Isles of the Forsaken (47 page)

The wave had eyes, Spaeth was sure of it. “What do you want?” she screamed at it.

The
Ripplewill
rose on the wave’s flank, and the giant lumbered on underneath. The wind hissed in Spaeth’s ears; she could almost hear words. “You coward!” she shouted. “Does it make you feel big to hurt a few humans who can’t even fight you?”

The moon plunged under again, and the world turned black. Spaeth sensed rather than saw the sinuous black shape dashing across the waves beside the boat, keeping even.

“You have grown very keen, my little ally,” the wind snarled in her ear.

“I’ve learned to see through you, traitor! All you’ve ever done is trick me. You warned me that someone was in alliance with you, and all the time it was me!”

“It was funny, wasn’t it?” Ridwit said. “It would have been even more funny if you had killed the Heir of Gilgen.”

Spaeth’s rage was black as the night. It
was
the night. Its power dwarfed her, mighty enough to shatter worlds. “See?” Ridwit hissed. “You are still better off with me.”

“No!” Spaeth cried. She had to resist this time. She had to struggle—for what? For powerlessness? To become a mite raging at the mountains?

She felt her own mouth stretching open as Ridwit laughed.
I must pull free
, Spaeth thought in panic.
I must become who I am
.

“Together, we have the power,” Ridwit said. “Let’s smash this little boat.”

It would crunch in her hand, its puny planks disintegrate to kindling. And all the heartbeats aboard would grow cold and die. The thought wrenched Spaeth’s mind off its course.

“Leave us alone!” she screamed. “These humans never did you any harm!”

The water laughed coldly against the hull. “What a weakling they make you. You are just like all the other Grey People: a doting fool for them. You will never have control while you let them enslave you. Give them up.”

Spaeth thought of Galber, bearing his pain because she couldn’t; of Tway’s loyalty, Torr’s trustworthiness. And Nathaway, who loved her with such abandon.

Tears filled her eyes as she felt the power drain away, leaving her helpless. She was on her knees now, still clutching the rail, a river of water washing around her legs.

Our only power is pity
, she felt Goth say. Spaeth had never felt more helpless. There was cruel laughter on the wind.

“Do you really think you can be the Heir of Gilgen now?” Ridwit said. “After you allied yourself with me? You proved yourself unfit.”

“Leave me alone!” Spaeth’s voice was drowned in the wind.

Step by step she made her way aft, to join the others huddled there. When she came close, Tway reached out to help her down into the cockpit, and put a warm arm around her.

“Torr! Larboard beam!” Cory shouted. The skipper glanced around and threw his weight against the tiller to bring the boat about. Spaeth turned to see the looming shape of a huge wave bearing down on them.

Torr’s manoeuvre came too late. The wave lifted the
Ripplewill
up; a breaker arched above like a gaping mouth edged with teeth of spray. Torr’s mouth formed the words, “Hold tight!” and the wave broke. A furious force of water buried them all. Spaeth had grasped a line, and now the deluge tore at her body, knocking the air out of her, pulling until her grip began to slip. All her will was in her hands, forcing them to keep clenched to safety. There was no up or down any more, no air, nothing but the elemental force of water.

Then there was a surface again, a place where water ended and air began. Spaeth gasped in. The wave was receding before them. Torr and Tway had been knocked to the other side of the cockpit, and Cory was nowhere to be seen.

Tway lunged for the tiller; Spaeth crawled through a wash of water to the spot where Cory’s liferope was fastened. It was taut; she heaved, but couldn’t budge it. “Torr, here!” she shouted. He came to her side, a dripping bear of a man. With slow, powerful movements he began to pull the rope in. Cory’s head bobbed above the water a little way to starboard. Hand over hand, against the force of the waves, Torr hauled his crewman in.

When Cory was near enough, Torr cleated the line and leaned over the gunwale to give him a hand. Their fingers almost touched; then the boat lifted up on a wave, carrying them apart. Spaeth could tell Cory was weakening from being dragged behind the boat in the wintry water. Again Torr leaned overside. This time the boat tilted into the sea, and the two men’s hands clasped. With a heave of superhuman strength Torr hefted Cory up and over the gunwale. Cory collapsed, gasping and dripping, on the floor of the cockpit.

Nathaway appeared out of the night. “What happened?” he shouted.

“Wave knocked her over,” Torr roared. “I mean over flat. The mast was in the sea. But she righted herself, by the horns! She came up again like a top. My little beauty!” He seemed about to throw himself down and kiss the deck. Instead he thumped Tway on the shoulder till her clothing squished. “It’s that keel of Yoran lead!”

“We Yorans usually know which way is up,” Tway said.

Torr turned to the Inning. “How is the hold?”

“Wet,” Nathaway said.

“You two get down there and help him,” Torr said to Cory and Spaeth. Cory tried to protest that he was fit, but Spaeth could tell he was bruised and bone-chilled. “That’s an order, Cory,” Torr said ominously.

The hold was a dark and swimming chaos. Everything that had not been fastened down had been pitched to the floor, and now floated in a foot of sloshing water. All lights had been extinguished, and the tinder was drenched or lost. Somewhere in the darkness, Galber was groaning in pain.

“Where’s the pump, Cory?” Spaeth demanded to distract herself from the sound of Galber’s voice.

“Over here.” They groped their way aft and set to work, dragging the pump into the centre of the cabin and running a hose out the hatchway. Then each of them took one side of the seesaw pump handle. It remained to be seen whether they could pump faster than the water was leaking in.

Survival became a matter of grim persistence. It was forcing burning muscles to bend yet again and again, until Spaeth lost all track of time and all memory of anything but the fragile shell of wood that kept out the hostile sea.

She was still working in a stupor when Nathaway put his hand on her arm and said, “I’ll handle it now. You rest.” Spaeth realized with surprise that she could see his face; and what was more, she could see the hold around her—no longer aswim in water, but cluttered by jetsam as if left by a receding tide.

When she emerged onto the open deck, the morning was dawning dull over a pewter sea. The
Ripplewill
still scudded west before an angry gale. When lifted high on the back of a wave, Spaeth could see miles of grey combers surrounding them under a lowering sky. But the light rushed to her head like a strong liquor. They had survived the night. Not by magic, not by power—by sheer stubborn unwillingness to let each other die.

Torr was still at the helm. His face wore an absorbed expression as he scanned the sea, attuned to every nuance of water and wind. From time to time the bow would disappear in a wall of foam, but it always rose again. They could no longer doubt their boat; every movement she made was like part of their own bodies.

The wind shifted north during the day, and turned cold. All their efforts at starting the stove again proved futile. Everything in the boat was drenched, and all they could do was bear the chill and hope for land and shelter ahead.

It was a worn and weary crew that finally raised a cheer when Torr sighted a line of hills on the western horizon. They gathered in the cockpit, peering ahead as the coast rose before them. “It has to be some island of the Outer Chain,” Torr said. “We’ve been blown clear across the Widewater.”

The shore was a line of jagged, rocky cliffs, their tops swathed in waterlogged clouds. The sea churned at their bases, spray leaping high against black rock. Even at a distance the booming of the breakers sounded.

They turned south along the coast. At last they spied the roofs of some stone cottages dotting the hill beyond a headland that surely hid a sheltering bay. The cheering sight of smoke rose from chimneys into the rain-soaked sky.

“I am going to sit down in the first fire I see,” Tway declared. “I think you could turn me on a spit for an hour, and I’d scarcely thaw.”

“I think I’ll have to peel these clothes off like an orange rind,” Cory said.

Torr said, “Well, I’m going to sleep for two days, and nothing on earth is going to wake me.”

They were skirting the headland before they saw what lay in the harbour. Torr jerked the tiller round, making the
Ripplewill
heel sharply in confusion. There, behind the arm of land, rose the tall masts and square rigging of a frigate guarding the bay.

Nathaway looked deadly weary. “The rest of you might slip past an inspection, but they’ll notice me,” he said. “If they’re suspicious, they might detain us. There could easily be a warrant out for my arrest.”

Spaeth looked at Torr, then slowly shook her head.

“It’s a far piece back to Lashnish,” Torr said. But he pushed the tiller over and sent the
Ripplewill
shooting out to sea again. “Let’s raise the mainsail, Cory,” he said. “If we’re going to defy the Panther, we might as well do it like we mean it.” He patted the
Ripplewill
’s transom. “Hold tight a little while longer, darling. You can’t rest yet.”