Arqualis”-she glanced bitterly at Pazel-“and their pets.”
Pazel could not believe his ears. “How can you say that, Neda? How can you think that?”
“Wait!” cried Thasha suddenly. “The big man’s moving. Ah, look: he’s reaching for the shell. Maybe he’ll give it a try himself.”
With his naked eye Pazel could just make out the orange shell, as the mighty leader took it from his aide. But rather than shout into the device he tossed it contemptuously to the ground.
Humans and dlomu grew deathly still. Pazel heard the creak of timbers, the piping of shorebirds about the rocky islets, the bumping of a wheelblock against the foremast. And then came a sudden, desperate banging at the window, and Captain Rose’s furious, gale-surmounting roar:
“Run! Run her south! Ware the ship and blary run!”
As that very instant the dlomic warriors gave a terrible cry and began sprinting out along the jetty in their hundreds.
“Ware the ship!” howled Fiffengurt. “Bindhammer, Fegin, aloft your yardmen! Bend them topsails now!”
“Gods of death,” said Haddismal, pointing.
The first dlomu were nearing the end of the jetty, some two miles from the Chathrand. But they did not stop: they dived with the grace of dolphins into the sea. One after another they dived, in a long coordinated maneuver. Dozens, then hundreds: the battalion was taking to the waves.
“Madness!” said Fulbreech. “Swimmers can’t catch a ship! And even if they could, what then? We’re sixty feet above the waterline!”
Pazel looked at Thasha: her eyes were wild, darting. All about them swarmed the men of the First Watch, freeing braces, racing up the shrouds, bellowing from the jungle of ropes overhead: “Let fall! Sheet home! Man the weather halyards!” Already the fore topsail was billowing out the spars. The main topsail followed, and the two vast, cream-colored rectangles filled and pulled. A tightening energy filled the ship, and slowly her bow swung away from the island.
The dlomu had become a haze of black dots, appearing and disappearing in the waves. Some of the sailors regarded the spectacle with astonished grins; it was as if a herd of cattle had decided to burrow into the earth. But Pazel did not grin. He thought of how Bolutu and Ibjen had brought the wounded Turach so easily ashore. He snatched the telescope from Fulbreech. The warriors’ strokes were amazingly fast, and their legs frothed the water behind them. He turned to Ibjen, shouted over the din: “Will they catch us?”
“How in Hell’s Mouth should I know?” Ibjen shot back.
“Could you catch us?”
His senses told him the question was ludicrous: the dlomu were swimming; the ship was setting sail. Ibjen hesitated, looking across the water at the black, swimming shapes. “No,” he said finally, and dropped his eyes.
It should have set Pazel’s mind at ease, but it had the opposite effect. Ibjen’s reply had been laced with shame.
Rose went on bellowing through the window: “Let go the topgallant clews! More sheetmen to windward! Brace that foremast or lose it, you creeping slugs!”
Pazel looked up at the windsock fluttering on the jiggermast yard: enough of a breeze for headway, but not for speed. Doesn’t matter, he told himself. For how fast could they possibly swim? Three knots, four? Fulbreech was right: it was madness. But the dlomu came on, swift and arrow-straight, and the Chathrand was still turning about.
“Lapwing!” howled Rose suddenly. “Cut loose those Rinforsaken drogues! Her bow’s fighting the turn, can’t you feel it?”
He was right, Pazel knew at once: the canvas drogues were pulling against the turn like stubborn mules. Pazel shook his head. “Rose guessed the whole tactical situation from in there,” he said to Ensyl, “and he couldn’t even see what was happening ashore.”
“He saw us seeing it,” Ensyl replied.
A decisive chop from the forecastle: Lapwing was taking an axe to the drogue cable. On the third blow the cable parted, and the Chathrand leaned into the turn, gaining speed. Now her bowsprit pointed at the red tower (its lock had been broken, its doors flung apart), now at the empty dunes, now at the corner of the village wall.
Fiffengurt twisted aft. A glance and a nod, and the teams at the mainmast began hauling with a will. A sudden thought brought his telescope snapping up: yes, the aft drogue was clear as well. Then up went his gaze, and both arms, and, “Topgallants, bow to stern!” he thundered, and one after another the higher sails were loosed. They filled faster than the canvas below: more wind at that height. They were turning with a will, now, the ship canting leeward in her eagerness to come about. Fiffengurt put both hands on the rail and heaved a sigh.
“Now we’ll be just fine, boys,” he said to no one in particular.
He slid down the forecastle ladder like a younger man and turned to face the captain. Rose’s bellows had given way to coughs (the smoky forecastle house was affecting all the prisoners) but he gave Fiffengurt a nod of affirmation. Fiffengurt touched his cap, turned smartly about (chest out, chin high) and then the lookout screamed from the fighting top:
“Sand! Sandbar at half a mile, three points off the starboard bow! No depth! No depth! Sandbar right across our way!”
They had not started their run, and no speed endangered them. But the ridge of submerged sand was disastrously placed. It began at the eastern edge of the island and meandered shoreward for nearly a mile. Fiffengurt howled a course correction. Hundreds of men at the ropes scurried and swore. They could only tack north, right at the village gate, until the sandbar ended.
No one smiled now. The swimmers had gained a tremendous advantage: indeed the Chathrand’s new course was actually bringing it closer to them. Worse still, they could not attain anything like the speed of a straight downwind run. All at once the race looked very tight.
Pazel and Thasha climbed the jiggermast shrouds, just high enough to see the sandbar. “But it’s huge,” cried Pazel. “How did we miss it before?” For they had rounded the little island from the east, right through these waters. “It must be a lot deeper than it looks, some trick of the light. We sailed right over it.”
“Yes,” Thasha agreed. But even as she spoke he saw her reconsider. “Pazel, maybe it wasn’t there.”
“Don’t be daft.”
“Look where it begins.” Thasha pointed to the island’s eastern tip, a confusion of jagged rocks. “The serpent. That’s where it was smashing about, trying to break free of its bridle. What if it dragged the thing along the seafloor, too?”
“And plowed up all that?”
“You think your explanation’s more likely?”
Pazel shrugged. “No,” he admitted. Then he actually laughed. “Thasha, this mucking world wants us dead.”
She didn’t laugh, but she smiled at him with black mirth, and that was almost better. It was a look of private understanding. Not one she could share with Greysan Fulbreech.
Warmed, Pazel turned his gaze on the swimmers again: less than a mile off, and closing. They moved as a single body, like a school of dark fish. He shaded his eyes, and felt his dread surge to life again, redoubled.
“Rin’s eyes, Thasha-they’re swimming with objects on their backs.”
“Weapons,” said a voice beneath them. “Light and curious weapons, but weapons nonetheless. And why, pray, are you without your own?”
It was Hercol, dressed for battle, which in this case meant that he wore little more than breeches, boots and a small steel arm-guard. His longbow was in his hand; his ancient, enchanted sword Ildraquin was strapped sidelong across his back; and on his belt hung the white knife of his old master, Sandor Ott. Pazel had last seen that knife in Thasha’s hands, during the battle with the rats. He wished now that she had thrown the cruel thing away. Wearing it, even Hercol looked sinister.
“Fetch your swords,” said the Tholjassan.
Pazel sought his eye. “This is some sort of crazy bluff, isn’t it? They were trying to drive us onto the sandbar, maybe, or-”
“Fetch them.”
Thasha swung down to the deck. “Stay with Fiffengurt, Pazel, he needs you. I’ll bring yours from the stateroom.”
