“Do ye think it’s for the wind cord?” asked the mate.
Sturm was fascinated by the brass tooth in the front of the
man’s mouth.
“Nay, ’tis not the time. This cursed mist may rise soon,
and the natural wind will spring up,” said Graff.
Sturm asked Soren what the mate meant by ‘wind cord.’
“Magic,” he said. “Mariners often buy wind from seaside
warlocks. They keep the wind bound in knots of magical
cord. When the ship’s master needs a breeze, he unknots as
much of a blow as he dares.”
“Is there much magic on the sea?” Sturm asked, wide-
eyed.
Soren wiped mist from his helmet brim before it could
drip off. “Far too much to suit me, young lord. This fog
seems too clinging to be nature’s work.”
Midday was no brighter than dawn. The sea flattened
out like the puddled wax around Sturm’s study candle in
Castle Brightblade. The lapping waves fell silent, and the
sail stayed slack against the mast. Captain Graff emerged
from below deck with a length of rawhide two spans long.
Sturm peered through the sterncastle rail as the captain
crossed the waist and mounted the steps to the poop.
“Sargo,” he said to the helmsman. “I’m loosing a knot.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Graff put one end of the cord in his teeth. There were a
dozen knots along its length. The idea of a magic cord
intrigued and repelled Sturm at the same time. Such power
was forbidden to the knightly orders.
Graff picked at the first knot with his blunt fingernails.
In the stagnant air, each of his mutters was clear.
“Come loose, you son of a snake,” he said.
Soren moved suddenly off the rail to the sternpost. He
gazed into the fog. “Captain Graff,” he said calmly. The
master of the SKELTER cursed some more at the tough loop
in the cord. “Captain!” Soren barked, using the parade-
ground voice that Sturm had heard so often from the
training yard. The old seaman looked up.
“Don’t bother me, lad; I’m engaged,” he said.
“There’s a ship out there,” Soren said. “It’s coming toward
us.”
“What? Eh? Do ye have the second sight?”
“No, just two good ears. Listen!”
Graff put a hand to his ear. Sturm came up on Soren’s
left and listened, too.
There … a faint knocking sound . . . like two blocks of
wood slapping together.
“By the gods, yer right!” Graff said. “Those are oars
beating, or I’m a thieving kender!”
Idle sailors collected in the stern to hear the
approaching ship. Soren backed out of the press, drawing
Sturm with him.
“You must go and tell your mother what is happening,”
he said.
“What IS happening, Soren?”
“A galley, a ship rowed by many men, is close upon us.
I fear they mean us mischief.”
“Pirates?” asked the boy, half-fearful, half-delighted.
“Mayhap, or rogues of a darker stripe. Run to your
mother and tell her this.”
Sturm slipped down a stayrope, as he’d often seen the
sailors do, and dropped to the deck outside his mother’s
enclosure. He pulled back the flap. It was dim and smoky
inside, but he spied Mistress Carin tending a small fire in a
copper pan.
“Mother! Mother!” he called.
“What is it?” Lady Ilys said from the shadows.
“Sergeant Soren says a rowing ship is coming for us. It
may be pirates!”
Mistress Carin gasped. Lady Ilys’s face appeared out of
the darkness. She was very pale, and her expression was
grim.
“Why would pirates bother so small a ship as this?” she
asked.
“It’s so foggy, my lady, Paladine wouldn’t know us for
who we are,” Carin said.
“Sturm, fetch the sergeant to me. I want a soldier’s view
of the matter.” The boy bowed hastily to his mother and ran
out to find Soren.
The thump and swish of oars was clearer now, even to
Sturm’s young ears. The fog swallowed the sound,
dispersing it, making it hard to tell from what quarter the
galley approached. Definitely astern; that was certain.
“Sergeant! Sergeant!” Sturm shouted. He found the
guardsman on the poop deck, whetting the blade of his
broadsword. The SKELTER’S crew of lean, raffish seamen