Chapter 20B

"Gone?" asked the queen-to-be, clambering up onto her horse and then turning to face him. "Where could they have gone?"

"After Salira, I'll wager," said Phillip. He looked westward, the direction that Siska had looked just as the confusion of Garel and Marek's arrival had begun. "I think that way."

Keeley nodded. "We must go after them," she said.

"We can't, our duty is to get you back to the city, milady," said one of the elderly Defenders. "We have to get you to the palace. That is as safe a place that may remain now."

"Aren't you supposed to do as I ask?" asked Keeley, looking back at the scarred old warrior.

He returned her gaze with placid and knowing eyes. "Our duty is to protect you over all, even above obeying you, milady. Unless the Blue Order has changed, their duty is the same." He turned his eyes then toward Phillip to see if the wizard concurred or disagreed with him.

Phillip sighed and nodded. "It is," he said. "As much as it pains me to leave Siska and Thean, we cannot take the risk of turning aside now."

"But - Siska - Thean!" blurted Keeley, staring at the wizard wide-eyed. "Those two more than any other, Phillip."

"You don't have to tell me," he said in a lower, almost dangerous voice. "I do know who I care about."

Keeley's eyes dropped and she urged her mount back, away from Phillip's. "I understand, sorry," she said.

Tatyana heeled her slender horse up beside the wizard and young woman. "You must go after her," she said in an agitated tone that spoke of near panic.

"What we must do, mistress, is get Keeley to the palace, else your lover forgets his oaths?" snapped Phillip, glaring at Siska's mother and Lord Tornadin in turn.

The regal-featured woman urged her horse back a few steps from the wrath in the wizard's eyes. "Y - Yes, mentor, I understand," she said in a halting voice. Her eyes showed resolve, however. She forced calm upon herself with great effort and put a slender hand upon Tornadin's arm, which worthy gave the wizard a spiteful look of his own.

"We must protect the queen-apparent, milord," she said in a soft voice, stroking the arm she had touched. "Despite my personal feelings, that is of utmost importance. I'm sorry to have snapped at you, mentor." This last he directed at the wizard and was said as she turned her mount aside to resume her former place in the procession.

Phillip said nothing, though, only looking toward where Garel and Marek were being loaded into one of the few carts under the cautious gaze of the healer. Already, Marek already used that wounded arm to help lever himself into the high-sided hay wain.

Lord Tornadin spoke stiffly to the wizard. "Everyone is making ready to move again, Mentor Phillip." The nobleman had an informal way with many, but seemed determined to keep formality with all the members of the order and the Defenders. Given his recent past, Phillip did not mind the emotional distance such formality maintained. The look of calculation and thought in those eyes made Phillip doubly glad for the distance.

Phillip took the opportunity of the young nobleman peering over the people to examine the nobleman himself. He was remarkably good-looking, though his eyes still held a predatory look that Phillip did not like. No, he could not truly like the man very much, but he could work with him. What was Tornadin truly about, though?

The soldiers sorted themselves once again into their escorting formations alongside the column of people afoot and mounted. With a jerky sort of start, that column began moving toward the city once again, though many eyes looked back for a sight of Siska or Thean, for varied reasons.

The sun stood well past its high and clouds loomed over the island, accompanied by a chill wind from the north as Moghran issued commands to signal to the other ships of the armada.

He paused, giving a messenger, wearing the red sash that marked utmost urgency, an impatient look as he stumbled to a stop before him. "What is it?" he asked.

Messengers, unlike all other slaves, were encouraged to dispense with formality in their service, especially when they wore the red. This young man seemed to know his business, for he did not even bob his head as many still did.

"The Graysails have been sited rounding the shallows to the east," he said. "Vice Admiral Pegahan is leading a counterstrike with his taskforce."

The Templar absorbed this bit of news. The Graysails were an annoyance, overall, but a deadly annoyance. Their small sloops were no match for a warbarge, but they were fast, maneuverable, and could do damage.

"How many of them?" asked Moghran, looking down at the charts that littered the table until he found the one that detailed that particular patch of water.

"All of them, milord Templar," said the messenger, swallowing. "Over a hundred ships."

"The Grays don't have a hundred ships, boy," growled the Templar, looking up from his charts to give the young man a bit of glare.

The messenger swallowed again. "There are others with them - Halfling, Ghantian, and Coghlandish vessels."

"The Shires bears arms?" asked Tarasha, sitting up and taking special notice. "That is a first in many a long year."

"They fly the flag of Tressen," said the Messenger, fidgeting under the sorceress' gaze. His eyes darted from meeting hers and he looked, instead, into the Templar's. "All of them have taken up the flag of Tressen, milord, we don't know yet if they are crewed by islanders or their original crews."

Moghran lifted his spyglass to his eye and peered in the direction of the small flotilla that meant to threaten them. "That ship is not flying a pennant for Tressen," said the Templar after a moment's examination. "What flag is that, boy?"

The messenger used his own spyglass, not as good as the Templar's, to be sure, but adequate. Messengers were a useful lot, all in all, Moghran decided. Their intense and brutal training rather drove home many a fine skill that could be tapped at need.

"Morrovale, milord," said the messenger as soon as he found the ship.

"Morrovale is a land-locked nation, yet they have a navy?" asked the Templar.

"They have merchantmen," said the messenger, lowering his spyglass. "And a overblown estimation of their self-importance, too, milord."

Moghran chuckled at the messenger's bit of wit. He could appreciate a good, worthy slave having a bit of cockiness. "Send word that that ship is not to be sunk, but captured, with the crew - as many as possible - alive."

"As milord commands," said the messenger. "Any other orders?"

"No. Go," said Moghran, turning to Tarasha and already forgetting the messenger. "What do you make of Morrovale's presence?" asked the Templar.

"That place has been a thorn in our heel for years," said the sorceress. "They've managed to prevent even our best agents infiltrating them or subverting their lesser nobles."

"Sounds as if they don't overestimate themselves, then," said Moghran, chuckling again. "I would find more out about these Morrovalans. See if any of the slaves aboard are from there."

Tarasha bowed slightly and walked away. Her movement could not be described as hasty, despite the speed with which she moved. Catlike seemed more the word. He wondered idly for a moment if she were truly as skilled in arms as her motions indicated. Most women he knew who moved like that were female Templars - a special breed indeed.

He lifted the spyglass again and watched as the Tressenite fleet moved toward the turning taskforce under Admiral Pegahan. The admiral was a capable man, if unimaginative. He should deal with this annoyance in short order. After all, he matched their numbers with superior vessels.

That did little to settle the growing sense of unease in the Templar. He gestured toward one of his own runners, a young messenger with muscular legs. "Send to Admiral Milaghaz to dispatch half his ships to reinforce Admiral Pegahan's fleet and make sure Pegahan knows the help is coming," he said, then waved the slave off.

That helped slightly, he found, to diminish his worry. Something told him that the Graysails were not going to go down to their wet graves without a struggle.

The island of Tressen, itself, dominated the northern horizon and already the leading ships of the armada were nearing the narrows that let into the bay that the city surrounded. Most of those were to turn aside, though, and form a picket, to prevent any ships escaping the bay or the few small port villages on other parts of the island. Most of those villages would be in ruins by now, in either case, but some boats may have survived the orcs' depredations.

"Kind of them to send the Grays out to meet us rather than forcing us to fight through the narrows," said the captain of the flagship. He was a grizzled old man who stood just a step below the Templar in status, though that step was a large one. It allowed him a certain leeway with formalities, such as titles and bowing.

Moghran knew him to be utterly capable, though, and did not begrudge him his sense of elevated station, so long as he still kept to his place.

"I think they did us no favors," said the Templar in a firm voice. "They have defenses in place on the island which were not there during my initial sortie. Expect stiff resistance during the initial landing."

"I do," murmured the captain. "We've got teams of sorceresses standing by to heal marines, though the toll in slaves will be high if the defense is too stiff."

Moghran chuckled. "There are slaves aplenty on that isle, captain, don't be sparing of the ones we have now."

"Yes, sir," said the old sailor. The Templar looked at the man and realized his own age could not be more than five years less. Yet he thought of the captain as old. He sighed inwardly. Yes, this would be his last campaign.

Salira gritted her teeth against the pain and near blindness that held her. Her bloodshot eyes stained all about her nearly black crimson in her vision as she stumbled to the door of the small hovel. She could hear the orcs again, yammering at the forest's edge, arguing with one another.

She had managed to put a certain measure of fear into them about this farmstead, but not enough, she supposed. Orcs that had not seen the explosion that killed their leader were egging the others to join them on a joint rush of the farmstead.

The forest looked to be simply a darker black red than the area around it and she tried to maintain her focus upon that, watching for movement more than seeing something. She held several small spells in reserve, all but cast, waiting on a gesture or a syllable.

However, the teleport had been the last major reserve of mana she had within herself. These would be drawn from the ambient magic around her, and that never stood as the most developed of her talents. She chuckled to herself, having discovered the limitation so blatantly.

Salira wiped the blood from her cheeks, where it had partially dried. If she backlashed again, it would likely kill her.

"Better than at the hands of those filthy orcs," she growled as she braced her shoulder against the inside of the doorframe. "I imagine they'll not make it either quick nor painless."

Dying from backlash was far from painless, but usually it would be mercifully quick.

Then the sound of a charge came to her. With a blood-curdling yowl, the orcs came tearing out of the forest, accompanied by much snapping of branches and curses as orcs stumbled in the undergrowth.

Salira peered around the corner of the door and loosed the first spell. A horizontal line of mana formed before all of the orcs, ten paces wide but only the thickness of a hair.

The first rank of orcs stuck the line and decapitated themselves, the second rank had more success, some of them ducking, though several of those managed only to bisect their skulls as they were pushed forward from behind.

The cord snapped as another orc slashed at it with his sword. It could not stand up to metal, not in her weakened state. However, the cord was taut, like a guy line on a ship and recoiled when the blade severed it. The orc that had sliced it lost an arm and half a dozen more lost other body parts, and two lost their lives. Salira chuckled to herself that at least one or two of among those still living would not likely take part in her rape if she were captured.

That was a hollow satisfaction, though, and the others charged on, still a strong company.

That manawire had been the most powerful of her defensive spells, too, the others would not have as great an effect.

Suddenly, Salira wished to suffer backlash greatly.

Some of them had reached the low stone fence that fronted the yard of the farmstead. When their hands touched the wall, however, the stones beneath their fingers exploded, hurling them back into their friends. Salira flicked her finger along the fencerow, detonating bound spells within the very rocks that were set in the low wall.

"Not enough," murmured the wizard to herself as they pressed on, several leaping over the fence too quickly for her to stop and charging across the lawn with scimitars upraised. She prepared to draw all the mana she could into herself for a final blast.

Another sound then came to her ears, a high-pitched keen, almost like that of a sword on stone. An orc screamed out a blood-curdling cry of pain and dismay before he fell silent. An explosion rattled the timbers of the little shack and the ground heaved. Window panes, what few remained, blew into the house from the two small front windows. Bits of glass pelted Salira as she picked herself up from the floor and she heard more shouting outside the house. The keening sound came to her again and she peered out through the doorway, her hand recoiling from where the outer edge of the wooden frame smouldered and charred.

Something the size of her fist flashed through her vision and winged off to her right. She tried to follow it's motion, but could not with her impaired eyes. An orc cried out from near the house, though, and something wet splattered her face as that sound came to her ear again.

A woman's voice broke over the din of the orcs in their confusion, hurling curses that not even the orcs could better. "Thean?" asked the wizard, though only in a whisper.

Her vision seemed to clear for a moment as a roar like the inside of a smelter's furnace came to her ears. The world looked nearly normal as a cone of pure white light lanced out from a dark shape at the edge of the woods upon the single path through that dense little forest. Orcs howled in that cone and she saw bone-shapes outlined by the brilliant white.

Siska's whitefire, thought Salira. Her bloodied eyes were allowing her to look right at it without being blinded and she saw the 'letters' of Siska's spell. She could make the whitefire, if she had the power to do so. The raw power, she gasped within her mind. Siska bled off more mana that Salira could use on her best day.

When the whitefire subsided, Salira could see a shape on the ground beside Siska's horse. The horse, itself, stamped and rolled its eyes, near to panic from the release of violent magics over its head. However, Siska tugged firmly on the reigns and managed to keep her saddle. Two orcs charged toward the apprentice and the other form on the ground - Thean.

Thean must have taken one down, as it heeled over and fell. The other, though, jerked as if struck by a catapult. Its' body flew a solid five paces before coming to a rest as the high pitched sound came to Salira again.