by Sam Taw
Tired of her games, he turned about and muttered, “No one forced you to come on this trip, and no one is forcing you to return. Maybe you should stay and find yourself a nice Frynkish husband to buy you amber and gold.”
She screamed at him, hurling the new bracelet at the back of his head as he walked away. I could hardly contain my amusement. Hiding behind a willow hurdle, I watched her scrabble about in the dirt to find the jewel, before wiping it clean of mud and sinking it in her cloak pocket. At least she is not focusing on me and Jago anymore.
A little later, as the sun started to creep over the horizon, I found a clean spring to refill my water bladders and pocketed some of the Prince’s bread and cheese for the return journey.
Tallack and Maleek organised who and what should be in each of the boats, ensuring an even load and an experienced sailor in all the vessels.
When at last it was time to board the ship, Tallack had to act the clown to persuade the sullen Brea to climb the gangplank, while I lingered on the jetty waiting my turn.
My nephew grinned at me, waving me over to the walkway at his side. As I stepped up, I heard fast footsteps on the wooden boards heading my way. I peered over my shoulder, unsteady on the bowing plank. Before I could make it onto the ship, a tall lad made a dash at me brandishing a knife and screaming in Frynkish. The blade was so close to my face I could almost feel its keen edge.
CHAPTER NINE
The youth swished the blade closer, making me jerk my head back. I could barely keep my balance as he reached over and grabbed hold of the strap on my kit bag. It had all my bronze blades that Aebba had made for me, plus the poppy resin jug from the Prince. I was not about to let him take it from me. I lashed out, catching his nose with my fist. Together we wrestled, while everyone looked on in disbelief.
“Just give it to him, Fur Benyn.” Jago yelled in horror. “Don’t let him take your life too.”
I had no intention of losing either. The lad grew angrier at my stubbornness, jabbing his blade into my arm and drawing blood. The pain soared through my shoulder and into my spine. He’d cut a vessel. It poured with blood. Still I held on, desperately trying to maintain my stance on the narrow boarding plank. Before I could punch him again, he sliced through the strap, grabbed the bag to his chest and ran.
Desolate and in surging pain, I staggered to the jetty and slumped to the floor. The thief turned and sprinted around the corner of a trading stall. Maleek was waiting for him. He held out his foot and tripped the thug over, sending him tumbling to the ground. In one swift move, Maleek unsheathed a massive curved blade and slashed open the youth’s throat.
The lad clutched his neck, choking on the foaming and gurgling red humours. Maleek stood over him, watching the life ebb from the boy’s body. With one final cough, his arms fell to his side, his eyes glazed with the stare of death. Maleek snatched my kit bag up and strolled to the jetty, his blade still dripping with the thief’s blood. He approached me, holding out the ragged item and explaining something for Jago to translate.
“He says that it should be easy enough to sew back together.” Jago looked at me in utter shock. Maleek took that lad’s life as though he was slicing bread for his supper. I hurried onto Tallack’s boat, making room for him to board after me.
“Jago, make sure you tell him how grateful I am.” I stammered, hugging my kit to my chest and moving swiftly to my seat in the bow. My slave translated my words and then rushed to staunch the flow of blood from my arm. He has learned my craft faster than I thought he would. He collected salt water in a beaker and soaked a cloth, before washing the gash clean.
“Would you like me to prepare some poppy water for the pain?” He asked me, hovering between my kit and the fresh water bladder.
“Willow will suit me fine, Jago. Pass me my best bone needle, will you. This will need stitching.”
He fussed and tutted at me, soaking the cattle gut lengths and threading my needle in readiness. I didn’t think he would have the courage to sew me up, but he set about the wound as though it was his calling. Such fine little stitches they were too. He had a steady hand and a careful eye. Even Tallack commended the boy on a job well done.
We were late setting sail after all that had occurred. The Prince insisted that he travelled on Tallack’s ship, along with his son, his personal healer and a large guardsman. I was relieved, since there was no room for Brea who travelled in one of the smaller crafts with a few of his crewmen. I offered to swap boats too, but Tallack feared that I might need his watchful eye on me after my brush with the thief’s blade.
The arrangements suited me well. I had good company, fine food and no Brea to put me on edge. Young Jago relaxed too, although he was still ill at ease in the presence of the Prince and Maleek. Perhaps his own beliefs gave him anxiety over the nature of the Prince’s curse. I on the other hand, was desperate to discover more. Apart from his obvious pain, I could detect nothing wrong with him. At least, none of the symptoms Jago told me about.
Suliaman’s guard adopted the role of manservant while he was aboard. I wanted for nothing, having all my meals brought to my seat at the front of the boat, and more wine than I could consume. By mid-afternoon, the warm drink dulled my senses so that I could feel no discomfort from my wound at all. Unfortunately, the more I drank, the less I could hold my tongue.
“So, this curse…” I slurred to the great man. “How did you come by it exactly?”
Maleek’s gaze turned towards the open water, his forehead pinched into deep folds. It was as though he’d understood what I’d asked before Jago had a chance to translate.
The Prince was a little more forthcoming about his misfortune. He narrowed his eyes at me and made a contemplative moan, before giving Jago his answer.
“He says that he upset a powerful family from a neighbouring land. Before he could make amends for the trouble, they conjured a demon to give him the curse.” Jago shuffled further away, sitting with his back up against the side of the ship. I wanted to know more, how did the demon appear to him, what did he look like, and many other questions slipped through my inebriated mind, but I had paused too long, the Prince had his own puzzles to solve.
“Fur Benyn, the Prince asks whether your nephew is um… a word that means bad man of the seas?” Jago stared down at his feet. The enquiry threw my kin in a poor light.
At the time, I didn’t see the insinuation, my brain half pickled in fine wine. “Ask him why he thinks that?”
Jago did, taking time to frame his words carefully. The response was immediate. “He says that this is a Phoenician trading ship from his homeland. Tallack could not have built such a vessel. He wants to know if he killed the merchant and took the cargo.”
That woke me up to his suspicions and his low opinion of our family. I sat upright and indignant. “Tell the noble man that Tallack traded a vast amount of tin for this ship in a fair exchange. We are not pirates.” I huffed so loudly that it alerted the Prince’s guard, his son and some of Tallack’s men. They observed our conversation with a keen eye, alert to any discord. I have no doubt that one word from me, and several of those rowing would have leapt to my defence.
Jago relayed my words to the old man, who immediately softened to my distress. His response was an apology, coupled with a hand gesture whereupon he touched his bowed forehead in a form of salute.
“I should think so too.” I blurted, assuming his mumbling was an attempt to calm troubled waters.
“He asks forgiveness, and says that he needed to know that his son was in no danger.”
“Hmm.” I harrumphed. The problem was that I could see his point. In his situation, I too would be wary. Tallack is a fine talker, and a brilliant trader, but for all the Prince knew, we could have overpowered his guard and thrown him and his son overboard and made off with all his wealth.
The waves were kind to us for more than half the journey back across the Channel. When the wind picked up it was against us, making Tallack’s men work hard to tack in a zig
zag path to harness its power. We were in a better position than the crafts behind us. They had the added problem of fewer oars, smaller sails and were sitting low in the water from the weight of traded copper.
When the day ended and the clouds blotted out the moon, we had no stars by which to navigate. I noticed that the Prince refused all the food brought to him, and had taken only a little fluid. The closer we got to our own shores, the more the swell lifted us high into the air, before allowing us to plunge down the other side of the wave. Jago moved so that he could stand at the boats edge once again, but managed to hold down his meal.
The Prince blew out his cheeks. His skin took on a pallid tone and he breathed erratically. His healer approached him, holding out a tiny glass jar of a thick liquid, but Suliaman sent him away. Before long, his guard was holding a bowl beneath his master’s face, catching his sickness. I tried to give the man his dignity, scrambling to the rear of the boat to speak with my nephew.
“This will not end well, you know that don’t you, Aunt Mel?” He said, keeping a weather eye on the sails and the rigging, while pushing the tiller to one side.
“You don’t know that at all. If what he tells me is true, and that a wicked demon has laid down the curse, then the holy men at the Skotek stones will lift it for him.” I steadied myself against my nephew as the ship lurched in the rising waters.
“If he makes it to the Skotek stones. From the look of him, he won’t make it back to shore. Can’t you give him something from your medicine kit?”
“He’s just shooed his own healer away. What makes you think he’ll take what I offer him?” I looked up at my nephew.
He shrugged. “Not sure, really. He seems to respect you.”
“Hmm.” I wanted to say, you wouldn’t be saying that if you’d heard what he called you earlier, but I kept my mouth clamped shut. Suliaman didn’t give me the impression that he respected me, but I couldn’t see any harm in offering help.
Tallack had a serious frown as he studied our trajectory. I took that to mean that I was distracting him and returned to my seat at the front. The Prince had a bear fur draped around his shoulders and was shaking from the exertion of his seasickness. I nodded to Jago to assist with language once again.
“Ask the Prince if he would like me to mix him a tonic to ward off the nausea.” While my servant spoke to the poorly man, I retrieved my kit and took out a handful of dried hops. I held them in my palm for the nobleman to see. He reached out and took one feathery green frond and turned it between his fingers. While he made up his mind, I found some kindling and dry sticks in the storage holds beneath the rowers’ benches and nestled them in a metal basket hanging from a chain above us. With a couple of flints cracked together, I sparked a flame and nurtured it into life. Before long, I had a fire strong enough to boil a little water to make my hot tonic of hops.
Suliaman watched me crush the hops into the hot water and to my surprise, he held out his hand to accept my offering.
“Tell him to let it steep a while before drinking it down. I’m afraid I have no honey to sweeten it, but it doesn’t taste so bad.”
Jago did as I asked, and just moments later, his guard and manservant went in search of honey, handing me an entire jar for my kit. I observed as the Prince sniffed the tonic. He sipped a little down, and decided that he did not require the added sweetener after all. I suspect that my potion helped him, or at the very least it engendered trust between us, as he seemed to smile more from then on.
My slave slumped down at my feet, tired and rather annoyed. “Did you not think to make a tonic for me on our way across to Frynk?”
I had to laugh at his petulance. “I would have but I had no hops until the Frynkish market.” That cheered him a little.
“Would you have given it to Brea?”
I thought long and hard about that question and chose not to answer him. If she was not sick on the boat, she may not have fallen overboard. Either way, she was safe and sailing behind us in another vessel. Given the chance again, I’m not sure that I would have pulled her from the waves even with my nephew watching my actions.
Suliaman finished the tonic and returned the beaker to me with his thanks. I kept my eye on him for some time, assessing the progression of his ailments. The sickness may have stopped, but he was in just as much pain as before. He barked out orders to his healer who dropped a large bead of poppy resin into more water and waited while the Prince guzzled it down.
The more the ship rocked, the more anguish showed on his face. It was as if the cold breeze and damp air was setting off all his bodily feeling and triggering an ache that would not be quelled. I’ve seen what happens to priests who got too fond of poppy resin. It took more and more of the stuff to have an effect, so that in the end, the need for the resin gave more pain than the original ague.
I thought ahead to the long voyage up the coastline to the Skotek Islands at the top of the world. This was a comparatively short journey, and he was suffering all the way. Stoking the little fire to keep it alive amid the vicious winds, I went to the stern with the excuse of needing more wood. Tallack saw my errand and pointed to a box above the water line. I found all sorts of treasures and cloth, trinkets and metals at one end, and more essential supplies at the other.
Sitting on the container lid, I spoke quietly to Tallack. “The Prince will never make the journey by sea. If we are to secure those trade routes and a copper supply, we will need to think of an alternative way to get him to the stones.”
My nephew is far more observant than I gave him credit for. “You’re right. He needs resin just to cross from Frynk. The highland seas between those islands will kill him.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I really don’t know. Perhaps this entire enterprise was a fool’s errand. Maybe we can just explain the matter and let him decide. Blydh needs us back on Dumnoni lands. As soon as we make port, we’ll have to part ways, and hope that he’ll still want to trade with us.”
That was not what I wanted to hear. This man and his new ways intrigued me. There was so much to learn from them, that I did not want the alliance to be over with so soon. I took my sticks back to the swinging fire and sat down with a bump. The ocean was growing rougher again and land was nowhere to be seen.
With stomachs calmed and the darkest part of the night yet to steer through, I propped myself up against the bow and wrapped my cloak about me. Jago stayed awake and alert, too frightened to close his eyes. I saw no point in mistrust. They were at our mercy in a foreign ocean heading for an unknown land. Safe in the knowledge that my nephew’s men would protect me from harm, I slept.
Before dawn, Jago woke me with warm mint tea and some stale flat bread. He’d kept the little fire burning through salt spray and gusting winds to make my morning drink. “Did you get any sleep at all?” I asked him, worried about his jitters. He shook his head. I peered over at the Prince sitting high in his chair on deck. He’d barely moved a muscle, but his eyes darted towards every movement on ship. For an old man in pain, he missed nothing.
“Jago, ask the Prince if he would like more hops to brew.”
The answer came back a polite and grateful thanks, but no. I could tell by his reddened eyelids that he was battling pain again, and was probably on his second dose of poppy for the day. For a curse as painful as this, he must have seriously offended his neighbour. It made me ponder over the true nature of his crime. I got the distinct impression that there was more to the story than he was prepared to admit.
Tallack and his men gnawed on some dried meats and flat bread before putting their shoulders to the oars. The sail billowed out once again in our favour, but the thick clouds still obscured our sight of the stars. Our course was a guess at best. With no further chance to sleep, I thrust a wedge of fabric in each ear to blot out the rhythmic drumming to keep the rowers in step with one another.
Maleek stood at the side of the ship, watching the lights bob up and down from the other boats around us. When,
at last, the light of day arrived, it brought with it a new hope and a first sighting of land. We’d made it across without loss of life or limb and with all our passengers and cargo intact. Maleek almost smiled at the vista and then told his father that the journey was almost at an end. The relief on the Prince’s face was obvious. He’d been holding all his symptoms at bay for the entire crossing. I strongly suspected that he too, had reservations about hopping around bays and headlands all the way up to the top of the world.
I looked over towards Tallack. His face was ashen and stern. Every crease in his young face seemed accentuated by the drying effects of the salted air. I dodged oars and legs and returned to his side.
“Something is wrong, I can tell. What is it?” I blustered.
“I don’t recognise this part of the coastline. We must have been blown off course last night.”
CHAPTER TEN
The land ahead was flat. Massive beaches stretched as far as the eye could see. Landing on any part of this coast line would leave us vulnerable to attack. Tallack ordered the men to drop the sail. We let the current pull us towards shore as Tallack ruminated on our choices.
“How much fresh water is left?” He asked one man. The answer was not good. “Get the plumb line over the side. I want to know how close we dare get.”
I watched his first mate clamber over to the storage boxes and retrieve a weight tied to the end of a knotted length of fine rope. It splashed the surface as it sunk to the sea bed. The man counted the number of knots submerged and informed his leader.
“This is as far as we go in this vessel. Can’t afford to strand my ship on a sandbank.” He said, stepping to the port bow and looking out to sea for the rest of the boats.
“You surely don’t expect us to swim to shore?” I said with a hint of panic in my voice.
Tallack snorted with a titter. “No, Aunt. Give me some credit. We’ll wait until another boat comes alongside and use it to ferry passengers to the beach.