Five Lands Saga Box Set 1 (Five Lands Saga Box Sets), page 133
Or longer. Besides, Diamis could always give different orders if he needed someone to bring them more supplies. Call the ships away for an afternoon, make up some emergency. It wasn’t as if his commanders were going to question him.
“Besides,” Kenton said dryly, “I’m sure the Drim outlaw is the one in league with the blood mages. If the soldiers happened to take them all out in one swoop, Diamis would still have what he wanted.”
Jaeme nodded, and Kenton wondered if he was thinking the same thing. Only Kenton’s and Perchaya’s souls stood between Diamis and the release of Maldorath. After that, this ritual would no longer be necessary to keep Daniella on their side, because Maldorath would inhabit Daniella’s body, and the woman they knew would be gone.
It wouldn’t happen. This ended tonight.
“All right,” Kenton said. “That’s enough confirmation for me. Are we ready to move ahead with the plan?”
“Can’t happen soon enough,” Jaeme said. They crept back from the bluff to begin the long hike upstream. They walked in silence for several miles, listening carefully for any signs of an encampment of soldiers along the river. There would almost certainly be one, especially where they were going.
When they arrived at a grove of elm trees two hundred yards west of the Beldac dam, Kenton paused and put a hand on Jaeme’s shoulder. “There it is,” he said.
Jaeme stared up river at the massive wall, which blocked the whole of the valley carved by the river—fifty feet tall and a hundred yards long. It had been Diamis’ first contribution to the Sevairnese economy, a project he’d began almost immediately after succeeding the Drim, and it had taken more than fifteen years to complete. The heavy stones blocked the river, reinforced by many tons of gravel beyond the wall that helped lessen the pressure on the dam itself.
Beyond the wall was the Lake Beldac—a wide body created by the dam that occupied the land north of the peninsula. A series of aquifers led that water to the farmland of southern and central Sevairn, preserving the runoff that otherwise flowed to the sea. It was a good idea, really, and had done wonders for the farmers. Kenton felt bad for them. It wasn’t their fault they were governed by a psychotic blood mage.
But they wouldn’t enjoy so much prosperity after the return of Maldorath, Kenton was sure of that.
Jaeme folded his arms. He’d agreed to this plan before, but now that he was looking at the magnitude of the dam, he clearly had doubts. “I hope you’re not going to suggest I can move that much stone.”
Kenton shook his head. “You won’t have to. Loosen some of the stones, destabilize them, and the river will do the rest.”
“You want me to destabilize a giant slab of granite,” Jaeme said. “How am I to do that? By hanging on the face of the dam by my toes?”
Kenton smiled, and Jaeme’s expression hardened as he rightly realized that’s exactly what Kenton expected him to do.
“That’ll take hours, at best.”
“That’s fine. You can make handholds in the stone, to get to a place where you can begin to weaken it. I can watch for anyone that might be nearby, help you avoid them.”
“Or kill them,” Jaeme said.
Kenton nodded. “Or kill them. And then we can take the rest of the night, if you need.”
Kenton had a feeling they would need that long. He only hoped they wouldn’t need more. Keeping Jaeme undiscovered would be much harder in the daylight.
Jaeme narrowed his eyes at him. “You want me to break a dam that big, while I’m currently hanging off the front of it. And at the end of all that, you expect me to be in one piece?”
Kenton shrugged. “I’ll be right there with you atop the wall if you like. I can form some harnesses while you work, anchor a system so you can swing away quickly when the stones begin to give.”
Jaeme looked downriver the way they had come. “And you’re sure this will flood the sea caves? It won’t miss them entirely on its way out to sea?”
“This river formed those caves,” Kenton said. “The water will rush right through them.” It had done so long before Diamis built the dam, long before he used those caves as a shelter for the suffering of those children. The river flooded the caves during the spring run-off, but the water drained out of them, leaving them dry the rest of year. Even that spring flooding, though, would be nothing like the torrent that would pour through when the reservoir broke free. “I can’t do this without you.”
“I’ll do it,” Jaeme said. “But we’d better go have a closer look.”
As they approached up the hill toward the dam, Kenton discovered his miscalculation. There, at the sides of the wall and just below, waited soldiers. Four of them, that he could see from here. Kenton and Jaeme snuck around the side, farther from the river, climbing up to the high ground around the reservoir on the north side. And there, on the southern shores of the lake, was a camp of fifty-some military tents. Torches lit the camp, and at the edge a dozen horses were tied to stakes.
“Looks like you weren’t the only one who thought this was a good idea,” Jaeme said. “You do have to hand it to the Lord General. He thought of everything.”
Kenton wished, not for the first time, that Diamis was a little less prepared. Even with the size of that force, though, they were still undetected. “Yes,” Kenton said. “But he’s expected me before, and I can’t say that it’s ever done him any good.”
Jaeme was quiet for a moment. “You still want to do this.”
“It’s this or face a cave full of mages and three ships of soldiers, all waiting for us to strike, plus whatever other force they might be prepared to summon to their defense. At least here our mission affords us a bit more stealth. Unless you’d prefer to spend months burrowing down through the cliffs.”
“No,” Jaeme said. “I said I’ll do it, and I will.” He took a deep breath. “At least it isn’t the top of Tir Neren.”
Kenton smiled. He’d forgotten about Jaeme’s fear of heights. “And there won’t be a long flight afterward.” Unless, of course, the river washed them away.
Jaeme sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”
Forty-nine
One thing Nikaenor had to say for his fish form—he could swim faster than any human who had ever lived. He cut through the ocean with little resistance, adjusting nearly automatically for currents. In fact, he thought he was moving quicker than he had while searching for Mirilina—and definitely more so than when going against the current of the river in Tir Neren, even though now he had his breeches and belt pouch providing resistance.
Maybe each time he was getting better at this, becoming more and more accustomed to the ebb and flow of underwater life.
He wasn’t sure that was something he wanted.
It’ll do some good today, he reminded himself as he moved forward, pushing himself even faster. Saara must be far enough from shore that the armada hadn’t spotted her yet, or every ship would have turned to intercept her. But it wouldn’t be long before she was in sight—and even if she saw the armada before they saw her, Nikaenor had no doubt there were smaller, quicker vessels on the lookout, as well.
He had to make it to her first.
Like when he’d dove for Mirilina, it was dark outside and dark in the ocean, but there were still colors: the glint of a school of silver fish, the faint glow of a certain type of coral—a different type from the kind he’d used to fend off the giant eel no one seemed to believe him about.
More than vision, though, he had this sense of what was around him. The prickle against his skin that told him instinctively he was nearing a jutting rock, the minute shift in the current that indicated a larger creature swimming not far away.
It wasn’t so large as the eel, he thought, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be a late-night snack for a shark. He shuddered and kept moving forward, trying to pay attention to these tiny shifts around him, to feel it in his bones.
It was that sense, more than sight, that told him when he’d reached the ships—the way the hulking masses bobbed with the tide. Huge shadows allowing moonlight through in the space between them.
Nikaenor doubted that soldiers would be able to see him in those patches of moonlight, especially if he swam extra low, but it wasn’t worth the risk. He shifted direction so he’d swim right under one of the behemoths. It should have been easy, uncomplicated—swim under and away, with the soldiers on the boats none the wiser.
The first sign that wouldn’t be so was a strange pattern of barely shifting currents that didn’t make sense to him—not until he ran into the thick chains hanging down off the side of the boat and forming a net of metal with spaces far too small for Nikaenor to fit through.
He blinked, pulling back. These weren’t fishing nets, even if they were modeled after them.
Not that it meant they weren’t in place to catch a certain fish.
Panic made his heart beat faster. Diamis knew this would be their plan, or at least suspected it enough to take extra precautions. Or had Daniella been the one to guess that at they might try to intercept Saara? Yes, it had probably been her, as she knew the details of the call that pulled the chosen together, and the distance Nikaenor had been able to swim when he went after Mirilina.
He tried to calm his nerves; tried to breath deep without remembering he was breathing only ocean water. Tried to think.
There had to be a break in these somewhere, a gap big enough. An opening deep down below, maybe.
First, though, he swam to the side, running his webbed hands gently along the chains as he went, passing through the wide space between the looming hull of this boat, then the next. It stood to reason Diamis wouldn’t have just draped one boat with the chains, but you don’t add a substitute to the recipe unless you’ve checked the corners of the pantry, as Mum would say.
As he guessed, the chains ran the full space between the boats and draped down the side of the next one, too. A huge net extending from ship to ship to ship, uniform enough that he wouldn’t squeeze through a single hole of it. Gods, this much iron, fastened into nets . . . It would have cost a fortune, the kind possessed only by the empire of Sevairn. It had been nearly a month since Daniella reported to Diamis—but Nikaenor hadn’t wanted to believe that even Diamis’ war machine could have churned out such a large barrier in so short a time.
Swimming upward just a bit, he could see by the growing moonlight that the chain rose high out of the water in the space between the two boats, connected one to another. He could probably climb the thing like a ladder, but if Diamis had planned things out this far, there would surely be sentries on the lookout for that.
Which led to his next plan: find a gap underneath. There had to be one. The ocean floor wasn’t some level ground; it was more jagged and unpredictable than one of Tam’s temper tantrums. Surely he could squeeze through.
He held onto a small hope that the ocean floor was so far down that even the great Lord General couldn’t get enough chain made to reach it.
Nikaenor felt along the chains as he went, hoping, praying to Mirilina that this might be the case. The chains startled him by jerking suddenly, pulled away from his hand, and he thought for a moment that there was some Vorgalian trick on them, that the soldiers above knew he was here and were coming for him.
But no. It was a large fish, only slightly smaller than him, which had battered against the thing, as confused by it as he had initially been. Too large to move through, the fish swam away.
Nikaenor’s hopes were dashed as he reached the bottom of the ocean—the ocean floor from this coast seemed to slope down more gradually, without the vast drop-off from the shelf off the coast of Ithale. Or possibly he hadn’t reached the shelf, and Diamis wisely had positioned his ships closer to shore.
His heart sunk as he felt the chain there, against the sandy, rocky floor. It was much thicker and heavier. He tugged at it, pulled at it until he thought his scales would pop off against the strain, but it was basically one long anchor.
A long anchor, he discovered as he swam alongside it, which was also flexible enough to sink into every dip, to rise with every rocky outcropping. There was no way he was going under this thing—if he dug down, it would only sink into the gap. And there was no way to go over. He briefly considered swimming to where the armada ended—because surely this netting had to end wherever the armada did—but Diamis would have boats circled closer to the coast at some distant place and blocked off there. Trying that and failing—it would take far too long. He’d never make it to Saara in time.
If Nikaenor could have cried underwater, he might have.
What would the others do? Something unexpected, no doubt. Something even Diamis or Daniella wouldn’t have planned on. Like Kenton’s plan at getting them into the palace or Perchaya’s rescue of Kenton in Ithale. Something brave, like Jaeme facing his uncle in battle, or Sayvil joining the resistance to protect her husband, or Saara marching right back into the palace where she was almost murdered by her own aunt.
Nikaenor thought he’d come up with a clever plan to reach Saara. But it hadn’t been so unexpected, after all. And brave, well—he’d certainly been in dangerous situations, but he’d mostly been following others’ directions, not trusting in his own. He’d jumped into the fray to save his friends at times, sure, but that had all been instinct and desperate need. But when it came to deliberate actions, he wasn’t nearly so brave—he’d had to be all but forced to claim Mirilina. So was it practicality that kept him from climbing over the chains or cowardice? Fear of the arrows that would pierce his scaled skin when the soldiers watched him climb up with nothing to shield him from the moonlight—
Wait.
Nikaenor’s pulse raced again. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he needed to find somewhere less exposed. Somewhere that would be unexpected, because it would bring him so close to those soldiers he could reach out and tweak their noses.
Maybe he needed to climb up next to the ships themselves.
This would either be a brilliant solution or the thing that pegged him as a half-wit for the rest of his—likely short—life. But he didn’t have any other options.
Nikaenor swam up the chain, careful not to tug on it as he went. Doubtless the soldiers saw the thing move every so often as something swam into it, but that didn’t mean they weren’t paying careful attention. Diamis must have told them they were looking for something—blood mages using Vorgalian air masks, perhaps, or even something closer to the truth, like a person who used Drim magics to turn into a fish.
Nikaenor angled up towards the bottom of the boat and gave the chain an experimental tug. As he suspected, the thing barely gave—at least not in a way that would notify any soldiers above. It was too firmly attached to the boat here, with less give than the section between boats.
Taking another deep breath of water, Nikaenor closed his eyes and started climbing. Slowly, carefully, his webbed feet and hands finding purchase on the crossing chains of the net. He felt his head break the surface of the water, fighting now to keep his eyes open so he’d see if a soldier’s head popped up over the side of the boat, if a blade or arrow was headed his way.
But there was nothing. The water lapped around him; the boat creaked.
He breathed again—air, this time, which felt cold and sharp—and started moving up the chains on the side of the boat until he reached the edge of the railing and had to steel himself again before poking his head up to see over the railing.
Unexpected, he thought. Brave.
He made the sign of the waves across his brow and then stood taller, peering over the edge onto the ship. His eyes landed on this dark object or that—but soon he could make out the sentries on the boat, several of them, lining the edges of the bulwark and keeping watch into the night. They looked out from the ship in all directions, but the nearest hadn’t sighted him yet, hidden as he was by the railing and a large coil of rope stowed nearby.
Still, the nearest soldier was within spitting distance. Well, for Nikaenor’s brother Ronan, probably. He’d always been a good spitter.
Nikaenor wouldn’t be able to cross the boat—he might not be seen if he snuck up the middle, but at some point he’d have to make it into the water on the other side without being shot by one of the crossbows leaned against the inside of the bulwark within reach of the sentries.
Nikaenor gripped the chain. He was going to have to climb over it here, under the shelter of the ship’s railing, where it was fixed to a large eye hook drilled into the ship’s hull. The sentries on the other boat might see him, but he was hidden from the gleam of Arkista by the edge of the railing, and here in the dark shadow, if he moved slowly and silently enough, he had a chance to go undetected.
So Nikaenor, slowly, slowly, lowered his body down below the railing again, still clinging to the iron net. And then he eased himself up and over the iron netting, moving first one leg and then the other, trying to do it all without unduly jostling the net.
This was where the heaviness of the iron net worked in his favor. The net wasn’t prone to moving under his weight, heavily weighted as it was. Still, one of the links shifted against another, the sound seemed as loud to his own ears as if he’d dropped an entire bag of fishhooks.
Nikaenor froze, not daring to breathe. On the next boat, he saw one of the dark shapes move toward the bulwark.
No arrow came, though, and no light charm blinked on to illuminate his hiding place. Nikaenor let out a breath and moved to lift his other leg over.
And then heard the louder creak of footsteps on the deck above him. His heart leapt into his throat so fast it nearly choked him. Had the sentry on the other boat sent a signal, letting the sailors on this one know where he was?
“Getting cross-eyed out there yet?” a man’s voice said above him. It approached the corner of the boat, and Nikaenor huddled below the railing.
