Scarlet and the White Wolf [02] - Mariner's Luck (9 page)

Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

time, until there were not enough mariners to beat the enemy crew back, or until the winds failed the Ostre Sul and she became a sitting target.

Scarlet's eyes fastened on the billowing sails of the schooner, and he suddenly wished he had Scaja's talent of farcasting his Gift. Scaja had spent many nights teaching his son how to cast the withy on something outside of the house that neither of them could see, a piece of wood in the lane, or a fish deep in the pond. Scarlet had always been able to use his Gift on objects or creatures within arm's reach, but to cast across distance required special skill. A fire on the schooner would solve many things, and if the wind was in their favor, might even do the job for them.

Scarlet knew it was useless, and the schooner was pulling further away with every second. Yet, even as he thought of setting a withy to the enemy sails, he felt a tingling in his skin, like a ripple through his veins, and a flush of heat flooding his face.
I can do it,
he thought.

He had never tried with anything this far away before, but that fact seemed irrelevant. He stared at the sails, his eyes very wide, and thought:
fire
.

A curl of smoke huffed from the edge of a white sail.

Scarlet trembled, for he now felt like he was holding a wild beast by the neck. Flames licked the sail and sent testing fingers to the wood of the schooner's mast. Power surged through Scarlet's body, stirring his blood, hammering his heart, and he recoiled in horror as he felt a man's clothing catch fire on the schooner.

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Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

A shout went up among the Rshani as one of the schooner's mainsails was engulfed in flames, and Scarlet jumped, startled, as Qixa bellowed at his men, giving an order Scarlet could not translate. The ten Rshani archers in reserve on the quarterdeck opened fire, felling the enemy fighters who had dropped their weapons and were attempting to put out the fire on their decks.

Qixa gave another order, and the archers launched two volleys of oil-soaked arrows. Twenty trails of flame went up.

Scarlet knew almost nothing of seafaring, yet he instinctively understood that all mariners must have a terror of fire at sea. One look at the blood-soaked deck of the brigantine told him that the Rshani crew could not withstand another assault. There was no other way.

A sail rigging caught fire on the schooner and then another at the aft, and then a great many of the schooner crew began to ignore the battle to fight the more pressing war on their own deck. The wind chose to shift at that moment, fanning the flames and dragging the brigantine safely away. Scarlet lost sight of the schooner in the fog.

No doubt they fought it bravely, but not much later, when the screams floated ghostlike over the misty swells, Scarlet knew the schooner crew had lost their battle with fire. In the new quiet, he grabbed the rail in both hands and leaned over, breathing in great gulps of cold air and trying not to vomit.

His mind was like a fly caught in a web, tearing and flailing at itself to escape. What's happening? he thought in dismay.

How did I do that? Not even Scaja could have sent a withy like that, and I sent not one, but many, and much stronger 74

Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

than anything I've ever seen Scaja do! What's happening to me?

Behind him, Qixa moved among the crew and ship, surveying the damage. The masts were whole and only one sail was damaged, but all the ship's rails was seriously marred and weakened, as well as the deck on the port side.

They would have to drop men over the side on ropes to inspect the hull and determine whether the impact from the schooner bellying up to them had pushed in the wooden hull below the waterline. As for the dead, Scarlet counted eighteen Rshani, among them Mautan the mate, who would never smile again. He did not see Liall anywhere, and fear clutched his heart.

The mariners were dumping the pirate dead overboard when Scarlet finally spotted Liall on the main deck, near the stern. Liall had a sword sheathed at his waist and he held a bloodied hand to his shoulder. He was shouting hoarsely.

"Scarlet!"

"Here!" Scarlet called. He watched, dazed, as Liall came toward him in a rush. Liall seized his shoulders.

"I told you to stay below!" Liall shouted, and then jerked Scarlet this way and that to see if he was whole. "Are you hurt?" he demanded.

Dark blood was spattered at Liall's shoulder and painted down the front of his coat. "No, but you are."

Liall was breathing heavily. "It is nothing."

Scarlet yanked Liall's coat open and flinched when he saw how much blood was soaked into the gray wool of Liall's shirt.

"You said there was a curae on board?"

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Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

Liall waved that aside, seeming unconcerned. Blood began dripping in a steady trickle from the end of Liall's shirt, spattering the crimson-washed deck. "I am not the only man wounded on this ship, and there is still work to be done."

"And you'll be no help to anyone if you faint."

Liall scanned Scarlet's body up and down. "Is any of that blood your own?"

Scarlet looked down at his clothes and felt briefly giddy, seeing all the gore. He looked worse than Liall did. "No." His stomach turned over and he was mortally glad he had not eaten for hours. "Never mind me. I have to look at that wound."

"The bleeding has stopped, mostly," Liall said as a last protest.

Scarlet thought Liall looked pale, considering his usual color, and without asking he shoved his shoulder under Liall's arm and steered the man toward their cabin.

Captain Qixa stopped them on the way and spoke to Liall.

Liall locked eyes with the captain and gave him a look of deep regret. "This is my fault," Liall said in Bizye. "You know what they were really after."

Qixa shook his head, his face proud but haggard with loss.

"No one makes me do anything, ap kyning. I knew the risk."

Liall bowed his head, equal to equal, and Qixa returned it with the aplomb of a king before barking an order to the crew in Sinha. The mariners began to throw the corpses overboard.

All, that is, save the Rshani. Mautan they bore gently away on their shoulders, singing a song of death.

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Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

Liall allowed Scarlet to guide him into the cabin, and sat slumped on the bunk as Scarlet hurried to find the small pack of medicines he always carried on the road. Scarlet left to dip a basin of fresh water from the barrel on the main deck and returned to find Liall flopped onto his back.

Frightened, Scarlet leaned over Liall and roughly shook his uninjured shoulder.

Liall opened his eyes blearily. "What?"

"I thought you'd passed out."

"I did." Liall sat up painfully. "This is how I heal."

That explained much, including how easily Liall slipped into sleep at the inn at Volkovoi and how quickly his bruises had vanished afterwards. Scarlet managed to get Liall out of his coat and the shirt off him. The wool shirt was ruined, cut in several places and soaked through with blood. He laid it aside and bit his lip when he saw the wide gash at Liall's shoulder.

"This will need stitching," he said.

Liall assessed Scarlet quietly with that measuring gaze of his, his pale eyes revealing nothing. He nodded. "Help me get my boots off. I am covered in blood."

Scarlet helped Liall to undress before turning to the small brazier. Water would have to be heated, and there were bandages to make. He wished suddenly that Hipola the midwife was here, or even Scaja, who had known much more about healing than he did. He could find no suitable cloth to bind the wound with, but he tore one of his older shirts and boiled it in the water. They would do for cleaning the wound, anyway. With the sterilized cleaning cloths laid aside, he dumped the hot water and refilled the iron pot with clean 77

Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

water to heat, boiling it for several minutes to kill off any lingering poisons.

Scarlet took a deep breath and set to work on Liall's shoulder. Liall shuddered a few times as Scarlet cleaned the wound thoroughly, but otherwise held perfectly still and made no protest, even when Scarlet's fingers dug inside his torn flesh to check for bits of metal or wood lodged in the wound.

The cut had bled profusely. A smaller man, a Hilurin or Aralyrin, would have been dead already from it. Liall began to shiver as Scarlet wiped the last of the blood away and heaped blankets over him and around him, leaving only the wound bare.

"I'll get the thread," Scarlet said.

"Do you know how to do this?"

Scarlet took a deep breath. "Yes. Scaja showed me. I've done it for horses, but never a man."

"Flesh is flesh. You will do fine."

Scarlet smiled wanly over his shoulder. "I should be the one comforting you, not the other way 'round."

There was a knock at the hatch and Liall snapped to alertness. Scarlet answered it and found a straight-faced mariner with a bundle in his hands. The bundle proved to be clean linen for binding and dressing a wound. Scarlet thanked the man, but the mariner turned on his heel and left, not acknowledging him. It seemed that Byzans were still enemy even after they allied with Rshani in battle.

Scarlet set the bundle near Liall and opened his small packet of medicines to take out the needle and boiled thread.

There was some yellow sulfa powder in there, too, fine as 78

Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

dust and smelling faintly of rotten eggs. This he sprinkled painlessly on Liall's wound before he put the needle through the candle flame. It took him three tries to thread the needle.

He sat beside Liall.

"You'll need to hold very still," he warned.

"Just do it."

Liall held quiet, aside from an occasional tremor as his muscles tightened. Scarlet forced himself not to think of it as living flesh as he concentrated on making the stitches small and neat. The wound was cleanly-made and the cut had slid deep sideways, rather than in. To Scarlet, it appeared that Liall had spun out of reach before the blade could thrust forward, and the edge had slid over the top of his muscle, creating a long, deep gash that bled much, but had failed to strike any vital areas.

Liall was barely awake when Scarlet cut the last stitch and readied the linen packing for the wound. He wound strips of linen under and around Liall's arm, and then made a small, careful knot.

Scarlet nodded with satisfaction. "That should hold."

"Good job," Liall said faintly. "Now ... I will rest for a bit."

But he struggled to open his eyes. "I told you to stay below."

Scarlet shrugged.

"I looked for you," Liall said. "At the end, when the battle turned to our favor, I could not see in the mist and the smoke. I was frightened," he admitted.

"You?" Scarlet scoffed. "Never."

"I realized," Liall said slowly "what an opportune moment it was to be rid of an unwanted passenger." He flinched when 79

Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

he saw the shock in Scarlet's eyes. "One well-placed knife in the midst of battle and no one would think it strange."

"I know the crew doesn't care for me," Scarlet said, shaken. "But why would any of them want me dead?"

"I did not say they did. And I do not truly believe that anyone is planning it, but ... my experience with the nature of men does not allow me to take risks." He reached for Scarlet's hand and his voice turned softer. "I really did not believe you would stay below. You have too much heart to stay hidden while others fight for their lives."

"Don't bet on it," Scarlet returned tartly. "Now that I've seen a battle, I realize I don't care to see another. Ever. If those pirates come back, you might find me hiding in a barrel." Scarlet belatedly remembered Liall throwing the blade into the Morturii's throat. "Thanks for throwing that knife."

Liall produced a sickly grin and Scarlet pulled the last blanket over him. Scarlet burned the cloth he had used to clean Liall's wound in the brazier, and when he finished this task he saw that Liall was fast asleep. Now he could see to his own injuries, if there were any.

His clothing was beginning to stiffen with blood, so he stripped to the skin in the cold cabin, shivering as he washed himself with the last of water. It was then that he discovered that some of the blood on him was his own, after all. He had a few slashes here and there, nothing that cleaning and salve would not take care of. He washed the cuts carefully with water and pressed the yellow powder over the red lines and forgot about them.

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Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

Captain Qixa entered the cabin without knocking just as Scarlet had finished dressing in his only other set of clean clothing. Qixa cast a narrow look at Scarlet as he checked Liall's wound, pursing his lips and nodding in grudging approval.

"Very good," Qixa said in heavily-accented Bizye. "He will sleep now, and wake strong. Watch for fever."

Scarlet nodded. "I'll care for him." It was the first time he had spoken to Qixa since the voyage began.

Qixa stared at Scarlet. "You fought hard, lenilyn child. The odds were very bad, but we won anyway. Perhaps you are not bad luck, after all," Qixa said, and then went out quickly, as if he were afraid Scarlet would take it as a compliment.

Scarlet gave the hatch a sour look and piled their bloodied clothing into a heap. Later, he would see about washing them, but just now the constant, brassy stink was making his head hurt. Liall was snoring softly.