The One Tree

who commands below, reports that his crew keeps pace. We endure, Chosen! We will survive!”

She groped for a share of his faith and could not find it. “Maybe we should abandon ship!”

He gaped at her. She heard the folly of her words before he responded, “Do you wish to chance this sea in a longboat?”

Helplessly, she asked, “What're you going to do?”

“Naught!” he returned in a shout like a challenge. 'While this gale holds, we are too precarious. But when the change comes, as come it must-Then perhaps you will see that the Giants are sailors-and Starfare's Gem, a ship-to make the heart proud!

“Until that time, hold faith! Stone and Sea, do you not comprehend that we are alive?”

But she was no longer listening to him. The imponderable screech and yowl of the blast seemed to strike straight at Covenant. He was shivering with cold. His need was poignant to her; but she did not know how to touch him. Her hands were useless, so deeply chilled that she could hardly curl them into fists. Slow blood oozed from several abrasions on her palms, formed in viscid drops between her fingers. She paid no attention to it.

Later, large bowls of diamondraught were passed among the companions. The Giantish liquor reduced her weakness somewhat, enabling her to go on clinging for her life. But still she did not raise her head. She could not think why Vain had saved her. The force of the storm felt like an act of malice. Surely if the Demondim-spawn had not saved her the blast would have been appeased.

Her health-sense insisted that the hurricane was a natural one, not a manifestation of deliberate evil. But she was so badly battered by the wind's violence and the cold, so eroded by her fear, that she no longer knew the difference.

They were all going to die, and she had not yet found a way to give Covenant back his mind.

Later still, night effaced the last illumination. The gale did not abate; it appeared to have blown out the stars. Nothing but a few weak lanterns-one near Galewrath, the rest scattered along the upper edge of the afterdeck-reduced the blackness. The wind went on reaping across the sea with a sound as shrill as a scythe. Through the stone came the groaning of the masts as they protested against their moorings, the repetitive thud and pound of the pumps. All the crewmembers took turns below, but their best efforts were barely enough to keep pace with the water. They could not lessen the great salt weight which held Starfare's Gem on its side. More diamondraught was passed around. The day had seemed interminable. Linden did not know how she could face the night and stay sane.

By degrees, her companions sank into themselves as she did. Dismay covered them like the night, soaked into them like the cold. If the wind shifted now, Galewrath would have no forewarning. In the distant light of her lantern, she looked as immobile as stone, no longer capable of the reactions upon which the dromond might depend. Yet Honninscrave sent no one to relieve her: any brief uncertainty while Shipsheartthew changed hands might cause the vessel to founder. And so the Giants who were not at the pumps had no other way to fight for their lives except to cling and shiver. Eventually, even the Master's chaffering could not rouse them to hope or spirit. They crouched against the rail, with the black sea running almost directly below them, and waited like men and women who had been sentenced to death.

But Honninscrave did not leave them alone. When his guyings and jollyings became ineffective, he shouted unexpectedly, “Ho, Pitchwife! The somnolence of these Giants abashes me! In days to come, they will hang their heads to hear such a tale told of them! Grant us a song to lift our hearts, that we may remember who we are!”

From a place near her, Linden heard the First mutter mordantly, “Aye, Pitchwife. Grant them a song. When those who are whole falter, those who are halt must bear them up.”

But Pitchwife did not appear to hear her. “Master!” he replied to Honninscrave with a frantic laugh, “I have been meditating such a song! It may not be kept silent, for it swells in my heart, becoming too great for any breast to contain! Behold!” With a lugubrious stagger, he let himself fall down the deck. When he hit the first lifeline, it thrummed under his weight, but held. Half-reclining against the line, he faced upward. “It will boon me to sing this song for you!”

Shadows cast by the lanterns made his misshapen face into a grimace. But his grin was unmistakable; and as he continued his humour became less forced.

“I will sing the song which Bahgoon sang, in the aftermath of his taming by his spouse and harridan, that many-legended odalisque Thelma Twofist!”

The power of his personal mirth drew a scattering of wan cheers and ripostes from the despondent Giants.

Striking a pose of exaggerated melancholy, he began. He did not actually sing; he could not make a singing voice audible. But he delivered his verses in a pitched rhythmic shout which affected his listeners like music.

'My love has eyes which do not glow

Her loveliness is somewhat formed askew,

With blemishes which number not a few,

And pouting lips o'er teeth not in a row.

'Her limbs are doughtier than mine,

And what I do not please to give she takes.

Her hair were better kempt with hoes and rakes.

Her kiss tastes less of diamondraught than brine.

'Her odorescence gives me ill:

Her converse is by wit or grace unlit:

Her raiment would become her if it fit.

So think of me with rue: I love her still.'

It was a lengthy song; but after a moment Linden was distracted from it. Faintly, she heard the First murmuring to herself, clearly unaware that anyone could hear her.

“Therefore do I love you, Pitchwife,” she said into the wind and the night. “In sooth, this is a gift to lift the heart. Husband, it shames me that I do not equal your grace.”

In a beneficial way, the deformed Giant seemed to shame all the crew. To answer his example, they stirred from their disconsolation, responded to each other as if they were coming back to life. Some of them were laughing; others straightened their backs, tightened their grips on the railing, as if by so doing they could better hear the song.

Instinctively, Linden roused herself with them. Their quickening emanations urged her to shrug off some of her numbness.

But when she did so, her percipience began to shout at her. Behind the restoration of the Giants rose a sense of peril. Something was approaching the Giantship-something malefic and fatal.

It had nothing to do with the storm. The storm was not evil. This was.

“Chosen?” Cail asked.

Distinctly, Covenant said, “Don't touch me.”

She tried to rise to her feet. Only Cail's swift intervention kept her from tumbling toward Pitchwife.

“Jesus!” She hardly heard herself. The darkness and the gale deafened her. “It's going to attack us here!”

The First swung toward her. “Attack us?”

As Linden cried out, “That Raver!” the assault began.

Scores of long dark shapes seethed out of the water below the aftermast. They broke through the reflections of the lanterns, started to wriggle up the steep stone.

As they squirmed upward, they took light. The air seemed to ignite them in fiery red.

Burning with crimson internal heat like fire-serpents, they attacked the deck, swarming toward Covenant and Linden.

Eels!