The King's Blood

and-bows, and they may have moved on.”

“Difficult, sir.”

“Ideas?”

“Hire on for an honest war.”

Marcus chuckled sourly.

His company was camped dark, but the sound of their voices and the smells of their food traveled in the darkness. He had fifty men of several races—otterpelted Kurtadam, black-chitined Timzinae, Firstblood. Even half a dozen bronzes-caled Jasuru hired on at the last minute when their contract as house guards fell through. It made for more tension in the camp, but the usual racial slurs were absent. They were Kurtadam and Timzinae and Jasuru, not clickers and roaches and pennies. And no one said a bad word about the Firstblood when it was a Firstblood who’d decide who dug the latrines.

And, to the point, the mixture gave Marcus options.

Ahariel Akkabrian had been one of the first guards when the Porte Oliva branch of the Medean bank had been a highstakes gamble with all odds against. His pelt was going grey, especially around his mouth and back, but the beads woven into it were silver instead of glass. He sat up on his cot as Marcus ducked into the tent. His eyes were bleary with sleep, but his voice was crisp.

“Captain Wester, sir. Yardem.”

“Sorry to wake you,” Yardem said.

“Ahariel,” Marcus said. “How long could you swim in the sea?”

“Me, you mean, sir? Or someone like me?”

“Kurtadam.”

“Long as you’d like.”

“No boasting. It’s not summer. The water’s cold. How long?”

Ahariel yawned deeply and shook his head, setting the beads to clicking.

“The dragons built us for water, Captain. The only people who can swim longer and colder than we can are the Drowned, and they can’t fight for shit.”

Marcus closed his eyes, seeing the moonlit cove again. The ships at anchor, the shelters, the hide boats. The coals of the fire glowing. He had eleven Kurtadam, Ahariel included. If he sent them into the water, that left a bit over thirty. Against twice that number. Marcus bit his lip and looked up at his second in command. In the light of the single candle, Yardem looked placid. Marcus cleared his throat.

“The day you throw me in a ditch and take control of the company?”

“Not today, sir,” Yardem said.

“Afraid you’d say that. Only one thing to do then. Ahariel? You’re going to need some knives.”

Marcus rode to the west, shield slung on his back and sword at his side. The sun rose behind him, pushing his shadow out ahead like a gigantic version of himself. To his left, the sea was as bright as beaten gold. The sentry tree was just in sight. The poor bastard on duty would be squinting into the brightness. The danger, of course, being that he wouldn’t look at all. If Marcus managed an actual surprise attack, they were doomed. He had the uncomfortable sense that God’s sense of humor went along lines very much like that.

“Spread out,” he called back down the line. “Broken file. We want to look bigger than we are.”

The call came back, voice after voice repeating the order. Timing was going to matter a great deal. The land looked different in the sunlight. The cove wasn’t as distant as it had seemed in the night. Marcus sat high in his saddle.

“Come on,” he murmured. “See us. Look over here and see us. We’re right here.”

A shiver along a wide branch. The leaves sent back light brighter than gold. A horn blared.

“That was it,” Yardem rumbled.

“Was,” Marcus said. He pictured the little shelters, the sailors scuttling for their belongings, for their boats. He counted ten silent breaths, then pulled his shield to the front and drew his sword.

“Sound the charge,” he said. “Let’s get this done.”

When they rounded the bend that led into the cove, a ragged volley of arrows met them. Marcus shouted, and his soldiers picked up the call. From the far end of the strip of sand, ten archers stood ground, loosing arrows and preparing to jump into the last hide boat and take to the safety of the water, the ships, and the sea. The other boats were already away, rowing fast toward the ships and loaded with enough men to defeat Marcus’s force.

The first boat was a dozen yards from shore and already sinking.

In the bright water, hidden by the glare of the sun, nearly a dozen Kurtadam with long knives put new holes in the boats.

Marcus pulled up, waving to his own archers to take the shoreline while the Jasuru charged the enemy and their boat, howling like mad animals. A few figures appeared on the ships, staring out at the spectacle on shore and in the tide-pool. The first boat vanished. The second was staying more nearly afloat as the men in it bailed frantically with helmets and hands. They weren’t rowing, though. It wouldn’t get them any farther.

Marcus lifted his hand and his archers raised bows.

“Surrender now and you won’t be harmed!” he shouted over the surf. “Or flee and be killed. Your choice.”

In the surf, one of the sailors started kicking for the ships. Marcus pointed at him with his sword. It took three volleys before he stopped. As if on cue, the black bobbing heads of Ahariel and the other Kurtadam appeared in a rough line between the sinking boats and the ships. As Marcus watched, the swimming Kurtadam lifted their knives above the water, like the ocean growing teeth.

“Leave your weapons in the water,” Marcus called. “Let’s end this gently.”

They emerged from the waves, sullen and bedraggled. Marcus’s soldiers took them one by one, bound them, and left them sitting under guard.

“Fifty-eight,” Yardem said.

“There’s a few still on the ships,” Marcus said. “And there’s the one we poked full of arrows.”

“Fifty-nine, then.”

“Still outnumbered. Badly outnumbered,” Marcus said. And then, “We can exaggerate when we take it to the taphouse.”

A young Firstblood man walked out of the sea. His beard was braided in the style of Cabral. His eyes were bright green, his face thin and sharp. His silk robe clung to his body, making his potbelly impossible to hide. Marcus kicked his horse and trotted up to him. He looked like a kitten that fell in a creek.

“Maceo Rinal?”

The pirate captain looked up at Marcus with contempt that was as good as acknowledgment.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Marcus said.

The man said something obscene.

Marcus had his tent set up at the top of the rise. The stretched leather clung to the frames and kept the wind out, if not the flies. Maceo Rinal sat on a cushion, wrapped in a wool blanket and stinking of brine. Marcus sat at his field desk with a plate of sausage and bread. Below them, as if on a stage, Marcus’s forces were involved with the long process of unloading the surrendered ship, hauling the cargo to land, and loading it onto wagons.

“You picked the wrong ship,” Marcus said.

“You picked the wrong man,” Rinal said. He had a smaller voice than Marcus had expected.

“Five weeks ago, a ship called the Stormcrow was coming east from the cape. It didn’t make it. Waylaid and sunk, but no sign of the cargo. Is this sounding familiar?”

“I am the cousin of King Sephan of Cabral. You and your magistrates have no power over me,” Rinal said, lifting his chin as he spoke. “I invoke the Treaty of Carcedon.”

Marcus took a bite of sausage and chewed slowly. When he spoke, he drew the syllables out.

“Captain Rinal? Look at me. Do I seem like a magistrate’s blade?”

The chin didn’t descend, but a flicker of uncertainty came to the young man’s eyes.

“I work for the Medean bank. My employers insured the Stormcrow. When you took the crates off that ship, you weren’t stealing from the sailors who were carrying them.