Read Online Lord of the Isles by David Drake - Free Book Online Page A

their feet more than equaled the decreasing buoyancy as the hull left the water.
    When the crewmen ended their forward pull, the sternpost was hard against the seawall near the inn’s door. Though the vessel was as high on the beach as possible, waves still washed the bronze beak that made the ship’s bow a weapon.

    Four of the sailors on deck lifted a boarding ramp and pushed the end of it to a pair of their number ready on top of the seawall. The men on board lashed their end to deckposts while their fellows braced the other with callused feet.
    â€œNot taking any chances with Her Ladyship having a tumble,” Nonnus said in a grimly musing voice. “She wouldn’t have liked the voyage even before the storm, not in the least. A trireme’s not a palace suite, no matter how rich and powerful you were on land.”
    Sharina touched his arm again. Some of her earliest memories were of the hermit who’d lifted her when she fell, washed her knee clean, and covered the scrape with a salve that drew away her pain with the sudden ease of grass lifting after a storm has wet the meadow.
    Nonnus was always reserved and perfectly controlled, to Sharina as well as to everyone else with whom he came in contact. To hear him joking with catlike humor—underlain by catlike cruelty—bothered Sharina worse than had the look of his bleak visage a moment before.
    One of the soldiers raised a trumpet, a long cone of silvery metal rather than a cowhorn, and blew a piercing two-note call. The soldier whose helmet crest was white—the others were red—shouted an order.
    The whole troop marched forward in unison two-abreast across the boarding ramp. Their hobnailed boots crashed on the planking and the dangling metal fittings of their armor jingled together. Each time their left feet came down the soldiers banged their spearshafts against their shields and shouted to create a harsh cacophony. It made Sharina’s muscles tense.
    â€œThe noise is to frighten an enemy when they attack,” Nonnus said in the same new voice. “It works with some, I’m told.”
    The sailors still aboard pressed the rail trying to look inconspicuous as the woman followed the troops down the deck. A fillet of silver lace fastened with pins whose diamond embellishments blazed in the sunlight bound her gray hair.
Her face had fine bones and a look of bored resignation.
    At the woman’s side, a half-step back so that her flaring cape didn’t brush his, was a young man in lustrous black: knee-high boots of polished leather, silk tunic, satin cape. His felt hat had rolled sides, three corners, and a black swan’s feather waving from its band. His carefully groomed mustache and goatee were probably intended to give gravity to his delicate features; instead they looked as though they’d been painted on a child.
    â€œAnother of Omifal’s finest,” the hermit said in that icy tone. “Watch them well, child. You’ll want to tell your grandchildren about this some day.”
    â€œNonnus,” Sharina said. “Please—please don’t use that voice. It …”
    Nonnus flinched as though she’d stabbed him. He knelt in an attitude of prayer, head bent and hands crossed. “I’m sorry, child,” he added before rising again from the seafoam. “I remember what was and I forget what should be. With the Lady’s help, I won’t let it happen again.”
    To cover her embarrassment, Sharina watched the young man. He’d paused at the stern to let the woman precede him off the ship. “He’s only a boy,” she murmured.
    â€œAbout twenty, I’d guess,” the hermit said, this time with dispassionate appraisal. “Nobles don’t age as fast as common folk.”
    As the youth strode across the ramp, his black cape fluttering in the sea breeze, Nonnus added, “It’s a bad age for a man, twenty. You have the strength to do