by the Princess and Lady Gabriella. The captain had pointed the heading and Hal and Ty fixed their position by the early morning stars and shoved off.
The sail had proven problematic as the boat tended to drift to port, but as they were aiming for a long stretch of Kingdom coastline, a slight deviation from their course shouldn’t be a problem. Either side of the Kingdom city of Ran would be acceptable, and should they spy the harbour, all the better.
There was little conversation as the women huddled under a great cloak provided by the captain against the night’s chill. The two young men were intent upon keeping their course as the sun rose and when it did they thought they could see land.
Hal pointed to a brown smudge to the northwest and said, ‘Head for that!’
Ty nodded. If Hal was correct that smudge would be cooking fires from a coastal town or even the port of Ran. The wind rose with the morning sun, a spanking breeze but from the north-west, forcing them to tack on some very long reaches. Hal sat at the tiller with Lady Gabriella and the Princess sitting on the windward side of the boat, while Ty waited in the bow ready to haul on the sheet to trim the single sail. Each time they shifted course, Hal had to duck his head under the wide swinging boom while the girls ducked down and waited, then shifted to the opposite side of the dinghy.
The coast grew progressively closer each time they swung to the north, but as they were almost sailing into the teeth of the wind it made for slow going. Two hours after sunrise, Ty shouted, ‘Sails, off to port!’
Ty risked standing for a moment, then sat down again and said, ‘That can’t be the Keshian picket. We haven’t sailed that far.’
Ty shielded his face from the low sun. Finally he said, ‘I see red sails!’
‘Oh, bloody hell,’ said Hal. ‘Pirates.’
Ty said, ‘That’s a Ceresian raiding fleet or I’m a duck. Turn about and make a run for the coast!’
‘Ready about!’ Hal cried warning he was turning the boat hard, and to be wary of the swinging boom. It would be very inconvenient if someone fell over the side at that moment. The girls ducked as he pulled on the tiller, saying, ‘Hard a’lee!
The two women moved swiftly to the windward side of the boat and Hal lost any concern for a cautious approach to the coast. He shouted to Ty, ‘Are we seen?’
As low as their boat was to the water and as far as they were from the sails, it was possible that they would go unnoticed by any lookouts aloft on the pirate ships.
‘I can’t tell!’ Ty called back. Then he pointed. ‘Look!’
The brown smudge they had first spied was resolving itself into a column of smoke rising from fires along the coast. As they were heading straight to it, it quickly became apparent this was a coastal raid.
‘Where are we?’ shouted Hal.
‘I don’t know,’ answered Ty. ‘That’s too small to be Ran. Lister perhaps? Or maybe Michaelsberg?’
The air now had the acrid tang of smoke and was turning hazy as they were sailing directly into the wind as best as Hal could manage. Their eyes teared from the sting and Gabriella sneezed.
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ said Ty.
Hal pulled gently against the tiller until the sails started to luff. He was gauging when best to turn back towards the coast on a long tack away from the fight.
Ty said, ‘That ship we’re following is slowing!’
Hal stood slightly to look over the girls’ heads. ‘They’re trimming sails.’
Suddenly they were running straight at the stern of the ship and Hal shouted, ‘Ready about!’
The girls ducked as Hal turned the boat and the wind blew away a particularly hazy patch of smoke so that the sterncastle of the ship they had been trailing could now be clearly seen.
The three-masted ship heeled over slightly as the crew adjusted the sails and Ty shouted, ‘It’s a Ceresian dromon!’ This one was painted black with red trim around the rails, and the sails were dark red tanbark. The ship was common to Kesh, but many such had found their ways north to the shores of the Eastern Kingdoms. Usually crewed by forty to sixty men, plus a bank of rowers, they were not as fast as Kingdom ships but their shallow draft and lateen sails allowed them to sail much closer into shore than the deepwater square-masted Kingdom frigates. And in close, with the rowers providing the power, they were good for short bursts of speed that could bring them into contact with their prey before a ship with only sails could manoeuvre away.
A lookout on the stern chanced to turn; he saw the small dinghy, pointed and shouted.
Ty cried, ‘We’re seen!’
Hal hauled over on the tiller without warning and the two women ducked under the boom just in time. Ty almost lost his balance.
‘Sorry!’ shouted Hal.
The dromon was a shallow draught ship, but it couldn’t ride into the beach as the dinghy could. If they beached the dromon the crew would have to dig sand trenches beneath the hull at low tide, unload every piece of cargo and provisions, then wait for high tide to lift her and try to tow her back to sea with longboats.
Hal glanced back a moment and saw that the pirate vessel was now reefing sails and that men on deck were scrambling to lower boats. ‘They’re coming after us!’
Ty said, ‘There!’ pointing at the shoreline.
Hal stared at the open beach on the other side of the white foam breakers. Ty waited until they could feel the shore current and the boat lifting on a swell and he leapt to unfasten the sheets and lower the sail. Hall let go of the tiller and lashed down the boom so it wouldn’t swing.
Lady Gabriella was already pulling up one oar as Ty reached to grab the other. Unceremoniously, Ty shouted, ‘Move!’ to Stephane, then belatedly added, ‘Er, Highness.’
Stephane ignored the lack of formality. ‘Their boats are in the water.’
Hal looked over his shoulder and saw a boat pushing away from the ship, now anchored, and another with crew climbing down ropes ready to follow. He looked ahead and shouted, ‘Pull!’
Ty and Gabriella both hauled on their oars and the boat moved up and away, rising on another swell as they edged closer to the beach. Hal looked back again and saw the pirates’ longboats each had six oarsmen and he knew they’d be a lot closer by the time the dinghy reached the beach.
Hal looked beyond the approaching shore and saw a fairly uniform rise beyond the sand. Tableland overlooked the beaches, but no more than ten or twelve feet above. With careful slow climbing they could probably reach the grass if they had time to find a suitable gully. Then he spied a sand mound that rose up to the tableland. He turned the bow of the dinghy towards it.
‘Ready!’ shouted the Princess as they were picked up by a comber that turned into a wave and accelerated them into the shore. The dinghy rode it into the sand then ground to a sudden halt.
‘Over there!’ Hal shouted, pointing to the mound he had spied. They climbed quickly out of the dinghy. Ty grabbed one bundle of provisions and Hal the other as he leapt out. The pirate longboats were bearing down. Hal judged they might be lucky to have a five-minute head start.
They turned and ran.
CHAPTER SIX
Jim ran.
The vaguely important, always elusive minor noble from the west forced his way past startled courtiers and annoyed servants as he raced through the halls of the King’s palace in Rillanon. Dishevelled and dirty from miles of fast travel, he was nearly exhausted yet found the strength to single-handedly disrupt the business of the palace for the day. His violent haste was understandable and those who recognized him quickly nodded in sympathy: his grandfather was dying.
Jim cursed the gods, the fates, whim, bad luck, any other agency he could imagine who might have conspired to have him away from the Kingdom’s home island when word reached him of his grandfather’s illness. His last Tsurani transport orb had been destroyed by a Keshian agent, and he had to rely on Pug’s son Magnus to
