Ships from the West

Thirteen

'Keep her thus until four bells,' Hawkwood told the helms shy;man. 'Then bring her one point to larboard. Arhuz!' 'Skipper?'

'Be prepared to send up the mizzen topsail when we alter course. If the wind backs call me at once. I am going below.'

'Aye, sir,' Arhuz answered smartly. He checked the xebec's course on the compass board and then swept the decks with his gaze, noting the angle of the yards, the fill of the sails, the condition of the running rigging. Then he watched the sea and sky, noting the direction of the swell, the position of clouds near and far, all those almost indefinable details which a master-mariner took in and filed away without conscious volition. Hawkwood clapped him on the shoulder, knowing the Seahare was in good hands, and went below.

He was exhausted. For days he had been on deck con shy;tinually, snatching occasional dozes in a sling of canvas spliced to the mizzen shrouds, and eating upright on the xebec's narrow quarterdeck with one eye to the wind and another to the sails. He had pushed the crew and the Seahare very hard, straining to extract every knot of speed out of the sleek craft and keeping the helmsmen on tenterhooks with minute variations of course to catch errant breezes. The log had been going continually in the forechains and a dozen times a day (and night) the logsman would cast his board into the sea while his mate watched the sands trickling through the thirty-second glass and cry nip when the time ran out. And the line would be reeled back in and the knots which had been run out by the ship's passage counted. So far, with a beam wind like this to starboard, the fore-and-aft rig of the xebec was drawing well, and they were averaging seven knots. Seven long sea-miles an hour. In the space of six days, running due south, they had put almost a hundred and ninety leagues between themselves and poor old Abrusio, and by Hawk-wood's calculations had long since passed the latitude of northern Gabrion, though that island lay still three hundred miles eastwards. Hawkwood had decided to avoid the narrow waters of the Malacar Straits, and sail instead south of Gabrion itself, entering the Levangore to the west of Azbakir. The Straits were too close to Astarac, and too easily patrolled. But a lot depended on the wind. While veering and backing a point or two in the last few days, it had remained steady and true. Once he changed course for the east, as he would very soon, he would have to think about sending up the square-rigged yards, on the fore and mainmasts at least. Lateen yards were less suited to a stern wind than square-rigged ones. The men would be happier too. The massive lateen yards, which gave the Seahare the look of some marvellous butterfly, were heavy to handle and awkward to brace round and reef.

He rubbed his eyes. A packet of spray, knocked aboard by the swift passage of the ship's beakhead, drenched the fore shy;castle. The xebec was riding the swell beautifully, shouldering aside the waves with a lovely, graceful motion and almost no roll. Despite this, seasickness had afflicted his supercargo almost from the moment they had left the shelter of Grios Point, and they had remained in their cabins. A fact for which he was inordinately grateful. He had too much to think about to worry about a sparring match between Isolla and Jemilla. And the boy, whose whelp was he? Murad's in.the eyes of the world, but Hawkwood had heard court rumours about his parentage. And why else would Golophin have inveigled a passage out of Hebrion for him and his mother if there was not some Royal connection? Here he came now, hauling him shy;self up the companionway and looking as eager as a young hound which has sighted a fox. Alone of the passengers he was unaffected by seasickness, and seemed in fact to revel in their swift southward passage, the valiant efforts of the ship. Hawkwood had had several conversations with him on the quarterdeck. He was pompous for one so young, and full of himself of course, but he knew when to keep his mouth shut, which was a blessing.

'Captain! How goes our progress?' Bleyn asked. The other occupants of the quarterdeck frowned and looked away. They had taken to Richard Hawkwood very quickly once he had proved that he was who he had claimed to be, and they thought that this boy did not address him with sufficient respect.

Hawkwood did not answer him for a second, but studied the traverse board, looked at the sails, and seeing one on the edge of shivering barked to the helmsman, 'Mind your luff.' Then he looked humourlessly at Bleyn. He had been about to go below and snatch some sleep for the first time in days and he was damned if some chattering popinjay was going to rob him of it. But something in Bleyn's eyes, some element of un shy;abashed exuberance, stopped him. 'Come below. I'll show you on the chart.'

They went back down the companionway and entered Hawkwood's cabin, which by rights should have been the finest on the ship. But Hawkwood had given that one to Isolla, and retained for himself that of the first mate. He had a pair of scuttles for light instead of windows and both he and Bleyn had to stoop as they entered. There was a broad table running athwartships which was fastened to the deck with brass runners, and pinned open upon it a chart of the Western Levangore and the Hebrian Gulf. Hawkwood picked up the dividers and consulted his log, ignoring Bleyn. The boy was staring about himself, at the cutlasses on the bulkhead, the battered sea-chest, the quadrant hung in a corner. At last Hawkwood pricked the bottom left corner of the chart. 'There we are, more or less.'

Bleyn peered at the chart. 'But we are out in the middle of nowhere! And headed south. We'll soon drop off the edge of the map.'

Hawkwood smiled and rubbed at the bristles of his return shy;ing beard. 'If you are being pursued, then nowhere is a good place to be. The open ocean is a grand place to hide.'

'But you have to turn eastwards soon, surely?'

'We'll change course today or the next, depending on the wind. Thus far it has been steady, but I've never yet known a steady westerly persist this long in the gulf. In spring the land is warming up and pushing the clouds out to sea. Southerlies are more usual in this part of the world, and heading east we should have a beam wind to work with again. Thus I hesitate to lower the lateen yards.'

'They're better when the wind is hitting the ship from the side, are they not?'

'The wind is on the beam, master Bleyn. If you're to sound like a sailor you must make an effort to learn our language.'

'Larboard is left and starboard is right, yes?'

'Bravo. We'll have you laying aloft before we're done.'

'How long before we reach Torunn?'

Hawkwood shook his head. 'This is not a four-horse coach we are in. We do not run to exact timetables, at sea. But if the winds are kind, then I would hazard that we should meet with the mouth of the Torrin Estuary in between three and four weeks.'

'A month! The war could be over in that time.' 'From what I hear, I doubt it.'

There was a muffled thump on the partition to one side, someone moving about. The partitions were thin wood, and Bleyn and Hawkwood looked at one another. It was Jemilla's cabin, though the word 'cabin' was a somewhat ambitious term for her kennel-like berth.

'Do you know much about this King Corfe?' Bleyn asked.

'Only what Golophin has told me, and popular rumour. He is a hard man by all accounts, but just, and a consummate general.'

'I wonder if he'll let me serve in his army,' Bleyn mused.

Hawkwood looked at him sharply, but before he could say anything there was a knock at his door. It was opened straight after to reveal Jemilla standing there, wrapped in a shawl. Her hair was in tails around her shoulders and she looked pale and drawn, with bruised rings about her eyes.

'Captain, you have come downstairs at last. I have been meaning to have a word with you for days in private. I could almost believe you have been avoiding me. Bleyn, leave us.'

'Mother-'

She stared at him, and he closed his mouth at once and left the cabin without another word. Jemilla shut the door care shy;fully behind him.

'My dear Richard,' she said quietly. 'It has been a long time since you and I were alone in the same room together.'

Hawkwood tossed the dividers on the chart before him. 'He's a good lad, that son of yours. You should stop treating him like a child.'

'He needs a father's hand on his shoulder.'

'Murad was not the paternal type, I take it.'

Her smile was not pleasant. 'You could say that. I've missed you, Richard.'

Hawkwood snorted derisively. 'It's been eighteen years, Jemilla, near as damn it. You've done a hell of a job of pretending otherwise.' He was surprised by the rancour in his voice. He had thought that Jemilla no longer mattered to him. The fact that both she and Isolla were on board confused him mightily, and though the ship had needed careful hand shy;ling to enable the fastest possible passage since Abrusio, he had been using that as an excuse to stay up on deck, in his own world as it were, leaving the complications below.

'I'm rather busy, and very tired. If you have anything to discuss it will have to wait.'

She moved closer. The shawl slipped to reveal one creamy shoulder. He gazed at her, fascinated despite himself. There was a lush ripeness about Jemilla. She was an exotic fruit on the very cusp of turning rotten, and wantonness in her seemed not a vice but the expression of a normal appetite.

She kissed him lightly on the lips. The shawl slipped further. Below it she wore only a thin shift, and her heavy round breasts swelled through it, the dark stain of the nipples visible beneath the fabric. Hawkwood cupped one breast in his callused palm and she closed her eyes. A smile he had forgotten played across her lips. Half triumph, half hunger. He placed his mouth on hers and she gently closed her teeth on his darting tongue.

A knock on the door. He straightened at once and drew back from Jemilla. She wrapped her shawl about her again, her eyes not leaving his. 'Come in.'

It was Isolla. She started upon seeing them standing there together, and something in her face fell. 'I will come back at a better time.'

Jemilla curtseyed to her gracefully. 'Do not depart on my account, your majesty. I was just leaving.' As she passed the Queen in the doorway, the shawl unaccountably slipped again. 'Later, Richard,' she called back over her naked shoulder, and was gone.

Hawkwood felt his face burning and could not meet Isolla's eyes. He scourged himself for he knew not what. 'Lady, what can I do for you?'

She seemed more disconcerted than he. 'I did not know that the lady Jemilla and you were . . . familiar to each other, Captain.'

Hawkwood raised his head and met her eyes frankly. 'We were lovers many years ago. There is nothing between us now.' Even as he said it he wondered if it were true.

Isolla coloured. 'It is not my business.'

'Best to have it in the open. We'll be living cheek-by-jowl for the next few weeks. I will not dance minuets around the truth on my own ship.' His voice sounded harsher than he had intended. In a softer tone he asked: 'You are feeling better?'

'Yes. I – I think perhaps I am gaining my sea legs.'

'Better to go up on deck and get some fresh air. It is fetid down here. Just do not look at the sea moving beyond the rail.'

‘I will be sure not to.'

'What was it you wished to speak of, lady?'

'It was nothing important. Good day, Captain. Thank you for your advice.' And she was gone. She banged her knee on the jamb of the door as she left.

Hawkwood sat down before the chart and stared blindly at the parchment, the dull shine of the brass dividers. He knuckled his eyes, his exhaustion returning to make water of his muscles. And then he had to sit back and laugh at he knew not what.

The small change of course he had ordered woke him from a troubled sleep. He climbed out of the swinging cot and pulled on his sodden boots, blinking and yawning. In his dreams he had been terribly thirsty, his tongue swollen in his rasping mouth, and he had been seated before a pitcher of water and one of wine, unable to quench his raging thirst because he could not choose between the two.

He stumped up on deck to find a strained atmosphere and a crowded quarterdeck. Arhuz nodded, checked the traverse board and reported, 'Course east-south-east, skipper, wind backing to west-south-west so we have it on the starboard quarter. Do you want to call all hands?'

Hawkwood studied the trim of the sails. They were still drawing well. 'What's our speed?'

'Six knots and one fathom, holding steady.'

'Then we'll continue thus until the change of the watch, and then get square yards on fore and main. Rouse out the sailmaker, Arhuz, and get it all set in train. Bosun! Open the main hatch and get tackles to the maintop.'

The mariners went about their business with a calm com shy;petence that pleased Hawkwood greatly. They were not his Ospreys, but they knew their craft, and he had nothing more to tell them. He studied the sky over the taffrail. The west was clouding up once more, banners and rags of cloud gathering on the horizon. To the north the air was as clear as ice, the sea empty of every living thing.

'Lookout!' he called. 'What's afoot?' On an afternoon like this, with the spring sun warming the deck and the fresh breeze about them, the lookout would be able to survey a great expanse of ocean whose diameter was fifteen leagues wide.

'Not a sail, sir. Nor a bird or scrap of weed neither.'

'Very good.' Then he noticed that both Isolla and Jemilla were on deck. Isolla was standing by the larboard mizzen shrouds wrapped in a fur cloak with skeins of glorious red-gold hair whipping about her face, and Jemilla was to star shy;board, staring up into the rigging with a look of anxiety.

'Captain,' she said with no trace of coquetry, 'can you not say something to him, issue some order?'

Hawkwood followed her gaze and saw what seemed to be a trio of master's mates high in the fore topmast shrouds. Frowning, he realised that one of them was Bleyn, and his two companions were beckoning him yet higher.

'Gribbs, Ordio!' he bellowed at once. 'On deck, and see master Bleyn down with you!'

The young men halted in their ascent, and then began to retrace their steps with the swiftness of long practice.

'Handsomely, handsomely there, damn you!', and they moderated their pace.

'Thank you, Captain,' Jemilla said, honest relief in her face. Then she swallowed and her hand went to her mouth.

'You had best get below, lady.' She left the quarterdeck, weaving across the pitching deck as though she were drunk. One of the quartermasters lent her his arm at a nod from Hawkwood and saw her down the companionway. Hawk shy;wood felt a small, unworthy sense of satisfaction as she went. This was his world, where he commanded and she was not much more than baggage. He had seen her a few times at court in recent years, a high-born aristocrat who deemed it charity when she deigned to notice his existence. The tables had been turned, it seemed. She was a refugee dependent on him for the safety of her son and herself. There was satisfac shy;tion to be had in her current discomfort, and she was not so alluring with that pasty puking look about her.

She will gain no hold on me, Hawkwood promised himself. Not on this voyage.

The wind was picking up, and the Seahare was pitching before it like an excited horse, great showers of spray breaking over her forecastle and travelling as far aft as the waist. Hawkwood grasped the mizzen backstay and felt the tension in the cable. He would have to shorten sail if this kept up, but for now he wanted to wring every ounce of speed he could out of the blessed wind.

'Arhuz, another man to the wheel, and brail up the mizzen-course.'

'Aye, sir. Prepare to shorten sail! You there, Jorth, get on up that yard and leave the damn landlubber to make his own way. This is not a nursery.'

The landlubber in question was Bleyn. He managed a creditable progress up the waist to the quarterdeck until he stood dripping before Hawkwood, his face wind-reddened and beaming.

'Better than a good horse!' he shouted above the wind, and Hawkwood found himself grinning at the boy. He was game, if nothing else.

'Get yourself below, Bleyn, and change your clothes. And look in on your mother. She is taken poorly.'

'Aye, sir!' Hawkwood watched him go with an inexplicable ache in his breast.

'He seems a fine young fellow. I wonder he was not presented at court,' Isolla said. Hawkwood had momentarily forgotten about her.

'You too might be better below, lady. It's apt to become a trifle boisterous on deck.'

'I do not mind. I seem to have become accustomed to the movement of the ship at last, and the air is like a tonic'

Her eyes sparkled. She was no beauty, but there was a strength, a wholeness about her that informed her features and somehow invited the same openness in return. Only the livid scar down one side of her face jarred. It did not make her ugly in Hawkwood's eyes, but he was reminded of his debt to her every time he saw it.

What am I become, he thought, some kind of moonstruck youngster? There was something in him which responded to all three of his passengers in different ways, but he would sooner jump overboard than try to delve further than that. Thank God for the ceaseless business of the ship to keep his thoughts occupied.

He recalled the chart below to his mind as easily as some men might recall a passage from an oft-read book. If he kept to this course he would, in mariner's terms, shave the south-west tip of Gabrion by some ten or fifteen leagues. That was all very well, but if the southerlies started up out of Calmar he would not have much leeway to play with. And then, to play for more sea room would mean eating up more time. Two days perhaps.

The figures and angles came together in his head. He felt Isolla watching him curiously but ignored her. The crew did not approach him. They knew what he was about, and knew he needed peace to resolve it in his mind.

'Hold this course,' he said to Arhuz at last. What Bleyn had said had tipped the scales. They could not be profligate with time. He would have to chance the southerlies and gain leeway by whatever small shifts he could. The decision left his mind clear again, and the tension left the deck. He studied the sail plan. The lateens on fore and main were drawing well for now. He would let them remain until the wind began to veer, if it did at all. No need to call all hands. The watch below might snore on undisturbed in their hammocks.

'Bosun!' he thundered. 'Belay the swaying up of the square yards. We'll stick to the lateens for now. Take down those tackles.'

He stood there on the quarterdeck as the crew took to the mizzen shrouds and began to fight for fistful after fistful of the booming mizzen course, tying it up in a loose bunt on the yard. The Seahare's motion grew a little less violent, but as Hawkwood watched the sea and the clouds closely he realised that the weather was about to worsen. A squall was approach shy;ing out of the west; he could see the white line of its fury whipping up the already stiffening swell, whilst above the water the cloud bunched and darkened and came on like some purposeful titan, its underside flickering with buried lightning.

He and Arhuz looked at one another. There was something disquieting about the remorseless speed of the line of broken water.

'Where in the world did that come from?' Arhuz asked wonderingly.

'All hands!' Hawkwood bellowed. 'All hands on deck! Arhuz, take in fore and main, and make it quick.' The off-duty watch came tumbling up the companionways from below, took one look at the approaching tempest, and began climbing the shrouds, yawning and shaking the sleep out of their heads.

'Is there something the matter, Captain?' Isolla asked.

'Go below, lady.' Hawkwood's tone brooked no argument, and she obeyed him without another word.

The mizzen was brailed up and the maincourse was in, but the men were still fighting to tie up the thumping canvas of the forecourse when the squall reached them.

In the space of four minutes it grew dark, a rain-swept, heaving twilight in which the wind howled and the lightnings exploded about their heads. The squall smote the Seahare on the starboard quarter and immediately knocked her a point off course. Hawkwood helped the two helmsmen fight the wicked jerking of the wheel and as the thick, warm rain beat on their right cheeks they watched the compass in the binnacle and by main strength turned one point, then two and then three points until the beakhead pointed east-north-east and the ship was running before the wind.

Only then could Hawkwood lift his gaze. He saw that the forecourse had broken free from the men on the yard and was flying in great, flapping rags, the heavy canvas creating havoc in the forestays, ripping ropes and splintering timber as far forward as the jib boom. Even as he watched, the sailors managed to cut the head of the sail free of the yard, and it took off like some huge pale bird and vanished into the foaming darkness ahead.

The Seahare was shipping green water over her forecastle, and it flooded down the waist as the bow rose, knocking men off their feet and smashing through the companion doorway and thus flooding the cabins aft. Hawkwood found himself staring at slate-grey, angry sky over the bowsprit, and then as the ship's stern rose the waves soared up like dark, foam-tipped phantoms and came choking and crashing over the bow again.

Arhuz was setting up lifelines and double-frapping the boats on the booms. Hawkwood shouted in the ear of the senior helmsman, 'Thus, very well thus.' The man's reply was lost in the roar of wave and wind, but he was nodding his head. Hawkwood made his way down into the waist as carefully as a man negotiating a cliff face in a gale. The turtle deck was shedding the green seas admirably, but they had surmounted the storm-sills of the companionways and he could feel the extra weight of water in the ship, rendering her stiffer and thus more likely to bury her bowsprit. It was a following sea now, and thank God the xebec was not square-sterned like most ships he had sailed and thus the waves which the wind was flinging at them slid under her counter without too much trouble. Hawkwood found himself admir shy;ing his sleek vessel, and her winsome eagerness to ride the monstrous swells.

'She swims well!' he shouted in Arhuz's ear. The Merduk grinned, his teeth a white flash in his dark face. 'Aye sir, she was always a willing ship.'

'We need men on the pumps, though, and those hatchway tarpaulins are working loose. Get Chips on deck to batten them down.'

'Aye, sir.' Arhuz hauled himself aft with the aid of the just-rigged lifelines.

It was the lack of heavy broadside guns that helped, Hawk shy;wood realised. The weight of a couple of dozen culverins on deck raised the centre of gravity of a ship and made her that much less seaworthy. It was the difference between a man jogging with a pack on his back, and one running unencum shy;bered. The xebec was running before the wind with only a brailed-up mizzen course to propel her, but her speed was remarkable. Perhaps too remarkable. A vision of the chart still pinned to his table below decks floated into his mind. They were steering directly for the ironbound western coast of Gabrion now, and there was not a safe landfall to be made there for many leagues in any direction; the promontories of that land loomed out to sea like the unforgiving ravelins of a fortress. They must turn aside if they were not to be flung upon the coast and smashed to matchwood. Hawkwood closed his eyes as the water foamed around his knees. A northerly course was the safer bet. Once they were around that great rocky peninsula known as the Gripe, they would find anchorages aplenty on Gabrion's flatter northern shores. But it would mean giving up on the southern route. They would then be committed to a passage of the Malacar Straits, the one thing he had tried so hard to avoid.

He opened his eyes and stared at the lowering sky again. Sudden squalls such as this were unusual but by no means unknown in the Hebrian Sea. Mostly they were quick to pass, a brief, chaotic maelstrom most dangerous in the first few minutes. But every horizon was dark now, and the sun had disappeared. This squall would blow for a day or two at least. The southern passage was too risky. He cursed silently. They would have to go north as soon as the ship could bear it.

He blinked rain out of his eyes. For a moment- And then he was sure. He had seen something up there against the dark racing clouds, a shadow or group of shadows moving with the wind. His blood ran cold. He stood staring with wide eyes, but saw nothing more than the galloping clouds, the flicker of the lightning, and the shifting silver curtain of the rain.

His cabin was swimming in at least a foot of water which sloshed back and forth with the pitch of the ship. A hooded lantern set in gimbals still burned feebly and he opened its slot to give himself more light, then bent over the chart and picked up the dividers. Navigating by dead-reckoning, with a rocky shore to leeward and the ship running full tilt towards it before the wind. A mariner's nightmare. He wiped salt water out of his eyes and forced himself to concentrate, estimating the ship's speed and plotting out her course. The results of his calculations made him whistle soundlessly, and he tossed down the dividers with something like anger. There was no shy;thing natural about this squall, of that he was now sure. It had reared up out of a clear sky at just the right moment, and was meant to wreck them on the rocks of Gabrion. It would blow until its work was done. 'Bastards.'

He roused out a bottle of brandy and gulped from the neck, feeling the good spirit kindle his innards, wondering if the xebec could stand a change of course to the north. The wind would be square on the larboard beam then, trying to capsize her. The decision had to be made soon. With every passing minute they were running off their leeway, thundering ever closer to that killer coast.

A knock on the door of his cabin. It stood open, swinging back and forth with the pressure of the water that sloshed underfoot. He did not turn around, and was unsurprised to hear Isolla's voice, somewhat hoarse.

'Captain, may I speak to you?'

'By all means.' He sucked from the neck of the brandy bottle again as though inspiration might be found therein.

'How long do you suppose this storm will endure? The mariners seem very concerned.'

Hawkwood smiled. 'I've no doubt they are, lady.' The lurch of the ship sent Isolla thumping against the door jamb. Hawk shy;wood steadied her with one hand. Her cloak was sodden and cold. She was as soaked as he was.

‘I believe the Himerians have found us,' Hawkwood said at last. 'It is they who have conjured up this squall. It's not violent enough to threaten the ship – not yet – but it is making us go where we do not want to go.' He gestured to the chart, which was wrinkling with wet. 'If I cannot change course very soon we will run full tilt on to the rocks of Gabrion. They timed their weather-working well.'

Isolla looked startled. 'How can they cast a spell over so great a distance? Hebrion is hundreds of miles behind us.'

‘I know. There must be another ship out there, somewhere beyond the walls of this storm. Weather-workers can only maintain one spell at a time; I believe they have used sorcery to speed their own vessel and draw within range of us, and then have switched their focus and unleashed this storm, which they think will propel the ship to its doom.'

'And will they succeed?'

'Even a preternatural storm can be weathered like any other, given good seamanship and a little luck. We're not beaten yet!' He smiled. Perhaps it was the brandy, or the storm, but he felt a certain sense of licence.

'You're wet through. You must try and keep yourself out of the water. Huddle in your cot under a blanket if you have to.'

She shrugged, and gave a wry smile. 'It's pouring in the door and down from the ceiling. There's not a dry spot in this ship I believe.'

Hawkwood leaned towards her on an impulse and kissed her cold lips.

Isolla jerked back, astonished. Her fingers went to her mouth. 'Captain, you forget yourself! Remember who I am.'

'I've never forgotten,' Hawkwood said recklessly, 'Not since that day on the road all those years ago when your horse threw a shoe, and you served me wine in Golophin's tower.'

'I am Hebrion's Queen!'

'Hebrion is gone, Isolla, and in a day or two we may all be dead.'

He reached for her again, but she backed away. He cornered her by the door and set his hands on the bulkhead on either side of her, the bottle still clenched in one fist. Around them the ship pitched and heaved and groaned and the water swept cold about their legs and the wind howled up on deck like a live thing, a sentient menace. Hawkwood bent his head and kissed her once more, throwing all sense of caution to the ravening wind. This time she did not draw away, but it was like kissing a marble statue, a tang of salt on stone.

He leant his forehead on her damp shoulder with a groan. 'I'm sorry.' The moment where all had been possible faded like the mirage it had been, burning away with the brandy fumes in his head.

'Forgive me, lady.' He was about to leave her when her hands came up and clasped his face. They stared at one another. Hawkwood could not read her eyes.

'You are forgiven, Captain’ she said softly, and then she lowered her face into the hollow of his neck and he felt her tremble. He kissed her wet hair, baffled and exhilarated at the same time. Half a minute she remained clinging to him, then she straightened and without looking at him or saying another word, she left, splashing up the companionway towards her own cabin. Hawkwood remained frozen, like a man stunned.

When he finally came back up on deck he felt oddly detached, as though the survival of the ship was not something that was important any longer. There were four men on the wheel now, and the remainder of the crew were huddled in the half-deck under the wheel, sheltering from the wind. Hawkwood roused himself and checked their course by the compass board. They were hurtling east-north-east, and if he was any judge the Seahare must be making at least nine knots. Before the squall they had been perhaps fifty leagues to windward of the Gabrionese coast. At their current speed they would run aground in some sixteen hours. There was no time to play with. His mind clear, Hawkwood stood by the wheel, clutched the lifeline, and bellowed at the helmsmen, 'Two points to port. I want her brought round to north-north-east, lads. Arhuz!'

'Aye, sir.' The first mate looked as dark and drowned as a seal.

'I want a sea anchor veered out from the stern on a five-hundred-fathom length of one-inch cable. Use one of the topgallant sails. It should cut down on our leeway.' Arhuz did not answer, but nodded grimly and left the quarterdeck, calling for a working party to follow him below.

The decision was made. They would try and weather the Gripe and strike out for the northern coast. If the southerlies finally kicked in after they had left this squall behind, then they would have the broad reaches of the Hebrian Sea to manoeuvre in instead of fighting for sea room all along the southern coast of Gabrion. They would have to risk the straits. It could not be helped.

If we make it that far, Hawkwood thought. He kept think shy;ing of Isolla's arms about him, the salt taste of her lips unmoving under his own. He could not puzzle out what it might mean, and he regretted the brandy she must have tasted on his mouth.

The ship came round, and the blast of the wind shifted from the back of his head to his left ear. The xebec began to roll as well as pitch now, a corkscrew motion that shipped even more water forward, whilst the pressure on the rudder sought to tear the spokes of the ship's wheel from the fists of the helmsmen. They hooked on the relieving tackles to aid them, but Hawkwood could almost sense the ropes slipping on the drum below.

'Steer small!' he shouted to the helmsmen. They had too little sea room to work with, and her course must be exact.

Bleyn came up on deck wearing an oilskin jacket too large for him. 'What can I do?' he shouted shrilly.

'Go below. Help man one of the pumps.' He nodded, grinned like a maniac, and disappeared again. The pumps were sending a fine spout of water out to leeward, but the Seahare was making more than they could cope with. As if conjured up by Hawkwood's concern, the ship's carpenter appeared.

'Pieto!' Hawkood greeted him. 'How does she swim?'

'We've three feet of water in the well, Captain, and it's gaining on us. She was always a dry ship, but this course is opening her seams. There's oakum floating about all over the hold. Can't we put her back before the wind?'

'Only if you want to break her back on Gabrion. Keep the pumps going Pieto, and rig hawse bags forward. We have to ride this one out'

The carpenter knuckled his forehead and went below look shy;ing discontented and afraid.

Hawkwood found himself loving his valiant ship. The Seahare shouldered aside the heavy swells manfully – they were breaking over her port quarter as well now – and kept her sharp beakhead on course despite the wrenchings of her rudder. She seemed as stubbornly indomitable as her captain.

This was being alive, this was tasting life. It was better than anything that could be found at the bottom of a bottle. It was the reason he had been born.

Hawkwood kept his station on the windward side of the quarterdeck and felt the spray sting his face and his good ship leap lithe and alive under his feet, and he laughed aloud at the black clouds, the drenching rain, and the malevolent fury of the storm.