‘Good. Is she awake?’
Durnik nodded. ‘I fixed her morning tea for her before I went out on deck.’
‘How do you think she’d react if I asked her to bully the captain for me—just a little bit?’
‘I don’t know that I’d use the word “bully,” Garion,’ Durnik advised seriously. ‘Try “talk to” or “persuade” instead. Pol doesn’t really think of what she does as bullying.’
‘It is, though.’
‘Of course, but she doesn’t think of it that way.’
‘Let’s go see her.’
The cabin Polgara shared with Durnik was as tiny and cramped as all the rest aboard this ungainly vessel. Two-thirds of the space inside was given over to the high-railed bed, built of planks and seeming to grow out of the bulkheads themselves. Polgara sat in the center of the bed in her favorite blue dressing gown, holding a cup of tea and gazing out the porthole at the sleet-spattered waves.
‘Good morning, Aunt Pol,’ Garion greeted her.
‘Good morning, dear. How nice of you to visit.’
‘Are you all right, now?’ he asked. ‘What I mean is, I understand that you were quite upset about what happened back at the harbor.’
She sighed. ‘I think the worst part was that I had no choice in the matter. Once Chabat raised the demon, she was doomed—but I was the one who had to destroy her soul.’ Her expression was somber with a peculiar overtone of deep and abiding regret. ‘Could we talk about something else?’ she asked.
‘All right. Would you like to speak to someone for me?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘The ship’s captain. He wants to drop his anchor until this weather clears, and I’d rather not wait.’
‘Why don’t you talk with him yourself, Garion?’
‘Because people tend to listen to you more attentively than they do me. Could you do it, Aunt Pol—talk to him, I mean?’
‘You want me to bully him.’
‘I wouldn’t exactly say “bully,” Aunt Pol,’ he protested.
‘But that’s what you mean, Garion. Always say what you mean.’
‘Will you?’
‘All right, if you want me to. Now, will you do something for me?’
‘Anything, Aunt Pol.’
She held out her cup. ‘Do you suppose you could fix me another cup of tea?’
After breakfast, Polgara put on her blue cloak and went out on deck. The Murgo captain changed his plans almost as soon as she began to speak to him. Then he climbed the main-mast and spent the rest of the morning with the lookout in the wildly swaying crow’s nest high aloft.
At the southern tip of the Urga peninsula, the steersman swung his tiller over, and the ship heeled sharply to port. It was not hard to understand why the captain had originally wanted to avoid the passage through the islands in anything remotely resembling rough weather. The currents and tides swirled through the narrow channels, the wind tore the tops of the dark-rolling waves to tatters, and the surf boomed and crashed on the knife-edged rocks rearing up out of the sea. The Murgo sailors rowed fearfully, casting wild-eyed looks at the looming cliffs on all sides of them. After the first league or so, the captain clambered down the mast to stand tensely beside the steersman as the ship cautiously crawled through the gale-lashed islands.
It was midafternoon when they finally passed the last of the rocky islets, and the sailors began to row away from the land toward open water where the wind-driven sleet sizzled into the whitecaps.
Belgarath and Garion, with their cloaks pulled tightly about them, stood on the deck watching the oarsmen for a few minutes; then the old man went to the companionway door. ‘Urgit!’ he shouted down the narrow hall, ‘come out here!’
The Murgo King stumbled up the stairs out onto the deck, his eyes fearful.
‘Don’t your people know how to set their rigging so that they can quarter into the wind?’ Belgarath demanded.
Urgit looked at him blankly. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,’ he said.
‘Durnik!’ Belgarath shouted.
The smith, standing with Toth at the stern of the ship, was intently watching his trailing lure and did not answer.
‘Durnik!’
‘Hmmm?’
‘We have to reset the rigging. Come and show the captain how it’s done.’
‘In a minute.’
‘Now, Durnik!’
The smith sighed and began to coil up his line. The fish struck without warning, and Durnik’s excited whoop was whipped away by the rising wind. He seized the line and jerked hard to set his hook. The great, silver-sided fish came boiling up out of the water, shaking his head angrily and threshing his way across the wind-driven chop. Durnik’s shoulders bowed as he pulled hard on his line, struggling manfully to haul the huge fish in hand over hand.
Belgarath started to swear.
‘I’ll show the captain how to set his rigging, Grandfather,’ Garion said.
‘How much do you know about it?’
‘I’ve been on at least as many ships as Durnik has. I know how it’s done.’ He went toward the bow to talk to the Murgo captain who now stood staring ahead at the tossing sea. ‘You want to slack off your lines on this side over here,’ Garion explained to him, ‘and draw them in on the other. The idea is to angle your sails so that they catch the wind. Then you put your rudder over to compensate.’
‘Nobody’s ever done it that way before,’ the captain declared stubbornly.
‘The Alorns do, and they’re the best sailors in the world.’
‘The Alorns control the wind by sorcery. You can’t use your sails unless the wind is behind you.’
‘Just try it, Captain,’ Garion said patiently. He looked at the heavy-shouldered sailor and saw that he was wasting his time. ‘If you’d rather not do it because I ask you to,’ he added, ‘I could probably persuade Lady Polgara to ask you—as a personal favor.’
The captain stared at him. Then he swallowed hard. ‘How was it you said you wanted the rigging reset, my Lord?’ he asked in a much milder tone.
It took perhaps a quarter of an hour to set the lines to Garion’s satisfaction. Then, with the dubious captain in tow, he went aft and took the tiller from the steersman. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘raise the sails.’
‘It’s not going to work,’ the captain predicted under his breath. Then he lifted his voice to a bellow. ‘Hoist the sails!’
The pulleys began to creak, and the sails, flapping in the wind, crawled up the masts. Then they boomed and bellied out, angled sharply to catch the wind. Garion pulled the tiller over as the ship heeled sharply to leeward. The prow knifed sharply through the heaving waves.
The Murgo captain gaped up at his sails. ‘I don’t believe it!’ he exclaimed. ‘Nobody’s ever done that before.’
‘You see how it works now, don’t you?’ Garion asked him.
‘Of course. It’s so simple that I can’t understand why I didn’t think of it myself.’
Garion had an answer, but he decided to keep it to himself. The captain had already had a bad enough day. He turned to the steersman. ‘You have to keep your tiller over like this to compensate for the force of the wind coming in on your starboard beam,’ he explained.
‘I understand, my Lord.’
Garion relinquished the tiller and stepped back to watch Durnik and Toth. They were still hauling at their line, and the great fish, no longer dancing on the sleet-swept surface, swept back and forth in long arcs across the boiling wake; the stout rope connecting his jaw to the two fishermen sizzled through the water as if it were hot.
‘Nice fish,’ Garion called to the struggling pair.
Durnik’s quick answering grin was like the sun coming up.
They quartered into an increasingly stiff wind for the remainder of the day. As the light began to fade, they were far from land. Garion was by now certain that the captain and the steersman could manage and he went forward to join the little group standing amidships a
round Durnik’s huge fish.
‘Now that you’ve got him, where are you going to find a pan big enough to cook him in?’ Silk was asking the smith.
A brief frown crossed Durnik’s face, but then he smiled again. ‘Pol will know how to take care of it,’ he said and went back to admiring the monster lying on the deck. ‘Pol knows how to take care of everything.’
The sleet had abated, and the dark-rolling waves stretched sullenly to the faintly luminous line of the horizon that divided the black waves from an even blacker sky. The Murgo captain came forward in the windy twilight with a worried look on his face. Respectfully, he touched Urgit’s sleeve.
‘Yes, Captain?’
‘I’m afraid there’s trouble, your Majesty.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
The captain pointed toward the line of the southern horizon. A half-dozen ships were running before the wind, coming directly toward them.
Urgit’s face grew slightly sick. ‘Malloreans?’
The captain nodded.
‘Do you think they’ve seen us?’
‘Almost certainly, your Majesty.’
‘We’d better go talk to Belgarath,’ Silk said. ‘I don’t think any of us counted on this.’
The conference in the aft cabin was tense. ‘They’re making much better time than we are, Grandfather,’ Garion said. ‘We’re quartering the wind, and they’re running with it dead astern. I think we’re going to have to turn north—at least until we can get out of their sight.’
The old man was staring at a tattered map the captain had brought with him. He shook his head. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘This gulf we’re in right now funnels into the mouth of the Gorand Sea, and I don’t want to get trapped in there.’ He turned to Silk. ‘You’ve been to Mallorea a few times. How good are their ships?’
Silk shrugged. ‘About the same as this one. I’m not trying to be offensive, Captain, but Angaraks aren’t the same kind of sailors—or shipbuilders—that Chereks are.’ He considered it. ‘There might be a way to escape them,’ he said. ‘Malloreans are timid sailors, so they won’t spread all sail at night. If we turned north and put up every ounce of canvas we can, we could be a long way ahead of them—no more than a blinking light on the horizon once it gets dark. Then we drop the sails, reset the rigging and put out every light on board ship.’
‘But we can’t do that,’ the captain objected. ‘It’s against the law.’
‘I’ll write you an excuse, Captain,’ Urgit said drily.
‘It’s too dangerous, your Majesty. If we run without lights, we could collide with another ship out there in the dark. We could be sunk.’
‘Captain,’ Urgit said in a patient tone, ‘there are six Mallorean ships chasing us. What do you imagine they’re going to do if they catch up with us?’
‘They’ll sink us, of course.’
‘What difference does it make, then? At least if we put out the lights, we’ll have a chance. Go ahead, Kheldar.’
Silk shrugged. ‘There isn’t much more. After we blow out the running lights, we hoist sail and run east again. The Malloreans won’t be able to see us, and they’ll charge right on across our wake. By tomorrow morning, they won’t have any idea about where we are.’
‘It might just work,’ Belgarath conceded.
‘It’s dangerous,’ the captain said disapprovingly.
‘Sometimes even breathing is dangerous, Captain,’ Urgit told him. ‘Let’s try it and see what happens. What I can’t understand, though, is what Mallorean ships are doing this far west.’
‘It’s possible that they’re marauders sent to harry the coastlines,’ Sadi suggested.
‘Perhaps,’ Urgit said dubiously.
They ran due north before the rising wind that swept up from the south polar icecap. The deck lanterns swung and bobbed in the wind, peopling the storm-whipped rigging with wildly dancing shadows. The six Mallorean vessels, running cautiously under half sail, dropped behind until their running lights looked no larger than tiny twinkling stars on the horizon far astern. Then, about midnight, the captain gave the order to drop the sails. The sailors quickly reset the rigging and the ship’s master came aft to where Garion stood beside the steersman. ‘Everything’s ready, my Lord,’ he reported.
‘All right then. Let’s blow out all the lights and see if we can sneak out of here.’
The Murgo’s stiff face creased uncertainly into a rueful grin. ‘When we get out of this—if we get out of it—I think I’ll take to my bed for a month,’ he said. He raised his voice to a shout. ‘Extinguish all the deck lights!’ he commanded.
The resulting blackness was so intense as to be very nearly palpable.
‘Hoist the sails!’ the captain shouted.
Garion could hear the creaking pulleys and the flapping of canvas. Then there was the heavy boom of the sails catching the wind and the ship heeled over as she swung to starboard.
‘There’s no way to be sure of our direction, my Lord,’ the captain warned. ‘We haven’t got a fixed point of any kind to refer to.’
‘Use those,’ Garion suggested, pointing at the winking deck lights on the Mallorean vessels trailing far behind. ‘We might as well get some use out of them.’
Their darkened scow moved eastward with her sharply angled sails cracking in the wind. The deck lights of the Mallorean ships that had been pursuing them continued their cautious northward course, crossed far behind, and winked out of sight.
‘May Torak guide them to a reef,’ the captain muttered fervently.
‘It worked!’ Urgit said delightedly, clapping the seaman on the shoulder. ‘By the Gods, it actually worked!’
‘I just hope that nobody catches me running at night without any lights,’ the captain brooded.
Dawn came smudged and bleary to the murky eastern horizon, rising slowly up out of a low-lying shadow some ten leagues or so ahead. ‘That’s the coast of Cthaka,’ the captain said, pointing.
‘Is there any sign of those Mallorean ships?’ Urgit asked, peering around at the heaving sea.
The captain shook his head. ‘They passed astern of us during the dogwatch, your Majesty. They’re halfway up the Gorand Sea by now.’ The seaman looked at Garion. ‘You wanted to get closer in to shore and then swing around to starboard again, my Lord?’
‘To starboard, of course.’
The captain squinted up at the sails. ‘We’ll have to reset the rigging again, I suppose.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Garion told him regretfully. ‘When we turn south, we’ll be sailing directly into the wind. You’ll have to furl your sails and break out the oars.’ He noted the disappointed expression on the seaman’s face. ‘I’m sorry, Captain, but there are limits. Your sails are the wrong shape, and when you get right down to it, rowing in this case will actually be faster. How far north were we swept last night?’
‘A goodly way, my Lord,’ the captain replied, peering at the indistinct coastline lying ahead. ‘You can put a lot of water behind you moving under full sail before a wind like that. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the mouth of the Gorand Sea somewhere ahead.’
‘We don’t want to go in there. Let’s not start playing tag with those Mallorean ships again—particularly in tight quarters. I’m going below for a bite of breakfast and some dry clothes. Send someone down if anything happens.’
‘I will, my Lord.’
They had fish for breakfast that morning. At Polgara’s suggestion, Durnik’s huge catch had been cut into steaks and then delicately broiled over a low flame.
‘Delicious, isn’t he?’ Durnik asked proudly.
‘Yes, dear,’ Polgara agreed. ‘He’s a very nice fish.’
‘Did I tell you how I caught him, Pol?’
‘Yes, dear—but that’s all right. You can tell me again, if you’d like.’
As they were just finishing their meal, the Murgo captain entered, wearing a tarred cape and an anxious expression. ‘There’s more of them, my Lord,’ he blurted t
o Garion.
‘More of what?’
‘Malloreans. There’s another squadron coming up the Cthaka coast.’
Urgit’s face blanched, and his hands started to tremble.
‘Are you sure they aren’t the same ones who were chasing us last night?’ Garion asked, getting quickly to his feet.
‘There’s no way they could be, my Lord. It’s a different group of ships.’
Silk was looking narrowly at the ship’s master. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘have you ever been in business for yourself?’
The captain threw a brief, guilty glance at Urgit. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he mumbled.
‘This is no time for false modesty, Captain,’ Silk said. ‘We’re charging headlong into the midst of a Mallorean squadron. Are there any coves or inlets around here where we could get out of sight?’
‘Not along this coast, your Highness; but right after you go through the channel into the Gorand Sea, there’s a small bay to starboard. It’s well hidden by some reefs. If we were to unstep the masts and tie bushes along the sides, I think we could escape notice.’
‘Let’s do it then, Captain,’ Belgarath said shortly. ‘What’s the weather look like?’
‘Not very pleasant. There’s a heavy cloud bank coming up from the south. I think we can expect a gale before noon.’
‘Good.’
‘Good?’
‘We’re not alone in these waters,’ Belgarath reminded him. ‘A nice gale ought to give the Malloreans something to do beside line the rails of their ships looking for us. Go give the orders, Captain. Let’s turn around and make a run for it.’
‘How were you so sure that the captain knew about a secluded cove or bay somewhere?’ Urgit asked Silk after the seaman had left.
Silk shrugged. ‘You levy taxes on merchandise that gets moved from one place to another, don’t you?’
‘Of course. I need the revenue.’
‘A resourceful man with his own boat can sort of forget to stop by the customs dock at the end of a voyage—or he can locate some quiet place to store things until he finds customers for them.’
The Malloreon: Book 02 - King of the Murgos Page 34