The Icebound Land

7

E VANLYN WATCHED WITH GROWING IRRITATION AS W ILL completed another lap of the beach, then dropped to the ground and performed a rapid ten push-ups. She couldn't understand why he persisted with this ridiculous exercise program. If it were simply a matter of keeping fit, she might have accepted it-after all, there was little enough to do on Skorghijl and it was one way of keeping busy. But she sensed it was tied to a deeper reason. In spite of their conversation some days earlier, she was sure he still had plans to escape.

"Stubborn, pigheaded idiot," she muttered. It was just like a boy, she thought. He couldn't seem to accept that she, a girl, could take charge of things and arrange their return to Araluen. She frowned. It wasn't the way Will had behaved in Celtica. When they were planning the destruction of Morgarath's massive bridge, he seemed to welcome her input and ideas. She wondered why he had changed.

As she watched, Will moved down the beach to the water's edge, where Svengal was rowing the wolfship's skiff back to shore. The Skandian second in command was a keen fisherman. He took the skiff out most mornings, weather permitting, and the fresh cod and sea bass that he caught in Skorghijl Harbor's deep, cold waters made a welcome change to their diet of salted meat and fish and stringy vegetables.

She watched with a small pang of jealousy as Will spoke to the Skandian. She didn't have Will's easy manner with people, she knew. He had an open, friendly attitude that made it easy for him to strike up a conversation with anyone he met. People seemed instinctively to like him. She, on the other hand, often felt awkward and ill at ease with strangers and they seemed to sense it. It didn't occur to her that this might be a result of her upbringing as a princess. And because she was in a mood to resent Will this morning, the sight of him helping Svengal haul the little skiff up past the high-tide mark simply increased her annoyance.

She kicked angrily at a rock on the beach, swore when it turned out to be bigger and more solidly anchored than she had expected and limped off to the lean-to, where she would be spared the sight of Will and his new friend.

"Any luck?" Will asked, posing the question that every fisherman in history has been asked. Svengal jerked his head at the pile of fish in the bottom of the boat.

"Got one beauty there," he said. There was a large cod among eight or nine smaller but still respectable fish. Will nodded, impressed.

"He's a beauty, all right," he said. "Need a hand cleaning them?"

The odds were that he would be told to clean the fish anyway. He and Evanlyn were tasked with all the housekeeping, cooking and serving duties. But he wanted to strike up a conversation with Svengal and this way, he thought, the Skandian might stay and chat while Will worked. Skandians were great chatters, he had noticed, particularly when someone else was busy.

"Help yourself," the big Skandian said easily, tossing a small fish knife onto the pile of fish. He sat on the bulwark of the skiff as Will lifted the fish out and began the messy work of scaling, gutting and cleaning. Will had known Svengal would stay. He knew that the Skandian would want to carry the huge cod to the hut himself.

Fishermen loved praise.

"Svengal," Will said, concentrating on scaling a bass and making sure his voice sounded casual, "why don't you go fishing at the same time each day?"

"The tide, boy," Svengal replied. "I like to fish the tide when it's rising. It brings the fish into the harbor, you see."

"The tide? What's that?" Will asked. Svengal shook his head at the Araluen boy's ignorance of natural things.

"Haven't you noticed how the water in the harbor gets higher and then lower during the day?" he asked. When Will nodded, he went on.

"That's the tide. It comes in and it goes out. But each day, it happens a little later than the day before."

Will frowned. "But where does it go out to?" he asked. "And where does it come from in the first place?"

Svengal scratched his beard thoughtfully. This wasn't something he had ever bothered to pursue. The tide was simply a fact of his life as a sailor. The why and where he left to other people.

"They say it's because of the Great Blue Whale," he said, remembering the fable he had heard as a child. Seeing Will's incomprehension, he continued. "I suppose you don't know what a whale is either?" He sighed at the boy's blank expression. "A whale is a giant fish."

"As big as the cod?" Will said, indicating the pride of Svengal's catch. The sea wolf laughed in genuine amusement.

"A good bit bigger than that, boy. Quite a bit."

"As big as a walrus, then?" Will asked. There was a colony of the lumbering animals on the rocks at the southern end of the anchorage and he had learned the name from one of the crew. Svengal's grin widened even further.

"Even bigger. Normal whales are as big as houses. Huge things, they are. But the Great Blue Whale is something else again. He's as big as one of your castles. He breathes the water in and then spits it out through a hole in the top of his head."

"I see," Will said carefully. Some comment seemed to be necessary.

"So," Svengal continued patiently, "when he breathes in, the tide goes out. Then he spits it out again-"

"Through a hole in the top of his head?" Will said. He began to clean the cod. This all seemed far too fantastic-fishes with holes in their heads that breathed water in and out. Svengal frowned at the interruption, and the note of disbelief he detected in Will's tone.

"Yes. Through a hole in the top of his head. When he does that, the tide comes back in again. He does it twice a day."

"So why doesn't he do it at the same time every day?" Will asked, and Svengal showed a further flash of annoyance. Truth be told, he had no idea. The legend hadn't covered this point.

"Because he's a whale, boy! And whales can't tell what time it is, can they?" Irritably, he grabbed the string of cleaned fish, making sure that he had the knife as well, and stalked off up the beach, leaving Will to wash the fish blood and scales off his hands.

Erak was sitting on a bench outside the eating hall as Svengal came up the beach.

"Nice cod," he said, and Svengal nodded briefly. Erak jerked a thumb in Will's direction and added, "What was all that about?"

"What? Oh, the boy? We were just talking about the Great Blue Whale," Svengal replied.

Erak rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"Really? How did you get onto that subject?"

Svengal paused, thinking back on the conversation. Finally, he said, "He just wanted to know about the tide, that was all." He waited to see if Erak had anything further to say, then shrugged and went inside.

"Did he now?" Erak said to himself. The boy was going to need watching, he thought. For the next few hours, he remained outside the hut, to all appearances dozing in the sun. But his eyes followed the apprentice Ranger wherever he went. Several hours later, he saw the boy tossing pieces of driftwood into the water, then watching them as the receding tide took them out to sea.

"Interesting," the wolfship skipper muttered to himself. Then he noticed that Will was standing and peering under his hand at the harbor entrance. Erak followed the direction of his gaze and stood up in surprise.

Listing heavily to one side, lying low in the water and crabbing with an uneven complement of oars, a wolfship was dragging itself into the bay.