by Deborah Hale
At last Maura fell into an exhausted doze, a blessing for which Rath muttered a garbled but grateful word of thanks, that somehow lulled him to sleep when the storm was at its worst.
He woke some time later, astonished to find Maura and himself alive. For a while he sat holding her, savoring the simple luxuries of quiet and calm, and the soft light of dawn streaming through the open hatch. A powerful sense of belief took hold of him, as it had in the mines and on midsummer night in the Secret Glade. Though he knew it would not last, he welcomed it just the same.
A while later, Maura stirred, stretched and opened her eyes.
“It’s so quiet,” she whispered. “Are we in the afterworld?”
Rath chuckled and dropped a kiss on the crown of her head. “Your ears might make you think so, aira, but your eyes and nose will tell you the truth.”
He grimaced at the reek of bile that had been spewed in the hold last night—not all hers by any means. “Shall we go up on deck and get a breath of fresh air?”
She gave a weary nod then leaned heavily against him as he helped her aloft. There they found the crew making repairs to the ship and going about their other duties in a mute daze. Most looked as if they had not yet recovered their wits from a hard blow to the head.
Only Gull had a relaxed, well-rested appearance, though Rath doubted he had left the deck all night. His clothes and his hair still looked a bit damp, though the cat lolling around his neck seemed dry enough. Rath wondered how it had weathered the storm.
Gull perched on a raised platform near the front of the ship that was girded by a waist-high railing. He scanned the horizon through a long tube that might have been carved from very pale wood, or perhaps ivory. Rath guessed what he was looking for.
“Any sign of the Ore Fleet?” he called to the captain.
“Not a glimpse, inlander.” Gull lowered the tube from his eye and leaned back against the platform railing. “I reckon it is too much to hope that the storm might have blown them east into the warding waters around the Vestan Islands. They were likely long past the Islands before it hit.”
Maura sighed. “I wish we’d reached the Islands before it hit.”
“We have a saying where I come from, wench.” Gull climbed down the short ladder from his perch with a jaunty step. “‘The worst wind is better than none at all’. This one blew us toward our destination all the faster. By my reckoning, we might make Margyle before nightfall.”
“The sooner the better,” Maura muttered under her breath.
After the tempest of the night, the day passed quietly. Late in the morning, Rath and Maura watched in fascination as a herd of sea beasts called nieda swam past the ship, lunging up into the air with surprising grace for their size. Now and then two of the larger ones would butt each other with their great, curled horns that put Rath in mind of Hitherland wild goats.
Through the warm hours after midday, Rath and Maura curled up in a quiet, shaded corner of the deck and let the motion of the ship and the soothing music of the waves lull them to sleep.
Later, the sound of a voice calling down from high on one of the masts startled Rath awake. Though he didn’t understand the words, the tone warned him it was not good news. The sudden, urgent rush of the crew confirmed it.
Maura stirred, too, as several men ran by in different directions. “I wonder what’s wrong.”
Rath had a good guess, but he did not want to alarm her.
Then the young crewman who had given Maura the sea grass dashed up to them. “Captain says you’re to go below and stay out of the way. We’ve spotted ships coming up fast behind us—the Ore Fleet, Captain says.”
The boy spat on the deck. “Slag the scum! If they catch up, grab something heavy and jump overboard with it. I’d rather be food for the fish than let the Han get hold of me!”
Rath could not concur with the lad’s dire advice, he realized as he hoisted Maura up from the deck. More than once when faced with the choice between death and capture, he had not hesitated to choose death. Now, when he looked within himself, and found a fragile bud of belief taking root, he knew that death was no longer an honorable choice for him.
4
W ould it never end? Maura wondered as Rath helped her up from the deck. Would the two of them never know more than a stolen moment’s peace before they were plunged once again into turmoil and peril?
Her belly no longer pitched and heaved as it had last night. Instead, a deep hollow seemed to gape inside her as she stared at the ominous dark shapes growing larger behind them. It was not as though she’d never faced the Han before. She had been running from them, hiding from them, and fighting them in one way or another ever since that fateful day the messenger bird had arrived for Langbard. Yet none of those encounters had shaken her in quite the way this one did.
Out on this vast water with nothing between the sea and the sky, there was no place to hide—nowhere to run. And the number of enemies was far greater than the few she and Rath had so far overcome on their travels. Only at the Beastmount Mine had they encountered anything like this. Then, they’d had time to plan surprise attacks.
This time, the surprise was on them.
Around her and Rath, the crew scrambled, adjusting sails and performing other tasks, the purposes of which she did not understand. The air was charged with a sense of alarm, ready to erupt into outright panic at any moment. It felt contagious and Maura feared she might be the first to catch it.
“Come.” Rath tugged on her arm. “Let’s get you somewhere safe. Then I will see if I can do anything to help.”
Maura braced her feet on the wooden decking. “You heard the boy. If the Han capture this ship, nowhere will be safe. I would rather stay with you and do what I can to make sure that does not happen.”
For a moment, Rath looked ready to argue.
She did not give him the chance. “We must trust in the Giver and in our destiny. They have never let us down yet, no matter how bleak things looked. I cannot believe they led us all the way to the Secret Glade only to abandon us so soon.”
Her words worked—on herself at least. A strange, potent energy swelled to fill the void of doubt within her. All the challenges she and Rath had overcome to get here flooded through her memory, magnifying that power. Looking back, it almost seemed those obstacles had been contrived to increase in difficulty and risk. Each time testing them harder, calling forth greater wit, strength, courage and faith. Preparing them to meet the next trial—to seize the next opportunity.
As she spoke, Maura could see every blow of Rath’s inner battle between doubt and trust reflected on his rugged features. Hard as all this had been for him to accept, he had never let her down, either. Nor did he now.
He nodded toward the stern of the ship. “Let’s go talk to Gull. Find out what he means to do and how we can help. The Giver knows, we’ve had plenty of practice fighting the Han.”
Hand in hand, they moved toward the rear of the vessel, trying to stay out of the way of crewmen rushing here and there. They found Captain Gull standing on a raised section of the deck peering through the strange instrument Maura had seen him use earlier.
Langbard had told her about such devices. The far end of the tube was enchanted with flesh from the eye of a great north-awk preserved in a thin coating of clear sap from the giant hitherpine. It allowed the person who looked through it to see as far, and as well, as one of those keen-eyed birds perched atop that tallest of trees.
First Gull peered behind to the east, then behind to the west. “Slagging scum!” he muttered, just loud enough for Maura to hear. “They should have sailed a week ago, rot ’em!”
Maura and Rath exchanged a look. Had the sailing of the Ore Fleet been delayed by the miners’ rebellion?
“East southeast!” cried Gull. “Can you get me no more speed?”
From high in the rigging a crewman called down, “Not with these sails and this wind, Captain! Do you reckon it’ll be enough to let us slip through their noose?”
Gull laughed. “The Han have been trying to get a noose around my neck for a while now and never succeeded. They will have no better luck today!”
Again Maura met Rath’s gaze. Did Gull’s crew recognize a desperate boast when they heard it?
“How close are the Han?” asked Rath. “And what is this ‘noose’ you are trying to dodge?”
“What are you doing here?” Gull lowered the seeing tube and stared at them, a look of puzzlement and annoyance wrinkling his brow. “Did I not order the pair of you belowdecks?”
He sounded much more vexed than when he’d ordered their deaths, yet Maura did not find herself intimidated. “Answer Rath’s question! Our lives are as much at risk as any on board. Perhaps more. We have a right to know what is going on!”
“Very well, wench. I will tell you what is going on.” Gull pointed off to the east with one hand and to the west with the spy tube. “A line of Hanish fighter ships from either side of the ore convoy is moving up like a pair of pincers. Damned if I know how they signaled one another to spring this trap, nor do I care. Unless we can break through one way or the other, they will catch us between and crack us like a roasted bristlenut.”
His gaze flickered in a strange manner as he spoke. Maura wondered if it was a sign of the fear he dared not show his crew.
Rath glanced toward the setting sun. “Did you not say we might make the Islands before nightfall? Can we outrun the Han long enough to reach the enchanted coastal waters you told us about? The ones that can sense metal and sink Hanish ships.”
Gull shook his head. “To repeat my crewman—not with these sails and this wind. I don’t suppose your pretty enchantress could make the wind change course for us?”
“I wish I could.” As Maura reached toward her sash, rough hands seized her from behind and she heard Rath cry out.
Too late, she realised Gull’s skittery eye movements had been wordless orders to his crew.
“What treachery is this?” She put up a token struggle and shot Captain Gull an indignant glare. “Our enemy is out there! We have done nothing but offer you our help against them!”
Glancing at the cat draped around his shoulders, the smuggler addressed his next words to it. “Ah, but is our enemy only out there? I wonder. Or was I right about this pair in the first place—figuring them for Hanish spies? Perhaps we had better toss them overboard.”
“Gull,” Rath growled, “you do not have time for this. If we were spies, we would have jumped into the sea already. I am not a strong swimmer, but I could stay afloat long enough for one of those ore tubs to retrieve me, rather than stay here to be cut to pieces by their warships!”
An instant of silence greeted his words, as if Gull and his men were trying to work out whether they might be true. In that instant, an idea blossomed in Maura’s mind. Seizing the chance to be heard, she blurted it out before she could question her own ignorance of seafaring or reject the notion as madly dangerous.
“Turn on the Han!” she cried. “You said they are too fast for you with the wind behind them, but the Phantom is nimble and can sail against the wind. Prove it!”
Time seemed to slow as Gull took a step toward her, his mouth opening. Maura thanked the Giver there were no metal weapons aboard the Phantom. If Gull had held a sword, she feared he would have run her through for daring to tell him what to do with his ship.
The words that came out of Gull’s mouth were the last she expected. “You heard the wench! Turn and dart in among the galleys. That should take the Han by surprise.”
The crew leaped into action and slowly the Phantom swung about to meet the Ore Fleet head-on.
“Captain,” called the man holding Maura, “does that mean we can let go of these two?”
Gull looked from Maura to Rath and back again. Then he nodded. “But keep a close watch and seize them again if they make any move to jump overboard. I swear, if this goes awry, I will kill them with my own hands.”
Rath shook off the hold of the two large crewmen it had taken to restrain him, then gathered Maura into the shelter of his embrace.
“A bold plan, love!” He chuckled. “Ordered like a true—”
“I know,” muttered Maura. That jest had no power to amuse or soothe her now. “Like a true outlaw.”
“Nay.” Rath shook his head, then lifted her hand to his lips. “I was going to say, ordered like a true queen.”
It was a bold plan. Rath pressed his lips to Maura’s hand, in admiration and homage. But would it work?
The Phantom was only one ship and small compared to the monstrous vessels bearing down on them. Her crew was not even armed to repel boarders. It was one thing for Gull to boast of sailing circles around the Hanish ore galleys. If the Phantom were caught in a squeeze between two of those big iron hulls, the wooden ship would be smashed to splinters.
“Oh, Rath—” Maura gripped his fingers so tight that he almost cried out “—what have I done?”
“Only what you needed to do and what you bid me do.” For her sake, Rath cast all his doubts adrift. “Trusted in the Giver and in our destiny.”
“But what if…”
Rath knew what she was feeling—the weight of leadership pressing down upon her. The fear that a bad decision of hers might harm more than just herself. He had no advice to give her for he had never learned how to overcome that feeling. The best he’d ever been able to do was ignore it until the crisis passed.
He pressed his forefinger to her lips. “We have no time for what-ifs now. Besides, the plan may have been yours but the decision was Gull’s. I do not reckon him a man to heed bad advice when it comes to his ship and crew. He must believe this is our best chance.”
Or perhaps he had decided, since there was no hope of escape, he would rather die in some grand, hopeless attack on the Ore Fleet. Rath remembered the day he had turned to face a whole host of Hanish warriors, and how astonished he’d been when they had all run past him. He also remembered a small battle with the Han at Raynor’s Rift and an idea he’d feared he would not live to try.
But he had lived and here was his chance to give it a go.
“Have you any madfern left in your sash?” he asked Maura.
She looked puzzled by his question. “Two or three pockets full. Why?”
“Come!” He tugged her toward Captain Gull. “Perhaps there is something we can do to help, after all.”
Action was the best antidote he had ever found to the paralysing venom of doubt and fear.
“Are you daft?” demanded Gull when Rath asked if there were any bows aboard the ship. He pointed toward the front-most of the ore galleys, now close enough for their bulk to strike cold terror into the stoutest heart. “Do you reckon those hulks will feel a few pinpricks?”
Either their crews had not seen the small wooden ship turn to charge them, or they could not believe their eyes. Rath was eager to foster that disbelief. In as few words as possible, he explained his plan to sow confusion with Maura’s madfern.
“Very well,” snapped Gull between issuing other orders, “we have bows, but I am not fool enough to place one in your hands.”
He called four of his men, bidding them to arm themselves and take their orders from Rath…provided those orders did not endanger his ship.
As the men rushed off to find their bows, Rath turned to Maura. “Have you any more of that linen for binding wounds?”
She had listened to what he’d told Gull, so she did not ask why he needed it. Instead, she lifted the flap of a large pocket at the base of her sash and pulled out a roll of the bleached cloth. She handed it to Rath, who began tearing the linen into small scraps. When he gave these back to her, she placed a large pinch of madfern into each one, then tied it closed with a bit of thread pulled from the torn edge of the binding cloth.
“This may not work, you know,” she muttered as she knotted the last fragment of thread.
“We will never know unless we try.” In truth, Rath did not care a great deal whether the pl
an worked. As long as it gave him and Maura something to think about besides the danger into which they were sailing and over which they had not the least control.
The Phantom slipped between two of the ore galleys as Rath fitted the first of the madfern bundles onto a wooden arrowhead.
The archer grimaced. “It won’t fly well with that thing on the tip. An arrow head must be sharp to cut the air.”
“Do your best.” Rath pointed toward the mast of the nearest Hanish ship. “It does not have far to travel. Loft it as high at you can and try to hit something so the arrowhead will burst the pouch.”
“Aye.” The young archer did not sound very confident. He fired off the arrow, while Maura chanted the madfern spell.
Rath wished he could borrow that seeing tube of Gull’s to watch the arrow’s flight and be certain it hit. Since he doubted Gull would lend it and since everything was moving so swiftly around them, he murmured a plea for the Giver’s help, instead. Then he bid the other archers to fire as the Phantom threaded its way among the ore galleys. Maura’s madfern supply was soon exhausted, with no effect that Rath could tell.
Then one of the archers nudged him. “Look back there!”
Rath surged up on his toes and craned his neck. At first he could see nothing remarkable. Then he noticed that one of the ore galleys they had passed was drifting toward the one nearest it. The other ship did not make any effort to avoid being hit. Closer and closer the two vessels drew with lumbering grace until they slammed together in a thunderous shriek of metal.
The deck of the Phantom erupted in cheers. A dozen hands appeared out of nowhere to thump Rath on the back. The crewmen suddenly looked at Maura with the respect she deserved.
“Well done, inlanders!” Captain Gull cried.
Rath caught Maura by the hand and the two of them exchanged a questioning look. Had those little packets of madfern caused the ore galleys to collide?