Lord of the Isles (12 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Lord of the Isles
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C
ashel stood at a distance from the other spectators, where the southern end of the hamlet's seawall gave way to grass and the natural crumbling rock of the region. He watched the trireme's crew launch their vessel, and he cried.
All the passengers were aboard. The crew had seated the mast in chocks pinned to the keel, below the deck and even the oarsmen's benches, but they hadn't set the yard as yet. They'd sewn all the canvas in Barca's Hamlet into a sail to replace the one the storm shredded. A trireme could only use the mainsail in fine weather, though, because the rig was awkward to adjust and dangerously capable of capsizing the long, narrow warship if a gust struck from abeam. On blustery days a small triangular sail could be spread from the forepost to aid the rowers.
Garric walked toward Cashel along the top of the seawall. He grinned and waved when he caught Cashel's glance.
Cashel waved back and wiped his eyes with his forearm. He didn't want company; that's why he was standing here! But he couldn't turn Garric away without making even more of a fool of himself than he felt already.
The ship's captain cried “Ready!” in a voice that was almost birdlike by the time the onshore breeze carried it to Cashel. The sailors in the surf, over a hundred of them, braced themselves against the hull and the outrigger that carried the upper two oarbanks.
The drummer seated cross-legged on the trireme's stern began to beat time on a section of hollow log: an ordinary drum's leather heads would soften in the sodden air of the ship's belly. Sailors shouted the cadence as they thrust the
vessel outward, into the waves. The sea foamed about them, knee-high to those farthest forward.
“These past three days have really confused me,” Garric said as they came close enough to hear each other. “It's like it was all happening to somebody else.”
“I wish it was,” Cashel said. His eyes were filling with tears again. He couldn't help it.
Ship's officers stood in the surf behind their men, shouting guidance as the waves rose and ebbed. The tide was a little past full, but there didn't seem to be any difficulty launching the vessel. Already the bow was free and the stern rocked with each measured thrust from the men in the water. The planking of the lower hull was black with the tar that sealed it against the sea.
Side by side with Cashel, Garric turned to watch the ship. Cashel quickly swiped his eyes dry again, though he knew it wouldn't help for long.
Thirty oars toward the bow on either side were manned, though the blades were raised and motionless for the moment. An officer leaned out from the curving forepost, watching for the abnormal swell that might lift the vessel and fling it broadside onto the shore again. Cashel was no sailor, but anyone who lived near the sea knew to respect its unpredictable strength.
The morning sun lighted the vermilion upper hull; the ship was a streak of fire on the water. The eye on the far bow seemed to blink as the spray slapped it. Garric must have noticed the same thing, because he said, “The captain told me that the eye isn't so the ship can see its way, like I'd thought. It's to scare away sea monsters.”
A dozen more oars came out, spaced along the after part of the hull. The trireme was completely afloat. The bow oars began to stroke, holding the vessel steady as the men in the water gripped the oarshafts nearer the stern and lifted themselves back aboard the ship. The drummer beat a changed rhythm.
The nobles and their soldier escort clustered just forward
of the mast where they were least in the way of the deck crew and the oarsmen swarming over the stern rails on both sides. In their midst stood a tall, blond woman shrouded in a winter cloak.
“Goodbye, Sharina!” Garric called. He waved both arms above his head. “Stay well! Stay well!”
He turned to Cashel and said, “I can't get over the fact that Sharina's leaving. This is all happening in another world.”
Cashel began to sob openly. He knelt slowly, the way an ox falls after being stabbed to the heart. His grip on his staff steadied him.
“Cashel?” Garric said. “
Cashel
?”
“Just leave me alone, can't you?” he shouted. Tears choked the words to blubbering. “Oh, Duzi, I love her so much. I love her so much.”
“You love Sharina?” Garric said. Even in his present state Cashel could hear the disbelief in his friend's voice. Then in a different tone Garric added, “Does she know it, Cashel?”
“No, nobody knows it,” Cashel said. He was already feeling better; blurting the truth seemed to have cleansed the poison of hurt from his soul. “Not even my sister knows.”
Though he couldn't really be sure of that. Ilna sometimes read his thoughts before they were even formed in his mind.
He got to his feet, still blind with tears but no longer trembling. He wiped his eyes; this time they stayed clear.
Out of embarrassment Garric didn't look directly toward Cashel. “I'm all right,” Cashel muttered to his friend's sidelong concern. He supposed he really was. There was a just cold empty place where the emotions had washed out of his heart with the tears.
The ship was already well offshore. Its oars rippled in sequence like the legs of a millipede. Only two banks were in use; the storm must have smashed many of the oars, and there was nothing in Barca's Hamlet to replace them.
“I didn't know people felt that way …” Garric said. His mouth worked silently as he tried to decide how to explain
what he meant, then chose to let the thought die.
“Like something out of one of your love poems, isn't it?” Cashel said bitterly. “Maybe that's my trouble—I let you read poems to me. Love doesn't belong here. It doesn't belong with people like me.”
Barca's Hamlet was too small a community for any child to grow up ignorant of what went on between men and women. When a couple fought, everybody heard the words they screamed at one another. Wives clawed other women, men bludgeoned rivals senseless in muddy farmyards.
But neighbors fought over fencelines and missing sheep, too. Hot anger was natural. The queasy hollowness Cashel felt at the thought of Sharina being gone was like leprosy, a wasting foulness that he couldn't wash off.
“Well, she'll be back, you know, Cashel,” Garric said, the lie patent in his brittle cheeriness. “I've been feeling really strange myself lately. I thought it was the seawolf's poison—”
He patted his right calf gently. The wounds had already closed, though the scabs would be some time clearing.
“—but you know, I wonder if it isn't a fever going around that you caught a touch of too?”
“She'll never be back,” Cashel said flatly. He was no longer sad; just empty. “I'm going away too, Garric. I can't stay here. It'd remind me the rest of my life that she was here and now she's gone.”
“Leave?” Garric said. “But where would you go? And look, I don't see any reason to think Sharina won't be back. Things these past few days have just confused us, that's all. They'll get back to normal.”
“I don't know where I'm going or when,” Cashel said heavily. “But I won't be staying here long.”
He forced a smile at his friend. “Right now I'm going back to the sheep. I shouldn't have left them, but I had to watch.”
Garric opened his mouth. “No,” Cashel said sharply. “I don't need company. Not today.”
He started for the nearby pasture, where ewes moved
slowly over the new grass. At the top of the first rise he paused to look over his shoulder again.
The ship was halfway to the horizon. It was impossible to make out individual figures on the deck, but Sharina's cloak was a blob of blue.
“
T
hree points north,” protested the tall young officer beside Sharina. The headband around his blond hair and the border of his linen breechclout were the same bright red, making him a dandy of greater refinement than the common sailors with their earrings and tattoos. “That's all we'd have to steer to set the mainsail and let the oarsmen rest.”
As soon as the vessel got under way, the crew had erected a deckhouse of light lacquered wood just forward of the steering oars, one on either side of the hull, and the captain's seat beneath the overhang of the curving sternpost. The shelter protected Asera and Meder from the sun and windblown spray, but it would have to come down or be blown down in any kind of weather.
Sharina found the deckhouse cramped. On a day like this she preferred the open air anyway, so she'd refused the wizard's invitation to join them.
For all its size, the trireme had remarkably little space for the people aboard it. The Blood Eagles were mostly near the arms chest forward of the mast. There was more space on the outriggers, but the troops were landsmen and clearly uncomfortable about being so close to the foaming sea. The outriggers were planked over, but they didn't have railings.
“We've a full crew, Kizuta,” Captain Lichnau replied. “A slow stroke on one bank isn't going to wear anybody out; in fact it'll keep them in condition. And three points north is
three points closer to Tegma than I want to chance. Now, go check the forewell and see if the caulking on those started seams is holding.”
Sharina stood almost between the two officers; they ignored her, treating the passengers as absolutely none of their business. The status of seamen on Ornifal—at least among officials of the king's court—must be very low.
And what was the status of peasants from Haft?
May the Shepherd wait with me. May the Lady take me by the hand. I'm so alone … .
Nonnus half-stood, half-reclined in the curve of the forepost. He gripped the rail with one foot. His other leg was crossed under the right knee, and his laced fingers supported his head as he looked back along the trireme's deck. He gave a minuscule nod and smile in response to Sharina's glance.
Even in this mild weather the trireme's bow slapped hard as it came off the top of each swell, because of the weight of the bronze ram. Spray flew, bathing the hermit. It glittered on his hairy limbs and soaked his tunic, though the heavy black wool didn't seem to change.
The conditions had no effect on Nonnus. He was out of the way, and he had a view of everything that happened on deck.
Sharina started toward him. The gods might or might not be on her side. About Nonnus there could be no doubt.
The officers' argument ended with Lichnau saying, “All right, set the jib sail but I
don't
trust even that after what we met on the run east.”
Kizuta trotted forward on the starboard outrigger, shouting to members of the deck crew. Nonnus bumped himself upright with a twitch of his hips and walked toward Sharina. Sailors carrying a roll of canvas, the jib sail, danced a graceful pirouette with him as they passed in the opposite direction through the crowd of Blood Eagles.
Along with other baggage, the troops' breastplates and helmets clogged the passageway between the oarbenches below. The rowers' own minimal personal effects were under the
benches or folded as padding. For now the Blood Eagles wore the jerkins and caps of soft leather which cushioned their metal armor. Dry leather can turn a swordcut, but it becomes a soggy mass of no more protective value than cheese if drenched by waves or a rainstorm.
The Blood Eagles had stowed their weapons in the arms chest, since there was no threat from anything except possibly the weather. In the cramped confines of the ship there was a good chance of losing a spear overboard or injuring a friend. Swords and daggers would knock against the ship's rail and fittings, damaging the ornamented scabbards, and the blades' high-carbon steel was almost certain to rust in the salt air.
Soldiers sat on the long chest or stood nearby, because it was the only part of the vessel to which they felt a connection. One of the younger men looked at Nonnus and said, “Say, some knife you've got there, old man. It'll drag you straight to the bottom of the sea if you go over. Want to stick it in here?”
His heel thumped the arms chest behind him.
“I'll have to be careful not to fall overboard,” Nonnus said mildly. He'd placed his javelin in the chest when he came aboard, but Sharina didn't remember the hermit ever being without the big knife except when he was praying.
She pushed quickly to Nonnus' side, then realized she should have held back for a moment. The soldier's eyes hardened to see a pretty young girl on the old man's arm. The other Blood Eagles watched, clearly disinclined to interfere with whatever their comrade had in mind.
“Yeah, an old codger like you could go over the side real easy if he got uppity with his betters,” the soldier said. “I figure that knife's a bit big to shave with, so why don't you put it away right now? Better yet, why don't you toss it over the side?”
The hermit's face had no more expression than a stone. “I'm sorry if I offended you, sir,” he said. His head barely moved, but his eyes flicked in both directions. There were soldiers behind him as well as in front.
“Ningir, what the hell do you think you're doing?” Wainer shouted as he burst through the crowd of his men. His face was flushed with anger. He'd rushed forward from where he'd been kneeling by the deckhouse, speaking to the procurator within.
“Well, I—” the soldier said in surprise.
“Listen, you young fool,” Wainer snarled. “I never saw work a sword could do that a Pewle knife couldn't; and once I saw Pewle knives do what swordsmen would not. Now, get below and don't come back up until you've made a written inventory of all the baggage!”
“I don't have anything to write on,” Ningir protested.
The officer poked him in the chest with an index finger as thick as a broomstick. “Then take off your jerkin and write on that!” he said. “Or stay below till you rot and grow mushrooms, I don't care which. Just get off this deck!”
The shouting pressed Sharina's body away the way a sheep twists from the blades at shearing time. Nonnus was firm as a rooted oak. He didn't hold her, but his side was a supporting buttress.
White-faced, Ningir turned and walked toward the companionway in the stern. The other Blood Eagles had straightened. Those who'd been sitting on the arms chest now stood up. Nobody spoke for a moment.
“
Damned
young fool,” Wainer said, looking almost but not quite at Nonnus as he spoke.
“Thank you, sir,” Nonnus said, his voice oddly husky. “The Lady was with me, that you came when you did.”
Wainer snorted. “The Lady was with Ningir or I miss my bet,” he said. He looked from Nonnus to Sharina, frowning slightly as his eyes shifted back to the hermit. He said, “I was at the Stone Wall.”
Nonnus nodded calmly, but Sharina felt his body go as hard as it had been while facing Ningir. “You're of an age to have been there,” he said.
“So are you,” Wainer said, watching the hermit without blinking.
“I'm of an age to live in a hut in the woods, sir,” Nonnus said, “as far from the world as I could go without leaving it.”
He gave Wainer a crooked grin. “I'll thank the Lady for your intervention, sir,” he said; bowed; and shepherded Sharina ahead of him toward the far bow.
The sailors had rigged the jib sail to the boom; it bellied well out to the port side. The outline of a shark's jaws was stenciled in red on the canvas, some sort of military boast or identification.
“What did he mean about the Stone Wall, Nonnus?” Sharina asked in a tiny voice.
“There are others who will tell you, child,” Nonnus replied. “I will not.”
He stood looking out over the sea. Sharina stood beside him, ignoring the slapping spray. Neither of them spoke again until the sun neared the western horizon and the hermit turned to cry, “Land on the starboard bow!”

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