A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  In a daze, Inos stumbled at Azak’s side as they descended the rubbly slope, back to the tents.

  What greater proof of love had any man ever offered a woman? He would relinquish Arakkaran for her, leave his homeland, his throne, his unbounded wealth and unlimited power … for her! How could any woman refuse such a love?

  Trust in love! the God had said, and at last she understood that cryptic edict.

  The God had been speaking of Azak, and Azak’s love.

  Wilderness were paradise:

  A book of Verses underneath the Bough,

  A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou,

  Beside me singing in the Wilderness—

  Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

  Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (§12, 1879)

  TWELVE

  Take the cash

  1

  “Think the Old Man’s going to drop anchor?” Ogi whispered, his imp’s nosiness making him twitch like a dog scenting rats. The captain had just gone by.

  “Likely,” Kani mumbled with his mouth full. “He looks almost as old as Rap, here.”

  They and a group of others were seated along the gangway, eating sausage and biscuit with their knees up and their backs against the cabins. Some were off duty; some, like Rap, were still too sick to work. On the benches before them, healthier men were rowing their hearts out, timing their stroke to the brutal swell for which Dyre Channel was famous.

  The air was warm and still and muggy, with a thin drizzle keeping everything soaked, and clouds hanging just above the masthead. Even in the shelter of the awnings, water dripped everywhere. The storm had blown itself out before it smashed Stormdancer into the iron toes of the Mosweeps, but Rap had not been dry since he came back aboard; nor had anyone else. By nightfall they would reach Thuli Pan.

  Rap was going to live. He was as weak as a sick chicken, still prone to sudden spasms of fever and ague, but definitely recovering. Some of the crew were in even worse shape, and everyone agreed that there was a sickness aboard, because no one wanted to admit to being felled by mere thirst and exhaustion; or even near drowning, as in Rap’s case. No one had died. Most were on the mend.

  And Rap had just been insulted, so he must give a suitable reply. He spoke around a wad of half-chewed sausage. “Kani … if I wasn’t eating, I’d feed your guts to the gulls.”

  The sailors considered the threat and decided it was adequate.

  “Do it as soon as we get to Durthing,” Ogi suggested. “He needs it. Four days now, maybe?”

  “Five, more like,” Ballast said in his guttural troll voice.

  Kani wiped a glitter of rain off his silver mustache. “More. Number One says he’s going to lay over a day or two in Thuli.”

  Everyone groaned. Rap ate in contented silence, knowing that someone would start explaining something to him shortly.

  Kani did. “Some of the passengers may quit there. Can’t say I’d blame them after this trip. That means looking for replacements, but most folk’d rather sail than go by galley, ’cept through the Nogids, see? Either way, we go on to Finrain. On Kith, see? We drop the rest there and carry on to Durthing.”

  Everyone sighed happily and began boasting of certain unbelievable experiences the female population of Durthing wanted, needed, and would soon receive.

  “Good spot, Durthing,” Ogi said, speaking only to Rap. “It’s just a village. Not even a jetty there. We’ll haul up on the beach and refit. Make momma happy, do some brawling, a bit of gardening. Durthing’s all sailors. I’m almost the only imp there. Jotnar, and a few trolls, mostly.”

  Kani claimed to be pure jotunn, but he snooped and chattered like an imp. “And the Impire doesn’t bother us,” he said firmly. “No chains there! No clanking legionaries. Nice little spot. We can find you a girl. Hey, fellows—who do we fix Rap up with?”

  Names were mentioned, and evidently became more and more unlikely, for each new one brought louder merriment. Even a couple of rowers joined in, calling out suggestions.

  Rap just ate and smiled and tried not to remember that Durthing was on Kith, and Kith was another island. He wondered if he might possibly escape during the layover in Thuli, then decided he was too weak to walk to the edge of town. Any town, no matter how small.

  His romantic future was soon forgotten, and talk returned to the captain’s probable retirement. “The Old Man does drop anchor,” Kani said, “then we put up Gathmor?”

  Everyone agreed to that, and the argument broke out about a new first mate, and other promotions.

  Ogi, though, turned again to Rap. “This one’s been rough! None of us can recall a worse trip.” He dropped his voice as if being careful not to give offense—any imp who lived and worked with a shipful of jotnar would soon learn caution. “We’ll all be glad to see home this time; but in a month or so, we’ll be ready to go again. It’s a good life if you can stand these —” His voice dropped to a whisper, “— blue-eyed maniacs. A week or two at sea, over to Faerie and back. Week or two onshore. Usually it’s dull as gutting fish, but the money’s good. Five years, a man can buy a farm and a wife. And you’re quick, lad. With that and your farsight you might even make an officer. You’re half jotunn, after all.”

  Rap mumbled noncommittally. He was sure now that escape from this Durthing place would turn out to be harder than it sounded, but he wasn’t going to raise suspicion by asking. He leaned across Kani and Verg to grab another sausage. Build his strength up.

  “Hey!” Ballast boomed. The talk had changed subject yet again. “The Mosweeps are the greatest mountains in all of Pandemia!”

  “Greatest bilge!” Kani mumbled, rubbing crumbs out of his mustache.

  “Yeah—how would you know?” asked Ogi. “You’ve never seen ’em!”

  “Nobody’s ever seen them!”

  “Not even Rap can see them!”

  That remark won a brief guffaw all round. Rap just grinned. He was a seer, and they didn’t mind! The matter was not usually mentioned, because sailors had a superstition against talking about magic, but they all knew about his power, obviously. Unlike the timid townsfolk of Krasnegar, these hardy sailors did not care that he could peer through walls or clothes. They had no privacy on board, anyway, so why did it matter? That discovery had touched him deeply. He was also something of a hero, which was another deliriously pleasant feeling. These tough seafolk had accepted him as one of themselves, and his freakish abilities didn’t count against him at all.

  It was a long time since he’d been one of a group.

  He had friends again.

  Someone whistled, and all eyes turned. “Rap!” shouted a voice. “Report to Number One.”

  Rap’s insides lurched nervously. He handed the rest of his sausage to Ballast and scrambled to his feet. The sudden move made his head spin, and he had to steady himself against the cabin wall. Then he began making his way forward, cursing his wobbling knees. As he emerged from the shelter of the awnings, the rain felt like ice on his heated face. His fever was coming back.

  Gathmor and Gnurr were waiting in the bow. The captain was slumped against the rail, looking haggard and about as ill as Rap was feeling. The mate was standing with feet apart, arms folded, glowering.

  Rap came to a halt before him, spreading his own feet wide to balance on the tipping deck. “Sir?”

  The deadly fog-gray eyes drilled through him. “Feeling better?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Ready to pull your oar next watch?”

  Rap’s heart cringed at the thought, and he was afraid his shivering might be showing, but again he said, “Aye, sir.”

  The mate grunted. His silver hair was streaked down over his face almost to his walrus moustache. The ship pitched and rolled while he just stared. Then he began to unfasten his jerkin.

  “You disobeyed an order.”

  Rap flinched. “Aye, sir.”

  “Look at me when I speak to you.”

  Rap looked up, although he didn’t need t
o. Gnurr had his eyes half closed and did not seem to be paying much attention.

  Gathmor hauled off the jerkin and dropped it on the desk, leaving himself bare-chested in the drizzle. “When a man does that,” he said, biting the words, “I usually throw him overboard. Look at me!”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “You believe me?”

  Rap swallowed and said, “Yes, I do, sir.” Jotnar often started quietly and then talked themselves up into manic frenzy. He could remember his friends Kratharkran and Verantor almost killing each other a few times as kids, and he’d lost his own temper once or twice, before he was old enough to control it. He wished he was in better shape to handle this, not so weak and shaky.

  “Rarely, on a first offense, I just beat him until he’s purple all over.”

  Why else would he strip down in the rain? “Aye, sir.”

  “Sometimes I do both.”

  Rap gave him the same reply. The sailor gripped the rail on either side of him. Muscles swelled and his knuckles showed white. He chewed his mustache for a moment.

  “The tide was ebbing, dawn was coming, and it was raining. But you thought you knew better.”

  “I thought—”

  “You’re not supposed to think!”

  “No, sir.”

  Pause. “And that line you caught was left there to keep her head to the wind. Not for you. I almost didn’t have it pulled in.”

  “No, sir.”

  Another pause. The jotunn was breathing hard, shivering with fury. “Well? You got nothing to say? You disobeyed a direct order. That’s mutiny, sailor! And you won’t give me any reason why I shouldn’t pulp you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No appeal for mercy?”

  Rap had been studying the sodden planks again, but at that demand he looked up, met Gathmor’s eye squarely, and said, “No.” He knew that things were very dicey now, but he also knew jotnar, and to show his fear would be a fatal mistake. Then he found enough spit to add, “No excuses!” But all his insides were silently screaming, Yes!

  “Evil take you!” For a moment Gathmor’s lips tightened, turning pure white. “You could mention that you saved the ship again, later. That would help.”

  Rap felt a thin tremor of relief. “I won’t beg, sir.”

  The mate seemed to take that as a challenge. His eyes narrowed, and Rap braced for the attack.

  Then the captain seemed to waken. “Belay that!” he said quietly. “Quit hassling the boy! You’re just mad because the whole crew started talking back.” He turned dull eyes on Rap and pursed his lips in a hint of a smile. “Did you know that?”

  “Sir?” Rap said blankly. He’d never spoken with Gnurr before.

  “They didn’t want to leave you.”

  Rap blinked stupidly, trying to comprehend an absurdity. The sailors had wanted to wait around for him when a million angry anthropophagi were about to descend on them?

  Gathmor scowled. “I suppose no one else heard … All right! But if you ever tell a soul—anyone at all, mind!—I’ll kill you. I swear.”

  “Aye, I mean no—sir.”

  “Not a word! But as long as no one knows you flouted that order, I’ll overlook it. Just this once.”

  “Thank you, sir. It won’t happen again.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  Suddenly the old captain laughed. “I told you he wouldn’t scare easy!”

  Gathmor grunted. “No, he didn’t.” He bent to retrieve his jerkin. With sudden anger, Rap realized that they’d been playing with him. Had Gathmor really been about to start a fight, he would have turned pale as ice, and he hadn’t. They’d been testing.

  For a long minute Stormdancer rolled and pitched, while the mate fastened buttons. Then he thrust aside his sodden hair with his fingers and sort of smiled. “But you did well. I said you’d be a free man. That stands.”

  He leaned back beside Gnurr, elbows on the drippy rail. Behind them the sea rolled in great gray hills and valleys. For a moment the two jotnar studied the greatly relieved faun.

  The captain doubled over, racked by a spell of coughing. Then he straightened again, annoyed by his weakness. “It’s not going to be much of a voyage, this one,” he said hoarsely. “For one thing, it just about killed us. And it would have, but for you.”

  “Aye … I mean, I did what I could, sir.”

  “And for another, Number One blew all our profit on buying a couple of thralls. Thought he’d gone crazy.”

  “So did I,” Gathmor growled sourly. “Forty-six imperials! Can’t think what got into me.”

  Andor had, of course. Andor could make most people do anything. Rap scanned briefly, but Andor was not aboard. Darad was snoozing on his bunk, facedown. His back was healing.

  Then the figure penetrated Rap’s throbbing head. “Forty-six imperials?”

  Gathmor scowled. “For you and your meaty friend. But it was worth it in the end.”

  “Er … thank you, sir.” Forty-six imperials? Rap had never thought he’d be worth that much money, not to anyone. Even allowing half for Little Chicken … twenty-three?

  “You like the life, don’t you?”

  “Aye, sir,” Rap said politely—and truthfully.

  Gathmor forced a thin smile and held out a horny hand to shake. “Welcome to the crew, sailor.”

  He seemed to mean well, he hardly squeezed at all.

  Then the significance of that little ritual drove a spike of horror into Rap’s conscience. Did the mate think he was promising to stay on, as one of Stormdancer’s hands? What about his quest for Inos? Had he just given his word to the sailor?

  And if Rap was forced to settle down as a crewman, living in this Durthing place, then what would Little Chicken say? Or do? What happened to the goblin’s destiny then, and how would he go about kidnapping—

  Huh?

  Rap scanned the ship again, then stared in shock at Gathmor. “The goblin?”

  The mate scowled. “You mean you didn’t know? He went after you.”

  Little Chicken? “He did?” Rap felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach.

  “When I ordered the men to float the ship, your buddy was the first to argue. I almost ran him through. Then he went tearing off, looking for you.”

  “Not my buddy,” Rap muttered, and staggered over to slump on the rail beside Gnurr while the world turned cartwheels and his knees almost folded under him. He must have been putting the goblin out of his mind as a man might try to forget a debt or ignore an aching tooth. He hadn’t noticed his absence.

  Of course Little Chicken would not have wanted to leave the island without his chosen victim. The sailors insisted that no one ever escaped from the Nogids. Whole fleets could disappear there. Castaways had no chance at all. Rap stared unseeing at the foam-streaked sea rushing past below him.

  Misunderstanding, the old captain laid a hand on his shoulder. “Death is a part of life, son,” he said, “and the sea a demanding mistress. Sailors all know what it is to lose friends.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Gathmor said sourly, “he disobeyed orders, also, and he didn’t save the ship. In fact we needed his strength to push off, and he wasn’t there, so even if he’d come back, I wouldn’t have let him on. It was probably him who roused the anthros. Friendship can be carried—”

  “He wasn’t my friend!” Rap shouted. He straightened up to face them. “I hope he tasted delicious!”

  That shocked the sailors into silence, while he struggled to take in all the implications of Little Chicken’s death. The prophecy had been cheated by a freakish accident of weather and timing. The goblin king was not going to meet his destiny. Witch and warlock both—their foresight had failed them.

  And the magic casement had been proved wrong, too! Not only was Rap not going to be tortured by the goblin, but if those prophecies had also been fallible, then he now had no reason to expect to be Inos’s champion against Kalkor, or meet a dragon with Sagorn.

  Whatever Rap did now, Ino
s would not be forced into marrying Little Chicken. Of course the witch might find another goblin prince for her.

  But maybe Sagorn had been right—Rap was only a humble churl who did not belong in Inos’s world of kings and imperors and sorcery. He was a faun, the old man had said, so he should be a hostler. But he was a jotunn, too. Jotnar were sailors by instinct.

  Gathmor was scowling suspiciously at Rap’s expression.

  “Sir,” Rap croaked, still clinging to the rail, “I haven’t told you how I got to Faerie.”

  “If it’s magic, I don’t want to hear about it. Not now, not ever.”

  “But … I may bring bad luck, sir.”

  “You brought good luck,” Gnurr said, with more authority than he had shown so far. “You look beat, lad. Go greet your new partners.”

  “P-partners, sir?”

  “Yes, partners!” Gathmor was grinning, which was astonishing—so astonishing that Rap could see nothing in the world but that huge grin under the great silver mustache and hardly noticed that he was shaking hands with the frail old captain, whose skin felt even hotter than his own. “They voted you in, sailor, as full partner. It won’t mean much this voyage, because of what you cost, but from now on you get your share. Off with you—and try to stay warm.”

  It didn’t make any sense. His head was throbbing, and waves of fever were tossing him like a tub in a storm. Moving on rubbery legs with the roll of the ship, Rap staggered away, and at once found himself encased in a mob of wet-smelling, noisy men, all crushing his hand and thumping his back, and half dragging him to his bench, raucously welcoming him and laughing. They’d all known why Gathmor had summoned him. They’d voted him a share. They wanted him as one of themselves. He thought he was going to vomit.

  Little Chicken was dead. The casement had been wrong. Rap wasn’t going to be butchered by the goblin. And he wasn’t going to meet any dragons, or Kalkor, or be Inos’s champion. He wasn’t ever going to see Inos. Not even Andor could get him away from Stormdancer now. Andor’s charm had limits—he couldn’t charm this many men all at once. And eighty men had all paid an incredible fortune to buy a seer who could guide their vessel through the dark, and fog, and rocks.