The Warrior's Bond toe-4 Read online

  Casuel made a sudden grab for my spyglass, making me bring it up so fast I nearly blacked my own eye. In the brass circle I saw figures emerge on to the sodden decks of the ocean ship, even at this distance their gestures eloquent of bewilderment and relief. A flash of green and gold defied the all-encompassing grey of the storm as a pennon was run up the foremast. The lynx’s mask was no more than a yellow blur above the chevron, but the ancient pattern of the D’Olbriot insignia was plain enough to me.

  I slapped Casuel on the shoulder. “It’s them! Let’s get down to the dock.” Rival emotions jostled my thoughts. Relief for the sake of all on board barely masked hollow realisation that all Messire’s current ambitions had nearly been sunk along with the vessel. Then I would have lost all, committed to the Sieur’s service for no hope of the reward that had persuaded me to renew my oath to the House. Elation crowded out such pointless worry. The ship and its precious passengers were here. Now I could promote my patron’s interests in good conscience, while also settling those obligations that touched my honour. Once such debts were settled on either hand, I could hope for future independence with Livak at my side. Exhilaration carried me as far as the door before I realised Casuel was still standing at the window, arms crossed over his narrow chest and with a scowl so black it threatened to tangle his brows in his hair.

  “Come on,” I urged. “They may need help.”

  Casuel sniffed. “Any mage who can wield that kind of power is going to have little use for my assistance.”

  There’s a widely held belief in Tormalin that wizards are so air-headed they’re no earthly use. Casuel confirmed this more thoroughly than any other mage I’d met. Before Messire’s command and Dastennin’s whim had tangled me up in these arcane complexities, I’d had no cause to meet mages. Like most folk, I vaguely assumed studying the mysteries of magebirth conferred wisdom, as always seemed the case in ancient tales. In reality I’d not met anyone quite so small-minded as Casuel since the dame-school where I learned my letters. Always fretting over what other people might think of him, suspicious that he was never given his due, he was a tangled mess of petty ambition. I’d been born to a family of no-nonsense craftsmen, and had chosen a life among soldiers in service to a noble House, so I’m used to men straightforward to the point of bluntness and confident in acknowledged skills. Casuel tested my patience sorely.

  But he’s a dedicated scholar, I reminded myself, a talent you can’t claim. Just as important, Casuel was Tormalin born and bred, so knew and respected the ranks and customs of our country, which undoubtedly made him the most fitting wizard to act as link between Hadrumal and Toremal. It was just a shame he wasn’t easier to work with.

  “We’re here to greet the Kellarin colonists on behalf of the Sieur and the Archmage, aren’t we?” I held the door open. These past few seasons shepherding Casuel around the byways and bridleways of Tormalin in search of ancient tomes buried in ancestral libraries had taught me that arguing simply set the wizard digging in his expensive boot heels. Calm assumption of his cooperation soon had him picking up his cloak, grumbling under his breath as he followed me.

  I drew my own cape close as we stepped out of the superior guest house into the extensive grounds of Ostrin’s shrine. The flighty wind snatched at my hood and I let it fall back rather than struggle to keep my head dry as Casuel was doing. The porter at the main gate opened the postern for us with a friendly smile to lighten his grimace as he left his sheltered niche. The wind slammed the heavy oak behind us.

  Catching Casuel by the arm, I pulled him out of the path of a sled skittering down the hill on gleaming metal runners. We placed our feet on the slick blue cobbles with care but locals ran down the notoriously steep streets of Bremilayne with the practised abandon of goats from the mountains rising up behind the city. Rain poured from the slate-hung eaves of houses stepped on foundations obstinately defying the slope, the door of one often nigh on a level with the upstairs windows of its neighbour. The wider-spaced houses of the upper town gave way to cramped and dirty lanes. By the time we emerged on to the broad sweep of the quayside, a crowd was assembling, drawn from unsavoury harbour taverns. Dockers were eager to earn their ale money unloading the new arrivals, hawkers and whores keen to take any advantage. I forced a way through those just avid for spectacle and Casuel scurried close behind me.

  “I’ve never seen the like, not magic used like that.” One man spoke across me, awe mixed with uncertainty.

  “And won’t do again, I’d say,’ agreed his friend, sounding relieved.

  “I’ll grant it was novelty enough but if they’d gone down, we’d have had some wreck-sale.” A third was looking with greedy eyes at the tilted masts of the ocean ship. ‘Think of the salvage that would have washed ashore.”

  I elbowed the would-be scavenger gull aside. With the list on the ship still severe, the crew and dockers were fighting to secure sodden ropes running slick and uncooperative round battered bollards. I wrenched on my own gloves and added my weight to steady a hawser that two men were struggling to make safe. “Casuel! Lend a hand, man!”

  The double-headed bollards lining the quayside suddenly glowed and amber light crackled in the air, startling profanity from the man beside me. I clutched the cable in surprise myself; I hadn’t intended Casuel use magic. Immobile metal twisted and ducked beneath the ropes, black iron arms questing blindly then looping themselves round the straining hemp before drawing back to stand upright once more. Reeled in like a gaffed fish, the great ship lurched, rolling upright to smack hard into the side of the dock with a crash that reverberated round the harbour. The vessel shivered from bow to stern with an ominous sound of splintering.

  “Nice work, Cas!” I dropped the rope and hurried along the quay, scanning the crowded deck. “Temar!” A sparely built young man by the stern castle looked round at my hail, acknowledging me with a brief wave. “We need to get your people off, quick as you can.” The ship hung low and unbalanced in the water and the damage Casuel had just done might finish what the storm had started. Cargo could be recovered from the bottom of the harbour but I didn’t want to be dragging the dock for bodies.

  A gangplank was hastily thrown out from the ship’s rail but a flare of golden radiance sent the dockers reaching for it recoiling in surprise. I turned to see Casuel gesturing at the hovering wood, face pinched with pique. A path instantly cleared between the mage and the ship and the crowd around Casuel thinned noticeably.

  Temar ignored the last remnants of magelight fading from the gangplank as he hurried down to me. “Ryshad!”

  “I thought we were going to be fishing you out of the rock pools.” I gripped his forearm in the archaic clasp he offered, noting that his fingers were no longer the smooth white of the idle noble but almost as weathered and calloused as my own.

  His grip on my own arm tightened involuntarily and I felt the pressure of muscles hardened by work. “When that last wave hit, I did wonder if we would surface on some shore of the Otherworld. Dastennin be thanked we made landfall safely.” The accents of ancient Tormalin were still strong in Temar’s voice but I heard more modern intonations as well, mostly Lescari. I looked up to the ship to recognise various mercenaries who’d chosen to stay on the far side of the ocean after the previous year’s expedition had discovered the long lost colony of the Old Empire. They were getting the people off the vessel as fast as they could.

  “Dastennin?” Casuel came up, frowning as he struggled to understand Temar. “Tell him he has modern magecraft to thank rather than ancient superstition.” Casuel had been born to a Tormalin merchant family and this wasn’t the first time I’d heard echoes of his Rationalist upbringing. It must cause him some confusion, I thought with amusement, since that philosophy denounces elemental magic just as readily as it reviles religion.

  “Casuel Devoir, Temar D’Alsennin,’ I made a belated introduction hastily.

  “Esquire.” Casuel swept a bow worthy of an Emperor’s salon. “Your captain was relying on his ow
n seafaring skills? I thought it was clearly understood an ocean crossing can only be safely managed with magical assistance.”

  “Quite so.” Temar bowed in turn with a deference to the wizard nicely combined with hauteur. “And one of your colleagues was performing admirably until he took a fall that broke both his legs.” Fleeting disdain in Temar’s ice blue eyes gave the lie to the measured politeness of his words. He indicated a figure being carried down the gangplank by two burly sailors, injuries solidly splinted with spars and canvas.

  “I’m sorry?” Casuel spared his injured colleague a scant glance. “Please speak more slowly.”

  I decided to turn the conversation to less contentious matters. “When did you cut your hair?”

  Temar ran a hand over the short crop that replaced the long queue I’d last seen him with, hair as black as my own but straight as a well rope. “Practicality is now the watchword of Kel Ar’Ayen. Fashion is a luxury we cannot yet afford.” I was glad to see a smile of good-humoured self-mockery lightened the severity of his angular features.

  “We’d better get this lot under lock and key, Temar, over yonder.” I pointed to the warehouse I’d bespoken when we first arrived in Bremilayne. Sodden sacks and battered casks were being swung on to the dock in capacious slings, stacked anyhow as everyone hurried to lighten the stricken vessel. I caught an avid expression on more than one onlooker’s face.

  “I will direct the men aboard ship.” Temar returned to the gangplank without further ado.

  “I’d better see to whoever that mage is,“ Casuel said hastily as he watched the injured man being lifted on to a litter.

  “Absolutely.” Casuel could deal with wizardly concerns and I’d see to my own responsibilities. Noticing D’Olbriot insignia on the cloak of a thickset new arrival by the lofty warehouse, I hurried over and ushered the man inside the shelter of the echoing building, speaking without preamble.

  “This arrival’s going to be the talk of the taverns, so who do we have to secure the place if the wharf rats come sniffing around?” I ran fingers through my hair to shed the worst of the rain, damp curls clinging tight to my fingers.

  “I’ve a double handful of newly recognised and four sworn and loyal.” The man’s grizzled and wiry hair ran unbroken into a full beard framing a prominent nose and bulbous eyes, leaving him looking like an owl peering out of an ivy bush. “Sorry we’re so behind hand. We’d have been here day before yesterday if a horse hadn’t gone lame.”

  “It’s Glannar, isn’t it, from the Layne Valley holdings?” His rich, rolling voice helped me place him, sergeant-at-arms to those most isolated holdings of the House of D’Olbriot.

  The man’s face creased into a ready grin. “You’ve the advantage of me. I recall you came up when we had that trouble in the shearing sheds but I can’t put a name to you.”

  “Ryshad.” I returned his smile. “Ryshad Tathel.”

  “Done well by the House, I hear,’ Glannar observed with a glance at the shiny copper circling my upper arm. He spoke with the self-assurance of a man who’d earned chosen status long enough since to let his own arm ring grow dull with the years.

  “No more than staying true to my oath.” I kept my tone easy. Glannar was only making conversation, not fishing for secrets or better yet salacious detail, like some I’d met since half-truths about my adventures in the Archipelago had escaped Messire’s orders for discretion. “You’ve got your lads well drilled?” I’d spent my share of time training raw recruits with wits blunter than a plough handle.

  Glannar nodded. “They’re lead miners’ sons, all bar one, so won’t stand any nonsense. We’ll keep this lot safe as a mouse in a malt heap.”

  “Good.” I turned my head as the great doors swung open to let a row of wet and laden dockers enter. I curbed an impulse to shed my cloak and make myself useful; getting my hands dirty wouldn’t have been appropriate to my shiny new rank or to Glannar’s consequence as sergeant-at-arms hereabouts. So I watched as he sent the sworn men about their business with brisk gestures. They in turn were visibly diligent in organising the recognised men, lads newly come to the service of the House, on the lowest rung of the ladder and keen to prove themselves worthy of invitation to swear the oath binding them to D’Olbriot interests.

  I watched the well-muscled youths set to with a will. I’d sworn that same ancient oath with fervent loyalty and believed in it with all my heart until the events of the last year and a half had shaken my faith to its roots. I had come within a whisker of handing back my oath fee and abandoning my allegiance to the Name, believing the House had abandoned me. Then reward had been offered, the rank of chosen man as recompense for my anguish, and I had taken it, more than a little uncertain but not sure enough of my other choices to abandon what I’d known for so long. But I had taken other obligations on myself as well, where once my oath had left no room for other loyalties.

  Glannar’s genial commands rang to the rafters behind me as I went out. The rain was slackening but the sky stayed grey and sullen. About as sullen as Casuel, who was standing in the meagre shelter of the dockside hoist being addressed by a tall figure wrapped in a bright blue cloak. I let a burdened sled scrape past over the cobbles before making my way over.

  “Ryshad Tathel, this is Velindre Ychane, mage of Hadrumal.” Casuel looked as if he were sucking a lemon. “Her affinity is with the air, as you’ve no doubt guessed. It was her on the other ship.”

  “My lady.” I bowed low. “We are deep in your debt.” I doubted Casuel had shown any gratitude but the House of D’Olbriot owed this woman a full measure of thanks, and for good or ill I was its representative here.

  “It’s lucky you were there,’ chipped in Casuel.

  “Luck had nothing to do with it.” She made a plain statement of fact out of words that could so easily have been arrogance, rebuke or both. “I’ve been making a study of the air currents off the Cape of Winds this past half-year. When I heard Esquire D’Alsennin would arrive around the middle of the season, I decided to work our way up the coast. I scried his ship as well as the likely impact of the storm and thought it best that we make landfall together. Given Urlan’s accident, it’s as well we did.” She addressed me directly, leaving Casuel tugging impatiently at the ties of his cloak. Her voice was low and a little husky, as self-assured as her stance. For all her Mandarkin name, the regular accents of Hadrumal were unshaded by any older allegiance and I guessed she had been born on that distant, secretive island.

  “You want to meet Temar? Esquire D’Alsennin, that is?” This was setting a new piece on a game board already well into play. I’d want to know more about this unknown lady before letting her loose among the complex concerns of the colony and the House I served, whatever Casuel might have to say about the unquestioning cooperation a mage was entitled to as of right.

  “When he has leisure from more pressing matters.” Velindre’s smile lent a sudden feminine air to her almost mannish features. She would never be considered a beautiful woman but her striking appearance would halt any eye and that impact would outlast more conventional charms. A few wisps of fine blonde hair escaped the confines of her hood and she brushed them away from pale lashed hazel eyes. “So you are Ryshad,’ she mused. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  I decided to match her directness. “From whom?”

  “Initially, from Otrick.” As she spoke sadness seemed to darken the heavy storm clouds above us. “Latterly from Troanna.”

  “What has Troanna to do with your studies?” Casuel was fidgeting from one foot to another anxious lest someone else’s manoeuvrings escape him.

  “She’s been keeping me supplied with all the news from home, Cas,” answered Velindre easily. “Shall I tell her you were asking after her?”

  Casuel blinked, caught off balance. I’ve yet to fully understand the formal and informal ranks and authorities of the wizards of Hadrumal, the ill-defined and often overlapping functions of their Council and their Halls, but I knew enough to know Casue
l wouldn’t want the acerbic wit of Troanna, acknowledged as pre-eminent in water magic, sharpened up at his expense. If Cloud-Master and Flood-Mistress kept her informed, Velindre had powerful friends.

  “How might Esquire D’Alsennin be of assistance?” I asked politely.

  Velindre smiled again. “He’s crossed the ocean and sailed unknown shores with currents and winds that no mage has ever sensed. No wizard ever passes up the chance of new knowledge.”

  Which was certainly true, but if that was the whole story I was a Caladhrian pack mule.

  “I’ll see if we can accommodate you,” said Casuel with fussy self-importance.

  Velindre’s eyes hardened, and I thought for a moment she was about to challenge his pretensions, but a new arrival spared him any rebuke.

  “Mage Devoir.” The newcomer bobbed a nervous curtsey that edged the hem of her rose pink dress with the muck of the dockside.

  “Allin?” Casuel sounded both surprised and displeased.

  “You’re entitled to call him Casuel, just like anyone else,” said Velindre drily. “So how is Urlan?”

  The girl Allin looked up, blushed and dropped her gaze to study her folded hands intently. “Both legs are broken and the bosun was saying he’d seen splinters of bone through the skin of his right shin. He’s been taken to the infirmary at the shrine.” Where Velindre was scarcely shorter than me, Allin barely came up to Casuel’s shoulder. Even allowing for the heavy cape bunched round her, I guessed her figure would be as round as her plain snub-nosed face. But her boot-button eyes were bright with intelligence and good nature, attributes lacking in many a prettier girl.