by Tim Stead
“I can.”
“Then you’ll do.”
The Gull streaked out to sea, carving a white path through the waves. He saw more than one of his crew look longingly at the fast disappearing land, but there was no safety there. Until they rounded the headland into the bay that protected Darna there wasn’t a single piece of useful shelter on the coast. He’d thought of turning west and running for Pek – a backward step, but a safe one if he could make it. But taking the ship against the wind in a storm was a hard thing, and his sick, scratched together crew weren’t ready for it, so it was east, and as fast as they could.
He glanced back at the storm. There was no doubt that it was catching them. The lowering clouds had spread out to a quarter of the sky, and the wind was picking up. It would not be long before he would have to haul down the main sail or risk the Gull being torn apart.
“I don’t like this.”
Ansel had appeared beside him again. The woman had a habit of being there, suddenly.
“The ship?” he asked.
“Everything,” she said. “The ship, the storm, the sea.”
“You’ll like it less in a while.”
There was a rattle up above them as the first fat drops of rain blew across the ship.
“You can go below if you like,” he said.
“Down there? I don’t think so. If this cobbled together piece of junk is going to sink I want to know about it before I’m waist deep in salt water.”
“The ship is quite seaworthy,” Taranath assured her, though he doubted his assurance would be much comfort. “It’s the crew I worry about. Half those we trained are hanging over the side throwing up and the other half are as scared as you.”
“I’m not scared,” Ansel said, looking away. “I’m concerned.”
“Have you ever been to sea?” he asked.
“No. Never wanted to,” she said.
“You seem to have a head for it. You look fine.”
“I can hardly stand,” she said.
Taranath looked around again. The storm was almost upon them, which meant it was moving quickly. That was a good and bad thing. It meant that it might pass as quickly as it caught them, but it also meant that they were barely two miles from shore. He could still make out the thin line of surf at the base of the cliffs. It also meant that the crew was unprepared.
“Three points to port,” he told the helmsman, who seemed to be coping. He wanted them to run parallel to the shore if they could. Otherwise they might find themselves fifty miles out, dangerously close to Cabarissa, by the time the storm blew out.
A gust caught the mainsail. The ship shuddered as if struck with a giant hammer. It was time to strike the big canvass.
Taranath had rigged two staysails between the foremast and the bowsprit, and that was all he planned to leave up. In a big wind they’d give him enough way if he didn’t try to run precisely with the wind, and if one of them broke away he could easily rig another.
“Strike the mainsail,” he shouted.
His crew responded slowly, creeping across the deck from handhold to handhold. They hadn’t found their sea legs yet.
“Come with me,” he said to Ansel, and scrambled down from the wheel deck to the ship’s heart. She followed rather more cautiously.
It began to rain in earnest, almost as though someone had emptied a bucket over the ship. It drummed on the deck and the land vanished from sight. The wind strengthened again and the ship heeled once more, almost half over. One of the crew slipped and shrieked as he slid across the deck and slammed into the rail.
“Ship first, lives later,” Taranath muttered. He dived for the line that held the gaff aloft and quickly loosened it. The sail was wet and heavy, and he could barely hold it. It dragged his hands towards the pulley and he was forced to let it slip through his blistered fingers.
He felt a weight come on behind him, and control returned. He lowered the gaff hand over hand, the sail closing above him as the gaff descended.
“Secure the boom!” he shouted. Once the wind let go of the sail the boom would be free to swing with the rolling of the ship, and it cleared the deck by a mere four feet.
The ship swung upright, lifted on a swell and plunged into the next trough. One of the men had reached the rope that secured the end of the boom, but he hadn’t shortened it yet. The boom swung against the wind.
Taranath saw it coming. He’d half expected it.
“Boom!” His shouted warning was nearly enough. Men flung themselves beneath the swinging wood, but one was too slow and was caught a solid blow to the back of the head as he ducked. Taranath tied off his own rope and scrambled for the boom line, catching it as it whipped across the deck. He braced a foot and pulled it taught, capturing the boom once more. He tied that off, too, and looked around.
The ship’s deck was in chaos. One man lay flattened against the rail, held there by another. The man who’d been struck by the boom was being dragged towards the aft hatch by another. Ansel crouched half way across the deck, clinging to the tied gaff line.
“We have to lower the foresail,” Taranath shouted. Already it was taking more strain than it could bear. Beneath the wind and the rain he could hear the fore mast complaining, creaking. It was the noise that things made just before they broke.
He crabbed forwards across the deck, not caring if anyone followed or obeyed. The quickest course was the cut the boom rope, to release it altogether. They could manage the sail by collapsing the gaff when the pressure was off the canvas, but if the mast went they’d lose the lot.
He seized the rope and found it tight as a bowstring. The ship rolled and dived again and he was swung around. The pain in his hands nearly forced him to let go, but he hung on, wrapping one arm around the line and pulling his knife out with his free hand.
Somebody shouted and he looked. A man was pointing back towards the stern. The Gull was sliding forwards into a massive trough, and the wave lifting the ship was a mountain.
“Hold on!” he shouted, but hardly anyone could have heard him over the wind, the rain and the sea. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
The wave pushed and the ship drove hard into the trough. Everything dissolved into white water and then darkness as the sea washed the deck. Taranath held on for what seemed like an age, the water pulling at his clothes and the rope biting into his arm.
It occurred to him in the eternal moment of darkness that he had killed these people. The ship would founder, the masts would break and the hull would be crushed. This storm was worse than anything he had ever known.
But the moment passed. The bow rose again and the ship climbed high on the back of the wave. Taranath wiped the water from his face and cut the boom line.
The boom flew away from him, and he skidded across the deck, still hanging on the cut end of the boom line, and fetched up against the rail. Someone scrambled across the deck and joined him. It was Torgan.
Together they managed to drop the gaff and haul in the boom again, tying it down.
Taranath knew that he should have rigged weather lines – ways for the crew to move around the deck in relative safety – but the storm had come on them so quickly, so ferociously. It seemed unnatural. He just hadn’t had the time. Now that both sails were down he made his way towards the stern, clambering along the rail on the larboard side.
The ship was easier now. The staysails, rudder and keel were enough to keep her from falling side on to the wind, and she was riding more comfortably, cruising crosswise down the troughs before cresting each wave. He took the wheel.
Already the wind seemed to be easing. With the big sails down the danger was past. Taranath had steered a ship through storms before, and this was no different. Now that the ship was rigged for them the wind and waves could be managed. They could be ridden as a skilled rider rides a spirited horse.
Order slowly returned to the deck before him. Ropes were tightened, anything still loose was lashed down. Men took up stations around the rails a
nd waited for the storm to abate.
It seemed that they had survived.
Worrel climbed the steps to the wheel deck. He was soaked through with rain and seawater. It dripped from the end of his nose, from the hair that lay matted over his ears. He wrapped an arm around the rail and stood for a minute looking forward into the veils of rain.
“She’s gone,” he said. “Ansel’s gone.”
“Gone?” It took a moment for Taranath to understand what he’d said. “What do mean? I saw her just a minute ago.”
“I’ve looked everywhere,” Worrel said.
The wave. It must have been the wave. He turned and looked back at the sea astern. He could see nothing, just waves, peak after peak of white water and spindrift fading into the grey distance.
“I can’t turn the ship,” he said, his hand on the wheel. He so desperately wanted to spin it, to go back. “If we go broadside to this…”
“She couldn’t swim,” Worrel said. “And there’s a villager, a man called Jarris, he’s gone, too. Neither of them could swim. And there’s a man with a broken arm, and another with a dent in his head, but they should mend, given time.”
Taranath felt his chest tighten, and it was hard to breath. He’d liked Ansel. She’d been clever, curious, a good lawkeeper. It was his fault that she was dead. His arrogance that had insisted he could save the ship, take it to Darna. If he’d taken the road she’d still be alive.
“Not your fault,” Worrel said. “We all took our chances, you most of all.”
“We should have taken the road,” he said.
“Then these folk would have taken the ship out on their own, and they’d all have drowned. You know that’s true. They needed you.”
It was true. But it seemed to Taranath that every decision he’d made had contributed to her death, that any other path through his maze of choices would have saved her life. It was a shadow fallen across his life that no sun could penetrate. He had never lost a friend before. His ships had always been lucky ships.
Worrel was still there. He was looking astern now.
“You ever see a storm come up that fast?” he asked.
“No.”
“And now it’s fading. Doesn’t seem quite natural, does it?”
It was an echo of his own earlier thought.
“What are you saying, Worrel?”
“You know what a Metaga is?”
“A weather witch? You don’t believe in that nonsense.”
“Not like that,” Worrel said. “But if magic can make a storm it might look like that, like what we just went through.”
“But who would do that? Not the mage lord.”
“No,” Worrel said. “But someone could. Or some thing.”
Taranath looked into the wind again, and through the thinning rain he could see the smallest patch of blue sky. Just like that the storm was over, and looking north he could see the shore again, the line of white surf, and the colour of sunshine on grass.
27 A Gift
Renat had arrived in Blaye two days after the Sword of Samara. He had been met at the docks by the cartel agent and he and all his baggage had travelled up to the agent’s house, which seemed a lot more pleasant than his own residence in Samara. It was a red brick house standing in a substantial garden on a quiet, tree-lined boulevard. The agent, Jazic Milan, seemed to be aware of his good fortune, and put on airs, but Renat was too worried to rise to it.
He had clutched the blind man’s blackwood box all the way to Blaye, never letting it out of his sight. It made him nervous to possess such a thing, as though at any minute he might be discovered and held accountable for its contents.
Jazic seemed much more sanguine about the whole affair.
“These easterners,” he said. “They have no sense of destiny, no ambition. If they could freeze the world in a glass ball, they would.”
Renat himself thought the world needed very little changing. Perhaps a few hundred more gold coins with his name on them would be a nice thing, but he liked the food in Samara, he liked the wine in Blaye, and he liked the sense of adventure that trading gave him, and he thought it prudent to keep these opinions to himself.
“Sarata will rule in the end simply because we desire it more,” Jazic said. “History is on our side.”
Renat resisted the urge to point out that history was presently the plaything of the mage lord, and the mage lord was clearly not in favour of Sarata’s pre-eminence.
“We all play out part,” he said. Personally, Renat did not see the advantage of chaos in the western kingdoms. They were all traders, after all, and stability was good for trade. He was willing to allow that others knew better, but suspected that imperial ambition was at the heart of it.
“These are great times,” Jazic said. “When Belin is king we who serve will not be forgotten, and Sarata will rise again.”
So it was politics, after all, Renat thought. He’d never met Belin, but the stories that filtered through the trade routes weren’t promising.
They were sitting together in Jazic’s drawing room. Unusually, it was placed at the back of the house and looked out onto a grassy garden set about with fruit trees and paved walks after the Blayish fashion. They were, of course, drinking Blayish wine.
“You think it appropriate to give the gift so soon?” he asked. “The engagement has not yet been announced.”
“You worry too much,” Jazic said. “It’s common knowledge here, and as long as we aren’t the first to congratulate them there can be no suspicion cast upon us. I have it on good authority that the Pekkish plan to make an extravagant gift in four days at the open audience.”
It was another new concept to Renat.
“This open audience,” he said. “Anyone can go?”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it? Any muck smeared peasant off the street is allowed to enter the palace and stand in the presence of the king, even to speak his mind. Such impertinence would merit a whipping at home.”
Renat nodded. It was true, and astonishing that the king of Blaye allowed such free access to his person, but from what he’d seen the monarch was well loved and benign, so the danger would be minimal.
“You’re sure that Calaine will be there?”
“The city expects it,” Jazic said. He laughed. “It’s pathetic how he panders to the whim of his people.”
Renat nodded again. He’d already made up his mind that he was going to agree with pretty much anything that Jazic said, even if he found it difficult to say the words. The house, the man’s confidence – everything suggested the man was politically connected.
“It’s certainly different from Sarata,” he mumbled.
“Well, then, we will go together with a suitable retinue. You can present your gift to Calaine, and I to Portina.”
“Jazic, would it not seem better if you presented both? You are the agent here, and it might seem odd if a Samaran agent presents gifts at the Blayish court.”
Jazic was pleased. “Why yes, I suppose that you are right,” he said. But you must come with me and see it done. It must be in your report to the cartel.”
“Of course.” Renat glanced at the blackwood box that lay on the table beside him. He would be glad to be rid of it, and happy to let Jazic take the credit, just in case everything went badly and they came seeking the guilty.
“Well, then,” Jazic said, standing and stretching. “I think lunch will be ready. Shall we eat?”
*
There was no royal palace in Blaye. Renat had seen the king’s residence – a large brick house to the north of the city surrounded by vineyards – but it was really no more than that. The open audience took place in another building. The Blayish called it the Great Hall. It was an unimaginative name, given that it was simply a very large hall set in the middle of the city.
There were plenty of Blayish soldiers here. They stood at the vast double doors and ignored the throng of people that pressed past them, and they stood inside, lining the walls and what Jazic tol
d him was called the speaking rail.
The two Saratans had to take their chances with the mob, but Jazic had made sure that he had enough retainers with him to allow them a small island of isolation, and they pressed towards the front, as close to the royal seat as they could. One of the retainers made their presence known to a Blayish man who sat just beyond the rail with a roll of paper, and Jazic’s name was written down.
The king’s seat lay beyond the rail in an area that rose up above the people like a huge dais. The rail itself was well guarded, but possessed a lectern from which the chosen could address the monarch, and a small gate.
The people arrived ahead of the king, and the hall was filled and buzzing with chatter long before Portina showed himself. A richly dressed man with a staff entered from the king’s end of the hall and thumped the wooden floor three times.
Conversation died.
Into the sudden silence walked the King of Blaye. He was taller than Renat had expected, and younger. He wore a black tunic and a scarlet cloak that did little to hide his muscular bulk. A sword hung on his left hip and he paused before sitting and surveyed his people with a stern gaze. Calaine followed him into the hall. Renat recognised her at once, and was surprised to see her without a trace of armour or weaponry. There was an appreciative murmur from the mob at her arrival.
The man who had been sitting by the rail took his roll of paper up to the king and spoke quietly. Portina nodded and sat. The scribe took his paper back to the rail and handed it to a soldier.
“The Lord King of Blaye will hear Miko Delanian, master baker.”
The king’s first business was a baker? Renat leaned forwards to catch sight of the supplicant and saw an ordinary man of middle years winding his way through the crowd to the lectern. He looked nervous, but not frightened. He smiled at a couple of folk that he knew and stepped up.
He bowed and pulled a scrap of paper from his pocked.
“Lord King,” he said. “I humbly beg your understanding and ask that the tax on imported flour be reduced by half. Our own flour cannot meet the needs of the city and it has raised the price of the people’s bread.”
