The camp’s size staggered her. From the land, by daylight, she hadn’t appreciated just how big it was. She knew that Blaise discipline was loose, so the number of fires was relatively greater than it would’ve been in the royal army; but she knew also that the count’s forces were very great.
The moon was nearly full, gleaming on the swells and turning foam to silver. A watchman in the stern of a moored transport blew his trumpet. He didn’t see Sharina and the king; he’d been blowing the same long note at intervals since sundown. What he thought he proved, other than that he was awake, escaped Sharina.
The shore was coming closer. Sharina wasn’t tired, but it was time to get a better view. She stopped kicking and lifted her chest onto the buoyant sack of clothing. For a moment she saw nothing but upward-slanting water; then she went over the crest and took in the shoreline less than three furlongs away.
Some of the biggest ships were anchored even farther from the beach than she and Carus—twenty feet to her left—had already penetrated. The shoreline here shelved more gradually than that of the smaller bay just north where the royal fleet had landed, so vessels too large to draw up on land had to stay well out.
Carus came over to her with kicks and three fierce sweeps of his right arm. “They can lighter the cargo and passengers ashore…” he said, nodding to the nearest of the thousand-tun vessels. “Those ships won’t have a chance if a storm breaks, though.”
Sharina glanced up at the clear sky, and said, “Do you think the wizards of Moon Wisdom are still controlling the weather?”
Carus chuckled. “I think Count Lerdoc’s a neck-or-nothing madman who’s praying a storm won’t wreck him if the danger even crosses his mind,” he said. “The problem with an enemy who takes risks is that sometimes he gets lucky.”
His moonlit smile was wry, as he added, “Which my enemies have often learned.”
The trumpet called again. The tock! tock! tock! of wood on wood sounded from the western arm of the bay. Sharina couldn’t guess if it were a signal or just late-night carpentry to repair a shelter or a ship.
Carus pointed with his whole arm. “There, we’ll come ashore where those boats are beached. The bigger ships might have somebody on board, but those lighters won’t have anything but a watchman, if that.”
“If there is a watchman?” Sharina said, kicking occasionally to keep her at arm’s length upcurrent of the king.
“Then we’ll deal with him,” Carus said. “One good thing about a beach is we don’t have to worry about how to get the blood off.”
Sharina ducked and resumed kicking her way toward shore. In a peasant village, you slaughtered most of the herd at the first touch of frost. That way the remainder would be able to winter over on the fodder you’d stored. In a war it was men you killed, in order that the kingdom itself survive.
Maybe in another age it wouldn’t have to be that way. Sharina had enough to do simply trying to save this age and the myriads of innocent people who lived in it. If a few rebels died, well, that was the way of the world.
Sailors on watch shouted to one other from ship to anchored ship. Sharina passed close enough to a vessel with a high, rounded stern that she could’ve thrown a pebble to it; Carus was closer yet. A lantern burned on the deckhouse. Its light didn’t illuminate the water, but it would blind a watchman to the blotches on a swell that were swimmers instead of driftwood or flotsam lost when the army disembarked.
The ships’ boats were pulled up at the tide line and fastened to oars driven blade first into the sand. Sharina lowered her head and, with her left hand, gripped the cords tying her bundle. She used her right arm and both legs to drive her the rest of the way ashore. The bonfire higher up the beach silhouetted the men around it and the boats below, but if there was a watchman, he was asleep in the belly of one of them.
Sharina’s left elbow touched sand. She hunched over her bundle and let the receding surf ground her. When it did, she ran in a crouch to where the bows of a large dory and a smaller boat formed a sheltering V.
Carus was already there, untying his clothing with his left hand. He grinned at her.
At the nearby fire a sailor was shaking time on a tambourine while a comrade sang, “…just another fatal wedding, just another broken heart…” No one was on watch at the boats.
That was just as well for him. In the king’s right hand, shimmering in the moonlight, was a dagger. Its blade of polished steel would open a man like a trout before he even had time to gasp.
20
“You are staying at the Hyacinth,” one of the Nine said to Cashel in a voice no more human than the speaker. The smell of rotting flesh puffed from its beak in time with the words. “You should not have come here.”
“I couldn’t let you eat my friend!” Cashel said. The spray had hardened on his neck and right cheek; his skin strained painfully when he spoke.
The Nine were right when they said Cashel shouldn’t have come here. By Duzi! they were. There was nothing else he could’ve done, though; and even now, Cashel guessed he’d do it all over again if the only choice was that or doing nothing. He hadn’t made any difference, but at least he wasn’t going to have to live remembering that he didn’t try.
A creature brought its abdomen close to Cashel’s right hand. A pore opened. Cashel braced himself mentally for a gush of fluid that would harden over his mouth and nose.
Instead there was a stench of ammonia and the glue holding the quarterstaff to his hand dissolved. Cashel sneezed violently.
The creature tugged. There was still a hardened loop attaching the staff to Cashel’s ribs. He couldn’t turn his head to watch, but another of the Nine touched its body there and sprayed more ammonia till the staff slipped free.
“Your friend was the woman from the Hyacinth,” a creature said.
“The woman from the Hyacinth was entranced, but she was not dead,” said another. Their bodies and their voices were identical. Cashel could easily have called every sheep in Barca’s Hamlet by name, but the Nine were indistinguishable.
“Our business is with the dead,” a third creature said. “We would not harm your friend. We will turn her loose when she has recovered.”
The creatures passed the quarterstaff from one to another. Each ran a delicately pincered “hand” along the hickory before giving it to the next. Fresh ammonia bit as one cleaned a last daub of glue from the shaft.
“She has recovered now,” said the first of the Nine to speak. “We will turn her loose with you, man from the Hyacinth. But you both must go away.”
“What?” said Cashel, trying to understand what he’d just heard. He didn’t suppose he ought to be complaining, but…
He said, “But you eat people!”
The Nine bobbed back and forth on their two pairs of walking legs, looking for all the world like a set of children’s dipper toys. They rubbed their beaks sideways, back and forth, to make scraping sounds.
Cashel thought for a moment the Nine were laughing. On reflection, he decided he didn’t believe they understood humor.
“We do not eat people, man from the Hyacinth,” said a creature who hadn’t spoken before. “We eat dead flesh.”
Two of the Nine moved away. Trussed as he was, Cashel couldn’t see what they were doing. He tried to roll and look back the way he’d come, but he couldn’t shift his torso quite enough to overbalance.
“Hold still and we will release you,” a creature said. It twisted its abdomen up, brushing Cashel’s wrist. The touch was dry and scaly like a snake’s skin, not hard.
A cool mist settled over Cashel’s arms and torso. He closed his eyes but the ammonia odor set him sneezing again. The glue loosened. When Cashel twisted, chunks of it dropped away like ice from slates in the sunshine.