Crown of Renewal (Legend of Paksenarrion) (60 page)

By midday she was able to eat more than dry bread, and though they passed through another squall in the afternoon, she felt no sickness. The captain explained that they had turned south while the storm moved north.

“We go behind it,” he said. “Come on deck—you should see.”

She wasn’t at all sure she could walk, with the ship falling out from under her and then shoving upward, but the captain helped her down the passage. “Loosen your knees,” he said. “Go with the ship.” She tried and at once felt steadier. It was like riding a horse, where stiff joints made balance more difficult.

Once outside, on deck, she held on to the rail of the ladder to the upper deck and looked around. The wider view showed no land at all. Dorrin had no idea how far away land might be or in which direction. Clouds obscured the sky, but here and there a ray of sunlight stabbed through.

The next day they sailed under a blue sky spotted with puffy white clouds over smaller waves.

“We’ve got to bear west again,” the captain said. “The way the wind is, we’ll miss the Immerhoft if we don’t.”

Dorrin listened without commenting. Her stomach had settled in the better weather, and she was able to exercise on the deck, not just in her cabin.

“Not all the way to the Eastbight—” the first mate said.

“Yes, unless the wind changes. We’ll need the backflow off the mountains there.”

“I’ll start drilling the men, then,” the mate said.

Dorrin looked up at that. “Drilling?”

“Come in too close and Slavers’ Bay pirates will come out and look us over. Best to be ready to fight. We may need you, too.” That last in a tone that was almost a question.

“Certainly,” Dorrin said. She watched as the mate used the captain’s keys to open a storage locker in the passage just outside his cabin—javelins, crossbows, heavy wide-bladed swords she remembered seeing in Aarenis. Every day the crew practiced maneuvers she had not imagined, running up the rigging with a quiver of javelins, tossing rings of rope two handspans across to land over a man’s head, grappling with one another on the deck … nothing like the drills her own troops had used, yet—on a ship moving in the water—it made sense. She herself practiced her footwork, her point control, all the movements that could be performed on the ship. The captain
even supervised her first attempt to climb the rigging, and the next day she made it up to the basket lookout on the mainmast.

Two hands of days later, a smudge on the horizon caught the morning light.

“The Eastbight’s prow,” the captain said. “A little north of where I hoped we’d find it.”

“How close do we come?” Dorrin asked.

“No closer than this, I hope,” he said, looking aloft to the streamer she now knew showed wind direction whichever way the ship turned. “And the wind’s fair for us.” He turned away from her and began giving orders she now half understood. Sailors hurried to obey, and the ship swung to heartward—port, as he called it.

By midday they were closer to the Eastbight but not much, and the peak she had first seen now lay off the sword—starboard—side, a little aft of the ship. She could not see where the mountains met the sea, only the loom of their tops.

To her surprise, the captain ordered some sails furled; the ship slowed. She looked; he looked off to the southwest, then ordered more sails brought in. “If we sail past the Elbow in the afternoon light, they’ll pick us up from the lookout they keep on the summer side of the Eastbight and maybe attack by night. Don’t want to clear the Elbow in afternoon light. We’ll bide here until sundown, then raise all sail and try to get past the worst of ’em by night … They’ll spot us in the morning, but it’ll be a stern chase and they probably won’t bother.”

The ship lurched about in the seas with so little way on, but Dorrin felt no nausea. Instead, as the afternoon wore on, she leaned against a coil of rope, watching the sailors on the deck. Some hauled heavy, odd-shaped metal pots from the hold, setting a row of them down the centerline of the ship. One flaring side rose above the rest of the rim to the height of a man’s chest. Dorrin had no idea what they were for. A few slept—those on watch the previous night, she supposed. Two were mending—one a sail and the other a pair of the short trousers they wore. The one who had joined the ship in Bannerlíth to work his passage, recognizable by the long strip of red cloth he wore wrapped around his waist so often, climbed the mainmast.
She had wondered whether the red meant he was Falkian, but the captain had told her so firmly not to waste his crew’s time that she had said nothing.

Now she wondered what he was doing up there. He had his knife out—she could see the flash of it moving in the light. Repairing something? The captain had explained that lines needed constant repair.

A bellow from the deck above interrupted her musing, immediately joined by a bellow from the main deck, the man the captain had introduced as his mate. The man on the mast came down quickly, the knife tucked into his sash; she could see the bone handle sticking out. Now they talked, low-voiced. She couldn’t hear the words and thought she probably wouldn’t understand anyway if it was all about the ship. But from the postures and expressions, the man had done something he shouldn’t have and was getting an earful. Dorrin looked away. No one liked to be stared at while that was going on.

She was surprised, therefore, when a little later the man came aft and sat on another coil of rope nearby. The glance he gave her was so calculating, so intent, that she frowned before she caught herself. He smiled then, a sly twist of the lips, got up, and walked back ’midships.

As the afternoon waned into evening, a haze spread over the water—not as thick as fog but chilly nonetheless. The captain came down for supper before dark, shaking his head. “Wind change,” he said. “It may help us, but we’ll have to look sharp to our steering.” He did not explain more. Dorrin addressed herself to her meal and asked no questions.

With the last of the light, the captain ordered sails spread, and the ship headed south once more, all lights onboard shuttered. Because Dorrin’s cabin was on the seaward side, the captain had told her she could have a candle if she wanted but to close the window and curtain. She preferred fresh air and came out on deck, looking up at the stars. She had learned enough to know they were sailing south. Over the side, the ship seemed to move through thin veils of mist, though it did not rise to the level of the deck.

Far off toward the land, she saw a light, lower than a star and yellower.
She squinted. It must be somewhere on the Eastbight, but … the captain had said the sunrising face was cliffs dropping sheer into the sea, uninhabited. She looked around the deck in the dim starlight; sailors moved about, hardly visible. Then, high overhead, a light sputtered and flared at the top of the mainmast, a peculiar greenish yellow Dorrin associated with wizards’ tricks.

The captain roared from the quarterdeck. Instantly, the thud of bare feet running on the deck—Dorrin could not tell how many. The mate snapped out orders; Dorrin backed into the cabin passage to be out of the way. The light above cast shadows and dim flickers of light onto the deck, making it impossible to see all that was going on. In that stuttering light, Dorrin saw one sailor leap for the foot of the mainmast and start up while two more raced up the rigging, each with a bucket hanging from his belt.

“One missin’, Captain,” called the mate from ’midship.

“Our working passenger?” the captain asked.

“Aye, sir. Not on deck; might be below or overboard.”

“Arm the known crew. Send a detail below to guard the rudder cables.” A pause, then: “Passenger: arm yourself. You will be needed.”

Dorrin had changed as soon as supper was over, arming shirt, mail, and doublet, and had laid out gorget, bracers, and the rest of her gear on her bunk. Dagger drawn, she moved warily down the passage and into her cabin. She heard nothing, smelled nothing, but the usual. She closed the cabin door by feel, then covered the window and lit a candle to make finishing her preparations easier. On with padded cap that went under the simple helmet, on with the gorget, the bracers, the boots. She looked again at her sword—but the captain had given her a cutlass, better for fighting aboard. She grinned; she felt happier than she had since she’d boarded. This was her world, the world of blades. Ahorse, afoot—and now on board a ship. She blew out the candle, pinched the hot wick to be sure it was safe, and eased back out onto the deck. Now the light at the masthead was gone, but off to the west, where land loomed, another light showed.

In the dim starlight she saw that the gridwork over the main hatch was open and heard voices from below. They grew louder until one of them yelled, “Captain! Found the fishbait sawing at a rudder line.”

“Bring him up,” Royan called. “Rig the spare line. And mount the bells in place.”

Bells? Dorrin hadn’t heard or seen any but the one ship’s bell that marked the watches. Now she saw shadowy figures pulling the strange pots from the center of the ship to the rails, where they clanked on something. Meanwhile, two sailors ran up the ladder from the hold, then hauled up the man they’d captured and bound. The captain came down to the main deck.

As Dorrin watched, the mate and two crewmen forced the man’s arms across the rail. “You would leave my ship rudderless in the ocean, helpless when your friends come,” Royan said. “I will leave you armless, helpless when the fish come.” The man screamed for mercy, but two quick strokes with the captain’s cutlass and his hands and forearms fell overboard as his blood spurted out. “May your blood call Barrandowea to my aid,” Royan said. Then to the mate, “Overboard with him.” They threw the man overboard. Dorrin heard only one splash and could see nothing of him.

Dorrin’s stomach turned, but she clenched her jaw and said nothing. The man had betrayed them to pirates and intended evil to everyone on board. They sailed on through the night, and the captain explained the use of the “bells,” the great bronze pots now fueled with sap from the forests of Kostandan.

Dorrin had become used to the ship’s noises—the flapping of sails, the creaking and groaning of the ship as it rolled, the slap and thud of bare feet on the deck, the wind whirring or whistling through the rigging, all the sounds water made against the hull. Now she heard something else—but before she could react to it, a hideous howling arose from all around the ship. Then a score or more of grapples trailing ropes flew up over both sides of the ship, smashing into the less cautious sailors who rushed to the rails at the noise. Some caught in the rigging, some scraped across the deck to lodge under the rail.

But
Blessing
’s crew had been through pirate attacks before. Lights appeared on the deck, set into the polished bronze bells Dorrin had
puzzled over. Though dim, they made it possible to tell sailors from pirates. “Cut the ropes—the grapples—” the captain told her. Sailors were already doing that, cutlasses thudding into the rails, slashing lines hanging from grapples in the rigging. From high above, the first fire-tipped bolts flew down, aimed at the pirates’ sails. Dorrin slashed at lines she was sure weren’t the ship’s own rigging and at the arms of a pirate about to climb over the rail. Blood spurted; he fell backward with a cry. She ducked as another grapple sailed past her head, skidded on the deck, and snapped into place under the rail.

Shouts and screams forward—Dorrin chanced a glance that way and saw a confused mass of men, pirates pouring over the bow railing, pushing defending sailors back and off the foredeck. “Stay back,” the captain called. “Keep them off the port side, away from the ladder up here. Use the fire-rings!”

Dorrin picked up one of the pitch-soaked rope rings, lit it at the nearest bell, and hurled it at the pirate sail that had come alongside; flames wreathed it as it flew, and it hit, clinging. The sail caught; flames rose, giving more light to see two pirates just coming over the rail. Dorrin struck one with her cutlass and pushed a lit fire-ring onto the other. Screaming, he dropped his cutlass and jumped back over the rail, but instead of water, he landed on the pirate ship’s deck. Dorrin scooped up his cutlass but had no time to see what happened to him, as more pirates had come over the opposite side.