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CHAPTER FIVE

The Port of Paldh

s

wanmay was as good as her word. They reached the mouth of the Teremene River five days after she made her promise.

By that time Neil could stand, and even walk, though he tired quickly, so when he heard that land had been sighted, he pulled on the clothes that Swanmay had supplied for him and went up on deck.

A cloud cover was breaking up with the rising of the sun, painting the landscape with long brushes of light. Corcac Sound, Neil reflected, was what Newland would have been, without the canals and malends and the sheer force of human will to keep the water back'a thousand islands and hammocks, some of which vanished at high tide, and all green with marsh grass and ancient oaks. They sailed past villages of houses raised on stilts and men in skiffs hauling in cast-nets full of wriggling shrimp. Beyond the river channel, a maze of creeks and waterways wandered off to the flat horizon.

He found Swanmay near the bow.

'We're nearly there,' she said. 'I told you, you see.'

'I did not doubt you, lady.' He paused uncomfortably. 'You said the men who attacked me are the same men you fear. Yet they did not recognize your ship in z'Espino. Why do you fear they will recognize it now, if they are in the port of Paldh?'

A hint of a smile touched her lips. 'In z'Espino they didn't yet know they were looking for me. Another day or so there and the news would have reached them.

For certain, it has reached Paldh by now.

'The news of your escape?'

'Yes.'

'Then'if I may'I would propose not to hold you strictly to your word. Put me off here, before we reach port. I'm sure I can find the mainland.'

She looked out over the marshes. 'It's quite beautiful, isn't it?' She seemed to ignore his suggestion.

'Yes,' he agreed.

'I've never seen anything like it.' She turned to him. 'It's kind of you to think of me, Sir Neil.'

'It's nothing compared with what you've done for me, lady. I would not see you hurt.'

She shrugged. 'I'm in no physical danger. They will not kill me, if that is what worries you.'

'I'm grateful for that,' he said.

'I accept your offer,' Swanmay decided. 'There is only a small chance that I will escape the Lier Sea now, with my head start gone. But it is a chance, nonetheless. I may yet win my game of fiedchese.'

'I pray you do, Lady Swanmay,' he told her gravely.

'That isn't my real name, you know.'

'I didn't,' he replied. 'I wish I knew your real name.'

She shook her head. 'I will provide you with a boat and some supplies.'

'That isn't necessary,' he said.

'It won't cost me anything, and it will make your life easier. Why shouldn't I do it?' She lifted her head. 'But if you would repay me for the boat, I have a suggestion.'

'Anything, if it is in my power.'

'It is. A kiss'just one. It's all I ask.'

In the light of the sun, her eyes were bluer than any sky. He suddenly remembered the words to a song he'd liked when he was a boy, 'Elveher qei Queryeven.'

The Port of Paldh

If you'll not stay and share my bed, The lady of the Queryen said Then all I ask is for a kiss, A single kiss instead.

But when Elveher bent to kiss the Queryen lady, she stabbed him in the heart with a knife she had concealed in her sleeve.

With her otherworldly beauty, Swanmay might as easily be Queryen as human.

'Why should you want that, lady?' he asked.

'Because I may never have another,' she replied.

'I'' He suddenly realized she wasn't joking.

'Anything in your power, you said.'

'I did.' he admitted, and he bent toward her, held by those strange, beautiful eyes. She smelled faintly of roses.

Her lips were warm and somehow surprising, different from any lips he had ever kissed, and with their touch, everything seemed oddly changed. When he pulled away, her eyes were no longer so mysterious. They held something he thought he understood.

'My name is Brinna,' she said. There was no knife in her hand.

Before the next bell he sat in a smallboat and watched her ship until he could no longer see the sails. Then he began to row upstream. Each time the oars dipped in the water, he seemed to hear Fastia telling him he would forget her.

The tide came in and eased his journey, but Paldh was several leagues upstream, and he was still very weak and had to rest frequently. Still, the exertion felt good, and the salt-marsh smell pleased him. Near sundown, he made dock at a fishing village, where a sandy-haired boy of about twelve took his bowline. He checked the wallet Brinna had given him and found coins in it. He selected a copper for the boy, but turned it in his fingers before giving it to him. It bore a sword on one side, but no inscription. He took a gold out and looked at that. It had the likeness of a man on it, and an inscription that read marcomir anthar thiuzan mikil. Marcomir was the king of Hansa.

The Port of Paldh

He sighed and returned the coin to his purse.

The boy said something in Hornish, which Neil knew only a few words of.

'Do you speak any king's tongue, lad, or Lierish?' he asked, in the best Hornish he could command.

'Tho, sure, I speak king's tongue,' the boy said, in a slow, lilting accent. 'Do you need a place to stay? The Moyr Muk has a room in it.' He indicated a long building built of leather planks and a shingled roof.

'My thanks,' Neil said. 'Say, what's your name, lad?'

'Nel MaypPenmar,' the boy told him.

Neil smiled. 'That's almost the same as my name. I'm Neil Meq-Vren. Nel, do you know your ships?'

The boy swelled his chest out a little. 'Tho, sir, I sure do.'

'I wonder, have you seen a Vitellian merchantman come through here in the past few days, the Delia Puchia?'

'I've seen that ship,' the boy said, 'but not lately.'

'What about a big brimwulf with no name or standard?'

'That one I saw, three days ago. She caught that storm and was listing hard, needed a new mast.'

'Storm?'

'Tho, a bad one. Some ships went down in that one'one of 'em out of here, the Tunn Carvanth.'

'Maybe the Delia Puchia came by and you didn't notice?'

'Maybe,' Nel said dubiously. 'You can ask around in the Moyr Muc. Why? You have kin on it?'

'Something like that,' Neil replied. 'Thanks.' He got his things and started toward the inn.

Beside the door was hung a placard with a painting of a porpoise on it, confirming Neil's idle suspicion that 'Moyr Muc' was the same as meurmuc, which was what they called dolphins on Skern. It meant 'sea-pig,' which he'd always thought was a poor name for such a beautiful creature. Of course Neil meant 'champion,' a name he didn't much deserve, either. He had lost his armor and his sword, and now it might be that the princess he had been sent by his queen to retrieve was at the bottom of the Lier.

None of the handful of people in the Sea Pig allowed that they had seen the Delia Puchia, but they pointed out that the shallow-drafted Vitellian ship could have made port at half a dozen other places to weather the storm. That made Neil feel a little better, but the larger problem remained'if Anne was still alive, it was because the Delia Puchia had done just that, which meant once again he had lost her trail.

Not too surprisingly, no one in the village of Torn-y-Llagh owned a sword, but he managed to buy a fishing spear and a knife, which was better than nothing. He ate a supper of boiled cod and bread, enjoying the simple familiarity of it. The next morning, feeling even stronger, he set out once more for Paldh.

Paldh was an old city. When the great harbors of Eslen were still marsh, before the building of the great Thornrath wall, it had been the only deepwater port of any size for a hundred leagues in either direction. In those days before the Crothanic Empire, Crotheny, Hornladh, and Tero Galle had all relied upon Paldh for their shipping. They had battled over it with their navies, and before them the Hegemony and the Warlock Kingdoms.

How many thousands of ships lay rotting in the channel of the Teremene River, no one could know, but the oldest of them had not been built by human beings.

Nor had the oldest walls of the city, most of which appeared to stand on a regular gray cliff thirty yards above the highest tide. Neil had never before seen them, but now that he paddled alongside he saw that what he had heard was true; above the barnacled high-water mark, one could still discern the faint seams that stretched between the original blocks of stone. When he reached the harbor, the massive barrier swept in an enormous semicircle that was something over a league in length, and here an ancient quay of the same stone provided the anchor for the floating docks.

The quay was perhaps a hundred yards in width, and a sort of sailor's city had grown up on it'taverns, inns, gambling houses, and brothels all crowded against the artificial bluff. Even from afar Neil could see that the dock town was teeming with colorful life.

He made out the brimwulf almost immediately, because he passed the dry-docks on his way in, and there she was, up on scaffolding with workmen scurrying about, making a music of hammers and saws. There were a number of other ships there, none of them the one Anne had sailed on.

He thought back to his fight in z'Espino. The brimwulf had been far down the docks from the Delia Puchia. The sailors on her wouldn't have seen the fight'and he'd been in armor anyway.

He paddled his boat over to the quay and tied her up near the ship, then climbed out onto the time-smoothed stone.

He waved at one of the nearer sailors.

'Hello, there,' he attempted in Hornish.

'Ik ni mathlya Haurnaraz,' the sailor replied.

Neil forced a laugh, and switched to Hanzish. 'Neither do I,' he said. 'It's good to hear you speak'I'm so tired of trying to understand the gibberish around here.'

The sailor smiled and poked a rough finger at Neil's boat. 'You come all the way here in that?'

Neil shook his head. 'No, the ship I served on was beached in the storm the other night. I bought this from a fisherman.'

'Bad storm, that,' the sailor said. 'We almost went down in it.'

'Pretty good blow,' Neil conceded.

'What ship was that you were on?' the man asked.

'The Esecselur, out of Hall.' That seemed safe enough'Hall was one of the most remote and least visited islands in the Sorrow chain, and it was'last he'd heard'one of the few under Hanzish rule.

'Ah, explains your accent,' the fellow said. 'Well, what do you need?'

'I wondered if you might use another hand, at least until the ship is repaired.

I'd work for a place to stay and a coin or two until I can get a berth on something headed home.'

The sailor scratched his head. 'Well, the captain did tell the/ru-mashipmanna to hire some local help, but I'm sure he'd rather have someone who speaks the godstongue.'

Neil hoped he didn't flinch at that. He'd spent most of his life The Port of Paldh

fighting people who spoke Hanzish. The fact that they thought their language was the language of the saints was just a reminder of why.

He must have hidden his feelings well, for the sailor then introduced him to the firstshipman, who looked him up and down, asked him the same questions the other fellow had, and then shrugged.

'We'll give you a try,' he said, 'But I'm telling you now you won't pull a berth with us. The lord whose ship this is is peculiar about who he takes aboard. But if you're still interested, it's a schilling a day plus a middle meal, and you can sleep in the tents.'

'That's fair enough,' Neil said. 'And your name?' the man asked. 'Kniva,' Neil improvised. 'Kniva Berigsunu.'

'You ever trim out a mast?'

'Before I was six,' Neil answered.

'Over there, then. If I don't like your work, you don't get paid.' Working on the mast was a good place to be'it allowed him to see all who came and went. He didn't see anyone he recognized, though, and certainly none of the knights or their men-at-arms. That was a good sign, probably'it suggested that they were still looking for Anne and her companions.

It made him feel itchy, working side by side with his enemies, but after a time he relaxed. The other men toiling on the mast seemed to take him for who he said he was, and he managed to get friendly with a couple of them. They were both from Selhastranth, an island off Saltmark, and their language and bad blood aside, Neil's island boyhood had been much like theirs.

So at the end of the day, as they collected their schillings, he wasn't surprised when Jan and Vithig asked him along to the tavern.

The curm vale the inn served was bitter and thick, not that different from the ale they brewed on the islands'and Neil knew he ought not have much of it. He'd never been a big drinker, and it had been a long time since he had imbibed more than a little wine.

Jan and Vithig showed no such inhibitions, swaging it down as if it were water.

By the time their portions of eel stew arrived, they were well on their way to Saint Leines hall.

After a round of bragging about various exploits at sea, Neil leaned forward.

'I've seen strange things lately,' he said, in a low voice. 'Uncanny things.

I've heard the draugs singing and seen a dead man walk on Ter-na-Fath. My fah says the end of the world is coming.'

Both of their faces scrunched up at that. Jan was a big, ruddy man with a bald crown and dark eyes, while Vithig's face was so angular, it looked as if he had swallowed an anvil and it had stuck in his head.

'You don't have to tell us things is weirding,' Vithig said. 'We've seen things''

Jan put a hand on his arm. 'No, don't do that,' he said.

Vithig nodded sagely. 'Aiw, I know. But it's not right. I've said His Lordship's men aren't men at all, some of 'em'and I'll say it again.' He punched a finger at Neil. 'Just you be glad they won't offer you a berth, is all I'm saying.'

'Vith, keep it down,' Jan growled.

'I didn't see anything strange aboard ship.'

'Aiw'they've gone, thank Ansu Hlera, off south to chase''

'Vith!' Jan pounded the table so hard, their bowls and mugs rattled.

Neil took another swallow of his ale. 'No fighting lads,' he said. 'I didn't mean to stir up any trouble. How does the saying go? 'Wise is the man who guards his lord's Rune-hoard.' '

'Here, that's what I'm saying,' Jan said.

'Well spoken,' Vithig murmured. 'I admit I'm not wise, not when Ansu Woth's blood is in me.' He raised his tankard. 'May we die in warm seas,' he toasted.

'To wisdom,' Neil replied, and took his swallow. 'Now, let me tell you about the great wurm we sighted in the Sorrows.'

'You never saw any wurm,' Jan protested.

'Aiw, but I did, and a great monster it was.'

He launched into a story his grandfather used to tell, and by the end of it, Jan had calmed down and Vithig was threatening to sing. Bold as he felt, Neil didn't reckon to take any more risks by pressing'

The Port of Paldh

it would be nice to know what lord owned the ship, but he already knew what he wanted to know, and with only a single day lost.

Much later, they staggered back to the tents, and Jan and Vithig fell straight into ale slumber. Neil considered killing them, but didn't for several reasons.

A fair fight would draw attention, and slitting their throats while they slept would destroy what little honor he had left. He doubted the sailors would make any connection between their comments and his absence the next day, and if they did, they would just reckon they had scared him off.

Anyway, sailors didn't talk to their officers and lords any more than they had to, and killing them was much more likely to make people wonder where he had got off to. Finally, Jan and Vithig were decent fellows who didn't deserve a bad end at his hand just because they had said something they shouldn't have.

So before anyone woke, he gathered his things and left, climbing the ramp up into the city of Paldh. There, with the money Brinna had given him, he found a sword he could afford. The blacksmith balked at selling it to him, so Neil showed him the cut on the back of his hand and small silver rose pendant at his neck'the two things he still had that marked him as a knight.

'Anyone can cut themselves,' the blacksmith pointed out, 'and you might have taken the rose from a dead knight.'

'That's true,' Neil allowed. 'But I gave you my word I'm a knight of Eslen.'

'Carrying Hanzish coin,' the blacksmith countered dubiously.

Neil added another gold coin to the five already on the table. 'Why did you make this if you don't want to sell it?' he asked. 'What knight commissioned it?'

'The city guard buys from me,' he said. 'I've license to sell to them.'

'And surely to a knight who has lost his effects,' Neil said. 'Besides, I'm leaving Paldh, and not likely to return.'

The blacksmith found a cloth and wrapped the sword up tightly. 'Just keep it hidden until you're out of town, hey?'

'That I'll do,' Neil said. He took the sword and left. At a stable on the road outside of town, he purchased a horse that seemed to have a bit of intelligence in its eyes, and some tack for it, leaving him only a few schillings for food. Thus mounted he set out south on the Great Vitellian Way.

The sword wasn't much of a sword'it was more of a steel club with an edge'and the horse wasn't much of a horse. But then, he wasn't much of a knight, though at last he felt something like one again. What he would do when he found the uncanny knight and his men he did not know, but he was ready to figure it out.