He grabbed at the rail. One hand seized it. He hung on with everything he had, knowing he would not live above a minute if his grip failed.
A hand closed on his wrist. A sailor with a silver hoop in one ear hauled him back aboard the Renewal. The fellow shouted something at him. Wind and storm blew the words away. Then the sailor offered him a length of line. He tied one end around the rail, the other around his waist. That done, he shook a fist at the sky, as if defying it to do its worst.
It seemed to take up his challenge. The wind blew harder than ever. Rain came down in sheets. Only by tasting whether the water on his lips was sweet or salt could Maniakes be sure whether storm or sea buffeted him.
A sailor pointed off to port. More wreckage drifted there, along with human forms. Maniakes started to bellow for more lines to be cast, but stopped with the words unspoken. Those luckless fellows would be walking the bridge of the separator now, to see whether their souls tumbled down into Skotos' icy hell or spent eternity bathed in Phos' light.
Maniakes turned and looked southeast, back toward the Key.
They'd cleared Sykeota some while before, and he could not see very far in any case. He didn't think they would be dashed against the shore, and realized he wouldn't find out for certain till too late to stay disaster if it came.
Lysia staggered out of the cabin the two of them shared. Maniakes ran toward her, signaling with his hands for her to go back inside. He pointed to the rope around his own midsection. Lysia nodded, thrust a pot in which she'd been copiously sick into his hands, and retreated.
He poured the pot into the sea. Like everything else, its contents were scattered and swept away. He was so soaked, he hardly felt wet: it was almost as if he were immersed in a swimming bath. In the middle of summer, both sea and rain were warm, the sole blessing Maniakes could find in the present situation.
One of the broad-beamed merchantmen carrying soldiers wallowed past. It rode lower in the water than it should have; sailors and soldiers both were bailing with might and main. Maniakes murmured a prayer that the ship would survive.
Thrax came back up toward the Renewal's bow. The drungarios disdained an anchoring rope. Maniakes thought that disdain a foolish display of bravado, but held his tongue; he was not Thrax's nursemaid. At the top of his lungs, Maniakes bellowed, «How long will this storm last?»
He had to repeat himself three or four times before Thrax understood. «Don't know, your Majesty.» the drungarios screamed back. He, too, did not make Maniakes hear him at the first try. When he was sure the Avtokrator had gotten his first sentence, he tried another: «Maybe it'll blow itself out by nightfall.»
«That would be good,» Maniakes said—and said, and said. «How long till nightfall?»
«To the ice with me if I know.» Thrax pointed up to the sky. One part of it was as gray and ugly and full of driving rain as the next. The only way they would be able to tell when the sun went down was by its getting dark— or rather, darker.
Nor had Thrax promised the storm would end when night came. Maniakes, then, was faced with waiting an indefinite length of time for something that might not happen. He wished he saw a better alternative. The only alternative that came to mind, though, was drowning immediately. Compared to that, waiting was better. Not far away, a bolt of lightning lanced down out of the sky.
Purple streaks dimmed Maniakes' vision. The lightning could as easily have struck the Renewal as not: one more thing about which the Avtokrator tried not to think.
He tried not to think at all. In the storm, thinking did him no good. He was just another frightened animal here, trying to ride out the forces of nature. On dry land, in among his soldiers or in a sturdy fortress, he could fancy himself the lord of all he surveyed. Here he surveyed little, and could control none of it.
A little while later, Rhegorios emerged from his cabin. A sailor gave him a safety line, which he accepted with some reluctance. «I thought you'd have been here on deck for the whole storm,» Maniakes said. «You're always wild for adventures like this.»
His cousin grimaced. «I've been puking my guts up, is what I've been doing, if you really want to know. I always thought I was a decent sailor, but I've never been in anything like—» Instead of finishing the sentence, Rhegorios leaned over the rail. When the spasm passed, he said, «I wish they hadn't given me this cursed rope. Now it's harder for me to throw myself into the sea.»
«It's not that bad,» Maniakes said, but all that meant was, it wasn't that bad for him. Rhegorios laughed at him—till he started retching again. Maniakes tried to hold the hair out of his face while he heaved.
«Is it getting darker?» Rhegorios asked when he could speak again. «Or am I starting to die?»
Maniakes hadn't paid much attention to the sky for a while, most likely because he'd come to assume the day would never end. Now he looked up. It was darker. «Thrax said the storm might blow itself out when night fell,» he shouted hopefully, over the roar of the wind.
«Here's hoping Thrax is right.» Rhegorios' abused stomach rebelled again. Nothing came forth this time, but he looked as miserable as if something had. «I hate the dry heaves,» he said, adding, Bloody shame they're the only thing about me I can call dry.» Water dripped from his beard, from the tip of his nose, from his hair, from his sleeves, and from his elbows when he bent his arms. Maniakes, who had stayed on deck through most of the storm, was wetter still, but the distinction would be meaningless in moments.
Darkness, having once made an appearance, quickly descended on the sea. The rain dropped from torrent to trickle; the wind ebbed. «Praise the good god, lads,» Thrax shouted to the crew. «I think we've come though the worst.»
A couple of sailors took him literally, either reciting Phos' creed or sending their own prayers of thanks to the lord with the great and good mind. Maniakes murmured a prayer of his own, part thanks but more a fervent hope the storm really was over and would not resume with the dawn.
«Break out a torch, boys!» Thrax yelled. «Let's find out if we have any friends left on the ocean.»
Maniakes would have bet a dry torch or, for that matter, any means of setting it alight, could not be found anywhere aboard the Renewal. He would have lost that bet, and in short order, too. Even in darkness, more than one sailor hurried for the torches wrapped in layer on layer of oiled canvas. And the cook had a firesafe, a good- sized pot in which embers were always smoldering. Thrax took the blazing torch and waved it back and forth.
One by one, other torches came to life on the Sailors' Sea, some close by, others so far off they were hard to tell from stars near the horizon. But there were no stars, the sky still being full of clouds. The ships that had survived the storm crawled across the water toward one another. When they got within hailing range, captains shouted back and forth, setting forth the toll of those known lost and, by silences, of those missing.
«It's not so bad as it looks, your Majesty,» Thrax said, somewhere getting on toward midnight. «More will join us tomorrow morning, and more still, blown so far off course that they can't see any torches at all, will make straight for the imperial city. Not everybody who isn't here is gone for good.»
«Yes, I understand that,» Maniakes answered. «And some, like that one transport out there somewhere —» He pointed vaguely past the bow of the Renewal. «—can't show torches because they haven't got any fire left. I think it's Phos' own miracle so many of our ships have been able to make lights. But still—»
But still. In any context, those words were ominous, implying lost gold, lost chances, lost hopes. Here they meant lost ships, lost men, lost animals—so many lost without any possibility of rescue, as when the dromon had broken up in the raging sea not far from the flagship.
Not all the survivors had stories like that to tell, but too many of them did. Maniakes did what he could to piece together his losses, bearing in mind what Thrax had said. They came to somewhere not far from a quarter of the force with which he'd set out from Lyssaion. He hoped not too many of the ships Thrax reckoned scattered were in fact lost.
«And speaking of scattered,» he said around a yawn, «where are we, anyhow?» He yawned again; now that the storm and the crises was for the moment past, he felt with full—perhaps with double– measure how tired and worn he was.
«To the ice with me if I know exactly, your Majesty,» Thrax answered. «We'll sail north when morning comes, and we'll sight land, and we'll figure out what land we've sighted. Then we'll blow where we're at, and how far away from Videssos the city we are, too.»
«All right,» Maniakes said mildly. He was no sailor, but he'd spent enough time at sea to know that navigation was an art almost as arcane as magecraft, and less exact. Knowing how to find out where they were
