Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [317]
"Are you all right?" he asked me, only a little breathless.
"Yes," I said, drawing in my breath in a gasp. "No. Ah, Elua, Joscelin ... what did he say to you, at the end?"
Leaning on the railing, he looked at the water surging past the ship as the Master of the Straits drove us back up the coast of Terre d'Ange.
"He said not to tell you," Joscelin said. "He said not knowing would drive you mad."
I jerked my head, stung. "He did not!" I retorted in outrage, although it sounded very like something Hyacinthe might have said. Joscelin glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.
"No," he admitted at last. "He said if I let harm befall you, he would raise the very seas to fall upon me and crush me."
That, too, sounded like Hyacinthe. I gazed at the empty waters falling away behind us, smiling through my tears. "My friend," I whispered, "I will miss you."
All day the eldritch wind blew, driving us northward. We rode upon its crest, surging forward, coast-hugging, heading for the northern tip of Azzalle. Quintilius Rousse held hard at the helm, shouting commands in D'Angeline and bastard Cruithne. We kept a lookout for the remainder of our fleet, but no other vessels were to be seen on these waters.
When we reached the point where the Rhenus opened onto the sea, we saw why.
They had been brought there before us, all of them. The sandy-beached mouth of the river was clogged with craft, ships and oar-boats and rafts, a vast encampment awaiting us on the southern shore of the river. They hailed us with great shouts, crowding the shore. Standing in the prow, I watched Drustan's eyes alight, rejoicing to see his people alive and hale.
Half would have died in the crossing, the Master of the Straits had told Quintilius Rousse. In truth, it was a dubious undertaking; who was to say it was not true? One life measured as naught against hundreds. And yet Hyacinthe was my friend, and I grieved for him.
We tossed lines ashore, and dozens of willing hands drew us landward; disembarking in triumph, nearly the whole of our company reunited on solid ground, hands clasped, backs thumped, tales were exchanged. Our arrival followed theirs by mere hours, it seemed; we heard the stories, unbelievable to any save us, of how the great waves had cradled their fleet, to the shores of First Sister and back, depositing them safe as mother's babes on the silted shores of the Rhenus.
There had been losses, it was true, when the Master of the Straits had first risen from the waves. Seventeen men, and four horses. I added their lives, in my mind, to the price of his freedom. Dear-bought, indeed.
But most were alive.
The Twins had taken command in our collective absence, and made a good job of it. None spoke of it at the time, but I heard later how the army despaired, cast upon the shores of First Sister, and how it was Grainne who rallied their spirits, sparking them with her own indomitable will; Eamonn, Eamonn had kept them organized, pasturing the horses, drying and cleaning their sea-damped arms, setting parties to forage, finding coast-dwellers of the Eidlach Or who spoke D'Angeline to communicate with the islefolk, a skill garnered from years of trading shouted news with Azzallese fishermen. Indeed, he found some who had known Thelesis de Mornay, and given her shelter in her exile.
And when the face of the waters returned, rising to tower above the bay and ordering them back to the fleet, it was the Twins who convinced the army to obey. I was not there, and cannot properly give voice to what transpired, but it gave grist to the bardic mills of the Dalriada for many a generation.
Quintilius Rousse lost no time in reuniting with his men. Not a one among them had been lost and, indeed, the discipline he had instilled in them may be credited for the low number of losses on shipboard. Assembling his decimated crew, he asked for volunteers among them, picking the five best riders to depart ere the sun's dying rays fled the