While I was an oarsman on the Rurisk that summer; we had one other encounter with a Red-Ship that is worth telling for the strangeness of it. On a clear summer night, we had been tumbled from our beds in the crew shed and sent racing toward our ship. Verity had sensed a Red-Ship lurking off Buck Point.
He wanted us to overtake it in the dark.
Justin stood in our prow, Skill-linked to Serene in Verity’s tower. Verity was a wordless mumble in my mind as he felt our way through the dark toward the ship he sensed. And something else? I could feel him groping out, beyond the Red-Ship, like a man feeling forward in the darkness. I sensed his uneasiness. We were allowed no talk, and our oars were muffed as we came closer. Nighteyes whispered to me that he had scent of them, and then we spotted them. Long and low and dark, the Red-Ship was cutting through the water ahead of us. A sudden cry went up from their deck; they had seen us. Our master shouted to us to lay into our oars, but as we did, a sick wave of fear engulfed me. My heart began to hammer, my hands to tremble. The terror that swept through me was a child’s nameless fear of things lurking in the dark, a helpless fear. I gripped my oar but could find no strength to ply it.
“Korrikska,” I heard a man groan in a thick Outislander accent. I think it was Nonge. I became aware I was not the only one unmanned. There was no steady beat to our oars. Some sat on their sea chests, head bowed over their oars, while others rowed frantically, but out of rhythm, the blades of the oars skipping and slapping against the water. We skittered on the surface like a crippled skater bug while the Red-Ship forged purposefully toward us. I lifted up my eyes and watched my death coming for me. The blood hammered so in my ears that I could not hear the cries of the panic-stricken men and women about me. I could not even take. a breath. I lifted up my eyes to the heavens.