The young man ceased, and they were all three silent awhile. A faint breeze rippled the foliage of the oakwoods of Tivarandardale. The sun was down behind the stately Thornbacks, and the whole sky from bourne to bourne was alight with the sunset glory. Dappled clouds, with sky showing here and there between, covered the heavens, save in the west where a great archway of clear air opened between clouds and earth: air of an azure that seemed to burn, so pure it was, so deep, so charged with warmth: not the harsh blue of noon-day nor the sumptuous deep eastern blue of approaching night, but a bright heavenly blue bordering on green, deep, tender, and delicate as the spirit of evening. Athwart the midst of that window of the west a blade of cloud, hard-edged and jagged with teeth coloured as of live coals and dead, fiery and iron-dark in turn, stretched like a battered sword. The clouds above the arch were pale rose: the zenith like black opal, dark blue and thunderous grey dappled with fire.
XXVII: THE SECOND EXPEDITION TO IMPLAND
HOW THE LORD JUSS, NOT TO BE PERSUADED FROM HIS SET PURPOSE, FOUND, WHERE LEAST IT WAS TO BE LOOKED FOR, UPHOLDING IN THAT RESOLVE; AND OF THE SAILING OF THE ARMAMENT TO MUELVA BY WAY OF THE STRAITS OF MELIKAPHKHAZ.
THAT was the last ember of red summer burning when they cut them that harvest on Krothering Side. Autumn came, and winter months, and the lengthening days of the returning year. And with the first breath of spring were the harbours filled with ships of war, so many as had never in former days been seen in the land, and in every countryside from the western Isles to Byland, from Shalgreth and Kelialand to the headlands under Rimon Armon, were soldiers gathered with their horses and all instruments of war.
Lord Brandoch Daha rode from the west, the day the Pasque flowers first opened on the bluffs below Erngate End and primroses made sweet the birch-forests in Gashterndale. He set forth betimes, and hard he rode, and he rode into Galing by the Lion Gate about the hour of noon. There was Lord Juss in his private chamber, and greeted him with great joy and love. So Brandoch Daha asked, “What speed?” And Juss answered, “Thirty ships and five afloat in Lookinghaven, whereof all save four be dragons of war. Zigg I expect to-morrow with the Kelialand levies; Spitfire lieth at Owlswick with fifteen hundred men from the southlands; Volle came in but three hours since with four hundred more. In sum, I’ll have four thousand, reckoning ships’ companies and our own bodyguards.”
“Eight ships of war have I,” said Lord Brandoch Daha, “in Stropardon Firth, all busked and boun. Five more at Aurwath, five at Lornagay in Morvey, and three on the Mealand coast at Stackray Oyce, besides four more in the Isles. And I have sixteen hundred spearmen and six hundred horse. All these shall come together to join with thine in Lookinghaven at the snapping of my fingers, give me but seven days’ notice.”
Juss gripped him by the hand. “Bare were my back without thee,” he said.
“In Krothering I’ve shifted not a stone nor swept not a chamber clean,” said Brandoch Daha. “’Tis a muck-pit. Every man’s hand I might command I set only to this. And now ’tis ready.” He turned sharp toward Juss and looked at him a minute in silence. Then with a gravity that sat not often on his lips he said, “Let me be urgent with thee once more: strike and delay not. Do him not again that kindness we did him aforetime, fribbling our strength away on the cursed shores of Impland, and by the charmed waters of Ravary, so as he might as secure as sleep send Corsus hither and Corinius to work havoc i’ the land; and so put on us the greatest shame was ever laid on mortal men, and we not bred up to suffer shame.”