Prince of the Blood, the King's Buccaneer

by Raymond E. Feist

  ‘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 slowly behind the breakers. Feeling a sadness beyond any he could express, he kept his eyes upon her as she slid below the waves.

  • CHAPTER THIRTEEN •

  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.’

  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 northward. 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 from 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.

  Brisa came and sat next to him, and looked at Nakor and Harry, both of whom were trying to conserve their depleted energy by sleeping.

  She turned to Nicholas. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  He nodded. ‘What?’

  Marcus …’ She began, then fell silent.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You know him well –’ she started again.

  Nicholas cut her off. ‘I hardly know him at all.’

  ‘I thought you were brothers,’ she said.

  Nicholas said, ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘Knew what?’ she asked.

  ‘Who Marcus is.’

  ‘He’s some Duke’s son, or so Harry told me. I didn’t know if I should believe him.’

  Nicholas nodded. ‘He’s not my brother,’ he said. ‘He’s my cousin.’

  ‘But you said you hardly know him,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t. I met him for the first time a few weeks before I met you. I don’t live on the Far Coast.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘In Krondor,’ he answered.

  She nodded. ‘I was hoping you could tell me about him.’

  Nicholas felt sorry for the girl, since he realized that her teasing preoccupation with Marcus now masked a deeper emotion. ‘I don’t know what to tell you. Most of us are from Krondor. Maybe one of the soldiers …’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s all right. We’re probably not going to get out of here, anyway.’

  Nicholas said, ‘Don’t say that.’ His tone was sharp and commanding.

  She looked at him with eyes wide and Harry sat up, half-asleep, and said, ‘What?’

  He realized he had spoken loudly. ‘I mean, don’t say it, even if you think it. Despair is a plague. If we give up here, we’re going to die. There’s no choice but to move ahead.’

  Brisa lay back, beside the snoring Nakor, and said, ‘I know.’

  Nicholas glanced up and down the beach, realizing it was too soon for either Marcus or Calis to return. All they could do was wait.

  Near sundown, Calis came into view, and a few minutes later, Marcus approached from the other direction. Calis said, ‘There’s nothing that looks remotely like a trail or even a difficult climb.’

  Marcus said, ‘Nothing to the south, either.’

  Nicholas said, ‘Then we either climb here or more farther to the south.’

  ‘Why south?’ demanded an exhausted Marcus. ‘I just said there was nothing there.’

  ‘Because south is where we are heading anyway. If we’re going to face an arbitrary choice, we may as well move toward our eventual goal.’

  Amos nodded. ‘If we’re going to do something, that’s as sound a plan as any I can suggest. Let’s get some sleep and start at first light.’

  Nicholas said, ‘Good. Eat what we can’t carry so we’ll have as much strength as possible.’

  Nakor and Anthony approached in the failing light, carrying some wood. ‘We left these up on the rocks to dry,’ said the little man.

  Anthony said, ‘If you can get a flame started, they should burn.’

  Calis gathered together the remnants of the previous night’s fire, small pieces of wood that hadn’t completely burned, and hacked away at the char, creating a small pile of splinters and kindling. He took his belt knife and a flint he kept there and struck sparks. Soon he had a small flame, which he carefully fed with larger pieces of wood until he had a substantial fire going. Then the wood carried by Anthony and Nakor was carefully placed atop the flames, and soon a good-size blaze held the cold night at bay.

  The sailors gathered around and Anthony took a brand and started a second fire a short distance off, so that more could feel the warmth. He and Nakor moved the sicker men closer to the heat, and they settled in for the long night.

  Nakor sat beside Nicholas. No one was in the mood to talk; most either tried to rest or ate what they could of hard biscuits, dried apples, and half-cooked fish. Without preamble, Nakor said, ‘Water is a problem.’

  Nicholas said, ‘Why?’

  Nakor said, ‘We’ve not seen any source of fresh water nearby. We have the skins we salvaged from the ship, but not enough of them, and we can’t haul casks very far.’

  Amos said, ‘Certainly we can’t haul them up the cliffs.’

  Nicholas sighed. ‘What do you suggest?’

  Nakor shrugged. ‘Have everyone drink as much as they can before we start off. That will help. If we find a place to climb close to where Marcus stopped, we can send some men back to refill the skins. If we’re a long way down the coast, we make do with what we have.’

  ‘What about food?’ asked Nicholas.

  ‘There won’t be much by tomorrow,’ answered Anthony as he sat down near the fire, weariness etched on his features. ‘A man died a few minutes ago.’

  Amos swore. Calling a pair of sailors to him, he said, ‘Get some canvas. We can’t sew him into a shroud, but you can wrap him in sail and tie rope around it. Then tomorrow we’ll carry him out to the rocks and bury him at sea, or as close as we can get.’

  The two men nodded and left to do as they were bid. Amos sounded old as he said, ‘There will be others.’

  No one spoke after that.

  For the next day and a half they trudged down the coast. Nicholas called for a halt regularly, for the lack of food, scant water, and heat were taking their toll. Late in the second day, Marcus said, ‘This is where I stopped my search before.’

  Nicholas felt a sense of despair. It had taken almost two days to get those sick and injured down the beach as far as Marcus had traveled in a half day by himself. Nicholas forced aside his dark mood and said, ‘You and Calis scout ahead.’ Silently he added a prayer that they quickly find a way up.

  Marcus and the half-elf both turned and jogged away from the resting sailors. Amos motioned for Nicholas to walk ahead with him, and when they were out of earshot of the others he said, ‘We’re going to have to start up the cliff tomorrow, no matter what.’

  Nicholas said, ‘We’re going to start dying soon.’

  Amos said, ‘We’re dying already. In two or three days, even if we find a clean ascent, half the men won’t have the strength to make the climb.’ He flexed his hand as if it was stiff, and he said, ‘I might be one of them.’ Glancing around, he said, ‘My hand is throbbing. There’s a weather front heading this way.’

  ‘Storm?’

  Amos nodded. ‘Usually. Sometimes just a break in the weather.’

  Glancing at the darkening eastern sky, Nicholas said, ‘It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours. Let’s call it a day and rest. We’ll need it.’

  Amos nodded and they returned to the others. Amos ordered the meager stores passed out among the men while Nicholas went to where Harry was sitting, massaging his aching
feet, with Brisa beside him. The girl had her knees drawn up under her chin and was hugging her legs, as if cold already.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Nicholas asked.

  Harry said, ‘My feet hurt and I’m hungry.’ Then he grinned. ‘Makes me something unique around here, doesn’t it?’

  Nicholas couldn’t help but smile. Harry was the last person who would lose his good spirits, he knew. ‘I want you to bring up the rear tomorrow,’ said Nicholas. ‘We’re going to have to attempt the cliffs and I need someone at the rear who can make sure no one falters or loses heart.’

  Harry nodded. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  Turning to the girl, Nicholas asked, ‘How are you?’

  Sourly she said, ‘My feet hurt and I’m hungry.’

  Nicholas laughed. ‘You two are a pair.’ He rose and moved over to talk to some of the other men.

  Brisa watched him depart, staring after him a long minute, then said, ‘He really tries, doesn’t he?’

  Harry said, ‘I guess. It’s in the blood, I think. Born to service and obligations of the nobility and that.’

  ‘You?’ she said, half-mocking.

  ‘I’m not a prince. I’m a second son of a minor noble, which means I have fewer prospects than your average ale merchant, unless I can hook my fortune to one of the mighty.’

  Brisa said, ‘Him?’ – indicating Nicholas with a thrust of her chin. Her tone was disbelieving.

  ‘Don’t scoff,’ said Harry. ‘Nicky’s a lot more than you’d think. He’s going to be a very important and powerful man someday. Brother to the King, you know.’

  ‘Right,’ said Brisa, her tone clearly disbelieving.

  ‘I’m not joking,’ said Harry. ‘He’s Prince Arutha’s youngest son. Truly. And Marcus is the son of the Duke of Crydee.’

  ‘Scruffy-looking bunch for nobles, if you ask me.’

  ‘Well, believe what you want. But he will be an important man someday.’

  Brisa snorted. ‘Assuming we live that long.’

  Harry had nothing to say to that.

  Brisa leaned in to Harry. ‘Don’t get any ideas. I’m just trying to stay warm.’