Vandar, give me strength. Robbert had no interest in their petty squabbles. “Call me ‘you’ again and I’ll have you thrown overboard.” He spun and continued down the corridor, and almost ran right into Lank as he came loping down the stairs.
“Ah, Robb, was just coming to tell you…”
“About the dragon,” Robbert said. “The Whaleheart just informed us.”
“Droyn saw it from the crow’s nest. He’s with Bloodhound now, and Gullimer. Apparently there are…”
“Some whales out there, coming our way,” Robb finished for him.
Sir Lothar Tunney gave a bemused laugh. “Well, it seems I’m not needed around here anymore. Might as well un-swear you my sword and take a ship to the Telleshis. Join a clan of outcasts…one with some pretty maids, ideally. Might get a year or two of fun before the war finds me.”
“Months more like. And you’d only sink on the way. And good luck finding a girl who fancies you, Lank. Women don’t tend to swoon over giraffes.”
“I was good enough for your sister. She fancied me.”
Robbert laughed aloud. The notion of it. “Keep dreaming, Lothar.” He strode right past him and out into the daylight, and the fog of noise on deck. The tall knight followed, easily keeping up with that absurd stride of his as Robb fought his way through the sailors and soldiers, some at work, others idle, and returned to the quarterdeck where the captain stood working the wheel and barking commands. The seas were uneasy, but big as Hammer was, she drove across the waves smoothly enough. Lord Gullimer was there with Sir Kester Droyn, the former in his essentials of armour and green and red cloak, the latter in light leathers to better scale the rigging. Dryon was a fearless sort, and had happily scampered up to the nest to keep lookout, taking a godsteel dagger with him to improve his sight. His blood-bond granted him particularly good vision, Robb knew.
“I heard about the dragon,” the prince said, arriving. “Where was it, Droyn? Point out exactly where you saw it.”
The knight of Smallweather obeyed. His finger gestured to the cliffs above his fleet. “Right there, my prince. I lost sight of it when it came down to land.”
“And it hasn’t been seen since?”
“No, my lord.”
Robbert nodded. “How about these greatwhales, Captain?”
“Cruising,” Bloodhound said.
“Cruising?” Robb repeated. “Or closing?”
“Bit of both. I don’t get the sense that they’re hostile. Not against us, at least.”
“Then who?” asked Lothar.
“Krakens,” Robbert said. “Whales hate krakens, Lank.”
“Aye,” agreed Burton. “That’s something old Bloodhound shares with them. Ever since I sailed with King Lorin as a boy.” He smiled. “You have heard about that, haven’t you? My days as a nipper riding the waves with the king?” He saw the look on Robbert’s face. “Well, reckon I might have mentioned it once or twice in the prince’s hearing, and this lanky knight here too, but not you, Lord Gullimer.”
“No,” Gullimer admitted. “At least not from the horse’s mouth. I have heard second-hand reports, Captain Burton. Your adventures on the high seas are well known. My own captain speaks very highly of you.”
“Oh? Truly? Well doesn’t that make me mighty proud to hear. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll be happy to share a tale or ten. We got a bit of time before we reach the fleet, so…”
These were not tales that Robbert needed to hear again. “Sir Kester, keep watching the skies. Report to me if that dragon is seen again.”
Robbert returned to the smaller cabin he shared with Lothar, his tall friend striding at his heel. The space was much smaller than his own royal cabin, but he didn’t mind that. It was worse for Lothar; the bunk could not fit him properly and Robbert could only imagine how bad it must be for the Whaleheart squeezing himself into a bed. Wherever he sleeps, Robbert thought. Or…does he sleep? He wasn’t sure on that account. Mostly the giant just prowled about the decks by day and night, never resting in his vigilance.
“A week, Robb,” Lank said, as they entered the cabin. “A week or even less if we’re lucky and we’ll be back home. Gods, I can’t wait to feel northern soil beneath my feet again.”
Bloody soil, Robbert thought, thick with the dead. The way they’d heard it, the Marshlands had been bled dry. If they landed there, it would be a wasteland they’d enter, of burned cities and scorched forts and armies of scavenging crows. “We have to get there first, Lothar,” he said. “We’ve hundreds of miles of open sea to cross, and there are some beasts about who might object to our passing. I’ll get excited when we’re a few hundred metres from shore, not miles.”
“And the princess?” Lothar asked. “Has she said where she wants to go yet? Except north.”
“No. I was about to ask just now before the King’s Wall interrupted.”
“Queen’s Wall,” Lank corrected. “Or…no, Princess’s Wall? Doesn’t sound so good, does it.”
“She’ll be the Grand Duchess when her grandmother dies,” Robbert said. “Not sure Grand Duchess’s Wall sounds any better to be honest.”
“She might be Grand Duchess already.” Lank went to his chest of armour; it was time to dress, now that they were nearing the coast. And especially so if there was a dragon to fight. “Odd that she’s going north at all. Do you think they’ll accept her as their leader, the Aramatians? I mean, she has the skin tone and the starcat, but all that godsteel and the Tukoran accent….personally I see her more as one of us than one of them, don’t you?”
Robb nodded. “The eyes as well.” That bright blue was much more common in the north. He crossed to his own chest and opened it up. A fog of mist poured out of it, his armour packed neatly inside. “Bloodhound said the dagger she wears reminded him of one King Lorin used to have. I thought it was familiar as well, the night we met her in Aram. I don’t know, Lank…all of this. The Whaleheart being sent to protect her. All this with her grandmother and Godrin, and that rumour that she’s Seaborn too. I think she’s important, and not just as her grandmother’s heir. I don’t want to drag her into danger if that’s where we’re going.”
Lothar gave him a long look. “Robb, you can’t let her change our course, just because you’re smitten.”
“I’m not smitten.”
“Besotted, then. Infatuated. Maybe you prefer one of those words.”
“Use whatever word you like, that’s not what this is about.”
“Then what is it about? She joined us, remember, and heir of Aramatia or not, you’re the Crown Prince of Tukor and maybe even our king. You have a responsibility to sail home and help defend the north. We can’t change course on her account, no matter who she is.” Lothar bent down to pick up a shoulder pauldron. “And all this cloak-and-dagger stuff isn’t helping. You need to sit her down and get the truth from her, Robb. You’re a king. Our king. You can’t be letting a woman dictate to you.”
She isn’t dictating to me, Robbert wanted to protest, but he had no taste for that fight right now. “There’s time,” is all he said. “Stop rushing me, Lank. Not everyone walks as quickly as you.”
Robbert finished dressing in silence, then returned to the decks to watch the cliffs grow high above him. Before long Bloodhound was barking his orders from the helm, and the crew were reefing and relaxing the sails, driving the prow of Hammer safely toward its stone jetty. Robbert was most relieved to see that the other three ships of his fleet were still intact and, blessedly, not burning.
He joined Lord Gullimer on the forecastle deck, the apple lord standing at the very front of the ship next to Hammer’s powerful ram forged in the likeness of her namesake. “A sad sight,” the lord intoned, looking across the paltry armada. His cloak flapped listlessly, as though to match his mood. “To think we set out from Tukor with almost twenty times the number.” He sighed. “Such is war, alas. One campaign can begin with great promise, and end in sour defeat. Oft as not luck and leadership are the deciding factors, and I fear we’ve been miserly provisioned in both.”
