Stormed Fortress (100 page)

'
You will make no dire threats!
'
Knuckles clenched, brown eyes narrowed, he bristled like an unkempt spaniel flaunting a wolf
'
s teeth.
'
What had you planned? To browbeat that crew for their fishing craft?
'

The pinned fugitive glared back. Arms crossed, he said nothing. Sore desperation did not reason, or answer to brangling morality.

'
Forget your suicidal attempt to rejoin the warfront!
'
snapped Dakar.
'
Run like a rogue, Parrien s
'
Brydion, and you
'
ll face arcane force under rightful reprisal. By my charge to safeguard the royal lineage, you could lawfully be noosed as a murdering criminal.
'

Even scalded to shame, Parrien
'
s shrewd instincts gave warning: something
else
lurked beneath Dakar
'
s outburst. Hidden pain, stuck like a thorn in the flesh, hazed his nerves beyond volatile. Set on wary guard, Parrien retired, and left Talvish to steer the next leg of their thrashed, winter passage to Athir.

As night fell again, the next clobbering storm whipped up the Cildein. The sloop reeled and tossed in the shrieking wind, with spars stripped and her helm lashed alee. The savage weather became everyone
'
s gaoler, as hours of frigid, damp misery kept them huddled belowdecks with the galley stove doused to avert wild fire.

Parrien endured in hostile retreat, protectively curled in the forward cabin. Nobody else would dispute that rough berth, banged and corkscrewed by each hissing wave-crest. The wet salt on his cheeks was not due to the deck leak, when someone
'
s invasive touch clasped his shoulder, softly arrived as a moth
'
s wing.

His flinching spin and snarled oath met Elaira.

She held a lit lamp. Her severely neat hair was braided, and her eyes pale as smoke in the dimness.
'
Glendien
'
s with Arithon, for the nonce,
'
she explained,
'
and we are not alone, having someone we love in grave jeopardy.
'
Her voice was unsteady, despite her held calm; a ghost
'
s imprint against the pounding rush of frothed water, and scarcely a plank
'
s width between the storm
'
s fury, and drowning.

'
Damn you!
'
snarled Parrien, before his throat closed with anguish for Tiassa and his four children.
'
Why not hold the hand of your hobbled prince? Or do you seek revenge by jabbing my flanks with censure parading as kindness?
'

Elaira hung the lamp from the ring in the deck-beam. Unhurried, against the sloop
'
s gyrating roll, she pulled shut the louvred door. Even in anger, one must pity her hands. She had worked herself raw, poulticing wounds and grinding the herbals for astringent remedies. Now, the same dauntless mercy withstood the inimical stare fixed upon her.

She said gently,
'
Please understand that your effort has not gone for naught, by steering this craft towards safety.
'

His recoil came on a sharply checked breath.

She cut him off.
'
Your wife is well, Parrien! Alestron
'
s upper fortress has not yet fallen. I
'
d show you in full measure, that accepts no one
'
s word, offered as a lame consolation.
'

Surely,
past question
the harsh cold made him shudder. Parrien pulled the dank blanket around his bull frame, tucked up his chapped knees, and demanded,
'
Why?
'
He could not remove her. Not if he manhandled her for rank insolence and bashed her backwards through the latched companion-way. Deeper than Tiassa
'
s nerve-stripping rages, this woman: her provocation was
more than
witch-trained. Over and over, she displayed the fibre to match and ameliorate Torbrand
'
s fettlesome lineage.

Parrien fought his tight chest.
'
Should my desperate straits matter?
'

Elaira attacked through his blistering spite.
'
Not for your pride, foolish man, that snarls to hide your heart
'
s weeping. I have come for your wife, who surely would settle the anguish of mind that torments you from sleep.
'

Massive and war-scarred before her elfin frame, Parrien propped his jaw on his fists and glowered like a denned animal.
'
You don
'
t have that high-handed hold over me!
'

The enchantress reached under her mantle and presented a clear crystal sphere.
'
Try me?
'

Her invitation awaited no answer. Already, her flicked rune cast the scrying his unbearable need in fact could not resist...

Night view opened up, of a scene boldly snatched from the midst of the Alliance war camp. There, under lamps in the Sunwheel pavilion, Lord Commander Sulfin Evend stood with Lysaer
s
'
Ilessid
, both men clad in the glittering regalia to commemorate the ritual burning and scattered ash of a convicted sorcerer. Which furore now set them in ranked opposition to the officers, who clamoured to close the campaign by unbridled aggression.
'
We can take the filthy rat
'
s warren down!
'

'
Bury the s
'
Brydion name and lineage in the rubble of their own battlements!
'
'
End the scourge that has strangled the trade in East Halla, protecting Atwood
'
s barbarians!
'

'
Flush the lair that
'
s harboured the Spinner of Darkness and furthered the hindrance of Fellowship sorcery!
'

Above the howl to drive home a swift conquest, then savage the wreckage for spoils, Sulfin Evend slammed down his fist and gave the riot his icy refusal.
'
Alestron
'
s sea quarter is already ours! And you
'
ve witnessed the corpse of the Master of Shadow blasted to smoke by invoked Light and the hands of your priests! Impatience at this stage will only waste lives. Our galleys risk sinking each time we stage a new company onto the harbour-side landing. Alestron
'
s last bastions won
'
t need to be cracked, since our sappers have broken the cisterns. More than ever before, we sit tight and wait. Hold the defenders hostage atop their own walls, and let thirst and hunger deliver their surrender into our hands.
'

When more outraged yelling disparaged restraint, Lysaer rebuked folly in scalding terms and fierce majesty.
'
Are we hungry for death? Addicted to ruin? Has the horror of war and a sorcerer
'
s wiles turned us into despoilers of women and children? Or are we the champions of hardworking craftsfolk, rightfully born to pursue decent lives and build honest security? I say now, under peril of my retribution, we stand proud and hold out for an honourable victory. My leave is not given to tear down a fortress like starving wolves set on a carcass!
'

'
The
s
'
Ilessid
pretender has changed
'
murmured Parrien.
'
How? Not through Fionn Areth
'
s sorry demise! Don
'
t tell me the burning of a false corpse has blindsided Desh-thiere
'
s curse.
'

'
The Mistwraith
'
s grip has not lifted
'
Elaira affirmed, her grief for the hapless grasslander
'
s fate limned by the scene in the crystal.
'
The staged ritual was a sop done to placate the troops. Endorsed by Lysaer, since Sulfin Evend
'
s sworn witness correlated his curse-driven awareness that his half-brother had quit the arena. Now, Lysaer wrestles the warped urge to pursue on the strength first inspired by Alithiel
'
s harmony. You have bought the distance to make reprieve possible. The farther away we move Arithon
'
s influence, the more the geas wanes, and the more freely Lysaer
'
s innate character can fight to reclaim his abused self-command.
'

Unlike the false avatar last seen in Tysan, who inflamed men to wreak righteous slaughter, this sane appeal curbed fanatical zeal and promised mercy through civilian justice.
'
Your Lord Commander serves my word of law!
'
the Blessed Prince appealed in dismissal.
'
Arcane workings no longer threaten our conquest! Our lines shall stand firm for an ordered surrender. Every one of you! Carry on by my charge to spare Alestron
'
s survivors from untoward cruelty . . . !
'

'
Pretty statesmanship won
'
t let my brother back down,
'
Parrien said in flat irony.
'
A cold day in Sithaer, before he bows his neck and flings open our gates to an enemy.
'

'
I know.
'
The admission was sorrowful. A pass of the enchantress
'
s hand masked the crystal, then unveiled a flickering change.
'
But hope always kindles through striving.
'

A fresh view unfolded within the quartz sphere, drawn from another council of war, convened inside the besieged citadel. There, Bransian paced like a shambling lion before the trestle that seated Sevrand, and the dauntless, hard-bitten captains still holding Alestron
'
s defence: heroes, who yet manned the cliff-top embrasures after the fall of the Sea Gate. All were besmirched by cinders and soot. Most gimped in blood-stained bandages. Bransian squinted through smoke-reddened eyes, against all the odds fired by grim purpose. I don
'
t care blazes if the cistern
'
s run dry! We are holding the walls! There
'
s drifted ice mounding the inside baileys. More snow-melt running off the slate roofs that our women are saving in catch barrels. We still have split rock to launch from the trebuchets, and dulled swords aplenty that can be resharpened. By Ath, we have the tools left to strike back! I will hear no more grumbling cant over losses! Tiassa and Sindelle are not whining, as widows, and no s
'
Brydion babe gives me bawling complaint that they
'
re cutting their teeth on jerked horse-meat. My own do not falter! We continue on! Until we are sucking the bones of boiled rats, this fortress will be protected!
'

Under the duke
'
s irascible glare, belief never flagged, that the effort withstanding the Light
'
s siege might yet win the hour, or find unforeseen intervention . . .

Parrien scrubbed at damp eyes. Through the tacit pause, the enchantress cleared the spent charge of her scrying and veiled the dimmed crystal back under silk. Because she did not press, or try him with platitudes, he found civil speech. "Thank you. I never properly acknowledged the fact that your action spared me from falling to enemy hands as a hostage.
'

'
You would have been butchered outright when the sea quarter fell,
'
Elaira gave acid correction.
'
I shared Arithon
'
s awareness, as he went down.
'
Agonized by that memory, but sure of her ground, she finished as she intended.
'
His Grace
'
s plea to stay Talvish
'
s hand was not bleeding-heart mercy, but a surety, delivered by the rogue far-sight of his s
'
Ahelas ancestry.
'

'
You say?
'
Parrien looked away. Scratched his beard, then heaved a sigh like a staghound chastised for gutting a warren of rabbits.
'
If I owe the runt sorcerer a life debt, may the rainy day come that he has to collect. Needing my help just might peel the man down to the lump in the clay that is human.
'