Crown of Shadows (45 page)

He tried not to remember that those men had crews, as he struggled to maintain the bearing Tarrant had chosen. He tried not to think about the fact that if those men wound up in the water, all they had to worry about was drowning. If this boat went under with the Hunter inside it, unable to save himself while any hint of daylight remained—

Not much danger in that,
he thought grimly, as the sky overhead went from pearl gray to ash gray to a steamy charcoal. A film of rain enveloped the horizon, and Damien could only pray that he was still where he belonged, in the middle of the Serpent, and not north or south where the rocky shores lay hidden in the mist. Soon it would be dark enough that even the Hunter could come out ... and Damien wouldn’t have complained if he did.

“Tell me again how this is less dangerous than being on land,” he muttered, as he fought the wheel into a new and hopefully more promising position. Damn the man for going below without doing something to control this storm! It was little consolation that without it their enemies in Seth would surely have overtaken them by now. Damien would trade this cold, rainy Hell for a hand-to-hand conflict any day.

At last, after what seemed like an eternity, the wind began to abate. Numbly, Damien noted that they were still afloat. It seemed nothing short of a miracle, for which he gave thanks as he tried to unclench his hands from the wheel, to force life back into his strained and frozen flesh. There was a pain in his shoulder blades that felt like a spear had gouged into his flesh there, and his feet were soaked and aching from the cold ... but he was alive. That was worth a few deep breaths, surely. He watched foam-topped waves break against the prow with considerably less fury than before, and muttered a quick prayer under his breath.
Please, God, let that be the worst of it.

It was.

At sunset Tarrant rose up from his hiding place within the cargo hold, and came to where Damien stood, shivering and exhausted. Without a word he took hold of the wheel and nodded for the ex-priest to withdraw. It took Damien a minute to get his flesh to respond, so frozen was he in that attitude. At last, stiffly, he started back to where the turbine still churned, meaning to feed it more fuel. “I’ve already taken care of it,” Tarrant informed him, as he swung the boat about on a new heading. For a moment Damien could neither move nor respond, then he walked a few steps to where a narrow bench was fixed to the deck and fell down onto it, heavily.

“It would have been nice if you’d done something to calm down that storm,” he muttered.

“I did. As much as any man can, who conjures wind in such a hurry.”

“I meant during the day.” Hell, what was the point of this? But he couldn’t stop the words from coming, not after all those hours. “It was dark enough—”

“I
did
,” the Hunter snapped. “Forgive me for not coming up on deck to make a show of it. Or did you think that the storm died down just in time out of liking for us?” He glanced toward the shore as if judging their distance from it, then back at the water directly ahead of them. “Weather-Working is a risky art, Vryce, I told you that before. Under the circumstances, I did the best I could.” He glanced back at Damien; the look of concern on his face was almost human. “Get some sleep,” he urged. And then, dryly: “I’ll wake you before the fun starts.”

He started to respond, then didn’t. His mouth framed a question, then lost it. With a groan he forced himself to his feet—no easy task, that, not once he had allowed himself the luxury of sitting down—and started back toward the cabin. There should be a comfortable place in there somewhere, if the horses didn’t trample him while he looked for it. Definitely worth the search.

That decided, he sank down to the deck beside the bench, lowered his head to the rain-washed wood, and drifted off into a sound and untroubled sleep.

Waves against wood. Wind slapping canvas. For a moment he couldn’t place where he was, and then it all came back to him. Along with the pain.

“God,” he whispered. His neck, the only part of him that hadn’t hurt earlier, was cramped from his awkward sleeping posture. He tried to massage out the knot that had formed in it while pushing himself up to a sitting position. “Where are we?”

Tarrant was still at the wheel. “Check the furnace,” he said, without turning around. Damien muttered something incoherent and moved to obey.

There was still fuel, but not much. He stayed around for a minute to watch it burn, reveling in the feel of its heat upon his face, and then climbed back up to the captain’s perch.

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah,” he affirmed. “If you don’t count that the horses nearly killed me.

The Hunter glanced at him. “My Working didn’t hold?”

“They’re scared and they’re hungry; you’ve got a lot to Work against.” Heavily he sat down on the bench once more, gazing out at the water ahead. It seemed to him that there was something dark along the horizon, that might or might not be land. “You bringing us in?”

“Unless you’d care to spend another day on the water.”

“Please.” He shivered melodramatically. “Don’t even joke about it.”

It seemed to him that Tarrant smiled ever so slightly. Damien studied his slender hands resting on the wheel, so elegant, so confident—so different from his own anxious grip—and asked, “So when the hell did you learn to sail?”

“When I accompanied Gannon and his troops to Westmark.” The Hunter shifted the wheel slightly to the right, toward the land ahead. “Unlike you, I take every opportunity to expand my store of knowledge.”

“You also had a crew to back you up.”

“You did fine, Reverend—” Damien heard his quick intake of breath as he caught himself. “You did fine,” he said softly. “We’re still afloat, aren’t we? That’s what matters.”

Damien stood again and studied the view; the thing that might be land was growing steadily larger ahead of them. “So where are we?”

“Halfway between Hade and Asmody, if I judge it correctly.”

Farther east than they’d planned on. “How can you tell?”

“I have Vision, remember? To my eyes this whole region is alive with power, and the Forest—” he nodded toward the darkness ahead and to the left of them, “—is as bright as a beacon to my eyes.”

Something occurred to him then, that never had before. “You’re never really in darkness, are you?”

It seemed to him that the Hunter smiled slightly. “Not as you know the word. Although when we were out in the ocean there were nights that came close. And the Unnamed—”

He stopped then, unwilling or unable to say more, but Damien could see the muscles along his face and neck tense as he remembered. What had the Unnamed done to him, there in his custom-designed Hell? Damien didn’t want to ask.

“So what now?” he said quietly.

Tarrant exhaled softly, accepting the reprieve. “Calesta will no doubt expect us to put into Hade or Asmody, and continue northward from there.”

“Which means he’s probably prepared a reception for us in both places.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Damn.” It was hard enough avoiding pursuit on open land, where you could go in nearly any direction. How did you do it pulling into a harbor, where one man with a farseer could spot you in time to raise a regiment? “Any idea how he’s controlling these people?”

The Hunter shrugged stiffly. “Dreams, perhaps. Visions. Or perhaps even direct control, using those few men who have bonded with him. Does it matter? The result is deadly for us, no matter what the technique.”

“So what do we do?” he demanded. “Sail east past Hade, and hope we can make the next port by morning? Hope that he hasn’t fortified that one as well?”

For a moment Tarrant didn’t answer. Then, without a word, he pointed toward the dark mass before them.

Damien drew in a sharp breath. “You’re crazy.”

“Prima’s full overhead, and Domina’s half should rise soon. That should give us good enough light.”

“For what? To see ourselves get killed?”

“I hope something less dramatic than that.” He glanced to the left slightly, as if measuring their direction against the Forest’s chill glow. All Damien could see was water. “We can’t just sail into port. Surely you realize that. Which leaves only one way to land—”

“They built a port on every hospitable mile of this coast,” Damien reminded him. “Which means, by definition, that any place without a port is going to be nasty.”

“So it is,” he agreed. “How fortunate that we both know how to swim.” The pale eyes fixed on Damien. “You do know how to swim, don’t you?”

“I can swim,” he growled.

“It’ll take us about an hour to get into position. The horses should be brought out by then, in case I miscalculate. As for supplies—”

“What chance is there of that?”

“What?”

“That you’ll
miscalculate.”

It seemed to him that a fleeting smile flitted across the man’s face.
God damn him if he finds thisamusing.
“I can get some sense of the ground beneath us by the light of the earth-fae, but that won’t come into clear focus until we’re very close. And there is, as you say, no truly hospitable shore. Nevertheless ...” He adjusted the wheel again, ever so slightly; it seemed to Damien that the shadow ahead was noticeably larger. “Even such risk is preferable to marching right into Calesta’s hands, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” he growled. “Only ... oh, hell.” He drew in a deep breath and counted to ten. Exhaled it slowly. “It doesn’t matter, does it? Just tell me when to jump.”

Now the Hunter’s amusement was clear. Damn him to hell for it.

“I will,” he promised.

Damien had been on a freighter once that had gotten caught up in a tsunami. It had been a simple flood wave that brought them in, not a bore, but that made it no less frightening. The wave had borne them into the harbor amidst a sea of wreckage and then withdrawn beneath them, dashing them down upon the very pier it had deluged mere moments ago. He still remembered the sound of the hull smashing as mooring piles stabbed into it from beneath, the screams of men and women as the deck canted wildly, spilling the less fortunate into the madly churning harbor. It was a scene that still haunted his dreams, that had driven him to choose land over sea whenever possible, that had developed in him an almost pathological hatred of the sea and all its arts.

Compared to such a landing, he had to admit, this one wasn’t the worst he had experienced.

But it came damned close.

Tarrant brought them in as close as he dared, then paralleled the coast for some miles searching for a promising site. Lacking his adept’s Vision, unable to Work his own equivalent with a fathom of water between him and the earth-fae, Damien could only watch and pray as mile after dark mile passed to the starboard. At last he saw Tarrant begin to bring about the wheel, a look of grim determination on his face.

“Good spot?” he dared. “Best we’ll get,” the Hunter responded.

Great.

They drove the boat aground on a rocky slope, their speed carrying them forward for yards more even as the ground ripped wood from the hull beneath them. The sound awakened memories in Damien that were better off forgotten, and he tried to focus on the mechanisms of immediate survival as a way of escaping them. Get the horses into the water as safely as possible, and see that they were moving toward shore. Clear the boat himself and get far away, lest it slip from its precarious grounding and drag him out into the sea in its wake. Try to keep sight of the shore as the breaking waves frothed over his head, pointedly not reminding himself how much he hated to swim even at a civilized beach....

But Tarrant had done it well, give him credit for that. Not yards beyond the place where they ran aground Damien felt solid earth beneath his feet. Within yards more he was walking, as securely as one could with surf pounding at one’s chest, and he saw to his satisfaction—and relief—that the horses had likewise found solid footing. He didn’t bother to look for Tarrant—if, God forbid, the current dragged the adept under, he could use the earth-fae beneath the water to save himself—but struggled toward land, sputtering and cursing the fate that seemed determined to drown him.