Blays stood, shedding his blankets. "Bring me my swords."
Lolligan drew back his head. "You're not serious. You just swam across a freezing lake!"
"And after a feat of heroism like that, I'd be especially upset about getting stabbed to death. Swords. Now."
Lira rose. "I'll need mine as well."
"Mine, too." Dante didn't bother to stand. "For whatever good it will do me."
Servants brought their arms along with an assortment of armor from Lolligan's stores, most of it antique. Blays wrapped iron-banded bracers around his forearms. Lira tried on a chainmail shirt, hurrying through her forms to test its flexibility. Dante lifted a tall shield—the enemy would be bringing archers—but it pulled on his arm with untenable weight. Across the lake at Jocubs', the newly-arrived ship rowed from the pier, lanterns off, and hove toward Lolligan's island. Lolligan's men swarmed to the northern beach, a flat stretch of rocks that stood just about the waterline.
"Pile that beach up with junk," Blays gestured. "Anything we can hide behind." Soldiers and servants hesitated. Blays turned to Lolligan. "I'm going to start grabbing furniture. All right?"
Lolligan grimaced, twisting the end of his pointed mustache. "Just leave the chairs with the blue felt. They were my grandfather's."
He ordered the back doors propped open. Blays jogged inside and came out with a wooden chair over his shoulder. Seeing that, Lolligan's men streamed into the house. The old salt merchant shut his eyes to the ransacking. His mercenaries came out with chairs and tables. Groaning pairs of men hoisted couches and mattresses. A team of four lurched under the weight of a dresser. Wood cracked inside the house. Two servants hustled outside, grinning madly, a door held between them. They piled it all in front of the rocky beach.
The ship loomed nearer, oars churning from both its decks. Blays ordered Lolligan, Fann, and the servants inside.
Fann fiddled with his hat. "That will be away from the fighting, yes?"
"Unless things go bad!" Blays said.
"Excellent." Fann and the other scurried inside.
Mourn joined the soldiers on the beach, as did the woman in blue. They both carried bows and thick sheafs of arrows. They were barely in place before the first arrows flew from the ship. These splashed in the water and plinked from the beach, testing range. A shout went up. The ship's oars backbeat against the lake. It slowed to a halt within easy bow range. The arrows ceased.
Cassinder's soft voice boomed unnaturally. "Three people have to die: those who killed Bil Jocubs. If you prefer, all of you can die as well."
Blays vaulted onto an overturned couch. "If you prefer, you can kiss my ass! And you know where it's just been!"
He ducked as an arrow whisked over his head. He leapt back behind the makeshift walls of furniture. Cries rang out from the ship. Chains clanked and creaked, lowering longboats from each side of the galley. Volleys of arrows covered the soldiers' descent on the rope ladders. Dante counted roughly twenty men per longboat. Another twenty archers in the prow. An unknown number of soldiers in reserve. Lolligan's troops were outnumbered at least twofold; if the galley's decks were full, as many as a hundred soldiers might stand against them. Dante took out his knife and carved a red line across his arm.
"Can you at least not smile when you do that?" Blays said.
"Was I?"
"Always. It's like your forearm killed your mom and you're giving it the death of a thousand cuts. It's got so many scars it's no wonder you didn't bother with a shield."
Mourn sniped at the archers on the deck, knocking two into the water. An arrow threaded through the barricade and pinned one of Lolligan's men to the ground. The mercenary writhed, screaming. Dante ignored him. He needed all his energy.
The longboats shoved off from the galley, shielded at their bows by thick hides. Dante lobbed a spike of nether at one of the archers on the galley. The man staggered, gagging blood. Dante smiled: Cassinder hadn't tried to stop him.
He closed his eyes and let the nether come. Shadows coated his hands to the elbows. The longboats stroked forward. When they were halfway between the galley and the beach, Dante stood, oblivious to the arrows hailing down around him, and flung out his hand.
The side of the rightward longboat exploded in a hail of splinters. Men hollered, shielding their faces from the shrapnel. Water gushed through the yawning hole. Soldiers leapt up to bail it out with buckets and bare hands. Mourn and the woman in blue popped up to pick them off. Soldiers flung themselves over the broken longboat's edge, paddling for shore in heavy armor. Most sunk beneath the placid waves.
The second longboat beat on. Flaming arrows whapped into the barricade, driving the mercenaries into cover. Fire licked over feather mattresses. Other arrows arced far overhead, clinking on the clay roof of the house and clacking into the wooden walls. Two servants dashed from the house, one carrying rags and a jug, the other with a flaming brand. An arrow knocked the man with the torch to the ground. The man with the jug raced on, skidding into cover beside Mourn, who poured oil on a rag, knotted it around an arrow, and glanced at the empty killing fields between the barricade and the house. He poked his arrow into the flames of a smoldering table, lighting the oily rag, then fired into the front of the galley.
The hulled longboat slogged on, barely above water. The other ship groaned to a halt on the shore. With high cries of battle, men piled over its side. Blays thrust up his sword and dashed through the burning furniture. Dante's body buzzed. He leapt to his feet and charged after Blays, Lira right beside. Lolligan's soldiers cheered and joined the charge.
The galley's arrows felled two men before they met the invaders. As Blays closed on the enemy, a spear thrust at his body. He met it with his lefthand sword, intercepting it near the tip and letting it slide past his chest as he closed. He drove his other sword into the spearman's exposed gut. A man in the red and white of Moddegan's soldiers chopped diagonally toward Lira's neck. Forearms crossed, she knocked aside his blade with hers, then grabbed his sword hand with her empty one, pivoted, and slung him over her hip. He cracked into the rocks. His helmet jarred away. With a backhand swipe, Lira cleaved in the side of his skull.
Behind her, a man cocked his sword and drove it toward her spine. Dante splayed his hand. A black blade severed the man's hand at the wrist. It fell to the rocks, still clutching his sword. His stump continued its forward thrust; his grin fossilized as his eyes tried to process the bloody absence where a hand and its weapon should be. He swayed and collapsed into the rocks, kicking.
Blays pivoted away from an overhand strike and spiked his blade into his attacker's extended neck. The man sank to the hilt, gargling blood over Blays' hand; Blays pivoted again, turning the man's body into an incoming spear. Its point pierced deep into the dying man's back. Blays slid his sword free and shoved the man to the ground, yanking the embedded spear away from its wielder. The disarmed man backpedaled, tripping. One of Lolligan's soldiers dropped to one knee beside him, stabbing the man through the chest.
An arrow streaked toward Blays. He sidestepped and struck it down midflight. A man in red charged Dante, a rectangular shield covering him from chin to shins. Dante held his ground and fired a bolt of shadows through the man's eye. The body tumbled forward onto the shield, skidding over the rocks.
Firelight lit the rocky shore. Every man in red lay among the wet stones, writhing or silenced, dying or dead. A burning arrow shot lanced from the barricade into the hide shield on the banked longboat's prow. Blays hollered and swung his sword in a circle, waving Lolligan's men back to the safety of their makeshift wall. Arrows volleyed from the galley's deck and ricocheted from the abandoned rocks.
Rhythmic cries erupted from the galley. Oars thrashed at the water, rotating the ship sidelong to the island. The galley began a slow advance. In moments, the archers on its forward deck would have clear fire on the barricade's flank.
Shouts filled the air to the south. A dozen men rushed through the dark yards of the house, bows in hand. They swarmed up the stairs to a third-floor balcony which was level with the firing platform on the galley. Two men pulled down the balcony's canvas roofing and draped it over the railing, providing some measure of cover for the others, who immediately rained fire on the archers in the galley.
"Fall back!" Blays yelled.
Covered by the men on the deck, the soldiers pinned behind the fiery barricade raced toward the safety of the house, ducking low, shields held above their heads. Dante ran with them. Sporadic arrows whisked between them. One man fell, an arrow buried in his leg. Lira ran back and helped him to his feet.
Another band of reinforcements sprinted up from the pier. With the house between them and the galley, Dante took stock of the wounded. Four of Lolligan's men had died down on the shore. Another six had been shot or badly stabbed in the scrum. While those still fit to fight thumped across the house to get to the decks and fire on the galley, Dante called out the servants, who helped him bear the wounded into the dining hall. Dents in the rugs showed where chairs and tables had once stood. Now it was perfectly empty, the ideal place to stretch out the bleeding men and seeing to their wounds. Dante patched up the two unconscious men with the blood-hungry nether, then left the others to be bandaged by the maids and footmen.
He ran outside onto the balcony. Men erupted in cheers. He grinned, but the noise wasn't for him: past the dark shore, the galley had turned, thrashing northward across the lake. On the many decks of Lolligan's home, sixty-odd mercenaries hollered, ringing their swords against their shields.
Dante ran from deck to deck until he found Lolligan, Ulwen, and the woman in blue, whose clothes clung to her body, sodden with sweat and water and blood. They smiled from the balcony, watching the galley retreat.
"What are you standing there for?" Dante said. "Let's get on a boat and finish them off."
Lolligan smiled, but his eyes were creased with worry. "I think we've done all we can tonight."
"What are you talking about? Their men are decimated. Their sorcerer is wounded and weak. We can take them."
"He speaks to the future," agreed the woman in blue. "They attacked us first, in the concealing shadows of darkness. Who would say we don't have the right to fight back?"
Lolligan nodded. "To hound them across the lake, however? To hunt them down and kill them? How do we argue
that
was a mistake? That it was forced upon us?"
Anger flashed over Dante, as much for this sudden split in solidarity as for the fact Cassinder was escaping over the black waves. "That man is one of the prime reasons the palace is pushing for war. Erasing him from the equation brings us one step closer to peace."
"Then there is tomorrow." The woman in blue gestured at the dark blot of the galley. "What if we spend our men tonight, and the dawn brings a fleet of the king's ships?"
"Not to mention potential pushback from Jocubs' supporters in the TAGVOG," Lolligan said. "If you want us to be able to stand with you and the norren, we'll need the manpower to stand firm against our enemies here."
Exhaustion dropped on Dante like a fog. His muscles felt trembly, weakened by the climb up Jocubs' water closet, the swim through cold waters, the battle on the shore. Sapped by the demands of the nether, his mind felt like the longboat he'd hulled: sluggish, sinking beneath the surface of a cold abyss.
"It compromises us all, doesn't it? This struggle." Dante shivered. On the north shore, fires hissed as servants doused the mounded furniture with buckets of water. Bitter smoke boiled across the island. "We'd better leave tonight, then. It will be much easier for you to pass off whatever story you please when Jocubs' killers aren't around to be questioned."
Lolligan tipped back his head, eyes glinting in the moonlight. "That might be for the best. Do you still have my salt? On the road, a small luxury can make all the difference."
Dante smiled. "I still have your salt."
"All I ask is you save a pinch for whoever runs your kitchens." He frowned at the city. "You should leave for your own safety, too. Mennok knows what new horrors tomorrow will bring."
"Blays would advise you to tell as many different stories as you can and let confusion win the battle for you."
Lolligan chuckled, shaking his head. "Thanks for all your help. Let's meet again in safer days."
Dante went downstairs to round up the others. The house smelled of blood and smoke. Lira had a gash on her upper arm, and a fist-sized bruise on Blays' chest was already magenta and swollen, but none of their group bore wounds that would slow them down. Hurriedly, they cleaned their swords and packed their clothes. A rowboat awaited them at the dock. At the stables, the boy rubbed his puffy eyes and slogged off to fetch their horses.
Dante settled their accounts and rode east. Everyone was as tired as the stablehand, too exhausted to even ask where they were headed. Then again, maybe it was obvious: they were going home.
Dawn spilled over the western mountains when they were halfway up the pass. They stopped for breakfast, or the world's latest supper. Green mountains ringed the long blue lake. Pillars of smoke rose from hundreds of different chimneys. Birds peeped from the branches, pecking at fresh buds and hard green seeds.
"Pretty, isn't it?" Blays said. "I hope Moddegan doesn't decide to burn the whole valley down."
"At least that would slow down his march on the Territories," Dante said.
Lira glanced up. "Was that what this was about?"
Dante gave her a brief glare. "This was about letting a people choose their own leaders."
"Specifically, leaders who want the same things we do."
"I'm fine with what we did." Dante swung up into the saddle. His head thudded. It would be hours before they reached the next town and the beds it would offer. Lira's accusation followed him all the way.
16
Ants scrambled in and out from the mouth of their sandy hill, unaware of their impending destruction. And what could they do if they knew? Run? Escape to the safety of their deepest tunnels? They certainly couldn't
stop
it. Their fear, their anger, the frantic waving of their antennae, none of it would make the slightest difference to the coming disaster.