by Andre Norton
He feared for the Cormorant as much as for themselves. In open water, the Seakeep vessel had good hope of outfighting or outrunning any adversary they might expect to find here, but the narrow mouth of the channel gave her precious little room in which to maneuver. They would just have to work quickly and get away as fast as possible to report the Star's death and to make their plans in accordance with the nature of the evidence they uncovered here.
He shook his head as a feeling of frustration swept him.
There might be no black wrecker, no danger at all. The Dion Star could have been separated from her escort during the tempest and, seeing the cove, have made for its shelter, oblivious to the peril lurking just beneath die waves.
If that had been the case, fortune had been hard on her, for the huge seas would probably have carried her over the obstruction at its center or at the Foot. Only the Headboard remained too high, and it was across this that she had attempted to come.
His expression hardened. She could have been sent across it. A wrecker would hot have dared to attack during the storm, but Ogin or his agent could easily have lured his victim to this place and let the Cradle do his murder-work for him.
He grimly pulled his mind back from speculation. That availed nothing. The merchantman herself would have to tell them what had happened.
There was little to be learned from the deck. The great waves raised by the tempest had swept it clean of all small or loose items. Of everything, only one lifeboat, in reality no more than a tiny dory, had somehow managed to stay in her moorings, probably because the angle at which the Dion Star had settled had given her good shelter, but nothing else remained. If men had died here, the ocean which had slain them had carried their bodies away with her.
“Try the cabins,” the mercenary suggested without much feeling of hope; he had pitched his voice low, although there was ostensibly no reason to maintain silence or secrecy.
After signaling Una and the two sailors to hold back, he made for the nearest of the two deck cabins, that which would most logically have been utilized by any survivors because of its location and size.
As he approached it, Storm Challenger suddenly stiffened on his shoulder, spreading his wings and extending his head with an angry hiss.
Tarlach stopped. So. There was no fear on his comrade, but something was decidedly amiss within.
He stepped out of line with the opening. Cautiously reaching over, he tried the door. It gave no resistance and swung wide with the first gentle pressure of his hand.
He stood still a moment as he gazed inside, his eyes hardening in a way no enemy would have been comforted to see.
The storm had spared some of the crew, then, for there were men in the cabin, dead men who had met their end through the violence of their own kind and not through nature's mindless fury.
One lay near the door, his skull so crushed by the blow of some heavy object that his brains were mixed with the blood fouling the floor beneath him. Swords had felled four others who had been seated around a table and had been cut down as they tried to rise and defend themselves. A final man was lying on a makeshift bunk to the right of the entrance, his left leg immobilized by rough splints. His throat had been cut, as if in an afterthought by one rushing past him to down his more active comrades.
It was the sight of the last which caused Una to sway and turn her face away when she and her companions joined him a few seconds later, but she was strong and quickly steadied herself once more.
“They never expected what they received from those who entered here,” she whispered savagely through set lips.
“It was help, friendship, that they were anticipating. That much is evident from their attitudes,” the warrior agreed.
His arm came around her, as if he were unconsciously seeking to shield her from any similar danger.
Tarlach himself was quick to recognize the unnecessarily protective nature of the gesture and hastened to release her again.
He glanced toward the door.
“Let us be gone,” he said briskly. “I little like this place.”
“Should we not examine it, Captain?” the man nearest them, Santor, questioned. “We might learn much from it. The log …”
The Falconer shook his head.
“That will have been taken, whatever else they left for future attention.
“I want to have a look at the hold and then cast off before the wrecker returns. We cannot face her with our force split and with no room in which to conduct a sea battle.”
“Perhaps they have stripped the cargo already,” the second mariner suggested. “They had all of yesterday in which to do it.”
“I doubt it, not completely. Ogin's ship needs must be small, and I do not imagine she would make more than a couple of runs in any one day unless really pressed. Her crew would not be able to bring much more than that up the cliff, however easy the climb might be for unencumbered men, and the risk of damage is too great to leave silks out on an open beach for very long.”
He looked to the woman.
“There are no dry caves at sea level?”
“None, or I should have mentioned them.”
He did not question her certainty. Seakeep's people knew all this coast intimately, Ravenfield's and Rosehill's as well as their own, a knowledge which had been the salvation of many a storm-caught or otherwise imperiled fisherman over the years. That knowledge included land features as well as those of ocean bed and currents.
The four left the bloodstained cabin, Tarlach carefully shutting the door behind them.
The Holdlady hastened toward the seaward rail to acquaint those aboard the Cormorant with the news of their discovery and to inform them of their plans. The others followed after her, for all of them still preferred availing themselves of the side's support to crossing the length of the steeply slanting deck without aid.
Without warning, the falcon let out a purposely low-pitched scream. Tarlach flung himself forward, catching Una as he went down, throwing her to the deck as well.
“Drop!” he hissed to the two men coming up behind them.
They obeyed, too surprised for either protest or question.
After a moment, the mercenary began to snake his way up the sloping deck until he had reached the rail. The rest followed him.
The side of the derelict was high and solidly built, but the storm and impact had broken it in several places, and stress had warped the boards comprising it so that cracks had opened between them. Through one of these last, they saw what had alarmed the war bird, a slender, black vessel even now bearing down on them.
Not on them. On the Cormorant.
The newcomer's prow looked strangely heavy for a craft of her size. Reinforced. She rammed her victims, then.
Those aboard the Seakeep ship recognized their danger as well and strove to avoid it, but the attacker was between them and the open water, and the wreck prevented them from slipping into the harbor itself quickly enough. They had only this one small area in which to move.
It was not enough. Undermanned as she was and taken by surprise by a speedy vessel obviously well used to this method of attack, the Cormorant was all but foredoomed. The killer struck her squarely, driving and pinning her against the solid structure of die big derelict.
She held a moment, then splintered under the double impact.
One man, the captain, died instantly, crushed in the crumbling of his vessel.
The others reached the water but had scarcely surfaced again before arrows raced down to meet them, arrows flying with an accuracy and assurance that proclaimed familiar custom on the part of those sending them forth.
Tarlach's glare silenced the bitter curse begun by the sailor nearest him. If they gave themselves away now, they, too, were slain.
His face was grim. The wreck was certain to be searched. They would not be able to conceal themselves effectively, not all four of them, and to attempt to do battle with so many was but suicide.
“Slide back down,” he commanded sud
denly. “Into the water.”
Una started to move at once, but the men held in place, staring at him.
“What keeps you?” he demanded impatiently.
“I can swim a very little, ‘’ Santor replied, “but Nordis, here, cannot.”
“Can you tread water?” he questioned this second seaman.
“NO.”
“I will bear you up if needs be, but the Headboard should give us support.—Make haste now, or we shall be sighted going over the side!”
The pair still looked decidedly unhappy, but they were without choice and slithered down the deck until they had joined the Daleswoman at the opposite rail. The Falconer was with them in another moment:
Tarlach and Una moved first, flipping themselves across the railing quickly and quietly and then lowering themselves the full length of their arms.
This part of the wreck was much nearer the water than was the other side, and they had but a short drop after releasing their hold.
The woman immediately swam into the darkness created by the overhanging vessel, not stopping until she had reached her very side. There, her feet found purchase on the stone fang impaling the Dion Star, and she raised an arm to signal the warrior that he had reasoned accurately concerning it.
A few moments later, the mariners were in the water as well, and all three men were huddled beside her in the shadow of the dead ship.
Theirs was not a comfortable position, standing upon that submerged rock and supporting themselves by leaning against the great hulk which would become their death if she shifted only a little farther in their direction.
Death walked the deck above them as well. Even as the captain had reasoned they would, the wrecker crew boarded the derelict seeking survivors from the Cormorant.
There was no mistaking the man who led and ruled that band. His voice reached them clearly above the gentle lapping of the waves. They knew it, all of them, and their hearts burned with hate and in impotent longing for vengeance.
Tarlach's lips moved in silent thanksgiving to the Horned Lord that he had been given the foresight to close the cabin door when his party had returned to the outer deck and that they had disturbed nothing during their brief exploration. The killers were searching thoroughly, and they apparently knew what signs to seek, but nothing had been left behind for them to discover.
So it proved, and the wrecker crew at last reassembled oh the deck.
Once more, Ogin's voice reached the fugitives.
“No boarding parties, then. That is well for us. Una's people would not have been such easy targets had we found them armed and prepared, as these would have been.”
“What were they doing so far into your territory?” another with the accent of a southlander asked. “Do they suspect you?”
The Holdlord gave a contemptuous laugh.
“Hardly. The storm drew them. Seakeepdale's residents are a humane race,” he explained in a mocking tone. “They always send their boats out as soon as possible after a tempest on the chance that some vessel or other might have come into trouble. That is why I have insisted that we keep at sea and away from here. We might have had considerable difficulty in taking them had they become suspicious, especially that ship. She was fast and easily handled.”
Ravenfield's lord turned his attention to the cargo.
“We shall have to finish here before anyone comes seeking the Cormorant—"
“Another ship can be sunk as easily,” a rough voice cut in.
“Do not be a fool! How many can disappear here in a week's time without our coming under suspicion? Why did you imagine I have let rich ships go by me in the past if not for fear of alerting our neighbors to our operation? Ravenfield cannot fight every Holdlord and ship's master in High Hallack, and remember well that if I go down, you cannot survive for long without my protection and support.”
The southlander, who appeared to be next in command to Ogin, broke in at this point, as eager to avoid one of the lord's tempers as he was to press on with their work.
“We shall have to make haste in any event. I know nothing of clouds if those are not storm dogs above us.”
Several others agreed and cursed angrily at the delay more foul weather would force upon them, that and the danger of the Dion Star's breaking apart with the better part of her valuable and delicate cargo still aboard. That had happened to them once already with another merchantman they had lured onto this rock.
Before they began, however, the Lord of Ravenfield had his killers take the corpses from the cabin and, after weighting them to assure their remaining on the bottom, cast them over the side, thus destroying the most obvious evidence of what had taken place. Soon the Cormorant would be sunk as well. After that, even if another Seakeep vessel did come upon the derelict before she was scuttled, her crew would have no reason to suspect any evil save the violence of nature and would not search for the bloodstains marring the cabin's floor.
19
Una shuddered as each of the dead men struck the water. One dark whim of fortune, and four more would join them. One small sound could be enough to betray them. The clarity of the voices, the distinctness with which they heard the movements of the wrecker crew, was evidence enough of that.
Tarlach had taken her into his arms almost from the time they had reached the wreck's side, for the place on which they had to stand gave but poor purchase for their feet, and she labored under the additional disadvantage of being several inches shorter than her companions, but now he pressed her closer to him. He knew what she endured, the sick fear that helplessness brings, the shame of being forced to witness grave wrong without being able to take action against it, the sheer misery of constant, piercing cold.
That last was bad now and would grow ever worse as the waiter in which they were immersed leached more and more heat from their bodies. Even Storm Challenger, who was spared an actual wetting as he clung to the Star's side, trembled constantly under the ever-more-vicious clawing of the penetrating damp and wind-powered chill.
This they could endure and must endure. Neither the temperature of the ocean nor of the air was low enough to slay them in the length of time they could expect to be here, although the violent muscle contractions which cold could induce might well bring death by rendering them incapable of swimming when the time came to leave their refuge.
They feared that possibility as they feared discovery by those above, but these mishaps must be counted the curse of chance. A more immediate danger threatened them. Their enemies would work long this day, and even after they had quit the Dion Star, the Seakeep fugitives durst not leave their hiding place, riot while any daylight remained. All that while, the tide would be rising. Already, it had begun to turn. The change was not yet noticeable, but soon, desperately soon, the level of the water would climb until it left them without a place on which to stand and perhaps to the point where it would fill their shelter entirely.
It was a fear that proved its accuracy all too quickly. The rising sea reached his neck, his chin. The Falconer bowed his head to give his helmet clearance in the space that remained and finally removed it altogether, letting it sink into the depths of the ocean.
Una looked up at him and then clung the more tightly to him. He seemed vulnerable without the masking helm, as if he stood naked before the world, and unconsciously, she offered herself as a shield against whatever darts it might fling.
They stayed thus only a short while before Tarlach was forced to release her in order to take charge of Nordis, he who could not swim. The woman found herself similarly occupied, for Santor, though he could support himself for a brief time, was possessed of small skill in the water and little endurance, and it was upon her that he must depend for his life during the long hours of waiting before them.
Fortune blessed them in that the day had not been young when they had boarded the derelict. The wrecker crew made one hurried trip from the Dion Star to the beach, but then the westering sun forced them to devote themselves to the cargo the
y had salvaged lest the tide, swelled as it was by the unsettled weather, take it from them.
Their going all but freed the fugitives from the danger of detection provided they did not leave their hiding place. This they could not do, not yet, with the dead vessel still in clear view of those black-souled men working on the beach and on, the cliff above it.
Only after night had spread her friendly mantle over the world did Tarlach cautiously move out from under the shadow of the derelict, towing the Seakeep mariner after him.
Darkness had fallen hone too soon, for the water would shortly have filled their sheltering place entirely, but the mercenary was quick to realize that the tide was serving their cause despite all the discomfort and concern it had given them. The rail of the Dion Star was now near to them, within relatively close reach. Had the sea still been low, they would have been hard-pressed to board her from the water, particularly weakened by cold and tension as they were.
Even with the help fortune had thus given them, the task was a hard one. He tried and failed to climb the outward sloping side, and he failed to leap up to it from the water.
Nordis, now resting in the Daleswoman's charge, watched him fall helplessly back. He had almost succeeded, but the distance was a little too far. Some support, some solid place against which to brace one's efforts, was needed if one was to gain the deck by that means.
“You are strong in the sea, Bird Warrior,” he said. “If you were to hold me, aid my spring, perhaps I could reach it and then draw the rest of us up.”
“Aye, it could work,” the mercenary replied quickly.
Scarcely had he spoken before Una and the second man came on either side of him Trusting himself to their support, he took hold of Nordis and gathered himself.
The mariner nodded.
“Now!”
As he leaped, the captain cast him upward with all the strength left to him.
For one bitter instant, Tarlach thought this attempt had failed like his own, but then the man's hands closed over the edge of the rail. He hung there a moment but soon began to struggle upward. The deck was not yet won.