Antiagon Fire

24

In the end, when he boarded the ferry at two quints past noon, Quaeryt took just one squad from first company, as well as Khalis and Horan. The ferryman only grunted when Quaeryt paid the copper a head fee, perhaps because Quaeryt’s squad comprised the only passengers. The ferry was a modified flatboat, if deeper of draft and roughly seven yards wide and fifteen long, guided by a large sweep rudder. Quaeryt saw two lockers aft of the square prow, long enough to contain either oars or poles, but neither compartment looked to have been opened recently.

Once they were well away from the pier at Geusyn, Quaeryt noted that the ferry immediately headed toward the far shore. When the craft’s heading was established he eased over to the man at the tiller. “How many passengers can you take at once?”

“Maybe three score.”

“How many ferries are there this size?”

“We run two at a time when we need to. The factor has four.”

To transport just first company and one regiment meant eight trips with all four ferries, assuming the factor who owned them could be persuaded to use all-and that could take days.

The tillerman glanced at Quaeryt’s gold crescent moon collar insignia. “You a Telaryn marshal or something?”

“Commander.”

“You thinking of transporting some of your men to Ephra to board a ship?”

“That’s possible. I won’t know until I check with the portmaster in Ephra.” Quaeryt laughed. “Is there one?”

“Old Haasyn was, last time I heard. Mostly just posts what ships are tied up or moored to the south, out of range of the Antiagon long guns.”

“Can they reach the harbor?”

“Not quite. Any ship that gets within a half mille, though, and it’s another story.”

Quaeryt nodded. “At what glass will you be returning to Geusyn tonight?”

“Around midnight when the tide’s flooding. You be heading back then?”

“That’s what I plan, but it depends on what I find out in Ephra.”

The tillerman nodded. “Like that with a lot of folks.”

As the ferry neared the northern end of the harbor, more like a semicircular indentation in the swamp, Quaeryt could see a number of ships farther to the southwest, two of which looked large enough to be warships, possibly the Montagne and the Solis.

Even before the ferry reached the mossy timber piers, the mixed odors of dead fish, swamp, greasy burned cooking oil, and others even less definable oozed over him, creating the impression that the ostler’s description of Ephra might be generous. More than generous, he decided, as a cloud of green mosquitoes appeared from nowhere.

“These piers aren’t where the merchanters tied up, are they?” Quaeryt asked the tillerman.

“Nope. Those are on the south side, far as possible from Kephria. Deeper water there, too.”

Two men hurried toward the bow, where they pulled long poles from the lockers and used them to guide the ferry toward the nearer pier. The poles told Quaeryt just how shallow the water was. One of the men laid down his pole and leapt across a yard or so of water to the pier, holding a coil of line attached to a cleat on the ferry. Once on the pier, he ran the line around a bollard, then braced his feet, letting the bollard take the weight of the ferry and bring it to a halt, before removing one turn of line from the bollard and slowly bringing the ferry to rest in the slip.

“Here you are, Commander,” announced the tillerman.

“Thank you. Which way to the deepwater piers?”

“See the lane one in-not the one by the seawall-but the one by the public house there? Follow that as far as it goes, and you’ll end up on the south harbor square.”

With all twenty rankers, the squad leader, Quaeryt, and the two undercaptains on the pier, Quaeryt felt as though the timbers moved with every step any of them took, and he was more than happy to set foot on the lane heading south. The weathered public house, with its sagging salt-grayed shutters and crooked windows overlooking the ferry slips and piers, made the meanest taproom in Solis look like a High Holder’s salon by comparison.

“This is a port?” murmured Horan from behind Quaeryt.

“What passes for one in old Bovaria,” replied Khalis.

“How did they ever…”

Whatever Horan might have said was lost as they walked past a pleasure house with open windows … behind each of which stood a woman barely clad, or wearing a shift of fabric so fine that she might have been wearing nothing at all. Quaeryt smiled wryly. Even had he not met Vaelora, he wouldn’t have been tempted. As a young seaman, he’d seen and heard too much.

After Quaeryt walked another block, slightly uphill, the lane flattened out, and several blocks ahead, down beyond the gently sloping lane, he could see grayish water, and a pair of masts above the low roofs of the harbor area. The shops were slightly less weathered and somewhat less run-down in the blocks closer to the harbor, but the lines of warehouses bordering the harbor made it clear that Ephra was a port of necessity, and little more.

Quaeryt walked up to the timbered building at the shore end of the second pier, a structure no more than four yards on a side, with a single door, open and tied back to the wall, with a frayed rope around a cleat that looked ready to pull out from the graying wood. He stepped inside and saw a burly man sitting on a high-backed stool looking out through an unglassed window at the harbor and the Gulf waters to the south.

The man turned his head, but did not speak.

“I’m looking for Haasyn, the portmaster.”

“You’ve found him.” The gray-bearded burly man studied Quaeryt. “You must be the commander the captain of that Telaryn ship’s been looking for.”

“Most likely. How long has he been here?”

“Three days … maybe four. Sends in a pinnace every afternoon, around third glass. They wait for a glass, maybe two, till the last ferry from Geusyn comes in.”

Almost another glass before the captain sends in the pinnace … and that’s if he’s prompt. “Where do they tie up the pinnace?”

“End of third pier.” Haasyn pointed.

“Thank you.” Quaeryt stepped out of the building, then looked at the squad. “The Montagne is anchored out to the south. They’ve been sending a pinnace in late afternoon. While we’re waiting, we might as well walk around and see what we can see.”

Unfortunately, there was little to see, except more of what they had already seen, and Quaeryt and his group ended up well before third glass standing near the end of third pier.

“Never seen so much of nothing,” said Horan.

“You haven’t seen that many small towns, then,” replied Khalis. “This is a small town that’s a port.”

“It wouldn’t even exist except that Kharst didn’t want to let his traders pay tariffs to Aliaro or Bhayar,” added Quaeryt.

“Why didn’t the traders just pay them anyway, sir?” asked Khalis.

“I wondered that myself … until what happened in Laaryn. It’s pretty clear that any factor or High Holder who went against the rex just ended up dead. Since he gave them pretty free rein in other matters”-including various depravities-“they tended not to go against his will. I’m sure many smuggled things and went around his ‘requests,’ but since any word of defying him had rather harsh consequences, that kept the defiance down. I’m only guessing at that, but it fits what I’ve seen.”

Quaeryt stopped talking as he saw a pinnace under sail angling past the southwest breakwater, running largely before the wind. Absently, he wondered if another reason for the afternoon run from the Montagne was because the winds tended to be more favorable. “It looks like that might be the pinnace from the Montagne.”

Little more than a quint later, the pinnace eased up to the pier, and two Telaryn seamen immediately secured the small craft to the pier, while an ensign who looked to be a few years younger than Quaeryt stepped out.

“Ensign Paolyn, sir. You’re Commander Quaeryt, sir?”

“I am.”

“Captain Nykaal’s been hoping you’d show up before long, sir.”

“We got here as quickly as we could. Most of the forces are still in Geusyn.”

The ensign nodded. “The captain said that was likely.”

Quaeryt looked at the pinnace, some seven yards long, with a single mast, although he also saw three sets of long oars as well. “Can you take the entire squad?”

“Yes, sir. In this weather. If the swells were higher, I’d want two trips, but the water’s calm, and looks to remain that way.”

Quaeryt could see that Horan and several of the rankers were looking dubiously at the small craft.

For all that, in short order, everyone boarded, and Paolyn had the pinnace headed back southward in less than half a quint. The trip out to the Montagne took longer, Quaeryt suspected, because Paolyn headed eastward to pick up the river current, and they had to tack back and forth before they neared the warship, one of the bigger vessels Quaeryt had seen, for all his past merchant experience. Close to sixty yards stem to stern, if a bit less at the keel.

Paolyn eased the pinnace up to a boarding platform that had been lowered. “If you would, Commander.”

“Thank you.” Quaeryt stepped onto the platform, then asked, “Permission to come aboard?” as he headed up the ladder to the quarterdeck.

“Welcome to the Montagne,” said the short officer in the uniform of a ship’s captain, although he also wore the gold crescents, signifying that, technically, they were of equal rank.

“Thank you, Captain. Quaeryt Rytersyn, commander and envoy to Khel.”

“Nykaal Kaalsyn, commanding. I doubted you could be anyone else.”

Quaeryt wondered why, but didn’t ask, and the two waited as the other two undercaptains came aboard, followed by the rankers. Two of the rankers looked slightly green, and Quaeryt wondered how they might do on the much longer and likely much rougher voyage to Kherseilles.

“Ensign Paolyn will see to your officers and men, Commander. If you would join me in my stateroom?”

“I’d be pleased to.”

Quaeryt followed the captain aft across the main deck and up the ladder to the top deck of the sterncastle. The quarters comprised a cabin roughly four yards by three with a wide bunk against the aft bulkhead and a circular table, firmly affixed to the deck, farther forward.

A steward stood waiting.

“Lager or wine, Commander,” asked Nykaal.

“Lager, please.”

“Make that two, Vessyn.”

The steward nodded and moved to a built-in cabinet.

Nykaal gestured to the table.

They both seated themselves, and the steward set a crystal beaker holding an amber lager in front of each of them and then left the stateroom.

“I understand that we’ll also be carrying Lady Vaelora, and that she’s accorded the status of an envoy as well.”

That bastard Bhayar! He decided that even before you recovered and never said a word. “Not quite. She is an envoy in duties and capabilities. Bhayar decided that was necessary because of the composition of the new High Council of Khel.”

Nykaal frowned.

“They’re all Pharsi. Pharsi women often govern, and since they lost so many men, the Council is likely predominantly women.”

“Oh! And with Lord Bhayar’s ancestry, the selection of the two of you … I see.”

Quaeryt wasn’t certain Nykaal saw completely, but he wasn’t about to alienate the captain by explaining because that would likely be taken as condescending. “Lord Bhayar would prefer to obtain agreement without fighting another war.”

“I can understand that.” Nykaal smiled. “Since you are both envoys and married, you will have my quarters for the voyage. No … don’t protest. I still have my sea cabin near the helm and for a week or so, that’s more than adequate. Besides, I’d certainly not be the captain who did not give up his quarters to the sister of Lord Bhayar and to the commander who destroyed the Bovarian armies twice.”

Does everyone know that? More than likely, Quaeryt reflected, if Nykaal had learned that in port in Solis. “I can’t say that my wife won’t appreciate that.”

“There is one difficulty. Lord Bhayar … ah … his dispatch mentioned two regiments.”

“That might be a problem, I take it?”

“If you were thinking of transporting them all at once. The Montagne and the Solis can each carry about four hundred of your troopers for the week or so it will take to reach Kherseilles. The merchanters … there are only four of them, and, well, they’ll average two hundred, maybe a bit more.”

“So I can take one regiment and my command company in one voyage and then wait three weeks and perhaps longer, given that it’s almost winter, if I want the second regiment?”

“That’s about it,” agreed Nykaal. “Lord Bhayar requested ten merchanters if possible, and a minimum of four. We were lucky to impress four, and none of them are happy about it, even for the golds Lord Bhayar promised.”

“With winter coming on, we’ll have to chance it with one regiment and the command company. It’s going to take several days just to get the men to Ephra, I fear, even one regiment.”

Nykaal nodded. “We can’t help much there, but we’ve got two pinnaces, and we can get them from the south pier to the ship fairly quickly.”

“Did the dispatch you received say anything about arrangements for mounts in Kherseilles?” Quaeryt asked.

“No. It just said that those arrangements would be taken care of by others.”

Which others? Quaeryt didn’t ask, since it was clear Nykaal didn’t know.

In less than a quint, Quaeryt and the captain had worked out a tentative schedule for boarding and for the voyage to Kherseilles.

At that moment, Nykaal cleared his throat. “If I might ask … how do you plan to return to Geusyn?”

“I’d thought to take the ferry…”

“Nonsense. We’ve got a good south wind, and Paolyn can take the pinnace on the tide just before it turns, and then come back. Be a good exercise for him as well.”

“If you’re certain…”

“No one should have to spend any more time in Ephra than absolutely necessary.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“I landed when we got here on Vendrei. Once was enough. That was true for the crew as well.” Nykaal laughed. “You can eat with me, and your officers with the mess, your rankers with the crew, and then we’ll send you off.”

“I appreciate that.” Quaeryt truly did. The less time we spend in Ephra, the better. Nykaal seemed a good sort, and the ship’s fare was bound to be better than anything in Ephra.

Quaeryt took another swallow of the lager.