“What for?”
“I was thinking along the lines of something in the nature of a national holiday.”
“I’d be more than happy to celebrate that one, my friend,” Andar agreed.
Gunda moved around the seedy-looking waterfront of Castano looking for a reasonably priced fishing sloop for the next few days while Andar went through the tedious business of hiring enough merchant ships to carry the bulk of the army up to Veltan’s Domain. Although Andar had access to the army treasury, Gunda was fairly certain that his friend would go up in flames if his sloop cost the army too much.
Gunda finally located a yawl that seemed to suit his purpose, and then he introduced Andar to the scruffy old fisherman who wanted to sell it. The two of them were haggling spiritedly when Gunda left the shabby waterfront tavern to have a word with his distant cousin, the captain of the Ascendant, about the rudiments of steering a boat. Despite his family background, Gunda knew next to nothing about boats.
The sun rose bright the following morning, and there was not a cloud in the sky, so Gunda went down to the harbor of Castano to play with his new toy.
He was moderately inept right at first, and he stirred up quite a few curses from other ships as he floundered around in the harbor, but after a few days he grew more practiced. He was quite certain now that, barring some natural disaster, he’d be all right at sea.
Then he went back to the army compound to see how Andar was coming along.
“I’ve still got a ways to go,” Andar admitted. “I’m having a bit of trouble finding enough ships.”
“How many more do you think you’ll need?”
“At least a hundred. You’re not going to move eighty thousand men on a handful of ships.”
“I’ll take the Albatross and go on ahead, then.”
“Albatross?”
“It’s a nice, seagoing sort of name, wouldn’t you say? I mean, an albatross is a sort of second cousin to a seagull, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know if I’d use that name, Gunda. I’ve heard that sailors aren’t really very fond of those particular birds. They seem to think that the presence of an albatross is bad luck, or something like that.”
“That’s just a superstition, Andar.”
Andar hesitated slightly. “Has Narasan finally got his head back on straight?” he asked quite seriously. “He sort of went all to pieces after his nephew was killed in that war on down to the south.”
“He seems to be pretty much all right now. I think taking on this war in a different part of the world has helped him get over what happened to his nephew. Padan’s keeping an eye on him, and he’ll let us know if our glorious leader’s still all in one piece. I’ll go on up there and find out where Narasan wants us to put the army ashore, and then I’ll come on back to lead you on in.”
“That’s assuming that I can find enough ships to get everybody up there all at the same time,” Andar rumbled. “I might have to make two trips, though. Ships of any kind are getting very scarce here in Castano, for some reason.”
“Do the best you can, old friend,” Gunda said. “I’ll see you in a couple weeks anyway.”
“You don’t have to rush on my account, Gunda. I’m getting paid no matter what I do.”
Gunda set sail from Castano at first light the next morning, and when the Albatross moved out of the choppy water in the harbor and reached the open sea, she opened many new doors for him. He found that once he’d adjusted the set of the sail just right, she’d cut through the waves like a well-sharpened knife. The ropes creaked pleasantly, and the sharp bow seemed to hiss as the Albatross raced north. After an hour or so, Gunda realized that he could actually feel her reaction to the waves as she sliced through them.
The sun was going down when Gunda decided to put out a sea anchor to hold the Albatross in more or less the same location until morning, and then he bailed out most of the water that’d come seeping in during the day. She was a nice enough boat, but it seemed that she had a few leaks that really needed some attention.
He sailed on the next morning and by late afternoon the southern edge of the ice zone came into sight. The Albatross obviously moved much faster than the wallowing Trogite merchant ships that had carried the advance army to the Land of Dhrall. “Aren’t you the little darling?” he said to her quite fondly.
As the sun was going down, Gunda entered the southern end of the channel through the ice zone and prudently moored the Albatross to a towering ice floe. This wouldn’t be a good time to start taking chances.
He slept well that night as the Albatross rocked in the gentle waves almost like a baby’s cradle. He awoke at first light, raised his sail again, and cautiously moved on up through the mile-wide channel as the sun rose to greet him.
It was about noon on the following day when the Albatross reached the northern end of the channel, and Gunda relaxed a bit as he came out. There hadn’t been any real danger involved in sailing up through the channel, but the towering ice floes had made him a bit edgy.
Once he’d cleared the ice zone, a good following breeze came up, and the Albatross leaped ahead with unbridled enthusiasm. Gunda tried to shake off all of his almost poetic responses to things that he was fairly certain most sailors had learned to take in stride, but he finally gave up. “Oh, well,” he murmured, “as long as we’re enjoying ourselves, what difference does it make?”
It took him almost two days to reach the south coast of Veltan’s Domain, and another day to reach the easternmost peninsula. The south coast, he noticed, was primarily farmland, and the little villages along the coast seemed neat and orderly. Now that summer had arrived, the farmland that lay inland from the snowy-white sand beaches was bright green with newly sprouted wheat, and the blue summer sky was dotted with fleecy white clouds.
As he turned north to sail the Albatross up along the east coast of Veltan’s Domain, Gunda came to realize just why he’d found Castano revisited so ugly. He was ruefully forced to admit that in comparison to the clean openness of the Land of Dhrall, the glorious Trogite Empire was cramped and dirty, and it reeked like an open sewer.
It was midafternoon of the following day when he saw the peculiarly mixed fleet of broad-beamed Trogite tubs and narrow Maag longships anchored just off a white sandy beach. He approached the Victory, the ship of his cousin, Pantal, and he saw that his friend Padan was watching him very closely.
“Ho, Padan,” Gunda called.
“Is that you, Gunda?” Padan demanded, seeming just a little surprised. “Where’s the rest of the army?”
“Probably still back in Castano. Andar’s having some trouble finding enough ships to carry all the men on up here. I’m not positive, but he might have to make two trips to get them all up here.” Gunda tied the bow of the Albatross to the anchor-chain of the Victory. “I need to talk with Narasan. If he’s found out where we’ll encounter the enemy, I’ll need to know the exact location so that I can put the army ashore there.”
“Not a bad idea,” Padan admitted. “Come on board. There are a few things you should know.”
Gunda climbed up the rope ladder to the deck of the Victory, and he and his boyhood friend clasped hands. “We’ve missed you, Gunda,” Padan said. “You really startled me with that little fishing boat. It looks a lot like the one that belongs to Veltan, and I wasn’t really expecting to ever see that one again.”
“Oh? Has Veltan sailed away?”
“It wasn’t Veltan who sailed off in that sloop. Scrawny Jalkan finally made the mistake we’ve all been waiting for. Narasan revoked his commission right there on the spot, and I dragged him down here to the beach in chains.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard in years,” Gunda said, grinning broadly. “What did the little scumbag do that our glorious leader found so offensive?”
“He insulted the wife of one of Veltan’s close friends.”
“That must have been some insult.”
“It was enough. Narasan almost fainted dead away whe
n he heard it, and he revoked Jalkan’s commission.”
“That sort of makes this whole war one of the nicer things in life, doesn’t it? What’s Veltan’s sloop got to do with all this, though?”
“I was just getting to that. I brought the rascal down here to the beach and locked him in what I thought was a secure compartment down in the hold of the Victory here. He was chained to the wall, and the compartment door was barred from the outside. I was absolutely positive that there was no way he could escape, but I found out this morning just how wrong I was. Somehow, he managed to wriggle out of the chains, push the bar away from the door, and slip over the side of the ship. Veltan’s sloop was anchored not far away, and when I woke up this morning, Jalkan—and sloop—were both missing.”
“Man, are you going to get yelled at!” Gunda exclaimed.
“I know,” Padan replied glumly. “It won’t be the first time, but I’m fairly sure that Narasan’s going to rake me over the coals until the cows come home this time. I really blundered, Gunda, and Narasan will probably come down on me with both feet.”
“Poor baby,” Gunda said with mock sympathy. “Where do I go to find our glorious leader?”
“He’s probably still in Veltan’s castle—in the map-room, most likely.” Padan paused. “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to keep what I just told you to yourself, could I?”
“That wouldn’t be at all proper, Padan,” Gunda replied, “and I’ve always been big on propriety.”
Commander Narasan was seriously discontented when Gunda told him that Jalkan had escaped. “Why didn’t Padan post guards on that slimy little rascal?” he demanded.
“You’ll have to ask Padan about that, Narasan,” Gunda replied. “Right now, I need to know just exactly where we want Andar to put the army on shore. They’ve probably left Castano by now, so it’s likely that I’ll meet him somewhere in the channel that comes up through the ice zone.”
“Let’s go to Veltan’s map-room,” Narasan suggested. “There’s a sizeable river mouth a few days to the north of here, and we’ll want the army to come ashore quite a ways up that river.” He paused. “How did you manage to get so far ahead of the main fleet, Gunda?” he asked.
Gunda shrugged. “I picked up a nice little fishing yawl down in Castano,” he replied. “Her name’s the Albatross, and she can go almost twice as fast as any other Trogite ship I’ve ever seen.”
Narasan winced. “How much did you pay for her?”
“Couldn’t really say, old boy,” Gunda replied in an offensively lofty tone. “Andar’s got the key to the army treasury, so I left all the haggling to him, while I went down to the harbor to persuade the Albatross that she was supposed to sail along in the water and not try to get up and fly.”
“Very funny, Gunda.”
“I’m glad you liked it, old friend.”
“You’ve got a bit of a problem, cousin,” Pantal said the next morning when Gunda rowed out to the Victory.
“Oh?”
“I hope you weren’t planning to leave here this morning.”
“That’s sort of what I had in mind,” Gunda replied.
“Right now, about the only thing that’s keeping your yawl off the bottom of the harbor is that rope you tied to the Victory’s anchor chain.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Come and look for yourself,” Pantal said, pushing a rope ladder over the side of his ship.
Gunda climbed up the ladder and followed his cousin over to the other side of the Victory.
He stopped and stared in utter disbelief at the Victory’s anchor-chain. As Pantal had said, the rope from the bow of the Albatross was tautly hanging straight down, and Gunda could see the hazy outline of his yawl under the water.
“What happened to her?” he exclaimed.
“I think the word most people use is ‘sank,’” Pantal replied.
“Did some rascal sneak out here and chop a hole in her bottom?”
Pantal shook his head. “I had men on watch last night. Nobody came near the Victory. Who sold that tub to you?”
“An old fisherman in Castano.”
“Let me guess. He was more than a bit crippled, and even more drunk.”
“You know him?”
“Not by name, but there are a lot of people like him in Castano. He was getting along in years, and he had all those aches and pains that old men are always complaining about. Have you ever heard the word ‘caulk,’ Gunda?”
“Not that I remember. What does it mean?”
“Quite a bit of unpleasant work, cousin. Ships of any size are built out of boards. Have you noticed that?”
“Don’t try to be funny, Pantal.”
“No matter how tight the shipbuilders jam the boards that form the hull of a ship together, water will start to seep through after a while. Sailors deal with that problem with a hammer, a chisel, and several bales of hemp. You ram the hemp between the boards and then poke and hammer it until it’s well seated. The water will still try to seep in, but you want it to. When the hemp gets wet, it swells, and that’s what seals up the hull. After you’ve caulked her hull, the Albatross will float like a well-sealed jug.”
“How often will I have to do that?”
“Every year, usually. If you happen to hit rough water fairly often, you might have to do it twice a year. Now you probably understand just why that old fisherman was willing to sell you his yawl. Just the thought of caulking her again probably gave him nightmares.”
“Cousin, I haven’t got the faintest idea of how to go about doing something like that,” Gunda confessed.
“I didn’t really think you would, cousin. I’ll have my men take care of it for you—but it’s going to cost you.”
“Somehow I knew that was coming,” Gunda said sourly.
“Nothing in the whole world comes free, cousin,” Pantal said. “Why don’t we go back to my cabin and talk about the price, shall we?”
Pantal’s men raised the Albatross to the surface of the harbor, bailed her out, and then hauled her on into the beach. Then they began the long, slow process of caulking up her hull.
“You’re really quite lucky, Gunda,” Pantal said. “Did you have to bail her out very many times when you were coming up here?”
Gunda shrugged. “Two or three times, if I remember correctly. The old fisherman told me that she was sort of leaky, and that I should keep an eye on that. What was it that made her finally fill up with water and sink like she did?”
Pantal shrugged. “It could have been any one of quite a few things—colder water, a large wave slapping into her on one side or the other, or a sizeable length of caulking giving away all at once. It’s hard to say for sure. You could very well have drowned out there, you know.”
“When I get back to Castano, I think I’ll look that old fisher-man up and have a few words with him,” Gunda growled. “How long’s this likely to take?”
“Several days, anyway.”
“Couldn’t you put more men to work on it? It’s sort of important right now for the Albatross to be seaworthy again.”
“They’d just be getting in each other’s way, Gunda. She’s not all that big, so there isn’t really enough room in her hull for two dozen men or more.”
The days seemed to drag on as Pantal’s men recaulked the Albatross, and Gunda spent most of his time in Veltan’s map-room studying the region where the war here would most probably take place.
It was becoming increasingly obvious that Narasan would need the rest of his army here very soon. The Albatross had seemed to be the best answer, but Gunda was definitely starting to have second thoughts about that.
2
She’s tight now, cousin,” Pantal advised Gunda late in the afternoon several days later, “and I think she might surprise you. She hasn’t been treated very well for several years, but now that she’s been recaulked, she’ll go through the water like a hot knife through butter.”
“I hope so,” Gunda replied. �
��I’d really like to get back to Castano—like about four days ago.”
“I don’t think she’ll go quite that fast, Gunda, but you never know.”
“I’ll do my best to find out. I’ve been watching the night sky for the last few days, and we’ve got a full moon now. If the sky stays clear, I won’t have to drop anchor when the sun goes down.”
“That isn’t the best idea in the world, cousin,” Pantal said a bit dubiously. “If you’re going to try sailing at night, stay a goodly distance away from any coast or islands. The Albatross doesn’t draw much water, but still . . .”
“I’ll be careful, cousin,” Gunda assured him, “but things are likely to start getting tight around here before too much longer, and Narasan’s going to need the rest of his army here, not down in Castano.”
Pantal’s assessment of the potential of the restored Albatross turned to be a slight understatement. Sometimes it seemed that she almost flew as Gunda raced on down the east coast of Veltan’s Domain. When he reached the tip of the peninsula jutting out from the south coast, however, he found that he had to fight the prevailing wind. Somewhat reluctantly, he lowered the sail and fell back on the oars.
Fortunately, the wind changed direction before the blisters on his hands started bleeding, and he raised the sail again.
Then he discovered that there was a steady current moving in a westerly direction along the north side of the ice zone, and he reached the channel that led south in just under two days. Of course, he was taking advantage of the full moon now, so the actual sailing time probably wasn’t much different than it had been when he’d come up from Castano. He was more than a little sandy-eyed as he started down along the channel, but he’d discovered that he could get by on no more than four or five hours of sleep a night. He was always tired, of course, but he promised himself several good nights of sleep after he reached Castano.
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