Knights of the Crown

Chapter 14

Golden Cup had been riding out the storm for two days now. Its masts still stood, but the few sails left bent to the yards had long since blown to rags. No one dared to go aloft to replace them, so the ship drove downwind under bare poles. Eight men at a time on the wheel kept the ship under control, and its hull was still sound, but sooner or later muscles or planks would weaken.

Pirvan clutched the railing and watched the storm clouds drive by above. He would not willingly look long at the waves. Out here on the high seas they were not wolves but something for which he had no name, long and deceptively slow until they were on top of you. Then they fell like hammers of solid green water.

Two men had already gone overboard without so much as a cry, let alone any hope of rescue. Even with safety lines, it was perilous to venture on deck. Belowdecks, minor leaks kept bedding sodden, the cooks had given up trying to light the galley fire lest they burn themselves alive or set the ship alight, and seasickness, flying objects, and falls had twenty men abed.

They would live to thank Tarothin for his healings. But those healings had also drained him, until he was in hardly better case than the crewmen.

What lay out there to the northwest, except what seemed to be the source of all the winds in the world? Pirvan had heard the sailors talk, hinting of a few bold voyages that far. There were islands, possibly an entire continent, and much plant and animal life. He’d even heard of intelligent creatures, some of them no better than broad jests by the gods, if the gods had anything to do with their creation at all.

A ship’s boy tugged at Pirvan’s sleeve.

“Master Pirvan. The dragon wishes to speak to you.”

Pirvan looked at the boy, trying to decide if he’d heard the message rightly. He also tried to decide if the boy’s face was green from fear or from seasickness.

“Tell Hipparan I will come directly.”

They had not yet found a proper honorific for the dragon, who was giving them no help whatever in the matter. But Tarothin, Eskaia, Haimya, and Pirvan at least were not accustomed to being at the beck and call of a being whose existence they would have doubted a year ago.

Of course, a dragon in dragonsleep existed, in the eyes of the gods. But Pirvan and his comrades of the quest were not gods. Indeed, every time he looked at the waste of water and listened to the wind-demons howling, Pirvan felt less godlike than ever.

He followed the boy down the ladder, making sure that he had a firm footing on the next rung before he moved from the previous one. A man less careful had fallen yesterday, cracking his skill. Without Tarothin’s skill, he would have been the storm’s third victim, and he was still in bed with a headache like nine morning-afters all at once.

There could be no opening the hatch on the main deck in this storm. Access to Hipparan’s quarters was through a door cut in the aft bulkhead, leading by way of a flimsy catwalk to the ladder. Every time the ship rolled to port, Pirvan clung to the handholds and waited for the catwalk to collapse. Every time it rolled to starboard, he was flattened against the hull until he knew he was going through the planks into the ocean.

Somehow neither happened, and after what seemed at least half the week, he was sitting on the straw, with Haimya, Tarothin, and Eskaia. The straw had not been changed in more than a trifle too long.

Every time Golden Cup rolled, everybody would slide back and forth, clutching at any available handhold, including one another. Once all four of the humans ended up in a pile against Hipparan, with Lady Eskaia upside down, her head in Tarothin’s lap and her legs draped over his shoulder.

She might not have laughed so long and so loudly if Tarothin hadn’t turned the color of a ripe cherry.

Hipparan finally cut off the day’s laughter with a cough. A dragon’s cough, Pirvan decided, sounded rather like a large drain backing up, and a sound like that definitely gained one’s attention.

“If this storm is going to become worse, we have little time” the dragon said. “I understand that the ransom for Gerik Ginfrayson is small and light?”

“Ah-” Haimya began.

“Yes,” Eskaia said briskly. “I trust you do not need to know any more?”

“If you think I am going to betray you to add the ransom to a hoard, I do not have and do not need-” Hipparan said. He sounded half outraged, half amused.

“Peace,” Pirvan said. “Do I assume that you are offering to fly the ransom to Synsaga?”

“The ransom without humans to negotiate would be useless,” Hipparan snapped. “Even if Synsaga’s men did not seek my life, what of that black dragon? It may be rumor, it may not be. I must carry humans to deliver the ransom if I must deal with an enemy.”

The tone was supercilious, almost contemptuous of the humans’ lack of insight. Pirvan did not listen to the tone, but to the offer. Hipparan was saying that he was prepared to risk his life, riding the storm, to complete the quest-if some humans were prepared to match his courage.

“I know no more about riding dragons than anyone alive today,” he said. “No less, either. I do know something about negotiation, craft, and stealth. I also have a small spell at my command that may prove useful, and a dagger that I know will.” He stood and braced himself against Hipparan’s neck.

“No one should go barebacked into Synsaga’s camp,” Haimya said. She joined Pirvan, and much to his surprise slipped an arm through his. No doubt this was just to keep from being flung on her nose by the next roll.

Tarothin was rising to his feet when Hipparan coughed again. “With all due respect, good wizard, you are more needed here. Also, I fear I cannot carry more than two to shore if I am to fly back with a third. Gerik is more or less of the common size, isn’t he?” he added, for Haimya.

She nodded, then started as Lady Eskaia also stood.

“I am the lightest of the four-” she began.

“Also the most valuable.”

“The one Synsaga would most readily negotiate with,” she replied.

“The one he would most gladly hold for ransom,” Hipparan growled. Haimya looked relieved at not having to say the same; Pirvan and Tarothin kept their faces carefully masklike.

So it would be Pirvan and Haimya, with the ransom, a letter from Eskaia proving they had full power to negotiate, and everything they might need to survive the flight and the landing.

“Of course, I’ll wager that the storm ends the moment you people take off,” Eskaia said. Her smile seemed forced; her gaiety certainly was.

“Yes, and if we don’t take off, the storm will sink the ship with all hands and the ransom, too,” Tarothin grumbled. “As Hipparan said, we are not rich in time. Let us be at our work.”

* * * * *

Pirvan had once or twice dreamed of dragons. They were deep in human memory and at times, in the hours of darkness, rose to the surface.

He had never so much as dreamed of the problems of riding a dragon. Particularly a dragon the size of a house, who had to fly out of the hold of a storm-tossed ship without hitting the rigging, the water, or the railing, and preferably without even opening the hatch to the hold.

There was no avoiding the last. Tarothin made that plain.

“If a dragon can’t wish-fling himself from one place to another, no human wizard can safely do it for him. The spells for that are good for humans and maybe horses and riders. I do not even command those completely. To attempt wish-flinging on a dragon and two riders would be to send them to their deaths.”

“It will be sending even more to their deaths if the ship floods through the open hatch,” Eskaia said.

They argued various ways around this impasse and came up with a solution that had at least this virtue: it risked no one except Hipparan and his riders.

They would prepare the dragon riders’ harness and gear in the hold, likewise strap it on and lash the riders in place. Then sailors would loosen the hatch, and others from the shelter of the forecastle would pull it aside quickly with strong ropes. One man would signal the direction of the wind.

The moment he knew downwind from upwind, Hipparan would leap. One leap to the deck, a second into the air, and with prayers from all and any spells Tarothin thought useful and could safely cast, the ransom flight would be aloft.

This plan’s virtue was more a lack of offices than an abundance of virtues. It would need luck and good timing. It would also mean that the harness had to be made absolutely strong enough without testing and adjusting. If something snapped as the dragon leaped, one rider at least would need healing and the second be on his or her way alone and barebacked.

Pirvan decided that if this prospect did not alarm Haimya or Hipparan, he was not going to be the sole voice of caution, which in this situation might look too much like cowardice. Indeed, he wondered all over again how many heroes had arisen from men’s desire not to be cowards.

* * * * *

What the dragon riders were taking with them was nearly the weight of a third rider. Some of it, such as the food and water, would be consumed. But the rest included weapons, bedding, a light tent, floatbelts, spare clothing and boots, a healing pouch, a lantern, and much else that Haimya assured him would be useful or necessary even if he didn’t know what it was.

Pirvan was willing to give Haimya the benefit of the doubt. After all, she’d campaigned in the field and he was definitely a city-dweller, for all his curious mixture of skills. But he did raise the point of their carrying all of this about in the jungle.

“Oh, it’s no more than seventy or eighty pounds apiece,” Haimya said cheerfully, then laughed at Pirvan’s expression. “Also, we will probably hide much of it before we approach the camp, then retrieve it afterward. Gerik should be able to carry his share on the way out.”

This assumed that they weren’t carrying Gerik, or in such haste that they could not risk leaving the way they had come. However, Pirvan saw no reason to delay departure further by what might be called quibbling. The faster they struck, the more likely they would have surprise on their side, and nothing counted for more in this kind of affair.

Sailors ransacked Golden Cup for leather, rope, and chain to make the saddles and harness. The sailmaker personally took command of assembling them. By the time all was ready, the harness could have supported the weight of a horse and cart, let alone two humans.

Over Haimya’s objections, most of the equipment was in sacks distributed over the harness. Pirvan reminded her that they might have to be ready to fight at once, and could do so better unencumbered. He had not been planning to mention the matter of swimming if they fell off, rather than sinking like stones from the weight of their gear.

Hipparan was less discreet. Haimya turned white, Pirvan put an arm around her, she did not resist, then both of them flushed as a chorus of cheers rose around them. From the expression on his face, Hipparan was ready to join the cheering; from the expression on hers, Haimya would gladly have turned all the onlookers into frogs.

The farewells had to be said in the hold, with the gale shrieking above the closed hatch. Even with that, the straw was now sodden, and every time the ship rolled, filthy water that hadn’t yet found the bilges sloshed back and forth.

“Well, Little Brother,” Grimsoar One-Eye said. “This is not the farewell I had expected.”

“To be sure. Silken sheets and lovely ladies make a proper deathbed. But this may not be a deathbed, and the lady is lovely enough, at any rate. Indeed, I’ll wager the price of a set of silk sheets that we’ll be back.”

“Who pays me if you lose?”

“Ask Lady Eskaia.” Pirvan jerked his head to the far side of the hold, where the two women were embracing clumsily, trying not to cry or fall.

“Aye.” Grimsoar lowered his voice. “There are a few of the lads who say that they don’t care if you come back, as long as we’re rid of the dragon.”

“Oh they do, do they?”

“No more than I can handle, to be sure.”

“Tarothin-”

“Begging your pardon, Brother, but sailors are sailors. They’ll take my fist in their face and call it a fair fight. With Tarothin, they’ll cry out, and others might listen.”

“As you wish.”

They gripped shoulders, then suddenly Haimya was beside him and it was time to ride the dragon.

* * * * *

“Ready above!” someone shouted. At least it sounded like that, above the endless creaking of the ship and the howl of the storm.

“Ready below!” Pirvan replied. Haimya said nothing, merely gripped her harness with one hand and patted Hipparan with the other.

“Both hands and no sentimentality, Lady,” the dragon grumbled. “You don’t think I’d be doing this if I didn’t think I still owed you?”

Any human reply was lost in the squeal of the hatch cover sliding free, the crash as it struck the deck, and the shriek as the storm burst into the hold. Haimya shifted to a two-handed grip and leaned back into her harness, then shut her eyes. Pirvan kept his open-until Hipparan’s first leap seemed to sink them all the way to the back of his skull.

He opened them again on deck, and the wind promptly tried to blow them shut. He remembered a picture of a dragon-mounted knight of Huma’s time, wearing something over his eyes. Too late to worry about that now.

The sailors were shouting and waving. Pirvan couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t have heard a thousand clerics chanting songs to the gods over the storm. He raised a hand to wave-and had only a one-handed grip when Hipparan leaped into the storm.

For a moment, Pirvan saw the waves above and the sky and Golden Cup’s masts below. He noticed that more than a few ropes had joined the scraps of canvas in flying loose on the wind. The dragon seemed to fall upward, the waves reached out, then paused-and at last began to recede.

By the time Hipparan rolled over to fly upright, Pirvan had a two-handed grip. He even had his eyes open-though the first thing he saw made him want to shut them again.

Hipparan was climbing swiftly toward the base of the clouds. They were too high for spray, but not for rain. Through the murk of rain and spray Pirvan saw Golden Cup, already shrunk to the size of a child’s toy boat bobbing in a bath.

Except that no bathwater ever had the sinister gray hue or oddly crinkled appearance of the storm-beaten ocean. And children’s toy boats were always neat and colorful, not battered and drab.

Then Hipparan plunged into the clouds. Pirvan’s last glimpse was of Haimya, her eyes so tightly closed and her face so pale that he could hardly tell if she was alive. He uttered a brief prayer to Habbakuk and closed his own eyes, for now there was nothing whatever to see.