In an instant, Durand understood.
Solan
was still driving toward the breakers, and the toppled crowd in the ship's waist must have crushed anyone working by the rail. As long as the sail was taut and full, they could never make the tack. Someone had to free the sail. With the deck a shambles, there was no one.
The deck pitched.
Durand leapt down into the waist and bounded over men and beasts with his eyes on the line that held the sail. If he could free it, they stood a chance. A screaming tangle of thrashing limbs blocked his way.
The starboard rail sketched a dark trace toward the line, and he jumped. His soles slid, but he threw himself forward, catching at shrouds and stiff canvas to keep his balance over the waves.
Solan
ran another fifty yards. There was no time.
Durand pitched from the rail, leaping bodily into the sail and its straining sheet line. In a moment of cracked knees and bruises, he got his hands on the knot and fumbled the whole thing free.
The ship's master was roaring. "Hard on the steering oar! Bring that yard round!"
And
Solan
wallowed, stalling in her headlong drive for the rocks. Bleeding sailors hauled the sail round, and Durand tied off his line.
Solan
bobbed once, coming about as the sail snapped tight once more, throwing the whole weight of the wind behind the master's will and snatching the bow round in a titanic jerk.
Durand struggled from the deck. Thirty or forty men looked back at him with one rattled expression. He searched the faces for Deorwen.
Then he felt a shadow moving in the storm.
They had been saved from falling backward into the cliff, but now, on her new tack,
Solan
shot along the foot of the vast wall.
They had no room.
The cliff wall rippled by, thundering full of jagged stone and breakers only yards away.
There was no room, and they could not claw off. While a square-rigger was handy—quick and easy to switch tacks— no square-rigged vessel could turn back into the wind now. They skimmed the exploding breakers, screaming toward the landing. The stone wharf loomed in a sliver of cliff-sheltered water.
They were coming on fast.
"Reef the sail, lads!" the master shouted. "For your lives!"
Solan
shot past the rocks at the cliff's foot, heeling so hard the yardarm scrabbled over the cliff face like a blind man's stick. Then they were free. Free and gliding across the slender shelter of the cove.
"Hells ..." the master said, but it wasn't relief. The little man clutched the rail at the front of the aftercastle; his eyes were on the quay.
"Lean into it, steersman," he growled. "We've got too much speed." The wharf was coming on fast. "Get the fenders over. Anything you can find." Men scrambled to get bundled cordage between ship and bare stone. Durand caught hold of the rail.
Solan
struck.
The whole vessel groaned like a beast, splintering planks through the forward quarter. The drag of rending timber bled off speed. Within a few heartbeats,
Solan
stopped, and the men were leaping ashore to loop lines over bollards and make the ship fast to the wharf, vowing the ropes would hold her even if she should sink where she lay.
Knights and sailors scrambled to their feet. Horses flipped and kicked, righting themselves. Durand found himself face-to-face with a sailor—maybe the man who should have been on the sheet—and the man shook his head.
"The Lord of the Deeps is great," he said, pawing lank hair from his face. "The wind switched. Just at the last. Veered straight off the sea." His voice hitched as he started to make the Eye of Heaven. Something had gone badly wrong with his shoulder.
"I have to find—" Durand began. He was about to say Deorwen. "—Someone. Did you see a woman?"
But the sailor was lost in the constricted world of unset bones. Durand started to pick his way through the tangle, hooking people to their feet and helping others calm horses. Finally, he let go one bridle and turned face-to-face with Deorwen, six inches from his nose. She had to look up.
He said nothing, but caught his breath like he'd been punched.
T am glad to see you well," she said.
Durand nodded, staring down into her eyes. "I must—the others. They'll need help," Durand said. Somehow, he managed not to catch hold of her, not to lift her from the deck— not even to touch her.
On the landing
, the company took stock and began the difficult task of leading the horses up the long stair to the cliff top. They had lost one boy—a quiet one Durand did not particularly remember—and three others were badly hurt. Several took minor wounds to ribs and wrists and shoulders. None of the knights was even hurt as badly as that. And of the animals, two warhorses and four packhorses had to be put down—their life's blood given to the sea. A few of the men took the chance to punch Durand in the shoulder.
At the top
of the wind
ing stair, they came to a postern
door with the Eye of Heaven in full red flood around them. Durand had been lugging a bag of someone's gear. Coensar took the last few steps alone. He lifted his hand to knock, then hesitated with his fist hanging, a long shadow on the door, and only then did Durand's memory come awake: Cassonel and the twenty-seven men. The Duke of Beoran. Coen at a postern door. He never imagined stairs or men with their backs to a forty-fathom fall.
Long before Durand could have steeled himself, Coensar knocked.
They slipped out of the light through a narrow passage and blinked into a stone courtyard. The storm had gone completely. As Durand's eyes adjusted, he realized they stood in the midst of a crowd. Light winked and slithered over a hundred jewels, darting in and out of the supple darkness of fur cuffs and linings. Durand had never seen so many nobles in one place.
"Durand, the helm!"
Lamoric hissed, and, in a heartbeat,
Durand had the bag from his shoulder and Lamoric's five-pound iron bucket looping through the air.
A man stalked forth, wearing an expression of sympathy.
"My Lords, we see fallen men on the quay; don't we?"
Lamoric stepped from his men, his red helm magically in place, and put one knee in the sod before an active-looking man, clothed himself in rich but simple black.
"Your Highness."
Your Highness.
Durand felt a stab of awe. Here, once more, the age-old blood of Atthian kings flowed in a living man. Durand joined the others in taking to their knees, and tried to determine which of the great men stood before them. A trim, dark beard marked out the blade of the man's jaw where the king's was fair—and more sturdy. The Prince of Windhover was meant to be a blond man and larger again. This one must be the youngest brother: Prince Biedin, Lord of Tern Gyre.
"We watched your vessel's arrival with considerable trepidation," Biedin confessed. "There was quite a crowd of us on the walls. Her master is to be commended."
"Yes, Highness."
"We will have men attend the injured at once. Now," said Biedin. "I am correct in concluding that you are the 'Knight in Red' they have all been talking of."
"I am, Highness."
"Please," Biedin said, "stand. Many were surprised, I think, that the Herald did not extend an invitation to you after your performance at Red Winding, and whispers have already reached us about High Ashes. A man might have thought such heroism a thing of another age."
"Your Highness."
"Sir Knight, you and your retinue are most welcome to Tern Gyre." He hesitated, lifting a hand to the walls confining the courtyard. "Sadly, space is in short supply at Tern Gyre on the eve of. the great event. If you agree, my seneschal will see that you and your pavilions are happily installed in the main encampment beyond the bridge." He set his hand on Lamoric's shoulder.
"That would suit us admirably, Your Highness."
"Good. I will make certain that my priest helps see to the unfortunate. And my man will send along a cask of wine to fortify your spirits." "Thank you, Highness."
"And we all look forward to great things on the morrow" said Bieden.
Lamoric and his men bowed low and followed the seneschal as the prince returned to the warmth of his hall.
Heremund ducked close to Durand.
"I'll see if there ain't room for one soul, anyway. I must see how the magnates are disposed." With a pointed strum on his mandora, the skald tramped off. Durand wished him good fortune.
While most of the entourage trailed after the prince, a part of the crowd detached itself to follow Lamoric's retainers. Waer was first among them.
He called to their backs: "That ship's master looked like a damned fool to me. What kind of madman lands his boat on a lee shore, eh? You might all have drowned, with the whole court, nearly, looking down as you wave your arms. But I suppose a ship was the only way."
A few of Lamoric's retainers turned as they walked.
Big Ouen glinted a few metal teeth at the man. "You're right clever behind the King's Peace, friend, but I wonder what you'll say when we're in the lists, eh?"
"It only gets worse," Waer sneered.
Berchard grinned at Ouen. "I had squirrels once at my old house. Chatter, chatter, chatter. Little buggers always on about their nuts."
As the two parties bantered, they walked under the gatehouse and stepped out onto the bridge: a natural stone arch forty fathoms over the surf. The back of the span was just broad enough to admit a single cart.
With the Eye gone beyond the Broken Crown, they might nearly have been walking in the empty sky.
The horses hated it.
The seneschal led them to a patch of open ground under the wheeling gulls, and Waer left them. A pavilion in
Mornaway
diamonds stood ahead of him.
Lamoric's men subsided
around a bonfire of borrowed branches and huddled in the glow, getting something cold to eat, and doing a poor job of drinking the prince's wine.
Berchard was yawning, though his good eye glittered.
"The Marshal here. Whoever leads the company that wins the day. He's meant to get a boon, just like the old days. He asks a boon of the Marshal that's lost. It can be anything. Horses. Some fine tract for hunting. An heirloom blade. All the fish from his weirs for a season. Favors. Gerfalcons."
"I'd settle for a joint of beef in the hall," Badan groused. "Cold fare is right hard after chasing across Hellebore and Saerdana and sea voyages and a shipwreck." He tore off a hank of tough bread. "What I want is a joint roasted till the meat slides off the bone."
"Your teeth still giving you grief?" Berchard needled dryly.
Durand did not laugh. His skull was packed to the eyeballs with treasonous dukes and crashing ships and rooks and Deorwen and Tern Gyre. He left the others and went to look for his tent, but, beyond the firelight, Lamoric caught him by the shoulder.
"Durand,"
he said. "I want you to know. The hag. This business on the ship with that line. Even the damned helmet this evening. You've been a lucky stroke." The man glanced toward the gleaming slit windows of Tern Gyre. "And now we are here." He was smiling.
Durand nodded, feeling false as an adder. "Aye, Lordship."
"Whatever happens," Lamoric said, "I will not forget." The man's face shone.
"No, Lordship."
"No." He nodded. "Now go. You'll need rest. We all need rest." He jerked his chin toward a kneeling Sir Agryn. "That's Last Twilight, I think. The Eye is gone. The man's better than a bell."
"Good night, Lordship," Durand said, and left them all for the shelter of his tent. The canvas walls glowed and flickered with fires and passing shadows. As he lay down, music pressed in around him. He hadn't noticed it when he was outside. Someone was playing a fiddle. Drums thumped and rumbled. He heard tabor-pipes swirling. Women shrilled like birds. Men roared.
He pressed his head against the ground. Lamoric had bought the best men he could, and here was the chance he'd paid for. Now, everything was down to two days' work. Every man in Lamoric's fighting conroi gambled with him. He could hear it. in Berchard's talk about coming home. About old bones. He could see it when Coensar's knuckles stopped before the postern door, or when big Ouen dreamed at the campfire.