Glasswrights' Master (33 page)

And yet, he had come with Hal. He had brought loyal knights and their vassals. He had left behind comfort and familiarity and certain power to fight with Hal against known evil. It was no wonder that the man questioned their ultimate success.

Hal could only nod toward Davin, who crouched near them in the boat, huddled next to Tovin Player in the prow. “Are we ready then?”

“Aye.” The old man was disapproving as ever. Hal had never seen Davin smile, and he certainly did not expect that to change as they crouched in a coracle on a glass-smooth autumn sea, just off the Morenian coast. “Better to do it now. The players' muscles will cool down, and they'll become less flexible.”

“Very well.” Hal gestured to the two soldiers who held oars. The men bowed their heads and stroked forward. Once. Twice. A dozen times.

The boat glided into a pod of similar craft, a dozen vessels all, bobbing on the glassy water. If the moon had been out, they might have been visible on the ocean, clear to any sailor who looked out from the ships that barricaded the Morenian harbor. In the darkness, though, they were practically invisible.

Hal looked at the faces in each small craft. They had rowed all the way from shore, launching from a sheltered cove well after sunset and laboring hard to reach this spot outside the Morenian harbor. The players were accustomed to hard work, but the necessity for silence had weighed heavily on them. They were ready for their performance to begin.

Hal looked to Tovin one last time. “You are certain?” he asked in a low voice.

“Aye. It is all that we can do.” The player had volunteered his men as soon as Hal and Hamid began to plan their attack. At first, Hal had laughed away the prospect–it was hardly likely that they could defeat their enemies with rhyming comedies, with woeful tragedies, all performed on a well-lit stage.

But then, Davin had mentioned an old plan that he had sketched in his endless notebooks. He needed strong men for it to work, but men who were short and light. As soon as Tovin heard the plan, he volunteered his players, and the troop leaped into their rapid training with an infectious enthusiasm. Hal had reluctantly conceded that the players had the precise skills that Davin's desperate ploy demanded, even as he wondered what payment Tovin would demand. Hal was scarcely in a position to haggle, though. He would pay the players, pay them richly, if ever he saw his treasury and his throne.

Each member of the troop was tested, to be certain that he did not fear the water. Each had been trained, quickly, in the rudiments of swimming, in case Davin's invention failed. Each had been reminded that he need not volunteer for a mission that might well mean death, that he need not agree to Davin's outrageous plan.

And each had proclaimed, in a loud, clear player's voice that he would undertake the task for his sponsor. Each had agreed to fight in honor of Rani Trader.

Hal had looked away when he saw the glint of tears in Tovin's eyes. Hal had never understood the player, but he had no problem comprehending loss. Loss and aching sorrow. Perhaps the player would not demand gold after all. Perhaps love had extracted its own toll.

Now, as Hal's boat bobbed on the ocean surface, he heard Mareka's voice, whispering in the deepest part of his brain. “There is no sorrow here, my lord. No sorrow beyond the Heavenly Gates. You can come with me, you know. Just lean against the edge of the boat. It is not so far. Not so far to the water.…”

He had heard Mareka for days now, for the fortnight that his men had been marching north. At first, she had come to him in his dreams, her voice soft, comforting, saying that she and Marekanoran felt no pain.

Then, she had whispered to him as he scraped away the bristles of his beard, telling him that the edge of his blade was sharp. He could come to her with one quick slash, one painless cut. He had cried out, and she had slipped away.

But not for long.

He had heard Mareka when he sat beside a well-built fire–she had whispered of the power and the beauty of the flames, reminded him how quickly they could consume a man. He had heard her when the road passed beside a swift-running river. She had spoken to him when they camped under sturdy tree branches, limbs that were strong enough to support a man and a length of clean-knotted rope.

Each time, he set her aside. Each time, she cried out as if he wounded her, as if he assaulted her with whatever mayhem she was suggesting. Each time, he heard her sobbing, desperate, frightened, alone.

He was still king. He must not yield to her ghost. He must not yield to death, no matter how strong the attraction.

He shook his head, looking out at the expectant faces, at the taut players' bodies in their stretched-leather boats. He hoped that they would think his voice shook because he was trying to keep it quiet in the night. “Men,” he said. “You are the first link in a chain. Tonight, the work that you do will allow us to enter our harbor, to reclaim the port that is rightfully ours. You go forth with a power never seen by man before. May all the Thousand watch over you.”

Hal leaned back, permitting Hamid to say a few words of his own. He thought that the Sarmonian king might only repeat his negative motto, might remind them all that their scheme could not work. The man was made of sterner stuff, though. He threw back his thin shoulders and said, “Morenians. My Sarmonian soldiers stand with you, ready on the shore. We rise up together, in a battle that will change our lives forever. Our children's children will speak of our glory for all the years to come.”

And then both kings leaned back. They allowed Davin to look about the players, to check the hastily crafted handiwork that would support such spirited lives. The old man had bullied the troops on the long march north, grumbling over great bone needles and lengths of leather thread. Davin had shown the players how to cut shapes out of the well-tanned leather that Hamid had produced from his treasury before they left Sarmonia. Davin had shown how to join the edges with a quick whiplash stitch. Children had been set to dripping wax over the seams, to oiling the finished products.

If Hal had seen Davin's creations in another context, he would have laughed. Even now, as hefty soldiers manned fragile bellows, he felt wholly inappropriate amusement rising in his throat. The players looked as if they played with toys, as if they bobbled in a summer fountain.

But this was no game. Lives were at stake. Brave men and women went forth to reclaim the harbor.

Hal watched as the volunteers strapped on Davin's leather contraptions, sealing the pods tightly around each foot. Oiled laces were rigged around each player's calves, laces that fit into holes sewed into leggings. The leather sacks were secured, oiled again, waxed closed.

And then each player sat in Davin's specially designed rope harness, dangled over the open sea. Each spun back toward his boat, leaning in the suspended chair so that the soldiers' bellows could find the small access holes, could pump the leather full of air.

In the dim night, the pods looked like nightmare feet, like bolsters attached to the players' legs. The strangeness was only accentuated by the final piece of Davin's handiwork–matched poles made of the lightest wood, each ending with an inflated bladder.

Even though Hal had heard the tools described, even though he had learned never to doubt Davin's creativity, he was amazed when he saw the first man walk across the water. The player's gait was awkward, and he fumbled with his poles, but he was walking on the ocean like a clumsy man on land.

“Slide, you fool! Slide!” Davin's instruction hissed down from Hal's boat. The player stiffened and seemed as if he would turn about to respond, but then he flexed his knees and kicked off for a longer glide on the water's surface.

Under other circumstances, Hal might have laughed. He might have marveled at a mind that had imagined men walking on water–imagined and then made that vision a reality. He might have sighed at the wonder of the poles–tools to help with balance, but weapons in their own right. Weapons that would reveal a poisoned spike, swaddled inside the bladder. Weapons that would be wielded against the Liantines that slept on ships in the harbor. Weapons that would gain back access to the port, even as they sowed confusion.

You could take one of those poles
, Hal heard Mareka say.
You could remove the bladder and plunge the spike into your chest. You could lean your full weight against it. It would hurt for a moment, but then you would be safe. You would be here, beyond the Heavenly Gates.

Hal tossed his head, pushing out Mareka's suggestion. Another coracle bumped against his, and Hal found himself looking into Farso's earnest eyes. “Come, Sire.” The baron nodded his head to include Hamid. “My lords, we must go meet the landward army. While we have tarried, they have moved into position outside the city.”

Army. That was hardly the word for it. One hundred men that Hamid had gathered–every last soul who owed loyalty directly to him, and not to one of the electors. One hundred men who had never seen Moren, who had never walked the city streets that they hoped to conquer before the next nightfall.

Hal set aside his doubts. One hundred men must be enough. One hundred warriors, relying on Davin's tricks. One hundred soldiers, well fed and already rested from their march north. If there had been more than five score, they could not have eaten from the tithing barns along the road. If there had been more than five score, Hal and Hamid might have already lost the war, before the first battle was begun.

The boat returned to shore without adventure. Along the way, Mareka whispered to him, assuring him that the water would close over his head quickly, that his lungs would only burn for a few minutes as he drowned.

He thrust away his wife and made himself think about Rani Trader. She had feared the sea. He had watched her face that fear, watched her try to conquer a rebellious stomach besides. She had been a brave woman, braver than he. He tried to convince himself that the moisture he wiped from his face was innocent sea-spray.

The short march inland was easy enough. The roads were clear, and when the light breeze blew from the north, Hal could make out the sound of the Pilgrims' Bell, tolling across the hills. It would guide him now, he vowed. He would embrace its solemn tones like the holiest of pilgrims reaching out for the Thousand Gods. For the Gods, for the Heavenly Gates.…

Hal sighed and pushed away yet another of Mareka's invitations, this one to grab the short sword from his bodyguard, to plunge the blade into his heart.

He was tired. More tired than he had ever thought he could be. How had his father lived to be such an old man? How had King Shanoranvilli stirred himself to rise from his bed every morning, no matter what chaos he faced?

Chaos he faced. Ever he raced. Sometimes he paced. Paced. Paced.

Hal let the rhyme carry him down the road, ignoring the mutter of the men beside him, forcing down the constant expectation of a cry from some Briantan guard. Surely the invaders had left sentries upon the approach to the city.… Surely they knew that someone would come to oust them.…

Perhaps they did not, though. Perhaps they believed themselves completely invulnerable–and that thought was even more distressing. If the Briantans believed themselves so secure, who was Hal to challenge them? Perhaps he should call a halt, stop the soldiers, try to save a few lives before the carnage of the battle.

Hal looked to his right, to Farso's grim face, barely visible in the moonless night. How could Hal stop now? He had been bereaved for a handful of weeks. Farso, though, had lost his child more than a year ago, had watched his wife succumb to a madness worse than any clean battle death. How could Hal say that he was unable to go on?

And so he found himself on the edge of the great plain that stretched before Moren's gates.

The soldiers moved swiftly. They had practiced their maneuvers on the long march north; their captains had drilled them, over and over, so that they could assemble Davin's engines with speed and accuracy.

Hal was still surprised by the creations. He had watched the players use them on their stage, but he had never seen the potential of the tools, never seen that they could be rebuilt as instruments of war. Certainly, stream of silken ribbons had been beautiful, but they were so far removed from a hail of burning bolts that Hal had not imagined Davin's true genius.

Now, though, the men assembled their creations with brutal efficiency. Hastily smoothed wooden beams were lowered into carved cradles. Gears fashioned of sturdy southern trees were meshed together, set on one side and then on the other, so that the engines could gain more power with every circuit they made, rolling forward.

Davin had tsked at the necessity of using wood. The engines would not last the day, he had exclaimed. The gears should be fashioned of metal, hammered out by the finest smiths.

Puladarati was the one who had convinced the old man to stop his fussing. The engines would work or they would not. Hal and his Sarmonian army would gain the gate, or they would be repulsed. There would be no long battle. One day, with wooden gears, would suffice. Or it would not.

Davin had grumbled, but he had conceded the point, supervising the men who carved the engines as they traveled northward. The best of the soldier craftsmen were carried in litters, allowed to carve all day, without the fatigue of walking.

Withdrawing behind the last of the sheltering hills, Hal turned to Hamid. “We are met, then. Till dawn.”

The Sarmonian nodded, the gesture scarcely visible in the dim light. “I'll see to my men. A word from their king would do them well as they face this battle.”

Hal watched the southerner disappear into the inky night. He should talk to his own men, try to raise their spirits. There were few enough of them–the handful that had fled the cathedral with him months past, supplemented by a dozen players who had agreed to ride Davin's engines on their destructive path.