Ra-khir looked momentarily stricken, but swiftly regained face. "I'll do my best, Knight-Captain." He had about as much chance of keeping Renshai corralled as he did the myriad of palace cats.
With every chair at the table full, Darris rose and offered his own to Ra-khir. The knight graciously accepted his offer, and Darris took a position behind and beside Griff, where he could observe most of the leaders' expressions.
The tribal leader of Gelshnir spoke in his musical Northern accent. "What are the pirates doing now?"
"Massing their ships offshore," the high king explained. "We estimate three hundred, but it's only a guess. They've destroyed every vessel that's drawn near enough to count."
The Gelshni general continued, "What about scouts? What do they know?"
King Humfreet of Erythane finally spoke. "They're less than worthless. Even those who can sneak near without getting butchered don't understand a word of the pirates' gabble."
Darris saw a spark flash through several eyes, but General Markanyin got the question out first. "What about the 'one man' who spoke with our prisoners?"
King Griff 's gaze went directly to Tae, and he paused a moment before answering, perhaps expecting the king of the Eastlands to save him the trouble. When Tae did not oblige, Griff accepted his burden. "He has an uncanny gift for languages and had the chance, because of the two prisoners, to immerse himself."
"Can he spy?" Markanyin asked hopefully.
Darris looked at Ra-khir and found him smiling. He had easily figured out the identity of their mystery language speaker.
"No," Griff said, more as a command than an answer. "We can't risk him. Not only do we need him for his talent, but he's too important to lose."
Finally, Tae spoke. What he lacked in volume, he made up for in intensity. "I'll do it."
Every eye jerked to the Eastern king.
Tae continued, "If we don't win this war, we all die. Women, children, no one will be spared. What's one life, any life, compared with that?"
Silence followed. Strategists and warriors filled the room, yet none had ever fought a war as significant and potentially deadly as this one.
General Sutton cleared his throat. "I'm certain His Highest Western Majesty meant no slight upon your courage, Your Eastern Majesty." Obviously unaccustomed to royal titles, the leader of Santagithi, and her closest allies, attempted to mimic proper formality as well as to smooth ruffled feathers. "He merely made the point that your precious skill might serve us better than on a simple scouting mission."
Tae smiled. No king despised formality more than he did. "No offense was taken."
Darris knew innocent Griff could kick and spit on Tae, and the scrappy little Easterner would give him all the time he needed to explain.
Valr Magnus ignored the verbal exchanges, studying the massive map that covered most of the tabletop. "Do we even know where these pirates come from?"
"Here." Leaning forward, Tae jabbed a finger that thumped against the wooden table well off the southern edge of the map and directly across from Bearn.
Exclamations and discussions began immediately. Though he had initiated it, Tae did not join any of the conversations. He sat back, clearly relieved to allow others to take the floor from him.
Unlike most of the others, Valr Magnus did not allow the shock of an army from beyond the known world to derail him. "We need to concern ourselves with more than just the army massed in the Southern Sea."The Northman stood to reach the exact spot off the map that Tae had indicated. "What we need to worry about are ships breaking off to go here…" He made a gliding motion around the isthmus of islands south and west of Bearn to indicate a shore fall near the twin Western cities of Corpa Schaull and Frist. "… and here." He indicated another sea path eastward to land on the barren stretch of land known as the Western Plains and beyond to the Eastlands.
"If we have all our armies massed here…" Magnus circled Bearn and Erythane with his finger. "… we leave our civilians wide open for attack." He scratched his honey-colored beard. "Then the enemy could circle around here…" He cut through the westernmost Westlands to Erythane and from the Western Plains through the Southern Weathered Mountains to Bearn. Magnus looked up to find all of his colleagues peering over the map. "At least, that's what I'd do if I were the pirates."
"Which is why," the general from Gelshnir said, "our armies are stretched along the western coast." He indicated the Erdai general and one of the Westerners, the one representing the twin cities of Corpa Bikat and Oshtan.
Tae added his piece again, which surprised Darris. When they had traveled together as friends, Tae had spent most of his time in silent hiding. He still seemed uncomfortable when attention turned to him, but his nearly two decades as king had, apparently, boosted his confidence. "The Eastern armies, right now, are massed along the shores of the Western Plains. My father reports having found some expert mystery general to lead them." Tae rolled his eyes.Weile Kahn had a habit of hitting his son with unwelcome surprises. "My father is on his way with a team of scouts. They're competent, but they're limited by not knowing the language."
General Markanyin rose and paced in the small space the table, and its massed kings and generals, left him. "With our armies spread thin, the pirates don't need strategy. They could attack Bearn en masse." He stopped between Tae and General Sutton, hand falling to the arm of Tae's chair. "These scouts of your father's…"
Darris held his breath. Rumors about Weile Kahn's followers abounded, and only the worst of them were true. Tae's father had gathered criminals as followers and served as their lord for decades. Survival had daily required stronger and more convoluted security than kings saw in a lifetime. His enemies included all of the world's power, above and beneath the law. Tae's mother had paid for Weile's antics with her life; and Tae, himself, had been left for dead on more than one occasion.
"… can they infiltrate the enemy?"
Tae shook his head. "Not without knowing the language, I'm afraid. I'm not even sure I could do that; many little things, most I don't even know about, would give me away. But, at least, I could spy on them and understand what they tell one another."
"Can you teach it to others?" the only Western general who had not yet spoken piped in. He was a small man, compared with the others, and the youngest in the room.
Tae's brows rose in increments. "Sure I could. Just give me students with a knack for both languages and stealth for two to three years."
"Two to three years? Is that how long it took you?"
"No," Tae admitted. "But I learned under rather unique circumstances." He glanced toward Griff, who was hanging on Tae's every word, even though he knew most of the answer. "From two native speakers." He switched from the ubiquitous Common Trading tongue to Western, then Northern, then Pudarian. Darris did not know Northern, but he did the other two. Even the accents were spot on. "I was exposed to innumerable languages from infancy, and I obviously have a god-granted knack that few share."
General Sutton looked around Markanyin to address Griff. "You're right,Your Majesty. That's a talent we dare not risk."
"Except," Tae added, "that the Pudarian general is quite correct. We need to know where to position our armies, because we don't have the numbers to spread them even as thin as we have." He sucked in a deep breath, let it out slowly, then proclaimed without allowing an opening for argument, "So, I'm going in."
CHAPTER 41
I gave up thinking a long time ago.
The steady lap of water against ships' hulls, the watery sounds of leaping fish and bobbing wood, the sharp wind blowing across the ocean all became too familiar to Tae. He and Imorelda had spent three days paddling cautiously between the massed warships on a hunk of old ship wood meant to look like ancient flotsam to anyone glimpsing it from a distance. He kept the cat focused on the proper wavelength for the alsona's communication. They had heard just enough of sailor orders and warrior commands to assure that all the pirates used the same pitch level of mental communication.