“When may I leave this wretched place?” Deanna asked firmly. She worked hard to compose herself, not wanting to appear as though she had been caught at anything treasonous. Of course it was perfectly logical that she would not want to be here with the one-eyes—she had protested the assignment vehemently when Greensparrow had given it to her.
“Resmore is outside, talking with Muckles,” the fiend answered with a snicker.
“If you are finished with the task for which you were summoned, then be gone,” Deanna growled.
“I would help you dress,” Taknapotin replied, grinning evilly.
“Be gone!”
Instantly the beast vanished, in a crackling flash that stole Deanna’s eyesight and filled her nostrils with the thick scent of sulfur.
When the smoke, and Deanna’s vision, cleared, she found Selna at the tent flap, holding Deanna’s clothing over her arm. How much this one already knew, the duchess mused.
Within the hour, Deanna had wished Resmore well and had departed the mountains, via a magical tunnel the duke of Newcastle had conveniently created for her. Trying to act as if nothing out of place had happened, indeed, trying to seem as though the world was better now that she was in her proper quarters in Mannington’s palace, she dismissed Selna and sat alone on the great canopy bed in her private room.
Her gaze drifted to the bureau, where sat her bejeweled crown, her trace to the old royal family. She thought back again to that day so long ago, when drunk with the promise of magical power she had made her fateful choice.
Her thoughts wound their way quickly through the years, to this point. A logical procession, Deanna realized, leading even to the potential trouble that lay ahead for her. The cyclopians were not happy with her performance in the mountains, and rightly so. Likely, Muckles had complained behind her back to every emissary that came out of Avon. When Cresis, the cyclopian duke of Carlisle, heard the grumbles, he had probably appealed to Greensparrow, who had little trouble getting to Selna and confirming the problem.
“As it is,” Deanna said aloud, her voice full of grim resignation, “let Resmore have the one-eyes and all their wretchedness.” She knew that she would be disciplined by Greensparrow, perhaps even forced to surrender her body to Taknapotin for a time, always a painful and exhausting possession.
Deanna only shrugged. For the time being, there was little she could do except shrug and accept the judgments of Greensparrow, her king and master. But this was not the life Deanna Wellworth had envisioned. For those first years after her family’s demise, she had been left alone by Greensparrow, visited rarely, and asked to perform no duties beyond the mostly boring day-to-day routines of serving the primarily figurehead position as duchess of Mannington. She had been thrilled indeed when Greensparrow had called her to a greater service, to serve in his stead and sign the peace accord with Brind’Amour in Princetown. Now her life would change, she had told herself after delivering the agreement to her king. And so it had, for soon after Greensparrow had sent her to the mountains, to the cyclopians, staining her hands with blood and shadowing her heart in treachery.
She focused again on the crown, its glistening gemstones, its unkept promises.
The dwarf howled in pain and tried to scamper, but the hole he was in was not wide and the dozen cyclopians prodding down at him with long spears scored hit after stinging hit.
Soon the dwarf was on the ground. He tried to struggle to his knees, but a spear jabbed him in the face and laid him out straight. The cyclopians took their time in finishing the task.
“Ah, my devious Muckles!” roared Duke Resmore, a broad-shouldered, rotund man, with thick gray hair and a deceivingly cheery face. “You do so know how to have fun!”
Muckles returned the laugh and clapped the huge man on the back. For the brutal cyclopian, life had just gotten a little better.
7
Masters of the Dorsal Sea
“Huegoth!” cried one of the crewmen, a call seconded by another man who was standing on the crosspiece of the warship’s mainmast.
“She’s got up half a sail, and both banks pulling hard!” the man on the crosspiece added.
Luthien leaned over the forward rail, peering out to sea, amazed at how good these full-time seagoers were at discerning the smallest details in what remained no more than a gray haze to his own eyes.
“I do not see,” remarked Oliver, standing beside Luthien.
“It can take years to train your eyes for the sea,” Luthien tried to explain. (And your stomach, he wanted to add, for Oliver had spent the better part of the week and a half out of Gybi at the rail.) They were aboard The Stratton Weaver, one of the great war galleons captured from the Avon fleet in Port Charley now flying under Eriador’s flag. In favorable winds, the three-masted Weaver could outrun any Huegoth longship, and in any condition could outfight three of the Huegoth vessels combined. With a keel length of nearly a hundred feet and a seasoned crew of more than two hundred, the galleon carried large weaponry that could take out a longship at three hundred yards. Already the crew at the heavy catapult located on the Weaver’s higher stern deck were loading balls of pitch into the basket, while those men working the large swiveling ballistae on the rail behind the foremast checked their sights and the straightness of the huge spears they would soon launch the barbarians’ way.
“I do not see,” Oliver said again.
“Fear not, Oliver, for Luthien is right,” agreed Katerin, whose eyes were more accustomed to the open waters. “It can take years to season one’s eyes to the sea. It is a Huegoth, though—that is evident even to me, though I have not been on the open sea in many months.”
“Trust in the eyes of our guides,” Luthien said to the halfling, who appeared thoroughly flustered by this point, tap-tapping his polished black shoe on the deck. “If they call the approaching vessel as a Huegoth, then a Huegoth it is!”
“I do not see,” Oliver said for the third time, “because I have two so very big monkey-types blocking the rail in front of me!”
Luthien and Katerin looked to each other and snorted, glad for the relief that was Oliver deBurrows when battle appeared so imminent. Then, with great ceremony, they parted for the halfling.
Oliver immediately scrambled up to the rail, standing atop it with one hand grasping a guide rope, the other cupped over his eyes—which seemed pointless, since the brim of his huge hat shaded his face well enough.
“Ah yes,” the halfling began. “So that is a Huegoth. Curious ship. One, two, three . . . eighteen, nineteen, twenty oars on each side, moving in harmony. Dip and up, dip and up.”
Luthien and Katerin stared open-mouthed at each other, then at the tiny spot on the horizon.
“Oh, and who is that big fellow standing tall on the prow?” Oliver asked, and shuddered visibly. The exaggerated movement tipped Luthien off, and he sighed and turned a doubting expression upon Katerin.
“I would not want to fight with that one,” the halfling went on. “His yellow beard alone seems as if it might scrape the tender skin from my halfling bones!”
“Indeed,” Luthien agreed. “But it is the ring upon his finger that I most fear. See how it resembles the lion’s paw?” Now it was Luthien’s turn to feign a shudder. “Knowing Huegoth savagery and cunning, it is likely that the claws can be extended to tear the face from an adversary.” He shuddered again, and with a grinning Katerin beside him, began to walk away.
Katerin gave him a congratulatory wink, thinking that he had properly called Oliver’s bluff.
“Silly boy,” the irrepressible halfling shouted after them. “Can you not see that the ring has no more than jew-wels where the retracted claws should be? Ah, but the earring . . .” he said, holding a finger up in the air.