The Reformer

The two men leaned into their oars, rising and falling with breathy grunts of effort. Adrian waited, poised, while the towers loomed on either side like the gates of the land of the Shades-only the giant three-headed hound was lacking, and there were watchdogs enough in the towers, and in the camp behind. I am insane, went through him. This has all been a delusion, and I'm completely fucking insane-

Center's vision showed him the floating barrier of logs ahead. He waited; then the boat's keel ground on the rough wood with an ugly crackling, crunching sound.

'Forward!' he called, and leapt into the bows, using the shock of impact to power his jump.

The two at the oars followed him, and the stern came out of the water. The boat teetered, wavered. . and then slid forward with a splash that sounded to Adrian's ears like the launching of a quinquereme down a slipway, with a flute and drum corps in accompaniment. Even his own breathing was like a bellows, and he slowed it with an effort of will, hissing the others to silence. The boat drifted, the oars loose on the thongs that secured them to the muffled oarlocks. Simun scrambled back on his hands and knees, swearing softly and checking the bottom of the boat with his fingers for the welling leaks that might show a cracked strake.

Nothing; no shouts, no blazing lights. The towers were looking for bigger fish. . if they were looking at all, and not just dozing. Adrian sat for a moment controlling his breathing, feeling the slowing of a heart whose pounding shook his chest.

'All right,' Simun said, his voice low and fierce. 'We did it, sor!'

' 'Well begun, half done; half done, not begun,' ' Adrian said, quoting an old Emerald folk saying. The founder of the Grove had been fond of it, too; it was whispered that he'd been a stonecutter and the son of a peasant himself. 'This way.'

The artificial harbor was as rectangular as men could make it, in the Confed style. They hadn't straightened the beach at the inner end, though; that was a half-moon, turning the whole affair into a U-shape. The low irregular line of the rock-filled ships loomed on either side, five hundred feet apart, with waves breaking on the outer sides and throwing a little white foam over the bulwarks. This arrangement would never survive a series of winter gales, but it only needed to last as long as the siege of Preble. . and there at the base of the U were the ships.

Center's lightening of the darkness intensified; Adrian felt as if an invisible line were being wound tighter and tighter around his forehead. Then it eased, and a strobing arrow marked their course.

the four captured quinqueremes, Center pointed out.

Adrian looked up. 'It's after midnight,' he said. 'Nobody'll be around.'

'Deck watches, sor,' Simun pointed out, nodding towards a dim lantern on the stern of one of the Confed vessels.

'But nobody on the captured ships, not yet. Take us in, but keep as near the middle as you can; beach her right next to the left-hand quinquereme of those four. When these'-he tapped the clay jugs-'start going off, things are likely to get a bit hairy, so be ready to push off when I get back.'

'Bit hairy, sor.' Simun chuckled softly. 'Take yor time, but by Gellerix' cunt, don't linger, eh?'

The oars bit, and Adrian-slowly, cautiously-loaded one of the jugs into his staff-sling. The jugs held a mixture of fish oil, sulfur, naphtha oil that oozed out of rocks, and quicklime. Experiment had shown they'd burn like the heart of a forge fire and couldn't be put out. They were also fairly fragile.

'Coming up on the shore,' he said. The darkness grew more absolute, as they ghosted into the shade of the captured quinquereme; it had the faint sewer stench a rowing vessel always did, even if the bilges were pumped regularly. 'Lay on your oars.'

The two men did, and Adrian hopped over the side. His sandals grated on pebbles and sand, and he reached back in for the sack of what Center, for some reason, called molotovs.

'Back in a minute,' he said casually, and walked up the beach.

The rams of the quinqueremes almost glowed with Center's unearthly vision, serrated bronze catching faint starlight. Off somewhere a man's voice raised in song, then ended in a squall-probably a wakened sleeper hitting him, Adrian thought distantly. He walked casually: if you looked as if you belonged, you'd shed a casual glance- people saw what they expected to see. Turning, he took his stance and aimed. Left to right, he thought.

Swing, swing, throw.

The jug arched out, wobbling a little as the liquid within shifted. It struck the first quinquereme right on the forecastle, on the timber square added to bear the weight of the guns. Crash. Not very loud, but distinct amid the wave lap and insect buzz of the night. A flicker of light, as the air found the quicklime. Crash. One more, to make sure. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. .

Fire on every one of the four captured ships. Enough to brighten this stretch of beach quite perceptibly; paint and rope and dry pinewood caught easily. Now all he could do was pray.

probability of optimal outcome 51 % ±3, Center supplied hopefully. in this instance, 'optimal' requires the survival of adrian gellert.

I'll still pray, Adrian thought, jogging back to the boat.

'Good to see ye, sor,' Simun panted.

They shoved off and began rowing, not so quickly as to attract attention. . he hoped.

'Uh-oh.'

A horn winded through the night, and then an alarm drum. With the gathering light from the burning ships, the harbor looked much smaller than it had in darkness. Much smaller, and the fire baskets on the entrance forts suddenly blazed, as they were swung in and then out again with a fresh load of pine knots. The huts nearest the beach held the deck crews of the Confed warships; men were swarming down to the shore, wading out and climbing up the sides of their vessels. Already officers were beginning to warp them away from the burning ships- excess caution, really. They were close, but not that close, and without rigging or sails aloft it would take more than heat and sparks to set them alight. Confeds might have been able to extinguish the fires on the captured ships if they'd gone straight there, Adrian mused-anything to distract his mind from what might happen, and what he couldn't do a thing about. They had no chance at all once they'd finished seeing to their own ships, but trained reflex was stronger than thought in an emergency. It had to be.

Flames licked higher from the prows of the ex-Islander warships. Adrian suddenly felt like a bug on a plate, his head whipping to and fro as he tried to see in all directions at once. Simun and his nephew were cursing in antiphonal harmony as they dug their oars in madly, like the chorus at a Goat Song festival play. Men were crowding onto the parapets of the wooden forts-archers. A six-oared launch put out from one of them, and the officer in the bows was pointing at him. More and more men ran down to the shore, and the growing buzz from the Confed camp was like some great beast awakening, grumpy and angry from its winter sleep. . and growling.

Sisst. A flight of arrows came slanting down out of the dark, into the water off the skiff's bow. Sissst. Closer now, and the raiders' own efforts were driving them further into range. The light grew ever brighter, as well. He could see quite plainly now, for several hundred yards; see the crew manhandling a catapult around on the tower top, a dart-thrower that could skewer a man at a thousand feet, much less the four hundred that separated his own tinglingly vulnerable body from it.

His head whipped back to shore. There were other small craft there; men were shouting and pointing at Adrian's skiff, and launching the boats. All men are initiates of the mysteries of death, he repeated to himself. And: Helga. Damn it. .

The world ended.

* * *

'What's that?' Donnuld Grayn gasped.

'That is my brother,' Esmond said, throwing up a hand and shouting.

He needed to do both. The Strikers had been creeping up toward the Confed encampment in the dark, their ships lightly beached behind them to the north. For a moment the night turned bright as day, a huge globe of fire rising to silhouette the rear of the camp's wall where the magazines of the captured Islander quinquerimes had exploded. Streaks and ribbons of fire shot up from it, and huge burning timbers pinwheeled through the sky. When they fell, whatever they landed on burned as well; the other ships in the harbor, the long sheds above the shoreline