Voyage of the Fox Rider (9 page)

And so in the cottage on the marge of the woods, Alamar waited and worried, for Jinnarin’s dream yet haunted her—a dream of a lofty crystal castle above pale green sea, and a lightning-stroked ebony ship…and of something
dreadful
drawing nigh.

And throughout the next months, often in the night did the old Man, the old Elf, the old Mage, pace in front of his cottage and stare down at the distant bay or up at the glittering stars remote and mutter aloud:

“Where away, O Elvenship, and your master Aravan?”

Passage

Summer, 1E9574

[The Past Three Months]

A
ravan turned his head this way and that, trying to locate the source of stealthy plashing muffled by the dense fog. Overhead the silken sails of the
Eroean
hung slackly, not a breath of air stirring in the morn, the ship slowly drifting, impelled by the remnants of the current of the distant river whose mouth lay easterly an uncertain way. Somewhere nearby stood the Dragon’s Fangs, sharp rocks jutting up from the sea, and Aravan knew that soon he must either drop anchor or lower towing gigs to spare the aimless
Eroean
from foundering upon this cloaked hazard…but not yet, not yet, for another deadly danger drew nigh.

Aravan gestured silently to Bokar, and the axe-bearing Dwarf stepped to the Elven captain’s side. Bokar at four feet six inches was considerably shorter than Aravan, though the Dwarf was half again as broad in the shoulders as was the Elf.

Without a word, Aravan pointed slightly astern of starboard. Bokar nodded and trod away, moving down the line of Dwarven warriors and Human sailors, speaking not but instead pointing to where Aravan had indicated. And armed to the teeth they waited—the Dwarves wearing boiled-leather breastplates and dark steel helms fitted with cheek and nose guards and adorned with horns or studs or spikes or with metal wings flaring; the Men unarmored but bearing cutlasses.

A week past the black-haired captain and his Elvenship and crew had been in the port of Janjong, taking on a cargo of nutmeg and cinnamon, laded o’er a ship’s ballast of porcelain tableware. South they had sailed, bearing slightly west, through the Jinga Sea, favorable but light winds abaft. Yet with all sails set—mains and studs, jibs and spankers, staysails, topsails, gallants and royals, skysails and moonrakers and starscrapers—the
Eroean
had churned white wake all the way to the pirate-infested Straits of Alacca, the long, narrow slot between the shores of Jūng and the rocky cliffs of Lazan…and there the wind had utterly died. A night they had spent sitting at anchor, waiting for the return of the air. But then morning had come and with it the fog, creeping out from the jungles, a fog so thick that nought could be seen more than five strides away.

And in the mist they had heard a voice coming across the waters—a Man’s sharp curse suddenly silenced. Swiftly, silently, Aravan had upped anchor just barely enough to let the ship drift free, the vessel sluggishly changing its position in the torpid flux. And all the crew had taken up arms, for they knew that pirates drew nigh.

Down from the ratlines came creeping Jatu, the huge black Man seeking Aravan. He stepped to the Elf and in soft voice said, “Captain, I cannot see aught of their ship down in the folds of the fog, but they’ve a Man aloft in a crow’s nest, skimming the top of this lost cloud, and he’s guiding them, sighting upon our rigging jutting up out of the mist.”

“Vash!”
hissed Aravan, his voice low. “Where away and how far?”

Yon
, indicated Jatu, a point or two aft of starboard. “Mayhap a candlemark at the rate they move.”

“Well, there’s nothing for it then except to stand and fight. Even so, wert thou sighted, Jatu? Nay? Hai, then they may yet believe to surprise us, knowing not that we know of them. Take two Men and ease the anchor back gently to the bottom.”

Aravan strode down the line, coming to wing-helmed Bokar. “Armsmaster, ready the boarding ropes and a corvus or three. We shall carry the fight to them.”

Through his red beard Bokar grinned fiercely, his dark eyes alight, then passed the word to his Dwarven fighters
as well as to all the Men. Yardarm ropes were loosed from their belaying pins, there on the starboard side, warriors and sailors grasping the lines. And in three separate places, broad, lengthy planks ending in long curving hooks were affixed to the
Eroean
’s toprail, devised to fall as would a drawbridge—the iron hooks set to grasp the enemy vessel—each plank a corvus for invading ship to ship.

Again Aravan strode the length of the line. “Down and hide, let them draw alongside thinking we yet sleep.”

Moments passed, and now all could hear the stealthy dip of oars. And through the runoffs they could see a vague shape darkly loom forth from the fog, drawing alongside the larger
Eroean
. Yet at last an obscure silhouette could be discerned: it was a two-masted junk, high sterned and low prowed, raised lugsails fore and aft with battens running across.

“Wait,” breathed Aravan to the Dwarven armsmaster.

Now the junk came up amidships, and at a soft command the vessel’s oars were shipped as the rowers ceased rowing and took up weaponry, and on her decks could dimly be seen moving figures readying for boarding.

With a muffled
thmp-tmp
of fenders between, softly the hull of the junk came into cushioned contact with her intended prey.

“Wait,” breathed Aravan yet again.

Thnk
. A cloth-wrapped grapnel was lobbed up over the
Eroean
’s rail, swiftly followed by three more, and the junk was haled snug and cinched against the hull of the Elvenship.

“Now,” hissed Aravan—“Now!” roared Bokar—
NOW!
howled all the crew—and with thunderous crashes the boarding bridges slammed down on the decks of the pirate vessel, long iron corvine claws clutching and holding, trapping the coastal raider against the
Eroean
’s hull. And bellowing the ancient Dwarven battle cry—
“Châkka-shok! Châkka-cor!”
—a shout echoed by all the Dwarves—axe in hand Bokar thundered down and across a fog-shrouded bridge, giant Jatu at his back, with Aravan in his grey leathers swinging on a rope above them like a ghost in the mist, steel glimmering in the
Elf’s grasp, while at one and the same time, with bloodcurdling shouts and savage wordless cries, Dwarven warriors and Human sailors, weapons clenched, charged across the spans or swung through the mist-laden air on yardarm ropes to assail the beclouded Jūngarian ship.

Bokar slammed into a mass of shocked reavers, the Dwarf’s double-bitted axe reaping foe, cleaving flesh, blood flying, while Jatu’s warbar smashed pirates aside, skulls crushed, bones broken. Like some mist-wrapped demon, Aravan hurtled out from the fog to land square on the poop deck, the grey cloud swirling, mist tendrils clinging, his sword licking out to fell the startled steersman. The Elf turned in time to fend a whistling blow from a tulwar wielded by a cursing swarthy Man, the pirate in a leather vest, copper plates sewn thereon.
Shing, shang
, skirled steel on steel, and Aravan pressed the enemy hindward, the Man to topple howling over the taffrail and fall yowling into the sea below.

The mass of the
Eroean
’s crew poured aboard the junk and hurled the reavers back. Pirates were felled by Dwarven axes, hewn down in frightened surprise, and raiders were cut to ribbons by the cutlasses of the Elvenship’s Men. The fight was over and done almost before it had begun, the brigands slain on the decks or driven overboard by the furious onslaught, some to escape in the fog, others to drown thrashing and shrieking until dragged under the brine.

And when the junk was cleared of enemy—“Take stock of our wounded,” cried Aravan, his call echoed by the bull voice of Bokar. And the Men and Dwarves turned to one another, seeking to find any who were injured.

Of the Elvenship’s crew, only five had taken hurt, and of those, just one required more than superficial aid. “Hegen, thou wilt be up and about and back at the wheel within a half-Moon,” said Aravan, the Elf standing by as the chirurgeon put needle and gut away then poured a clear liquid over the side wound, the steersman drawing in a sharp breath through clenched teeth.

“Aye, Captain,” Hegen managed to grit out, “two weeks or less, I’d say.”

As Fager bound the now-sewn gash with a clean cloth wrapped ‘round Hegen’s waist, dark Jatu stepped to Aravan’s
side. The Man was huge, o’ertopping Aravan’s own six-foot height by a good seven inches. Three hundred pounds if he was an ounce and none of it fat, his skin was so black it seemed tinged with blue, a color not found in his dark brown gaze. He was garbed in dusky leather, and brown goatskin buskins shod his feet. He cleared his throat, a deep rumble, and then said, “Not much in the way of booty, Captain—a bit of silk, some copper utensils, a few weapons, all inferior…and, oh yes, powder of the poppy, not very pure, the kind meant for smoking.”

Aravan turned to the Man, the Elf’s blue gaze grim. “Burn it.”

“The poppy?”

“The entire ship, Jatu. Burn it all.”

Jatu grinned. “Aye, aye, Captain. But shouldn’t we cast off before setting it aflame?”

Aravan laughed a full-throated laugh. “Aye, Jatu. Burn it when we’ve a wind in our sails again.”

The fog lingered for nigh half a day, burning off in late mid morn. Even so, the winds yet failed to blow, and the ship and her prize lay at anchor, a safe distance from the Dragon’s Fangs. Another night the doldrums loitered, but just ere dawn the silken sails of the
Eroean
belled outward, heralding the return of the air. Easterly it blew, a light westerly, the breeze channeled down the strait.

Jatu looked up at the billowing cloth and smiled. “Bo’s’n, pipe the crew on deck. And have Tink wake the Captain.”

“Aye, aye, Meestan Jatu,” answered the Man, a Tugalian by the name of Rico.

Moments later, Aravan emerged from the aft quarters, turning his face to the breeze. He stepped to the wheel and grinned at his first officer, the giant black grinning back. “Jatu, set the spanker to help her to come about, manage the sails for a larboard run, then up anchor.” In the starlight, Aravan eyed the distant rocks jagging up from the water. “We’ll take her close-hauled into the wind for we’ve a bit of short tacking to do.”

“Aye, Captain,” replied Jatu. “And the junk? Set her afire and cut her free, right?”

Aravan grimly nodded. “Aye. She’ll not raid these waters again.”

Jatu relayed the orders to Rico, and with a series of piping signals, the bo’s’n oversaw the setting of lines, Men running this way and that, unbelaying ropes and haling on them, all to a purpose—the turning of the yardarms to bring the sails around—the spanker alone slowly swinging the ship about, tethered as she was on her anchor chain.

The junk was hauled astern, Dwarves tugging her aft. Bokar and another boarded her and splashed oil on her decks, then scrambled up a rope ladder and back to the Elvenship. Torches were lighted and cast o’er the taffrail and down onto the pirate vessel, and as the flames exploded upward the ship was cast loose, the breeze carrying her away from the
Eroean
, her battened sails afire, her decking aflame.

Aravan glanced at her but once, then looked away, for it was a ship that burned, and somehow he felt as if a wrong were being done. Even so, he would not tow her as salvage, for she would merely slow his own ship down. And he could not leave her in these waters, else she would once again be used as a raider. And so he had her burned but did not watch, feeling all the while vaguely guilty of some indeterminate unspecified crime.

And as the
Eroean
haled about and started to surge forward—“Up anchor,” the Elf commanded.

Rico piped the anchor aboard, and sailors in the bow cranked the windlass deosil, the great bronze grapnel breaking free of the bottom and riding the chain upward, and the Elvenship ran unfettered at last.

Her bow quartered to the wind, a short haul they coursed and then came about and entered in among the crags jutting up from the sea, tacking along a safe channel through the sharp-toothed Dragon’s Fangs. Then they swung once more onto a larboard tack, to slip past the last of the jagged rocks. And now the water was clear before them, the strait widening out. And with her face to the breeze the
Eroean
put her shoulder to the sea, cleaving the waves, running westward, sails set and billowing, dawnlight illuminating the white wake behind.

And far abaft beyond the rocks a ship burned, orange flames lighting the sky.