Of course! They were built to last only a few years, possibly even for the invasion of Afrit. And after that, Swartheld would serve Heldya and a conquered Afrit. “Thank you. I knew there was something. Is there anything else I should know? Things so obvious to you that someone like me wouldn’t even think of?”
“They’ve got their warehouses too close together, and they’re all timber. You build like that, and you get too much spoilage, especially in a wet spell. They did put a set of piers near the river, though, just at the edge of where you lose the current. Makes it easy for their flatboats to dock and tie up there. Means more than two kays by wagon to the nearest deepwater pier, but you don’t risk losing the flatboats either.”
After Elphred retreats to the stern, where he alternates as steersman with another Afritan, Lerial again concentrates on studying the merchanters, if only for a short time, because he is still too far away to see or sense the details he needs to know.
Almost another glass passes before the sail-galley reaches a point due north of the westernmost dwellings and buildings of Estheld, but still west of the harbor piers. Elphred turns the sail-galley more to the southeast, and two of the men adjust the sail, angling it to the wind. The galley picks up a bit more speed, or so it seems to Lerial, from the light spray coming up over the bow.
Before long, Lerial can begin to sense more details of Estheld, rather than see them, because the large merchanters at the piers block much of his view of the warehouses and other buildings along the waterfront. The first, and most obvious, discovery is that there are two chaos-mages there, one clearly aboard a large merchanter tied at the end of the westernmost pier, the other somewhere ashore. At the same time, he still cannot tell much about what or who might be loading aboard the merchanters, although he can sense cold iron on the nearest vessel, a likely hint of weapons, but certainly not anything conclusive.
“Ser! There are two fast galleys headed our way … over there to the south. They’re twenty-oar boats.”
Lerial looks to where Elphred is pointing, and, unhappily, there are indeed two galleys moving toward them, each twice the size of the Afritan sail-galley. Knowing how much more difficult it is to use order or chaos over water—and the fact that he’ll need every bit of strength he has to deal with the real Heldyan problem—Lerial doesn’t even consider using order-chaos separation. Not yet, anyway. And since no chaos-mage is supplying chaos, that limits his choices. “We need to get closer. I’m going to conceal us. After everything goes black, turn more to port, and then keep moving on that heading. But have the men ready to row when I give the word.”
“Yes, ser.”
Lerial can sense a certain fatalism in Elphred’s voice, and while he’d like to reassure the galley master, he has his own doubts, especially since he’s trying to keep in mind his father’s advice about avoiding suicidal efforts. He raises the concealment … and listens to the murmurs from the Afritan crew, if only for a moment.
“… frigging … black…”
“… told us…”
“… said we’d be in less danger…”
“… mages … always danger…”
Lerial keeps the concealment as close to the sail-galley as possible while gauging the shift in heading and trying to determine if Elphred’s new course is widening the gap between them and the galleys while also trying to sense everything in the Estheld harbor.
The Heldyan galleys appear not to have changed course, while the Afritan sail-galley nears the piers, passing less than a hundred yards from yet another merchanter anchored off the harbor proper. Lerial can sense no troopers on the decks, suggesting that the merchanter is waiting for a berth at one of the piers.
Now Lerial can sense armsmen on one of the piers, shuffling up a gangplank and onto the main deck of a vessel. He shifts his sensing to another vessel, whose decks are crowded with men, that is preparing to cast off. After another tenth of a glass, from what Lerial can tell, there are indeed thousands of troopers in and around the Estheld harbor, either already on vessels, boarding them, or waiting to board them.
What can you do? What will stop all of them?
After several moments, the answer strikes him: Fire … fire everywhere. But how can he accomplish that without totally exhausting himself long before he has created a wide-enough conflagration? Will small bits of order-chaos separation all across the merchanters and the warehouses near the harbor do that? But how can you do even that without exhausting yourself? The only way for that to work is for the sail-galley to get much, much closer.