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23

The Kings of the White Islands found their ships at last, and not a day too soon.

Progress had been rapid enough earlier, but not easy. The Islanders, tireless on their ice floes, were unused to hill-climbing. They became sore-footed and irritable. There were quarrels and killings, and only the cruel hands of the Four Kings held them from tribal warfare.

Several hundred of the people of Iubar had been forced to march by land as well, because there was not room for them in their ships. They, too, were sore-footed and irritable, and they suffered from the steady diet of fish, which they insisted on cooking. Nothing was available from the land, and scurvy plagued them, as did the dysentery common to camps. Daily halts were made for burial parties. The Islanders ate everything raw, and throve. They became increasingly impatient with the Iubarians, threatening to go on alone and leave them to their misery.

Stark and Halk spent much time trying to hold the ill-mated force together. Stark was a grim and silent man these days, and even Halk walked wide of him. Gerd and Grith were ever at his heels, and the whole pack followed when he went among the ranks.

Morn was Stark's liaison with the ships of Iubar, and the situation there was worsening with each rising of Old Sun. Over-crowded and deep-laden as they were, the ships could still outdistance the marchers on land, and must needs heave to and wait, lest they lose touch entirely.

There is sickness aboard, said Morn one day. It costs my people much effort to find food for so many. Water becomes a problem. There is fear, and much discontent. The Lady Sanghalain is told by her advisers to forget the promise of star-ships and sail on to seek new land for her people, abandoning those on shore. They care nothing for the Islanders.

They will, said Stark, when they need them to fight. And what about the Iubarians here, Sanghalain's own folk?

There are those who say that they must be sacrificed for the good of the rest. One day, she will have to listen.

Stark did not need to be told how near this shaky alliance was to breaking up. He could feel it, as a man feels quicksand beneath his feet.

So, when Morn brought word of a fortified town ahead, and a harbor filled with ships, he took the news at once to the Four Kings where they marched beneath the gold-bright Head of Gengan.

Aud showed his large, strong teeth. "Now," he said, "we shall see how the Dark Man fights." It was a simple operation, swiftly done. The Irnanese had chosen to march by land, with Halk. All the rest were in the boat, which did not sail in company with the ships of Iubar but stayed closer inshore, in constant touch with Stark. Now the tribesmen and the Fallarin and Tarf, except those necessary to crew the boat, joined the land forces, glad of something to do.

Leaving Halk in charge, Stark and Tuchvar ranged ahead with the hounds in two separate parties, to locate any landward guardposts. The Northhounds found and silenced them before the watchers were aware of any force approaching through the thick woods with their curtain of frost-blighted leaves.

From a ridge of high ground, Stark looked down at the town.

It seemed cramped within a ditch and palisade. Probably it had grown too rapidly, as lost and landless people accreted around the strong leader whose crude banner hung above the gate—a tanned hide with a splash of color on it, indistinguishable at this distance. Some of the buildings were old. Others were new or still in the making, and many were rough shelters of boughs and skins.

In the small, crowded harbor were craft much like the one Stark's people used, designed alike for fishing and for battle. A number of these had been stripped and supplied with mechanisms that had nothing to do with fishing. Most of the half-dozen coasting traders moored along the outer quay at the far side of the harbor were probably prizes captured by the refitted boats. The quay itself, like the houses of the original village, was old, a rough construction of logs and stones.

People moved in the streets of the town. There was a market. The hammers of builders rang. Along the harbor front fishermen mended nets, and among the boats a scattering of men repaired rigging or banged away at carpentry.

On a small island, little more than a hump of rock beside the harbor mouth stood a tumbledown tower with a mangonel on top and some armed men lounging about. A narrow causeway led from the tower to the end of the quay, and people were fishing from it with hand lines. Some sort of ordered life had found a footing here and was resuming its normal patterns. It seemed a pity to break them up again, but there was no help for it and the damage ought not to be irreparable, no more than a severe shaking-up.

Stark looked at the sky. Then he went back down from the ridge to where the army waited. By the sea's edge he conferred with the Four Kings and with his own leaders, and with Morn, and presently Morn slipped into the tideless water and disappeared, heading for Sanghalain's ships, which lay out of sight beyond a headland.

Stark said to the Four Kings, "Pick your men." He turned to Aud. "You and I will march together."

Aud smiled. "Where are your very powerful weapons, Dark Man?"

"They're not needed here," Stark said. "Unless you would feel safer?"

Aud snarled, and went to collect his force. They set off through the woods, making a long circle around the town. The hounds ran ahead as before, to clear the way. They were excited, impatient for battle. They growled and whimpered, and their minds were filled with sparks of fire.

Stark's mind, like his heart, was filled with blackness. He needed the release of battle even more than the hounds, before that which was inside him should overwhelm him. He led the long line of Islanders—Aud's and Astrane's—among the blighted trees, going fast, with a morose and savage face that made Aud think better of his taunts.

Old Sun dropped over the edge of the world before they had completed their circuit.

In darkness, Stark led the way down toward the harbor side. They waited among the trees, where scrub woods covered a slope above the water. Gerd and Grith pressed close to Stark, panting, and he laid his hands on them as the first of the Three Ladies rose in the northern sky. Stark's eyes caught the light and shone like ice, whereas the eyes of the hounds were hot and yellow.

The palisade gate was shut. The town was remarkably quiet, showing few lights. The sentries the hounds had slain must have been found by now. Stark wondered what the leaders had made of them, being dead with no mark on them except the look of fear, and whether they knew about the army so close at hand. Certainly they would be alert and on guard. The only surprises would be in the method of attack and the size of the forces involved—which would not include the Iubarian marchers, who were far behind. The second of the Three Ladies rose. The harbor water gleamed pure silver, the dark hulls and masts in sharp silhouette against it. The only lamps were in the island tower at the end of the quay, a few vagrant yellow rays showing through arrow-slits and cracks in the masonry.

The Islanders were as still as couching beasts. Stark could hear their breathing, and the rough panting of the hounds. He listened beyond these sounds, stretching his hearing against the outer silence, and all at once he heard a small splashing, as though a fish had jumped, close by the tower.

Dark shapes broke the quiet silver. They were all around the tower, on the causeway, rushing the inner defenses. A man screamed, and the night shattered into barbs of sound.

Stark said, "Be ready."

The Islanders gathered themselves, a faint rustling among the trees.

Voices shouted in the town. A flat-toned drum pounded and a horn blew.

More dark shapes appeared on the quay. Their wet hides glistened as they busied themselves among the mooring lines.

"Now," said Stark. And Astrane's men went, with a crackling of leaves, straight for the quay, where they would guard the Ssussminh.

The town gates burst open. Armed men rushed out, heading for the harbor.

"Now!" Stark shouted to Aud, and ran from the woods with the Northhounds baying before him.

The townsmen turned to fight. Stark saw a jostling of hard leathery faces in the gentle light, and a brandishing of weapons. He heard screaming as the hounds killed. Then he was in the midst of it.

He was only dimly aware of Aud fighting beside him, silent and deadly. The Islanders never made a sound, either of challenge or pain, and he felt something eerie in that voiceless ferocity that contrasted with the shouts and cries of the townsmen, who outnumbered the Islanders but who quickly became uncertain whether they were fighting men or trolls.

Nevertheless, the townsmen fought fiercely, until the other part of the army came pouring down the cliffs and took them in flank. Then they retreated, running in panic for the gate until a powerfully built man with a mane of yellow hair roared and rallied them and beat the Islanders back. Stark crossed blades with him briefly, and then the fighting swept them apart. A few minutes later, the townsmen were shut inside their palisade again and Stark stood shivering and sweating while the hounds fed around him. Aud looked at him once, then turned away.

The small army leaned on its spears and waited until the coasting ships and a sufficient number of smaller craft had been towed or worked out of the harbor, with the aid of the Ssussminh, the Fallarin putting a breath of wind in the sails. Sanghalain's larger ships now stood off the harbor mouth to discourage pursuit by sea. The Islanders withdrew, making their way back to the shore, and the gates of the town remained closed. The lengthy process of embarkation began. When the last of the Islanders and Iubarians were safely crammed away somehow in the captured craft, Stark returned to his own boat and slept for a long time. When he awoke, the strange look was gone from him, and Ashton was at pains to hide his relief.

The ships sailed in company, in two separate wings that did not intermix. They made good speed with a following wind. Old Sun's rusty fires burned hotter with each day. At night the Three Ladies mounted higher overhead, their brilliance echoed in the phosphorescent wakes. It was necessary to put into shore for water, and often there was fighting. At sea, predatory sails showed from time to time, and then sheered off when both the size and poverty of the fleet became evident. Pedrallon put off his furs and ceased to shiver. Neither the Iubarians nor the Ssussminh had any use for the rotting tropics, and in any case these were already beleaguered, crowded with refugees from both north and south and violently disinclined to welcome any more. It seemed that Sanghalain had no choice but to go on to Ged Darod, in hopes of the star-ship that Gerrith had promised.

But all that way north across the Great Sea to Skeg, the radio gave not even the faintest whisper of a human voice. They heard only the far-off hiss and crackle of star-talk, where the great suns spoke among themselves of things unknowable to man.

Stark could not imagine that Gerrith would have lied to him, but in her state of exalted self-deception she might have believed anything. Prophecies were slippery things, blades to turn in the believer's hand and pierce him. Stark looked at Old Sun and knew that the ginger star was like to be the only sun that he and Simon Ashton would ever see.

And then that happened which made him think that, after all, Gerrith might have seen true things in her Water of Vision.

A sudden tropic storm struck the fleet. Its brief violence did for several of the smaller craft, and Stark's was among them. Her mast went by the board and her sprung seams took water so rapidly that there was no time to save anything but their lives. Transceivers and automatics went to the bottom, leaving them as Gerrith had said—mute, and with nothing of the off-worlds left in their hands.

The need to reach Ged Darod quickly became like a fever that ran through all ranks. Ferdias now possessed the only voice on Skaith that could be heard beyond the sky.

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Framed