“Kurt,” said Kta, “be careful. This deck will be awash soon, and a wave could carry you overboard.”
“How do your men keep their footing?”
“They do not move without need. You are no seaman, my friend. I wish you would go below. I would not have you entertaining Kalyt’s green-eyed daughters tonight. I know not what their feelings may be about humans.”
Kurt knew the legend. Drowned sailors were held in the domain of Kalyt the Sea Father until proper rites could release their souls from bondage to the lustful sea-sprites and send them to their ancestral hearths.
He took Kta’s warning, but it was advice, not order, and he was not willing to go below. He walked off aft and suddenly a great swell made him lose his balance. He caught at the mast in time to save himself from pitching headlong into the rowers’ pit. He refused to look back at Kta, humiliated enough. He found his balance again and walked carefully toward the low prominence of the cabin, taking refuge against its wall.
Tavi was soon hard put to maintain her course against the seas. Her bow rose on the swells and her deck pitched alarmingly as she rode them down. Overhead the sky turned to premature twilight, and the wind carried the scent of rain.
Then a great gust of wind scoured the sea and hit the ship. The spray kicked up, the bow awash as water broke over the ship’s bronze-shod ram. Kurt wiped the stinging
water from his eyes as sea and sky tilted insanely. He kept tight grip on the safety line. Tavi became a fragile wooden shell shrunk to miniature proportions against the waves that this morning had run so smoothly under her bow.
Wood and rigging groaned as if the vessel was straining to hold together, and a torrent of water nearly swept Kurt oft his feet. Rain and salt water mixed in a ceaseless, blinding mist. In the shadowy sky lightning flashed and thunder boomed directly after, and Kurt flinched against the cabin wall, constantly expecting the ship not to surface after the next pitch downward or the breaking of spray across her deck. Thunder ripped overhead-lightning seemed close enough to take the very mast. His heart was in his throat already; at every crash of thunder he simply shut his eyes and expected to die. He had ridden out combat a dozen times. The fury of this little landbound sea was more awesome. He clung, half drowned, and shivered in the howling wind, and Kta’s green-eyed sea-sprites seemed real and malevolently threatening, the depths yawning open and deadly, alternate with the sky beyond the rail. He could almost hear them singing in the wind.
It was a measureless time before the rain ceased, but at last the clouds broke and the winds abated. To starboard through the haze of rain land appeared, the land they so much wanted to leave behind, a dim gray line, the stark cliffs and headlands of Sufak. Kta turned the helm over to Tkel and stood looking toward the east, wiping the rain from his face. The water streamed from his hair.
“How much have we lost?” Kurt asked.
Kta shrugged. “Considerable. Considerable. We must fight contrary winds, at least for the present. Spring is a constant struggle between south wind and north, and eventually south must win. It is a question of tune and heaven’s good favor.”
“Heaven’s good favor would have prevented that storm,” said Kurt. Cold limbs and exhaustion made him more acid than he was lately wont to be with Kta, but Kta was well-armored this day. He merely shrugged off the human cynicism.
“How are we to know? Maybe we were going toward trouble and the wind blew us back to safety. Maybe the storm had nothing to do with us. A man should not be too conceited.”
Kurt gave him a peculiar look, and caught his balance as the sea’s ebbing violence lifted Tavi’s bow and lowered it again. It pleased him, even so, to find Kta straight-facedly laughing at him; so it had been in Elas, on evenings when they talked together, making light of their serious differences. It was good to know they could still do that.