Into The Darkness

His fingers tangled in her hair. Above her busy lips and tongue, he laughed. "You are quite a lot of woman, my sweet," he said, "but what you're doing there hasn't been a secret of the nobility for a long, long time, if it ever was. Why, only last week this pretty little shopgirl-"

In spite of his hands, she raised up so suddenly that the back of her head caught him in the chin. "What?" she hissed as he yelped in pain. Fury filled her as quickly and completely as lubriciousness had. Before he could even start to set himself to rights, she pushed him with all her strength.

He had time for only a startled squawk before he tumbled out on to the cobbles.

"Milady, what on earth -?" he began.

"Shut up!" Krasta snarled. Careless of her left breast peeping out from the undone tunic, she leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder. "Take me home this instant. Make your stupid beasts move or you'll be sorry for it, do you hear me?"

"Aye, milady," the coachman answered: not a word more, which was wise of him. He flicked the reins. After what sounded like surprised snorts, the horses moved up into a trot. Krasta looked back over her shoulder. Valnu took a couple of steps in pursuit of the carriage, then gave up. He vanished in the darkness behind her.

Absently, Krasta did up the toggles he had opened. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve, again and again. Disgust filled her, so much that she almost had to lean out of the carriage and vomit it forth into the road way. It wasn't what she'd been doing; she'd done that before, and always been amused how such a small thing could make a man behave as if treacle filled his veins.

But that her mouth had gone where a commoner's - a pretty little shop girl's, Valnu had said - mouth went before… She could imagine nothilig more revolting. She felt ritually unclean, like a man of the Ice People, who had accidentally slain his fetish animal.

After she got back to the mansion, she routed Bauska out of bed had the servant fetch her a bottle of brandy. She rinsed her mouth sever times, then imperiously thrust the bottle back. Bauska took it awful without a word. Like the coachman, she'd learned better than to ask questions of her mistress.

With his comrades, Tealdo tramped along the wooden quay in the harbor of Imola toward the Ambuscade, from whose flagpole fluttered the Algarvian banner. All the army that had spent so long training was now filing aboard the ships that filled the harbor in the former Duchy of Bari.

Tealdo marveled to see the men all together. He marveled even more to see the ships A together. "We haven't put together a fleet like this for a cursed long time," he said over his shoulder to Trasone, who marched along behind him.

"Not for a thousand years the officers say" his friend agreed

"Silence in the ranks there!" Sergeant Panfilo bellowed. Someone fortunately, someone well away from Tealdo - made a noise that probably came from his mouth but sounded as if it had a different origin. Panfilo stormed off to see if he could catch and terrorize the miscreant.

Up the gangplank Tealdo went. His feet thudded on the timbers of the deck. The sailors scurrying around there and the men who traveled the lines of the rigging like outsized spiders did not strike him as an ordinary naval crew. That was only fair - they weren't an ordinary naval crew, nor anything close to it. Every one of them was a highly trained yachtsman.

But that art was no longer obsolete, thanks to the ingenuity of Algarve's generals and admirals. Tealdo wished he would be able to watch the great sails fill with wind as the fleet weighed anchor. Instead he went down to a poorly lit compartment with whose cramped dimensions he was all too familiar. There he and his company would stay till their journey ended… or till something went wrong.

Maybe Captain Larbino had something similar on his mind, for he said, "Men, what we do here tonight will go a long way toward winning the war for Algarve. The Sibians shouldn't realize we're coming till we shop up on their doorstep - we'll catch them with their kilts down.

Nobody has gone to war with a fleet of sailing ships for hundreds of years.

They'll never expect it, and their mages likely won't be able to give'em much warning, either. If we sail over a ley line… so what? We don't draw any energy from it, so they won't notice us. We'll be as safe as we would on dry land till we get into Tirgoviste harbor. Make yourselves comfortable and enjoy the trip."

Tealdo made himself as comfortable as he could, which wasn't very. He listened to more soldiers tramping into their assigned compartments, and to sailors running around and shouting things the thick oak timbers that surrounding him kept him from understanding. But tone carried, even If words didn't. "They sound like they're having a mighty good time, don, t they?" he said to Trasone.