There were small adventures to be enjoyed during those eightodd weeks of travel between islands, as well. One day, a huge pod of whales came into view below the airship, traveling west in pursuit of the setting sun. They breached and sounded with spouts of water and slaps of tails and fins, great sea vessels riding the waves with joy and abandon, complete within themselves. The Highlander and the Elf peered down at them, tracking their progress, reminded of the smallness of their own world, envious of the freedom these giants enjoyed. On another day, hundreds of dolphins appeared, leaping and diving in rhythmic cadence, small glimmers of brightness in the deep blue sea. There were migrating schools of bilifish at times, some with sails, some brightly colored, all sleek and swift. There were giant squids with thirty-foot tentacles, as well, who swam like feathered arrows, and dangerous looking predators with fins that cut the water like knives.
Now and again something aboard ship would break down, and what was required to complete repairs could not be found. Sometimes supplies ran low. In both instances, the Wing Riders were pressed into service. While the third rider remained with the airship, the other two would explore the surrounding islands to forage for what was needed. Twice, Bek was allowed to accompany them, both times when they went in search of fresh water, fruit, and vegetables to supplement the ship’s dietary staples. Once he rode with Hunter Predd aboard his Roc, Obsidian, and once with a rider named Gill aboard Tashin. Each time, the experience was exhilarating. There was a freedom to flying the Rocs that was absent even on an airship. The great birds were much quicker and smoother, their responses swifter, and the feeling of riding something alive and warm far different from riding something built of wood and metal.
The Wing Riders were a fiercely independent bunch and kept apart from everyone. When Bek screwed up his courage to ask the taciturn Hunter Predd about it, the Wing Rider explained patiently that life as a Wing Rider necessitated believing you were different. It had to do with the time you spent flying and the freedom you embraced when you gave up the safeties and securities others relied upon living on the ground. Wing Riders needed to view themselves as independent in order to function. They needed to be unfettered and unencumbered by connections of any kind, save to their Rocs and to their own people.
Bek wasn’t sure that much of it wasn’t just a superior attitude fostered by the freedom that flying the Rocs engendered in Wing Riders. But he liked Hunter Predd and Gill, and he didn’t see that there was anything to be gained by questioning their thinking. If he were a Wing Rider, he told himself, he would probably think the same way.
When Bek told Ahren of his conversation with Hunter Predd, the Elf Prince laughed. “Everyone aboard this ship thinks their way of life is best, but most keep their opinions to themselves. The reason the Wing Riders are so free with theirs is that they can always jump on their Rocs and fly off if they don’t like what they hear back!”
But there were few conflicts in the weeks that passed after their departure from Flay Creech, and eventually everyone settled into a comfortable routine and developed a complacency with life aboard ship. It wasn’t until one of the Wing Riders finally sighted the island of Shatterstone that everything began to change.
It was the Wing Rider, Gill, patrolling in the late afternoon on Tashin, who sighted Shatterstone first. The expedition had been looking for it for several days, alerted by Redden Alt Mer, who had taken the appropriate readings and made the necessary calculations. An earlier sighting of a group of three small islands laid out in a line corresponded to landmarks drawn on the map and confirmed that the island they sought was close.
Walker was standing with the Rover Captain in the pilot box behind Furl Hawken, who was in command of the helm that afternoon, discussing whether they needed to correct their course at sunrise on the following day, when Gill appeared with the news. All activity stopped as the ship’s company hurried to the rails, and Big Red swung the Jerle Shannara hard to the left to follow the Wing Rider’s lead.