“I believe so, my lord, yes I do. She was sailing with another of Lord Gullimer’s vessels, and they looked to be tied together, that I saw. Though I could not say for certain. They were many leagues away, and we did not get a long look at them.” He rubbed at a scraggly flaxen beard. “I wonder if you might consider sending someone out to search for them, Prince Robbert. They may be in dire need of water and rations, as we were. I would go myself, if I could, but with the damage we have suffered…”
“You’ve done quite enough, Sir Colyn, and have earned your rest.” Robb looked across his little fleet. “I’ll send Landslide,” he decided. He was not going to let the apple lord die without an attempt to save him, and Lord Huffort’s flagship was best placed to brave the waters again, big and bulky and undamaged as it was. It would be nice to rid himself of Huffort for a day or two as well. The man is restless here. I’ll give him something to do.
Some rain was starting to fall, and the wind was picking up, a hot wind blowing from the ocean. Across the decks of every vessel, empty buckets and pails and barrels were brought out to catch the rainwater. The ragged men of Wild Raven were opening their mouths and looking skyward, sighing in sweet relief. Some were weeping, hugging one another. Sir Colyn smiled. “We haven’t felt a drop of rain for long days. It has come at just the right time.”
Not for Orchard, Robbert thought. If these winds continued to strengthen, the waves were sure to follow, and both beleaguered boats could yet be sunk. He told Sir Colyn to begin repairs right away, and that he would send both Buckley and Sir Gregory to help him, then paid a visit to Lord Huffort’s large, spacious cabin aboard Landslide. There, he gave a direct command to the lantern-jawed lord to unmoor on the morning tide and sail south down to the coast, to find Orchard and her companion ship and tow them both back if required.
Naturally, Lord Lewyn did not seem pleased with the charge. “We’re meant to be sailing north, not south,” he groused. “How far do you want me to go?”
“As far as is required,” Robbert said.
“And if another storm picks up? You’d risk me and my men to this folly? I have almost six hundred soldiers aboard.”
“Those can stay here,” Robbert told him. “Take only the captain and his crew. If Orchard is foundering, her men may need to come aboard. You can clear space overnight.”
“In this weather?” The rain was falling much harder already, and a grey fog was closing in. “Be reasonable, Robbert. At least let them sleep belowdecks tonight. By morning the rain will have cleared and they can move onto the beach then.”
“Fine,” Robbert said. “But I want you ready to sail by dawn, Lewyn. If Hammer was not still undergoing repairs, I would go myself. But alas that is not the case, so it must be you. Or would you prefer to see Lord Gullimer left out there to die? Along with hundreds of men?”
Huffort grunted and shook his head. “Of course not.” He thought a moment, and there was a slight shift in his eyes. “I’ll see it done, if that’s your command.”
“It is,” Robbert said, firmly.
“Then we’ll be gone by morning, fear not.”
Robbert left him as quickly as he’d come. Spending any length of time with the man only ever served to put him in a foul mood. He purged himself over the following hours by helping to oversee the repairs to the ships, taking reports from scouts and scavengers as they returned from the cliffs above, distributing water and rations to the starving men aboard Wild Raven, checking on the horses and mules and watching the seas for signs of sails. With luck Lord Gullimer would be sighted by nightfall and he could give Lord Huffort a reprieve.
He wasn’t. The fog was too thick to see through, the rains too heavy, and none of the watchers came down from the cliffs telling Robbert that Orchard was near. All the same, the prince went to bed that night more hopeful than he’d been in a while. Another ship had come in, along with the loyal knight Sir Colyn Rowley, who had served beneath his father for many years, and with luck Lord Wilson Gullimer, and several hundred more men, would soon be joining him as well.
It would bring their total numbers up toward four thousand, perhaps a few more. It was hardly much of an army, but enough to make some difference. He smiled to think of how his brother would react to his return, and his lords bannermen and captains and knights. And when he slept that night, he dreamt of fighting beside Ray on the battlefield, back to back, as one, slaying both man and beast, fighting for the pride of their father, the great Rylian Lukar, as he watched on from the Hall of Green.
He was awoken by a hard shake to the shoulder.
Bernie Westermont loomed above him. His face was cast in a glare of anger. “What is it, Bern?” Robbert asked, voice cracked from sleep. He blinked and sat up and glanced outside through the window by his bed. It was dark still, and foggy, and the rain had not stopped falling. A thin line of colour marked the eastern horizon.
“Huffort,” the big knight said, making the name a curse.
Robbert frowned. “What’s he done now?”
“Come. You’d best see.”
Robbert threw on a pair of breeches and stepped outside, unclothed above the waist. The rain washed down across his agile, youthful frame. The light was so poor and fog so thick that he could barely make out the rest of the fleet, moored along their stone jetties. But it was clear enough that Landslide was gone.
And she was not the only one.
“He took them,” Bernie said. “The Stone Maiden and Mountain. Huffort took all his ships.”
“To find Gullimer?” Robbert asked, his head still heavy with sleep. It was a naive question, and he realised the truth at once.
Bernie Westermont said it for him. “He sailed north, Robb. Home. That traitorous bastard has abandoned us.”
41
The doomed were led out at dawn, a line of four men accused of murder and mutiny.
Outside the broken city walls, a stage had been erected, looking east toward the sunrise. Shards of pale light shone down through the clouds, and a soft cool rain was falling, sprinkling from the skies. It was almost pretty, Lythian thought. He closed a fist, knowing what he had to do.
One of the men was weeping, the youngest of them, a youth of only seventeen. He served Lord Barrow, and had been a stableboy in his former life before the muster called him to war. The lord himself stood at Lythian’s side, shaking his head. “This is foul, my lord. Foul. He is only a boy. He did not know what he was doing.”
He knew, Lythian thought. He was drawn along by the older men, but he knew. “No man can escape justice, Lord Barrow,” is all he said. He spoke in a strong, clear voice, standing tall and straight-backed, bedecked in his misting armour. From his shoulders trailed the cloak that marked him as the First Blade of Vandar, and from his hip glowed the great golden blade that only such a man could bear. He had decided to portray an image of total strength. No more doubt, he thought. No more weakness. Play the role with pride.
The young weeper was walking at the back. Before him went three others, two in the service of House Kindrick and one of the Rosetree men. They were part of a larger group, it had been discovered. There had been eight of them originally, though three had perished during the fighting with the prisoners, and another had died of his wounds a few days later.
Dead by their own steel, Lythian thought. As he had suspected, the men had conspired to gather weapons from the armoury, and throw them down upon a group of Agarathi men they had previously identified as violent. Men they had taunted for weeks, Lythian knew, mocking them and goading them and stirring them into a frenzy. It seemed that this was a long-term plan, involving more men than had likely been identified.
There are some out there now, the First Blade thought, looking across the crowds gathered upon the muddy plains below the stage. Hundreds had come out to watch, perhaps as many as a thousand, and many more were observing from the battlements and broken walls. Most wore hooded cloaks to shield themselves from the rains, shadowing their faces and their dark, hateful eyes. Lythian looked out at them, a fixed expression of defiance on his face. He wondered for a moment what would happen if they all attacked him at once. How many would I kill before they overwhelmed me? Fifty? A hundred? Might I slay them all?
The thought moved through him darkly. His jaw stiffened as he embraced it. There was a hate rising in him, approaching like a tide he could not seem to stop. It had crept upon him, day by day, fuelled by the whispers and the rumours and the dark glances of the men. Men, he thought bitterly. Roaches would be a better term for them. Too few of them were good and honourable, and some had started to leave. Amron had staunched that wound for a time, but the deserters had begun to slip away again, escaping through the breaches in the walls in ones and twos and little groups, up to a dozen disappearing each night.
He grimaced, gazing out, wondering which of the men would be gone by tomorrow. It was a leak he could not stop, a drip drip drip of deserting men driven to return home to their loved ones. If that was a motive he could understand, it was not one he was able to forgive. I will leave this gallows here, he thought. I’ll decree that any man caught trying to flee will get a length of rope as well…
“You’re going to regret this, Lindar,” sneered a voice. “You hear me. You kill those men and…”
“And what?” Lythian turned, cloak swaying, to look Lord Kindrick in the eye. He loomed over him. Lythian was no Amron Daecar, but he was no small man either, and in his armour he was grand as a god. “If I kill these men, then what will happen to me?”
Kindrick shrunk away at the force of his voice. His eyes moved aside like the frightened weasel he was. “It’ll…it’ll rest on your conscience, is all. These men…they didn’t do anything. They…”
