mind, so I just started shouting, as one is wont to do in such situations. “Look, I was trying to help you out, right? You might show a little gratitude, for God’s sake!”
“Gratitude?” she sneered. “For what? For starting, and almost losing, an unnecessary fight? Let me fight my own battles, Will.”
“Right, I will,” I spluttered, “And next time-”
I was interrupted by Orgos calling me from the foot of the mainmast. Lisha was with him and they looked thoroughly disenchanted.
“Oh bugger,” I muttered, and went over to them, staring at the decking all the way. When I stood before them I could barely look them in the face.
“Sorry,” I said in a small voice. “I just. ”
“I know,” said Orgos. His tone was soft but not without reprimand. “Renthrette can look after herself, Will. And did you forget everything we have learned together? You looked drunker than him.”
“It’s different when you’re fighting someone with a real sword who wants to hurt you,” I replied bitterly.
“In a real fight you have to be even more composed than when you fence, because the hits are more crucial.”
“Don’t lecture me, all right?” I said. “I’m not a child.”
“Will,” said Lisha quietly.
“What?”
“There won’t always be someone on hand to pull you out of trouble when you get in over your head. If only for that reason, be more cautious.”
They left me to myself, and I stared over the side at the water for a while, feeling the slight sting of the salt spray on my arms and face.
SCENE XVI Consequences
You’ve got guts, Will, I’ll give you that,” said Garnet obliquely as we sat down to a supper of dry biscuits and steamed mussels. He gave me a half-smile of encouragement, and then moved to where the smell of the food didn’t remind him of how awful he felt. Renthrette behaved as if the matter simply hadn’t happened, which was actually a pleasant surprise. She even passed me the salt as we ate. As if we didn’t have enough salt.
I saw the captain lurching around the galley in the evening and sort of smiled at him. He muttered something spiteful and gestured with his fist. I was not the
That night it transpired that there were two meetings. The party meeting consisted of Lisha reminding us that we should “keep our heads” (directed at me) and that when we docked tomorrow we should conduct ourselves with caution and dignity (also directed at me). Mithos sat out of the lamplight, almost lost in shadow. Once he nodded solemnly, but he said nothing. Garnet ground the bit of his ax, tracing small perfect circles with a flat stone. Renthrette was rebinding her sword hilt in the same tortuous manner. Her eyes would flash from Lisha back to the weapon in her hand as she wound the thin leather thong round and round the handle, spiraling slowly and immaculately up to the pommel.
The second meeting was held in the captain’s quarters, but we didn’t learn of that one until the morning.
Southern Shale was in sight shortly after dawn. Though it was a lengthy stretch of coastline, there was only one convenient harbor close by, and we steered towards it under the same prevailing wind that had made our trip so swift and easy. Trouble, however, has many guises. In this case, it had a scarlet jacket and a black beard full of muffled curses.
“The captain is up to something,” said Lisha as we finished breakfast. “He looks furtive.”
“He always looks furtive,” I said.
“But he also looks pleased with himself, and I fear he is planning to revenge himself on us for yesterday’s incident.”
I tried not to look guilty, but Renthrette met my eyes mercilessly. Then Garnet looked up and whispered, “Did you feel that? We’re changing course. He’s steering us out to sea.”
He was right. A long, anxious pause followed.
“I wouldn’t put it past the captain to just take us where the sharks can get us,” said Mithos darkly, “and toss us overboard. Or find somewhere he could sell us.”
“We’ll give him a fight,” added Orgos, feeling the edge of his shaving dagger.
“Could we not just grab the lifeboat and go?” Garnet suggested.
“We’re too far from shore,” Mithos sighed. “He could bring the ship about and plow us under.”
“Then we must take the wheel,” said Orgos, “and steer it in ourselves.”
“There are twenty-five crewmen,” said Garnet, “we couldn’t hold them all off.”
“Not if they were organized, we couldn’t,” agreed Lisha, “but we might be able to if we could somehow keep them in pockets of five or six.”
She fell silently thoughtful for a moment, and then carefully, pausing between sentences, laid out a course of action.
I had crawled my way to the lifeboat unseen. The crew were still wandering around, but while they had been listless before, they were now cautious and alert. On the deck where I had “fought” the captain, two burly men, bronzed by the sun, stood with shouldered pikes, looking about them. In the stern of the ship, rising like a pulpit above the racks of bound cargo, was the castle, and in it, the helmsman. Two floors below the castle were the captain’s quarters. He now shared them with five armed men, two covering the steps down to the door from the deck. I loaded my crossbow and kept as still as I could, the heat prickling on my salt-dried arms and sunburnt neck.
Lisha emerged from our cabins and fell heavily on the wet stairs. The crew watched, unimpressed. Garnet helped her to her feet, and then she ducked back inside the cabin and emerged with her spear. With this she supported herself conspicuously and hobbled out onto deck, Garnet at her side. He was wearing a dark green cloak over his tunic, and I knew what it concealed. Slowly they edged around the ship until they neared the castle.
The crew were armed with clubs, boathooks, and whatever else they could lay their hands on, but their demeanor suggested that they thought we hadn’t spotted the change in course.
So much the better.
I caught a glimpse of Orgos shinning up the castle ladder only because I was watching for him. He emerged, black against the sky, his swords spinning in his hands. He dodged an advancing guard, who fell heavily onto the massive bundles of timber below, and parried the cutlass of another, turning him promptly out of the wooden turret and down onto the deck.
A cry went up immediately and the crewmen started to move at random, shielding their eyes from the sun as they looked up to where Orgos was bringing the vessel groaning back towards the coast. Lisha twirled the spear in her hands and threw off the false injury like a cloak. In a second, she stood at the foot of the castle ladder with Garnet at her side, his ax drawn and ready. As they braced themselves for the inevitable assault, Orgos started down the ladder towards them.
Through the portholes of his cabin I could see the captain shouting as he felt the
Orgos took a position between Lisha and Garnet, his swords whirling about his wrists. The crew hesitated and then began to close in on them. I thought I noticed the deep green of Garnet’s eyes as he flashed a look of concern from Lisha to the growing semicircle of armed men that edged closer to them, but Lisha, spreading her feet apart a little, just raised her dark spear purposefully and nodded to Orgos. As Lisha and Garnet lowered their eyes, he raised his sword, the one in his right hand, the one with the amber stone in the pommel, and there was a flash of light.
Actually, it was more than a flash. It was as if something had been dropped into a still pool, the ripples coursing out from the pommel of Orgos’s sword, yellow-orange, like tongues of flame. They radiated out in a single
