The fight was almost over. The black deck of the gnomes' ship was slippery with smeared streaks and pools of blood, the bodies of orcs and gnomes thrown together across it. Only a dozen gnomes were left standing, several clutching the railing. Some of the gnomes were shoving the bodies of slain orcs over the side of the ship.
Gomja was hammering a battered orc lying flat on the deck with his huge, ham-sized fists. Seeing that his opponent was no longer fighting back, he grabbed the orc by its black-armored shoulders, lifted it from the deck, and casually hurled it off the side of the ship into empty space. "Now you know the hazards of inviting yourselves onto other people's ships without asking first!" he roared, clapping his two thick hands together to dust them off.
Gomja looked back and surveyed the ship. Teldin, Gaye, and the gnomes were sweating heavily, their clothing askew and splattered with red. The gnomes had taken the worst of the fighting, having had so little experience with it before; half of their numbers on deck were dead, and the rest were exhausted and wounded. The wind whipped at the survivors as they stood on the deck beneath the huge sun, miles above the ground.
"Well, lads," said Gomja softly. "We've won." He took a last look around, then walked over to catch a gnome who was on the verge of letting go of the railing and falling overboard. "Gather your gear! All hands below!" he shouted. "We've won! Let's tell the rest!"
The weary gnomes staggered against the wind, toward the nearest hatch, some still clutching their weapons. Gaye wandered over to Teldin and fell against him, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face in his stained shirt. He held her to him, thinking of the mounting toll of dead, all for the sake of his cloak, which snapped in the wind behind him like a flag.
*****
"We need to put down right away," Aelfred said when he met Teldin in a narrow corridor near the helm. Teldin had just been on his way to check on Sylvie. "I've got to get her off the helm before she falls asleep. She's almost too tired to think straight. No-don't go see her. The gnomes haven't found all their boobytraps yet, and I've got that gnome mage, Loomfinger, in there with her to keep her awake until she can set us down. I wish this ship had a second helm so I could just have Loomfinger take over for her."
Teldin looked down the corridor to the helm room. "If there's anything I can do . . ." he said.
Aelfred damped a hand on Teldin's shoulder. "Old son, you've done more than your share already. Sylvie said you took but almost the whole upper deck of the scorpion with some spell you threw at them. She could see it from her helm. It really picked her up for a while." Aelfred's twisted grin came back. "She said your sword fighting needed work, though. Looks like we have to start getting together again on that."
Word came a few minutes later from Loomfinger that Sylvie had spotted a place to land, and Aelfred went to the helm room to be with her. Avoiding several undismantied booby-traps in the corridors, Teldin went to his cabin to peer out the forthole over his too-short bed, not willing to risk being on the top deck when the ship came down.
Fortunately, the ship was circling its prospective landing site in such a way that his cabin was facing the site itself. It was long the coast of a large sea with a very smooth, regular coastline that curved off into the distance. The ship dropped toward the water at a comfortable speed, though Teldin found himself worrying about the impact when the ship hit the water. Sylvie was a much better pilot than he had been when he had brought the Probe down, he knew, but the knowledge did not take the edge off his worries.
"Can I see?"
Teldin jumped when he heard Gaye's voice behind him, striking his head against a shelf mounted right over the porthole. He felt his head, detecting no serious harm, and forced himself to relax. He got up from his bed.
"Don't you ever knock?" he said irritably.
Gaye climbed on the bed and peered out the window. She was wearing what looked like a silk bathrobe, tied around the waist with one of Teldin's belts-a belt he did not recall having ever loaned to anyone, least of all her. Her hair was wet and hung down over her face and shoulders in thick strands. Water dripped in the bed from her hair, and her feet left huge wet spots on the sheets wherever she stood.
"My cabin's on the wrong side," she said by way of apology, her face pressed to the portal. "This should be fun, huh? Dyffed says this ship was made to travel underwater if we want it to. Maybe we could go exploring and see what lives under the lake, then take off and see the fid."
"You not only don't knock," Teldin remarked, "but you also don't dress properly, and you're making a mess of things. Did you just get out of the shower?"
Gaye looked back with a frown. "Boy, you're in a bad mood. Yes, I just got out of the shower. I couldn't stand to run around a moment longer without cleaning up. You could use a shower yourself, Mister Cloak Man. Why are you so grumpy, huh? The fight was pretty awful, but at least we're alive. Or is it me? You pick at me a lot lately. Why?"
Teldin started to reply, then stopped. He didn't really know why. He stared at her, wrapped in her bathrobe and still dripping bath water on his bed, and it finally dawned on him why she bothered him. It wasn't because she was a kender; he'd known a kender or two during the War of the Lance, and though they were irritating at times, they could be quite likable, too. Gaye was very likable, in fact-and that was the problem.
He dropped his gaze and rubbed his face with both hands. "I'm sorry," he said. "Everything has me on edge lately." He sat down uncomfortably on the gnome-sized chair behind him, feeling his back ache a little as he did so, and reflected on how much of the problem he wanted to discuss with her. He heard Gaye move away from the window and sit down on the edge of his bed.
"Gaye," he began, "ever since I put on this cloak, I've watched everyone I've ever known be killed or injured because of it. My neighbors, my friends, my enemies, even-one. I can't take it. I can't even count the number of people who have died because someone wanted to get this cloak at every cost. I can't lead anything remotely like a normal life with half the universe out to kill or capture me. The neogi caught me once and tried to cut me up and break all my joints just for fun." He hesitated, seeing one grim memory in particular, then went on. "I even knew a woman once, someone I loved, who betrayed me to the neogi so she could get my cloak. She and I… I thought we were very close, but it meant nothing at all to her. She just wanted the cloak. Aelfred and I… we had to kill her when she tried to kill me."
Teldin covered his eyes with his fingers. "I know you want to be my friend, "You're like Aelfred in a way. Nothing gets to him for long. He always comes back, ready to fight and move on. I like people like that, but… I don't want people to get too close to me these days. I can't take the thought of being responsible for their being killed."
The kender thought this over. "Or maybe for them betraying you," she said quietly.
Teldin thought that one over. "Yes, maybe that, too. It just seems easier not to get… involved."
Gaye sighed as she regarded Teldin. "You know, if there was ever a time when you needed people, this is the time. My father tried to handle everything in our family business after my mother died, and it made me crazy to see him wear himself out. He had people who were willing to help, but he turned them away. For what? The work just made him ill, until… well." Gaye shrugged slightly, looking down for a moment. "Anyway, you can't afford to do that same thing, and you have no end of help. Gomja said he quit his job with the gnomes because you're his best friend and he wanted to help you out. Aelfred told me he and Sylvie decided they would stick it out with you, no matter what, because they both really like you and they don't want any bad guys to get your cloak. Dyffed's here because he's… well, because he's a gnome, but he likes you, too."
Gaye pushed herself up from the bed and padded over to Teldin on her bare feet. Before he could react, she leaned close, her eyes looking deep into his own. She had used some sort of fragrant soap when she had showered, and the scent surprised him. She reached out and took his head in her warm hands.
"And I'm here," she said in a low voice, "because-"
There was a sudden thundering sound outside, all across the hull of the ship. Just as suddenly, everything on the ship was hurled forward toward the bow, which dived downward. The light from the porthole went out. Teldin felt Gaye slam into him with a muffled cry as the room tilted up almost vertically. Loose items around the room crashed into the wall near him. Then the ship struck something more solid than water, and Teldin's head snapped back and slammed the wall behind him. He saw an amazing assortment of stars explode in his vision, then saw nothing at all.
Chapter Twelve
Teldin felt the top deck of the Perilous Halibut slowly roll with the waves, and, despite his headache, he steadied himself easily as it did. The ship kept a surprisingly even keel for a gnome-built craft, he thought-particularly a craft that had just been through a nearly disastrous landing. As the throbbing in his head came and went, Teldin watched a group of six gnomes paddle for the shoreline in their small raft, cobbled together from doors and wooden beams knocked from the interior of the ship. He mulled for a moment over Sylvie's bad news, which he'd received shortly after the splash-landing, then sourly pushed it from his mind. Things were looking worse all the time.
Looking down, Teldin checked the railing where a thick rope had been tied off. Once the gnomes got ashore, they would take the other end of the rope and tie it to one of the trees there; then the crew of the Perilous Halibut would pull the ship in. The screws and paddles the gnomes had originally designed for powering the ship no longer functioned. The screws were made to be turned by the giant hamsters, both of which had been knocked unconscious in the crash and were still "woozy," Gaye had reported. The paddles were nearly all broken, having been badly stored, and the mechanisms for the screws had also taken some damage in the crash; they could not be fixed without two days of work. It was easier to simply haul the ship in by force.
Someone walked heavily from the stern of the ship to stand behind Teldin. He heard the being stretch and yawn, then casually straighten his uniform.
"Lovely day, if you don't mind my saying so, sir," said Gomja, carefully shading his small eyes with a thick blue-gray hand as he watched the gnomes' progress. "Unless, of course, we're attacked by the local militia or those scro find us, but we can handle that, I'll wager. By the Great Captain's blunderbuss, a good fight would get the blood stirring. We gave better than we got up there."
"Scro?" Teldin asked, half turning to look at the huge giff. The giffs pleased remembrance of the battle was starting to annoy him. "What are scro?"
"Scro are space orcs, sir," said Gomja, still watching the gnomes. "I didn't realize it at first when we were fighting them, but it came to me afterward. My sire told me a few tales about them. Scro are orcish survivors of the Unhuman War, hundreds of years ago, when the elves and humanoids fought for control of all the spheres. The survivors spelled the name 'orcs' backward when they cut their ties with their ancestors. They've been just an occasional nuisance until now. Sao are much more dangerous than common orcs, and even ogres will leave them alone. They're supposed to be partially resistant to magical spells, and all are well trained for combat. They fought well, I must admit. I wish I had saved one of their suits of armor as a trophy."
Teldin looked back at the shore. The gnomes were climbing out of their boat at the beach, a hundred yards away. Two gnomes fell into the water and disappeared as he watched. "But the scro, or whatever you call them, are dead, and we aren't," he said, summing up all he cared to recall about the battle. "I wouldn't like to see them get another chance at us."
Gomja grunted. The gnomes had managed to upset their entire raft, and it appeared to have come apart. There was nothing that could be done about it.
"The scro should have an easy time with us now that we're stuck here," Teldin said grimly. He turned to look back at the dozen or so gnomes on the top deck, each holding a loaded crossbow and nervously watching the sky for other spelljammers. Teldin lowered his voice in hopes that the gnomes couldn't hear him. "With the helm gone, we don't have much of a chance to escape them."
Gomja looked down sharply. "Where did you hear that, sir? The helm's quite functional. Its magic was merely nullified by the antimagical properties of this lake water."
"What?" Teldin frowned at Gomja. "Sylvie said that the helm wouldn't work, no matter what magic or effort she used on it. That was why we lost control and went underwater, hitting the lake bottom. The helm is simply dead."
"I am sure she would say now that she spoke too soon, sir," Gomja said promptly. "Before I came on deck, I asked her about the ship, and she explained what she had discovered about the antimagical properties of the water in this lake. It's quite remarkable, sir. The water doesn't remove a magical item's powers, but the water will keep the item from functioning. All we have to do is pull the ship onto the shore, out of the water, and we'll be off."
Teldin snorted softly, crossing his arms in front of him. "I wonder if the water would shut off the powers in my cloak long enough to let me take it off."
"That is possible, sir, but not likely." Gomja looked over the side of the ship briefly, ""You could try it, but the ladder came off in the landing, and you'd have no way to get up the side of the ship and on deck again unless you used a rope."
Teldin made up his mind to try it anyway-closer to shore. "If we run into one more minor setback like antimagical water that interrupts spelljamming," he muttered, "the scro, the neogi, the elves, and everyone else can fight over the cloak and my smashed body at their leisure." He felt the dull throbbing of his headache behind his eyes. He'd have to try the cold compresses that Gaye had applied to him when he'd recovered in his cabin, surrounded by his scattered belongings. He couldn't for the life of him recall anything that had gone on for a few minutes before the crash; he remembered only that he was trying to get to his cabin to lie down. He'd asked Gaye, since she'd been in the cabin with him, but she'd shrugged and said only that she'd discuss it later.
In the distance, the gnomes made it to the shore and managed to pull part of their raft onto the beach. After some confusion, the gnomes worked their way up the bank to the closest of the many trees there, the rope trailing behind them into the water. It took them about twenty minutes to tie the rope down. When they finished, the huge giff braced himself on the deck and began pulling on the rope, hand over hand. The ship creaked and groaned, changing its heading to face the shore, and slowly moved toward land.
"Antimagical water," Teldin said, half to himself. "What else does this place have in store for us?"
He turned away to look out over the lake. Thus, Gomja, not Teldin, was the first to see the horse-sized, green-and-gray insect that broke through the tree branches behind the tired gnomes. One of the centaurlike creature's clawed hands grasped the rope that the gnomes had just finished tying off. With a curved saber in its other hand, the creature chopped through the rope with a single cut.
An instant later, dozens of the multilegged horrors crashed out of the woods, rushing down the slope at the startled gnomes with long bows drawn and curved swords raised.
*****