spotted: a small, flat-bottomed boat, obviously unfit to leave the calm waters of the canal, tied up to a dock on the opposite side. A man lay dozing in it, and some rotting fruit rinds were bumping gently against one gunwhale. Looking around, Sterren saw that a similar dock on the near side jutted forty feet out into the canal and had a space on one side where just such a boat could readily tie up.
“A ferry, that’s what it is,” he added, as he led the way down to the dock.
He hoped it actually was a ferry; if not, he knew he was going to look very foolish.
“I don’t understand why we’re doing this,” Zander muttered as he followed his warlord down the cobbled slope.
“Because Shiphaven Market is where people recruit for foreign adventures; I told you all that,” Sterren retorted, as his feet hit the first planks.
Zander was not silenced. “Is it always this cold?” he asked, pulling his tunic tighter at the throat.
“No,” Sterren and Lady Kalira replied, simultaneously.
Sterren was not particularly pleased with the cold and wind, or with Zander’s whining. Both acted as deterrents to desertion. The immense size of the city did, as well; Sterren, being a native and accustomed to it from birth, had not realized how intimidating it must be to a foreigner, newly arrived from the rural openness of Semma, to find himself surrounded by a seemingly endless maze of walls and streets.
Even the rich city smell that he found so comforting probably seemed like an alien stink to the Semmans.
He was rapidly losing hope that all four of his volunteers would desert, but if even one did, he thought he could send the others after him, while he and Lady Kalira supposedly continued his recruiting mission. That might provide sufficient opportunity for his own escape. He came to the end of the dock, stopped, and waved an arm above his head.
Here he called, shouting at the top of his lungs in order to be heard over the wind, “Over here!” The man in the flat-bottomed boat looked up, startled out of his doze, and saw the party on east side. He sat up, then stood, and picked up a long-handled oar.
Sterren could feel Lady Kalira’s impatience as they stood and watched while the ferryman casually used the blunt end of the oar to push off from the dock and then began paddling his way slowly across the canal, fighting the steady breeze that wanted to push his ungainly craft out to sea. The gap between the two docks was a good forty yards, Sterren judged, and it took several long minutes for the boat to cross it.
When it drew near, the ferryman stopped rowing, reached down, and came up with a coil of rope. He threw one end of it up onto the dock.
Alder, with admirable presence of mind, caught it and began hauling the boat in.
The other end of the rope was secured to the boat’s blunt bow, and in a moment that bumped up against the battered end of the dock.
“Bunch of barbarians, is it?” the ferryman muttered in Ethsharitic. “I can’t take you all at once!” he called aloud.
The Semtnan soldiers spoke no Ethsharitic and were all crowding forward toward the boat. “Wait!” Sterren called. “Not all at once! You’ll... you’ll...” He could not think of a Semmat equivalent for “sink,” “swamp,” or “capsize.”
He didn’t need one; the soldiers got the idea and stopped pressing.
In his native tongue, Sterren called to the boatman, “Yes, they are a bunch of barbarians, but I’m stuck with them. How many can you take?”
“How many of you are there?” the boatman asked, eyeing the little mob.
Sterren did a quick head count to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anyone, then answered, “Eight, in all.”
The boatman considered, then said, “I can take four each time easily enough. Two trips will do it, then. I’ll give you a cut rate, too, six bits the lot.”
Sterren was not at all sure that was actually a cut rate, but he paid no attention. Here, sent by the gods, was a chance to split the party. He turned to Lady Kalira. “He says he can only take four at a time,” he explained. “I’ll go on ahead with Zander and Alar and Bern, say, and then he’ll come back for the rest of you.”
“Oh, no!” she replied. “No, I stay with you! You, me, Alder, and Dogal go first, and the rest can follow.”
“My lady, need I remind you that I am in charge here, and not you? This is my city, and I am your warlord.”
“This is your city, all right,” Lady Kalira interrupted, “and that’s exactly why I’m staying with you.”
Sterren opened his mouth to argue, then caught sight of the expression on Alder’s face.
It was not an easy expression to describe, having something of resignation, annoyance, and doubt in it, but Sterren knew immediately that it meant Alder didn’t trust him any more than Lady Kalira did. He closed his mouth.
“All right,” he said after a moment. “We’ll go first, then those four.” He pushed his way past the soldiers and climbed down into the boat. “My lady, if you will?” he said, turning back and offering a hand.
Lady Kalira accepted his aid, stepping down into the boat. She settled on one of the seats in the bow.
Dogal followed, then Alder with the bowline, and Sterren, prompted by the ferryman’s gestures, settled the two of them amidships, while he sat in the bow beside Lady Kalira.
“Oars are on either side,” the ferryman pointed out from where he stood in the stem.
Sterren translated, and Alder and Dogal each took an oar as the ferryman reached over them with his own long oar and pushed them away from the dock.
It took the Semman soldiers a minute to get the hang of rowing, but even so, the trip west was much quicker than the ferryman’s solo trip east had been.
Once across, they clambered quickly ashore.
The ferryman waited, and once they were all safely on the dock he said, “That’ll be six bits. I don’t get the others until I see the money.”
Sterren did not bother to translate this for the others; he just pulled the money from his purse and tossed it to the ferryman, who caught it deftly.
Then the foursome had to stand on the western dock and wait while the ferryman returned for the other soldiers.
It was only then that Lady Kalira realized that none of the other four spoke a single word of Ethsharitic, or even Trader’s Tongue. The ferryman did his best to make himself understood in both languages, bits of his shouting carried across the water, but the four Semmans were very slow indeed to find places in the boat and cast off successfully.
Sterren watched the others carefully, glancing back now and then at the city streets behind them, but he saw no opportunity to make a dash for shelter. He waited, unhappily, until the party was reunited.
The north wind was chilly, and Dogal was shivering badly by the time the others scrambled up out of the boat. Even Sterren felt the cold.
“This way,” he said, with no idea whether it was the right way; he just wanted to get moving and out of the wind.
He led the way up away from the canal, past a cross street, around a sinuous bend, and through two three-way intersections.
Then he stopped, trying to figure out where he was.
The other seven, all close behind him, nearly trampled him.
He looked about. The others followed suit.
They were obviously in Shiphaven. Most of the people in sight on the streets wore the blue kilts and white tunics of sailors. Two chandlers’ shops were in sight, and a cooper’s as well. A red-haired woman sat on the balcony of a nearby brothel, but wore a heavy shawl wrapped about her against the wind. She called a greeting, judging the soldiers to be potential customers; Kendrik in particular stared at her greedily.
Sterren did not recognize the street. He considered stopping one of the sailors strolling by, but rejected the idea immediately; he would not admit so easily to being lost in his native city.
Even over the clatter of passing feet and the whistle of the wind in the nearby eaves, he could hear voices
