Ravian's Quest

by Jerry Carpenter

  They bobbed in the middle of the bay as, all about them, the whales – many of them three times the size of any the Tarcuns had ever encountered – continued the relentless pursuit of their invisible prey. On several occasions, the enormous mammals came close to the swordship but never as close as the first near miss. The crew stood rapt – half-terrified, half in awe – witnesses to the spectacular display of nature.

  ‘Well, men,’ Ravian announced, as the herd finally moved on and out to sea, ‘now you’ve really got something to tell your grandchildren about. Let’s get underway Captain – I think that we are safe to do so.’

  ‘By Delikas, Your Highness,’ said Godart, as Sea Eagle’s sails filled and she gathered way again, ‘that first one was close. Another boat length and we would have been in its jaws.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Ravian. ‘I think they are basically harmless but you can see how an accident might happen – especially if you were to encounter them in a smaller vessel. To be honest, I had no idea that whales could grow to such an enormous size and I have to admit that this encounter does give me some concern about Creedus’s other warnings.

  ‘Still,’ he said, looking meaningfully at Lectus, ‘at least there won’t be any arguments about what we’ll call this bay.’

  Lectus rolled his eyes.

  ‘ “Whale Bay” by any chance, Your Highness?’ he said.

  As they continued north, the coastline became progressively more rugged and the forests thinned, became stunted and windblown, and then disappeared altogether to be replaced by bleak, rolling tundra. Even as the land became more and more arid, however, the sea seemed to become even richer in life and, frequently, they found themselves sailing through vast schools of fish harried by thousands of seabirds. The many colonies of these birds, as well as a number of seal congregations, were some of the few features of a coastline that had otherwise become a monotonous series of one grey headland after another. Interestingly, they discovered that the days had become progressively longer as they sailed further north and, now, they found that the nights didn’t get completely dark at all, but eased into twilight for a few hours then back into daylight again.

  Five days after their encounter at Whale Bay, Godart announced that he felt that they were approaching the northern extremity of Grenwain.

  ‘I’ve noticed that the outgoing tide is developing a stronger and stronger set along the coast to the north,’ he said when Ravian asked him to explain the logic behind his declaration. ‘I fancy that there is a similar set flowing up the other side of the island. If that’s true, then, once we round the northern end and head south, we’ll have to stand well out to sea to make any headway against the current.’

  On a fine morning two days later – exactly on the two-week time limit that Ravian had promised Lectus – they came to a craggy headland that did, indeed, seem to mark the northern extremity of the mainland of Grenwain. Some distance offshore, they could see a small group of islands wreathed in wisps of fog.

  ‘Should we round those islands, Your Highness?’ Godart enquired.

  ‘No, I think that we’ve come far enough,’ Ravian replied. ‘Just mark them on the chart and let’s head across to the channel. Make sure that we give the headland a wide berth – we’re coasting on a falling tide and I don’t fancy being shipwrecked out here.’

  Godart set a course to pass well clear of the bluff.

  As they ghosted along on the light southerly breeze, the lookout hailed that he could see surf breaking on a reef between Sea Eagle and the headland.

  ‘Just as well we gave ourselves plenty of sea room,’ Ravian observed.

  Even as the prince congratulated himself on his prudent seamanship however, another hail came from the masthead that there was more surf even closer to the ship. Ravian didn’t need to tell Godart to adjust their course north as, even from the quarterdeck, they could see that the water had begun to boil and rear some distance off the starboard bow. Then, to their horror, more white water suddenly appeared directly ahead of them and although Godart quickly jibed Sea Eagle back onto a westerly heading, a strong current began to drag the swordship sideways towards the surf.

  ‘Damn these light airs!’ Ravian cursed. ‘Captain, drop the sails! We are going to have to row for our lives!’

  By the time Sea Eagle had her oars out, the entire passage of water between the northern headland and the rapidly nearing islands had risen up into a maelstrom of white water and, although the Tarcun oarsmen pulled desperately for safety, it was clear that the current was winning the battle.

  ‘Put the helm over, Godart!’ ordered Ravian. ‘We’ve still got a chance if we go in bow first and keep some steerage way!’

  ‘It’s these damn tides!’ Godart cursed, as Sea Eagle answered her helm and headed directly towards the roaring white wall of water. ‘The whole western seaboard must ebb out over this reef!’

  The swordship hit the wave with a crash, briefly burying her bow before climbing up the boiling wall and then swooping onwards. The Tarcuns had already resigned themselves to the likelihood of their ship smashing into a reef but now, as they careened headlong through the foam, the full scale of their peril became evident. All about them, the sea boiled and swirled chaotically, huge waves crashing into each other in confusion and sending spray high into the air while, directly ahead of the wallowing swordship, the ocean sucked down into an enormous spiral, the bottom of which could not be seen.

  ‘It’s not a reef at all!’ shouted Ravian. ‘It’s – ’

  ‘The Vortex?’ supplied Lectus, in a surprisingly calm voice.

  The turbulence tossed and tumbled the crew at the end of their oars as Sea Eagle rapidly drew towards the whirlpool.

  ‘Ship oars, Godart,’ Ravian said. ‘There’s no point trying to fight this.’

  ‘My friends, I am so sorry to have brought you to this end. I hope you will forgive me in the next world.’

  Godart and Lectus made no reply as they watched the dark, spinning hole draw nearer and nearer.

  Then, they were in the grip of the Vortex.

  As if grabbed by a giant hand, Sea Eagle was snatched from the white water and pitched into the swirling pit, the swordship surfing down to the deepest point of the spinning blue hole, burying her bow and then spinning sideways.

  ‘Bale out men!’ shouted Godart. ‘We may survive this yet!’

  Ravian knew that a smaller, less sea-worthy vessel would have been sucked underwater, but Sea Eagle remained bow down in the Vortex, her stern rotating just below the lip of the whirlpool. As the crew desperately lowered the level of water in the bow, Ravian, Godart and Lectus conferred on their predicament.

  ‘This isn’t such a bad situation,’ said Godart.

  ‘Define bad,’ belched Lectus, before lunging for the rail and vomiting loudly.

  Indeed, the spinning, bucking motion of their ride in the Vortex was hideously uncomfortable and, as Ravian watched several of his most experienced seamen lunge to be sick over the side, his own stomach heaved in sympathy.

  Godart seemed to be immune to the motion.

  ‘It’s not a reef at all, Your Highness,’ the young captain said, his eyes shining with excitement. ‘The tide must run up both sides of Grenwain and the two currents come together here at the northernmost point. At full flow, they create a massive tidal boil and this whirlpool is just an eddy within it.’

  ‘Just?’ said Ravian, fighting the nausea that threatened to send him to the rail to join Lectus. ‘If we were on lesser craft, we would not have survived.’

  Even as he spoke, though, he saw how they might extricate themselves from their situation.

  ‘Put the helm hard over to port,’ he ordered his captain.

  It took Godart and two crewmen to do it but, as they finally managed to swing the tiller across the quarterdeck, Sea Eagle abruptly surfed backwards up the side of the whirlpool and out into the maelstrom of white water again. The abrupt change in motion was too much for Ravian and he staggered across to
join Lectus in emptying his stomach into the boiling sea. He was still vomiting as another whirlpool ensnared the vessel and dragged her into its void where, this time, the swordship pivoted about her stern. Godart who, for some reason, was immune to the motion that had already struck down most of the men on board, joined them at the side and continued to expound his hypothesis.

  ‘We only have to wait for the tide to ease and we’ll be on our way again,’ he told them. ‘In fact, I don’t think that this whirlpool has as much depth as the last one, so the effect may be decreasing already.’

  Ravian wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and willed his mind to function.

  ‘How long ago do you estimate high tide was?’ he asked his captain.

  ‘Oh, approximately two hours,’ Godart replied airily.

  ‘So we could possibly be in the grip of this tidal race for a further two hours?’

  ‘Two hours!’ groaned Lectus, and dry-retched.

  ‘Yes, perhaps,’ replied Godart, frowning as he tried to follow the prince’s train of thought.

  ‘We are being set to the north at Delikas alone knows what rate,’ said Ravian, ‘and, if you recall, there are some very unfriendly-looking islands in that direction. I would say that we will be well amongst them before two hours of this is over.’

  As if to prove his point, the vortex ejected Sea Eagle, only for the swordship to rock through the tossing waters and into another whirlpool. From the elevation that the short intermission gave them though, Ravian and Godart were able to see that the islands under discussion were already dangerously close.

  ‘Run the oars out again, Captain!’ Ravian ordered. ‘We must get some steerage way on!’

  Godart ordered the oars out and the tiller hard over again. True to the captain’s forecast, the fury of the turbulence seemed to be slowly abating and the swordship freed itself from the vortex with relative ease. Indeed, the Tarcuns now saw, all the whirlpools were subsiding into sullen swirls of turbulence and the foam-covered sea was beginning to restore itself into a more orderly state. A powerful current still had them in its grip however, and the archipelago ahead – several small islands around which clustered numerous, fang-like satellites – was ominously close. In the absence of any breeze at all, Godart set a course to try and cross the current and exhorted his weakened crew to pull as hard as they could. Despite their desperate efforts however, it soon became clear that they were not going to weather the rugged pinnacle that marked the eastern extremity of the island group.

  ‘We’ll collide with that island if we hold to this course,’ Ravian told the young captain. ‘We’ll have to pass inside it and risk whatever might lie between it and its neighbour. Alter course for the centre of the channel and pray that it’s a clear passage!’

  As Sea Eagle careened through the unknown waters at the same speed she would normally make under full sail, her crew could see the tide boiling like a fast-flowing river against the face of the craggy eastern pinnacle. They did not, however, see the tooth of rock that lay directly in their path until the very last moment, when it suddenly revealed itself in a wave trough barely a boat-length ahead. Godart put the helm over instantly but there was no chance to avoid the impact, the tide sweeping Sea Eagle against the submerged pinnacle with a crash that spun the swordship sideways and threw the rowers from their thwarts. Ravian and Godart ran forward to the port bow as water began to pour in through the fractured timbers.

  ‘Get some canvas into these holes!’ Ravian bellowed, the water already sloshing about his feet.

  ‘Delikas! If only we had some wind!’ Godart cursed.

  ‘Well, we don’t, and there’s nothing we can do about it,’ Ravian replied more calmly than he felt. ‘The men can’t bail and row at the same time and we’re taking on water fast. There’s a beach over on that island – run Sea Eagle ashore and we’ll see what can be done!’

  The exhausted crew returned to their stations and, with the sea rising ominously about their ankles, they rowed across the current for all they were worth. Fortunately, they encountered no more rocks but, as they came into the shallows and the current finally began to relinquish its hold on their ship, a further surprise awaited them.

  What had appeared, from a distance, to be a line of pink shingle just above the waterline, suddenly came alive and began to move about as the swordship closed. To their astonishment, the Tarcuns realised that the bay was occupied by hundreds of be-whiskered, seal-like creatures, each of which was endowed with two enormous tusks the length of a man’s arm. These rotund residents, most of them twice the size of a man, stared at the fast-approaching swordship with a uniform expression of bemused surprise.

  ‘I believe that we’re about to meet Creedus’s cannibals,’ Ravian growled.

  ‘Do you think they’re dangerous?’ asked Lectus.

  ‘We don’t have time to ask them,’ Ravian replied tersely. ‘Captain, put your ship on the beach.’

  Godart did as he was ordered and, as Sea Eagle drove onto the shore, her bronze keel clattering and squealing through the coarse shingle, the “cannibals” in her path scattered in a panicky confusion of grunts and flying flippers. Then the swordship finally ground to a halt, almost half her length out of water, and the beach’s residents, having retired into a densely-packed mass some fifty paces from the vessel, stared at the exhausted Tarcuns in silence.

  ‘Oh my, they certainly smell as bad as the rest of the natives of this land,’ groaned Lectus, as a powerful stench surrounded the Sea Eagle.

  ‘As I thought,’ said Ravian. ‘They’re some sort of large seal. I don’t think that we need to be concerned as long as we don’t get too close to them. Let’s have a look and see what sort of damage we’ve got.’

  Godart and he climbed over the side amidships and walked forward to the hole in the bow, the “cannibals” grunting and shuffling back a few more paces as they did so. Several of the crew joined the prince and the captain as they inspected the damage.

  ‘Not too bad – all things considered,’ commented Godart. ‘The planks have been stove in but the ribs are intact, so we have only to replace the broken timbers and, with some fresh caulking, we should be as good as new.’

  ‘Just as well we carry spare timbers,’ said Ravian, looking about at the treeless shoreline. ‘Still, it’s going to take a day or so to repair, so let’s run a block and tackle up to that big rock over there and haul her out above the high tide mark. We’ll worry about re-floating her again once she’s seaworthy.’

  ‘Hmmm…yes, Your Highness,’ muttered Godart, doubtfully eyeing the close-packed crowd of “cannibals” that stood between the bow of his ship and the rock that Ravian had referred to.

  ‘Well, come on, Captain,’ Ravian said impatiently. ‘The weather may be calm now, but we only need an easterly storm to blow up and we’ll be establishing the first Tarcun colony in the Western Sea! These creatures seem harmless enough but I certainly don’t want to find myself in the position of having to set up house with one.’

  Seeing that his captain still hesitated, Ravian called for the end of the rope.

  ‘All right then, Godart,’ he said, encouragingly. ‘We’ll do it together.’

  Hauling the end of the heavy line between them, the two Tarcuns advanced towards the front rank of the tusked denizens. As they did so, the animals reared up imposingly on their hind flippers and Ravian began to have second thoughts about electing to lead the way through the beasts. Once they got to within ten paces of the seals though, the huge creatures suddenly broke and scampered to either side like sheep. Having cleared a channel through the colony, Ravian and Godart were able to secure the rope around the rock and Sea Eagle was, thereby, hauled up the beach to a level where the high tide would neither sink nor re-float her during the night.

  It was now close to sunset and, to a man, the Tarcuns were exhausted by the harrowing events of the day. The weather looked settled and Ravian had not the heart to drive his men to repair their vessel in the darkness, nor
did he feel the need to set a watch. All of them made themselves as comfortable as they could on board and, regardless of the cacophony of grunting, roaring and farting from the “cannibals” throughout the night, they slept the thankful sleep of men who have faced death and lived.

  The next morning, content to leave the repairs under the competent supervision of Sea Eagle’s bosun, Ravian, Godart and Lectus decided to exercise their land-legs with an exploration of the island.

  The pathway through the herd had remained open overnight, the cannibals clearly suspicious of the rope stretching between the ship and the rock, so the three Tarcuns were able to cross the foreshore without disturbing the beasts. Cresting a bank, they found themselves upon a tussock-carpeted expanse of land fringing a steep, rocky hillock. With Lectus groaning and complaining at almost every step, they climbed to the summit of the promontory – the day as warm as any they had experienced since leaving Blundoor. The view that awaited them at the top was spectacular however, offering ample reward for their sweaty toil.

  They saw that they were on one of seven islands of similar height and that, scattered about these main members of the archipelago, another dozen or so lesser pinnacles rose sheer out of deep water. Across the straits, now boiling again with the tide race that had so nearly claimed their ship the previous day, the dark mass of Grenwain stretched away to the south.

  From their elevation, the Tarcuns could also see the line of rocks that lay like a row of teeth between the easternmost pinnacle and the island upon which they stood. It was difficult to tell which one Sea Eagle had hit, but it was clear that they had had scant chance of making it through the reef without striking at least one of the fangs. Inside the reef, the bay in which they now sheltered looked clear of any further hazards and Ravian and Godart agreed that a course due east from their beaching point would safely take them back out to deep water.

  ‘The next high tide will be about two hours after dusk,’ Godart declared.