There was no surprise when they finally reached Princess Tarassa's private valley. The bodies of soldiers from both sides lay thicker here than anywhere else, and from them rose such a stench that the air was almost unbreathable. Blade could see that many of Tarassa's guards had died literally fighting tooth and nail, biting and clawing at their enemies. But they had all died in the end, and so had Princess Tarassa.
They found her lying behind the blackened rubble of the palace. She had been a long and horrible time dying. Her face was already so swollen and blackened that it was impossible to see what expression had been on it when she died. That was just as well.
They buried Tarassa as deeply as they could and piled blocks of marble from her palace over the grave to make it safe. It was only after the princess was buried that Prince Durouman finally went off behind some blackened stumps and vomited himself empty. When he returned his face was still pale, but there was a ghastly, cold control in his voice when he spoke.
«I think there is no more question of whether the Five Kingdoms will come to aid us. The only question is which one will send the first ships.» His face split in a grim smile. «Would you care to make a bet on it, Blade?»
The first ships came in on the evening of the next day, three galleys from Belthanor, the southernmost of the Five Kingdoms. Blade and Prince Durouman told the captains all they needed to know of the situation and organized the crews into search parties. Prince Durouman would gladly have left the island and its dead behind. Blade thought otherwise. He was determined to comb Parine thoroughly for survivors and anything Kul-Nam's men might have left behind that might be useful in the coming war.
«Besides,» he added, «what better way to convince people of what is at stake in this war than by showing them Parine? You will have few traitors among those who have seen this.» He swept a hand around them, taking in all the rubble and corpses.
Prince Durouman had to admit Blade's point.
The search parties turned up two welcome surprises in the first two days. One was Princess Tarassa's son, alive and reasonably healthy. Two of the household servants had fled with him before the palace was surrounded and had hidden in a cave. The other surprise was more than a thousand of Parine's famous barrels, seasoned and ready for use, left completely intact in their sheds in the countryside.
«Kul-Nam's soldiers must have found them too bulky to carry away and not valuable enough to be worth destroying,» said Prince Durouman. «I imagine they'll be useful for our supplies when we sail, but-Blade, why are you smiling like that?»
So Blade finally had to explain the weapon he had conceived for use against the sailing ships of Kul-Nam's fleet.
It was extremely simple. Put a sealed barrel of gunpowder on the end of a long spar, preferably at least sixty feet long-
«A ship's mast?» asked the prince.
«Perhaps. Something long and strong, in any case.»
In the end of the barrel, put an iron rod, moving back and forth through a hole sealed with greased leather. Fasten the other end of the spar to the ram of a galley. Row the galley straight at a sailing ship until the barrel strikes the enemy's side. The iron rod is driven in through the hole, passing across a piece of flint. This strikes sparks. The sparks set off the powder. Anything from sixty to four hundred pounds of gunpowder- explodes against the enemy's hull well below the water line.
«That will blow a hole large enough for a man to ride through on horseback,» said Blade. «The ship will be on the bottom in minutes.»
«It will also knock the caulking out of every seam in the galley and the teeth out of the jaws of every man aboard her,» said Prince Durouman. «Assuming the sailing ship's guns haven't sunk the galley on the way in.»
«True. There is a risk. But it is only a risk on the way in. Once the barrel has exploded, the galley can back off with little further danger from her victim. If the enemy's men are still on their feet at all, they will be thinking about bucket brigades or sharks, not about manning their guns.»
«Very well,» said Prince Durouman. «I can think of all sorts of petty objections. But this is no time for them, and besides, I know better by now than to try arguing with you.»
«Good,» said Blade. «Men should immediately be put to work filling and arming barrels and trimming down spars. If we have enough material, I would like each galley to have several of these weapons aboard when we sail. No one should be told exactly what they are making or how it will be used until we sail, not even the galley captains.»
«Spies?»
«Exactly. This is a weapon that can be used successfully in only one battle, and it cannot even be used in that battle unless it is a complete surprise. Otherwise Kul-Nam's admirals will be able to think of tactics to meet it.»
«If they are still interested in winning battles for a ruler who shows such poor judgment as Kul-Nam.»
«They may not be interested in victory for its own sake. They will still be interested in winning for the sake of not being tortured to death by the Emperor.»
The galleys were now coming in from the mainland, three, five, eight each day. As fast as they came, Blade snatched their carpenters and other skilled workers ashore. Some of the galleys were sent back for more powder and masts. The armed and filled barrels and the trimmed spars began to pile up. They were kept under close guard in dry caves not far from the sea.
There was no problem getting the men to work, even without knowing exactly what they were making. They knew that whatever they were making would help destroy Kul-Nam's fleet and bring him down. Any man who had seen the ruins of Parine or helped bury its dead in mass graves could imagine the same thing happening to his home and family, and he would return to his work with more enthusiasm than ever. The workers would in fact have gladly stayed on their jobs twenty hours a day. Blade refused to let them do so, fearing that exhaustion would set in and lead to carelessness, and carelessness to accidents. He was not going to see many weeks' work and the best chance for victory wiped out by the mistake of some worker too tired to see straight.
The pirates of Nongai came as they had promised. They were fifty galleys, each crammed with all the fighting men and supplies she could hold and a little bit more. The officers and men from the galleys of the Five Kingdoms looked dubiously at the pirates at first. Then they saw the pirates behaving themselves on shore, standing guard like disciplined men, and obeying the orders of Blade and Prince Durouman without question. Old suspicions did not vanish overnight, but nothing remained to keep pirates and Five Kingdom sailors from fighting side by side as long as the enemy was Kul-Nam.
Two days after the pirates arrived, the entire royal fleet of Nullar appeared, twenty-six galleys. Prince Durouman was openly astonished and asked their admiral what had inspired the king to such unusual boldness.
«The lady who shall be your wife inspired him,» replied the admiral. «She said that if the fleet were not sent to aid you, she would set forth to do so, though she had to set forth in a fishing boat clad only in her night shift.»
«She will make a fine empress for Saram,» said Durouman, only half to himself. He seemed to be getting accustomed to the idea of himself on the throne of Saram.
In another two days the fleet received its last reinforcements. These were small, but surprising and very welcome, especially to Blade. They consisted of two galleys, formerly of the Imperial fleet but now flying the flag of the House of Kudai. Aboard them were Tulu, now Duke of Kudai, and as many of the guards and servants of the house as he'd been able to save after his father's arrest and execution.