Love And War (19 page)

“Who is master of this SKELTER?”

“One Graff, a mariner of many years' experience on these seas.”

“Very good, Sergeant. And when do we sail?” “With the morning tide, my lady.” WITH THE
MORNING TIDE. Sturm repeated those words over and over in his head. Since leaving the castle, he had imagined their quick
deliverance. He would hear a sharp tattoo of hoofbeats behind, and Lord Bright-blade would
gallop over the hill at the head of a troop of horsemen. “Come back! All is well!” he
would shout. How would his father ride to them across the sea? The answer was clear, and
Sturm did not like it.

The good ship SKELTER lay fast against a long wooden pier. Short and round, she was
freshly caulked and painted. Sturm wondered what exotic cargoes had been carried under the
green planking of her hull.

Dark-skinned sailors clung to the rigging, doing mysterious things with lengths of rope
and bundles of sailcloth. Sturm never took his eyes off them as he trailed after his
mother and Soren down the pier. The captain of the SKELTER greeted them at the foot of the
gangplank. He clasped his own hands across his belly and bowed shortly to Lady Ilys. “Captain Graff, at yer service, ma'am,” he said. His beard was plaited in intricate braids, and a dull gold bead hung from one earlobe. “We'll
be weighing anchor ere the sun strikes the housetops of Thel. Will ye board now?”

She made only the slightest nod of assent. Mistress Carin went ahead, and two husky
sailors fell upon their baggage. Soren stood aside, one hand on the pommel of his sword.
Sturm stayed by him, taking in the busy spectacle of a ship being readied for sea.

“Will it be a long voyage, Sergeant?” asked the boy.

“Depends on the sea and the wind, young lord. And the skill of the mariners.”

“Couldn't we wait a while longer? For news from Father?” asked Sturm.

Soren did not reply. He stared at the housetops of the town, waiting for the pink sky
beyond them to blaze yellow, then blue. Vapor steamed from his nostrils in the chill air.

“Sergeant, I shall board now,” Lady Ilys said. Soren offered his arm. “Come along, Sturm,”
she said. The boy responded with a sigh. He dragged his feet up the worn plank, looking
back often to the barren hills east of town.

Lines fell from the ship to the water. Gangs of sailors manned two broad sweeps and rowed
SKELTER out of Thel harbor. Open pilot boats guided them past the bar into the Inland Sea.
Sturm watched them turn back as SKELTER'S single sail was raised.

Captain Graff rigged a screen of hides below the sterncastle for Lady Ilys and Carin.
Barrels and crates of trade goods were pushed aside to create a space for the women under
the castle platform. A smoky oil lamp was lit, and Mistress Carin set to making pallets
for her lady and Sturm.

The ship rolled with a steady motion to which Sturm quickly adapted. He wanted to go on
deck and watch the sailors at their work, but Lady Ilys forbade him. The strain of recent
days was bearing on her hard, and she wanted most of all to rest.

“Stay by me, Sturm,” she said. “I need a strong man at my side while I rest. I won't feel
safe otherwise.”

She took off her fur cape and lay down, pulling the soft wrap around her as a blanket.
Sturm lay down, his back to hers, vigilant as a knight and wary as a Brightblade - for all
of ten minutes. Then he, too, lapsed into heavy slumber.

He sensed a change. The ship's motion had lessened.

The air in the hide enclosure was close and hot. Sturm rolled to his feet, tightened the
drawstring of his pants, and went out on deck.

A cold, thick, white fog had settled on the warmer sea. The SKELTER glided under a feeble
following wind. They were far out in the midst of the Inland Sea. No land was visible;
indeed, nothing could be seen ten paces beyond the ship's rail.

Sturm prowled the waist of the ship, scampering out of the way of the sailors as they
tightened the mainsail tackle. The big square of canvas hung limply in the misty air,
flopping only rarely when a stray gust struck it.

Soren was on the poop. The steersman leaned on one leg behind the sergeant, shifting the
thick black staff of the rudder with practiced ease. Timbers and rigging creaked as
SKELTER eased across the flat, languid water.

The weather was no fairer the second day at sea, Captain Graff and his first mate - a
squat, dwarfish fellow with yellow eyes - put their heads together by the mast. Naturally,
Sturm was on hand to listen.

“Do ye think it's for the wind cord?” asked the mate. Sturm was fascinated by the brass
tooth in the front of the man's mouth.

“Nay, 'tis not the time. This cursed mist may rise soon, and the natural wind will spring
up,” said Graff.

Sturm asked Soren what the mate meant by 'wind cord.'

“Magic,” he said. “Mariners often buy wind from seaside warlocks. They keep the wind bound
in knots of magical cord. When the ship's master needs a breeze, he unknots as much of a
blow as he dares.”

“Is there much magic on the sea?” Sturm asked, wide- eyed.

Soren wiped mist from his helmet brim before it could drip off. “Far too much to suit me,
young lord. This fog seems too clinging to be nature's work.”

Midday was no brighter than dawn. The sea flattened out like the puddled wax around
Sturm's study candle in Castle Brightblade. The lapping waves fell silent, and the sail
stayed slack against the mast. Captain Graff emerged from below deck with a length of
rawhide two spans long. Sturm peered through the sterncastle rail as the captain crossed
the waist and mounted the steps to the poop.

“Sargo,” he said to the helmsman. “I'm loosing a knot.” “Aye, aye, sir.” Graff put one end
of the cord in his teeth. There were a dozen knots along its length. The idea of a magic cord intrigued and repelled Sturm at the same time. Such power was forbidden to the knightly
orders.

Graff picked at the first knot with his blunt fingernails. In the stagnant air, each of
his mutters was clear.

“Come loose, you son of a snake,” he said.

Soren moved suddenly off the rail to the sternpost. He gazed into the fog. “Captain
Graff,” he said calmly. The master of the SKELTER cursed some more at the tough loop in
the cord. “Captain!” Soren barked, using the parade- ground voice that Sturm had heard so
often from the training yard. The old seaman looked up.

“Don't bother me, lad; I'm engaged,” he said.

“There's a ship out there,” Soren said. “It's coming toward us.”

“What? Eh? Do ye have the second sight?” “No, just two good ears. Listen!” Graff put a
hand to his ear. Sturm came up on Soren's left and listened, too. There ... a faint knocking sound . . . like two blocks of wood slapping together. “By the gods, yer right!” Graff said. “Those are oars beating, or I'm a thieving kender!” Idle sailors collected in the stern to hear the approaching ship. Soren backed out of the press, drawing Sturm with him.

“You must go and tell your mother what is happening,” he said.

“What IS happening, Soren?”

“A galley, a ship rowed by many men, is close upon us. I fear they mean us mischief.”

“Pirates?” asked the boy, half-fearful, half-delighted.

“Mayhap, or rogues of a darker stripe. Run to your mother and tell her this.”

Sturm slipped down a stayrope, as he'd often seen the sailors do, and dropped to the deck
outside his mother's enclosure. He pulled back the flap. It was dim and smoky inside, but
he spied Mistress Carin tending a small fire in a copper pan.

“Mother! Mother!” he called. “What is it?” Lady Ilys said from the shadows. “Sergeant
Soren says a rowing ship is coming for us. It may be pirates!” Mistress Carin gasped. Lady Ilys's face appeared out of the darkness. She was very pale, and her expression was grim.

“Why would pirates bother so small a ship as this?” she asked. “It's so foggy, my lady, Paladine wouldn't know us for who we are,“ Carin said. ”Sturm, fetch the sergeant to me. I want a soldier's view of the matter.” The boy bowed hastily to his mother and ran out to find Soren.

The thump and swish of oars was clearer now, even to Sturm's young ears. The fog swallowed
the sound, dispersing it, making it hard to tell from what quarter the galley approached.
Definitely astern; that was certain.

“Sergeant! Sergeant!” Sturm shouted. He found the guardsman on the poop deck, whetting the
blade of his broadsword. The SKELTER'S crew of lean, raffish seamen nervously shifted
hatchets and cutlasses from hand to hand. Only Captain Graff and Sargo, the aged helmsman,
were calm.

“Sergeant, my mother wishes to speak to you,” Sturm said.

“I honor your noble mother, but I regret I cannot leave the deck just now,” Soren said.
“The enemy, if enemy they be, is near.”

“Where? Where?” “Treading on our heels.” Sturm strained to see. The oars pounded
ceaselessly. ... “Ship on the port stem!” sang out a man in the rigging.

Out of the white murk came a massive object wrought in bronze. To Sturm it looked like the
head of a mace.

“The galley's ram,” Soren told him.

“Hard a-starboard!” cried the captain. Sargo put the tiller over, but the becalmed SKELTER
scarcely noticed. Graff ordered the helm kept over. He held the wind cord aloft and undid
the knot he'd worked so hard to loosen. “Elementals of the air, I release you!” he
exclaimed.

The sail snapped out with a crack, and the deck dropped from under Sturm's feet. SKELTER
heeled sharply to starboard just as the phantom galley charged through the dead water
where the roundship once plodded.

Wind freed from the cord sang in the rigging. “How long will it last?” Soren asked the
captain. Graff rubbed his ears and shrugged, a confession of total ignorance.

SKELTER bounded over the waveless sea, tearing the fog apart like rotted cheesecloth. The
galley trailed them, trying to draw nearer. Sturm held on the port rail, the wind in his
eyes, as the galley swept clear of the mist. The bronze ram gave way to a black timber
hull that cut the water in spurts with each dip of the oars. The galley's upperworks were daubed blood red. Movement on the deck suggested men behind the red planking, and a
hedgehog of spears bristled in the air. Below them, blending back into the fog, were the
oars, black with water, rising and falling in time with a muffled drum.

“Keep back from the rail, lad,” the captain told Sturm. “They may have archers.”

The boy forgot his mother's request and stood with Sergeant Soren on the port quarterdeck.
The magic wind pushed the roundship without falter for one notch of the candle. At one
notch and a half, the galley ran its oars in.

The SKELTER'S crew cheered. Sturm said, “Have we bested them, Captain?”

“Not yet, lad, not yet.”

Sturm saw dark triangles billow from the galley's masts. Their pursuers were taking to
sail, using SKELTER'S own wind to keep up with them.

The sun burned a hole in the clouds. Details of the black galley stood out at once. A
pennant whipped from the foremast. Sargo squinted his good eye at it.

“That be no pirate,” he said. “That be a ship of Kernaf.” “Who is Kernaf?” asked Sturm. “
'What' be more like it - the isle of Kernaf. That's a ship of their navy,” Graff said. As Sturm watched, the magic wind diminished, and the SKELTER slowed. The galley wallowed in the press of sail and drew along their port side.

“Hail, ship of Kernaf!” Graff shouted through his hands. “What would ye want with us?”

“Heave to! We mean to board!” was the reply. Sturm could see men massing on the forecastle.

“We're a free trader out of Solamnia. What business have ye with us?” bawled Graff.

“You are sailing in waters claimed by our great Sea Lord,” the Kernaf spokesman said.
“Heave to, or we'll take you by force.”

Oars sprouted from the galley's sides like legs on a centipede. “Go, young lord. Go to
your mother,” said Soren. He plucked a dagger two spans long from his belt. “You must
defend her when all else is lost.”

Sturm accepted the iron blade. It was heavy and keen, and in the guardsman's hand it could
easily pierce a single thickness of mail. Sturm darted across the deck to the hide
enclosure. Mistress Carin and Lady Ilys stood together by the starboard bulwark, amid the
wine casks and clay pots of oil.

“Mother, I am here to defend you!” he said, brandishing the dagger.

“Come here,” she said. She gathered Sturm in her arms and hugged him tightly. “My brave
boy,” she said. “Carin and I heard all.”

Shouts from the deck: “The ram! The ram!” SKELTER leaped sideways in the sea, rolling far
to starboard. Lady Ilys and Carin fell back on the pots and casks. Sturm's head banged
onto the deck, and the dagger flew from his hand.

Above came the sounds of fighting - heavy thuds, the ring of metal on metal, the screams
of the wounded and dying. Men fell overboard with loud splashes.

A shaft of sunlight slashed into the enclosure. Kernaffi marines had cut down the hides.
Sturm groped dazedly for the lost dagger. The boarders charged in. Mistress Carin bravely
faced them, but the nearest man grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out on deck. Lady
Ilys called for her son. By then Sturm was crawling about, searching for Soren's weapon.
The Kernaffi approached Lady Ilys, but she walked out on her own and stood regally in a
circle of poised javelins.

Sturm saw his mother confront the rough, kilt-wearing Kernaffi. His throat tightened when
the ring of spearpoints closed in. He cast around desperately for the dagger. Back among
the crates of cloth the braided handle gleamed. Sturm reached for it. ...

A rough hand grasped the hood of his cloak and hauled him to his feet. “KOY ESK TA?” said
the Kernaffi, laughing in the boy's frightened face.

By the time Sturm was drag-marched to deck, the battle was over. The Thelite sailors were
bunched together by the mast, on their knees and begging for mercy. Sheer numbers of
javelin-armed Kernaffi had forced Soren back to the starboard rail. They pinned him there,
spearpoints at his throat. Soren's broken sword lay at his feet, as did a good number of
wounded Kernaffi.