"What is it?" asked Tanis wearily.
"My leg," gasped Flint. "I can't put any weight on it. I think it's broken."
Tanis hurried to examine him. Sure enough, there was a fracture in the right limb, which had already swelled and was turning purple.
With Flint complaining all the way, Tanis flung the dwarf across his shoulders and carried him from the cove, setting him down gently next to Raistlin.
Although the young mage was plainly worn out, his face covered with grime and small cuts, he found a broken tree limb nearby, tore strips from his robe, and did the best he could to approximate a tight splint on Flint's leg.
"Just my luck," said Flint sulkily, wincing as Raistlin wound the bandaging.
"We should have left you to the lacedon," said the young mage with uncharacteristic wry humor.
"The what?" asked the dwarf.
"The ghoul back there," said Tanis. He was lying on the sand, covered with slime and dirt, but he was too exhausted to care. "Kirsig was right about there being undead creatures in the tunnel."
"Of course, they'd like you better if you were dead. They feed on corpses, you know," said Raistlin dryly, finishing with the splint. Unceremoniously he curled up against a rock and within minutes was asleep.
Flint grumbled something unintelligible.
Their little cove was sheltered by a horn of rocks. Beyond that, the dark and forbidding Blood Sea stretched to the horizon. Light from the two moons, Lunitari and Solinari, speckled the black water with silver. They could hear nothing but the crash of surf and the lapping of waves.
For hours, Tanis and Flint waited for Kirsig, shivering. At one point, thinking Flint hadn't said anything in a long while, Tanis looked over and realized that the bone-weary dwarf had fallen asleep as well, sitting up against a rock with his broken leg stretched out in front of him. With a sigh, Tanis settled in for the night watch.
* * * * *
It was an hour or so before dawn when Tanis caught sight of a small craft wending its way across the cove. Kirsig was sitting on one of the forward seats, but someone else was pulling the oars. Tanis roused Flint and Raistlin.
As the boat pulled up next to them, Kirsig jumped out, followed by the other occupant of the boat, a tall, well-proportioned black-skinned man with a gleaming bald pate. He was bare-chested, wearing only a thick breech-cloth and high-strapped sandals. A fine bone necklace curved around his muscular neck, and a small jeweled knife hung from a loop on his waist.
"I'm sorry I took so long," explained Kirsig hurriedly. "I had to go to town and hunt up Nugetre. Then I had to pack my things. . . ." Suddenly she stopped and stared, wide-eyed. "Garsh, what happened to the pretty dwarf!"
She rushed over to Flint, who remained sitting against the rock, and knelt down to examine his leg solicitously. The dwarf scowled.
The one called Nugetre was standing with his hands on his hips, staring at Tanis and Raistlin, grinning as he sized them up.
"Kirsig . . ." began Tanis.
"What do you mean, you had to pack your things?" Raistlin asked Kirsig pointedly.
The female half-ogre turned to Raistlin. "Well," she huffed, "I had to kill one of the ogre guards. I couldn't very well stay there, could I? So I'm coming with you!"
"But—but—" stammered Raistlin.
"A woman on such a voyage?" Tanis said.
"If you ask me—" began Flint.
Nugetre silenced them all with an outburst of loud, lusty laughter.
After a long pause, Tanis asked Kirsig, "What does he find so funny?"
"What I find funny, half-elf," said Nugetre, eyeing the three of them scornfully, "is that more than half of my crew are female. And they meet the standards I set just as well as the men do."
"I've known Nugetre for years," said Kirsig hastily. "He used to buy food from my father to take on his crossings. He's one or the best seamen around and is willing to take us across the Blood Sea."
"For a fee," reminded Nugetre, wagging a finger at the female half-ogre.
"Besides," added Kirsig enthusiastically, "you're going to need some help with this dwarf . . . medical help, I mean. I've picked up a few tricks over the years. They won't cure the plague, but they should lessen the pain and speed the healing of that broken leg."
Flint looked helplessly at Tanis and Raistlin. Tanis and Raistlin looked at each other.
"Okay," Tanis said resignedly.
Kirsig and the three companions all squeezed into the boat, and the muscular Nugetre began to row with an easy rhythm. Within minutes, they were out of the cove and hundreds of yards from shore. They could barely glimpse the shadowy shape of Ogrebond atop the steep, rocky hill.
A pale rosy light had begun to show in the sky as they reached Nugetre's ship.
Chapter 8
The Broken Man
Something grabbed At Sturm. Weakly the Solamnic looked up, his vision blurry. He felt himself being lifted.
The next thing he knew, as if experiencing it through a haze, Sturm was lying in the bottom of a small wooden boat alongside Caramon. His friend's clothes hung on him in tatters; encrusted sores and bruises covered his body. What skin remained intact had been baked a deep bronze-red by the sun. Sturm stared at the young warrior, whose eyes remained closed. With relief, the young knight noted that his companion breathed steadily. Then Sturm, too, passed out.
A gnarled old fisherman named Lazaril had scooped them out of the sea, cut their bonds, and dumped them into his boat.
Now the fisherman, bent and wiry, regarded them, his hand on his chin, thinking. Lazaril had been hoping to catch a stringer of eels this morning to sell later in the day at the open market in Atossa, a city on the north coast of Mithas. But if he worked it right, these two humans would fetch more than a dozen stringers of eels.
They looked terrible, though—possibly near death. He ought to
