Dragonlance Tales, Vol. 3 – Love and War

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

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