“So you know me. It is well.” He bent his gaze on the white-faced guard. “Do you doubt, that I must teach you?”
“No,” the guard answered hoarsely. “No, Lord!”
He went to his knees. The spear-point clashed on rock as he dropped it. Then he bellied down and hid his face in his hands.
Boghaz whimpered again, “Lord Rhiannon.”
“Bind him,” said Carse, “and open me this door.”
It was done. Boghaz lifted the three heavy bars from their sockets. The door swung inward and Carse stood upon the threshold.
She was waiting, standing tensely erect in the gloom. They had not given her so much as a candle and the tiny cell was closed except for the barred slot in the door. The air was stale and dank with a taint of mouldy straw from the pallet that was the only furniture. And she wore her fetters still.
Carse steeled himself. He wondered whether, in the hidden depths of his mind, the Cursed One watched. Almost, he thought, he heard the echo of dark laughter, mocking the man who played at being a god.
Ywain said, “Are you indeed Rhiannon?”
Marshal the deep proud voice, the look of brooding fire in the glance.
“You have known me before,” said Carse. “How say you now?”
He waited, while her eyes searched him in the half light. And then slowly her head bent, stiffly as became Ywain of Sark even before Rhiannon.
“Lord,” she said.
Carse laughed softly and turned to the cringing Boghaz.
“Wrap her in the cloths from the pallet. You must carry her—and bear her gently, swine!”
Boghaz scurried to obey. Ywain was obviously furious at the indignity but she held her tongue on that score.
“We are escaping them?” she asked.
“We are leaving Khondor to its fate,” Carse gripped the sword. “I would be in Sark when the Sea Kings come that I may blast them myself, with my own weapons!”
Boghaz covered her face with the rags. Her hauberk and the hampering chains were hidden. The Valkisian lifted what might have been only a dirty bundle to his massive shoulder. And over the bundle he gave Carse a beaming wink.
Carse himself was not so sure. In this moment, grasping at the chance for freedom, Ywain would not be too critical. But it was a long way to Sark.
Had he detected in her manner just the faintest note of mockery when she bent her head?
XV. Under the Two Moons
Boghaz, with the true instinct of his breed, had learned every rathole in Khondor. He took them out of the palace by a way so long disused that the dust lay inches thick and the postern door had almost rotted away. Then, by crumbling stairways and steep alleys that were no more than cracks in the rock, he led the way around the city.
Khondor seethed. The night wind carried echoes of hastening feet and taut voices. The upper air was full of beating wings where the Sky Folk went, dark against the stars.
There was no panic. But Carse could feel the anger of the city, and the hard grim tension of a people about to strike back against certain doom. From the distant temple he could hear the voices of women chanting to the gods.
The hurrying people they met paid them little heed. It was only a fat sailor with a bundle and a tall man muffled in a cloak, going down toward the harbor. What matter for notice in that?
They climbed the long, long steps downward to the basin and there was much coming and going on the dizzy way, but still they passed unchallenged. Each Khond was too full of his own worries this fateful night to pay attention to his neighbor.
Nevertheless Carse’s heart was pounding and his ears ached from listening for the alarm which would surely come as soon as Ironbeard went up to slay his captive.
They gained the quays. Carse saw the tall mast of the galley towering above the longships and made for it with Boghaz panting at his heels.
Torches burned here by the hundreds. By their light fighting men and supplies were pouring aboard the long-ships. The rock walls rang with the tumult. Small craft darted between the outer moorings.
Carse kept his head lowered, shouldering his way through the crowd. The water was alive with Swimmers and there were women with set white faces who had come to bid their men farewell.
As they neared the galley Carse let Boghaz get ahead of him. He paused in the shelter of a pile of casks, pretending to bind up his sandal thong while the Valkisian went aboard with his burden. He heard the crew, sullen-faced and nervous, hailing Boghaz and asking for news.
Boghaz disposed of Ywain by dumping her casually in the cabin, and then called all hands forward for a conference by the wine butt, which was locked in the lazarette there. The Valkisian had his speech by heart.
“News?” Carse heard him say. “I’ll give you news! Since Rold was taken there’s an ugly temper in the city. We were their brothers yesterday. Today we’re outlaws and enemies again. I’ve heard them talking in the wine shops and I tell you our lives aren’t worth that!”
While the crew was muttering uneasily over that, Carse darted over the side unseen. Before he gained the cabin he heard Boghaz finish.
“There was a mob already gathering when I left. If we want to save our hides we’d better cast off now while we have the chance!”
Carse had been pretty sure what the reaction of the crew would be to that story and he was not sure at all that Boghaz was stretching it too much. He had seen mobs turn before and his crew of convict Sarks, Jekkarans and others might soon be in a nasty spot.
Now, with the cabin door closed and barred, he leaned against the panel, listening. He heard the padding of bare feet on the deck, the quick shouting of orders, the rattle of the blocks as the sails came down from the yards. The mooring lines were cast off. The sweeps came out with a ragged rumble. The galley rode free.
“Ironbeard’s orders!” Boghaz shouted to someone on shore. “A mission for Khondor!”
The galley quivered, then began to gather way with the measured booming of the drum. And then, over all the near confusion of sound, Carse heard that his ears had been straining to hear—the distant roar from the crest of the rock, the alarm sweeping through the city, rushing toward the harbor stair.
He stood in an agony of fear lest everyone else should hear it too and know its meaning without being told. But the din of the harbor covered it long enough and by the time word had been brought down from the crest the black galley was already in the road stead, speeding down into the mouth of the fjord.
In the darkness of the cabin Ywain spoke quietly. “Lord Rhiannon—may I be allowed to breathe?”
He knelt and stripped the cloths from her and she sat up.
“My thanks. Well, we are free of the palace and the harbor but there still remains the fiord. I heard the outcry.”
“Aye,” said Carse. “And the Sky Folk will carry word ahead.” He laughed. “Let us see if they can stop Rhiannon by flinging pebbles from the cliffs!”
He left her then, ordering her to remain where she was, and went out on deck.
They were well along the channel now, racing under a fast stroke. The sails were beginning to catch the wind that blew between the cliffs. He tried to remember how the ballista defenses were set, counting on the fact that they were meant to bear on ships coming into the fiord, not going out.
Speed would be the main thing. If they could drive the galley fast enough they’d have a chance.
In the faint light of Deimos no one saw him. Not until Phobos topped the cliffs and sent a shaft of greenish light. Then the men saw him there, his cloak whipping in the wind, the long sword in his hands.