The Reformer

crammed full of pitch and tar, turpentine and rope and boards and sails, the warehouses of olive oil and grain, the rough pine barracks the Confeds had raised. .

One of the wooden towers along the landward wall was blazing, too; a twenty-foot baulk of pine flaming like a torch had dropped out of the sky on it. Men swarmed along the parapet, frantically tearing at the burning wood and dashing futile buckets on it.

'Fire!' Esmond called, startled out of his wonderment. 'Fire, and save your lord!'

The arquebuses of Adrian's men began to bark with a methodical eagerness. And on the wall of the Confed fortress, men began to die.

Oh, shit, Adrian thought, as he pulled himself up.

His ears hurt, and his head when he shook it to clear his vision of the spots strobing across it. When it did clear, a grin spread over his mouth despite the pain. Half the harbor was burning, and half the camp beyond-and most of the men there were far too occupied to be concerned with the small boat they'd spotted a moment before. Make that three-quarters, he thought, as another Confed vessel began to blaze out of control, and its deck crew scrambled ashore or over the side.

Sisssht. More arrows plowed into the water around the boat; this time two stuck in the thwarts, humming like bees.

'I'd be afraid if I had the time,' Adrian said quietly. Louder: 'Row for the north bank of the harbor-that ship there!'

He pointed to one of the sunken merchantmen, just within sling range of the north tower. Then he stood, trying to compensate for the pitch and roll of the little skiff with his knees, sling dangling from his hand. The enemy launch was quite close now, close enough to see the firelight glitter ruddily on the spears of the men between the rowers.

Swing. Swing. Throw.

His hand moved in blank obedience to Center's direction, fingers releasing the thong when the red dot blinked. The firebomb-molotov-arched out with a steady, inevitable trajectory. He could hear it shatter against the breastplate of the officer in the launch, and hear the man's scream as the flames took him even more clearly. Luck-Adrian's, not the man's in the launch-pitched him forward into the arms of his men, to spatter fire among them, lighting hair and tunics and the wood of the craft with impartial ferocity.

'Row, gods condemn you!' Adrian roared to Simun and his nephew.

The towers had seen what was happening, and worse, where he was going. He felt at the burlap sack; three more molotovs. Arrows fell around them, and more stuck quivering in the wood of the skiff. One passed by his ear, close enough for the feathers to sting; two inches left, and the last sound he ever would have heard would have been that one crunching into his brain.

Shock of impact; the prow of the boat was level with the railing of the sunken rock-filled merchant ship. The wood was splintery under his hands as he vaulted aboard, the deck wet and unstable underneath his feet. Two ships down, a party from the tower was clambering towards him, shields up and assegais out. Their faces were red with the light of the burning camp; he must be a black outline to them, a figure out of darkness and night.

'Behind you!' he screamed at them. 'Your tower's burning too, you velipad fuckers!'

Swing. Swing. Throw.

The molotov whipped out, not at the soldiers but at the wooden fortress behind them. Heads followed it, and saw where it left a streak of red fire on the wood.

Swing. Swing. Throw. A sharp pain in his leg, above the knee, and the limb threatened to buckle. The pain was distant, and he ignored it. Ignored the weakness, forcing the muscle rigid. Swing. Swing. Throw. A last crackle against the wood of the tower.

One of the troopers clambering towards him bawled in panic and threw away his shield, leaping into the sea; not quite total madness, since he hadn't had time to don his mail shirt. He struck out for the other side of the harbor with a clumsy threshing stroke. As if that had been the first rock of an avalanche, men began to throw themselves out of the tower into the water.

Adrian felt a great tension drain, and his strength along with it. The leg gave under him, and he found himself somehow seated on the deck, staring without belief at the black-fletched arrow through the fleshy part of his thigh. Then the pain struck, and he bit his lip to hold back a moan.

Simun was bending over him. 'Not serious, sir. Head's right through, clean. Here, I'll break it off and pull this out-'

'Nnnghg!'

'There we go, m'lord, right as rain when I tie it up-'

'Uncle.'

Simun looked up, and saw the last two Confed troopers clambering onto the prow of the merchantman. 'Well, fuck me, some people don't know when they're not welcome,' he said, scooping up Adrian's staff-sling. He scrabbled in his own belt pouch, came out with a lead bullet the size of a small plum, and dropped it into the cup.

Crack. The first Confed pitched backward, with an oval hole in his forehead and his eyes bulging with hydrostatic shock from the blow that had homogenized his brain.

Simun dropped the sling and drew his sword, unhooking the small buckler from his belt. 'Spread out, Davad,' he told his nephew.

The two Emeralds did, and the Confed began backing up-he had shield, helmet and assegai, but not his mail shirt.

'And hurry up,' Simun said, moving forward, light on his feet. 'We've got to get the boat over this whore of a hulk and out to where Lord Esmond's waiting for us. The commander ought to get to the surgeon, too.'

THIRTEEN

'Why do I feel as if this is a noose?' Esmond muttered under his breath as he backed away from King Casull with the chain of gold and emeralds bouncing on his chest.

The mutter might have gone unheard in the screaming roar of the crowd, if Center had not been filtering Adrian's perceptions. I wish you could make the leg hurt less, he thought. To his brother: 'It well might be, if we're not careful.'

The King of the Isles was all benevolence as he waved from the dais on the harborfront to the crowds, spreading an arm to indicate the Gellerts. Adrian didn't miss the slight narrowing of eyes as the cheers mounted into hysterical abandon. The Gellerts were far too popular now, with the Confed fleet in ashes and all but a precautionary garrison retreating eastward. Far too popular, and far too likely to be candidates to rule Preble themselves. The populace certainly wouldn't object; the problem would be to keep them from deifying Esmond and Adrian both, and sacrificing to them. After months with the horrors of a Confed sack hanging over the city, it wasn't surprising.

Nor safe, from Casull's point of view, Adrian thought, as the sons of the Syndics of Preble-who'd vied for the honor-picked up the poles of the carrying chair, to take him to the state banquet. And I don't think he's the type to forget Tenny, either.

'In a week,' he said to his brother-they were close in the sedan chair, 'he'll have convinced himself we deliberately set Tenny up, so we could seize Preble ourselves and set up as kings.'

Esmond's eyes narrowed. 'It's what he'd have done himself,' he pointed out. Adrian nodded; King Casull IV was no son of Casull III, after all-he'd started out as an ambitious general. 'In fact,' Esmond went on, 'it's not a half-bad idea. We could cause the Confederacy no end of grief here, running things.'

Adrian looked around in alarm, fast enough to draw a fresh throb of pain from his bandaged leg. It was healing so quickly as to be near miraculous in this hot climate-Center had had some hints about spirits of wine-but it was a serious wound.

'No, don't worry, little brother,' Esmond said. 'We couldn't get away with it-not between Casull and the Confeds. The Confeds might take us on as client-kings, but that's out of the question, of course.' His smile became a little strange. 'Their camp burned, but Vanbert still stands. . and Nanya's not avenged yet.'