Dawn saw them sneaking out of the Hold, carrying their sailing gear and running, hand in hand, down to the wharf where the sloop was awaiting them. They could see bundles of sleeping folk
sprawled across chairs or tables, and some under as well. Banners flapped lightly over the few booths still left in the Gather square.
As they were stowing their gear, laughing, whispering and evading any notice, Robinton glanced up at the Hold heights. No dragon was indolently sprawled there.
Robinton couldn’t remember if he’d said goodbye to his mother.
He thought he must have, for he knew he had remembered to express his gratitude to Kasia’s parents.
While Kasia went aft to take her place at the tiller, he untied the painter as Captain Gostol had shown him, jumped lightly to the bow and pushed the sloop away from the thick piles. Then he went to hoist the sail, which immediately began to fill. Kasia trimmed the sheet until the sail was nicely taut against the wind, and he made his way astern to sit beside her in the cockpit.
A fishman, coming up from the cabin of a larger ship, waved lazily at them as they made their way across the wide harbour and out into Tillek waters. He was the last person they saw for eight days and nights.
Their world became the sloop and the water and the sky which, for the first three days, was brilliantly blue as only autumnal skies could be in that latitude. Not that it mattered to them what the weather was like: they were with each other. Among other things, they both loved freshly caught and instantly fried fish. Sometimes Robinton caught while Kasia cooked; other times she did the fishing and he the frying.
Then the weather deteriorated and, in the teeth of a gale which came up with ferocious speed, Kasia yelled for him to lower the sail and tie it tightly and secure the boom. Finishing with that task despite the lashing rain and the mounting seas, he went below and got out their bad-weather gear, dressing quickly in his so that he could hold the tiller while she put hers on. When he came on deck again, he dropped his load and rushed to help her with the tiller. It was some time before she could release it and don her bad-weather gear, her face pinched with the cold of the rain which battered at them as they dipped and rose with the high seas. The waves broke over them time and again and at Kasia’s bawled order, Robinton managed to reach a long arm for the bailing bucket.
More water poured in to take the place of what he had thrown overboard but he kept bailing with one hand while with the other
he assisted her hold on the tiller. The little sloop rode to the frothy height of immense waves and then slammed down into the troughs, shaking them to the bones. He knew his teeth were chattering with the cold and could see through the driving rain that she had her jaw clamped shut, lips pulled back, giving the appearance of snarling into the storm. She lay half across the tiller, fighting to keep the sloop’s bow headed into the waves. He knew without her having to tell him that one broadside would capsize the ship and spill them into the cold, cold sea. They didn’t seem to have much chance of surviving this storm; they’d certainly be better off if they could remain in the ship and afloat.
Somehow, sometime, when the lowering skies had lightened, the wind dropped and the pressure on the rudder eased. They flopped limply across each other and the tiller bar, gasping in the air.
“Quickly,” she said, pointing at the mast. “We’re in the eye of this storm and must take advantage of that. Hoist the sail halfway up the mast. There’s the coastline, and we should find somewhere to shelter for the rest of the storm. There’s got to be a cove, an inlet, somewhere to anchor.”
Her urgency lent him the burst of energy to do as she bid. Then he helped her hold even that little bit of sail against the force of the wind and keep the rudder headed towards the black bulk ahead of them.