For a moment, silence. Caradryel felt a chill run up his arms. His stomach felt weak. The words ‘die here in this valley’ had slipped out rather easily.
Then Grondil chuckled again, and shook his head. ‘Elgi amuse me,’ he said. ‘So serious, all the time. And you love your fine words.’
He shot Caradryel a sly, intelligent look.
‘I’ll take you to Morgrim,’ Grondil said. ‘Though you’ll have to watch your scrawny backs with him – he doesn’t have my sense of humour.’
Thoriol emerged into the sunlight, blinking and stumbling. He carried his gear slung across his back, just like the others. They were dressed the same way: loose-fitting white robes trimmed with a deep crimson. Baelian’s company shouldered their longbows casually, used to the cumbersome lengths of yew and silk-spun bowstrings. Thoriol remembered enough of his training to use the weapon but struggled to look proficient with it.
‘It’ll come,’ Baelian had told him during the crossing, grinning as ever. ‘Soon you’ll forget what it was like not to carry one.’
Thoriol gazed up at the soaring spires of Tor Alessi, glistening white in the strong sunlight. Gull-shrieks filled the air. Behind him, the length of a gangplank away, the Resurviel bobbed on the quayside. Harbour-hands were already crawling all over her, furling sails and stowing lines.
Baelian’s company assembled on the stone quay, all twenty-four of them. Crowds pushed past them as Baelian attempted to call them to order and speak to the harbour official. Everything in the waterfront seemed to be in constant motion – a carnival of unloading, loading, shouting, moving and hauling. The wind was stiff and thick with salt. The aroma of it was different to Ulthuan – fewer spice fragrances and somehow… dirtier.
While Baelian argued with the official, Thoriol let his eyes wander across to the towers rearing up ahead. Some of them still bore the scars of ballista strikes. Banners of the King and various noble houses rippled in the breeze, exposing images of trees, horses, sea-serpents and hawks.
Everything was martial, hard-edged and poorly finished. Tor Alessi seemed to have no purpose to it but war.
Eventually Baelian turned away from the official, his scarred face tight with irritation.
‘Fools,’ he spat, rolling up some parchment and stowing it under his robes. ‘This place is full to bursting and they’re running around like startled pheasants. Useless.’ He started to storm off, then turned and gave Thoriol a significant glance. ‘Stay together. I’ve got us lodgings in the lower Eliamar quarter. Let’s not get lost in the crush, eh?’
Thoriol smiled dryly. The captain had little to worry about – Thoriol had no plans to make an escape any time soon. Despite himself, he had found himself rather enjoying his reacquaintance with the archery he had learned as a youth. He’d taken a surprising degree of pleasure in handling the long yew bow, in stringing it and leaning in to the pull.
It came back quickly. He remembered how he’d taken hunting bows into the forests west of Tor Vael, and how proficient he’d become at bringing back a haul for the larders. He’d always had a quick eye, and enjoyed the lightweight spring of the weapon; far more elegant than a sword or an axe. Only later had that enjoyment faded, and he’d never had the chance to become expert with the battlefield weapons of the asur companies – long, slender bows with a range of over two hundred yards and a fearful delivery. The effort required just to bend those bows was considerable, and after days of practice on the ship he was only capable of matching his counterparts’ most elementary efforts.
For all that, the process had been oddly cathartic. The others had accepted him readily, showing little or no interest in his origins but willing to help him learn. They shared watered-down wine, bread, hard cheese and olives, discussing the potential for riches in the east, the prospects for the war against the druchii, tales – implausible or otherwise – of love affairs in Saphery and Avelorn.
After the worst of his sickness had abated, Thoriol had found himself more at ease in their company than he would have imagined possible. His early reticence had earned him the moniker of ‘the Silent’. Despite opening up a little since then, the name had stuck, and he saw no harm in it.
He had made friends: Loeth, the tall one from Tiranoc; Taemon, the intense brooder from Chrace; Rovil and Florean from Eataine, good-natured, jovial and as close as brothers.
They did not judge him, except in jest. They accepted the strange gaps in his history without question, for most of them had similar missing pieces from their own half-told lives. They did not talk of arcane matters or the deep counsel of kings, but they laughed often, and seemed to have few cares beyond the acquisition of prestige, the payment in gold coin every month, and the care of their bows and quivers –about which they were all fastidious.
So the crossing had not been as arduous as Thoriol had feared. He still rankled over the deception that had brought him there, and remained wary of the ever-smirking Baelian, but he could not pretend that it had been unbearable.
Now, looking at the teeming mass of asur around him, letting the rough-edged splendour of Tor Alessi sink in, feeling the firmness of solid ground under his feet for the first time since passing out in Lothern, he smiled ruefully.
The world was a strange place. For the time being, he would see where the current path led. Thoriol the Scholar was long dead, confined to a past that he could not talk about. Thoriol the Dragon rider had always been a fiction, something that he’d known deep down would never amount to much.
Thoriol the Archer, though. It had a certain ring to it. Perhaps not enough for
