Miphon told himself that Alish had scant chance of finding a ring to set himself free from the green bottle. But what if he escaped down a drop-shaft? In theory, that was impossible. Morgan Hearst said Elkor Alish was the best climber he knew, but if Alish tried to descend a drop-shaft, then intolerable forces of acceleration would pry him loose from the walls and send him hurtling down into the waiting fire trench. It seemed there was no escape that way – but Miphon had to remind himself that, trapped behind the portcullis, he had spent days without seeing the obvious way to set himself free.
The wizard puzzled the villagers, as did the third visitor. At first sight, he seemed the oldest, yet his face was as puzzled as if he had only just been born: odd things moved him to laughter or to tears. Many thought him simple, a moon-child: yet his talk was always sensible.
The visitors arrived as bad weather was setting in; a fishing smack, with a crew including a man who had fallen in heavy seas and dislocated his shoulder, struggled to haven through a mounting storm. The casualty had been half a day with his injury by the time the boat came to safety; someone skilled in manipulation can put a shoulder into place with ease if it has only just slipped out, but by the time Miphon saw the man, the muscles had long since locked rigid.
Miphon hated to be ruthless, but their need was great; he promised to put the shoulder back if he could have the boat. Even though the crewman was white-faced with shock and agony, he was in two minds about it; in a village such as this, a boat was wealth. Pain forced his choice. There was a hurried consultation with his family, for he did not own the boat, and would need others to guarantee the price to the owner, and share the debt- burden.
The agreement was made; now Miphon had only to remedy the injury. Opium would have been the drug of choice, to dull pain and put the victim into a stupor, but there was none to be had; this Scourside village lacked even a name for the substance. That being so, Miphon had water put on to boil, to produce steam. He saturated a length of cloth with alcohol, then wrapped it round the injured joint and associated muscles. Despite his tenderness, his patient cried out, as well he might in the face of such pain.
With the help of a steady flow of steam, the alcohol slowly penetrated the muscles, dulling the pain sufficiently for Miphon to try and put the joint back. He took the arm and pulled it outwards from the body -steadily and slowly – then bent the arm at the elbow and moved it in an arc, bringing the hand toward the chest.
Miphon knew exactly what he was doing; he had a name for every muscle and every bone, and knew how they worked together. He had done this often enough before: there were few injuries he had not seen and treated at some stage in the years gone by. The joint slipped home with an audible clunk.
It was done.
Given a break in the weather, Hearst decided to put to sea without further delay, despite the danger of renewed bad weather; he found the only resolution for his sorrows was constant action. The renascent storm caught them at sea at dusk; soon they were in desperate trouble. They could not set a sea anchor and ride out the storm with a bare mast, because the wind would have swept them onto the rocks of the shore.
Then Blackwood took the helm and began to give orders. With a precise reading of wind and wave, with immaculate timing in his orders, with an exact estimate of how much strain the rigging and timbers of his cockleshell command could endure, he saw them through grim hours of light and darkness in seas that could have sunk the best ships of the fleet of Rovac.
For Blackwood, the night in the raging weather brought divine release and giddy exultation.
Cursed by an empathy with all living things, he endured the terror of a rabbit seen ravaged by the talons of a hunting hawk, even as he thrilled to the beauty of the killing creature which was, after all, being true to the heart of its own nature. As for the conflict of human wills, such as he had seen in the bargaining for the boat – he found that almost unbearable.
But, guiding the boat through the storm, matching his new powers of empathy and heightened perception against the inanimate, he was free to rejoice in his abilities.
The long struggle with the sea took them clear of the shore, then, when the wind veered from north-west to west, they ran before it, and were driven far out to the east. Blackwood began to fear they would be swept far out into the Eastern Ocean, there doubtless to sink, for their boat was now taking in water.
However, eventually, when the wind slackened, they found themselves in sight of a cold granite island. There Blackwood brought their leaking boat to harbour. He was exhausted by then, and faltering; he almost wrecked the boat when crossing the bar at the harbour mouth. But they survived.
The island, they found, was Ork, the home base for a pirate fleet.
The leader of the pirates of Ork was Ohio. He claimed that a brother of his, Menator, commanded pirate ships on the west coast of Argan; they had gone their separate ways because of a quarrel, but now Ohio was thinking of rejoining his brother.
Ork had lately been blockaded for weeks by Collosnon warships. The Collosnon navy was determined to destroy the pirates, and Ohio's men – mostly recruited from Scourside villages – had no belly for a fight. Storms had scattered the blockade, but Ohio could not leave until ships damaged in an earlier attempt to break the blockade had been repaired. While they delayed, the navy returned.
The travellers sweetened Ohio with a gift of that fraction of Gorn's dragon treasure which they had brought with them from Stronghold Handfast. Taking this gift in secret, he did not have to divide it with his men. In exchange for the visitors' gift and their silence about the same, Ohio offered to take them with him when he left Ork; they accepted the offer.
It was on the island of Ork that Hearst acquired a steel hook. It curved out from a short, rounded length of wood, the hollow end of which, padded with leather, fitted over the stump of Hearst's right hand. Iron bars ran from the wooden block all the way to a cunning piece of jointed flexible plate armour at the elbow, which would take the strain if Hearst lifted weights with the hook. He chose to file the end of the hook to a point and sharpen one side to a cutting edge; Miphon warned that this would diminish the overall utility of the hook, but Hearst snarled that he was a warrior, not a washerwoman.
The day came when it was time to leave Ork. Hearst, Miphon and Blackwood travelled in Ohio's lean clean-lined flagship, the Skua, and it was Blackwood who took that ship out to sea across the bar at the harbour mouth.
They had chosen a wild day on which to set sail. One ship was wrecked on the bar, but the others got clear of Ork, and the blockading Collosnon ships found it impossible to close and board in the heaving seas.
Both pirates and naval ships ran before an easterly wind, till the weather settled enough for the navy flagship to close and grapple with Ohio's Skua. A boarding party crossed and combat began. Then the weather took a turn for the worse, some of the grapples were hacked away, some tore loose, and the Collosnon boarding party was isolated on the Skua.
It was a fight to the finish.
CHAPTER FORTY
To the south, a lee shore raised prow-cleaving cliffs. Those wave-breakers slewed as the ship plumbed the sea's hollows. Morgan Hearst braced for balance as the Skua heaved up again, breaking free from the weight of the waters. He challenged the shrill scream of wind through rigging: 'Ahyak Rovac!'
Lightning forked across the sky. Bone-breaking thunder followed. His enemy menaced him. Hearst grunted, striking: 'Huhn!'
Swords swung: metal to metal. One blade shattered. 'Huhn!' said Hearst. Driving his blade home.
His enemy gaped, pain too wide to scream. Hearst drew free his sword as the ship plunged down, then turned to face another challenge. He felt no fear: he was more than ready for death.
'Huhn!' said Hearst, as the ship recovered the sky.
