“Rest easy,” Adrian said, clambering between them into the stern of the boat and carrying the big net of clay jars with him; that tilted its prow up, nearly out of the water. “All right—fast as you can!”
“Row!” Simun called softly to his nephew. “Fast now, boy, stretch out—rapppiipai! Rapppippipai!”
The two men leaned into their oars, rising and falling with breathy grunts of effort. Adrian waited, poised, while the towers loomed on either side like the gates of the land of the Shades—only the giant three-headed hound was lacking, and there were watchdogs enough in the towers, and in the camp behind. I am insane, went through him. This has all been a delusion, and I’m completely fucking insane—
Center’s vision showed him the floating barrier of logs ahead. He waited; then the boat’s keel ground on the rough wood with an ugly crackling, crunching sound.
“Forward!” he called, and leapt into the bows, using the shock of impact to power his jump.
The two at the oars followed him, and the stern came out of the water. The boat teetered, wavered . . . and then slid forward with a splash that sounded to Adrian’s ears like the launching of a quinquereme down a slipway, with a flute and drum corps in accompaniment. Even his own breathing was like a bellows, and he slowed it with an effort of will, hissing the others to silence. The boat drifted, the oars loose on the thongs that secured them to the muffled oarlocks. Simun scrambled back on his hands and knees, swearing softly and checking the bottom of the boat with his fingers for the welling leaks that might show a cracked strake.
Nothing; no shouts, no blazing lights. The towers were looking for bigger fish . . . if they were looking at all, and not just dozing. Adrian sat for a moment controlling his breathing, feeling the slowing of a heart whose pounding shook his chest.
“All right,” Simun said, his voice low and fierce. “We did it, sor!”
” ‘Well begun, half done; half done, not begun,’ ” Adrian said, quoting an old Emerald folk saying. The founder of the Grove had been fond of it, too; it was whispered that he’d been a stonecutter and the son of a peasant himself. “This way.”
The artificial harbor was as rectangular as men could make it, in the Confed style. They hadn’t straightened the beach at the inner end, though; that was a half-moon, turning the whole affair into a U-shape. The low irregular line of the rock-filled ships loomed on either side, five hundred feet apart, with waves breaking on the outer sides and throwing a little white foam over the bulwarks. This arrangement would never survive a series of winter gales, but it only needed to last as long as the siege of Preble . . . and there at the base of the U were the ships.
Center’s lightening of the darkness intensified; Adrian felt as if an invisible line were being wound tighter and tighter around his forehead. Then it eased, and a strobing arrow marked their course.
the four captured quinqueremes, Center pointed out.
Adrian looked up. “It’s after midnight,” he said. “Nobody’ll be around.”
“Deck watches, sor,” Simun pointed out, nodding towards a dim lantern on the stern of one of the Confed vessels.
“But nobody on the captured ships, not yet. Take us in, but keep as near the middle as you can; beach her right next to the left-hand quinquereme of those four. When these”—he tapped the clay jugs—”start going off, things are likely to get a bit hairy, so be ready to push off when I get back.”
“Bit hairy, sor.” Simun chuckled softly. “Take yor time, but by Gellerix’ cunt, don’t linger, eh?”
The oars bit, and Adrian—slowly, cautiously—loaded one of the jugs into his staff-sling. The jugs held a mixture of fish oil, sulfur, naphtha oil that oozed out of rocks, and quicklime. Experiment had shown they’d burn like the heart of a forge fire and couldn’t be put out. They were also fairly fragile.
“Coming up on the shore,” he said. The darkness grew more absolute, as they ghosted into the shade of the captured quinquereme; it had the faint sewer stench a rowing vessel always did, even if the bilges were pumped regularly. “Lay on your oars.”