Lair of Beasts [Book I in the Curse Of Blood Saga]

Chapter V - Norrdragor Castle

The storm arrived our second day at sea, hence it was that an eight day crossing turned into a miserable ten long days. I had barely moved from my hammock. Almost as soon as we set out into open water, leaving the calmness of the shallow bay, I confined myself to my swinging bed; though it smelled of rat piss and dank bilge water below deck.

Carac routinely checked on me throughout the first day and was shrewd enough to deposit a bucket beside me without laughing at the state of my green visage. I availed myself of it within seconds of its arrival, emptying therein what little contents my stomach possessed.

A resourceful man, that Carac, I mused afore retching again.

He was later able to tempt me up into the fresh briny breeze the first evening so that I might see for myself how the Gulf of Dragons derived its name. He pointed to the eastern horizon, now a dusky blue in the twilight, where I could just make out the pointed profiles of a line of mountainous islands; three of which were erupting with fire. Plumes of red and orange exploded regularly into the midnight firmament as I watched, mesmerized by the rivulets of flame that hemorrhaged down the sides of the peaks, along glowing trenches, as the red, waxing moon surveyed us balefully from above.

When the foul weather had rolled in, on our second evening, the animal cages were brought down below, the sail removed and almost no one ventured above deck except the minimum crew required for the watch; not even to use the garderobes on the bow: which were little more than seats with holes aimed over each side of the prow.

I obtained no sleep that night; nor the next. The ship groaned and creaked precariously, waves thundering against her sides and up over the gunwales all night and into the next morning. Men were forced to void their bladders and bowels into buckets instead of hazarding upstairs; although, by morning, most of these had been flung about and discharged across the floor by the interminable pitching and rolling of the straining hulk.

At length, the fury of the ocean abated enough, by the morning of the next day when we passed into the Midnight Straits, that I crawled above deck to take in the fresh air — I could stand the putrescent odors of the ship's bowels no longer. Carac stood atop the forecastle with the merchant captain, but I decided that I would remain where I stood, on my yet unsteady legs, directly beside the hatch; or close to the mainstays and mast, but no further afield.

Each day became better than its predecessor and by the time I had been at sea a full week, I was eventually confident enough in my sea legs to brave the very perimeter of the ship's sturdy sides, looking down at where the wide hull sliced through the dark water.

I was never happier to see the Vargenlund Narrows that eventually appeared to the north — a nearby sailor who had been inspecting the rigging had furnished me with the name of the estuary ahead — but I would be happier still once I was permitted to stumble down the gangplank and onto blessedly solid ground; alas, that would not be for another week. Although I stood in the open air, I still felt claustrophobic and desired more than anything to plant my feet onto terra firma.

My anxious yearnings pulled my nerves taut by harrowing degrees — like that of a drowning man's desperate need for air! These thoughts so completely distracted me — as well as Vargenlund's towering, white city walls to the eastern half of the mouth — that I did not feel the presence of a man beside me until Higgins, his clothes now unkempt and stained with the questionable filth of the voyage, laid his thick forearms on the gunnel next to where I clutched at it with bone-white fingers.

He spared a quick look towards Carac, who was still quietly conversing with the captain, and then brought solemn blue eyes, almost hidden beneath his wiry, unruly red brows, to meet my own pale, green gaze.