The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(92)
“Isn’t that risky for him?” Kronos asked.
“At any other time of year. But in the days leading up to the midsummer celebrations, there is much traveling between the towns and territories . . . Aquila and his Coritani mercenaries could have easily moved through Catuvellauni lands without rousing suspicion.” I was distantly pleased to hear that there was no tremor in my voice at the thought of Aquila already scratching like a rabid dog at the gates of my home. “If any of my tribe manage to escape back inside the walls of the town, then the Coritani will simply camp out in front of the gates and wait them out.”
Cai nodded, scratching at his chin. “If that’s the situation, we’ll need to alert those inside the wall that we’re there before we attack. Once they know they have help, we can come at Aquila from both sides—Virico from the front, us in a surprise attack from the rear—and we can wipe the bastard out before he really even knows what’s hit him.”
“And you can do that?” Quint asked. “Get inside to speak with the king?”
I smiled, confident in that, at least. “There are hidden places where the walls can be climbed. Don’t worry. I’ve been sneaking in and out of Durovernum since I could toddle about upright,” I said. “I’ll get us into my father’s great hall, even if I have to grow the Morrigan’s own wings to fly there.”
XXIV
THE SEA WAS rippled glass and the sky a cloudless vault of pale blue. A breeze from the east had the boat captain’s beard drifting over his shoulder as he muttered and paced, eyeing the birds that swooped and dove overhead as the barge boys loaded Cleopatra’s gift horses onto the barge and secured the chariots on the ship. We boarded the galley and stowed our gear, settling in for the next several hours of open-water passage as the ship nudged her way into the channel, trailing the transport barge in her wake.
Kallista came up to stand beside me in the bow, her freckled cheeks flushed with excitement. “Now I’ll finally get to see your island,” she said, grinning. “I feel just like one of my ancestor queens, traveling the breadth of the wide world to find new lands.”
She leaned out over the very front of the ship’s bow, hair streaming out behind her, and I heard Quint sigh. I looked over my shoulder at him where he stood, arms crossed, gazing at the niece he hadn’t even known he’d had less than a year ago.
“She’s just like my brother,” he said, and I could almost see the memories chasing through his mind. “Always looking over the next hill, running to catch the horizon . . . I owe you a great debt, Fallon.”
“Owe me?” I said, blinking at him. “For what?”
“If it weren’t for you and your mad quests,” he said, “I never would have met that girl.” He looked over at Elka, and his expression shifted from proud uncle to smitten soldier. “Or that one.”
“You’re a good friend, Quintus,” I said. “And if it hadn’t been for you teaching us those legion shield techniques, we wouldn’t have survived that particular mad quest. You owe me nothing.”
“Yeah, well, I still plan to make myself useful to the Legio Achillea on this mission,” he said, recalling the name Cai had given us during our fight with the Amazons on Corsica. “If nothing else,” he continued, nodding at Elka, “it’ll make me look good.”
I shook my head, smiling, as he loped off to go find Cai. He was near the stern speaking to the sailors whose duty on that voyage was mostly keeping an eye on the barge towlines as we made the crossing. The barge had no sails or oars of its own and was entirely dependent on the galley to move across the waves. I knew that the tides could sometimes be treacherous on that stretch of water—I’d heard the traders who’d plied their wares speak of it, growing up—but not that day, I thought. The sky overhead was filled with wheeling gulls, and the water sparkled with the silver flash of schools of fish. It was a perfect day for a crossing.
Right up until the very moment that it wasn’t.
* * *
—
We’d been on the sea for hours, the sun climbing steadily higher into a sky slowly hazing to overcast, when a thin, faint line of white on the horizon heralded the appearance of the sacred white cliffs of the Island of the Mighty. Finally . . .
“Look!” I grabbed for Ajani’s arm, pointing feverishly. She had the keenest sight of any of us, and I needed to know that I wasn’t imagining things.
“What?” Ajani squinted. “Where?”
“There . . . you see? The line of white . . .”
She was silent, squinting in the direction I pointed for so long I was starting to doubt my own eyes. But then she smiled and said, “I see it.”
Prydain didn’t need a towering great lighthouse to let ships know they were near its shores, I thought. The shores themselves were enough for that. I felt a great heavy weight lift from my heart in that moment, and I breathed deeply, as if I could smell the forests and fields of home on the wind—but, of course, we were still too far out for that. I glanced over my shoulder to see where Cai was, to show him his first glimpse of Prydain . . .
And the weight that had lifted from me came crashing back down.
The sky to the south of us was a black rampart of clouds.
The storm wall looked as though it had been built by the hands of an angry god, and it was moving swiftly toward us, flickering tongues of lightning down into the sea. The storm’s approach was so rapid—and I’d been so focused on catching sight of home—that I hadn’t even noticed the change in the day. But suddenly I could feel it. A tingling along my arms and the chill of the shifting wind. The sails overhead balked at the change, and the mast creaked. The sailors began hurrying across the deck, hauling on ropes and calling to each other in loud, insistent voices.