He took the lightning slap she gave him with good grace, making her laugh again with a florid bow before striding off to order his first mate to muster a fighting party.
“Your people are ready?” he asked her.
She jerked her head at the rigging above, Vaelin seeing the densely packed archers on the platforms at the top of the great ship’s two towering masts. A figure leaned over the side of the foremost platform to wave at them, Vaelin recognising Bren Antesh’s silhouette. He sensed a certain impatience in the archer’s movements. “I think your Lord of Archers is keen for you to join him aloft,” he advised.
“In which case he’ll be disappointed,” she replied with a level gaze.
He let the matter drop; cautioning her seemed irrelevant given their mission.
The Shield had sailed into Warnsclave a day after Belorath’s arrival, his great flagship laden with stolen supplies, relating his dismay at failing to seize a ship of equal size and design to his own newly acquired monster. “It was like fighting a mirror image,” he told Lyrna, his usual ebullience muted somewhat, and unlike most, less inclined to stare at her face. “Except one captained by a fool,” he went on. “Sadly, the fires we birthed in her were too great and she went down, along with a few hundred Free Swords, judging by the screams.”
The idea had been birthed then, triggering instincts Vaelin had thought lost with his song.
“But enough to seize the docks, and Varinshold will stand or fall on who holds them. Plus, Brother Caenis will relate the need to attack on Winterfall Eve to the Renfaelin host via Brother Lernial.”
“The odds.” She shook her head. “Even if these Renfaelins, whoever they are, do ride to our aid, the odds still do not favour us. Marven is right, the risk is too great.”
“Not for the Seordah,” he said. “Not if they make the first attack, aided by Lady Reva’s archers. The docks will be taken within an hour.”
“Their prowess impresses you that much?”
He recalled the Kuritai that day as the rain beat down, swift and deadly but seeming like slow children as the forest folk broke their line. “You didn’t see them at Alltor, Highness.” He straightened, addressing her formally. “My queen, as Battle Lord I tell you this is the only way Varinshold will be in our hands before the year’s end.”
“By the Father,” Reva’s whisper brought him back to the present. She stood at the rail as they rounded the southern headland and Varinshold came into view. For a moment Vaelin felt certain they had sailed to liberate nothing more than a ruin, the entire southern quarter seemingly just a mass of piled brick and blackened wood. As they drew closer however, he began to pick out familiar buildings still standing amidst the rubble: the merchants’ houses overlooking the harbour, the northern wing of the palace just visible through the fading morning mist, and in the centre, the dark stump of the Blackhold, where he hoped the Aspects still drew breath.
Reva turned back from the view, her face grim, waving at the archers above, who promptly crouched, disappearing from view. The Shield donned a shirt of broad-ringed mail and buckled on his sabre. “Best if you stay by me, my lady,” he told Reva with a wink. “I’ll protect you.”
This time she failed to laugh, the sight of the city seemingly robbing her of humour. “It’s they who need protection,” she muttered, jerking her head at the Volarians now visible on the quay. Her face had taken on a tense aspect, her brow furrowed and gaze focused. On any other woman her age it might be taken for sullenness but Vaelin knew it was the face she wore throughout the siege, the face so many Volarians had seen in their final seconds of life.
