‘Cast off that mooring line,’ shouted Captain Ford. It was ten past eight by Mark’s old watch and the Morning Star was still lashed to the two-aven buoy in Pellia Harbour. They had overstayed their welcome by an hour – he credited his generous bribe for that – but now time was running out. ‘Pel!’ he cried again, ‘don’t you see him coming? Cast it off now! I don’t want to be answering any more questions.’
In the fading twilight they could see the harbourmaster’s ketch approaching, slowly but inexorably making its way through the maze of boats moored off the wharf.
‘Aye aye, Captain,’ Pel shouted as he hurried to untie the brig-sloop. He waved a cheery thanks to the harbourmaster and called, ‘See you next time through!’
The Malakasian official gave a half-hearted salute and watched as the incoming tide carried the Morning Star upriver a ways. He considered something, then dug in his tunic for a tempine. ‘Come about, Jon,’ he finally ordered, peeling the fruit. ‘One more time around and then it’s home for both of us.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the boy replied, still looking at the brig-sloop. ‘Funny the way they’re just drifting, isn’t it?’
The harbourmaster chewed contentedly; another day was over. ‘They saw us coming, Jon, that’s all; he didn’t want to pay extra for going overtime. They’re drifting because they probably weren’t ready to get under way just yet.’
‘Yes, sir. Strange that he’s already setting topsails, though.’
‘What’s that?’ The harbourmaster turned to watch the brig-sloop set her tops and topmains. The ship was running upriver, showing no sign of tacking beyond the headlands. ‘But he said he had a long journey ahead of him.’
‘I heard him, too,’ the boy said, ‘but I don’t know how long a journey a boat that big can make along this river, maybe just up beyond the palace and back, and what’s that? A couple of days for them? Rutters! Look at them go! That’s a fast ship!’
The harbourmaster wasn’t listening. The captain, if he even was their captain, had been lying. ‘Jon, run us in to the wharf, now – hurry on with you!’
By one twenty-five the navy ship had tacked east and was running up on the Morning Star. She was visible only by her watchlights; probably a schooner with enough sheets on her to overtake a typhoon. The tide had run in, carrying the brig-sloop upriver for the past two avens, but as slack water approached, the winds slowed and the current pushed back against Captain Ford’s best efforts to run a beeline south from Pellia.
‘What time is it?’ he called from the quarterdeck.
‘It’s about one-thirty,’ Steven shouted back, ‘less than two avens before we can disappear.’
‘That’s too much time,’ he replied, checking their stern. The schooner was bearing down on them and within an aven, it would be within hailing distance, and at that point, there would be nothing he could do. For now, he could play dumb, claim that he had no idea the navy was after him – why would they be? He paged through viable excuses in his head: just running with the tide while he made repairs, testing a new rudder, breaking in a new crew; just about any excuse would free them, because they were doing nothing wrong, nor hauling anything illegal – apart from partisan sorcerers, a Welstar Palace fugitive and an outlaw text from Prince Malagon’s personal library, of course. With Steven and the others gone, however, it would be a different story: they could board him, search his ship, interrogate the crew and all he need to do was tell them, come on, make yourselves at home; we’re just testing this new rudder before we head for Orindale.
‘Two avens,’ he muttered to himself. ‘How, by all the gods of the Northern Forest, do we avoid being boarded for two avens?’
Pel climbed to the quarterdeck and reported, ‘That’s all the sheet we can get on her, Captain.’
‘Nice job, Pel,’ he said generously. ‘How long until slack tide?’
‘Half an aven, maybe less,’ the young sailor said, looking cold and weak with exhaustion. None of them had slept much over the past two days, but while the others were huddled together below, devising a plan to seal the Fold for ever, Pel had been up on deck, out in the wind and weather, keeping the Morning Star on course.
‘Half an aven,’ Captain Ford echoed, ‘good. That’s what I was thinking.’
‘We’re going to lose this tailwind, though,’ he added. ‘When the tide turns, the wind’ll change. This is no front blowing us south.’
‘I know, I know, but he’ll lose the wind, too.’
Less than half an aven later, the southern tidal flow slowed to a trickle, and with it went the Morning Star’s tailwind. Slack tide: on the coast it would have meant half an aven of dead water, but here, the Welstar River took over. Captain Ford was talking to himself as he considered the limp sheets and the following naval patrol. ‘One chance. That’s it. We have to turn east and run back north beyond the city, but we can’t look like we’re running, son of a raving whore!’
Still at the helm, he was glad to see Steven appear on deck. ‘Our list of excuses remains good,’ Captain Ford said. ‘We’re putting her through her paces before heading for the Northeast Channel. Why’d we turn and run downriver? Why not? We needed a bit of time and the tide was coming in, right? When we hit slack water, we turned and headed for the open sea. Simple, believable… and yet still likely to have me hanged and my boat pressed into the Malakasian navy.’
Now that it was the middle of the night, Steven could safely be on deck. ‘You’re fine,’ he said. ‘With us gone, you’ve got nothing to hide; just don’t do anything that looks suspicious.’
‘Easier said than done, my friend,’ Captain Ford replied. He felt the brig-sloop turning slowly beneath his boots. He checked the schooner, cursed the river and shouted, ‘Pel! Kellin! Garec! We’re coming about, let’s go! Let’s go! I want to make a hard left.’
‘Sir, the barges!’ Pel’s voice rang out.
‘You think I don’t see them?’ The captain wiped his face on his cloak. ‘Come about, on my order!’ He left the helm to Steven and crossed to the port rail, listening through the darkness for the armada of massive barges plying the river. The broad, flat-bottomed vessels were loaded with crates, lumber, even quarried stone. Passing between them at night was just about the most insane decision he could make. But given the circumstances, it might give them time to escape. The sailors tailing might be interested in the brig-sloop, perhaps even angry with her apparently oblivious captain, but he doubted they would risk death to investigate a boat that had, thus far, done essentially nothing wrong. His mood was turning sour; he retook the helm.
‘Captain, this is what I meant by doing something suspicious,’ Steven pointed out. ‘I’m just wondering what happens if one of those barges runs into us by accident while we’re cutting across traffic like a drunken teenager. I’ve been hoping for a chance to use a bit of magic before I get to Jones Beach, but turning away a five-hundred-ton barge loaded with masonry is more test than I need.’
‘If you don’t mind, I need to concentrate.’ Captain Ford watched upriver, timing the barge traffic, counting the watchlights and estimating the distances between them.
Alen and Gilmour emerged and Steven jumped down to join them, leaving the quarterdeck to the captain.
‘What’s happening?’ Gilmour asked. ‘We can see the navy boat’s still following.’
‘We’re taking steps to avoid them now,’ Steven said and gestured towards the centre of the river. ‘I think the idea is that if we can reach the east bank, we can run north through the city, with the river and the tide at our backs-’
‘And the schooner won’t follow us-’ Gilmour said.
‘Because he’d have to be out of his mind,’ Alen finished.
‘That about sums it up.’ Steven watched Pel and Kellin hurry amidships. Garec, who had picked up some rudimentary sailing skills, thanks largely to Kellin, helped where he could. Hoyt and Milla were asleep in the forward cabin, quite unaware that they might soon be swimming to shore.
Brexan, looking bleary-eyed, clomped up to them and asked, ‘What’s all the rutting shouting?’
‘Oh, nothing much,’ Garec said cheerfully, ‘but since you’re up, would you mind giving a hand over here?’ He was wrestling with a line affixed, through a system of pulleys, to the main spar.
Brexan traced the line to its terminus, high in the rigging. ‘What by all the gods in the Northern Forest are you doing?’ she cried, suddenly wide awake.
‘Crossing the road,’ Garec said, chuckling nervously.
Alen moved to the gunwale, watching as a veritable fleet of big-boned vessels cruised north. To Steven, he said diffidently, ‘Do you think you could…’
‘I have no idea,’ Steven read his mind. ‘It would be like moving a mountain.’
‘A moving mountain,’ Gilmour added.
‘What time is it, anyway?’ Alen squinted at Steven’s wrist in the torchlight.
‘About twenty to three. We need another hour and a half.’
‘If we live through the next five minutes.’
*
Captain Ford waited, feeling the Morning Star drift lazily towards the centre of the river. He watched, holding his breath, as a barge passed by like a floating island. From this distance he could see the crew, lined up on the port rail, staring at the madmen on the tiny sloop. Some were shouting, waving him off, or gesturing wildly with storm lanterns. Others stood in mute amazement as the Morning Star bobbed in the barge’s wake like a child’s toy. As the great vessel slipped past, averting catastrophe by just a few paces, the silence was broken as her captain, in a towering rage, shrieked insults across the bow. ‘Rutting demonpissing horsecock! Are you mad? Trying to get yourself killed, you whoring motherhumper? If I see you in Pellia, I’ll rip your miserable head from your shoulders, I swear I will!’
Captain Ford ignored him, pulling the brig-sloop around and shouting himself, ‘Now, Pel, Kellin, Garec, come about! Haul, gods rut you raw, haul away!’
With Kellin and Pel on the foremast, Garec and Brexan on the main, the partisan crew bent low with the effort of turning the brig-sloop in a hard tack straight across the river. Steven, Gilmour and Alen leaped to join them, glad to have something to do, to distract themselves from the next barge in line, another flat-bottomed monster loaded to the gunwales. Already they could hear their crew shouting and cursing, trying to turn their own ship to avoid the maniac in the way.
‘We’re not going to make it,’ Garec grunted, heaving at the main yard. ‘Even if we get her turned, there’s no wind. We’re already drifting downriver.’
Steven let go the line and Garec stumbled, almost falling. He grappled with the rope as it slid across the planks. ‘A bit of warning next time!’ he shouted as Steven ran for the quarterdeck, mouthing apologies as he went.
‘What? You have other plans?’ The bowman tried digging his toes into the deck, clawing for any purchase on the icy wood.
‘We need wind!’ Steven cried.
‘Steven, no!’ Captain Ford shouted, suddenly realising what he meant to do, ‘wait! You’ll rip their arms off!’
‘What?’ Steven shouted, ‘why?’
‘Garec, Pel!’ Captain Ford cried, ‘belay those lines – now! ’
‘But we’re not all the way over!’ Pel shouted.
‘Do it now! Both of you!’
Garec scrambled to obey and the main yard spun until the line went taut. He glanced up, saw the barge bearing down on them, her watchlights glowing like the eyes of a river demon, and screamed, ‘Now, Steven, now!’
Captain Ford had stood at the helm when Gilmour had filled the brig-sloop’s sails with hurricane-force wind and together, they had saved the ship, bouncing her off the mud reef. It had astounded him that anyone could be so powerful as to harness the very wind to his bidding.
But when Steven Taylor raised his hands to the main sheet, Captain Ford felt as though the Morning Star was about to spring from the water and take flight.
The wind was deafening, the howling roar of a winter gale. The sails filled, and all but the topmain – which ripped down the middle – held fast. The rigging was pulled so taut that the lines looked to be frozen solid. Captain Ford felt his ship heave forward, as if she had been thrown across the river. The force of the blast was overwhelming and he shouted as he nearly fell backwards from the helm. He held on, pulling hard to keep the rudder to port. Garec, Brexan, Kellin and Pel all tumbled to the deck; Brexan slid across and fell down the forward hatch, cursing Steven’s mother all the way.
Alen gripped as many lines as he could while Gilmour braced himself against the mainmast. He was shouting something, but Captain Ford couldn’t make it out over the wind; he was too busy trying to keep on course.
Finally, he turned and watched as the barge passed within a hair’s breadth of them.
Then it was over. The little brig-sloop had passed through the shipping lanes and was turning north for Pellia with the river current. The naval schooner, her sails hanging limp in the light of her watch-lights, drifted lazily backwards along the west bank. For the moment, the Morning Star and her crew were safe.
As the raised poop deck of the second barge passed, Captain Ford heard her captain shouting for his head.
‘Sorry,’ he called back, raising a deferential hand. ‘Sorry about that!’
The hoots, hollers and insults continued as the hulking vessel passed out of sight. Captain Ford corrected their course, feeling the seaward current beneath his feet. ‘We did it,’ he whispered, exhaling a long, cathartic sigh.
Steven bounded up to him. ‘You all right, Captain?’
Captain Ford laughed hoarsely. ‘Remind me never to do that again.’
‘Me either.’ Steven clapped him on the shoulder. ‘That was some fine sailing.’
‘Nonsense.’ The captain was sweating in the cold night air, ‘all I did was to crank her over and hold on for dear life.’
‘History will one day recall your greatness and poise under pressure,’ Steven teased.
‘I think I pissed myself,’ he said.
‘Don’t feel bad about that; Garec did too.’
Still lying where he had fallen, Garec cried, ‘And I’m not ashamed to admit it, either!’
Gilmour laughed and helped him up.
‘Captain,’ Garec said, ‘permission to help myself to your personal store of beer?’
‘Permission granted,’ Captain Ford said, ‘but save eleven or twelve for me, if you please.’
‘Done – rutting whores-’ he stopped. ‘What time is it, anyway?’ He peered at his wrist in the firelight. ‘Three and ten minutes. Is that enough time for a beer?’
‘Enough for one,’ Steven said, ‘a quick one.’
‘I’ll join you,’ Alen said. ‘I could use a bracer as well.’
The naval schooner, having tacked arduously along the west bank, didn’t catch up with the Morning Star until well after dawn. As he passed the Pellia headlands, Doren Ford was exhausted, but he was also excited at the prospect of sailing safely through the blockade and running northeast along the west edge of the archipelago. Another morning of rare winter sunshine lit the North Sea like an undulating carpet of precious gemstones.
When the schooner captain gave the order to heave to, Captain Ford complied without hesitation. He ordered the brig-sloop’s sails reefed and even had Pel toss lines to Prince Malagon’s marines as their launch came alongside.
After explaining to the officer leading the boarding party that he had no idea the brig-sloop had been shadowed upriver, Captain Ford encouraged the Malakasians to search his vessel, jib to bilge.
They found nothing illegal: no contraband, no political insurgents or partisans, no outlaw books, not even a sliver of fennaroot.
When asked where he was bound, Captain Ford explained that he had heard of some great storm that had apparently crippled the shipping industry in Falkan, and he was heading south along the Ravenian Sea, running empty in hopes of securing long-term shipping contracts from Orindale to Landry, or even Pellia, if the wind and tides were right.
The lieutenant nodded and started over the rail, then paused and asked, ‘Why’d you make that tack last night?’
‘Which tack?’ Captain Ford played dumb. He was so tired; he hoped the muscles in his face were sagging enough to make him look like the dough-head he’d been called.
‘Which tack? That suicidal tack across the river,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Why try that tack with almost no wind and at slack tide?’
Captain Ford gestured towards his crew: Hoyt (who had slept through it all), Pel, Kellin and Brexan stood sipping tecan and nibbling at breakfast. ‘Signed on a couple of new hands last Moon,’ he said. ‘They’ve been struggling a bit with the chain of command, so I thought I’d put the fear of the Northern Forest in them before we set out into deep water.’
The lieutenant, clearly amused, asked, ‘Did it work?’
‘We’ll see, my young friend. We will certainly see.’
‘Good voyage to you, Captain.’
‘Thank you, sir, and the same to you.’ He untied the launch and watched as the boarding party heaved away at their oars. Less than half-way back to the schooner, the lieutenant raised a blue pennant and his captain, watching from the quarterdeck, ordered the same pennant run up the schooner’s halyard. The Morning Star was free to go.
‘Set sail for Orindale, Captain?’ Hoyt asked, handing Captain Ford a mug of something that smelled suspiciously like beer.
‘To Orindale.’ Captain Ford took a big mouthful and swallowed, then shouted for his first mate.