The same mounted galloper as before drew rein before them; Adrian could smell the rank omnivore breath of the velipad as it came up on its haunches, pawing the air before it with great blunt claws.
"Where do you think you're going?" the young Confed nobleman cried. "Back to your posts, you Emerald scum-"
Thunk.
Esmond's javelin punched through the light cuirass of linen and bronze scale with a sound like an axe hitting wood. The Confed goggled, and then his eyes slid down to the slim ashwood shaft in his gut. He slid free of the saddle with the same expression of bewildered indignation, as if he could not believe that a mere Emerald mercenary had dared to raise a hand against him.
"For every slight, for every insult, I will send a dozen of them to the Shades," Esmond muttered as he caught the velipad and swung into the saddle with effortless grace. "For Nanya, not all their lives are enough."
Adrian swallowed at the sound of his brother's voice, even now. There was a huge rasping slither behind them as Audsley's men drew their assegais in turn, then a banging clatter like all the smiths' shops in the world as the fight came to close quarters. He risked a glance over his left shoulder; the volunteers were going down like greatbeasts under a sacrificer's axe, but there were so many of them that it would take some time. . and the dust and confusion were immense. Without Center to sketch images across his vision it would have all been a mass of steel and shouting and blood, patternless, Chaos and Old Night come again.
"When Demansk's men get through with the rabble, they'll curve in to take Audsley's regulars from the rear," he called up to Esmond. "If we get out of the bag in time. ."
"Exactly," Esmond said, like an apparition of Wodep the War God on the restive velipad, his armor splashed with blood.
Me too, Adrian realized, daubing at himself. Me too.
* * *
"Strike sail," Adrian said.
The skipper of the Wave Strider shrugged. "Lay aloft!" he shouted. "Strike sail!"
The ship they'd hijacked was much like the ones their father had run out of Solinga for most of their lives: a hundred feet long and forty at the broadest part of the hull, fully decked, with one tall mast and a single large square sail. Adrian didn't think his father would ever have tolerated the skirt of weed that showed green against the blue water all around, or bilges that stank badly enough to overpower even the iodine smell of the sea. The swan's head that curled above them on the quarterdeck was standard, but the blue and gold paint was chipped and faded. For all that, the hull was watertight and they'd made good time from the west-coast port of Preble. Adrian licked dry lips, squinting out over the white-flecked blue of the Western Ocean; they hadn't had time to ship extra water or supplies, and with two hundred men aboard they were down to a cupful a day-green, slimy, sweeter-tasting than any wine.
The big yard came down with a rattle, and a curse from the Emerald mercenaries on deck who had to scramble out of the way. With the sail down, Adrian had a better view of the craft that was approaching them.
It was no merchantman. The hull was low and long and snake-slender, with glaring eyes and snarling teeth painted above a bronze ram that flashed out of the water with every forward bound. Outriggers held seats for oarsmen who would drive two banks of long oars when the mast was down. Right now it was rigged for cruising, the mast up and a sail painted the same blue-gray as the hull bent to it. Two light catapults stood manned near the bows, ready to throw rocks or jugs full of clingfire; two ballistae flanked the quarterdeck, with giant javelins ready to hurl. The knot of men by the steering oar was bright with plumes and gold and blowing cloaks dyed in the famous purple of the western islands. And the flag above them had the stylized cresting wave of the Lords of the Isles.
The other ship's sail came down like magic, neatly furled-a heavy crew, a warship's crew. Esmond came up beside his brother, shading his eyes with a palm. As he did, the oars flashed out of the other ship's sides and struck the water all together like the limbs of a centipede, slashing creamy froth from the waves. The slender hull jerked forward, then turned to present its ram to the merchantman's side in a smooth curve, turned by the oars as well as the twin steering oars; they could hear the clack. . clack. . clack of the hortator's mallets on the log that served as drum.
"Bireme," Esmond said. "Twenty marines, hundred and twenty oarsmen, thirty sailors. They can't be far from home. Royal ship too, I think, not a freebooter. Very well-trained crew."
Adrian nodded, although being a royal ship wasn't always much of a distinction, with Islanders. Any king's ship would turn pirate if the opportunity offered.
One of the officers on the warship's quarterdeck raised a speaking trumpet. He hailed them in Confed, accented but understandable.
"Ahoy there! What ship?"
"Wave Strider, out of Preble," the captain said. "Bound for Chalice."
"What cargo?"
The voice sounded suspicious; there were far too many armed men on the merchantman's deck, but she was equally obviously no pirate or longshore raider. That would make her cautious. Even a successful ramming run might leave the warship vulnerable to boarding; a little bad luck, a ram caught in the wounded ship's timbers, and the Wave Strider's men could swarm aboard. That was how Confed ships had beat the Kingdom's fleets despite the Islanders' seamanship, grappling and turning naval battles into land fights.
Adrian stepped forward, speaking in the tongue of the Isles; he could feel Esmond stiffen in surprise. Which was natural enough, since as far as he knew Adrian spoke only a few words.
"Our cargo is brave men," he said. "Come to serve King Casull IV, Lord of the Isles, Supreme Autocrat, Chosen of the Sun God and Lemare of the Sea, against the thieves and tyrants of Vanbert. We are Adrian and Esmond Gellert, of Solinga."
The ships were close enough now that Adrian could see the officer's eyes go wide in a swarthy, hook-nosed face. The plume at the forefront of his turban nodded as he turned and spoke urgently with some others.
"They've heard of us, and not just through Father," Esmond murmured at his ear.
"Now the question is whether they want to get in good with the Confeds or poke them in the eye," Adrian murmured back.
The gorgeously-dressed officer turned back, sun breaking off the gilded scales of his armor. "The King, may he live forever, must hear of this," he said. "You will transfer to Slasher."
"Esteemed sir, we will remain with our men," Esmond said, in slower and more heavily accented Islander. "But we are very eager to lay our fates at the feet of the King, to whom the gods have given a great realm."
There was a moment of tension as stares met. The plumes nodded again as the Islander captain nodded. "Very well. Make what sail you can."
* * *
"Enter," King Casull said.
The audience chamber was small and informal, one wall an openwork lattice of carved marble looking down over the city of Chalice. For the rest it held a mosaic of sea monsters-most of them quite real, as Casull had learned in his years as a skipper and admiral, before the previous King had met an untimely end in the last war with the Confeds-an ebony table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, embroidered cushions, a tray of dried fruit and pitchers of wine and water. A girl in a diaphanous gown knelt in one corner, strumming a jitar, and two guards stood by the entrance, the points of their huge curved slashing-swords resting on the floor before their boots and their hands ready on the hilts. A stick of incense burned in a fretted brass tray, melding with the scent of the flowers in the gardens outside, and the tarry reek of the harbor below.