"Sound the alarm!" Garric said. He didn't know what was going on, but he drew his sword with no more than a whisper against the iron lip of the scabbard.

Cashel was running sternward, so the danger wasn't in the bow. Garric turned, looking past the high, curving sternpost. The hundred and twenty-seven ships of the royal fleet were arrayed behind theShepherd in order as good as that of so many soldiers at drill. He didn't see any danger, neither in the water foaming past in the oar-thresh nor in the sea to the horizon or the clouds above it. Rain perhaps, but from this sky it would be warm and slow, not gusts with lightning slashes.

There was danger somewhere. The warning must have come from Tenoctris, and she didn't make mistakes.

The trumpet and coiled horn on Admiral Zettin'sQueen of Ornifal blew together, the raucous call that signaled fleet action. Zettin was commander of the fleet just as Lord Waldron commanded the royal army: Garric could give orders to either man and expect them to be obeyed before they were fully out of his mouth, but the prince didn't get involved in the mechanics of maneuvering ships or battalions.

The prince had other matters to take care of. At the moment, the most important was learning what was the matter.

"Clear the yards, you stupid scuts!" Master Lobon shouted to the sailors who'd gone aloft for show. "Action stations, don't you hear!"

Wiping his face with the end of his red sash-of-office, he snarled-to the gods, not to any of the humans nearby, " Sister take me, the mast's raised! Won't that be a fine thing if we have to ram?"

King Carus took in the world through Garric's eyes, but he analyzed what he saw with the mind of the foremost man of war who'd ever ruled the Isles. A glint on a hilltop that Garric assumed was merely a quartz outcrop was to Carus a possible ambush; the tension in a courtier's posture might precede an assassination attempt. Carus had personal experience of those threats and a thousand more But he saw nothing of concern in the surrounding seascape.