He would have a hard enough time defending Tirabot Manor. He would have little steel and less help from the law defending kender.
"So," Gildas Aurhinius said. "I am not safe aboard ships of the land I served in arms for nearly forty years. As a pension, it lacks justice."
"Who dispenses justice in Istar these days?" Haimya said. "Too many, I think, who would not know it if it came up and bit them in-" She made an explicit gesture.
"Too true," Aurhinius said. He looked out to sea. "Is Torvik himself vowed to lead the fleet to Suivinari?"
"I have not spoken with him," Pirvan said. "And rumor often lies. But it is what I would expect of him. As son to both Jemar and Eskaia, he has strong friends all through the fleet, as well as his own reputation."
Aurhinius nodded and added, half to himself, "And a mother whose heart would break if he falls leading the fleet."
"Her heart would break sooner if he held back from leading," Haimya said. Even Pirvan gave back a step at the edge in her voice. "Your head would break, too, if Eskaia thought you had aught to do with Torvik's holding back."
Pirvan remembered that Haimya had known Eskaia longer than any of them, from when both women were scarcely older than Eskaia's namesake was now. How much steel had always lain beneath that fair, even girlish outside, Haimya doubtless knew better than all of them.
"I will hold my peace," Aurhinius said, looking out to sea again.
Drowning out the rattle of blocks and oars, and the calls of the sailors, a long crescent of broad-winged birds soared overhead. The sunlight struck fire from their red wings, so that they held the eye until they were but distant specks on the horizon and their cries had faded to equally distant echoes.
"Red cranes," Aurhinius said. "Some fly north, out to sea, every spring about this time. Some say it is the females, to nest on unknown islands far to the north, close to the minotaur lands. Others say it is only the old ones who fly north, to a clean death far out to sea. I like the second one better."
Pirvan stopped Haimya as she was about to reproach Aurhinius for ill-luck words or make a gesture of aversion, probably both. They were indeed old birds, some of them, but there were too many young ones making the flight to Suivinari for Aurhinius to have uttered a true prophecy.
Still, in his innermost heart and mind, Pirvan uttered a short prayer to Habbakuk, friend of those faring by sea, and Kiri-Jolith, friend of justice.
Chapter 8
Torvik looked aft from Red Elf's stern platform, wary of the swings and lunges of the tiller as the ship cut across the choppy sea under full sail. The fleet was steadily falling astern, with some of the smaller or more distant ships already hull down. He could still count seventy or more, from flyboats smaller than Red Elf and barely fit to be this far offshore, to Shield of Virtue, looming like a temple amid peasant huts.
Indeed, the fleet looked like a city afloat, and carried as many people, even if there were fewer women and hardly any children among them, and only the arts of war, seafaring, and magic represented. Torvik hoped that such strength would make even minotaurs think that prudence and honor together spoke in favor of peace.
Not that any number of human hopes ever moved a single minotaur, when he or she was determined on a fight. The best Torvik expected was that the strength of the human fleet would give the minotaurs pause, while they looked for weak spots at which to strike without sacrificing themselves to no purpose.
That might be enough, if a quick answer came to the mysteries of Suivinari Island. No sailor, human or minotaur, enjoyed dangerous mysteries that had already cost them a safe watering stop, and might spread farther out to sea. Even those sailors of either race who might in principal welcome war would in practice be content with being once again unable to sail safely near Suivinari.
The problem lay in the sailors not being altogether their own masters. War chiefs among the minotaurs and merchants and kingpriest's friends among the humans could both be ready to shed others' blood to pursue their own ends, which lay in the misty realms of racial honor and the pursuit of money and virtue.
Torvik wished he had been able to speak to his sister Chuina, serving as a corporal of archers aboard Windmaster's Gift. At her rank, folk doubtless talked more freely to her than they ever would to a captain. But the two ships had never been close enough for an easy visit, and letters or signals might be read or seen by unwelcome eyes.
Torvik looked forward. The waist of his ship was crowded with more than forty fighters sent aboard her from the rest of the fleet, and what planks the newcomers didn't cover, their baggage and weapons hid. He had asked that they all be fit to row as well as fight, because much of the advantage of a threefold increase in his fighting strength would be lost if the forty could not lend a hand at the oars. Red Elf's own crew lacked the numbers to both fight and row, and facing minotaurs or unknown minotaur-slayers, she might have to do both at once.
That was as chance and the gods would have it, however. The fighters looked stouthearted and their arms were neither too shiny nor too rusty. As to their thoughts, Torvik would not have read those if he could have. He did hope that sharp ears among the loyal folk of Red Elf and prudence among the fighters would forestall any treachery.
He would gladly die fighting minotaurs or anyone else, as long as his short life would end with honor. He would shed neither his own blood nor his people's to provoke a war with the minotaurs from which others would reap the glory.
Beyond Red Elf's raking prow, the peaks of Suivinari's mountains began to peer over the horizon.
Zeskuk's cabin was low for a minotaur's comfort, not surprising in a ship built for humans, however generously. It was likewise so dim that he needed a lamp lit even now, with full daylight on deck.
The whale oil in the glass globe of the lamp rippled as Cleaver rolled to the swell in the anchorage. Zeskuk scraped soot from the chimney with his dagger, and with his wrist wiped more from the inscription on the lamp's bronze base.
"To my brother Zeskuk. May his honor never be questioned."
The lamp was a gift from Zeskuk's eldest sibling, Yunigan, some twenty years ago, when the elder minotaur's honor was called into question. He had sailed out with two ships to silence the questions, and had done so, though at the price of his own life and one of his ships. The battle against the humans of Golden Cup and Jemar the Fair's squadron had, so the tales ran, been one for the praise songs. There had been honor enough for both sides before the battle was done and the last body cast into the sea.
Footsteps thumped on the deck outside and a heavy fist rattled the door on its hinges.
"Enter, Sister," Zeskuk called.
Fulvura strode in. She was tall for a woman, able to look her brother in the eye. She wore a kilt and tunic, a dagger on her belt, and a shatang slung across her back, as well as her usual sober look.
"The lookouts on the Green Mountain report the human fleet in sight. A scout is in advance, bound for the island," she said.
"Let him come."
"Even if he steers toward our anchorage?"
"Even so," Zeskuk said. "If the lookouts are alert, we will have ample warning. If they are not, I will have their heads."
"One of them is Thenvor's cousin. He might call challenge on you for his cousin's blood."
"Let him. I fear Thenvor somewhat less than I do the humans," he grumbled.
"What about dividing our ships," Fulvura offered, "sending half to the north of the island, to lurk inshore and thereby conceal our strength?"