“Sir?”
Rap staggered on a roll, and the thane’s hand flashed out to grip his shoulder and steady him. His fingers dug in like skewers.
“There is something very odd about you, halfman. Very odd! My instincts for self-preservation tell me I should gift you a full suit of armor and send you out to push. I just tested you, you realize?”
Here came the job offer. “Sir?”
“You passed, but not in the way I expected. I would have taken odds of a thousand to one that what I demanded was humanly impossible for a mundane in your condition. But you weren’t using occult power, were you?”
“No, sir. Just farsight. I can’t see well at the moment.”
“Farsight . . . and something else, but not magic!” Kalkor chuckled, and it was a sound to freeze bones. “I had decided to kill you if you did pass.” He sighed. “But, as I said, I’m a gambler. Just a sentimental softie, I am. I will accept that you are not an adept in spite of the test.”
He raised a quizzical eyebrow, and Rap said, “Thank you, sir.”
“Indeed. You may be a mage or even a sorcerer, of course, but then I am helpless—and you certainly don’t look like either at the moment. Faun, I am going to be very surprised if we do not fulfill that absurd prophecy one day, you and I. That intrigues me! I have raised twelve heads in the Place of Ravens. I should like very much to raise yours, also.”
“I will bet on you, sir, not me.”
Sudden anger blazed in the inhumanly blue eyes. “Do not joke about sacred matters! I am no imp to wager squalid, worthless things like money! A Reckoning is a solemn ritual, an offering of courage and a sacrifice of life. Few things less than life itself are worth gambling.” For a moment Rap thought Kalkor was going to flash into jotunn madness, but then the eerie smile returned. “Two strong men battling to the death, entering the circle knowing that one of them will never leave? There is the ultimate gamble, the finest game of all. I hope that one day I do leave my bones for the ravens of Nintor—it is the noblest death for a thane. And I ask only one favor from the Gods, Master Rap.”
Rap saw that he was supposed to question. “What’s that, sir?”
“That my slayer be worthy, a man of courage. Tell Darad I want him.”
4
It was a real pleasure to pass the message to Darad and see apprehension spread over the nightmare face. There were not many pleasures on Blood Wave. Gathmor was conscious, but too weak even to sit up. Rap found water for both of them and eventually begged some food, also. Then he set to work on the problems of cleaning up his fellow prisoner and finding fresh clothes for him. The jotnar did not interfere, but they were surly and uncooperative.
And yet even a captive could have moments less miserable than others. Boat and contents steamed in the hot tropic sun. The sea shone like silver, flashing bands of glory across the minatory obscenity of the orca crudely painted on the sail. White birds followed, rocking on the arcs of their wings. Given blue sky and a fine breeze, a half jotunn could not be totally unhappy on a sprightly vessel like Blood Wave on a fine day.
Rap had noted Darad cowering at the thane’s feet and then forgotten him. The next development was Kalkor himself striding past, stopping to drag one of the sacks of loot out from under a bench near the bow. Rap knew what was coming before it emerged, and he swung his farsight aft again. Cowering under the poop deck was the flaxen-haired minstrel, Jalon, struggling to adjust Darad’s oversize breeches to his slender form. Small and unassertive, Jalon was a most unlikely jotunn, as he himself had pointed out to Rap once when they shared a picnic lunch in the hills, long ago. His skin was pallid, sickly compared to all the bronzed sailors, and certainly there was no more terrified minstrel on the Summer Seas.
What the crew thought of the magical transformation was impossible to tell. Blue-eyed glances flashed under golden brows, questioning and commenting in surly silence. Kalkor had not deigned to explain, and not a man aboard would dare show fear.
The thane headed aft again, carrying a bejeweled ivory harp. In a few minutes Jalon had done the best he could to tune the battered, impractical instrument and was sitting on the helmsman’s deck, with his legs dangling.
And then—pure miracle! Somehow he wrung a flawless, angelic thread of music from the harp and on it wove tapestries of the finest singing in all Pandemia. A couple of sea chanties, then a ballad, and more and more, and either every one was perfectly fitted to the timing set by the ship’s motion, or else Blood Wave herself now danced to the minstrel’s beat.
Glory! It soared, it floated in the warm sky like a flight of rainbows. It lifted the heart or wrung it as he chose. Murderous brutes those jotnar certainly were, but at times Rap could see tears in their eyes, while he himself was tormented by thoughts of Inos and could not help but weep. Then Jalon would switch to some rousing warrior song. Rap’s heart would pound, his spirit surge, and he was ready to storm Zark single-handed. At those times the jotnar were roaring, waving battle-axes and eager to waste the entire Impire.
“God of Madness!” Gathmor whispered during a brief pause. “Who is he and where did he come from and how does he do that?” But then the mystery came again, and everyone hushed to listen. Kalkor kept Jalon at it for hours, while Blood Wave rushed over the ever-rolling waves in search of land.
As each song ended, harsh jotunn voices called out the names of others, and there were very few that Jalon did not know or could not sing; his repertoire was enormous. But even he had his limits, and eventually his voice began to falter. To say that Kalkor took pity on him would have been an absurdity, but at last he acknowledged human frailty and sent the minstrel off with Vurjuk to eat and drink and rest. The other jotnar began to talk fiercely among themselves, discussing what they had just heard.
Gathmor was asleep. Rap was hungry, but the sailors were eating and he felt it wiser to wait awhile than dare to interrupt. Instead he gave some more thought to his own troubles and prospects.
To start with, where exactly was the ship? The storm could have moved it an immense distance; he had no experience to guess how far. Direction he always knew fairly well, a talent that seemed to be part of his farsight, and in any case he could always read the helmsman’s binnacle. After his first two or three days aboard, though, his attention had been distracted by weakness and pain and he had stopped caring. The wind had first carried Blood Wave southward, then northeast, but she had not piled up against the coasts of either Kith or Sysanasso. One or other likely lay ahead, then, for the helmsman was holding the most northerly course he could manage in a southwesterly, and although she, too, bore only a single square sail, this was a much more weatherly vessel than the top-heavy Stormdancer.
And if Blood Wave had not gone westward, then Gathmor was in terrible danger, because he was no longer needed as a pilot for the Nogids. Kalkor could find another of those anytime.
All Pandemia lay somewhere to the north. If Blood Wave passed west of Sysanasso, she would enter the Dragon Sea, rife with commerce and good pickings for a merciless raider. Alternatively, east of the big island lay Ilrane and elves or Kerith and merfolk, areas Rap had never studied. Farther east still was Zark, although one storm could not possibly move a ship that far.
Which brought his thoughts back again to Inos.
How ironic that a callous killer and rapist like Kalkor should have seen what Rap himself had never before realized. He was in love with his queen! How blind could a man be?
Or how crazy? A stableboy falling in love with a princess—the very idea had been stupid beyond dreams, too stupid even to contemplate. It still was.
And so what? She still deserved his loyalty as a subject. That loyalty should be even stronger if he loved her.
She did not return his love. How could she? A very lowly factor’s clerk . . . not even that now, only a vagabond with a knack for horses and a smattering of sailoring skills. On that mad night when her father died, Inos had been courteous and kindly to her childhood friend, as she would always be. She had thanked him for his help. She had not flinched before his occult abilities, because she was a sophisticated, educated lady, not one of the ignorant, superstitious rustics of Krasnegar. Like him.