She started up the stairs, with her shadow dancing on the wall beside her. ”You should take Skarash’s advice. Find a ship bound for Arakkaran as soon as you can.”
They were through the door at the top before Azak said, “No. I shall stay with you. I care more for you than I do for Zark, or Arakkaran, or anything.”
Again she halted and spun around to look at him in wonder. “This is madness!”
“Yes. But love always is, isn’t it?”
“Your kingdom? Your sons?”
“I would give away my kingdom forever if I could just kiss you just once.”
She could find no answer to that.
To the seas again:
I must go down to the seas again,
to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship
and a star to steer her by.
— Masefield, Sea-Fever
NINE
They also serve
1
With rain dribbling down his neck and only two hours of daylight left to reach Puldarn, Ulynago thumped the reins and bellowed at his team. Ahead of him the ancient highway ran like a beam of gray light through the black woods, straight for the notch in the trees on the ridge ahead. Had he been able to see back over the load, the view behind would have been just about identical; traffic was almost nonexistent in this weather. He’d met none since Thin Bridge, just outside Tithro.
On the bench at his side, Iggo slumped and nodded, two-thirds asleep. No man ought to be able to sleep in such a downpour, but Iggo wasn’t very much awake at the best of times.
In Puldarn there was hot food and beer and a certain wellpadded waitress. Ulynago was a man of simple tastes.
Until four years ago, he’d been a legionary. He’d seen no real fighting, but he’d cut up a few rebellious gnomes in his time. Revolting gnomes, the legions called them—gnomes were always revolting. Joke! Good sport, though, gnomes. He’d struggled his way up to centurion near the end of his term. Then there had been better opportunities. He’d retired with a lot more than his official requital, enough to buy his wheels and hooves, back home in South Pithmot where he’d been raised. And he’d hired as swamper, Iggo who was big and stupid—stupid enough once to tackle a drunken troll and a lot stupider afterward. An ideal helpep, who couldn’t always remember when he’d been paid. So everything was just as the Gods ordered, except for this Evil-take-it rain. Ulynago hoped the wet wouldn’t get into his wheat, good northern wheat that had come all the way from Shimlundok, destined for rich folks’ fine bread. The damp would do it no good, and him no good, therefore. The merchants would try to chew him down on the price.
With no warning, he forgot the wheat. He had a different I problem—the horses breaking step, trying to slow to a walk. What the Evil? The wagon rocked. He yelled and pulled out his whip. He cracked it. It made no difference. Something had spooked them, they were fighting the weight, all on the wrong feet. The rig twisted. Hastily he grabbed the brake. Iggo lurched forward and awoke with a bellow of oaths.
“Shut up and get the blades!” Ulynago yelled. “Wha’s’matter?”
With a few lurid additions, Ulynago explained that he didn’t know. The rig clattered to a halt. The horses stood and steamed in the wet, but all calm as jelly pudding. Silence. What the Evil?
Ulynago thumped reins again. Ears twitched . . . nothing more. God of Madness! The horses were all staring at the trees just ahead. He felt the hairs on his spine rise. Who would hijack a load of wheat? Of course he did have eighteen gold crowns in his moneybelt. If men were behind this, what had they done to his team?
He rose and peered back over the load at the highway behind—bare rock, shining in the wet, running straight and empty as far as he could see in the rain mist. He didn’t like these parts. Too close to dragon country, but one whiff of dragon would have put the team in Puldarn by now. Not dragons.
A man stalked out of the trees ahead and headed for the rig. With a roar, Ulynago tried to rouse the team again, and again nothing happened. Grinding out a mixture of army oaths and teamster technicalities, he shook water off his hat, took up his sword, and jumped down. Then he saw that the newcomer was only an elf. The tightness in his gut eased a lot—he could handle elves. Only one? Iggo’s boots thumped down on the other side of the wagon.
Ulynago headed for the elf. He certainly was no threat—unarmed, just a kid in fancy blue and green, all soaked and smeared with grass stains. Hard to tell with elves, so he might be older. He was striding . . . elves usually pranced. Odd sort of elf.
They met beside the lead pair, with the point of Ulynago’s sword at the brat’s midriff.
“Who the Evil are you? What you do to my team?”
“I’m truly sorry about this,” the kid said, looking at him with eyes that sparkled green and blue like his clothes. He was ignoring the blade.
“Sorry about what?”
“This.”
Lying flat on his back, Ulynago could feel the rain falling straight into his eyes. The sky was full of wildly gyrating trees. He thought back to when something like a ballista had impacted the point of his chin, all of five or six seconds ago. He was still holding his sword. No one had ever gotten by his guard like that before. No helmet. His head had hit the stones . . . God of Torment!
Somewhere Iggo yelled, just once. Then a clatter of metal struck the roadway, and a muffled thump.
An elf? A skinny, good-for nothing, yellow-bellied, pantywaist elf? Then other voices . . . There were more of them. Sounded like jotnar. Ulynago tried to rise, and everything went very black.
Some time later he discovered he was lying under the wagon, out of the rain, with the bench cushion under his head. Iggo was beside him, snoring. The highwaymen were long gone.
He wondered why jotnar would have sent an elf.
And to the end of his days Ulynago never understood why they’d taken only three of his horses and only one of the eighteen gold crowns in his moneybelt.
2
’Twas the fourth hour of the night, and things were heating up in the Mainbrace Saloon. Bithbal could hear the threat notes under the mind-wrenching roar of conversation. He could smell anger through the fog of oil fumes and yeast. Even the dim flicker of lamplight was enough to show the shiny red faces starting to change color, and some deep primitive sense of battle was crawling over his skin like ants, telling him the time was near for action. He fingered the sap in his belt. All those blond jotunn heads shining in the gloom—how many would he bloody tonight?
Bithbal was twenty-two, tow-haired and big, even for a jotunn. He’d skipped ship here in Noom when he’d discovered what a bouncer could earn. The chance to fight every bleeding night and even get paid for it had been irresistible, sheer jotunn rapture. After six months, he was a veteran. He’d swallowed his pride enough to take up using a blackjack when the odds got impossible otherwise, and he’d had the front of his pants armored. He’d been hurt and healed and been hurt again almost daily, but he’d never bounced less than eight in a single night’s work, even when his arm was broken, and his record was thirtyseven. He loved his work.
Now he thought he might just have time to sell one more round of beer. He headed for the cage and thrust in the money he’d collected for the last lot, watching to make certain it went in his tally pot so he’d get his share of the take. Then he hung a dozen horseshoes of sausage over his elbow, hefted a full tray of steins, and went weaving off into the roar and the dark and the crowd. With hard-earned skill he held the tray high on his sore left hand, whipping off the beer and taking money with his right. There was no wasted conversation in that din, and no one had smiled seriously for some time.
Checking faces as he went, he felt a tightness growing in him, a thrill of pure joy somewhere down around his bladder. Yes, it would be a bone grinder tonight. There was a good sprinkling of imps for tinder, and the jotnar were well up to standard. He’d learned to spot difficult ones, and tonight they were all over the room. He’d never seen so many obvious hard cases. Oddly, it usually wasn’t the real toughs that raised the anchor, but once they got going they soon became the survivors, so they were the ones he had to remove afterward, before they started on the furniture. The furniture was solid bronze, all bolted to the flagstones, but sailors enjoyed a challenge.