The sole consolation was that, undernourished and sickly as they were, none of the Wego any longer had the energy for fighting. But that meant, of course, they would have none to prepare for a mass exodus when the weather broke, either.
“Why did we come home?” Wellearn mourned more than once. But Skilluck strictly reprimanded him.
“We had no way of knowing how bad this winter was to be! Nor would we have felt easy in our minds had we abandoned our folk to face it without help!”
“At least we needn’t have found out until next summer,” Sharprong grumbled.
“By which time our kindred and our young’uns could have been dead! As things are, we stand some slender hope of keeping a clawful of the folk alive.”
“Slender…” Strongrip muttered, gazing at the drifts which blizzard after day-long blizzard had piled against the bravetrees. Many upper branches and almost all their fronds had frozen so hard the wind could snap them off, and every gust was greeted with their brittle tinkling.
“Next time we take Tempestamer to sea we’ll hang a net while she feeds,” Skilluck sighed. “Even a load of sour weed could save another briq or two.”
“Captain, you can’t keep our fleet in being singleclawed!” Strongrip began. Skilluck silenced him with a glare.
“Name me another captain who’s fit enough to help?”
There was a dismal pause. At length Wellearn ventured, “Maybe Toughide?”
“One might well try him, sure. Wait on him and ask if he will join us. If he won’t, I’ll still do what I can to feed his briq, or anyone’s!” Skilluck stamped his pad. “How many summers to catch and pith and train the briqs we need to replace Stormock and Billowise and the rest? For all we know, there may not be another summer!”
So it was done, and Toughide goaded his weak and weary Watereign forth in Tempestamer’s wake the next clear day, and though she was less elegantly pithed, a lucky mawful of fish revived her and he was able to make it back to shore with a mass of weed caught on curved prongs, lacking nets such as Skilluck had preserved.
When it was noised abroad that those briqs too feeble to risk the winter ocean were nonetheless receiving fodder, a few score folk made their way to the wharf and watched the spectacle in silence. It was unprecedented. Never in history had any captain of the Wego acted to aid his rivals; rather, he should frustrate them so they would not win the wise’uns’ prize.
It was a new strange thing. The onlookers dispersed and reported it. Next time the weather cleared not two but seven briqs put out: Riskall came, and Catchordes, and Shrewdesign’s Neverest, and two more so young their captains had not named them, which seemed barely strong enough to quit the harbor.
Towards these last Tempestamer behaved most strangely, for she slowed her pace instead of exulting in the water, and kept them in her lee as though they were of her own budding. By now Wellearn was informed concerning the manner of pithing and breaking a briq, and therefore he exclaimed in amazement.
“Captain, had I known when I first joined your crew that you’d left Tempestamer with those nerves intact…!”
He left the rest unsaid. There was no need to explain he meant the nerves governing a briq’s response to briqlings. It was generally held to be a recipe for disaster to do as Skilluck had done, for such a briq might fall in with a wild herd and become ungovernable.
Dryly Skilluck made reply, “Most likely my Tempestamer would cut younglings out of the herd without orders and drive them home with her! It’s something I’ve always wanted to try. Is she not huger, even now, than any wild’un?”
It was true. There was no record, not even any legend, of a briq’s surpassing her, and she was still growing despite the dreadful winter.
“We’ll find a wild herd off the coast near Hearthome,” said Skilluck dreamily. “We’ll let her pick the young’uns she personally likes. We’ll raise such a fleet as will conquer any ocean, any season. Before my time expires, I hope to see the Wego travel round the globe!”