“Yes, of course,” said Tilphosa. She stepped into the taproom with her head high; every inch a queen.
Sharina stood at the base of the flagship’s forward fighting tower, looking toward the beach two furlongs away. The great quinquereme proceeded along the shore under the thrust of only one bank of oars, giving her just enough way on that she didn’t wallow in the surf. The ballistae on the bow and stern towers were cocked and loaded with thick-shafted arrows whose square iron heads could smash a ship’s hull at short range or an archer’s scantlings half a mile inland.
Carus had transferred from The King of the Isles to one of the lightest warships in the fleet, an eighty-oared bireme that had been in service as a revenue cutter before Garric became regent of the kingdom. Earlier in the reign of Valence the Third, the Kingdom of the Isles had controlled little more than port duties and the fishing within dory-haul of Ornifal, but even that slight reach had required enforcement vessels.
The bireme swept toward the beach at a slight angle, watched by Sharina and every other person who could get a view of the proceedings. A score of triremes sculled along beside The King of the Isles—closer than safety permitted—each with its single ballista or catapult aimed shoreward against a threat as yet invisible.
Admiral Nitker in the stern of the flagship looked carved from granite; Lord Waldron on the Lady of Sunrise, a broad-beamed sailing ship that transported his staff and three days’ rations for the whole army, flicked his bare sword in small, furious arcs at his right side. Everybody in the fleet was terrified at the idea of Carus—of Garric, as they thought—making the initial landing on Laut with only a company of Blood Eagles. It was a comment on the force of Carus’ personality—and on the raging fury he’d frequently blazed with in the days since he began to wear Garric’s flesh—that none of the strong-minded men of his army had seriously tried to prevent him from doing this.
The bireme slid up the beach, first grating and then grinding slowly to a halt with twenty feet of her bow on dry land. The little vessel didn’t have a ram, so her curving stem had acted like a sled runner under the rowers’ final efforts.
The bireme tilted to its starboard, inland side. The men, bodyguards acting as oarsmen only for this last short run-up, were leaping to the sand even before the hull thumped down. The first man off, splendid in a silver breastplate and a gold diadem instead of the helmet every officer had begged he wear, was King Carus.
A line of Blood Eagles, still juggling the shields on their left arms, formed in front of him and trotted toward the straggle of fishermen’s huts that were the only buildings visible. A woman stood in the doorway of one, holding a pot in one hand and covering her mouth with the other. She threw down the pot and ran inland screaming.
The cornicene at Carus’ side put his horn to his lips and blew a lowing call. A score of triremes, already stern on to the beach, began backing in. They were moving faster than their hulls could accept without straining when they hit the sand, but the immediate threat was the real Confederate army, not a hypothetical fleet that might sally to attack the royal force.
Tenoctris came out of her little enclosure under the fighting tower, holding the bamboo splint she’d been using as a wand. She walked to the rail and deliberately tossed it into the sea. “Are things going well, Sharina?” she asked.
Horns and trumpets blared as nearly a hundred vessels jockeyed for position. Officers on The King of the Isles screamed at crewmen and one another. The flagship needed to turn seaward or she’d run aground on the western jaw of the broad bay, and there was more confusion than Sharina would’ve expected about just how she should avoid that in the shoal of other vessels. Admiral Nitker jumped onto the stern rail to bellow at the captain of the trireme within stone’s throw to port; a white-faced aide clung to the admiral’s belt with one hand and a bollard for the mast stays with the other.
“All right, I guess,” Sharina said. She found herself smiling. “The Confederacy of the West seems to be conspicuous by its absence, but right now it looks like half the royal fleet is in danger of sinking the other half unless we’re lucky.”
She paused to watch the shore fill with armed men climbing out of the triremes, forming under the harsh commands of noncoms, and then advancing in pike-fanged blocks to the perimeter Carus and his company of Blood Eagles were marking out. The troops aboard the following ships would throw up earthworks behind the armed line, building both a base camp and a refuge for the emptied vessels. For now the fleet’s defense lay in the spearheads and swordblades.
Which would be sufficient, even if the Confederates managed to mount an attack. The ancient king leading the Isles was a hasty man capable of ignoring everything but his own will—as witness his actions just now—but the time Sharina had spent with Carus had convinced her that the world would never know his equal as a warrior. When he determined the forces for the first wave that might have to fight its way ashore, his analysis was as certain as Ilna’s choice of yarn for a fabric.
“I guess it’s always as confused as this in a war,” Sharina said quietly. “When I read about battles, I couldn’t understand how armies could blunder about, slaughtering each other almost by accident it sometimes seemed. But I see now.”
There was no sign the enemy headquartered three miles away in Donelle was even aware of the royal invasion. They’d learn soon, but in an hour the camp’s fortifications would be complete—
And within four hours, according to the king’s plan, the royal army would advance to begin the siege of Donelle. The only thing that could change Carus’ timetable would be for the Confederate army to march out of the city to face him in the field.
Sharina shivered at the thought.
“Is something wrong?” Tenoctris said.
“I was thinking that the war might be over before nightfall if the enemy commander’s a fool,” Sharina said. “But—have you ever seen a pig butchered, Tenoctris?”
The wizard shook her head minutely. “My education was in books, dear,” she said.
“I’m just thinking about twenty thousand pigs being slaughtered at the same time, is all,” Sharina said. “All the blood, and the mud; and the way the pigs squeal…”
Tenoctris put her hand on arm Sharina’s arm.
Twenty more troop-carrying warships backed toward shore farther to the east. The first squadron, lighter by the weight of a hundred men apiece, struggled to get under weigh and clear the beach for later comers. They’d wait offshore until the earthworks were up and there was leisure to fit the ships of the fleet as tightly together as they’d been in the Arsenal.
The King of the Isles slowed noticeably. Oarsmen to port had reversed stroke so that the bow swung seaward under the thrust of the starboard oars. The trireme on the port side was pulling forward at full power, giving the flagship sea room. The oars of the smaller ship slanted back along her hull in perfect synchrony before lifting to surge forward; they spilled chains of diamond-glittering droplets into the foam alongside.
“Was your work successful?” Sharina asked, giving a slight emphasis to the possessive. She nodded toward the tower’s curtained base where the wizard had been.
“I learned that none of our missing friends are in Donelle,” Tenoctris said. She offered a minuscule smile, more sad than not. “Though I think Ilna may have been there recently. If I’ve read the indications correctly. I’m not”—the smile broadened—“a very powerful wizard, as you know.”
Sharina moved to the opposite rail so that she could continue to watch the beach. The ships of the squadron that had landed the initial troops were crawling seaward again, all but one trireme whose officers stood knee deep in the water to examine the keel and planking; the captain apparently thought she’d strained her hull when she grounded. More ships were backing shoreward, maneuvering with difficulty to avoid the stranded vessel.