"Be there at sunset tonight," she said. "Yourself, and enough trustworthy captains to lead-oh, a hundred picked fighters. You need not bring all the fighters, of course."
Torvik doubted that any trustworthy captain would promise his people's service without letting the people see for themselves what was afoot. But he would face that problem when he knew whether or not it would be one.
At last Mirraleen uncoiled gracefully and kissed Torvik, a gentle brushing of lips that seemed to content both of them. Then she squeezed through the port and plunged into the sea.
Watching after her, Torvik saw one arm raised in farewell. Then she was gone into the morning calm, and he turned back into his cabin, to face the work of raising a band of fighters ready to befriend Dimernesti, and with those friends slip into a mage's lair.
Chapter 17
It would have been as well to ride out against the enemy's supplies, on the very night of the betrothal. The weather argued eloquently for delay.
"The roads will be too muddy for horses and just barely too solid for boats," Bertsa Wylum said. "Also, nothing will catch fire, or go on burning if we can set it alight to begin with."
"The sentries will all be hiding with hot cider and warm peasant girls," Elderdrake put in. "We could surprise them much more easily tonight than tomorrow."
"If we could find them at all, maybe," Gerik said. "But remember that mounted humans can't move as silently as kender. Don't take that as permission to go off and try to do the work yourself, either," he added, as a familiar smile crept across the kender's sharp features.
"Oh, I swear to do nothing that you would not do were our positions the other way around," Elderdrake said. He started to swear by both the human and kender names of the true gods. Gerik let him run through all the ones whom kender could lawfully swear by, while thinking that Elderdrake's oath might not be as confining as one could wish.
Were a kender to tell him to sit and wait while enemies gathered, bent on gorging themselves on the blood of those he loved, he might find some excuses for doing something else. But all the kender conducted themselves properly, and now it was the next night, and Gerik of Tirabot was walking downstairs from his chambers to ride out.
In the courtyard outside, he could hear the horses already stamping restlessly. It had seemed a windless, overcast night when he looked out the window, rising from bed and Ellysta's last embrace.
She walked down the stairs behind him, wearing her traveling garb and now hung about with as many pouches and bottles as Serafina. She also openly wore two daggers, and said she had others hidden in various places.
"You are the only one who will ever learn those places, without having one of the knives thrust into you," she had said, grinning. It was a relief to him that she no longer talked of fleeing so as to draw the wrath of Tirabot's enemies after her. It was not a relief to suspect that nothing could now turn that wrath aside.
Where were the promised Solamnics? Not even a letter from them had come, although to be sure they might not be willing to use the ciphers for Gerik. So their letters might have gone astray or been read, and ambushes or laws or both placed in their path. There were any number of places where even a band sent from the Keeps could vanish without a trace sufficient to raise suspicion in anyone, and enough laws for a shrewd counselor to cheat Takhisis out of her rule in the Abyss.
Gerik had written of this, in cipher, to his father. He only hoped he still had a father to receive the letter. The fleet could not have met disaster; that word would have flown about the land as if on dragon's wings. But one knight more or less could be another matter.
Time, once more, to put away fears. Gerik walked out into the courtyard, Ellysta now beside him, matching stride with him, her hand on his arm. Some of the fighters started to raise a cheer; Bertsa Wylum silenced them with a furious gesture.
He turned to Ellysta and their lips met without thought. This time the cheers could not be silenced. Even Wylum smiled.
"All that we need for you to be something out of a hero tale is a garland of flowers for me to put about your neck," Ellysta said.
"That, and nobody dying, or at least those who die, departing without pain or fear," Gerik said. He could not force out of his memories the faces of the men who had died the Night of the Runaway Horses, even if they were enemies.
"We'll find that rose garden," Ellysta said softly. "We will find it, and there we can forget death."
If he kissed her or even spoke to her again, Gerik knew he would fumble his leap into the saddle. To avoid that evil omen, he turned away, slapped his hands down on the bow of the saddle, and vaulted high.
His horse made a rude noise that seemed to sum up the complaint of all horses against all men who wearied them with fine gestures. But Gerik also felt his mount as taut as his own nerves, with readiness to go.
The gate opened with scarcely a murmur from well-oiled hinges. Gerik bent low and whispered in his mount's ear, and man and horse together broke into a trot toward the gateway.
Torvik was quickly proved right in his suspicions that few good captains would come without bringing at least some of the men they might be leading the gods knew where. Mirraleen also knew, but everyone seemed to be painfully cautious about mentioning her name in Torvik's presence.
Every fighter and sailor aboard Red Elf wanted to sail to the reef. So did all of Chuina's archers. So did two captains and twenty fighters from Vuinlod, who called themselves volunteers but whom Torvik suspected were carefully chosen by Gildas Aurhinius.
There was a good band of the most seasoned fighters among the sea barbarians, come forward to follow Jemar the Fair's children in honor of their father. There was a smaller band of Karthayans. There were more folk from Kingfisher's Claw that Sorraz the Harpooner was happy to see go, with Yavanna at their head and Beeyona prepared to heal their wounds.
There were even a few from Istar, whether to garner for their city a share of whatever glory this enterprise might bring or to spy on it, Torvik did not know. He would not refuse them, however. They would be too badly outnumbered to cause trouble even if they wished it.
The minotaurs did not send fighters, but they sent a boatload of salt provisions and another, smaller boatload full of bottled healing potions. The last came with a note from Lujimar, hoping that at the end of the battle Torvik would have a name equal to what his parents had gained in the battle of Golden Cup.
So Red Elf carried nearly two hundred armed fighters and sailors when she dropped anchor off Quillfish Lair Reef, and waited for the coming of the Dimernesti.
Gerik had not expected any kender to ride with him tonight except Elderdrake, so he was surprised, and at first less than pleased, when six more kender slipped out of the woods into the road, halting the advance with a request to accompany the riders.
He was not, however, entirely surprised to discover that one of them was the kender priest of Branchala, whose gifts to Elderdrake lay behind the Night of the Runaway Horses. Or at least Elderdrake assured him that the robed kender was the priest, and the other five just as trustworthy in fighting if not in magic.
The priest's five companions were roughly clad for kender, well armed (two daggers at least, plus a chapak or hoopak), and almost as grim as dwarves. The priest wore a robe of fine linen and sandals of stamped leather. He carried nothing except his staff, and wore an unvaryingly polite smile.
None of the newly-come kender would give their names, but that hardly mattered when it became plain that they would obey no one but the priest. It did matter that the priest would not give his name either, but at least there was a solution for that problem.