Perilous Seas (11 page)

Gathmor
was asleep. Rap was hungry, but the sailors were eating and he felt it wiser to
wait awhile than dare to interrupt. Instead he gave some more thought to his
own troubles and prospects.

To
start with, where exactly was the ship? The storm could have moved it an
immense distance; he had no experience to guess how far. Direction he always
knew fairly well, a talent that seemed to be part of his farsight, and in any
case he could always read the helmsman’s binnacle. After his first two or
three days aboard, though, his attention had been distracted by weakness and
pain and he had stopped caring. The wind had first carried Blood Wave
southward, then northeast, but she had not piled up against the coasts of
either Kith or Sysanasso. One or other likely lay ahead, then, for the helmsman
was holding the most northerly course he could manage in a southwesterly, and
although she, too, bore only a single square sail, this was a much more
weatherly vessel than the top-heavy Stormdancer.

And
if Blood Wave had not gone westward, then Gathmor was in terrible danger,
because he was no longer needed as a pilot for the Nogids. Kalkor could find
another of those anytime.

All
Pandemia lay somewhere to the north. If Blood Wave passed west of Sysanasso,
she would enter the Dragon Sea, rife with commerce and good pickings for a
merciless raider. Alternatively, east of the big island lay Ilrane and elves or
Kerith and merfolk, areas Rap had never studied. Farther east still was Zark,
although one storm could not possibly move a ship that far.

Which
brought his thoughts back again to Inos.

How
ironic that a callous killer and rapist like Kalkor should have seen what Rap
himself had never before realized. He was in love with his queen! How blind
could a man be?

Or
how crazy? A stableboy falling in love with a princessthe very idea had been
stupid beyond dreams, too stupid even to contemplate. It still was.

And
so what? She still deserved his loyalty as a subject. That loyalty should be
even stronger if he loved her.

She
did not return his love. How could she? A very lowly factor’s clerk ...
not even that now, only a vagabond with a knack for horses and a smattering of
sailoring skills. On that mad night when her father died, Inos had been
courteous and kindly to her childhood friend, as she would always be. She had
thanked him for his help. She had not flinched before his occult abilities,
because she was a sophisticated, educated lady, not one of the ignorant,
superstitious rustics of Krasnegar. Like him.

And
if by some miracle he could ever find her, she would certainly by then be
married into some noble family. The wardens might just possibly have installed
her on the throne of her fathers, with a compromise consort acceptable to both
thanes and imperor . . . not, thank the Gods, Little Chicken!

Never
Rap.

The
man in her tent had been a swordsman, almost certainly an aristocrat. Big,
handsome fellow.

So
Rap must continue his search if it took a lifetime. She would welcome him into
her household, perhaps make him master-of-horse, as they had joked together
when they were children. She need never suspect how he felt about her. He would
serve her loyally as subject and worship as lover from afar.

And
if all he was feeling was an overaged juvenile infatuation, then he would grow
out of it in time.

Could
a juvenile infatuation hurt this much?

Now
he knew why the fairy child had not told him her word of power-her name, or
possibly the name of her guardian elemental, if that is what the words were.
She had told Little Chicken because he had truly known his life’s great
desire, and because he had wanted it enough to die for it. Rap had not said
that he loved Inos, only that he wanted to find her and be her loyal subject.
Not the whole truth! Had he known the truth, and said it, then he would be an
adept now, with two words. And the fairy would have died in his arms, not the
goblin’s.

What
if Kalkor got to Inos first?

Or
changed his mind and slew Rap out of hand? He obviously took the prophecy
seriously.

Or
decided to torture his word out of him to become an adept? Better not to think
about that.

No,
somehow Rap must escape from the thane’s clutches.

He’d
escaped from the goblins, hadn’t he? And from the imps, and from a
warlock.

How
obvious now was the advice that King Holindarn had given him, and even
Andor-that occult powers must be kept secret at all costs. Too late! A jotunn
raider would never willingly release a seer. Before landfall, Rap would find
himself chained or deliberately crippled so he could neither run nor swim.

“Rap?”

The
whisper startled him out of his brooding, and he jerked around to stare at a
brilliantly flushed face. For a moment the redness suggested an extreme,
comical embarrassment; then he saw that it was only a very bad case of tropic
sunburn. Jalon had now found a shirt to give him some protection, but he must
be suffering. Under his pain, he was pathetically bewildered and frightened. He
still clutched the frivolously ornate harp in one hand and was holding up his
oversized breeches with the other.

Once
Jalon had confessed to having elvish blood in him. Seeing him now alongside so
many pure jotnar, Rap thought he could detect a goldish tinge to his skin, and
a slant to his eyes. And of course he lacked the height and muscle. It would be
unkind to comment on that, though.

“Take
a chair,” Rap said sadly. “Wine? Sweetmeats?”

“Don’t!”
the minstrel said, crouching down. “Don’t mock, Rap! Gods, man, but
you’ve grown! “

“I
have?”

“It
was only two days ago we met, you know. For me, that is.”

“You
share memories, don’t you?” Rap thought of Thinal and Sagorn and
Darad, and all that had happened in the year since that picnic ... more than a
year.

“Yes.
But mine are the clearest to me. The others never see things properly!”
That was the artist speaking, the painter. He took a harder look at Rap’s
face and grimaced. “It wasn’t me set Darad on you, Rap!”

“Oh,
no!”

“Really!”
Jalon’s dreamy blue eyes filled with tears. “I warned you about
him, remember! Then I got lost in the forest, and I was tempted to call him,
because he knows that country, but I knew he’d head straight back to get
you, so I called Andor instead. He recognized the danger, Rap, too. Andor’s
not all that bad! He managed to find his way south . . . “

“Did
he meet any goblins?” Rap asked, suddenly curious. The minstrel nodded. “A
few, in ones and twos, and of course he could charm that many. They’re
fairly harmless in the summer, anyway. “

“Not
now, they’re not! Or so I’ve heard. “

“Well,
they were! But I did try to keep Darad off you. And I haven’t been back
since. “

“Not
at all?” Rap thought he saw a shiftiness.

“Well
... once. Just for a few minutes. I wrote a letter that Andor needed, a letter
of introduction. And he’d trapped me, because he called me in a room
where lots of people had seen him going in. They would’ve seen me if I
tried to leave.”

Rap
chuckled. The gang of five exploited one another without scruple. He wondered
how many little tricks they had like that. Jalon glanced around nervously, then
looked doubtfully at Gathmor, who was glaring at him. “Rap, I need some
help!”

“Don’t
we all?”

“No,
immediate help! I have to compose an epic, a jotunn war song.”

“Good
luck.”

A
flicker of anger appeared in Jalon’s washed blue eyes, or perhaps it was
only fear. “Kalkor told me to. You know the sort of thing he wants?”

“No.
Do you?”

“Oh,
yes. It’s to be about the battle of Durthing.”

Gathmor
snarled, and Rap stretched out a hand to restrain him as he struggled to sit
up.

“It’s
not my idea!” the minstrel squealed, flinching. “But there’s
a convention to these battle songs. Every man has to be mentioned, so I have to
talk to every man aboard and get his name. Then I have to fit him into a verse,
telling of his exploits. That’s not hard; I’ll just lift stuff from
all the old classics. But I need to know the names of their opponents, see?
They have to be in there, too.”

“And
these brutes didn’t think to ask who they were killing? “ Rap asked
bitterly.

Jalon
nodded. “Please, Rap?”

“Why
bother? Call Darad:”

“I
daren’t! Kalkor says if I call any of the others he’ll put his eyes
out!”

His
distress and his red face made Jalon seem almost farcical. The sequential gang
had a man for every situation, and Darad was the man for this one, never Jalon.

“Have
you five ever been trapped like this before?”

The
minstrel shook his head, looking ready to weep. He was much better at singing
about warfare than he was at being involved in it.

“All
right!” Rap said, ignoring Gathmor’s growls. “I’ll list
the best fighters in Durthing for you. They’re dead, so it won’t
hurt them. But you’ll owe me, Master Jalon!”

Jalon
nodded vigorously. “I won’t forget, Rap. And the others will
remember and be grateful, too. “

That
seemed doubtful. Even more doubtful was the possibility that Rap would ever be
able to collect on the debt.

Jalon
was too fine an artist to displease any audience, and probably too great a coward
to disappoint this one. By nightfall he had completed his jotunn battle song
about the sack of Durthing. It was all pure fantasy, and a stupendous success.
It listed every member of Blood Wave’s crew by name and credited him with
some gruesome exploit or other. Even Rap could tell that most of these tales
were verses pirated from well-known ballads or epics, but that did not seem to
matter at all. The jotnar cheered and roared and applauded every line.

And
when at last the blood-soaked narrative drew to its close with the youngest and
most junior of the raiders, who turned out to be the oversized Vurjuk, the baby
giant who so much reminded Rap of his boyhood friend Katharkran. For the
finale, Jalon had saved a famous feat of arms attributed to the ancient jotunn
hero Stoneheart. Legend told how Stoneheart had pursued three mighty foes up a
great tree and there hacked them to pieces, so that when he departed the
branches were all decorated with severed limbs and organs and the grass around
was drenched with blood. In Jalon’s version there were six enemies, not
three, and all were dismembered single-handedly in midair by young Vurjuk and
his ax. The sailors screamed with joy, rolling around in their mirth, while the
juvenile champion turned an excited fiery red and cheered with the rest of
them, quite willing to pretend that every word of this had really happened.

The
sky was dark, but the wind held, and Blood Wave sailed on. Long into the night
Jalon had to keep repeating his masterpiece, over and over, until it seemed as
if all the raiders had come to accept that things had actually happened exactly
as he said. In the end they were congratulating one another, and especially
complimenting the boy champion who had slaughtered six men single-handed, in a
tree.

In
some ways they were like children, Rap decided, oddly incomplete. It was not
bloodlines that made them monsters, for he knew many decent, likable
jotnar-like many of his former shipmates on Stormdancer, or like Kratharkran,
who’d apprenticed to his uncle the farrier. Nor was it climate, for
Krasnegar was every bit as cold and bleak as Nordland itself. It could only be
custom. In other circumstances Vurjuk might have made a very fine blacksmith,
and were Kratharkran here and a proud member of Kalkor’s crew, then
likely he also would be striving to be a man as they were men, to be like his
hero Kalkor. But now, however ruthless he might have been before, Vurjuk had
been given a reputation to live up to. He would be worse than ever, if that was
possible.

Meanwhile,
Blood Wave sailed on, into the unknown.

Her
recent long ordeal on camels, Inos decided, had given her a very sentimental
view of horses. Camels’ gait was a sickening sway, and her joints grew
stiff with the unnatural posture. Camels were stupid and bad-tempered and
smelly.

But
after three days on a mule she discovered she was looking back on both camels
and horses with nostalgia. Mules bounced. They raised blisters in unmentionable
places. They were stupid and bad-tempered and smelly. The absurd Zarkian robe
she wore had never been designed for riding, while her primitive saddle had
been stuffed with flints.

After
three nights on the bare ground at ever-greater altitudes, she remembered the
tents in the desert with much greater affection than she had expected, but a
lady never complained, as her aunt had taught her, and if poor old Kade was
managing to look on the bright side-and she stubbornly was-then her much
younger niece must strive to do much better. Azak expected courage in royalty.
So Inos smiled and smiled, and cracked jokes, and once in a while actually
deceived herself, as well. This was, after all, a great adventure. All the rest
of her life she would be able to silence a whole dinner table with the simple
words, “When I was in Thume . . .”

The
escape seemed to be working. Elkarath had not appeared in their path with a
roar of thunder. The brigands of Tall Cranes had not come in pursuit, seeking
vengeance. Perhaps they believed their own stories of uncanny horrors preying
upon travelers rash enough to venture into Thume, but those horrors had not
materialized, either.

The
scenery was remarkable, she told herself firmly through chattering teeth.

The
gloom-filled forest was redolent with arboreal mystery. Or something. Big
trees, anyway. Creepy, haunted.

The
ruins had been spectacular-vast tumbled towers and walls of unthinkable
antiquity, hidden in forest, beetling over chasms, half buried in silt in the
tree-choked valleys. What cities had these been? Who were their brave warriors
and fair queens? How long since children had laughed in the deserted courts or
horses had plied the empty streets? Now only the wind moved, in blank doorways
and crazy staring windows, whispering forgotten names in tongues unknown.