Treason's Shore (50 page)

Chapter Thirty-one

I
NDA climbed to the top of the goat trail and looked around the clearing behind the cliffs above Elbow Jink. The muddy, trampled clearing had been camped on for days, maybe a week or two. The Resistance had learned from the Marlovans, planning an ambush from the heights, but they hadn’t learned to set perimeter watches.
Either that
or their leaders couldn’t get anyone to sit out the fun
, Inda thought as he motioned his dragoons to spread out.

Some thirty paces beyond the scree protecting the clearing sat the Idayagans. They had ranged themselves along the very edge of the cliffs above the pass, weapons to hand.

Paulan Ebetim and his men scarcely noticed the cold that they had been complaining bitterly about until that morning, when, at last, their lookout watching the pass had galloped below. That was the signal: the Pirate and his Marlovans had been sighted!

And there they were, riding around the sharp curve at extreme range. Their horses plodded up the muddy switchback with heads low, harnesses jingling, the echoes up the stone cliffs tinkling like coins falling on ice.

A few of the watchers noted the mostly bare yellow heads of the riders, here and there a knit cap, and exchanged gloating glances. The Marlovans did seem to have their shields to hand, not tied behind them, but from the way they joked back and forth in their wood-snap, wolf-growl language, they clearly suspected nothing. Perfect targets.

Paulan Ebetim ignored the whispered cracks his men exchanged. He did not share their confidence of an easy win, not since Zek the Ropemaker’s “I’ll be right back” had stretched into two days. Zek and the rest of the Olarans had all had brief but necessary errands, Paulan had discovered the previous day. There were none but Idayagans here for the ambush, something the younger men had crowed about—good riddance—but that left Paulan very uneasy.

It didn’t do to bring up some kinds of worry. People were too quick with words like “coward” and “fear” and especially “traitor” if they didn’t like what they were hearing.

Paulan gripped his bow, tested the snapvine, discovered it had loosened yet again in the sodden cold. He bent over the bow to tighten it again, glad to have something to do with his hands, but he’d just begun the task when a whisper ran through the others: “They’re in range!”

They slapped arrows to bows.

The horsemen finished rounding the curve and the front one with the banner rode directly below the Idayagans.

Paulan leaned out over a boulder, trying to descry which one might be Inda the Pirate. They all looked pretty much alike in those gray coats when seen from above.

“Pick your man—” His voice rasped, and he fought the urge to cough. The middle of the column was now directly below. “Shoot.”

A heartbeat after the bows twanged, the shields below flipped up, and the hissing arrows thumped and clattered harmlessly against them.

Paulan scarcely had a moment to think
They knew!
when there was noise from behind him. The ambushers whirled around as gray-coated Marlovans advanced, their scar-faced leader saying, “Surprise.”

Just before New Year’s Week, Cama sat down to his desk, and laboriously wrote to Evred-Harvaldar:

New Year’s Week, and Convocation, had passed before Evred replied. Cama had got used to that; he’d carry right on around the question until Evred had thought it out. Nor was he surprised when (after he’d sent a second message, saying that Inda’s dragoon flight had returned, having caught the Olarans exactly where he’d predicted they’d be) Evred wrote, “Let Inda decide.”

Sitting in the makeshift jail down in Castle Andahi’s cellar, Paulan Ebetim had gone from terror to resignation. They’d separated him from the rest of the men, so he had no idea where they were, or if they even lived. He’d heard rumors that the Marlovans didn’t take prisoners, so he braced himself to be dragged out before an assembled army to be put to death. At least his family was up the coast at Olara, where they wouldn’t find out until it was over.

Then day after cold, wearying day passed with nothing to do but watch the slow march of light reflected through the iron bars of his door from somewhere beyond the barrels and barrels of wine and coffee the Marlovans had stored. He couldn’t smell the beans—he figured the peculiar dark island wood of the barrels was too close-grained for that—but he sure could smell ground coffee drifting down from the kitchens directly above the cells. The smell was a kind of unexpected torment, though he was grateful for the warmth from their bake ovens.

After two weeks of no company, no talk, and food twice a day, he gathered enough courage to complain about the terrible food to his guards. “Is this slop some kind of torture?” he asked in careful Iascan.

The old man who’d brought the tray dumped the tray on the ground. “You eat what we eat.” He slammed the door behind him.

After half a watch, Paulan realized that this was all he was going to get. He scraped up the spilled food. As he munched grimly through the now cold rye bread and the congealed oatmeal with dots of sticky honey—none of which tasted better for the wait—he wondered if they were forming up for the execution now.

But more days passed with no change in the routine (or the food), and then, without any warning, they came for him. “What now?” he asked when two guards, the old one and a young one, jerked him out of the cell.

“Harskialdna,” the old one said.

When Paulan was brought before Inda, the smell of old fear sweat rising off stale clothing brought Inda right back to to the time he was a prisoner in Ymar. He tensed, fighting the urge to squirm. He hated the memories, hated the idea of prisoners, but these fellows hadn’t attacked on the cliff, they’d all thrown their weapons down while their leader just stood there with his mouth open. Inda couldn’t kill a bunch of terrified, unarmed men.

The followers had been put to work like lawbreakers, but this Ebetim was supposed to be a leader. So here Inda was, stuck with a prisoner, and Evred had told him to do whatever he thought best. Whatever Inda thought best was to pretend Ebetim didn’t exist, except he did. The dawn and sunset guard rota had “feed prisoner” written on the watch commander’s list of duties.

He eyed the wretched man. “Zek the Noose had a good plan. You were supposed to kill us, and when Cama and his boys ran up the pass, they’d drop on ’em from above, from our own beacon site. Good plan. But not good enough. It’s never going to be good enough—none of you have the training. Do you really want to fight until you’re all dead?”

Paulan waited. Everyone made speeches, it seemed. Mardric had loved making speeches. Zek, too. People in command made speeches, and because they were commanders, you had to listen—you couldn’t tell them to shut up like you could your mates. Especially when you were a prisoner.

Paulan had shut his eyes against the sharp angle of sunlight coming in through the window behind the Pirate’s head. When the silence had gone on too long he jerked up his hand to shade his eyes and discovered that the Pirate was waiting for an answer.

Paulan recovered the last few words and said hastily but with feeling, “No.”

“You really want to live?” the Pirate asked. He had brown eyes. They were wide. His face was too scarred; Paulan couldn’t tell if his expression was some kind of trick—if he was playing with the prisoner or he was asking a real question.

So stick to the truth and keep it short
. “Yes.”

“Right. Then we’re going to put you on the next trader going out. You learn a new trade. And never come back, because if you do, you’ll go up against the wall.”

“I don’t know anything about ships,” Paulan said. Then wished the words back inside his throat.

The Pirate snorted. “Neither did I, when I was put on one. But one thing about ship life is you learn fast.”

He waved a hand, and Paulan was hauled summarily away. Inda said to the grizzled Rider Captain, the former Jarl of Tlennen, “See to it he’s not put on an Idayagan trader.”

The captain thumped his fist to his chest and withdrew, taking the prisoner problem away. Inda got up from the Jarl’s desk. At least Zek’s assassination team had fought; these other fellows like Ebetim, throwing down their weapons before a truce or a surrender, how could they ever expect to win? They weren’t warriors, they were playing at being warriors. Paulan Ebetim had spoken with the flat weariness of disillusionment.

“Maybe I should change the plans,” Inda said to Cama. “See what you think.”

As they talked they walked downstairs, through the hall where the children were practicing. Radran supervised the smaller boys and Captain Han Tlen the little girls as everybody worked through knife drill.

“They’re not going to execute that Idayagan horse apple,” Radran said, his face sour. Then, louder, “Do it again,” to the waiting eight-year-olds.

Han scowled down at her feet. She admired Radran, and liked him, except when he talked about torture and killing. Though she wanted all those Venn who had killed her family and the Jarlan dead, dead,
dead
—and the Idayagans who maimed or killed someone’s dad or brother or cousin, too—she didn’t want to
talk
about it all the time, especially about flogging away their flesh and laughing while they screamed.

Radran had stopped doing it so much after he came back from the royal city, but he’d started again when the Harskialdna arrived, bringing that Olaran Resistance leader. Nobody knew what to do with prisoners. If people attacked, you killed them or drove them away. If people were brought in having done something wrong, you punished them. Not much of that, as Cama-Jarl hated flogging; he thought hard work much better, so mostly they were chained together and put to work on the stone-shifting gangs, rebuilding the walls. There’d been an abrupt drop-off in cut purses and the like since they’d begun that.

They didn’t do that with Paulan Ebetim because he was a Resistance leader.

Prisoners, especially a leader, meant torture, Radran had said, grinning with glee. But days passed. Now, whatever the Harskialdna had decided, it wasn’t on any execution, or they’d all hear the bell for gathering in the court. Han was relieved. She didn’t want to hear Radran’s bitter disappointment, so she said to the girls, “Shooting practice.”

“But it’s
sleeting
out there,” Lnand protested, hands on her hips.

“So the enemies will wait around for a nice day if they attack?”

“
They
won’t even
see
the target.” Lnand pointed at the little girls, who promptly began shrilling, “We can, too! We can, too!”

“Then they may as well learn. Right?” Han said over their squealing.

“I’ll take them,” said sixteen-year-old Ingrid.

Lnand whirled around, making a dramatic start. Han jerked, then hated showing that much reaction, because she despised how Lnand yapped on and on about how being startled gave her nightmares, After All They’d Endured During the War.