Wild Magic (48 page)

But their luck was not to hold.

The wind failed them, first. For days on end it dropped away to nothing, leaving the seas flat and leaden. A thick layer of pale cloud blanketed the sky from horizon to horizon and gave no hint it would ever clear, making navigation by night impossible, for there was not a star to be seen. By day it was not much better, for the sun hid itself from them, indicating its position only by a brief flaring amid the cloud-cover. The hours of light became shorter and shorter, the sun dawning slowly in the south and then disappearing in the same spot, like a whale rolling over in its sleep.

For the next two days a penetrating rain fell without cease, soaking everyone and everything on board. Aran stamped around the ship in a foul temper, hating the waste of time, the lack of progress, feeling the weight of the advantage gained with every lost minute by those other ships which he knew in the very marrow of his bones had set sail for Sanctuary before them.

As a result, he drove the crew hard. They unshipped the oars and rowed till the sun went down, then into the long, long night, with no stop for a cooked meal. When men started to complain at the lack of the good hot food they had become accustomed to, Aran glared so grimly that they quieted and made do with the hard bread and cold sausage Mag Snaketongue passed around, washed down with a mug apiece of smallbeer.

Fent’s muscles – unused to such unforgiving punishment – felt as though they were on fire. From time to time he surreptitiously allowed the blade of his oar to skim uselessly through the soft top of a wave to give his arms some surcease; until Tor Bolson, manning the oar in front of him began to laugh at what he perceived as his ineptitude. Then he redoubled his efforts and swore rhythmically and foully to himself for another hour.

By the fifth day, men were complaining of painful blisters on their hands from the constant friction of brine-soaked skin on brine-soaked wood, but Aran would allow no one rest, and even took an oar himself, driving the pace even harder, until his hands were as badly afflicted as his crew’s. Blisters bred more blisters, then spread, deepened, got infected, became agonising. Even when they wrapped their hands in strips of cloth dipped in the vile-smelling ointment Hesta Rolfsen had boiled up and bottled for them in a great earthenware pot stoppered with a plug of oily rope, matters failed to improve. By the time seawater boils started to break out on the crew’s buttocks, their misery was complete, and when at last Aran relented and allowed the men to row in shifts and sleep between bouts at the oar, those who moved around the ship did so crabbed over like old men, their hands curled in on themselves like dead things.

Still they rowed.

Three hours after sun-up, Urse One-Ear said to his neighbour: ‘Cats’ paws.’

His oar-partner was a green lad from Fishey with big muscles but no sense of coordination; and despite his claim of great adventures with his cousins out on the high seas in pursuit of belukah whales and once even a narwhal, he looked as if he’d be far happier with oxen and plough.

‘What?’

‘See: out there.’ Urse nodded at the tract of sea they had traversed that day.

Far out beyond the clean white froth of their wake, tiny curls of water were making rough spots on the surface of the dark ocean.

‘That’s how waves are born, that is.’

The lad – Emer Bretison – laughed. ‘Those little things? More like kittens’ paws, I’d say.’

‘Those little things will catch the wind and grow. They may be no larger than kittens’ paws now, but by nightfall we’ll be surrounded by lions.’

Emer had no idea what a lion was, but didn’t want to show his ignorance. ‘The
Long Serpent
will eat them up and spit them out,’ he declared.

Urse cast an eye at the darkening horizon and said nothing.

Sure enough, a faint breeze sprang up shortly afterwards – fresh enough to freeze their faces, but not strong enough to warrant raising the sail. It proved fitful in nature, blowing first from the south-west, which, if it strengthened, would suit their course well; then from due west, which would not. Away to the south, tall clouds began to pile themselves up into towers of soft grey which then took on the colours of a bruise, all blue-black and savage purple.

The moon – in its last quarter and providing precious little illumination at the best of times – rose and buried itself behind the banks of cloud, offering only the merest glimmer of light as the wind came out of the south and the clouds began to race across the sky towards the
Long Serpent
.

Wind: at last.

‘Ship oars!’ Aran Aranson yelled impatiently. Then: ‘Yard up!’

The crew obeyed these orders gladly, with the shortsighted relief of men who were fed up with rowing. But Urse One-Ear and Flint Hakason exchanged a glance. They knew the signs of a major storm coming at them, even if others appeared neither to see, nor care. Urse coughed once, and when Aran failed to take any notice of this discreet gesture, coughed again, loudly and horribly. Aran stared at him suspiciously. Urse shook his head. Aran frowned. Urse looked pointedly out to the steerboard side, where the far seas were beginning to stand up tall and advance like some great army. Aran followed his gaze, then turned deliberately and rudely away from Tam’s lieutenant and called out: ‘Reef the sail to the third point!’

Urse raised his eyebrows, then shrugged and strode over to the yard.

‘He’s a madman,’ he said under his breath to Haki Ulfson as they hauled on the lines. ‘If this blow’s as big as it looks, we’ll lose the sail. And if we lose the sail, we’re all doomed.’

‘Aran Aranson’s a good enough sailor,’ Haki replied nonchalantly. ‘Storm reef should hold her. I’ve seen worse: most likely, we’ll outrun the blow – she’s a fine ship.’

‘Fine enough,’ Urse conceded. ‘But she’s untested.’

‘Well, now’s Aran’s time to prove her worth.’

‘Even at risk to our lives?’

‘Where’s your sense of adventure, man?’

Urse said nothing, but his expression spoke his mind eloquently.

The first wave hit the ship broadside and rocked the timbers till they creaked in protest. The next one took her to the steerboard and stern, skewing her path. ‘Hold the braces!’ Aran yelled at Gar Felinson, and the lad leapt to do his bidding, grasping the writhing ropes until it looked as though he were trying by main force to hold back a runaway stallion.

Those men charged with manning the lines, the steerboard and the beitass took up their appointed positions. Fent, no accomplished sailor, and therefore not assigned any specific task other than bailing, found himself suddenly unemployed. He looked around, deciding where best to put himself. Another wave hit, harder than the last: spray shot over the gunwale and soaked him quite abruptly from head to foot. Cursing furiously, he made a dash for the stern and dived under one of the skiffs. Here, at least, he’d have some cover if there was a storm coming. He’d seen enough storms even from the safety of the land to know he didn’t want to be in the path of one at sea. He’d seen storms wrack the shores of Rockfall with horrible regularity in bad winters, rip the turf off houses, down trees, wreck boats anchored even in the most sheltered coves, drive whales and seals up onto beaches far past the usual tideline. Besides, he felt he’d done his duty and more these past days. What was the point of being the captain’s only son, if he could not cut himself a little slack? Every fibre of his body ached and burned, his hands felt as if they would never be the same again and his stomach, with the movements caused by this newly active sea, was beginning to feel distinctly queasy.

In addition, under the ship’s boat he was out of Urse One-Ear’s sight, and therefore, with luck, his mind.

Aran, in contrast, relished a blow. He watched his crew move smartly about the deck, each man focused on his task, and he felt he could indulge himself. With the surefootedness of a mountain goat, he ran the length of the vessel and took up position at the elegantly curved prow, his right hand gripping the gunwale for support, his face turned to the dark northern horizon, the wind strong at his back. Beneath the soles of his boots, he could feel the way the oak accommodated the powerful currents, could sense the keel flexing as lithely as the spine of a leaping cat. The
Long Serpent
! She was his: she was elemental and unconquerable and
he
had had her brought to life out of nothing – out of despair and disaster. And for this: this was what he had been waiting for all his life – this feeling of triumph. He was the master of a superb ship, master of the seas; master of his destiny.

Distant thunder rumbled and a few seconds later a fork of white lightning split the sky.

Now the wind came at them in ferocious gusts. One of these coincided with a broadside wave which took the ship beam to and heeled her over so that water gushed over the side and washed like a river down the deck. Men ran hither and thither, bailing like fury. Like the finely crafted vessel she was, the
Long Serpent
righted herself, directly into the path of the wind, slicing through the tops of the waves and skipping forward like a skittish colt.

Aran Aranson’s free hand strayed to the pouch which hung inside his leather tunic, his fingers closing over the shape of the rolled parchment within, and his wolfish face transformed itself from grim concentration to the sheerest exultation.

Thunder sounded again; and almost simultaneously lightning lacerated the clouds, illuminating a nightmarish scene, for the swells were deepening dramatically, rolling closer together; the pitch of the waves growing ever steeper. With a great booming crack, the sail filled with wind so violently that the grease which weatherproofed the wool shot out of the leeward side, peppering the men who stood in range with painful pellets of solidified fat. The lines whipped out of the men’s hands and went snaking lethally about the deck. One lashed itself across Haki Ulfson’s face, causing him to cry out and stumble. The next minute, he was gone.

‘Man overboard!’

The shout brought Aran out of his reverie. Dropping his hand away from the map, he turned to find Urse One-Ear and a blond man whose name he could not recall fishing precariously over the stern with an oar, with other crewmembers holding tight to their waists and legs. For a second through the gloom he saw a white hand reaching out of the dark waves, then the lost man disappeared entirely, only to emerge again in a pool of moonlight twenty feet away in their lee, out of range and retreating fast as the wind carried them forward, his eyes and mouth wide with horror. There was nothing they could do. Engulfed by a huge roller with a heart as black as the night itself, Haki Ulfson was swallowed by the sea.

There was a short lull in which the men stared unbelievingly at the disturbed patch of water where they had last seen their companion; then the storm hit with a vengeance.

‘Tie everything down!’ Aran yelled, leaping back down the ship. ‘Tie yourselves in!’

The crew needed no encouragement. They tied down the provisions as best and as quickly as they could, and then made themselves fast to oarholes and braces, to the mast and the massive mastfish. The experienced men used knots they could easily undo in the event of the ship rolling; the inexperienced ones tied themselves in with every single knot they could remember. Aran and Urse One-Ear found themselves both at the steerboard. The big man took a step back. A wave hit hard alongside, drenching them both. Aran shook his head. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘You take her.’ Urse was stronger: if the
Long Serpent
had to be wrestled onto the best course, he stood the better chance against the power of the waves.

Instead, Aran lashed himself to the stern, between the two skiffs.

Turning, he found himself confronted by a huge wave. It seemed, he thought inconsequentially in the seconds before it rolled down at him, nearly as tall as the great oaks from the Barrow Plantation from which the
Long Serpent
had been constructed. Which made it as tall as the ship was long. He remembered how he had stood awestruck in the shade of those giants seven summers ago when he had travelled with Margan to survey one of the wonders of Elda. It was a sacred site; now he wondered whether the destruction of that grove might not have angered – if not the god himself – at least the guardian spirits of the place.

That first wave came in under the stern and carried them far up into the air, so that the Master found himself falling backwards, held only by his makeshift harness, gazing past the vertiginous line of sail and mast into the unrelieved night sky. For a moment the vessel seemed to gain a precarious equilibrium, balancing on the crest of the wave. Then, she pitched down so hard that Aran was now staring along the length of the ship into a deep, dark pit of ocean which seemed as eager to swallow them as it had Haki Ulfson such a short time before. They came down with a great crash which made his head ring and jolted his back painfully into the timbers so that his breath shot out of him, but the
Long Serpent
held her own.

Other waves followed the first, now coming hard against one another and Aran regarded them with his first real taste of fear: if the ship were caught between two of those, he knew she would be snapped in half like a twig. If one were to break directly upon her and her timbers withstood the impact she would still be dragged down, rolled and held beneath the surface by the power of its undertow.

He had never seen such waves, never felt such vicious wind. The force of it was so strong that his hair stood on end, his feet kept lifting off the deck. It smashed the ice it had found floating on the surface of the waves into him like slingshot. He tried to shout an order to his men and heard his own voice stolen away from him like a moth sucked into the night. Powerless to do anything but provide silent witness, he watched casks, oars and tools caught up into the air, saw them spin around one another as if in a maelstrom and vanish into the darkness. Waves came and went. The ship pitched and rolled. Timbers creaked and screamed. Water cascaded down the deck. He watched Urse fighting the steerboard; saw how, even though wracked by the dizzying power of the elements, the big man yet managed to hold the ship into the waves, his head haloed by spinning yellow foam.