Chapter 355: The Ships at Dawn

The warning from Orselle reached us before the breakfast bread had been cut.

Mary entered without her usual folder. She carried a single sheet, still creased from the hand of the runner who had brought it through the gate.

“Ships,” she said.

I put down my knife.

“How many?”

“Seven seen before dawn. Possibly more beyond the headland. They are holding outside the harbor approaches.”

Evelyn reached for the report after I had read it. Adriana stood and went to the window, though there was nothing there she could see of a coast connected to us by a gate.

“Surtr’s?” she asked.

“Three carry his colors. Two carry the court’s. The others have not shown enough for the watch to identify them.”

The date at the top was June fourteenth.

One day after we had finished reassuring the provincial councils that we would tell them the truth about the danger.

“Baldr?” I asked.

“Closing the harbor to departures until he knows what they intend. He has called in the fishing boats that can still reach it.”

I looked at my wives.

Evelyn was already calculating what the receiving wards could take. Adriana had turned from the window and was reaching for the list Mary had left on our desk the previous evening.

Breakfast would have to wait.

Thor arrived at the council room carrying Mjolnir and the expression she wore when somebody else had chosen the day’s work for her.

Lexander came through from Concordia soon afterward.

The map of the coast occupied half the table. We had spent so long studying the roads that I had begun to think of the sea as the safe side of Orselle.

The harbor commander had corrected that mistake in his first report.

Four ships carried troops. One rode low enough to suggest a heavy cargo. Two smaller vessels were moving between them and the headland.

No attack had begun.

No fishing boat had been sunk.

But an Orselle merchant vessel approaching from the south had turned away after one of the smaller ships crossed its course.

“A blockade,” Lexander said.

“Or the beginning of one,” Thor replied.

Mary rested a finger beside the harbor.

“The gate keeps the city fed.”

“Within the limits of what we can move through it,” I said.

It carried people, supplies, wounded soldiers, messages, and the growing traffic of a kingdom learning to work together. It did not make the ships, fishing grounds, or coastal villages unnecessary.

Nor could it carry an entire harbor away from the sea.

We divided the work before dividing the force.

Thor would remain at Greykeep with the main reserve, watching the inland reports for an attack timed to draw us away from the coast. Lexander would coordinate Concordia’s reinforcements and maintain support for the returning provinces.

I would go to Orselle.

Eshara would accompany me with the company she had trained beside. Her first assignment would be the city walls and landing grounds, under Baldr’s command.

Daven was already at the coastal watch posts.

Tareth and Ossira could be shifted south for reconnaissance while the newer dragon volunteers covered the road patrols they left behind. We would keep enough eyes inland to notice if the enemy column beyond Slateford began moving again.

“No one attacks a ship because it has a sail,” Thor said. “We need to know where the rowers are, where the prisoners are, and whether the crews have a way to surrender.”

She looked toward me.

“And no storm until the harbor commander has explained what it will do to his own boats.”

“I was going to ask.”

“Good. I enjoy hearing that before the weather changes.”

Adriana caught me outside the receiving hall.

She had been speaking to the clerks about carts waiting on the Orselle side of the gate. If military traffic increased, some of those loads would need to move before they blocked the route entirely.

“There are two flour wagons and a cart of medicine ready,” she told me. “Mary is arranging the rest around them.”

“Thank you.”

She looked at the sword on my belt.

“You might not need that.”

“I hope not.”

“I wasn’t suggesting you leave it.”

I touched her cheek.

She leaned into my hand for a moment, then kissed my palm.

“Evelyn is with Aurelia. They are making room in case the coast sends more wounded.”

“Tell her I will send word when I arrive.”

“Tell her yourself when you come back.”

I smiled faintly.

“Both, then.”

She accepted that and let me go.

Orselle smelled of fish, tar, and people who had been awake too long.

The harbor bells were quiet now, but their warning had emptied the quays of anyone without work there. Sailors hauled spare lines onto the walls. Families carried bedding away from the houses nearest the outer waterfront.

Maren met me at the gate house.

“The council is in the harbor tower,” she said. “Your troops are being taken to their positions.”

Eshara bowed briefly and followed the waiting officer without asking to come with me.

I noticed.

So did Maren.

“She looks eager.”

“She has been learning where to put it.”

We climbed the stairs above the harbor.

Baldr stood at the open western window beside the harbor commander. Beyond them, the sea shone pale beneath a low bank of cloud.

The ships were easy to see.

That was part of the point.

They had positioned themselves where everyone on the walls could count them.

The harbor commander was named Rusk.

I had spoken with him several times since Orselle rejoined us, but that morning was the first time he had no patience left for ceremonial introductions.

He put a glass in my hand and pointed.

“The broad one in the center is a converted grain carrier. Those openings along the deck are for engines. The two on either side can put troops ashore in boats.”

“Can they enter the harbor?”

“Not without passing our batteries and the chain. Unless they first persuade us to lower it.”

He turned toward a table where a sealed message lay beside a damp white pennant.

“They have begun persuading.”

I read it.

The fleet demanded access for an inspection of Orselle’s harbor, warehouses, and transit gate. It claimed the city was sheltering unlawfully removed persons and supplying forces in rebellion against divine order.

Compliance would preserve trade.

Refusal would make the city responsible for whatever followed.

I set the page down carefully.

Maren watched my face.

“The council has already refused.”

“Good,” I said. “Now show me where they are most likely to land.”

There were three possibilities.

The harbor itself, dangerous for them but disastrous for us if they broke through. A narrow beach north of the outer fields, where boats could land beneath the cliffs. A sheltered southern cove connected to the city by a road barely wide enough for two carts to pass.

Baldr had troops watching both beaches.

Dorevan remained above the northern approach. Sareth covered the southern coast, with orders to report before engaging unless people were already under attack.

The enemy’s remaining dragon had not appeared.

That worried Aurethar, who joined us halfway through the discussion.

“It may be waiting inland,” he said. “Or they may have moved it elsewhere after losing the collars at Bell Quarry.”

“Do we know whether these ships carry the same instruments?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

Rusk pointed toward the anchored fleet.

“We know they have men at the oars on the two narrow vessels. We don’t know whether those men chose to be there.”

I studied the water between the ships and the harbor.

“Then sinking them is the wrong place to begin.”

We spent the afternoon preparing for something the enemy might never attempt.

Water barrels went up onto roofs. The wells were checked. Every boat capable of carrying a stretcher was assigned a crew and a place to wait inside the harbor.

Rusk explained the local currents to me until I could repeat them back without his expression changing.

The wind came from the southwest. Strengthening it too much would drive loose vessels toward the northern rocks. Turning it sharply could endanger fishing boats still making for the coast.

“What can you give me without drowning my neighbors?” he asked.

“Fog over their approach. A crosswind against their sails, carefully placed. Ice at the harbor mouth if we need it, though I would rather keep your own rescue boats moving.”

He considered the answer.

“Fog first. Only outside these markers.”

I nodded.

There was something reassuring about a man who looked at divine power and immediately asked where to put the boundary stakes.

The first boat reached us under a white cloth shortly before sunset.

It came from the smaller enemy vessel nearest the southern headland. Six men rowed it. A seventh lay across the bottom beneath a coat.

Our archers watched while Rusk directed them to an outer landing clear of the main harbor chain.

The men dropped their oars when challenged.

One stood with both hands raised and nearly lost his balance.

“We’re leaving,” he shouted. “We’re not carrying terms.”

Eshara stood beside the landing party, spear angled down rather than toward the boat.

“Then keep your hands visible and let us help you ashore.”

The man on the bottom had a crossbow wound in his side. Two of the rowers wore bruises around their wrists, but no enchanted bands.

They had been fishermen taken with their boat farther east.

They had escaped while carrying fresh water between ships.

Behind them, the fleet began sounding horns.

Their account changed the shape of the morning we expected.

The grain carrier held two fire-throwing engines and several wagons’ worth of ammunition. The troopships carried landing parties. The smaller vessels would tow burning rafts toward the harbor defenses if the attack began.

There were pressed sailors among the crews, though they could not say how many.

One of the fishermen had heard officers arguing about the northern beach.

Another had seen ropes, ladders, and shallow boats being made ready on the southern side of the fleet.

We questioned them separately and compared what they knew.

No single statement became the whole plan.

But Rusk doubled the crews assigned to towing and cutting loose anything burning that approached the chain.

Baldr strengthened the southern cove.

I went back to the tower and watched the last daylight fade around the ships.

At Greykeep, the children had been told there were boats to watch.

Adriana’s evening letter informed me that Carol considered this encouraging, because she liked boats.

Julian had attempted to explain that some boats carried people who meant harm.

Carol had suggested asking them to get out.

I read that line twice and laughed despite myself.

Evelyn had added a note beneath it.

The wounded fisherman is being treated here. He is not out of danger. His brother is with him. We have room for more if you need it.

Below that, Adriana had written one more sentence.

We would also like you back.

I folded the page and tucked it inside my coat.

Then I went down to eat with the watch.

The attack began in darkness, before sunrise on June fifteenth.

It began with a bell from the southern watch post.

Daven’s warning followed through the relay almost immediately: boats moving toward the cove, more than the sentries could count with certainty.

Then the ships offshore began advancing.

The harbor batteries answered the first vessel that crossed Rusk’s marked line.

I stood on the tower platform with rain gathering around my hands and laid fog across the outer water.

Not over our quays.

Not over the rescue boats waiting beneath the wall.

I left the channel markers visible from inside and hid them from the ships trying to enter.

A bright shape rose through the mist.

The first engine had fired.

It struck short of the breakwater and burst across the sea in a sheet of flame.

Rusk swore beside me.

“They’ve guessed the range.”

“Then let’s spoil the next guess.”

I pushed a crosswind against the grain carrier’s upper sails.

Its bow turned a fraction. That was enough to force its crew to correct before firing again.

The effort pulled at me strangely. On land, I knew where my walls and ridges would stand. Here, every movement continued into another movement, wind against sail, sail against hull, hull against water.

I kept my eyes on Rusk’s signals.

The second shot struck the outer stonework.

Men ducked beneath shields. Burning fragments scattered across the platform below us.

I drove rain onto the nearest fire while the bucket crews reached the others.

An archer stumbled backward with blood on his forehead.

I caught him before he struck the stairwell and handed him to two sailors.

Beyond the fog, horns answered one another.

Then a runner reached the platform.

“Baldr requests the southern reserve. They have landed.”

Eshara went with the reserve.

I saw her company moving through the lower street, shields catching the firelight, her spear upright so the men behind her could follow it.

She looked once toward the tower.

I raised a hand.

Then she was gone around the corner.

Rusk sent the next runner to the northern watch. Dorevan had reported boats testing that beach too, but they had turned away when he landed above the sand.

The southern cove was the real attempt.

The harbor attack was meant to keep us watching the water.

We still had to watch it.

A burning raft appeared through the fog, drifting toward the chain.

Behind it came another.

Rusk shouted for the tow crews.

I reached for the rain and brought it down harder.

The first raft struck the outer buoy line before a boat could reach it.

Its fire hissed under the rain but did not die. Oil burned between the timbers.

I froze a narrow band of water against its forward edge, slowing it just long enough for a harbor crew to hook a line beneath one corner.

They pulled with the current rather than against it, swinging the raft away from the chain and toward empty stone.

The second tow crew reached the other raft.

An enemy boat emerged behind them.

Archers stood in its bow.

I raised a sloping shield of ice between the boats as the first arrows flew. It broke almost immediately under their movement, but the moment was enough for our battery to fire a warning shot across the attackers’ bow.

Two archers dropped flat.

The boat turned away.

Rusk slapped my shoulder once.

“Keep that channel open.”

I did.

Above the outer fleet, wings cut through the cloud.

Tareth and Ossira had arrived from the inland patrol with Aurethar guiding them.

They did not dive blindly through the fog.

They circled until the harbor signal gave them the grain carrier’s position, then approached from behind its windward quarter.

From the tower, I saw Tareth strike the upper rigging with his claws.

Canvas tore.

Ossira landed for a moment across the stern structure, crushing the steering platform before launching herself away again.

Neither breathed fire.

The ship turned slowly, helplessly, across the path of one of its escorts.

I eased the crosswind before the collision could drive both hulls together.

Rusk watched through his glass.

“The engines have lost their bearing.”

Then he lowered the glass sharply.

“Men overboard.”

The nearest rescue boat was already moving.

I thinned the fog along its route and held the wind off its side while the crew rowed toward the figures struggling in the water.

Some wore enemy colors.

One clung to a broken spar with both hands.

Another disappeared beneath the surface before the boat reached him.

I could not pull the whole sea aside to find one man.

That knowledge hurt in a way no exhaustion could explain.

The sailors recovered five from the water and turned back low in their boat, one of their own men holding pressure against a stranger’s bleeding shoulder.

Beyond them, the damaged carrier began drifting away from the harbor approach.

Its escorts moved to cover it.

The horns changed.

Rusk listened, then breathed out.

“They’re withdrawing from the mouth.”

“The cove?” I asked.

“Still fighting.”

Baldr’s report reached us after the sun had cleared the horizon.

The landing force had reached the first bend in the southern road before our defenders stopped it.

Eshara’s company arrived while the enemy was trying to climb the slope around Baldr’s flank. She had taken position with the mortal shield line and stayed there, shortening her reach when her own people needed room instead of sweeping the whole hillside with her power.

The attackers could neither widen their front nor return easily to the boats behind them.

Sareth settled on the ridge above the cove, cutting off the path they had hoped would lead around the city defenses.

Their commander was wounded.

When Baldr offered surrender, more than half accepted.

Others escaped in the boats that remained afloat.

We did not pursue them onto the open water.

By midmorning, the road was secure.

Orselle had held.

I went down from the tower when Rusk could spare me.

My legs felt unreliable on the stairs.

The harbor looked battered in daylight. Stone chips covered the lower platforms. One storage roof had burned through despite the rain. Two fishing boats had been damaged at their moorings.

The chain remained intact.

So did the gate house.

Maren stood beside a team carrying wounded men toward it, counting litters as they passed.

“How many?” I asked.

“We are still receiving them from the cove.”

She looked at my face.

“Sit down before you become one of the things I have to count.”

I sat on an overturned crate.

A boy brought me water and stared at my hair until his mother pulled him back to the bucket line.

I drank and watched the harbor crews begin recovering their ropes.

The count was complete by evening.

Seven of our defenders had died. Twenty-nine were wounded, including sailors, soldiers, and three people struck while carrying water to the fires.

Eshara had a cut along one arm and was furious about the two soldiers from her company who would not return with her.

Baldr sat beside her while the healer finished the bandage.

I heard her say, “I could have gone farther up the slope.”

“And left the line you were holding,” he replied.

She looked at him.

“You kept the flank from breaking. That is what your people needed.”

She did not answer.

But she stayed seated when he asked her to rest.

We held forty-one prisoners from the landing, besides the five sailors pulled from the sea. Their weapons had been secured. Their wounded were being treated.

The escaped fishermen were asked, separately, whether they recognized anyone.

There would be time to sort their accounts carefully.

The fleet had moved beyond immediate reach, but it had not vanished.

Aurethar watched the damaged carrier being taken under tow behind the southern headland. The other ships gathered around it.

They could return.

They could remain offshore and make fishing dangerous.

They could seek an easier landing farther along the coast.

At the evening council, Rusk marked the water we could watch reliably and the stretches we could not.

Daven would extend the warning chain where the coast allowed it. Dragon patrols would inspect beyond the headlands in pairs. The harbor would reopen only for controlled departures with the watch’s approval.

Maren listened, then pushed a clean sheet toward me.

“Our shipwrights want authority to begin fitting two fast harbor boats for patrol. They can use the spare timbers intended for the old quay repair.”

I read the request.

“The harbor commander agrees?”

“He wrote half of it,” she said.

Rusk grunted.

I signed.

I returned to Greykeep after the first relief company had passed through.

Evelyn was still in the infirmary.

Adriana met me in the corridor outside it, carrying clean cloths she had been helping sort.

She set them down when she saw me.

“You came back.”

“I said I would.”

“You said you intended to.”

I put my arms around her.

She held me more tightly than usual, then stepped back far enough to inspect my face.

“Have you eaten?”

“Some bread.”

“When?”

I considered the question.

She sighed.

“Come with me.”

Evelyn found us half an hour later with a meal on Julian’s tray and Adriana making certain I did more than look at it.

My first wife stopped in the doorway, closed her eyes for a moment, and came to sit beside us.

“The fisherman survived the night,” she said. “The one who came before the attack.”

I set down my spoon.

“Good.”

“His brother has asked whether he can help repair the boats.”

I thought of the men rowing through the fog to reach people whose uniforms they could not yet see.

“Rusk will find something for him.”

Julian came in before I had finished eating.

Garrick Valewood stayed near the door while the boy approached with an object wrapped in cloth.

“We made another thing,” Julian said.

I looked at him over the rim of my cup.

“Should I prepare for more paint?”

“No. Well, not much.”

He unfolded the cloth.

A little wooden boat rested inside, its hull shaped carefully enough to float upright. It had no weapons, no mast yet, and a seat wide enough for several of the children’s small figures.

“Carol wanted a boat where everyone could get out safely,” he explained. “Then Grandfather said we should make one that could bring people in too.”

I ran a finger along the smooth edge.

“Did you test it?”

“In the washing basin.”

Garrick cleared his throat.

“After removing the soap.”

Julian nodded seriously.

“That turned out to matter.”

I laughed, and some of the tightness in my chest finally loosened.

Later, after the children were asleep, a final report came from Orselle.

The rescue crews had recovered another sailor alive near the rocks north of the harbor. He had held onto a broken hatch cover through most of the day before a patrol boat found him.

He was being warmed and treated.

The message gave no opinion about his loyalty.

It gave his name.

I read it aloud to Evelyn and Adriana, then set the report beside the wooden boat.

Outside our windows, rain began without any help from me.

Evelyn leaned against my shoulder. Adriana tucked her feet beneath her and took my hand.

We listened until the first drops became a steady sound against the glass.

Tomorrow, the ships would still be out there.

Tonight, one more man had come out of the water.