“Seas are calmer today,” he offered. In fact it was the first calm day for over a week; the stories he had heard of the Boraelin’s tempestuous wintry nature had not been exaggerated.
Belorath replied with a customary grunt, raising his sextant once more. “But the clouds aren’t. Promises another storm by tomorrow.” He squinted, keeping the sextant level, his eyes tracking to a brief glimpse of the sun through the cloud. “I believe, brother,” he said, consulting the numbers on his parchment. “We are less than two weeks from Volarian shores. It’s time a decision was made.”
? ? ?
“Eskethia.” Thirty-Four’s finger tapped the chart where a two-hundred-mile-long stretch of Volarian coastline traced from north to south. “One of the last provinces to fall to Volarian rule. The free people there may be less inclined to fight for the empire. Also, New Kethia is home to the largest slave market in the western provinces. Many of the slaves seized in your homeland will still be there, awaiting the winter auctions.”
“Well garrisoned?” Frentis asked him, although it was Lekran who replied.
“At least a division,” he said. “As our friend says, Eskethians are ever resentful at the loss of their sovereignty, though it happened centuries ago.”
Frentis eyed the chart closely, gauging the distance from Eskethia to Volar. Close enough to threaten the capital, but sufficiently distant to ensure any forces sent against us won’t have time to return when the queen lands. He raised his gaze to Belorath. “Captain?”
“It’s not a shore I’m familiar with, may take a while to find a suitable landing site. Luckily the coming storm should mask our approach from their patrol ships.”
Frentis nodded. “Eskethia then,” he said, hating himself for the dread that clutched at his chest, knowing the decision meant his weeks of dreamless sleep would soon have to be abandoned. Just one night, he told himself. What can she do in just one night?
? ? ?
There was a time she would have made them watch, delighting in their impotence as they squirmed in their bonds, helpless witnesses to the slaughter of their families. But for reasons she can’t fathom such diversions hold no interest for her now and she has been content to gather them atop the Council Tower, standing at the parapet with the tip of a sword pricking every back, watching smoke and flames rise from the wealthier districts of the city as their estates are laid waste. It is close to midnight and the flames are bright, though they are at too great a height to hear the screams. For all their unnatural vitality these greats of the empire are now revealed as old men, sagging in grief, weeping or choking out desperate pleas for mercy, kept upright only by the promise of instant death should they falter.
“I realise this may be a redundant statement, Honoured Council-men,” she tells them. “But the Ally is less than impressed by your efforts to fulfil his great design.”
She moves to the grey-haired dullard, the one whose name she still can’t recall although she is almost certain he must have known her father as a youth. He wears the formal robes of a Council-man, red from head to toe, though a telltale stain is spreading across the fabric around his legs. “Barely a tenth of the forces required have been gathered,” she tells the somewhat pungent greyhead, “whilst you present me with an endless parade of ever-more-pathetic excuses. The Ally has ordained a great destiny for this empire whilst you wallow in your comforts and blind yourselves to the threat growing across the sea.”
He attempts to beg, but his words emerge in a stumbling incoherent babble of spit and tears. She lets him burble on and turns an appraising glance on the man standing at his back, dressed in light armour like the Kuritai, but armed with but one sword, the blade longer and more slender than the Volarian standard, reminiscent in fact of the Asraelin pattern. Also, unlike the Kuritai, his armour is enamelled in red rather than black. He is of average height but his body is toned to near perfection, the product of decades of breeding and years of conditioning. It had always been a persistent delusion among these long-lived clods that the Kuritai were the ultimate slave soldiers, incapable of improvement, and now here they were, once again proved fatally wrong.