Kushiel’s Dart

It was fairly done, and generous; I held myself as much to blame, for having failed to warn Rousse’s sailors. But in truth, the Master of the Straits had rigged and baited the trap, and I think we’d have fallen into it no matter how it transpired.

Rousse’s riders had found the fleet with Ghislain de Somerville and half the Azzallese forces; this was the word they had brought back to us. The other half was under the command of Marc de Trevalion, further southeast. Between the two of them, they covered a long stretch of border, and the half-destroyed remnants of four bridges that might be used to cross the Rhenus. We would sail as far as the first bridge; beyond that, Rousse’s ships could not travel. Their value lay in securing the length of the river between bridge and sea; we’d only caught them massed at the bridge because a tenacious party of some fifteen hundred Skaldi was rumored to be gathering for an assault on the bridge.

I do not think a river-crossing ever played any part in Selig’s invasion plan; surely, from what we had seen, the bulk of the Skaldi horde had flooded through the Northern Pass. But if he did gain control of Azzalle’s border, he would have unlimited access to Terre d’Ange, and a strong foothold in the flatlands. And if he did not, with a mere handful of men-and a few thousand were little more than that, to Selig-he tied up the forces of an entire province and ensured that Azzalle’s army wouldn’t fall upon his back.

A leader who thinks. Gonzago de Escabares had spoken truly.

When the shouting clamor of battle, steel on steel, reached our ears, I knew we must be nigh.

We saw it first, in the flagship. The Skaldi had found an engineer or two among their number, and in the absence of Rousse’s fleet, mounted a full-scale effort to restore the bridge. They’d adopted Tiberian tactics, digging fortifications along shore and constructing narrow rolling walls to shelter the builders.

Tiberian soldiers, however, wouldn’t have broken ranks and disregarded order halfway through the process, forging forward under cover of a hail of spears, inching crude rafts along the half-drowned bridge supports. Only a few hundred had gained D’Angeline soil, but the rest were bidding fair to cross, keeping Ghislain’s men a spearcast’s length at bay. He’d only seven hundred under his command; and I learned, later, that his archers had spent their arsenal over the past two days, hoping to hold off the Skaldi until our arrival.

They’d succeeded, if only barely.

The Skaldi froze, as our thirty-odd ships drew upriver. I daresay they’d posted a lookout for the fleet’s return two days ago, but that discipline too had crumbled in the blood-fever of launching a full attack. My heart filled with icy fear at the familiar sight of them, Skaldic warriors, iron-thewed and ferocious.

It’s as well that D’Angeline women don’t ride into battle. Quintilius Rousse never hesitated. Each ship had a full complement of his own sailors on board, trained to obey the Admiral’s voice without thinking. He raised it now, roaring orders as if to shout down the ocean, incomprehensible commands that only sailors understand.

The Skaldi began to chant Waldemar Selig’s name.

I daresay Drustan mab Necthana grasped Rousse’s plan quickly enough; leaping onto the prow of the flagship, his misshapen limb no obstacle to his agility, he called out to the Craithne. On each ship, a line of archers formed along the shoreward side, protecting the sailors who scrambled overboard like monkeys, catching cast lines and hauling the ships toward the shallow waters along the foreign bank.

At the bridge, the Skaldi broke ranks, the greater number surging back toward the flatlands. If nothing else, they are bold; those trapped on D’Angeline soil never looked back, but began composing their death-songs. I heard the sound of it rise, fierce and hard, chilling my spine. No doubt the Azzallese felt the same.

Our ships grounded in the shallows. Planks were lowered with a crash, some reaching the bank, some landing in water. Drustan, red cloak whipping around him, shouted orders. Ramps were dropped into the holds, horses brought up, wild-eyed and terrified, Cruithne and Dalriada scrambling to arms.

It was something to see, an entire army boiling over the fleet’s edge, plunging down planks, churning water and soil into mud. I understood, for a brief moment, why poets sing of such things.

And then the fighting began.

It didn’t last long. Fierce as the Skaldi are, they are men, and bleed and die like men; and nothing, in all Waldemar Selig’s planning, had prepared them for Drustan’s wild army, blue-whorled faces spilling out of ships, fighting with a ruthless ferocity that equaled their own.