As he smacked the water, Caramon struggled to react. His arms seemed all tangled up with the wooden mast, and his hands were tied tight. Even without these disadvantages, swimming wasn't Caramon's strong point. He would have drowned in CrystalmirLake some months ago if Sturm hadn't rescued him. He had made some modest strides since that day, but now he kicked for all he was worth.
Because of the way in which they had hit the water, Sturm was briefly pinned under the mast and took a few seconds to surface. Gasping for air, Sturm struggled to free his arms, but like Caramon, he couldn't. He scissored his legs, kicking strongly. Fortunately for the two of them, the wooden mast section helped keep" them afloat.
"Don't kick so hard!" Sturm managed to wheeze at Caramon. "You'll use up all your strength. Take it easy for now."
The water was strangely warm and murky, brown rather than blue-green and swirling with sediment. Their kicking churned up bubbles and slimy, clinging vegetation. The water had a decidedly stagnant smell.
Suddenly a tremendous explosion rocked their ears. Both men twisted their necks around in time to see, through the mist, the Venora explode in a great plume of smoke and fire. The current had already carried the ship several thousand yards off. The other ship, the one Caramon had barely glimpsed, had vanished into the haze.
Caramon and Sturm watched for several minutes as remnants of the ship burned and sank into the waves. Almost as if by signal, then, the warm fog descended heavily, obscuring everything but the rolling infinity of the ocean.
As they struggled to keep afloat, both Caramon and Sturm had the same unspoken thoughts.
Where were they? Why had this happened to them? How in blazes would they ever find and rescue Tasslehoff? Or save themselves?
* * * * *
Although he certainly missed his good friends Caramon and Sturm, and although he certainly needed rescuing, Tasslehoff Burrfoot was having a pretty good time.
It was true that he was stuck in a small iron-barred brig in the lower deck of the minotaur ship, which stank worse than a mountain of dead skunks. It was also true that he was a prisoner of the minotaurs, the webbed ogres—which he had learned were called orughi—and human seafaring rabble who might at any moment put him to death.
But so far he had been treated rather well, all things considered. Sarkis had given him back his packs and pouches. Indeed, the commander of the ship acted as though the kender's possessions were sacrosanct and would be safer under the protection of Tas. Tas could spend hours poring through his various belongings, and now he had no shortage of hours to kill. He wished he hadn't sent the magic message bottle to Raistlin, since this would be an even better time to use it.
Tas got plenty of sleep. And his captors fed him reasonably well under the circumstances, mostly a greasy, lumpy meat stew that once you got used to it tasted just fine. The bowls of stew were sometimes brought to him by monkeys, who were on the ship in droves and acted as the cook's helpers. One of them in particular, a pear-shaped woolly monkey, Tas got to know rather well. He dubbed him "Oh-Tick," after a certain innkeeper he remembered fondly, and when he conversed with Oh-Tick, Tas felt the monkey, tilting his head in a listening kind of way, almost understood him.
Tas had plenty of interesting visitors. Very few of the ship's denizens had ever met or even seen a kender before. So they trooped down, by ones and twos, to gawk at him, in some cases to taunt him, and in a couple of instances to throw fruit cores and dirt clods at him.
Tas threw the fruit cores and dirt clods right back, but he liked it best when they came to taunt him. The human rabble really knew some good insults, and this in turn stimulated Tas's imagination. He came right back at them with some of the most totally offensive things he had ever thought of. It made several of his visitors so angry that their faces got all purple before they stomped away.
The minotaurs had more dignity, even if they smelled worse. They would approach almost respectfully and gaze at him in his solitary cell. Tas only saw Sarkis once again, when the leader came down all alone and spent several minutes standing impassively, watching Tas, his eyes taking note of every detail of the kender from topknot to soft leather boots. Tas couldn't manage to get a word out of the huge, ugly beast.
Dogz was different. Scornful and arrogant, he, too, came to take a leisurely look at Tasslehoff. After their first encounter, which was marked by a nasty exchange of barbed comments, Dogz returned again and again. Tas began to have stilted but edifying conversations with the huge beast, who seemed in some ways to be as curious about him as Tas was about everything, and indeed more fearful of Tas than the other way around. Gradually the two developed an awkward, almost friendly relationship.
Dogz was Sarkis's cousin, as it turned out, and utterly in awe of and loyal to his higher-ranking relative. Sarkis regarded Dogz's friendship with the kender to be another sign of a pathetic weakness, so Dogz had to steal his opportunities to see the kender.
"So you really like being a minotaur, huh?" asked Tas, amazed at the fierce pride exhibited by the strutting bull creature. Tas found Dogz fascinating, but the kender couldn't help but know, even if Dogz seemed oblivious to it, that minotaurs were a race widely scorned on Krynn.
"It is . . . a great honor to be a minotaur," rumbled Dogz uncertainly.
"What's the good part?" asked Tas, intrigued. "I mean, when
