she had embroidered his lacs d’amour across the crown – lovely work.
The cap was full of power. He hadn’t seen it before – perhaps hadn’t been
Jack Kaves whistled.
The captain turned and looked at his helmet, which had a great gouge in it where some weapon had punched right through it. Indeed, with all too little effort, the captain could remember the boglin chief’s scythes, slicing at his unvisored face and never quite reaching it.
‘Well, well,’ he said. He leaned forward, and Jack upended a pot of river-water over his head.
The old archer handed him a rag and he dried his hair, face and beard. While he used the rag, he walked along the wall, feeling the damp spread down inside his breastplate. He could all but hear it rusting. Michael was going to be-
There were, indeed, boats on the river. Fifty row galleys – obviously crewed by men.
He stood and watched them for several long minutes.
Jack Kaves stood beside him, holding out a sausage. ‘What’s it mean, Cap’n?’ he asked.
The captain gave a wry smile. ‘It means we win,’ he said. ‘Unless we screw it up really badly, we win.’
Albinkirk – Desiderata
Lady Almspend shook her head. She was tying the points of her sleeves back. ‘Don’t be a ninny. That’s fat. You there – get my kit-bag up from the hold. The barbs – I have a tool for them.’
‘You do?’ Lachlan asked.
Almspend took the Queen’s hand. ‘I know you can hear me, my lady. Stay with us. Take power from the sun – take strength. I can get this out, with a little luck.’
Lachlan grunted.
An oarsman came up the foredeck ladder with her leather bag.
‘Dump it on the deck,’ she ordered. He did, breaking an ink bottle and putting black ink on every shift she owned.
She snatched the item she sought – a pair of matching halves, like a mould for an arrow.
‘Hold on, my lady,’ she said. ‘This will hurt.’
She pushed the mould over the arrow – in and in, along the path of the original wound, and the Queen moaned, and a long line of saliva mixed with blood came out of her mouth.
Lachlan spat. ‘She’ll-’
‘Shut up,’ said Lady Almspend. She gave her moulds a twist and they snapped over the arrowhead – covering the wicked barbs.
‘Pull it out,’ she said to Lachlan.
He tugged and looked at her.
‘Pull it out, or she dies,’ Lady Almspend insisted.
Lachlan set his shoulders, hesitated, and then pulled. The arrow – moulds and all – popped free with a horrible sucking noise.
Blood spurted after it.
Lissen Carak – Peter
Nita Qwan knew that the great battle had started. But he was cooking. He had built a small oven of river clay, fired it himself, and now he was making a pie.
A third of the Sossag warriors were watching him. Sometimes they clapped. It made him laugh.
The pair of boglins were back, too. If you didn’t look too closely at their bodies they looked like a pair of rough- hewn, slightly misshapen back-country men.
They lay full length in the grass, beyond the circle of men, so that their wing-cases were atop them like upturned boats. When they approved of his cooking, they rubbed their back legs together.
His pie was the size of a mill wheel.
His fire was even larger – a carefully dug pit that he had filled with coals from patient burning of hardwoods.
There was no reason that the project should work, but it kept him busy, and it entertained the other warriors.
Nita Qwan wondered what Ota Qwan intended. The man had touched up his paint, polished his bronze gorget, sharpened his sword and his spear and all his arrows, and now he lay watching Peter cook with the other warriors.
Waiting.
The problem with a pie was that you never really knew if it was done.
Battle seemed to have some of the same qualities.
Nita Qwan went and sat with the pie for a while, and then he went over and squatted on his heels by Ota Qwan.
The war chief raised his head off his arms. ‘Is it done yet?’ he asked.
Nita Qwan shrugged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Or yes.’
Ota Qwan nodded seriously.
Skahas Gaho laughed.
‘Why are we not on the field?’ Nita Qwan asked.
‘Pie isn’t done yet,’ Ota Qwan said, and all the senior warriors laughed. There was a unanimity to their laughter that told Peter that Ota Qwan had passed some important test of leadership. He was the war leader, and they did not contest it. A subtle change but a real one.
Ota Qwan rolled over, carefully brushing bits of fern from the grease that carried his paint. ‘Thorn is going to fight the knights in the fields,’ he said. ‘Fields from which every scrap of cover has been burned.’
The older warriors nodded, like a chorus.
Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘We almost lost a lot of warriors last night,’ he said. ‘I won’t risk the people on such foolishness again. This time, we will go when it is right for us to go. Or not. And the pie is as good a sign as any.’
Off by the edge of the clearing, a woman – Ojig – sat up quickly, and her sister, Small Hands, stiffened like a dog at the scent of a wolf, and took up her bow, and suddenly all the people were moving – weaponed, alert-
‘Qwethnethog!’ shouted Small Hands.
Nita Qwan never heard an order given but in heartbeats, the clearing was empty, save only his fire, his pie, and the six eldest warriors standing around Ota Qwan.
The Qwethnethog emerged from the underbrush moving as fast as a racehorse, and she took several long strides to slow. She looked back and forth at the line of men, and at the fire.
‘Skadai,’ she said in her shrill voice.
‘Dead,’ said one of the aged warriors.
‘Ahh,’ she keened. Made an alien gesture with her taloned paws, and turned. ‘Who leads the Sossag people?’
Ota Qwan stood forth. ‘I lead them in war,’ he said.
The Qwethnethog looked at him, turning her head from side to side. Nita Qwan noted that her helmet crest was a deep scarlet, and the colour came well down her forehead. But the crest was smaller than on a male. It amused him – even through the terror she broadcast – that he’d become so well-versed in the ways of the Wild as to know male from female, clan from clan. She was of their own clan – the western Qwethnethog, who lived in the steep hills above the Sossag lakes.
‘My brother speaks for all the Qwethnethog of the Mountains,’ she said in her shrill voice. ‘We are leaving the field, and will fight no more for Thorn.’
Ota Qwan looked at the men to the right and left. ‘We thank you,’ he said. ‘Go in peace.’
The great monster turned and sniffed. ‘Smells delicious,’ she said, to no one in particular.
