“Captain!” said Strongrip with a sharp reproof. “We have to live until the summer first!”
“Agreed, agreed,” the captain sighed, and raised his spyglass to search for weed among the random floes.
They returned with not only weed but plumpfish, for Tempestamer sensed a school of them and patiently circled until they had to approach the surface again where she and her companions could feed and nets haul up what was left. The other captains were loud in admiration, and Skilluck seized his chance to exact a pledge: were spring to be delayed, were the fields to lie under frost a moonlong past usual, they would take aboard whomever of the Wego wished to come and head south, following Tempestamer.
Hearing the vow taken, Wellearn almost collapsed from relief.
“Captain, we’re saved!” he whispered.
“Didn’t I tell you? A few score days of hunger and cold, and then a mawful of good food … But we aren’t on course yet. So many of us are too lost in dreamness to work out what’s best for our salvation.”
For at least a while, though, it seemed Welleam’s prediction was assured of fulfillment. Revived by the gift of fish, half the Wego came to watch the next departure of the fleet—and help carve up the carcass of a briq that had died at her moorings, a tragedy for her captain but valuable food to the folk—and among them were Knowelkin and Grandirection, who had composed their quarrel. They made shift to chant a star-blessing on the departing briqs, and the crowd settled into familiar responses even though a few budlings, too young to have seen a clear sky, were heard to ask fretfully what stars might be.
Two calm days followed, and the nets were quickly filled, suggesting that warm water was working up from the south in earnest of springtime and bringing bounty with it.
But on the fleet’s last night before returning home a fiery prong stabbed out of heaven and exploded on a berg, raising a wall of water high enough to swamp the smallest briq. There was a thunderclap, followed by a cascade of ice-chips, but this was not hail and that had not been lightning.
Tempestamer gave forth a cry such as no tame briq had ever been heard to utter, and for hours ran out of control, seeking the lost young’un. Although Skilluck finally mastered her again, and set course for Ushere well before dawn, it was obvious that some captains were regretting their pledge. After all, if despite the chaplains’ blessing the sky signaled its enmity, what hope was there of carrying out Skilluck’s plan?
“That was an omen!” was his retort. “If we don’t move south, that’s what we can look forward to more of! Wellearn, do the skies hurl such missiles at Hearthome?”
“Not that I was ever told!” Wellearn asserted.
“But you said the stars look down on Hearthome more than us! Maybe we should stay here, cowering under cloud!”
Wellearn was taken aback until he saw what Skilluck was steering towards. Then he roared, “Safe? Did that prong strike from clear air? More likely the stars are warning us to move where we can see them and be seen, instead of hiding from them all the tune!” The force of his logic told to some extent, but what counted most was that their weather-sense had given no warning of that blow from heaven. Had it been a lightning-strike, it would have been preceded by a sense of uncomfortable tightness and uncertainty. As things were, the discomfort had succeeded the impact. The sensation was weirdly disturbing.
Shortly thereafter the chaplains, whose duties included keeping track of the calendar, marked the usual date of spring. Weather-sense contradicted that, too. Traces of a thaw did occur; many beaches were cleared of ice as warm water washed against them. But uplands to the north which ordinarily caught the early sun-heat remained capped with snow, and even in low-lying valleys there were places where the drifts endured. As for the ground where new crops should be planted, it was stiff as stone a moonlong later.
“I hold you to your vow,” Skilluck said when that day dawned, and the other captains shuffled their pads noisily. “But for me, would your briqs be even as healthy as they are?”