Elof nodded, and hurried down the rope ladder. His feet thumped onto the cutter's polished deck; it was less resonant than usual, and closer to the water, so great was the weight of supplies below. He hurried to hoist the head-sail; it would pull his bows free of the flagship. He kept his head lowered, so those on deck would not see how close he was to weeping. The headsail caught the breeze and billowed out; he ran astern to set it with the winches, and slip the stern mooring, "All right, Roc!" he cried then. "Cast off forward!" The headsail filled, the cutter began to move, and to a chorus of farewells he leaned on the tiller and turned her nose out from under the curve of the
Korentyn's
timbered flank. Around her bows he swung, heading out into the wide estuary of Ancarvadoen; but as the cutter's bows crossed the pool of light from the flagship's lanterns he had to turn and look back. Ils stood by the rail, gripping it in her plump fingers, and he cursed himself that he had said no word to her; he raised a hand to touch his heart, and she nodded quickly, and turned away. But high upon the carven bows Kermorvan stood, tall and pale and grim as winter, his arm raised in solemn salute. Elof rose quickly, and lifted his hand in return. It is said that they seemed for a moment like the statues that stood upon Morvanhal's sea wall, of an earlier Keryn and the grim old lord Vayde who was his friend; for in that time many years seemed to fall upon Elof, and score his face deeply. But all too soon the vision passed; out into the night the small craft glided, became a ghostly glimmer upon blackness, and faded then altogether from
Korentyn's
sight.
Though they could not see him, Elof could still see them, the great ship in its glowing circle, and the fleet beyond; he stood a long while watching. He had made many farewells in his life, but surely none more bitter than this; his thoughts moved like the craft beneath him, upon blackness. Only the thrash and creak of the boom called him to himself; it was high time and past to hoist the mainsail. He turned the
Seafire
into the wind, set the tiller and clambered up to free the lashings; one was stiff, he tugged at it and swore. Then he started so violently he all but went over the rail: out of the darkness another hand had reached, and twitched the other strand of the knot free. "Thought you were supposed to be the sailor!" jibed Roc.
"What in the jaws of Hel…" Elof shouted, and then he gathered his wits. "You sprang on board once you'd cast off, I suppose? Right, you can help me with the mainsail, but the moment it's done, keep your head down; we'll be going about. Back to the
Korentyn."
"Think so, do you?" inquired Roc with an ominous calm as they struggled to free the heavy gaff from the boom and begin unfurling the sail. "And why might that be, may I ask?"
"Why?" snorted Elof. "Didn't I tell you to your face, once already? You can't just cast off all your obligations like that, public or personal; you're needed back home, man, needed…"
"Oh aye? Am I?"
Elof, checking the hanks around the mast, paused and looked up. "Marja needs you. And you've a place in the state -"
"Oh aye? As what? Not a bloody smith, I'll tell you that. Hammering bits of iron, aye, without this messing about with virtues, chants, I'm fine at that. I did all right in Bryhaine; they'd lost the true craft there. But here? There's a smith's guild here, with flaming mastersmiths and all. And there's you. Whenever folk look at me, they see
you
, behind me like a shadow; only the shadow's the brighter. Just think! Here's one with no true craft; how'd he ever get to be a smith? And here's t'other, and
he's
got craft enough for two. Hella, but it's been hard! And now my woman's a mastersmith; what's she need me for? Contrast? Can't even talk about her work with me; haven't a bloody clue what she's on about. And her work's her life. So we don't talk; haven't for a while now. And precious little else, either. Different in the Southlands; I was the rich one there, the one they looked up to; who looks up to me here?" He turned, spat into the wind and swore at the result.
"I'm sorry, Roc," said Elof quietly. "I had wondered…I should have realised… But I can't tear you away from our other friends. There's much good you could do in the King's service…"
"Why d'you think he's been making this much use of me? He knows; not much he doesn't notice, our long friend. So he's been sending me on all these weighty errands - "
"Well then…" Elof freed the main halyard, and passed him the end. "Wind it around the winch there,
carefully
… People will come to respect you for that, soon enough; King's trusted emissary, there's many a role of less honour to play. Now wind when I say… yes, that way…"
Roc chuckled. "Indeed, that's so. It's the role I play now."
Elof, who had been about to give the command, stopped and stared. "You mean… He knows you're here? He sent you?"
"By royal warrant, aye; read it if you like, got it in my hip pocket somewhere. Charged to return to him, intact if at all possible, the person of his right worthy and well-trusted Court Smith… well, you know the form. Said he wouldn't sleep easy with you milling round the whale-roads on your own. And, well, I jumped at the commission, didn't I?"
Elof shook his head feebly. "But his… You can't! I his is folly, this voyage… for any other, I mean -"
"Aye, well, don't go smothering me with gratitude, will you?" A sudden gust buffeted the cutter, plucked at the- unfurled edge of sails; the gaff swung violently, caught Elof in the chest and stretched him flat on the deck.
"Hel's black belly, man!" roared Roc, trying to restrain the threshing spar, "Will you lay off flapping your lip and sail this thing? D'you want us wrecked not ten minutes out at sea?"
"We're not at sea yet!" wheezed Elof. "Still in the estuary… you hate the sea, Roc…"
"I'll not like it the better for being dumped in it!"
"The winch, then! Not too fast… that's right!" Smoothly the heavy gaff rose to its proper inclination and creaked its way up the mast, the stiff sail creaking and flapping like a vast dry wing in the quickening wind. Elof kept a careful hand on the mainsheet winch till the gaff hung tight at the top of the mast, then showed Roc how to fasten the halyard securely and, turned to the tiller. "Now back here with me, out of the way of the boom! Take the mainsheet here, pay it out little by little as I tell you -"
Roc looked askance at him. "Fine old time you'll have, doing all this on your own - "
Elof, too preoccupied to understand, set hand to the tiller and swung the
Sea/ire
about. In a thunder of sailcloth the boom scythed across the deck, thudded up short as the mainsheet restrained it. At Elof's word Roc unwound the winch, the mainsail caught the wind and grew full with it; the
Seafire
, spurred like a spirited horse, sprang forward over the whitecapped windrows. The headsail sang and strained at the sheets, dangerously tight; Elof thrust the tiller at Roc and sprang for the winch. Swiftly he slackened the headsail, let out the mainsheet a little, then very carefully he eased the tension on the winches with the heel of his hand. He saw there was little or no flutter at the luff edges of the sails, against mast and forestay, and glanced at the trailing hempen strands sewn in rows across the sailcloth; the rows fluttered at a slight angle to each other. Sails not quite set, then; but if he…
Then another consideration slashed across the rest. "Well?" came Roc's sardonic inquiry. "If you're wanting rid of me hadn't we best be turning tail now? Or won't you have a long tack back?"
Elof bit his lip. "You're right."
"What do I do? Swing the tiller…"
"
No
! I didn't mean that, anyway; I meant what you said earlier. I can sail the cutter on my own - just. And in easy conditions; how I'd fare in a storm…"
"Um," said Roc dubiously. "In a storm you might
be
on your own…"
"You'll get used to it, soon enough -"
"Whatever you say…" sighed Roc; but he did not sound convinced.
Unhappy as he was, Elof summoned up a grin. "You could still change your mind… No?" He chuckled. "Roc, I'm glad, I've got to admit it. But it's a mad venture, all the same. Scarce a hope of returning, let alone succeeding -"
Roc snorted. "Think I need you to tell me that? But then, when the whole world's daft, maybe it's as well to be dafter yet…"
Elof nodded wryly, and from that time he argued no more, but took in the mainsail a little further and pulled the tiller gently towards him. The cutter heeled slightly as it bore away, and the slap of the wavelets beneath the hull quickened like a pulse. Before the land wind and the oncoming storm that rode it the
Sea-fire
ran upon a broad reach, away through the dark roads of Ancarvadoen and out, out until the horns of the bay dwindled to strips of shadow upon either flank, and their bows reared and plunged upon the higher swell of the open ocean beyond, unsheltered and unforgiving. Thus it was, as the chronicles record, that the two friends set forth on a quest that was to prove darker, more perilous and more painful than any in their lives before, and of greater moment. For in the end it was to cast them, as the Raven had foretold, into the very balance of the changing world.
How long their voyage endured no account is certain; it may be that no exact record survived. Upon the open sea, with nothing above but clouds constant only in their inconstancy, it might indeed have been easy to lose track of the hours, the days that passed by, forever alone at the focus of a vast arena of empty water. Yet it is unlikely that they did so, for they were not aimless wanderers, but steering a course by sun and stars. Elof at least had studied the simple principles of navigation, as were then understood, with the Mastersmith, that he might learn to make the necessary instruments. In later years, as friend to such a mariner as Kermorvan, he had learned more, and much sea-lore besides. Yet it is said only that for many weeks they sailed swiftly and well, and that the
Seafire
bore them safely through many a time of peril. In that first storm, that hunted them from the land there was hard going, for as it came upon them the rudder fought like a living thing, Roc and Elof struggling desperately to lash it down while the wind yelled in their ears, fresh rain drummed upon their heads, and heavy seas broke every minute over the stern. Long hours the weather lasted, and they were left sodden, exhausted, bruised and sore from the tossing-about they had received; their hair was rimed with salt, salt that stiffened their garments and flayed the skin from them as cruelly as the ropes that hissed and ran through their fingers. But the cutter was a finely made craft, and though it rode low in the water under its weight of supplies the sea washed harmlessly across its well-caulked decking and slopped out through the scuppers. It scudded on before the storm, bounding impudently across the wavecrests, and when at the end of the night the clouds broke and the risen sun beamed down on them once more, they saw mast and rig as firm as ever, and the bilges scarce wetter than before. No line had parted, nor any seam loosened. And Elof smiled at that, for in the shipyards he himself had laid such virtues of strength upon the metal fastenings. Even Roc, though he groaned and grumbled as loudly as the waves that ran still high beneath the hull, was impressed, and more confident that they might somehow come through the voyage alive.
Elof had always wondered at the daring of the hero Vayde in braving this same passage in what was, by all accounts, no larger a craft, a feat that many ascribed to necromancy; he found reason to doubt that, in the weeks that followed. The sudden squalls he had come to fear around the coasts he could ride out easily here, and worse weather also. For though the storms of the ocean were terrible, when the chill airs came blasting down off the Ice to whip the waves into white-capped peaks that loomed high above the
Seafire's
masthead, and between them sudden sickening troughs that swallowed it up, yet at least there were no lee shores at hand to worry about, no rocks or shoals lurking, hungry to rake the belly from the boat like a dagger-tooth its prey. And down into trough and up over peak the little cutter rode, where sleek longship or massive dromund might have been caught across the crests and twisted apart, or plunged in bow or stern and been overturned in the troughs. It could climb the rising slopes of waves that would have burst like falling mountains upon the decks of larger craft, sweeping off rig and crew alike and tumbling toylike the mastless hulk that remained. Like a gull it floated upon the heaving hills of ocean, lurching madly this way and that; often no sail could be carried, the rudder had to be lashed and a sea-anchor thrown out to keep the drifting bows into the wind. Yet though sorely soaked and battered it came through whole, its crew with it, and Elof came to conclude that in refusing Kermorvan's ships he had all unconsciously made the wiser choice.
Those weeks at sea were by no means all storms; it was spring, and though that brought gales and rain in plenty, they carried warm weather in their wake. There were cool, crisp nights, when the stars shone among ragged clouds like gems beneath grey velvet, and their wake came alight with the phosphorescence the ship was named for, a shimmering stream of cool fire like the reflection of some invisible moon. There were fair days, when the foamcrests were dazzling in the clear light, when the expanse of seas shone like a vast disc of sapphire under a cloudless sky.