nervously shifted hatchets and cutlasses from hand to hand.
Only Captain Graff and Sargo, the aged helmsman, were
calm.
“Sergeant, my mother wishes to speak to you,” Sturm
said.
“I honor your noble mother, but I regret I cannot leave
the deck just now,” Soren said. “The enemy, it enemy they
be, is near.”
“Where? Where?”
“Treading on our heels.”
Sturm strained to see. The oars pounded ceaselessly. …
“Ship on the port stem!” sang out a man in the rigging.
Out of the white murk came a massive object wrought in
bronze. To Sturm it looked like the head of a mace.
“The galley’s ram,” Soren told him.
“Hard a-starboard!” cried the captain. Sargo put the
tiller over, but the becalmed SKELTER scarcely noticed.
Graff ordered the helm kept over. He held the wind cord
aloft and undid the knot he’d worked so hard to loosen.
“Elementals of the air, I release you!” he exclaimed.
The sail snapped out with a crack, and the deck dropped
from under Sturm’s feet. SKELTER heeled sharply to
starboard just as the phantom galley charged through the
dead water where the roundship once plodded.
Wind freed from the cord sang in the rigging. “How
long will it last?” Soren asked the captain. Graff rubbed his
ears and shrugged, a confession of total ignorance.
SKELTER bounded over the waveless sea, tearing the
fog apart like rotted cheesecloth. The galley trailed them,
trying to draw nearer. Sturm held on the port rail, the wind
in his eyes, as the galley swept clear of the mist. The bronze
ram gave way to a black timber hull that cut the water in
spurts with each dip of the oars. The galley’s upperworks
were daubed blood red. Movement on the deck suggested
men behind the red planking, and a hedgehog of spears
bristled in the air. Below them, blending back into the fog,
were the oars, black with water, rising and falling in time
with a muffled drum.
“Keep back from the rail, lad,” the captain told Sturm.
“They may have archers.”
The boy forgot his mother’s request and stood with
Sergeant Soren on the port quarterdeck. The magic wind
pushed the roundship without falter for one notch of the
candle. At one notch and a half, the galley ran its oars in.
The SKELTER’S crew cheered. Sturm said, “Have we
bested them, Captain?”
“Not yet, lad, not yet.”
Sturm saw dark triangles billow from the galley’s masts.
Their pursuers were taking to sail, using SKELTER’S own
wind to keep up with them.
The sun burned a hole in the clouds. Details of the black
galley stood out at once. A pennant whipped from the
foremast. Sargo squinted his good eye at it.
“That be no pirate,” he said. “That be a ship of Kernaf.”
“Who is Kernaf?” asked Sturm.
” ‘What’ be more like it – the isle of Kernaf. That’s a
ship of their navy,” Graff said.
As Sturm watched, the magic wind diminished, and the
SKELTER slowed. The galley wallowed in the press of sail
and drew along their port side.
“Hail, ship of Kernaf!” Graff shouted through his hands.
“What would ye want with us?”
“Heave to! We mean to board!” was the reply. Sturm
could see men massing on the forecastle.
“We’re a free trader out of Solamnia. What business
have ye with us?” bawled Graff.
“You are sailing in waters claimed by our great Sea
Lord,” the Kernaf spokesman said. “Heave to, or we’ll take
you by force.”
Oars sprouted from the galley’s sides like legs on a
centipede. “Go, young lord. Go to your mother,” said Soren.
He plucked a dagger two spans long from his belt. “You
must defend her when all else is lost.”
Sturm accepted the iron blade. It was heavy and keen,
and in the guardsman’s hand it could easily pierce a single
thickness of mail. Sturm darted across the deck to the hide
enclosure. Mistress Carin and Lady Ilys stood together by
the starboard bulwark, amid the wine casks and clay pots of
oil.
“Mother, I am here to defend you!” he said, brandishing
the dagger.
“Come here,” she said. She gathered Sturm in her arms
and hugged him tightly. “My brave boy,” she said. “Carin