by Roland Green
“My lady?”
He looked up as a puff of wind blew Eskaia’s hood back from her head and made her dark curls dance. So did her eyes, with both mischief and determination.
“I promised Haimya that I would not haul on the line. Nothing more.”
Pirvan did not care if Eskaia had promised her guard-maid some dwarf-forged armor and a castle on Lunitari. The less time she spent on deck, the happier he and many others would be.
Before he could say anything, however, a wild cry came from aloft, and more cries from forward echoed it.
“The anchor’s parted!”
* * * * *
It was the chain to the main anchor that had parted, being the only one over the side. Lowering both together, it seemed, would have taken more hands than were available for the work. So the captain had gambled on the lull in the storm holding for a few minutes longer.
The lull held for the most part. But enough wind remained blowing, and imperceptibly shifting as well, to pull the chain hard against a sharp edge of rock. As the wind rose and the anchoring party rushed aft to lower the second anchor, the rock sawed at the stout chain like a notched sword at an ogre’s neck.
Moments after it parted, Pirvan felt a puff of wind that turned into a steady blowing-from the northwest. In the time since they’d sailed into the lee of the Flower Rocks, the wind had shifted around until now the rocks were themselves alee shore!
If every soul aboard Golden Cup had been twins, there would still have been work for them all in the next few minutes. Pirvan was caught up in it all, turning his hands to whatever work he was ordered to do or saw not being done. He could not have said from moment to moment what was going on, as the ship’s people struggled to save it and themselves, but he remembered what he saw when he could at last look up from the deck.
Golden Cup’s stern had turned toward the wind and was driving south, with the Flower Rocks seemingly close enough to touch. The ship also seemed to be making some way toward the east, with every scrap of sail set that its two remaining masts could carry. Somebody had even tied something to the stump of the foremast, and it was beyond there that Pirvan saw it:
Tarothin stood by the railing, both hands raised, one of them holding his staff. Tarothin, the healing-weakened wizard who could not swim a stroke, stood by the railing with neither rope around his waist, nor floatbelt around his torso, nor anybody at hand to catch him if he slipped.
Pirvan dropped some work he could not remember having picked up and sprinted for the ladder. The deck seemed to drop out from under him as he clutched the rungs and hauled himself upward more than climbed. A dash, a second ladder, the ship lurching wildly again, and he was a sword’s length from Tarothin.
There he stopped. To either side, the waves surged and foamed into the shallow water and over the rocks. Over a good part of the area astern, the wind seemed to have halted. Pirvan saw spray rising farther off to the north, flung toward the ship, and caught in the air to shimmer like heat rising from a fire.
He also saw one of the men working on the foremast snatch up a short spear-a boarding pike, Pirvan had heard them called-and lift it, ready to throw.
Whatever Tarothin might have in mind, he could not be meaning to sink the ship with Lady Eskaia aboard. Not unless so many people had lied to Pirvan that Golden Cup was already doomed.
His dagger came out in a heartbeat and flew through the air as the sailor brought his arm back. Before the pike left his hand, the weighted pommel of Pirvan’s dagger smashed into his shoulder. The spear went wild, more nearly hitting Pirvan than Tarothin. The thief lunged forward, kicked the sailor in the stomach, snatched up the dagger as the man crumpled, and made ready to hold the man’s comrades at bay.
“Don’t touch the staff!” someone shouted. Pirvan thought wizards couldn’t talk while working a spell, then realized that it was Grimsoar who had shouted. He stormed across the deck with a coil of rope under one arm and a hefty club in the other. He looped the rope around Tarothin’s waist several times, then tied it with just as many knots to the railing. By the time Grimsoar was finished, Tarothin was more firmly a part of the ship than much of the surviving deck gear.
By that time, too, the sailors had retreated and Pirvan had attention to spare for what Tarothin had been doing. There was a passage in the Flower Rocks from north to south, narrow and high-walled, more like a canyon than anything else but wide enough for the largest ships.
With the wind as it had been, even a landlubber like Pirvan could see that they would never have made it. But with Tarothin’s spell shifting the wind, Golden Cup was making steady progress toward the passage.
It was not steady all the way; the bowsprit came to grief halfway through, as the surge of the waves overpowered both wizard and helmsman. But in time there was open water ahead, where there had been solid rock too recently for anyone’s comfort, and orders being shouted that Pirvan knew he should obey.
“I’ll keep any witlings off him,” Grimsoar said.
“Unless they need-your strength,” Tarothin said. His voice rasped as if his throat was filled with sand.
“We need you.” Grimsoar said. “Either Grimsoar stays or you go below.”
Tarothin seemed not to hear. He gripped the railing and stared out over the waves. Even in the lee of the Flower Rocks, they had regained their wolfish aspect-and the stag had lost several prongs from one of his antlers.
The orders came from below, louder this time, and Pirvan turned and scrambled down the ladder.
* * * * *
The work the mate of the deck had called Pirvan to do was repairing the safety lines. He knew as much about ropes and knots as some of the sailors, so his hands flew, and meanwhile he listened to the sailors talk.
They weren’t out of danger yet, it seemed. If the wind backed around to the south again, they had only one anchor to keep them off the rocks. If it stayed northerly, they could still be driven south to the Finburnighu Shoals. That was another feature of the Gulf of Karthay that Pirvan had never heard of and would have been glad not to hear of now.
As he strung a safety line across a gap in the bulwarks, Pirvan saw one of those sets of bollards on a shelf in the rocks, a long bowshot away. He also saw the water boiling between the ship and the rocks, and the distance opening between it and the bollards.
“Wind’s one way, current’s another, tide’s a third,” Kurulus said. He lowered his voice. “You can ship with me any time you please, Brother Pirvan.”
Pirvan nodded silently. An idea was forming in his mind.
“Do we have a boat left?”
The mate shrugged. “All smashed, but they made a raft of barrels yesterday. If it’s in one piece-but now, you can’t steer it through that.”
“What if it was on a rope?”
“A line?”
“Whatever you call it.”
Pirvan’s patience with the fine points of the sailors’ vocabulary threatened to run out. So did every other sort of patience. He could see the gap between the ship and the bollards opening steadily, and who knew where the next set was?
“I can swim to the bollards with a line. Then the men on the raft can pull themselves ashore. Five or six men can pull a heavier line ashore. One line and the anchor should hold us.”
“Can you swim well-?”
“Well enough to reach the rocks, and then it will be more a matter of climbing. That I can do better than anyone aboard, I wager.”
“Like I said, Brother, when I have my ship-”
“I accept the offer, if we both live long enough.”
“Better if your wizard friend could throw the rope with a spell.”
“I don’t know if he knows levitation. Also, that wind block weakened him all over again.”
Kurulus and several sailors who’d gathered just within hearing looked sour. Pirvan wanted to curse. First they’d been ready to kill Tarothin for casting a spell. Now they seemed ready to kill him because he couldn’t cast the one they needed.
At least the warrior-maid might not have heard him and the mate talking-
“You’ll need two of us swimming the line ashore, Kurulus. Now, don’t argue,” Haimya added. “I swim better than Pirvan, even if he does climb better than I do.”
It did not seem like a good time to mention Haimya’s seasickness. Time was passing, the bollards were receding, the wind seemed to be rising, and possibly the prospect of action had cured Haimya’s seasickness.
And possibly the three moons might do a perfect hesitation dance that very night.
Pirvan pulled off his shirt and began looking around for a suitable length of rope.
* * * * *
The wind continued to rise as Pirvan and Haimya made their preparations. As swiftly as they worked, the first bollards were out of sight by the time they were ready. By the favor of the gods and long-dead masons, a second set was coming into sight as they stepped to the bulwarks.
Pirvan wore only his loinguard and gloves, Haimya a loinguard, a sailor’s shirt, and sharkskin buckskins. Both carried daggers, Haimya a beltful of wooden pegs, and Pirvan a small mallet. Both had ropes around their waists.
“Now, remember, nothing fancy, and are you sure you wouldn’t have float-?” the mate of the hold said. She was short and sturdy, likewise old enough to be Pirvan’s mother and right now behaving much like one.
“We’ll be doing as much climbing as swimming,” Pirvan said. “Ready, Haimya?”
“Haimya-” Lady Eskaia began. She’d come on deck even though she now looked as sick as Haimya had been. Then her voice failed her and she only hugged her guard-maid.
Grimsoar came up, at the head of the men assigned to the raft. “Brother, Tarothin says-”
Pirvan scrambled under the lifeline and balanced on the ragged edge of the deck. Nothing from Tarothin could be worth standing here a moment longer, listening to the wind howl and wondering how many moments he had yet to live.
A wild cry rose above the wind. Haimya soared into the air, bent double, and plunged from sight under the foam. Pirvan waited only long enough for her head to reappear, then dived after her.
* * * * *
The rope snapped tight around Pirvan’s waist, burning his skin even in the chill water. It also squeezed the breath out of him, so that he had barely enough air in his lungs to reach the surface. He gulped in air, his lungs stopped burning, then a wave broke over him and he choked on the water.
A strong arm slid under him, lifting him, while an equally strong hand grabbed him by the hair and lifted his face out of the water. He churned with both arms and legs, lifting himself higher, above the next wave and the one after it. By then he could breathe normally again.
No words were needed. He just looked his thanks at Haimya and began to swim toward the rocks. So did she, but with a sureness of movement in her shapely arms and legs that proved the truth of her words. She could have covered two feet to Pirvan’s one if she hadn’t deliberately slowed so that they approached the rocks together.
In the lee of the Flower Rocks, the waves weren’t shattering both themselves and swimmers on the outcrop-pings. It was still like climbing out of a boiling pot with a rim two men high. Pirvan trod water for a moment, looking for the best way up.
A crack about as wide as his head seemed the best way. As long as he wasn’t washed in too far and wedged tightly underwater, or swept out and battered against the rocks-
It was then that he saw Haimya’s head vanish below the surface.
He thought for a moment that she’d dived away from the rocks, or been caught in an undertow. Then he saw the men aboard Golden Cup waving their arms and pointing. They also seemed to be shouting, but into this wind they might have been in Qualinesti for all he could hear them.
It was Haimya’s bubbling scream that brought him fully alert. That, and her head popping up suddenly, with something huge and shapeless in the water barely ten feet behind her.
Alertness flowed into action in the space of a single breath. Diving with a dagger in your hand was a good way to lose it; Pirvan’s steel was still in his belt as he entered the water. He deliberately dived deep and rolled over on his back as he drew the dagger, looking for his enemy.
The water was murky from the storm, but he could make out Haimya, thrashing in the water with both arms and one leg. One leg? He looked at the other, and saw that it hung limply, as if something had broken it or even worse, shattered the hip.
No blood, though-but Pirvan sensed something large and evil, circling them just beyond the limits of vision. He even thought he heard a peeping, like a newly hatched chick but far harsher, just at the upper limits of his hearing.
Then a serpentine shape came out of the murk, and Haimya thrashed still more wildly. Pirvan had just time to see her other leg go limp, then lunged at the shape. It was gray and shaped more like a sausage than a serpent, but it had scales and a face that was a nightmarish parody of a human one.
A water naga-and an evil one, or else one that thought for some reason Haimya and Pirvan were enemies. No time to argue with it, either, even if it were intelligent enough to understand.
Pirvan’s dagger skidded off scales but upward and inexorably toward the left eye. The paralysis spell struck him, but on the other arm-then the dagger drove into the naga’s eye and pain erased its ability to cast spells.
Pirvan stroked toward the surface, using his one good arm and two good legs, searching for Haimya both above water and below. He saw her head in the middle of a circle of foam her arms had made, then saw it slide out of sight.
Pirvan dived after her, largely convinced that he would never surface again.
At least I won’t have to explain to Gerik Ginfrayson how she drowned before my eyes.
As he dived, he felt a tingle in his paralyzed left arm. He commanded it to move, and wanted to shout as it obeyed the command. He wanted to shout a second time as Haimya swept up past him, thrashing frantically with both arms and both legs!
She was on the surface waiting for him, staring all about her, eyes wide with alertness and (although Pirvan would never even think it) more than a little fear. He didn’t blame her; the water seemed far colder at the mere thought of the naga’s paralysis spell.
“Can you climb?” he called. “I can pull up if you want to wait in the water-”
Haimya’s answer was to fling herself at the rocks.
Chapter 8
Haimya might not have the greatest head for heights or skill in climbing equal to Pirvan’s, but her desire to be well clear of the water before the naga revived or summoned its friends worked well enough. She was on the first ledge before Pirvan, and reached the bollards at the same moment.
On that ledge, they at last had time to regain their wind-and discover that Pirvan’s line had snapped somewhere in the fight with the naga. Pirvan looked down into a churning waterscape that had swallowed the rope like a chicken snatching a grain of barley. Diving back in would be futile; how dangerous as well depended rather on what had happened to the naga.
Haimya’s face was a study-gratitude to Pirvan for saving her, fear for her lady and shipmates if the one line wasn’t enough, and what seemed to be doubts about her own honor. Her sense of honor was the sort, Pirvan knew, that would make her think he should have let the naga take her if only he could have saved both lines.
Soon she would realize that this was fretting herself over an impossibility, and be calm. Meanwhile, the less Pirvan said, the better.
They tied the remaining line comprehensively around the bollards and signaled. Then they started hauling in the second line, for the raft.
They were streaming with spray, sweat, and blood by the time the second line was secure. Pirvan’s hands were in better shape than his compani
on’s, who clearly felt the salt water stinging her blisters and raw spots. She had also gotten wounded climbing up the rock.
They were wiping the spray out of their eyes for the tenth time when the raft went over the side of Golden Cup. Squinting, Pirvan saw it carried the promised six men and the end of the heaviest remaining chain. All six men were also armed with boarding pikes, fishing tridents, or axes, and the ship’s side was lined with more spearmen and a few archers.
Pirvan doubted there was a dry bowstring within a day’s sail of the Flower Rocks, but the sight was reassuring nonetheless. It might even mean something if the naga came back-it seemed to have no power to bespell more than one human at a time. Young, old, sick, or merely stupid? Tarothin would know, if they ever spoke to him again.…
Pirvan realized that cold and exhaustion were clouding his mind. Haimya’s eyes were glassy, and she was beginning to shiver. He shook his head, thought of brandy-laced tea, and hauled in a double-sized portion of the line. Haimya tightened her grip, though even her sword-callused hands were beginning to weary, and threw her weight on the line, too.
At some moment, Pirvan became aware that he and Haimya were no longer alone on the rock. They seemed to be surrounded by sailors, all as large as heroes of legend or even Grimsoar One-Eye. One of them was Grimsoar, and he wrapped a blanket around Haimya. Except that there was only the one blanket, and she quickly stepped close to him and let him wrap them both up in the scant but welcome warmth of the tar-smelling wool.
They sat down, and Pirvan remembered hearing someone growl, “Lucky man, cuddling that sword-wench.” He remembered somebody else suggesting that the first speaker keep his tongue between his teeth if he wished to have either.
Then, for quite a long time, there didn’t seem to be anything worth remembering.
* * * * *
By the time Pirvan and Haimya were asleep, wrapped up in the blanket and each other, Golden Cup was safe. The heavy line came ashore with a rush, as six stout sailors heaved on it. The moment it was secured to the bollards, everyone who could lay a hand on the slack of the line did so and hauled the ship around until its bow pointed north and most of the strain was off the anchor.