Free The Ships of Merior by Janny Wurts

loomed and leered and lolled obscene tongues over gate-turrets chiselled from white quartz. These were emblazoned with rampant lions, each bearing a snake in its mouth.
    ‘Ugly.’ By now querulously tired, Halliron regarded the carvings with distaste while the tarnished strips oftin hung as ward talismans jangled and clinked in thin dissonance. ‘The Paravian gates torn down from this site were said to be fashioned of agate, and counter-weighted to swing at a hand’s touch.’
    This was a Second Age fortress?’ Medlir asked. ‘How surprising to find it inhabited.’ He soothed the cross-grained buckskin to a halt as the gate watch called down gruff challenge. He had to answer without hearing his master’s return comment. ‘We’re wayfarers, two minstrels and a companion. We shouldn’t be stopping here at all, except the old man needs shelter.’
    ‘Pull aside then.’ The watch captain lounged in his niche, his breath plumed in flamelight. ‘The post courier’s overdue from Tharidor, and the gates’ll be opened when he’s in.’
    ‘There’s courtesy for you,’ Halliron said between sneezes. ‘I knew we should have made camp. If the courier hasn’t come to grief in the dark, well have our choice of three inns, all of them cavernously dim and dirty, and not a one of them honest.’
    ‘Which has the best ale?’ asked Dakar.
    ‘Who knows?’ The Masterbard sighed. ‘In Jaelot, they cut the brew with water.’
    By chance, their wait became shortened. While Medlir fussed over his master, and Dakar communed with his mount, a barrel-chested wagonmaster in sheepskins rolled in, swearing at his team and unhappy to be missing his dinner. He brandished his whip at the gate house, while his sweated horses sidled and stamped and struck blue-edged sparks from the pavement. It’s that thrice-cursed shipment from the mill I’m carrying, the one with the mayor’s seal on it.’
    The gates were opened very swiftly indeed, while something clicked in the brain of Dakar’s camel-necked chestnut that said stable, and comfort, and oats. It pinned back rabbity ears and lunged to harry the wagon team through.
    The lead pair were blinkered. The first the near one knew of Faery-toes’ attentions was a nip of yellow teeth at its flanks.
    It veered to a bounding grind of singletrees, while Dakar, howling mightily, sawed nerveless mouth with both reins and fell off. He had the aplomb to roll clear, while the carter whipcracked and cursed.
    The lash caught the gelding on the nose. He wind-milled sideways on splayed feet, rat-tail flailing. Eyes rolled white, his nostrils expanded into a snort that blew steam, he half-reared and reversed to a thunderous clatter of hooves. His gaunt rump jammed the wheel horse in the shoulder. It staggered, squealing. The rest of the team careened sideways and jack-knifed the dray between the gate turrets with Faery-toes folded amidst them like a misguided log in a torrent.
    Oaths became lost in the crack of shod hooves as a brief show of stamping coalesced to a five horse brawl amid the traces.
    The carter clung to his swaying box like a man on a half-foundered vessel, plying his lash and a poisonous stream of threats upon his scuffling team to no avail. Leather parted; tenets burst from collar stuffing to a scream of splintering wood. Unnoticed atop the swaying wagon bed, lashings creaked and shifted loose. A springy bundle of cypress teetered, then tipped like an unfolding set of shears and swan-dived onto the pavement.
    The splintering crack of impact raised stinging reverberations under the confines of the gate arch. The wheel pair parted sideways in a violent shy and the carter threw down his whip, crying murder, as eighty board feet of rare moulding custom-carved to please the mayor’s wife became milled to pale slivers beneath his wheels.
    Through a small, stunned second, the torches dimmed in a swooping gust of wind. Under their demonic flicker, the carter turned red and tare at his