Only Rap noticed as Andor and Sagorn alternated in the darkness. The wily old scholar had contributed no more ideas.
The channel twisted to the right. It was much wider than it had looked on the chart. At first Stormdancer showed a dangerous desire to drift ashore in the crosswind, and Rap had to learn that he must make the crew row the ship this way, to make the scenery move at an angle that way. He held the chart in his hand, still rolled, slowly turning it to keep the picture the right way up. Then another bend brought calmer air and the ship began to behave more like a horse would.
His head drooped, his knees quivered. He forced himself to straighten up. This was much easier than driving a wagon down the hill in Krasnegar, but it was not easy enough to do in his sleep.
“There’s a village over there!” The chart was correct so far. He wasn’t sure that Gathmor could even see him pointing. There were no stars. The night was about as black as night could be.
“Ssh! Sound travels over water.”
“Aye, sir,” Rap said quietly. “We’re getting too close this side, sir.” The high walls of the valley had muffled the storm that would be battering the open sea by now, but ripples ahead must mean wind.
The mate leaned on the steering oar. “Current. You’re doing great, lad.”
“This can’t be easy for you,” Rap said, with sudden insight. ”Easy? Easy?” The jotunn’s whisper was bitter. “Steering my ship in the dark through the Nogids with a landlubber mongrel pup as pilot? I d rather pull out my toenails. I mean that. Every nail. Slowly.”
“I’m sure you would, sir. A little bit to the left, sir.” Gathmor shuddered and muttered, “Two points to port.” He leaned on the oar.
The old captain had stretched out at Rap’s feet, too weak to stand longer. He was either asleep or unconscious.
The silent progress was uncanny. Even within the ship, there was hardly a sound from the rowers. Perhaps these men had experience in sneaking around in the dark in boats, but it would be unwise to ask. They did not even have the coxswain piping the stroke for them. Likely they could hear the drumbeat in Rap’s head-it felt loud enough to waken the anthropophagi.
Waves splashed on the shore, and the wind stirred trees on the higher slopes, but that was all. Stormdancer was going to pass very close to the village. A dog started to bark, and Rap quieted it—all part of the service. A man coughed on the shore. Nothing Rap could do about coughs. He wished he could cure headaches, though. His.
And his farsight was starting to play tricks, surely? “How much water does the ship need, sir?”
“Draft? About half a fathom is all.”
“Oh!” Incredible-a fathom was a span. “That’s all right then. ”
Gathmor groaned. “You can see through water, too?”
“Aye, sir. At least two fathoms here.”
Water . . . drinking water . . . fresh water . . . Gods be with us . . .
“Where are we, lad?” Nerves crackled in the mate’s voice. ”Just rounding Uzinip.”
A moment later Stormdancer began to move uneasily in a stronger swell. Surf boomed somewhere ahead, and she came sweeping out of the narrow pass, turning the corner at an angle Rap had not expected, borne by the current into a strait whose far side he could not sense—it might be Zark, for all he knew.
And there were lights on the shore nearby, fires.
“That’s it!” Gathmor said. “The fort!” He took a deep breath to yell his triumph, and Rap clapped a hand over his mouth just in time.
5
The crew rowed gently, holding the ship against the gusting breeze. Dead ahead, on a narrow meadow between hillside and beach, were the remains of Fort Emshandar. Dead ahead.
Rap had described the scene, but the sailors could make out most of it themselves. The great bonfires on the sand showed the dancing anthropophagi, while sounds of drums and chanting drifted over the waves, as did the rank odors from the smoking ruins of the stockade, and a stronger, stomach-churning scent of roast meat from the celebration. Large things were being cooked on spits.
“Can you see the water?” Gathmor asked grimly. He was keeping his voice low, but the wind would carry sound out to sea anyway.
“I think so, sir. In the ruins. A well, with a windlass. There’s men there. No, they’re women.” Rap thought he could hear the windlass creaking, but that might be the turnspits on the beach.
“Doesn’t matter.” The mate thumped his fist on the rail in baffled fury. There were hundreds of the anthropophagi, and the jotnar were in no shape to fight anyway, whatever the odds.
Sagorn had been watching and listening, heedless that he might be noticed in the flicker of the bonfires. Now he became Andor again. “We must not linger. That fort must have had occult defenses. It would not have lasted a week in the Nogids without them.”
“So?” Gathmor snarled. The other passengers had been sent to their cabins long ago. Anyone but Andor would have been.
“So the anthropophagi must have sorcerers of their own. They will have farsight, too.”
The jotunn grunted agreement. “We’re dead without water.” Like them all, he was having trouble speaking. They were all shivering and staggering. The rowers would fail soon.
“There’s a streambed,” Rap croaked miserably. “Farther up the hill.” Of course. That was why the fort had been built on this spot, and why its well had found water.
“There’s a thousand cannibals between us and it.”
“I can see in the dark, sir. But I can’t swim.” Again the brutal hand thumped Rap’s shoulder. “Who can, with a bucket of water? The Gods sent you, lad. Do it, and you’re a free man.”
Rap did not reply. If he didn’t do it, he would be a dead one.
Stormdancer carried no dinghy and needed no fancy docks. Rap piloted her back along her previous course until the fires were out of sight. Farther would be safer, but the rowers could barely make way against the current being sent through the channel by the storm, and Rap was too weak to walk very far. One final spurt drove the bow up on the beach, and the men collapsed on top of their weaker companions. Without fresh water to revive them, they likely could not even push her off again.
The mate scrambled over the rail with a rope. Rap followed, clutching two buckets. The drop was not far, but he fell in a heap, struggling and spluttering in thigh-deep water. He swallowed a fair bit without meaning to, yet it felt good. The sailors had told him stories about seawater driving men mad, but perhaps a little wouldn’t hurt in the short run, and there might not be any long run to worry about. The anthropophagi would not need to add salt to their Rap stew, that was all.
“Gods, it’s dark!” Gathmor had blundered into a rock and was now tying the rope around it. “If I let go this cable I couldn’t find the damn ship again. You still there?”
“Aye, sir.”
“I’d come with you if I thought I could do a damn bit of good.”
“I’m sure you would, sir.”
“I’ll try, if you want. If you hold my hand.” The mate was suffering an attack of fallibility. Perhaps he had never before in his life had to admit that another man was better than he was at anything, and that must be hurting his jotunnish pride.
Rap said something reassuring as he staggered away across the sand. He was the seeing man in the land of the blind, but he kept remembering the warning that Sagorn had passed along by way of Andor’s voice and memory—the anthropophagi might very well have sorcerers of their own.
They must have! The Nogids lay like a barricade across the road home from Faerie. Certainly Rap was not the first occult genius to be shipwrecked here. Adepts and even mages . . . not all would have died without telling their words of power. There might be many seeing men in this land of the blind.
Moreover—and the sudden insight felt more like a flicker of delirium than any sort of sane logic—down the centuries the Impire had launched dozens of campaigns to conquer the Nogids; so the sailors had told him. But the imps had never achieved more than a scattering of strongpoints, little forts like Emshandar, to succor the naval traffic. They were perpetually under seige, he had been told. Sooner or later they all got taken and sacked. Tonight was a case in point.
The legions’ opponents, therefore, had not been mobs of primitive savages but the wardens of the west. The Nogids must lie in Zinixo’s sector. They were a quarantine, a barrier defending Faerie itself from being overrun by the masses of the Impire. The Protocol kept East’s legions at bay, and likely North’s raiders, also. No occult defense the Impire put on its forts would last long when the warden of the west decided to clean house.