Shouts and screams filled the air as men were thrown once more from their stations, and loud crashes echoed through the now still air as gear lashed to the deck broke loose and smashed against the mast or quarterdeck.
Higher and higher the ship climbed, and this time Nicholas felt even more terrified, for he could see clearly, with no rain blinding him. Only spray from the advancing mountain of water filled the air as the ship struggled to keep afloat. Nicholas was vaguely aware of Brisa screaming and Harry cursing, and he realized he had lost sight of Calis during the last wave.
Then, as it seemed the ship would tumble over on its back like an overturned turtle, they crested the wave. Down the other side they raced, and Nicholas’s voice joined others in voicing incoherent terror. The absence of magic had robbed the sea of its fey driving force, and instead of another rising wave behind, the sea was at its normal level. Against any reasonable expectation, the water was collapsing back to its former calm state, rather than carrying through its fearful onslaught, so rather than their having survived the worst of the giant wave, its dissipation was adding impetus to the ship’s downward plunge. Nicholas could see the sandbars and reefs through the ocean below, as if staring through green glass. He knew with certainty they would not survive this plunge, for there was not enough water ahead to cushion the ship’s bow.
The floor of the ocean rushed upward and Nicholas felt the water strike him like a blow from the hand of a giant. He felt the ship drop away beneath his feet as the water claimed him, then felt the grinding crash of wood against rock. The ship cried out as it died, a screaming tearing of wood and iron, joined by the terrified cries of its crew.
Then Nicholas was pulled under the white foam. Holding his breath as well as he could, he felt himself being dragged deep into the water. Blind from the water in his face, Nicholas was dragged downward by a force he had never experienced. He was cast into a world of sounds and vibrations, tossed around so violently that direction was confused. He kicked as hard as he could against the undertow as the mass of the ship created a vacuum around it, sucking down everything nearby.
Then suddenly he felt his feet strike wood, as if he had landed hard on the floor of his room. Hot pain stabbed through his left foot, and he gasped. Suddenly his mouth and nose filled with water. Nicholas felt his lungs burn as seawater choked him. He flailed about, water churning around him, hurling him to his knees upon the deck and forcing itself deeper into his lungs. In a shocking moment of clarity, he knew he was going to die. A detached sense of peace settled over Nicholas, and he could feel the pounding blood in his own temples and chest as a distant thing, and the burning in his lungs a faint echo of the pain he had endured a moment earlier.
Then suddenly he was moving upward at amazing speed, as if a giant hand had lifted him. The ship had bounced off the sea floor and rose back up on the air trapped inside its hull. It shot upward, clearing the less than fifty feet of water between the floor of the ocean and the surface.
The ship broke through the surface, and Nicholas was tossed into the air. He gasped, spitting salt water from his lungs, his arms flailing as if he were trying to fly. Then the ship dipped back into the waves and he struck the surface of the water. As the ship righted itself beneath him, Nicholas half crawled, half swam to the rail, where he clung for his life. Like a wounded animal, the Raptor heeled over to port, water filling its hold and throwing it out of trim.
Nicholas spit and coughed, and gasped a painfully deep breath, then coughed again, retching out the last of the water. He blew salt water out of his nose, wiped his face with one hand, and looked around. All three masts had been shattered, the foremast snapped above the main yard, and the others below. The deck was littered with debris, bodies, and seaweed. It took almost a minute for the confusion to sort itself out.
Marcus and Calis both clung to what was left of a line from the forechannel, and Brisa gripped Marcus around the waist with both arms. Ghuda still held Anthony tightly with one arm while the other was wrapped around a capstan. Blood ran down his face from a messy-looking scalp wound. Nakor was enmeshed in what remained of one of the foremast ratlines, and he was shouting for someone to cut him loose.
Then Nicholas realized who was missing. “Harry!” he shouted. Suddenly his stomach constricted and he vomited seawater.
The ship groaned and rolled and Amos pulled himself out from under a broken spar. Heaving himself to his feet, he glanced around at the damage. He came to give Nicholas a hand up and said, “What a mess.” Turning to the stern of the ship, he shouted, “Mr. Rhodes!”
No answer came. Amos set about examining his ship and quickly came back to Nicholas. “Gather everyone on the main deck, and salvage whatever you can. Get as many water casks and skins into the longboats as possible, and whatever food you can find. We’re sinking.”
“Is there anything we can do?” asked Nicholas.
Amos shook his head and turned away. Nicholas went to where Calis was cutting Nakor loose from the tangle of ropes that confined him and said, “Everyone to the main deck. We’re abandoning ship.”
Word quickly passed and Marcus and Nicholas hurried to their cabins, where water could already be seen coming up through the planks of the deck. They grabbed whatever they could from the jumble and hurried up above. Calis had retrieved his bow and arrows, both protected by oilskin, but Marcus’s bow was lost. Knowing that they were about to be cast adrift on a hostile shore, Nicholas forced his way past a tangle of debris and bodies and entered Amos’s cabin. He opened the small trap and removed the pouch of gold Amos had shown him when Brisa had been brought aboard. He began to hurry out, then remembered something and sloshed through the rising water to Amos’s desk. He pulled it open and found a red-leather-covered logbook, which he picked up. Putting the gold in his tunic and the log under his arm, he entered the companionway and saw water swirling. The ship was going down fast.
Hurrying up the ladder to the main deck, Nicholas felt another stab of pain in his foot and almost dropped the log. He made it to the deck in time to see a few surviving sailors leaping off the railing into the water. Amos stood on the deck and motioned him over.
Reaching Amos, Nicholas gave him the logbook. “I’ve got the gold from your cabin, too. We’re probably going to need it.”
“Bless you, boy, for keeping your wits about you.” He hugged the book to his chest. “With this, we can get home someday.”
Nicholas climbed over the rail and found a longboat waiting only five feet below. Glancing upward, he said, “Amos?”
“I’m coming, Nicky.” He took one last look around the deck. “I’m coming.”
They climbed down into the longboat, and Ghuda and a sailor pulled hard to put as much distance as possible between the longboat and the dying ship as possible.
When they were less than a quarter mile away, the Raptor, formerly the Royal Eagle, pride of the Krondorian fleet, rolled over into the water and sank.
Bitterly Amos said, “Damn, I hate losing ships.”
Nicholas didn’t know why, but he found the remark terribly funny, and try as he might, he couldn’t keep himself from laughing. He tried to hold it in, but in a few moments he was nearly convulsed in mirth. Amos bristled, but Brisa and Ghuda both joined in, and even Marcus couldn’t help himself. Nakor never seemed to need an excuse to laugh, so he made no attempt to hide his mirth. After another minute, only the unconscious figure of Anthony and a bristling Amos Trask were not laughing.
“What’s so damned funny?” demanded Amos.
Ghuda said, “How many ships have you lost?” His face was covered in sticky blood, but otherwise he looked all right.
Amos said, “Three,” then suddenly his face split into a grin and he found himself infected as those in the longboat nearly collapsed at the answer.
From outside the boat a hoarse voice said, “If you’re not enjoying yourself too much up there, can someone give me a hand?”
Nicholas glanced over the gunwales of the boat and saw a fa
miliar figure clinging to a broken spar in the water. “Harry!” he shouted, and leaned over to help his friend into the already crowded boat.
“I’d thought you drowned,” said Nicholas.
With a wince from a bruise somewhere on his person, Harry said, “I see it caused you a great deal of grief.”
Nicholas’s expression turned somber. “We were just a little giddy after escaping,” he said.
Harry nodded. “I got tossed overboard. I saw the bow bounce off the bottom and thought you had all been killed.”
Amos said, “I’m surprised more of us aren’t. Look.” He pointed and they turned to see another pair of longboats drawing toward them. When they were within shouting distance, Amos shouted, “Is Mr. Rhodes with you?”
A sailor answered, “I saw a spar take his head off, Captain. No doubt but he’s dead.”
“How many are you?”
“Twenty-seven in this boat, and nineteen in the next, sir.”
“Provisions?”
“None, sir, in this boat.”
From the second longboat, a sailor called out, “We have a barrel of pork and another of dried apples, Captain.”
Glancing around, Amos said, “Well, we need to make for shore. It’ll be dark in a few hours, and I don’t wish to drift along aimlessly.” Signaling for the boats to take up positions, he said, “Follow us in.”
Ghuda and a sailor began to row, and Amos said, “Calis, keep an eye out for rocks ahead. Look to the breakers and see if there’s water spilling in two directions, for there’ll be rocks beneath the surface if you do.”
They rowed toward the massive cliffs and Nicholas said, “I wonder what’s up there?”
Calis said, “Perhaps woods or brushland, or plains. Somewhere I can hunt.”
“Or maybe there’s a town up there,” ventured Harry, still looking like a drowned rat.
Brisa said, “Someplace I could get a clean shirt.”
“And something to eat,” ventured Nakor, with a halfhearted grin.
They picked their way among some rocks to reach a place where the water rushed through, and followed this small current into the roll of combers. Cresting a wave, they let it push them along toward the beach.
Suddenly Calis shouted, “Rocks! Turn to the right!” As Ghuda, sitting on the left, began to frantically back water with his oar, a ripping sound rang out and the boat stopped as if they had hit a wall. Calis and Marcus were pitched over the bow and Brisa screamed.
A spire of rock no more than an inch high protruded from the bow of the longboat, but water was rushing in around it. “We’re holed,” yelled Amos. “Grab what you can and get out and swim!”
He turned and shouted to the other boats. “We’ve struck rocks! Keep clear!”
The sailor in the bow of the second boat waved in reply to show he understood and they steered to the left of Amos’s boat, giving it a wide berth.
Nicholas grabbed a pair of waterskins and went over the side. He swam easily to where he could stand, then waded ashore. Everyone else made it in good order as the other boats attempted to land.
The second boat slid sideways along an underwater shelf of rock, and sailors cursed as they were also forced to abandon their boat. The third boat was warned off in time and made it to the beach without taking damage.
Amos gave orders for some of his sailors to swim out and see if they could pull the second boat off the rock shelf. “The waves will break it up on the rocks if we can’t.”
More than a dozen men, all exhausted, waded into the surf and swam to the second boat. They pushed and pulled, trying to move the massive longboat off the shelf, but could not.
Finally Amos signaled for them to return. When they were back on the beach, the sailor who had spoken to Amos from the bow of that boat said, “She’s taken water, Captain, and she’s sitting as firm on that shelf as a vulture on a dead dog.”
“Damn.” Amos turned and inspected their present location. The shadows from the massive cliffs rearing above them had already extended into the water, and he could feel a chill. “See if you can find the makings of a good-sized fire,” he said to Nicholas, Marcus, Calis, and Brisa in general. “It’s going to be cold soon and we’ve not one blanket among us.” He quickly summed up: forty-nine soldiers and sailors, and Nicholas and his companions, fifty-eight survivors in all—out of a company of more than two hundred. He made a quick prayer to Killian, the goddess of sailors, asking for her mercy on the lost men.
With a sigh of resignation, he said to his crew, “Fan out and see if anything useful’s being washed ashore.” Glancing around, he said, “We’ve still got a couple of hours’ light, so let’s see where we are.”
The men obeyed and most fanned out along the beach, some moving to the northwest, others to the southeast along the rocks. A few too injured to move simply sank to the sand, silent in their wet misery.
Amos watched them leave and said to Nakor and Ghuda, who still held the unconscious Anthony, “Wake him if you can, but help look around. I have a feeling we’re going to need every advantage we can wring out if we’re going to survive.”
Ghuda put the unconscious magician down and shook him, but he didn’t move. After a moment Ghuda rose and left him, joining the others who were looking for anything that might wash ashore. Nakor turned to Amos and said, “Sorry about your ship.”
Amos nodded. “As am I.”
Nakor reached into his rucksack and jerked his hand out as if he had been stung. “Oh, that’s bad,” he said.
“What is?” asked Amos.
“There’s a merchant in Ashunta who is going to be very upset when he discovers his fruit has been ruined by seawater.” Shaking his head sadly, the bandy-legged man moved away from the captain, and began to search among the rocks.
Alone, Amos turned to where his ship lay on her side in the water, sinking slowing behind the breakers. Feeling a sadness beyond any he could express, he kept his eyes upon her as she slid below the waves.
13
ASCENT
The fire smoldered.
Brisa hugged herself in a vain attempt to stay warm beside the dying embers. Others huddled around two other little fires or walked up and down the beach trying to stay warm. The previous day they had explored up and down the coast. At every turn in the shoreline they found nothing but beach and rock, and a seemingly endless wall of stone to their backs. What little wood they had found was now gone, and while the days were searing hot, the nights were bitter. Enough wreckage had washed ashore so a rude lean-to had been fashioned from sails and broken spars, but the wood that had drifted ashore from the ship was too wet to do more than smolder on the fire. The salt pork had been ruined, but the dried apples were edible. There was a fair supply of water and enough salvage to permit a few of the sailors to fish off the rocks. Some fish were trapped in tide pools, but without a pot to cook them in, they were poor fare. Seabirds were absent in any numbers, and the few that flew overhead did not appear to be nesting anywhere close.
Anthony had regained consciousness the next morning, without much memory after his attempt to cancel the spell that had trapped them. He was shocked and shaken to discover the ship gone, and had seemed to come out of his own panic only when it was obvious his skills as a healer were needed.
The second morning was dawning and Amos came to Nicholas. “We’re dying,” he said flatly. “If there’s a less hospitable stretch of coast in the world, I’ve not seen it.”
“What do you want to do?” asked Nicholas.
“One longboat isn’t going to carry fifty-eight of us. We have two choices. Either we select a crew to attempt to row south, past this escarpment, to whatever passes for civilization around here, coming back with help for the rest of us, or we all try to climb the cliff face. Or we do both.”
Nicholas said, “No. We stay together.”
Amos seemed on the verge of arguing, but then shook his head. “You’re right. One thing is certain: we can’t stay. We’ll starve.”
&
nbsp; Nicholas said, “We’d better start looking for a way up.”
Amos nodded. “I’m the oldest man here, and I don’t relish the climb, but it’s the cliffs or nothing.”
Nicholas sighed. “I’ve never done much climbing. My foot…” He turned to Calis and Marcus. “Would either of you know a path up these cliffs if you saw one?”
Marcus frowned, but Calis nodded and stood up. “Which way?”
“You go that way,” said Nicholas, pointing to the northwest. Turning to Marcus, he said, “And you go the other way. Travel no more than half a day. When the sun is overhead, return here.”
They nodded and set off, moving purposely but not fast enough to deplete energy they couldn’t restore. Hunger was on everyone’s mind, and Nicholas knew that without fresh food soon, they would all begin dying. At least a dozen sailors were hurt or ill from the effects of the shipwreck, either from water in their lungs or from internal injuries. Nakor and Anthony worked hard to make them comfortable, but there was little they could do without Anthony’s bag of curatives. Nicholas sympathized with them; he felt aches and bruises worse than any he’d had before and knew that the least abused among them felt as battered as he did. He was surprised there weren’t more serious injuries, but he grimly admitted that anyone who was badly hurt during the shipwreck hadn’t survived.
While Calis and Marcus were gone, they took inventory of what little they had scavenged from the wreckage washing up on the beach. They had only a few weapons among them: Nicholas and Ghuda each had their swords, Calis had his bow, and they possessed a collection of daggers and knives. There was one sack of hard biscuits that had survived in a small barrel that washed ashore, to supplement the dried apples. There were ropes strewn up and down the beach, so Nicholas set the men to gathering them up, and separating the lines that they could use to climb the cliffs and rope too far gone to be reliable.
Nicholas was distressed to discover that the inventory took less than an hour for the entire company. Trying to ignore his own hunger, he sat down before the now dead fire and waited.
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