Up . . .
Rap could no more resist Andor than he could fight Darad. Down . . .
3
Year in and year out, Stormdancer shuttled back and forth to Faerie. By playing off the prevailing wind—such as it was—against the prevailing current, on four trips out of five a skilled mariner like Gnurr or Gathmor could manage the run from Milflor to Kith with very little need for oars. But on Rap’s second night aboard, a gale sprang up out of the south-southeast, a very rare event. For four days Gnurr held her head as much to the east and north as he could, but no one liked the resulting course, or where it led. Rowing was impossible in that weather. The crew became crabby; the passengers vanished into the hell of seasickness.
Every day Rap endured longer periods of lonely torment with the oar. As his strength increased, so Gathmor raised his demands, and Rap was amused to find himself savoring nostalgic memories of old Sergeant Thosolin and his petty testings. He was pestered no more by Andor, for Andor was an imp, and imps were poor sailors. Rap had the passengers’ deck to himself as he swung his oar up and down in a mindless fog.
Even Little Chicken rarely bothered him. The goblin, of course, had soon become arm-wrestling champion of the ship, unwittingly earning Kani a year’s wages on his first two bouts. No one had been willing to bet on the third. The sailors quickly accepted him as just another non-jotunn curiosity. They assumed that his unnatural strength was a racial trait and joked about raiding the northlands to collect more like him.
Stormdancer carried seven passengers: Andor the gentleman tourist, an elderly bishop and his wife, a young Imperial playboy who had been visiting his retired parents, a horse-faced, desiccated matron who wrote popular romances and was planning one about Faerie, and a viscount of middle years, honeymooning with a much younger wife. Obviously they must all be wealthy, or they could not have afforded the fare. Obviously they were all either brave or foolish, also, for the crossing from Faene was never a sure thing. As the days passed, one by one they found their sea legs and emerged again from their cabins.
Night by night the convoy scattered. By the fifth day the last two sails had gone and thereafter Stormdancer was alone under the blue dome of heaven. On the sixth day the wind suddenly failed, having done all the damage it could. Thereafter Rap made muscles and blisters with real rowing. Real rowing was much worse than exercising, and he was grateful for the extra strength he had gained already.
Day by day he settled into the routine life of a sailor. When not rowing, he scrubbed and peeled and baited as he was told. He emptied the passenger’s slop buckets, he cleaned fish, he polished and mopped. Such simple labor he could handle as well as any man alive, always doing the best he could, because that was his way. As he completed each task he was rewarded with another. He received neither punishment nor praise and looked for neither; he was more than happy to be accepted as just another hand. Somewhere between Hononin’s stables and Stormdancer, a boy had become a man. That discovery was enormously welcome, and Rap was determined to do anything at all to live up to his new status.
He listened to the sailors’ talk; he asked questions; they were happy to answer. They borrowed the master’s charts and spread them out and showed him. The simplest route to Hub was to sail northward through Westerwater to the great Ambly River, which was navigable all the way to Cenmere. But the winds and currents were treacherous that way. Many a fine ship had been hurled onto the lee shores, or swept into the maw of the Nogids. There were always pirates, and the Imperial navy did not patrol much in Westerwater.
Safer by far was a course to the south of the archipelago, usually to Kith, the Impire’s island stronghold in the Summer Seas. The currents were strong, though, and the winds were fickle. Sailing ships becalmed often turned up years later as desiccated husks being battered by the surf against the rockbound coast of Zark. Galleys were safer, but they faced dangers, also, and the gale had left Gathmor unsure of Stormdancer’s position. In that situation, in the Summer Seas, the only solution was to head north and make landfall.
Day after day the air remained as calm as rock, the sea flat as well water. Men’s muscles urged the ship onward, northward, against the southerly current. The more experienced men grew thoughtful. This might not turn out to be one of their better trips, they muttered. Thirst became a large part of Rap’s life. Even the passengers complained at the scanty water ration, and they were not rowing.
Two men to an oar . . . but only in emergencies would both men row at once. The other would rest as well as he could, curled up on the baggage under the bench, or be off somewhere else doing work for Gathmor. Rap soon learned to sleep on any surface, in any position, lulled by exhaustion and the surge of the ship, by the hiss of water beyond the hull, by the rhythmic creak of oar against thole pin, and the pulsing susurrus of many men breathing in unison.
And when it was his turn to row, then stroke merged into stroke, watch into watch, day into night, and all into a fog of pain and burning thirst. A sip of water became a lifelong ambition, one moment’s rest a dream of paradise.
Whispers told of ships that had died of thirst, of floating coffins filled with skeletons, drifting for years upon the Summer Seas, but after a while even the whispering stopped. No one had breath or spit to waste.
Especially not the green hand. At first Ballast did far more rowing than his share. Inevitably Rap flagged near the end of his watch, when every moment had become a torment beyond endurance and the next one worse. Then the big man would appear and offer to relieve him a little early. Rap always refused, but always his partner would simply slide into the harder inboard position and row alongside until Rap knew that his own efforts had become mere show and Ballast was doing all the work. Rap, in fact, became a drag on the oar, but he made himself a promise that he would always keep up the pretense, and he never once released his grip before the bosun rang the bell.
Then came a watch when Ballast did not arrive to relieve him early, and the officers came at the bell. For a brief moment all oars were shipped and Stormdancer drifted, a lonely speck on a limitless ocean, visible only to the Gods. Trusting that They were watching, Captain Gnurr ritually thanked Them for sending him a new mariner and tipped a glass of wine over Rap’s head. The officers shook his blood-soaked hand and the crew cheered. He was very grateful for the wine, because it would conceal any other shameful fluid that might be trickling down his cheeks.
Little Chicken had been a capable rower from the first, but no one bothered to honor him that way. He had made it look too easy.
The goblin’s bench was port amidships, whereas Rap sat near the starboard bow, and the line of cabins stood between. Of course Rap’s farsight was not blocked by mere cabins, and he took a mean pleasure in noting that the goblin’s occult talent had not made him blister-proof—but Little Chicken probably enjoyed blisters.
Rap also knew that the viscount was failing to satisfy his young wife, and that the elderly bishop had the opposite problem with his. And he knew why the handsome young gentleman traveler, Sir Andor, so popular with both crew and passengers, took longer than the others to find his sea legs.
Andor had not been on board during the worst of the weather. Even in the calm, Sir Andor often pleaded squeamishness and retreated to his cabin. He sometimes even took his meals along with him, which seemed like odd treatment for seasickness.
More often than not, the man in Andor’s cabin was Darad. The first time Rap farsaw that transformation, it frightened him, and made him angry. He suspected Andor was threatening him. He toyed with the idea of telling Gathmor and exposing the whole sequential gang. As he calmed down, he saw that a denunciation would be useless. Gathmor would never spy on his passenger and Andor would deny the charge. Rap knew who got believed when the two of them offered conflicting stories.
Much of the time, therefore, the occupant of Cabin One was a giant jotunn warrior, who did little except lie on his belly and squirm. His back was a mass of blisters, his eye swollen, and the bites on his arm tumescent and oozing. His agony would not improve his attitude toward Rap, but he did not need to suffer that way. He could simply call Andor back in his place and wait until one of the gang summoned him in some place where medical help was available. His innumerable scars showed that he had endured much healing in the past, and that was what he was doing now. Despite what Rap had been told by both Thinal and Sagorn, the five men did care about each other to some extent. Andor was giving Darad a chance to recover from his injuries, just as Andor’s own arm was healing. When the cabal needed its fighter, he would be fit again.