by Rod Fisher
Chapter Nine
WITH THE cover of darkness Felic left Chessa in hiding and went alone to retrieve his weapons. On his return they stole a small skiff and rowed away from the village. The sky, the water and the shoreline became indistinguishable as they left the sparse lights of the dwellings along the waterfront. They were a considerable distance from shore when the moon rose above the Isle of Cedars, a wooded sentinel rising in the mouth of the bay. A wash of silver light transformed the inky void around them so dramatically that Chessa cooed with pleasure.
"Felic, it's beautiful. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful before?"
"Tonight I could do without it."
"But Felic," she sighed, "Don't you think it is wonderfully romantic?"
"You pick an odd time to think of romance." He looked back at the village. "But perhaps we're far enough out to be invisible from shore."
The sea was calm and they spent half the night searching for the mouth of the stream that led into the swamp. They explored several inroads into the trees before finding the right one. Although the tide was ebbing, it still covered the entire area with water, concealing the channel through the mud flats. It was slow going up the stream. Tide and current hindered their progress. As the eastern sky lightened to violet, they rounded a bend and saw the Sun-Eagle with the prelude of dawn subtly defining the tracery of her rigging.
Chessa shivered and yawned. "Oh Felic, hurry. I'm so tired and cold, and I want to get in bed so you can get me warm again."
Felic, weary from his night's labor at the oars, was irritated by her petulance. "Sorry, Chessa, but you won't be getting any sleep for a while."
She looked at him in surprise. "But why?"
"As soon as possible we must finish caulking the seams. We must have the boat ready to sail on the next high tide."
"Do you think they will find us here?"
"It is only a matter of time. If we are lucky perhaps they won't find us before we have enough water to sail out of here."
Felic tied the skiff's painter to the yacht and they scrambled aboard. He went first to the armorer's chest and selected a longbow and arrows, which he brought on deck. Then he got a fire going in the galley box. Chessa was glad to get the job of heating the resin. She crouched by the flames with a fur robe thrown over her back and her shivering was warmed away.
Felic pulled the fibrous bark into long wisps. When the resin was liquefied he dipped the fibers into it and tamped it into the bevel of the seams with a caulking iron and mallet from the ship's tool locker. He worried that the sharp click of the mallet, which carried a considerable distance, would alert the searching Dagrans. Chessa followed his instructions quietly, too fatigued to chatter. When they finished the worst of the seams, Felic brought the sails on deck. He examined Chessa's patches before lacing the material to the yards. When the sails were bent, he furled them loosely and hauled the yards up out of the way.
"Now can we rest?" Chessa begged.
"One more job. An important one. We have no steering oar as yet. Get me the leather strips that I brought from the village." He cleared the rotted remnants of former lashings from the holes where the oar mounted to the starboard bulwark. When Chessa returned with the strapping, he fixed the oar back as it had been when the yacht was functional. It was more than just an oar. It had a right angle extension several feet long that gave leverage on the vertical shaft, which pivoted on the two lashings.
With that job finished, Felic took pity on Chessa. "You can get some sleep now, pigeon."
She started below, then stopped. "Are you coming, too?"
"No. I am going to hide along the path to the village. If the Dagrans return I do not wish it to be a surprise."
"Then be careful ...please, Felic?"
"Don't worry. Just get some rest. When the tide peaks I'll need your help getting this old bird into the bay."
She stood on tiptoe and stifled a yawn to kiss him. He propelled her gently toward the companionway. He slung the quiver of arrows over his back, nicked up the longbow, and loped off down the dock and into the trees.
