Ravian wasn’t surprised by the outburst – he knew her well enough by now.
‘That’s not how it is, nor how it needs to be,’ he said gently. ‘Look, Lefia, there’s no reason for you to stay here and you’ve said that you would like to see more of the world. Come away with me – I won’t touch you – I promise. Voyage with me to Tarcus and see what it’s like there. If you decide not to stay, I’ll put you on a ship to anywhere you want to go.’
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
‘You’re not just feeling sorry for me?’
‘I swear it.’
She looked at him directly then, and he saw that her self-composure – and her pride – had returned.
‘Very well then – but I warn you, lay one finger on me without my permission and I promise that my sword will live up to its name.’
When Ravian returned to the castle, Lectus confirmed that he had had little difficulty convincing King Postus to reinstate his daughter to royal status for the purposes of a political marriage.
‘He still refuses to see Princess Karalla, however – or admit her into his castle,’ he told the prince. ‘It would seem that King Postus is not the forgiving sort.’
It was probably just as well, Ravian thought. He didn’t think Lefia would ever forgive her father for executing her lover.
King Postus’s continuing order of banishment meant that, as the Tarcun party and their new addition began their ride back to Portana, Prince Pinnius was forced to farewell his sister on the trail outside Trebedan.
The two siblings dismounted and embraced tearfully.
‘I don’t know if we will ever see each other again,’ Pinnius said to her.
‘It’s in the hands of the gods,’ Lefia replied, ‘but you know that I will always be thinking of you.’
Pinnius turned to Ravian.
‘You won’t forget your promise?’
‘I won’t,’ Ravian replied, ‘nor will I ever forget your friendship. Come and visit me in Tarcus sometime.’
Pinnius looked rueful.
‘I would dearly love to, Ravian,’ he said, ‘but, as you can see, my father is in his twilight years, so I my duty will lie within this kingdom for a long time to come. One thing I can promise you though is that, as long as I live, Bolstenia will always be a friend to Tarcus.’
The two men shook hands and Ravian knew that he would always be able to rely on the small mountain kingdom as an ally.
Chapter Nine
During the journey to Portana, Lefia spoke little to Ravian and, sensing her mood, he let her keep her distance.
However, in contrast to her new-found reserve around the Tarcun prince, Lefia seemed quite comfortable talking to, or being talked at by, Lectus – the pair staying close by each other’s side throughout the journey. Ravian, despite some flashes of envy, was glad that she had found a companion among their party and pleased that it was his advisor. Lectus, he knew, would begin Lefia’s education in the history and traditions of Tarcus and he was sure that the courtier would paint his prince in the best possible light.
When they arrived in Portana, Godart and the crew of Sea Eagle greeted them with bemused stares.
‘Captain Godart, may I introduce the Princess Karrala,’ Ravian said. ‘The princess will be accompanying us back to Tarcus. Please organise a private space for her below the quarterdeck.’
Godart had kept the crew busy while Ravian had been inland and Sea Eagle gleamed like a new vessel. The young captain quickly arranged to screen off an area below decks for Lefia’s quarters, as well making some provisions for her ablutions.
They remained in Portana only as long as it took for Lectus to sell off their horses, and then the swordship put out to sea before a balmy southeasterly. By the first evening, they were well across the Bay of Bolstenia, making for the headland beyond which they would turn south for the Western Portal. Lefia had stayed on the quarterdeck all day, talking with Lectus and some of the other crew and taking in the novel experiences of the swordship and the sea. It was not until around sunset that Ravian, as he stared across at the distant shore of Bolstenia, found her leaning on the rail beside him.
‘This crew had been with you a long time,’ she observed.
‘Aye,’ he replied, ‘a number of months on this voyage – and most of them during the war before that. Sea Eagle was the first real swordship.’
‘Lectus tells me that the swordship was your invention,’ she said, ‘and that you saved Tarcus from invasion by the Northern Alliance.’
‘I had the help of some very clever men to develop the swordship,’ he replied, ‘and every Tarcun can take credit for our victory over the North.’
She smiled at him, the light from the setting sun colouring her gold.
‘He didn’t tell me that you were so given to modesty,’ she said.
Ravian smiled back.
‘Is there anything he hasn’t told you?’ he asked. ‘You two seem as thick as thieves.’
‘He told me about your first wife – and about Belice,’ she said. ‘I also gather that he is still slightly miffed that you appear to have by-passed the Princess Flamina. Still, I daresay she will still be waiting for you if you change your mind.’
Ravian was silent.
‘Don’t worry,’ Lefia said. ‘Lectus clearly thinks the sun shines out of your bottom – and so do the rest of the crew. It seems impossible to find anyone who doesn’t want to extol your virtues to me at every opportunity. It must be wonderful to be so beloved by your men – any one of them would obviously die for you.’
Ravian blushed.
The loyalty and obedience of his men were things he took for granted. That they should love him as well was something that hadn’t really occurred to him.
‘Don’t worry, Lefia,’ he said, ‘I’m no more virtuous than anybody else.’
‘No more virtuous than me, you mean?’ she asked with an edge to her voice. ‘How very condescending of you.’
‘I didn’t mean that at all,’ he replied. ‘Please don’t try and trap me into a fight that I’m not looking for.’
There was a silence between them.
‘Well,’ said Ravian at last, ‘you know about Sinur and Belice. I loved Belice very much and I suppose that I also loved Sinur once. Tell me your story.’
She continued to stare out towards the land in the gathering darkness. For a time, it seemed to Ravian that she hadn’t heard his question.
‘His name was Ebatane,’ she said at last, ‘and he was a castle guard, the son of a lowly farming family. There isn’t much else to say really. He was a gentle, honest man of the valley, we were each other’s first loves and – selfishly – I let him into my bed. I never really thought about the consequences until it was too late.’
‘And you were planning to stay in the hills forever?’ Ravian asked.
‘At least until that madman who is my father died – then I’m sure Pinnius would have pardoned me for my sins.’
‘You can go anywhere you want to now, you know.’
‘I know that – but I’m happy to be where I am at the moment.’
Ravian said nothing. That Lefia – somehow, he had found himself continuing to call her by her nymph-name and she had not objected – stood beside him at all was a wondrous thing that he could barely allow himself to believe. Now, he was prepared to wait and see if she felt about him as he did her.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it has been a long day, and I am used to going to bed with the sun. Shall we meet here for sword practice tomorrow morning?’
Ravian agreed that they should and wished her goodnight. Shortly after she had retired to her makeshift quarters, Lectus bustled up to him in the gathering darkness.
‘What a splendid young woman,’ he said. ‘How are you getting on, Your Highness?’
‘To be honest, I’m not so sure,’ replied Ravian. ‘She already seems more familiar with everybody onboard than with me – particularly with you.’
Lectus smil
ed.
‘Don’t be discouraged, Your Highness. To Princess Karrala, the rest of us are simply travelling companions. You, on the other hand, could turn out to be her husband. It’s a peculiar situation to be sure – but you can’t expect her to just tumble into your arms. She needs to be very sure about you – the poor thing’s had a rough time of it really.’
‘How very sensitive of you, Lectus – I can see that you girls have already become the best of friends. Still, you’re probably right. Hopefully, she’ll like what she sees of me enough to stay when we reach Tarcus.’
‘Ah, Tarcus,’ sighed Lectus. ‘Home is certainly where the heart is. Let us hope for a safe and speedy return home.’
The wind stayed fair as they rounded the cape the following morning and altered course south. For three days, they ran easily down the coast of Survene, the crew becoming used to the unusual sight of their admiral and the Bolstenian princess duelling on the quarterdeck each morning. On the dawn of the fifth day out from Portana though, the wind suddenly backed to the northeast and began blowing with steadily increasing intensity.
‘It looks as though we’re in for quite a blow,’ said Godart, eyeing the white-streaked sea astern of them. ‘I’d try to find shelter on the coast but it doesn’t look too hospitable and we are already south of any safe harbours marked on the chart.’
‘Well, we’ll just have to put a reef in and make a run for the Western Portal,’ said Ravian. ‘If the storm blows us too far off-shore, be ready to take in all canvas and run under a bare pole – no gale lasts forever.’
By that afternoon, the wind had increased to a velocity that Ravian had seldom experienced. Oddly, there were no clouds, no rain and there were no intermittent gusts – the wind simply continued to blow with steadily increasing intensity, building the swells marching down from the Grenwain Channel into menacing, deep-blue mountains of frightening size.
Ravian didn’t need to tell Godart to drop the sails. Even after his captain had done so though, Sea Eagle continued to drive southeast, making a similar sort of speed under a bare mast to that which she would normally achieve under full canvas.
‘I’ve never had to do this before, Godart,’ Ravian said, ‘but I think it would be prudent to stream a sea anchor astern. It will take the strain off the men at the tiller and, hopefully, stop us being blown too far off-shore.’
As the crew ran the canvas bucket out behind the swordship, Lefia joined them on the quarterdeck.
‘Are we in danger?’ she asked.
Ravian was pleased to see that she appeared neither seasick, nor frightened.
‘Not at this stage,’ he replied.
As he spoke, a passing mountain of sea lifted Sea Eagle high on its crest, the wind howling like tortured souls in her rigging, and they had a brief view of the endless lines of ocean swells chasing them down from astern. There was no longer any sign of land, despite the continuing clear sky and good visibility.
‘To be honest,’ he continued, ‘this is the strongest, steadiest wind I’ve ever experienced – but we seem to be handling it all right with the sea anchor out. As long as the weather doesn’t back any further, our main concern is going to be how long it lasts – and how far offshore and to the south we get blown. If the wind should come around further to the west, things will become difficult because then we’ll have to deal with the wind and the sea coming at us from different directions.’
The wind continued to roar out of the northeast for three days, sometimes easing slightly, and sometimes blowing so hard that the noise hurt their ears. Then, during the night of the third day, it died away to nothing in less than an hour.
‘I’ve never experienced, or even heard of, anything like we’ve just been though, Your Highness,’ Godart remarked to Ravian as Sea Eagle alternated between lurching to the top of each massive, moonlit swell, and then swooping down into the dark maw of each intervening trough. ‘Do you think the wind has gone for a while?’
‘I don’t know why, Godart, but I have a horrible feeling that the wind will be gone for a long time,’ Ravian replied. ‘I have no idea how far offshore we are and this swell is still pushing us southwest. Once the sea calms a bit, let’s hope we can pick up a breeze that will get us back to the coast. I suggest that you start rationing the water – it may be some time before we see land again.’
Dawn came with clear skies and the promise of a hot day. The size of the swells had reduced slightly but the mountainous waves were still so large as to dwarf anything they had ever seen in the Sapphire Sea.
‘What is your plan?’ Lefia asked Ravian as she joined him on the quarterdeck.
‘We wait for the swell to die down,’ he replied. ‘If we don’t get some wind soon, we are going to have to start rowing – and we won’t be able to do that until this beam sea eases. To be honest, I’m a little concerned – if I was on the Sapphire Sea I would know what to expect, but the weather out here seems quite different to anything I’ve ever known. Something makes me think that we are going to have a long row ahead of us.’
They waited for another two days as the swell, the marching walls now glassy in the windless conditions, slowly reduced in size. On the morning of the third day after the storm had died, Godart ordered the oars run out and they began to row east – their task made difficult as Sea Eagle continued to roll between the troughs.
‘How far south do you estimate we are, Captain?’ Ravian asked him.
‘Well south of the Western Portal, Sir,’ Godart replied. ‘The chart shows only one port on the western coast of Saravene – Dasena – but I have a feeling that we have been set south even of that latitude.’
They rowed all morning – the crew split into two shifts, each taking an hour at the oars. It was very hot – the work made harder by the continual rolling of the swordship. Godart, Lectus and Ravian took their turns at the oars alongside the crewmen, their backsides quickly chafing as they tried to hold their position on the seesawing thwarts.
At midday, Ravian called a halt to the rowing and assembled the crew below the quarterdeck. All of them were badly burned by the sun.
‘Men,’ he began, ‘we are somewhere off the coast of Saravene. I don’t precisely know how far but I’m sure that – even if we get no more wind at all – we can row back to shore. If the wind comes up in the meantime, then you can curse me for setting you to the oars now, but I’m not so sure that is going to happen any time soon. We must be thrifty with our water supplies and everyone must continue to take their turn on the thwarts. However, because of the heat, from now on we will row only at night – so now we rest until sunset. The swell is dropping, so this evening’s rowing should be a lot easier on our backsides than it was this morning.’
‘If we all had backsides the size of Citizen Lectus’s we’d all be a lot more comfortable!’ an anonymous wag called out.
The entire crew roared with laughter and even Lectus smiled.
‘All right then,’ Ravian said when the mirth had died down, ‘everybody turn in and try to get some sleep.’
They tried to sleep as Sea Eagle continued to roll lazily between the swells. By the time they returned to their oars that evening, the wave height had dropped considerably and, as Ravian had predicted, the rowing was not quite so tough on their posteriors.
Taking his turn at the oars with the second shift however, Ravian was surprised to see Lefia on the thwart in front of him – her shoulders rippling in the moonlight as she worked her oar.
‘What are you doing?’ he hissed.
‘What does it look like?’ she hissed back. ‘I’m rowing – it’s not a difficult skill to master.’
‘But I never meant for you to take a turn at the oars!’
‘Everyone must take their turn on the thwarts, you said – and why shouldn’t I? I’m as strong as most of your men.’
They rowed the rest of their hour in silence, Ravian finding that watching the muscles move in Lefia’s back and shoulders made a pleasant distraction from the tedious to
il. As the other shift took over again, she strolled up to him on the quarterdeck – the silver light clearly illuminating the mocking smile on her face.
‘Have you managed to recover from the sight of a woman rowing yet?’ she asked.
‘It’s not that,’ he blustered, ‘it’s just that I…well…you are…’
‘A precious princess?’ she suggested. ‘I’m not so precious, My Sweet. I can look after myself.’
‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,’ Ravian said, thinking that they might be about to argue.
She cocked her head to one side as she looked at him.
‘You know, Ravian, you really are old-fashioned, aren’t you? – always ready to rush to the aid of the distressed damsel.’
Ravian said nothing. No matter what he did, he thought miserably, it always seemed the wrong thing as far as Lefia was concerned.
She laughed.
‘Don’t change,’ she said and, to his surprise, gave his arm a brief squeeze. ‘It’s quite attractive really, and I know that you’ve got a good heart. Those men of yours would follow you anywhere.’
Leaving him standing, dumbfounded, she walked down off the quarterdeck and disappeared into her quarters. Had Ravian not been in full view of the men on the rowing shift, he would have leaped for joy.
They spoke no more that evening, Ravian content just to be close to her and watch her as they rowed their shifts. As the orange ball of the sun climbed over the horizon ahead of them, it illuminated a sea that stretched out all around them like a pool of blue oil. Like the wind that had created it, they saw, the swell had died completely.
They rowed for another two hours and then, after breakfasting, Ravian ordered a sail rigged as a sunshade and sent everybody to rest. Sea Eagle lolled the day away in the baking sun, the sea shimmering like a shining, blue desert, until, as evening approached and the air began to cool, her crew turned to their oars again.
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