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

almost anything you want, but you don’t have the judgment to know what the price of some of those things is going to be in later times.”
    â€œLet’s get closer,” Sharina said, in part because she didn’t want to think about what Nonnus meant by what he’d just said.
    They walked up the seawall’s rough face with the ease of long practice and strong legs. The masons of the Old Kingdom built with such skill that even after weathering for a
millennium the courses were as tight as splits within individual stones.
    The soldiers had formed a double rank between the mill and the inn. The two nobles frowned in puzzlement as they stood with the trumpeter, bannerman, and white-crested officer.
    The hamlet’s residents watched in a murmuring circle, but none of them spoke to the newcomers. The strangers were an apparition here, a wonder greater than a stranded whale. Katchin the Miller stood sideways at the back of the crowd as though ready to flee.
    â€œMaybe he thinks they’re royal tax collectors,” Sharina whispered to her companion. “Maybe they are!”
    â€œNot them, child,” Nonnus murmured back. “There was never a tax collector who rated an escort of Blood Eagles.”
    Aboard the ship, sailors brought packets of personal goods from below and tossed them down to their fellows on the beach. A team was attaching a small sail to a frame of oars for a shelter. The sailors seemed cheerful in contrast to the formal discipline of the armored soldiers. They were probably glad to have made a safe landfall despite the storm which battered their vessel.
    After conferring with the woman, the officer shouted, “The procurator Asera bos-Gezaman demands food and lodging during the time she stays in this community. In the name of Valence the Third, King of the Isles!”
    He turned his head slightly as he spoke so that his demands swept the onlookers in general. “She also requires food and lodging for twenty-five soldiers of the Royal Guard and food for two hundred sailors. Immediately!”
    Sharina’s father stepped forward. “I’m Reise or-Laver, the innkeeper here,” he said to the officer. “I can offer your mistress food and lodging, though not of the sort she’d find in Carcosa or the house of one of her peers.”
    â€œOf course not,” Asera said, speaking for herself for the first time. “This is Haft, not civilization!”
    Reise dropped to one knee, lowered his head, and made an
odd gesture with his outstretched right hand as though he were brushing something across the ground. Sharina had never seen her father do anything like that before. Then he rose and said to Asera, “As Her Ladyship says, of course.”
    Asera chuckled in a reaction that smoothed her face and made her look unexpectedly attractive. “Court manners on the east coast of Haft?” she said. “Now you have surprised me, innkeeper. Let’s go inside and see if your cooking can surprise me as well.”
    Reise bowed again and started toward the door of the inn. “Are you the village chief or whatever he’s called here as well?” Asera asked as she followed, accompanied by the young noble but not the officer. “That damned ship needs repairs and a new sail before we set off again for Carcosa … .”
    Katchin hurried after the others now that he was sure of the situation. “I’m the count’s bailiff for this borough!” he called as the nobles went inside.
    The officer gave an order that released his men from their rigid brace. They began looking around the community. The villagers’ conversation grew louder, and one or two of the bolder locals approached the strangers with questions or offers.
    â€œThey were just blown here,” Sharina said, glad to have an explanation for the ship’s presence. “Like Tenoctris and the seawolves, I suppose.”
    â€œYes, but more like which of