Corsair Princess Page 3

  This man, Sahin, had convinced them to try something else. I wondered how much longer it would be until he ran out of coins and his army deserted him. If I had time to spare, I would have found a comfortable spot in the middle of that forest, built myself a grand palisade, and waited him out. I did not have the luxury, and the fervent would certainly not camp in the woods with me for a season waiting for the enemy to disperse.

  That evening, a cold and steady wind pushed up from the Bergion that lasted clear through the next morning. It was an annoying tussle of wind that continued to catch and flip my cloak around my waist or over my head. It could last for days, and this one seemed fit to bother us a good long while.

  A scout rode up later that morning. “Smoke, sir,” he said, but I could find none of it upon the horizon. “There, sir,” he said and pointed back southwest.

  It seemed inconsequential at first, just a trail of smoke a good distance back down the road—likely something set by one idiot or another from the mob.

  Then there was a second, third, and in the next breath several dozen tendrils rising in a long line behind us. Okel and my colonels rode up.

  Grano stated the obvious. “Someone is burning the entire valley.”

  Okel asked me, “Do you think it will catch?”

  “Did you hear what happened in Aderan last year? That fire swept half of the province.”

  I would have charged us back down the road and taken the chance of finding a way through, but there was no way back through the mob.

  “Colonel Ivinta, have your scouts found any evidence of a force in front of us?”

  “No, sir. But as the valley narrows, the road makes its way through a set of hills. Any number of men could lay in wait there.”

  Captain Grano said, “You expect they are driving us toward an ambush?”

  “I judge it to be likely.”

  I was outdone. I could wait for the flames to burn us alive or race along in front of it, not knowing when the enemy would fall upon me. If I were Sahin, I would be waiting behind a wide firebreak on the far side of those hills with every man I could find. He’d smash us as we came. I could not go left. I could not go right. I could not stand and wait.

  Stop.

  Think.

  “Map,” I called, and Colonel Ivinta did not fail me. It was titled The East and featured Havish at its center.

  “This river,” I said and pointed at the thin line. “Is it close? How deep is it?”

  “One of the lads made it that far this morning. It’s not deep enough to drown in but wide enough to need a bridge.”

  “Better than the alternatives,” I said. “Prepare the division to race the road, sirs. Quartermaster, secure what you can that will move fast. Abandon the rest of the train. Every man to a horse. Send word to those behind us. Those who can must flee back to the southwest. Those who can race the road behind us must begin it at once. The rest will go to Lord Bayen.”

  They were loud as they returned to their commands, and the days spent retraining the men proved enough. The order was given, and the 5th began to move.

  On any other day, I would have found the colors of the forest exhilarating as we raced the road. I spent the ride with thoughts of the flames chasing us.

  I spotted the promised bridge. It was the typical stone arch with a low, wide rail and wide abutments made of great squares of stone. It was not much of a river. The trees upon its bank overhung it so far that they touched in some places. All of it was more of the same maples, though this stretch did have the occasional straight pine.

  I called a halt there, and from the top of the bridge looked back southwest through the haze. Smoke rose in a black sheet.

  My men looked on.

  “We’ll boil in there,” Okel said. No one disagreed.

  I looked over the rail at the stout abutment and the shallow river. I could not help the thought of it filled with 8,000 men and horse. Hemari Stew.

  “We’ll dam the river,” I said. “Clear the forest away from its edge and use the cutting to build a dam.”

  I saw it clearly, and I did not wait for them to catch my meaning. “Divide the division by regiments, two on the near side and two on the far bank. Spread them out by company every thirty paces. Underbrush into the river first. Colonel Grano, 1st brigade is here on the southwest bank. Ivinta, you are on the far side. Move!”

  It was ponderous. Two battalions needed to cross while another two pushed straight into the trees.

  I handed off my horse to Okel and climbed up onto the rail to get a better view. The smoke was already reaching us, as if a fireplace flue had been left closed somewhere nearby. The sky above was gray and growing black, and a faint red glow menaced the horizon.

  “Too much work. Too many trees,” I whispered to myself, bit my tongue for being a fool, and urged them on.

  The sound of hatchets along the southwest bank added a note of hope. Dense brush started washing beneath the bridge, and I spotted Grano’s men. It happened faster then. Companies all along both banks got to work, and the sound of the whack and crack of hatchets rose until it rivaled thunder. The tearing timber scream of the first great maple coming down had the effect of a rally cry. The 5th roared its approval, and the sound grew again more savage and urgent. Brush crammed the river and began to jam the arches beneath the bridge.

  “Sir, the levies,” a scout shouted. “They’re quick marching up the road behind us. Their commander begs a word.”

  The man saluted me sharply from his dusty roan. The horse was exhausted. The officer upon it had yet to be tested.

  “How many are you?” I asked.

  “Most of my command was fit for it. 40,000 made it here, more or less.”

  “What happened behind you on the road?”

  “Chaos. That drunk from Eril made a break for it with his horses and left his foot soldiers behind. The pilgrims lost their minds at the first word and ran in every direction. I am not sure if anyone else got free of them.”

  “I intend to dam the river and shelter in its waters. You and yours are welcome to stay if they are fit enough to work for it.”

  “We’re not dying today,” he said. “How shall I order them?”

  “Divide into quarters and assign one to each of my colonels. Half on each side of the river.”

  He saluted me without comment, and with a gentle coax, earned a canter from his tired horse.

  The young and strong from the fields of the Kaaryon poured up the road at the quick, and their commander sent them out along the river. Good men all—made solid by a life of hard work. The forest was no match for 50,000 men. The underbrush vanished. Trees went down ten at a time, and their branches were cleared away in moments.

  “Logs! Grano, Ivinta,” I shouted down to them. Both were quick to it. Grano had a team of thirty horses rigged and standing by. The first stripped trunk was dragged roughly out of the forest, gouging huge divots in the earth as it came. He and 300 of his men followed it up onto the center of the bridge.

  “On three,” Grano cried. He counted it off, the men strained, and up and over the side it went. The stubborn ferns that clung to the great trunk did not seem to mind the ride. They did better upon rotting wood, as I understood them. Our dam would be a fantastic refuge for them as well. If it survived.

  The water of that small river pushed upon that first trunk. The bridge quivered—laughing, it seemed—at the marvelous theater it was hosting and the great task its abutments were being asked to perform. The water rose.

  Other trunks, branches, and buckets of mud moved up from both banks. The bridge’s wide arches jammed solid.

  “Extend it,” I told the captains at the working end of each line. “I want to extended the dam upstream like the horns of a bull.”

  They were fit for the task. More and more brush and trunks—the layers fattened and filled in, and the water continued to rise. It became a race then, a battle to hem in the dammed river before it swelled beyond the wall of logs raised against it.r />
  A red flicker caught my eye. A great ember thrown by the wind drifted over us. I turned to see a horizon scarred by a rolling swirl of racing flames. There was no more blue sky to be found. The haze of smoke began to grow thicker. The smell of the first hot billow caught hold of every man. They stopped and looked.

  “Bayen comes for us,” one man screamed.

  “Maybe for you,” I shouted back, “but not for the 5th. Rally ho! Put your backs into it now men. Rally!”

  The rising note of alarm was quashed by the renewed savagery of hatchets, awls, and axes. The forest surrendered to us. Trunk, branches, and limbs were swept onto my wall like dust across a floor. And the rising waters slowly covered this broken carpet like a skirt being pulled up a luscious thigh.

  A scream. I searched the road—a chorus of screams. Faintly through the growing smoke I saw riders heading our way. It was the priest and his pilgrims.

  “Grano, order! Three companies phalanx triangle on the road.”

  “Are they welcome to bathe with us when the time comes?” he asked.

  I nodded reluctantly, and he got the best men of the 5th moving to stop the panicked devotees from fouling our work.

  The pile of logs had risen to the level of the bridge rail—a half circle the size of the palace lawn. The great horns I had hoped for were there. All along it men shoveled mud against its base and sides. And out beyond the dam, the thousands continued to tear down the forest, pushing it farther and farther back from our shelter. I jumped down and crossed to the far side of the bridge. The river had been reduced to a trickle.

  I was about to accuse the captains of over-engineering the dam when the bridge quivered again. The logs groaned, shifted, and then settled. The maple wall proved fit. The flow of the river ceased.

  A falling ember burned my neck. I slapped it away and searched the sky. They were coming down all around us now, and other small fires had started out in the forest. Above us, the smoke was red from the glow of the approaching flames.

  We were out of time.

  I leapt back up onto the rail. I hollered for the 5th, but they could not hear me. I smacked my sword sharply upon the side of the stone rail beneath me. The thunder of hatchets quieted until all that could be heard was the mewing and begging of the lesser men who pushed upon Grano’s phalanx.

  “Into the river now,” I ordered. “Every man, every horse. Gather to the river. Relay it. Leave no man in the trees.”

  The order moved, and the action swung. The cohesion of company, brigade, and battalion held. The men rejoined their horses, and Hemari blue and levy brown began to fill the vast pond, purple and black though they seemed in the cast of the flame that made the boiling sky glow red.

  Okel brought Marrow up. My golden mare was nervous, but I quieted her by leaping aloft and letting her stamp a circle upon the center of the bridge.

  Grano rode up, bloody spear in hand. “Sir, they have your cousin’s horses.”

  Behind him were the two companies of Hemari foot and one of horse that blocked the road. A thousand or more screaming devotees pushed and trampled upon them. Gone were the women and children they had dragged along with them to Havish—left behind to burn. All that was left of them was the most craven flock of madmen Zoviya was capable of squeezing from its ass. And there, leading them, was that priest with the ridiculous name.

  I led Grano back down. The companies were ready. I ordered Grano and the footmen to withdraw and said to the horseman, “Order, make ready spears. Let’s clear this road!”

  The men growled as we charged out into the blizzard of embers and the chaos of lesser men. Our spears were savage. Those who screamed for mercy got none. Those who fled rode into flames.

  The red glow became orange, and the smoke blasted us back.

  Marrow and the rest of the horses were near panic, but they smelled the water as we turned. We galloped across the bridge, around the arm of the eastern horn of the dam and into the cool waters of our great pond.

  The smoke was thinner there inside the half circle of wet timber. The rest looked on as we rode in. The blood and soot that washed from us darkened the shadowed water.

  Okel met me in the center of the huddled division.

  “If Sahin escapes you after this, every man of the 5th will hang.”

  “I bought us today. Talk to me about tomorrow when it comes.”

  And then the distant line of trees at the western edge of our vast clearing burst into flames. The fire raced around it, and a wave of sparks and half-burnt leaves came at us like rain. The horses shrieked.

  Every man was to himself then, working in the sudden rush of thick, choking smoke to keep his horse calm. The horsemanship of the 5th shone like 8,000 candles against the darkness of night. We wet their coats and tied their eyes with blinders. The horses fell silent, and all that could be heard was the slap of wet clothes, the hushed words of horsemen, and the growling scream of flames. The levies crouched down into the water around us as the world burned.

  Bayen had not forsaken us. If ever divine attention was paid to men upon this earth, we were blessed. The dam held, the flames passed, and we were preserved.

  55

  Admiral Soma O’Nropeel

  The new ships loved the waters of the Gulf of Ulgos as much as I loved commanding them. I missed the Grace, but neither she nor the Thorne had any business in the deep waters of the Pinnion Ocean. Barok correctly assigned both of them to duties in the Gulf of Temptir under command of Admiral Mercanfur and named me the Admiral of the Pinnion. My written orders were to deliver passengers and freight between Urnedi, Moorsmoth, and Lindrig. I had my own mission, but it was compatible with this assignment.

  The Lynx was the best of the five ships of my squadron. Her trim sails could catch the slightest breath of cool morning air rolling down from the mountains, and she could keep tack as the warmth of the setting sun drew the airs back up. Waves that had made Mercanfur and I nervous just ten days before slid unnoticed beneath the Lynx. The rest of my squadron was fit for the Pinnion but deficient in one way or another. The three-masted ship could only hoist one sail without running the risk of pitching over, and the rest drafted too shallow and drifted a touch.

  I was also blessed with a loyal crew. I’d kept every man from aboard the Grace and had my pick of volunteers to fill the ship’s complement of fifty-five. I’d named Rindsfar my boatswain, and he was proving an able second in command.

  It was the 47th of Spring when we sighted the cattlemen’s town of Moorsmoth. The approach was a bit daunting for the Lynx with her deeper keel, but I trimmed sails and stayed far back from the coast until it was time to turn upriver.

  The sun-wasted city startled me. The streets that had seemed drab and confused during the night were bright with the yellow, red, and blue cloth of its awnings, porches, and busy people. The small peaks north of the city were banded with clever scaffolding and the smoke from the tin mines was hidden on their far side. East of the city, a carpet of green pastures flowed up onto a long row of forested fang-like peaks. The range was cut by a massive valley that rose east and then north between the rows of tall teeth. The valley’s grasslands were smudged with great herds of grazing cattle and cut by the same fat river. And above it all to the northeast was Mount Wedd, a snow-covered incisor that bit the clouds foolish enough to come too close.

  One of the smudges upriver looked more like an army than a herd of cattle. I hollered for the lookout to tell me what he saw.

  “Greencoats and the auxiliaries, Admiral. They’re trailing a sizable local force as well. Looks like they were able to make the move to Wilgmuth a few days early, ma’am.”

  My suspicions were confirmed when we rounded the last high shoulder of dark rock and set eyes on piers packed with cheering crowds and ships flying the pennants of Enhedu and Heneur. The Phalia was one of them, and the sight of her brought me such joy, I joined in the applause.

  Colonel Bohn Kennculli was there, with a helmet under his arm, a sash of some local
office across his chest, and as happy an expression as anyone from his family was capable. The bottom third of the pier he waited on was cleared away for us. I docked my ships, and my captains and I met Colonel Kennculli and his lieutenants there. Also in the supporting cast were an unassuming nolumari and a quartet of locals—senior Cynt and Raydau men, I assumed. Captain Etchpay rounded out the group, and I nearly bounded across and gave the Heneuran a great hug. He’d put on weight and looked ready to wrestle bears.

  Colonel Kennculli saluted me and I him. I’d seen the expression on the faces of Leger’s soldiers before. Bohn had a report to deliver, and he had no one to deliver it to. I regretted his loneliness. There wasn’t but thirty men who knew that Leger was dead. I wasn’t entirely interested in the details that were about to be inflicted upon me but stood up straight and gave him the order he was hoping for. “Pleasant afternoon to you, Colonel. Report, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I am happy to report that General Mertone and his captains led the army up the valley this morning with 11,000 men. They will cross the river this afternoon and make the turn for Heneur. Very nearly every professional soldier in the Oreol and 3,000 from the fields signed on. The auxiliaries we took on at Almidi all made muster right here in Moorsmoth two day ago to the delight of the town and our recruiters. The new Raydau and Cynt auxiliaries started their fifty days this morning.”

  “There is news from Heneur?” I asked.

  “Yes, Admiral. Captain Etchpay brought word from Wilgmuth that Aderan’s army made it up through the pass with close to 30,000 men. Arilas Vlek believes his 13,000 are enough to challenge this mass of slaves and levies, but he has holed up inside Wilgmuth, instead, and invited the Serm to lay siege. The arrival of our army on the Serm’s flank will bring a swift ending.”