When he returned to the deck, he saw that two galleys were in fact pulling out ahead of the pirate fleet and closing on Charger. Blade strained to identify them, shading his eyes from the sun-then gulped as he recognized the badges on the approaching sails. One was the late Esdros' Spider Prince, the other was Cayla's own Sea Witch. Gasps and mutterings from the crew as they crowded forward to look told him that they also had recognized the approaching ships. Of all the Captains of the Brotherhood, Cayla was the most likely to be driven by a lust for vengeance to throw caution and tradition to the winds and violate Truce. But there was nothing they could do about it without abandoning their whole plan, except what Brora was already doing-going among the men and warning them to be prepared for anything, with their weapons ready to hand.
Sea Witch was coming up so fast that even from miles away Blade could see the water foaming white at her ram and under her flashing oars. Cayla was obviously eager to come up with him and was driving her rowers along at a deadly pace. Within a few more minutes, Blade could make out every detail of Witch, now miles ahead of her consort-details including Cayla herself, standing on the quarterdeck as rigid as a stone statue. She did not move, nor did any of the other armed men on her ship's deck. Witch might have been a ship manned by statues, the oars pulling her along moved by magic.
Those oars did not stop until Sea Witch glided to a stop off to port of Charger, and her crew came pouring on deck fully armed. Cayla was also wearing armor, Blade noticed-a crested metal helm and a contoured leather cuirass that yet left her with an oddly sexless appearance.
But the voice that called across the hundred feet of water to Blade was the same as before, except for a new note of deadly rage.
«Well, Blahyd, how has being a traitor suited you?»
«What makes you think I am a traitor?» he shouted back.
That jerked her violently into silence for a moment and caused the men on Witch's deck to look at her and then at each other. Another moment, and she shouted back:
«You slay Indhios, slaughter his picked men like sheep, and now you come and say you have not betrayed the Brotherhood? Indhios would have given us Royth like a roast pig on a platter, and now he is dead. Dead at your hand, you traitor!» Her voice had risen to a scream, and Blade saw her crew drawing swords and nocking arrows to their bows. He motioned his own crew to do the same, then replied, making his voice sound full of injured innocence:
«Indhios was as much of a traitor to the Brotherhood as to Royth. Or at least he would have been. And the Brotherhood would have been destroyed in discovering this.» Cayla's head jerked in astonishment, and Blade pressed his advantage, his voice becoming more urgent. «Indhios didn't want to rule Royth as the puppet of the Brotherhood. He wanted to rule it in his own right. He would have betrayed Royth, all right, and let you do all the hard work of destroying his enemies. Then he would have turned on you with his own men and destroyed you or driven you out. Then he could have ruled Royth as its savior from the pirates.» Blade had a stack of carefully forged documents below in his cabin to prove his arguments. He wondered if he would need them. Such a double betrayal would have been just like Indhios, and he suspected that the wiser heads among the pirates knew that already. But the experience of the other Richard Blade, the top-ranking secret agent, was guiding him now, with memories of how important it could be to support a lie as fully as possible.
Blade couldn't read the expressions on the faces staring at him over Witch's railing. But the total silence on the other ship's deck made him hope his words had left some sort of impression. He saw heads turning toward him, then Cayla waving one hand in a chopping gesture. Witch's men slipped their arrows back into the quivers and their swords back into their scabbards. Blade took a deep breath. Cayla hailed him again:
«You have invoked Truce, Blahyd. And you bring word that might best be laid before the Council of Captains. Otherwise I would take your ship and kill your men before your eyes, then send your cods to your high-born doxy! You will follow me.» She turned her back decisively to bark orders to her crew, who began dropping down to the rowing benches. Sea Witch swept away while Charger turned under Brora's orders to fall in astern of her, and Spider Prince curved round in a great circle to take up a position at the very rear. Like a convict and two guards, the three ships set off for their goal, the ever-growing pirate fleet that now blackened fully half the horizon.
At the brutal pace Witch set, they came up with the advance guards of the pirate armada within half an hour. Blade saw familiar badges on the sails of the galleys as they fell behind and saw their crews pointing and staring at his own flags and the Truce banners flying from Charger's masts.
Beyond the advance guard lay a stretch of open sea, then the main body. Four hundred ships now seemed a conservative estimate of its total strength, Blade felt. There seemed to be an endless arc of galleys interspersed with high-prowed merchant vessels, now stretching completely across Blade's field of vision, and seeming to reach around to either side to engulf the three ships racing up to it. He could see the sun winking on helms and weapons aboard some of the merchant vessels, the intricate frames of catapults and ballistas on the high castles of others, skiffs and pinnacles with bright orange and blue and gold sails darting back and forth among the larger ships, like swallows around cliffs.
Blade soon saw that Cayla was leading them toward a particular ship, a huge merchantman even larger than Khystros' long-gone Triumph. From its three masts streamed the green and white banner of the Captain's Council of the Brotherhood, the same that Blade had seen over Council House on Neral. As Charger drew closer and the flagship loomed higher and higher over him, Blade saw that her decks were crowded not only with armed soldiers, but with Captains in full battle gear, as well as their ceremonial white baldrics and green cloaks. It appeared that Charger had arrived in the middle of a full meeting of the Council itself. Blade wondered what the Captains had been discussing before and smiled at the havoc he would be wreaking on their carefully planned agenda. Those Captains senior enough or distinguished enough to win seats upon the Council were also often old enough to have developed a taste for complicated paperwork and tidy agendas.
The seniors were out in even greater force than usual, judging from the amount of gray and white in the beards that appeared at the railing as Charger ranged alongside the flagship. A rope ladder plummeted down onto Charger's deck. Blade caught it nimbly and scrambled up to the deck of the flagship.
As he stepped onto the deck, so did Cayla on the other side of the ship. The mercenaries and even the Captains eased themselves out of her path as she strode toward Blade. He could read her expression now-suspicion, hatred, and sheer cold fury mixed in constantly changing proportions. She too was now wearing the emblems of a Council member, a sight that made Blade even warier. She must have been rising fast and far in influence to take a seat on the Captain's Council while still barely thirty.
She stood watching him, hands clasped behind her back and feet braced apart, while the High Captain, chairman of the Council, ran through the formal greetings in a chilly and perfunctory manner. Not even for a traitor would the Brotherhood now violate a proclaimed Truce, but the control Blade saw written in many faces was stretched thin.
When the High Captain had finished speaking, the sudden silence and the eyes turned his way told Blade that it was now up to him. «Captains,» he began. «I did indeed flee from Neral, and it was indeed after slaying a fellow Captain. But that Captain and certain others-«he glared at Cayla, whose face showed no reaction «-for reasons of their own attempted to murder me by night in my own quarters. I defended myself, slaying Esdros and some of his companions. I plead guilty to bad judgment in having fled and suborned my crew to help me flee, rather than await the justice of the Brotherhood.» He hoped that last bit of flattery would go over well with some of the senior Captains. But he could see no change in the frozen faces staring at him.