It took Dawson almost a full minute to find the words.
“Lord Regent, I would be honored.”
Marcus
Sometime, centuries before, someone had built a low wall along the top of the rise. In the moonlight, the scattered rocks reminded Marcus of knucklebones. He knelt, one hand on the dew-slick grass. In the cove below him, three ships rested at anchor. Shallow-bottomed with paired masts. Faster and more maneuverable than the round-bellied trade ships that they hunted. One showed a mark on the side where she’d been struck not too many weeks before, the new timber of the patch bright and unweathered.
On the sand, a cookfire still burned, its orange glow the only warmth in the spring night. From where they stood, Marcus counted a dozen structures—more than tents, less than huts—scattered just above the tide line. A wellestablished camp, then. That was good. A half dozen stretchedleather boats rested near the water.
Yardem Hane grunted softly and pointed a wide hand to the east. A tree a hundred feet or so from the water towered up toward the sky. A glimmer, moonlight on metal, less than a third of the way to its tip showed where the sentry perched. Marcus pointed out at the ships. High in the rigging of the one nearest the shore, another dark figure.
Yardem held up two fingers, wide brows rising in question. Two watchers?
Marcus shook his head, holding up a third finger. One more.
The pair sat still in the shadows made darker by the spray of fallen stone. The moon shifted slowly in its arc. The movement was subtle. A single branch on the distant tree that moved in the breeze more slowly. Marcus pointed. Yardem flicked an ear silently; he wore no earrings when they were scouting. Marcus looked over the cove one last time, cataloging it as best he could. They faded back down the rise, into the shadows. They walked north, and then west. They didn’t speak until they’d traveled twice as far as their low voices would carry.
“How many do you make out?” Marcus asked.
Yardem spat thoughtfully.
“Not more than seventy, sir,” he said.
“That’s my count too.”
The path was hardly more than a deer trail. Thin spaces in the trees. It wouldn’t be many weeks before the leaves of summer choked the path, but tonight their steps were muffled by well-rotted litter and a spring’s soft moss. The moon was no more than a scattering of pale dapples in the darkness under the leaves.
“We could go back to the city,” Yardem said. “Raise a hundred men. Maybe a ship.”
“You think Pyk would pay out the coin?”
“Could borrow it from someone.”
In the brush, a small animal skittered, fleeing before them as if they were a fire.
“The one farthest from shore was riding lower than the others,” Marcus said.
“Was.”
“We come in with a ship, they’ll see us. It’ll be empty water by the time we’re there.”
Yardem was quiet apart from a small grunt when his head bumped against a low branch. Marcus kept his eyes on the darkness, not really seeing. His legs shifted and moved easily. His mind gnawed at the puzzle.
“If they see us coming on land,” he said, “they haul out boats and wave to us from the sea. We trap them on land in a fair fight with the men we have now, they have numbers and territory on us. We wait to get more sword-and-bows, and they may have moved on.”
“Difficult, sir.”
“Ideas?”
“Hire on for an honest war.”
Marcus chuckled sourly.
His company was camped dark, but the sound of their voices and the smells of their food traveled in the darkness. He had fifty men of several races—otterpelted Kurtadam, black-chitined Timzinae, Firstblood. Even half a dozen bronzes-caled Jasuru hired on at the last minute when their contract as house guards fell through. It made for more tension in the camp, but the usual racial slurs were absent. They were Kurtadam and Timzinae and Jasuru, not clickers and roaches and pennies. And no one said a bad word about the Firstblood when it was a Firstblood who’d decide who dug the latrines.
And, to the point, the mixture gave Marcus options.
Ahariel Akkabrian had been one of the first guards when the Porte Oliva branch of the Medean bank had been a highstakes gamble with all odds against. His pelt was going grey, especially around his mouth and back, but the beads woven into it were silver instead of glass. He sat up on his cot as Marcus ducked into the tent. His eyes were bleary with sleep, but his voice was crisp.
“Captain Wester, sir. Yardem.”
“Sorry to wake you,” Yardem said.
“Ahariel,” Marcus said. “How long could you swim in the sea?”
“Me, you mean, sir? Or someone like me?”
“Kurtadam.”
“Long as you’d like.”
“No boasting. It’s not summer. The water’s cold. How long?”
Ahariel yawned deeply and shook his head, setting the beads to clicking.
“The dragons built us for water, Captain. The only people who can swim longer and colder than we can are the Drowned, and they can’t fight for shit.”
Marcus closed his eyes, seeing the moonlit cove again. The ships at anchor, the shelters, the hide boats. The coals of the fire glowing. He had eleven Kurtadam, Ahariel included. If he sent them into the water, that left a bit over thirty. Against twice that number. Marcus bit his lip and looked up at his second in command. In the light of the single candle, Yardem looked placid. Marcus cleared his throat.
“The day you throw me in a ditch and take control of the company?”
“Not today, sir,” Yardem said.
“Afraid you’d say that. Only one thing to do then. Ahariel? You’re going to need some knives.”
Marcus rode to the west, shield slung on his back and sword at his side. The sun rose behind him, pushing his shadow out ahead like a gigantic version of himself. To his left, the sea was as bright as beaten gold. The sentry tree was just in sight. The poor bastard on duty would be squinting into the brightness. The danger, of course, being that he wouldn’t look at all. If Marcus managed an actual surprise attack, they were doomed. He had the uncomfortable sense that God’s sense of humor went along lines very much like that.
“Spread out,” he called back down the line. “Broken file. We want to look bigger than we are.”
The call came back, voice after voice repeating the order. Timing was going to matter a great deal. The land looked different in the sunlight. The cove wasn’t as distant as it had seemed in the night. Marcus sat high in his saddle.
“Come on,” he murmured. “See us. Look over here and see us. We’re right here.”
A shiver along a wide branch. The leaves sent back light brighter than gold. A horn blared.
“That was it,” Yardem rumbled.
“Was,” Marcus said. He pictured the little shelters, the sailors scuttling for their belongings, for their boats. He counted ten silent breaths, then pulled his shield to the front and drew his sword.
“Sound the charge,” he said. “Let’s get this done.”
When they rounded the bend that led into the cove, a ragged volley of arrows met them. Marcus shouted, and his soldiers picked up the call. From the far end of the strip of sand, ten archers stood ground, loosing arrows and preparing to jump into the last hide boat and take to the safety of the water, the ships, and the sea. The other boats were already away, rowing fast toward the ships and loaded with enough men to defeat Marcus’s force.
The first boat was a dozen yards from shore and already sinking.