By Blood Betrayed (The Kingsblood Chronicles) (42 page)

Lian wondered about the precaution, but he imagined that a cable-tied ship was a good victim for a fast, rowed pirate ship. Cedrick ordered Lian, Kess, and Snog to stand ready at their weapons, but remarked that he didn’t really expect trouble leaving Mola.

The mercenary company was lounging around the deck, though they were quick to move out of the sailors’ way. Despite the warship’s run of bad luck, morale was high, and the entire crew seemed glad to be putting out to sea again, with one exception.

Snog stood hugging the railing, his usual greyish skin now slightly red. Lian assumed that the reddish tinge was analogous to the green color that humans displayed when they were nauseous. From his post in the foredeck, he could see that the goblin would be useless if they came under attack.

“Kess,” he said, getting the other engineer’s attention.

“Aye, sir?” asked the sailor, sparing Snog a pitying glance.

“Relieve Snog and send him forward with his loader. Don’t leave the stern weapon unmanned,” he ordered. He decided that the chaser was the least important weapon on their current heading, and it was better to have the least experienced member of their team manning it.

“Aye, aye, sir!” Kess said, pleased to be manning a station alone.

Cedrick, standing at the helm, met Lian’s eyes across the center of the ship. Noting Kess’ progress along the railing, he shouted to the lookout in the crow’s nest, “Any sightings?”

“One small skiff nor’west, no other movement!” the sailor yelled back down.

“What’s his bearing?”

“Looks like he’s makin’ Mola-port, Captain!” came the report. Cedrick nodded and instructed the lookout to keep a sharp eye out.

By this time, Kess reached the ballista emplacement and relayed Lian’s orders. Snog’s loader patiently waited until the goblin had finished his current bout of seasickness before he helped him to his feet and led him forward. The goblin gave managed a few weak curses in Govlikel, as he staggered his way to stand next to Lian.

“I’m sorry, milord,” he said, true anguish on his face. “I didn’t know it’d be this bad.”

“Don’t worry about it, my friend,” Lian said, tapping him gently on the shoulder. “Man your station and hope it gets better.”

The red-faced goblin nodded weakly, gingerly sitting down on the bolt-thrower’s mounting. A pair of sailors delivered the stand which the ship’s carpenter had constructed for Snog to stand on while he fired his thrower. Snog’s loader, who went by the name of Smiles, went about the business of lashing it to the weapon’s mount.

“My thanks,” Lian said to the men who brought it.

“Aye, sir,” the larger said, offering his hand. “Bosun’s mate Doval, sir, at your service. This here’s my pal Alo. He speaks
Aesidhe
, but not much Dunshor, sir.”

Lian shook Doval’s hand, returning firm pressure with his own. In
Aesidhe
, he said, “Good to meet you, Alo,” shaking the second man’s hand as well.

Alo returned the greeting in heavily accented
Aesidhe
, adding something in a language Lian did not recognize. “Alo says he hopes yer friend gets to feelin’ better, Alan, sir. The other two boggles suffered like that fer a week a’fore they got their sea legs, sir.

“Forgive my askin’, sir, but ye’ve been aboard a ship before?” Doval asked, producing a stick of sugared cinnamon and proceeding to chew on it. Snog caught a whiff of the spice and moaned, retching over the side again.

Lian nodded. “A few times. Enough that this chop won’t make me puke, but I haven’t really been in rough water yet.” His experience was fleeting, indeed. A few short runs aboard Fendar Port warships was all the practice he’d had, and that was on very calm seas thanks to his mother’s magic.

“Lots of remedies, Alan, sir,” Doval said. “But I’d see Reidar if it’s bad like the boggle. He’s got some nasty stuff that if ye can keep it down, ye’ll feel the better for it. Don’ know if it’d kill yer companion, though.”

The bosun’s mate had positioned himself where he could watch Cedrick and the first mate, who Lian hadn’t yet met. At some signal from one of them, he leapt onto the railing and began bellowing orders to raise the sails.

Simultaneously, the four men turning the capstan stopped. They pulled their staves out of the channels and when the tension on the cable let up, used them to pry it out of the grooves. Calling out, “Stand clear!” they released it in unison. The cable immediately slipped off of the end of the ship, and Lian noted that he’d best stay away from the area when it was being cut loose, for it had enough force to easily sweep a man overboard.

The stiff breeze began to push the ship east, but they were drifting toward the barely submerged sand bars which had been of such concern to the
Golden Gull
. The forward sails, which Lian heard referred to as the jib, ran from the second spar, called the jib boom, to the foremast. The top two of these three sails were raised quickly, and they snapped taut.
Searcher
heeled over to port, and her rudder began to establish control, turning them eastward and shoreward away from the sandbars.

The bosun’s mate, at a further command from the captain, began to oversee rigging of the topsails of the two main masts, and the
Searcher
began to pick up speed. As she did so, the helm became more responsive, and the ship began to cut a straight course between the bar and the land.

In comparison, the
Golden Gull’s
painstaking process of navigating the channel was primitive and clumsy.
Searcher
was a graceful ship whose movement was powerful and sure, not at all like the galleon’s wallowing progress through the strait.

As the ship exited the mouth of Mola’s harbor, the heads of dozens of lizard folk popped out of the water. Raising their arms, they waved energetically. It seemed as if they were inviting the ship to come back to Mola.

Alo’s grasp of Dunshor was sufficient to give sail trimming orders, and Doval left him in charge of setting the mainsails. “Excitin’, ain’t it, sir?” Doval said, joining Lian at the railing.

“Yes, Doval, it is,” Lian replied. “That was amazing.” The statement was as much a complement to Doval’s sense of timing as to the engineering of the ship itself.

Doval accepted the implied compliment and smiled. “Well, Alan, sir, I’ll hope you remember that if Cedrick asks you for yer opinion on my skills. I’m hopin’ to be chief bosun, now that my old boss is gone. Ye heard ‘bout the seaweed thing what got about twenty of us?” he said, obviously disappointed when Lian nodded that he had. Sailors loved to tell tales.

“Well, it would’a had me, instead, if I hadn’t been down with fever,” he said, “so fer me, ‘twas lucky that Talus bought his lot, back in that pirates’ hellhole.” He looked contrite, and said, “Mind ye don’t talk about him that way yerself, sir. Talus was a good sort.”

“Don’t worry about it, Doval,” Lian replied. “I caught your meaning.”

“Thankee, sir,” he said, falling silent to watch the waves and coastline for a while. Turning back to Lian, he said, “Truth, sir, I be glad to put that vampire-infested place behind us. I didn’t see one, but I knowed that there was some of them Companions out there in the wood a’watchin’ us.”

“You know that for a fact, or just assuming?” Lian asked curiously, making a small sign of warding against evil. He didn’t believe that the Companions were evil, necessarily, but it would have been out of character not to appear uncomfortable at the mention of the ancient guardians and lords of Greythorn.

“Well, it makes sense, sir,” Doval said. However, the rest of his explanation was interrupted by the lookout’s yell of “Sail ho!”

 Doval quickly moved back to his post at the foredeck railing, and the crew was suddenly more alert. To Lian’s eye, if the sails represented a pirate attack, it was obvious that the attackers hadn’t expected the
Searcher
to get out of dock that fast.
Golden Gull
, by this time, was barely out of the slip.

“Dunshor warships,” yelled the lookout. “Two of ‘em and closing on us! They’re flying Fendar colors!”

“Rig mains’il!” yelled Cedrick, and the bosun ordered the crews to raise the remaining sails.

Lian was not surprised to encounter some of Admiral Sevlin’s ships in the area. Mola was a major resupply point for Fendar, and the Dunshor navy made a point of ensuring that the port was patrolled and cleared of pirate vessels.

Cedrick ordered that the
Searcher’s
colors be raised, and the blue flag of the ship was unfurled on the topmast. The searching mermaid motif was displayed on their flag as well, along with crossed swords beneath her.

The crew apprehensively watched the approach of the two carracks, but as they passed the flagship merely raised signal flags wishing
Searcher
fair seas. Lian predicted that once news of Rishak’s coup reached the Admiralty at Fendar, the fleet would begin to search ships for him, but he hoped that hadn’t been implemented yet. Sevlin was a political appointee, and his loyalty would be to whoever held the throne of Dunshor.

Beyond the two warships, there was nothing but open sea, and once safely away from the shore, Doval trimmed the sails until they were traveling at a tremendous clip.
We must be moving at close to fifteen knots
, Lian marveled, mesmerized by the water and waves sluicing under the prow of the ship as if the boat were immersed in a rapidly moving river.

Turning to face the rapidly receding coastline, he bid farewell to the land of his birth.

But I will return
, he promised.
And then you had better watch out, Uncle
. Forcing back the array of emotions that the vow stirred, he reluctantly turned back to face the sea ahead of him.

Chapter Twenty Six

“Fool is he who names the gods.”

-- Rodan proverb

True to his word, Captain Cedrick began to tutor Lian in the rudiments of navigation. Cedrick and the strange little navigator, Ylen, spent the first two hours of second watch in the captain’s cabin with Lian, instructing the young mercenary. Lian discovered that ocean navigation was quite different from land navigation, for it wasn’t possible to record the distance traveled with landmarks. A single, minute miscalculation could cause the ship to stray hundreds of miles off its intended course, and that was if the weather remained favorable.

In addition, a
major
storm could propel a ship on the other side of the world or leave it broken into flinders, flung against a rocky coast.

Ylen, a short man with no discernible hair whatsoever, summed it up, “The gods have created a world where traveling from one place to another reliably is the highest challenge. Fireshowers in the southern seas, icebergs in these northern waters, sea trolls, dragons, Ashira’s
seemingly
random effect on compasses, riptides that can suck a ship into rocky straits with no warning, all of these obstacles are expected in the normal course of sailing. Gods help you if something
really
unfortunate occurs.”

Both Cedrick and Lian had superstitiously stomped their feet on the cabin floor when Ylen finished his pronouncement, for the navigator’s words sounded like a temptation fate would find difficult to ignore. Lian wondered if perhaps Ylen was the source of the ship’s bad luck. He also found that the longer he was acquainted with the odd little pilot, the stronger his dislike for him grew.

Lian’s billet was in a small cabin which under normal circumstances would be shared with the chief bosun and the sergeant-at-arms, but both men had been casualties of the kelp monster attack. Neither officer’s replacement had been confirmed by Cedrick, so in the meantime, they were still bunking with the general crew belowdecks.

His cabin contained only one real bed and was, in his opinion, far too small for three men to share. On the walls were brackets, intended to mount a pair of hammocks from corner to corner, so that the men were suspended one over the other. After he tried the bed on the first night, Lian chose to string up one of the hammocks, for the permanent bunk was extremely uncomfortable, not to mention several inches too short for his lanky frame. Snog, on the other hand, liked the hard bed, particularly because it had a good-sized railing to prevent its occupant from rolling out due to rough seas during the night.

The goblin had quickly acclimated to the ship’s tossing, and was now chewing on a few strips of salted pork.

Lord Grey enacted a semi-permanent enchantment on the room so that voices within could not be heard from outside. This allowed he and Lian to speak. “I have studied the ship and its occupants, at least as much as my position in this cabin allows,” he said on the first night after he cast the spell, his whispered song nearly silent. Lian had chosen to leave the necromancer in the cabin, a decision of which Lord Grey did not approve.

“And?” Lian asked, his tone curious yet undemanding.

“There isn’t a curse, per se, but there certainly is an aura of misfortune about this ship. The captains recognize this, I think, and are attempting to reverse the attitude of the crew. It’s no small testament to their ability as leaders that their men remain aboard despite all that has befallen them. Most crews would have mutinied and abandoned the ship after a quarter of what this ship’s been through.” Lord Grey spoke flatly, as if he were pronouncing an edict gleaned from a stone tablet.

“There is, however, another matter of concern. I find the rats in the bilge to be rather alarming,” he declared.

“That’s significant?” Lian asked, involuntarily resting his hand on Gem’s hilt. The blade sent reassurance to her wielder.

“I think that it is, Alan,” the skull replied. “Consider for a moment in whose land we were. How might a being such as Saul feed itself during a long voyage without the risk of being discovered abovedecks?”

“You think we have a vampire on board?” Lian asked, unsurprised. He had suspected as much.

“I am only saying that it’s a possibility, but a strong one. However, I can’t establish a ward like I did at the bakery without the risk that Reidar or another magically talented crew member would sense it and investigate.”