The Summer of the Swordsman

Chapter XXII

It was all over by evening. We were boarded and captured. While we weren't all put to the sword, no one asked us to surrender, either, and so we never did. Our dead were pitched over the side, and the water boiled with the frenzied movements of gorging sharks. Our wounded were treated, more or less, and our weapons piled away from us. They found Anakreon, wounded through the lung and the neck, barely alive beneath a heap of dead. The Verhemese surgeon looked at him and shook his head. I caught Mourner's eye but could read nothing.

By dark we were allowed to curl up on the deck and get what sleep we could, but that was difficult with an almost full moon above us. I looked eastward, toward the high, wide bank of clouds approaching us. It would be dark soon, and probably stormy.

I was right. Within half an hour the moon had vanished behind the clouds, and the anchored fleet was a mass of shadows, its presence betrayed only by the plop of water against its hulls and the occasional groan of its timbers. We could see a shadowy forest of masts to one side, and to the other was open sea. We had tried to turn at the last moment and break from the fighting, and we had almost succeeded. Now we were on the edge of the fleet, riding beside an abandoned ship.

I looked over her trim lines; she wasn't a merchantman, for she was too light and swift for that. She was possibly an escort vessel that Garius had captured from a trading fleet. She looked as though she could be swift and nimble at need, able to chase off pirates' attacks and sail circles round the slow‑moving fleet.

I looked away. The moon had reappeared, but the reappearance would be a short one by the look of the massed clouds overhead. In the bright silver light I could see men stretched out on the decks. Our guards stood beside the hatchway, mid‑deck, looking around at the fleet and talking in low voices. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I wondered at the folly of anyone who would assign only two guards to sixty prisoners.

I looked back at the ship beside us, my eyes resting appreciatively on her figurehead, a lady, her skirts gathered in her hands, gazing straight ahead with her hair streaming behind her. The silver of the moon caught the carved edges, outlining them like the brush strokes of a master calligrapher.

"Get us to her and I'll sail us away from here," a voice said beside me. Mourner, his eyes burning and steady in his pale face. Quinquius and Sored stood behind him, nodding. The others were watching, too, making no move.

"Your leg," I said, mistrusting the sudden leap of my heart. We had never surrendered, after all, and there were sixty and more of us, however badly hurt.

Mourner looked down at his clumsily bandaged thigh and then shrugged. "It will bear me a while yet," he said.

"Done, then," I said. "Wait until we're ready." Mourner nodded and I moved away past the guards, hitching at my belt as though I wanted to relieve myself, and shrugging. I caught my toe on the edge of the hatch as I passed them and sprawled on my face, bawling curses and struggling to get up.

The guards pointed and nudged each other, and as they enjoyed my clumsiness, Quinquius crept up behind them, muffled them in his cloak, and clouted them behind the ears with the knobbed hilt of his dagger. They lay still; he frisked them in a thorough manner, and maybe would have killed them, except that Mourner shook his head. He grunted, tied the men to opposite sides of the railing, gagged them, and helped me up.

"Good job," I said.

"Graceful as you are," said Quinquius, "You should join the Dancing Priesthoods‑‑the Salii‑‑they need‑‑"

"Shut up," I snapped. "What of the wounded?"

"We need grappling hooks and some sort of gangway," Sored said.

"Be reasonable," Quinquius said, "We'll be seen. Where will we get a gangway, anyhow?"

"Right there," Sored said, pointing to a stretch of planking. "Most ships carry their own, Roman. Don't you know anything?"

I supervised the grappling, which was a ticklish maneuver. Luckily for us the moon was gone for good, but it took another hour before the ships were close enough to lay the gangplank between them and carry the more seriously wounded across.

Anakreon came first, the breath bubbling at the back of his throat, and we carried him below to the captain's cabin closely followed by Kenui and the rest of the wounded.

"Now what?" asked Quinquius, looking from me to Mourner.

"We cut our anchor and drift for a while, then we sail out of here." I said. "Should be easy with the storm coming up. Mourner, do you know where to go?"

"I know," Mourner said, looking up at the rigging and then at the clouds. The strong wind pushed the hair straight back from his face. "We head for Timras."

I stared. "Timras!" I cried, "Why not Danskagge, in God's name! You could go to Torkal as you promised‑‑or even to Soyusk‑‑"

Mourner interrupted me for only the second time that summer. "Stow it, Oristides," he snapped. "Think with your brain instead of the seat of your breeches! Look to the east‑‑toward Danskagge. See the clouds? Can you feel the wind? If we try to return to Hirstad it'll be in the teeth of this storm! I'm wounded, and so's the rest of this crew with a few exceptions. I don't think we can take the pitching, and I don't think I can navigate this ship properly with all the tacking I'll have to do just to get her anywhere near Hirstad!" He paused and gathered himself, and continued in a gentler voice. "But if I can just let this ship run before that wind, we'll be in Timras in four days, eight at the most. What do you say?"

I reached out in the darkness, found Mourner's shoulder and slapped it. "As you advise, Master Mariner," I said, only half in jest. "Timras it is, and I hope Prince Hethra welcomes us with open arms." I spoke more loudly, "You heard him. We'll stow the wounded belowdecks, and those able-bodied members of the troop will come above and help us reef the sails. We're in for a rough night."