By Blood Betrayed (The Kingsblood Chronicles)

by Houpt, David

  “I’ve got me a fix for ale-sickness,” Snog said quietly.

  Nan looked up at him sharply, then winced at the sudden movement. “It work?” she asked, her voice rough and harsh.

  Snog nodded. “Ye won’ like the taste, mind. But me dam taught it to me.” He grinned, showing all of his teeth.

  “How much?” she said, moaning.

  “Ye can think o’ it as a favor, like,” he said, “if I gets trouble from the humans.”

  “You want me to break heads if they gives ya grief? Done, little boggle,” she said.

  Snog fished some of the mushroom-scented tobacco out of his pouch, but before he could retrieve his pipe, Nan had produced one of her own. He took it from her and packed it. “Ye got fire?” he asked. “Ye can light it?”

  She nodded, producing a small wooden wand with a scorched end. Shaking it hard in the air before her, she hummed a single note. It flared with a bright yellow flame, and she lit the pipe.

  The goblin said, “Ye smoke tha’, ye’ll feel better.” He packed his own pipe and Nan offered him her wand, which still burned. Lian could see that she was already feeling relief from the hangover pain, and her expression was clearing.

  “Amazing,” he remarked. “And it explains why you smoke so much.”

  Snog nodded. “Aye, milord. It do.”

  Nan, obviously feeling much better, walked around the bay, clucking appreciatively as she sucked on the pipe clenched in her teeth. “He war trained?” she asked.

  Lian had tested the bay’s training on their journey to Mola, and nodded. “Skirmish training only. He won’t kick unless something threatens him, but he’ll stand his ground once he’s been given time to calm down. He’s really skittish when you first mount, so I’m guessing whoever broke him didn’t do a good job.”

  “Or maybe the damned horse’s just insane,” she said, leaping onto his back without warning and tossing the lit pipe to Lian. With a shout, she ran the horse toward the end of the dock and then turned. Lian pulled Snog aside as she drove the horse at speed onto the sand and toward the woods.

  “Some woman, ain’t she?” asked an appreciative voice. It was the man who’d been introduced as Yarek. They had first seen him as the only weaponless man in the tavern, although Lian had since learned that he possessed a great bow several inches longer than he was tall. Yarek had a relaxed demeanor, and had made Lian feel welcome aboard the mercenary ship.

  “That she is,” he agreed, unable to keep a wistful tone from his voice. He was surprised to learn that he was quite attracted to the uncouth and unpredictable Rodan horsewoman.

  Yarek smiled widely. “She bites,” he warned and turned to continue his path to the foredeck, where he practiced his style of weaponless fighting. Lian had observed him perform his art the previous day, and while it was similar to aythra, it was also quite different. He wondered if he’d be aboard long enough to learn some of it from Yarek. Several of the crew had joined the graceful man the previous day, to rehearse a few basic moves.

  Nan was returning from her breakneck ride through the woods, and she brought the horse up short before the two warriors. Beliu’s eyes were wide and his breathing labored. “He’s a pleasure to ride, and I bet I can get thirty crowns for him. When the time comes, make sure I do all the talking, though,” she admonished.

  “They ever hear of the Rodan in Seagate?” Lian asked.

  “Not that I know of, save for me,” Nan said, hopping down and slapping the horse on the neck affectionately.

  “Woe to them, then,” he said with a grin.

  “Aye,” she confirmed, then unexpectedly grabbed Lian by the back of the neck and pulled him in for a rough kiss, “and luck fer you.” She flashed a grin at him as she grabbed her pipe from his hand and led the horse aboard.

  “Gods,” was all he managed to say, and he shook his head.

  Snog suppressed a chuckle, and Lian could feel Gem’s twin emotions of amusement and worry. Cover my blush with the illusion, if you don’t mind, he requested, and she replied that she didn’t eliminate it, but she certainly cut back on its intensity.

  The fishing fleet was still on the beach, since it would be some time before the village could process the huge catch from the day before. The fishermen each told stories of the way the school had run straight into the nets. To Lian, it sounded as if something had driven the herring into the fishing boats, and he wished the Molans well.

  Cedrick was occupied with checking over the ship preparations, but he stopped to make sure that Lian and Nan had the gelding well secured. “I’d hobble him, if I were you,” the captain said, “as excitable as he was when you brought him dockside.”

  Lian agreed, but took Nan’s lead. The barbarian chuckled and held up a small ball which appeared to be coated with cane sugar. “Don’t you worry about Beliu misbehavin’, Captain Cedrick. He’ll be purrin’ like a kitten in a bit.” She offered the ball to the gelding, who sniffed at it and then hurriedly consumed the proffered treat. Chewing on it briefly, the horse seemed to enjoy its taste.

  “What’ve you got in there?” Lian asked, genuinely curious. Shipping horses over water was a major problem for any army commander who needed his calvary moved by sea.

  Nan winked and said, “Family secret, Alan. I’ve stolen a lord’s own warhorse with it, though.”

  Cedrick examined the gelding, whose eyes were already starting to glaze, and with an approving nod he moved on to other matters.

  The stern capstan had been freed of its anchor chain, and the cable from the harbor’s docking system had been threaded through the traction grooves. Four of the Searcher’s brawniest sailors took up their positions, and at Cedrick’s command they began winding the drum. The majority of the sailors, including the ones turning the capstan, began singing a chanty to time the steps and turning of the men at the crank. One sailor, however, stood by with an axe, prepared to cut the cable.

  Lian wondered about the precaution, but he imagined that a cable-tied ship was a good victim for a fast, rowed pirate ship. Cedrick ordered Lian, Kess, and Snog to stand ready at their weapons, but remarked that he didn’t really expect trouble leaving Mola.

  The mercenary company was lounging around the deck, though they were quick to move out of the sailors’ way. Despite the warship’s run of bad luck, morale was high, and the entire crew seemed glad to be putting out to sea again, with one exception.

  Snog stood hugging the railing, his usual greyish skin now slightly red. Lian assumed that the reddish tinge was analogous to the green color that humans displayed when they were nauseous. From his post in the foredeck, he could see that the goblin would be useless if they came under attack.

  “Kess,” he said, getting the other engineer’s attention.

  “Aye, sir?” asked the sailor, sparing Snog a pitying glance.

  “Relieve Snog and send him forward with his loader. Don’t leave the stern weapon unmanned,” he ordered. He decided that the chaser was the least important weapon on their current heading, and it was better to have the least experienced member of their team manning it.

  “Aye, aye, sir!” Kess said, pleased to be manning a station alone.

  Cedrick, standing at the helm, met Lian’s eyes across the center of the ship. Noting Kess’ progress along the railing, he shouted to the lookout in the crow’s nest, “Any sightings?”

  “One small skiff nor’west, no other movement!” the sailor yelled back down.

  “What’s his bearing?”

  “Looks like he’s makin’ Mola-port, Captain!” came the report. Cedrick nodded and instructed the lookout to keep a sharp eye out.

  By this time, Kess reached the ballista emplacement and relayed Lian’s orders. Snog’s loader patiently waited until the goblin had finished his current bout of seasickness before he helped him to his feet and led him forward. The goblin gave managed a few weak curses in Govlikel, as he staggered his way to stand next to Lian.

  “I’m sorry, milord,” he said, true anguish on his fa
ce. “I didn’t know it’d be this bad.”

  “Don’t worry about it, my friend,” Lian said, tapping him gently on the shoulder. “Man your station and hope it gets better.”

  The red-faced goblin nodded weakly, gingerly sitting down on the bolt-thrower’s mounting. A pair of sailors delivered the stand which the ship’s carpenter had constructed for Snog to stand on while he fired his thrower. Snog’s loader, who went by the name of Smiles, went about the business of lashing it to the weapon’s mount.

  “My thanks,” Lian said to the men who brought it.

  “Aye, sir,” the larger said, offering his hand. “Bosun’s mate Doval, sir, at your service. This here’s my pal Alo. He speaks Aesidhe, but not much Dunshor, sir.”

  Lian shook Doval’s hand, returning firm pressure with his own. In Aesidhe, he said, “Good to meet you, Alo,” shaking the second man’s hand as well.

  Alo returned the greeting in heavily accented Aesidhe, adding something in a language Lian did not recognize. “Alo says he hopes yer friend gets to feelin’ better, Alan, sir. The other two boggles suffered like that fer a week a’fore they got their sea legs, sir.

  “Forgive my askin’, sir, but ye’ve been aboard a ship before?” Doval asked, producing a stick of sugared cinnamon and proceeding to chew on it. Snog caught a whiff of the spice and moaned, retching over the side again.

  Lian nodded. “A few times. Enough that this chop won’t make me puke, but I haven’t really been in rough water yet.” His experience was fleeting, indeed. A few short runs aboard Fendar Port warships was all the practice he’d had, and that was on very calm seas thanks to his mother’s magic.

  “Lots of remedies, Alan, sir,” Doval said. “But I’d see Reidar if it’s bad like the boggle. He’s got some nasty stuff that if ye can keep it down, ye’ll feel the better for it. Don’ know if it’d kill yer companion, though.”

  The bosun’s mate had positioned himself where he could watch Cedrick and the first mate, who Lian hadn’t yet met. At some signal from one of them, he leapt onto the railing and began bellowing orders to raise the sails.

  Simultaneously, the four men turning the capstan stopped. They pulled their staves out of the channels and when the tension on the cable let up, used them to pry it out of the grooves. Calling out, “Stand clear!” they released it in unison. The cable immediately slipped off of the end of the ship, and Lian noted that he’d best stay away from the area when it was being cut loose, for it had enough force to easily sweep a man overboard.

  The stiff breeze began to push the ship east, but they were drifting toward the barely submerged sand bars which had been of such concern to the Golden Gull. The forward sails, which Lian heard referred to as the jib, ran from the second spar, called the jib boom, to the foremast. The top two of these three sails were raised quickly, and they snapped taut. Searcher heeled over to port, and her rudder began to establish control, turning them eastward and shoreward away from the sandbars.

  The bosun’s mate, at a further command from the captain, began to oversee rigging of the topsails of the two main masts, and the Searcher began to pick up speed. As she did so, the helm became more responsive, and the ship began to cut a straight course between the bar and the land.

  In comparison, the Golden Gull’s painstaking process of navigating the channel was primitive and clumsy. Searcher was a graceful ship whose movement was powerful and sure, not at all like the galleon’s wallowing progress through the strait.

  As the ship exited the mouth of Mola’s harbor, the heads of dozens of lizard folk popped out of the water. Raising their arms, they waved energetically. It seemed as if they were inviting the ship to come back to Mola.

  Alo’s grasp of Dunshor was sufficient to give sail trimming orders, and Doval left him in charge of setting the mainsails. “Excitin’, ain’t it, sir?” Doval said, joining Lian at the railing.

  “Yes, Doval, it is,” Lian replied. “That was amazing.” The statement was as much a complement to Doval’s sense of timing as to the engineering of the ship itself.

  Doval accepted the implied compliment and smiled. “Well, Alan, sir, I’ll hope you remember that if Cedrick asks you for yer opinion on my skills. I’m hopin’ to be chief bosun, now that my old boss is gone. Ye heard ‘bout the seaweed thing what got about twenty of us?” he said, obviously disappointed when Lian nodded that he had. Sailors loved to tell tales.

  “Well, it would’a had me, instead, if I hadn’t been down with fever,” he said, “so fer me, ‘twas lucky that Talus bought his lot, back in that pirates’ hellhole.” He looked contrite, and said, “Mind ye don’t talk about him that way yerself, sir. Talus was a good sort.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Doval,” Lian replied. “I caught your meaning.”

  “Thankee, sir,” he said, falling silent to watch the waves and coastline for a while. Turning back to Lian, he said, “Truth, sir, I be glad to put that vampire-infested place behind us. I didn’t see one, but I knowed that there was some of them Companions out there in the wood a’watchin’ us.”

  “You know that for a fact, or just assuming?” Lian asked curiously, making a small sign of warding against evil. He didn’t believe that the Companions were evil, necessarily, but it would have been out of character not to appear uncomfortable at the mention of the ancient guardians and lords of Greythorn.

  “Well, it makes sense, sir,” Doval said. However, the rest of his explanation was interrupted by the lookout’s yell of “Sail ho!”

  Doval quickly moved back to his post at the foredeck railing, and the crew was suddenly more alert. To Lian’s eye, if the sails represented a pirate attack, it was obvious that the attackers hadn’t expected the Searcher to get out of dock that fast. Golden Gull, by this time, was barely out of the slip.

  “Dunshor warships,” yelled the lookout. “Two of ‘em and closing on us! They’re flying Fendar colors!”

  “Rig mains’il!” yelled Cedrick, and the bosun ordered the crews to raise the remaining sails.

  Lian was not surprised to encounter some of Admiral Sevlin’s ships in the area. Mola was a major resupply point for Fendar, and the Dunshor navy made a point of ensuring that the port was patrolled and cleared of pirate vessels.

  Cedrick ordered that the Searcher’s colors be raised, and the blue flag of the ship was unfurled on the topmast. The searching mermaid motif was displayed on their flag as well, along with crossed swords beneath her.

  The crew apprehensively watched the approach of the two carracks, but as they passed the flagship merely raised signal flags wishing Searcher fair seas. Lian predicted that once news of Rishak’s coup reached the Admiralty at Fendar, the fleet would begin to search ships for him, but he hoped that hadn’t been implemented yet. Sevlin was a political appointee, and his loyalty would be to whoever held the throne of Dunshor.

  Beyond the two warships, there was nothing but open sea, and once safely away from the shore, Doval trimmed the sails until they were traveling at a tremendous clip. We must be moving at close to fifteen knots, Lian marveled, mesmerized by the water and waves sluicing under the prow of the ship as if the boat were immersed in a rapidly moving river.

  Turning to face the rapidly receding coastline, he bid farewell to the land of his birth.

  But I will return, he promised. And then you had better watch out, Uncle. Forcing back the array of emotions that the vow stirred, he reluctantly turned back to face the sea ahead of him.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  “Fool is he who names the gods.”

  -- Rodan proverb

  True to his word, Captain Cedrick began to tutor Lian in the rudiments of navigation. Cedrick and the strange little navigator, Ylen, spent the first two hours of second watch in the captain’s cabin with Lian, instructing the young mercenary. Lian discovered that ocean navigation was quite different from land navigation, for it wasn’t possible to record the distance traveled with landmarks. A single, minute miscalculation could cause the ship to stray hundreds of mi
les off its intended course, and that was if the weather remained favorable.

  In addition, a major storm could propel a ship on the other side of the world or leave it broken into flinders, flung against a rocky coast.

  Ylen, a short man with no discernible hair whatsoever, summed it up, “The gods have created a world where traveling from one place to another reliably is the highest challenge. Fireshowers in the southern seas, icebergs in these northern waters, sea trolls, dragons, Ashira’s seemingly random effect on compasses, riptides that can suck a ship into rocky straits with no warning, all of these obstacles are expected in the normal course of sailing. Gods help you if something really unfortunate occurs.”

  Both Cedrick and Lian had superstitiously stomped their feet on the cabin floor when Ylen finished his pronouncement, for the navigator’s words sounded like a temptation fate would find difficult to ignore. Lian wondered if perhaps Ylen was the source of the ship’s bad luck. He also found that the longer he was acquainted with the odd little pilot, the stronger his dislike for him grew.

  Lian’s billet was in a small cabin which under normal circumstances would be shared with the chief bosun and the sergeant-at-arms, but both men had been casualties of the kelp monster attack. Neither officer’s replacement had been confirmed by Cedrick, so in the meantime, they were still bunking with the general crew belowdecks.

  His cabin contained only one real bed and was, in his opinion, far too small for three men to share. On the walls were brackets, intended to mount a pair of hammocks from corner to corner, so that the men were suspended one over the other. After he tried the bed on the first night, Lian chose to string up one of the hammocks, for the permanent bunk was extremely uncomfortable, not to mention several inches too short for his lanky frame. Snog, on the other hand, liked the hard bed, particularly because it had a good-sized railing to prevent its occupant from rolling out due to rough seas during the night.