The Last Dragon: Book Four

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Captain waited for me to confirm or deny that Kendra controlled a dragon, a beast that like me not long ago, he considered a myth. Only a month ago I’d have sided with him and laughed at the absurd idea. Instead, I said, “She can do all that and more.”

He peered at me as if waiting for me to admit it was a joke. When that didn’t happen, he said in the same disbelieving tone, “And you can make water appear in the desert. It flows from your finger like a small spring?”

His attitude had turned sour, perhaps at hearing the preposterous words emerge from his mouth and that he’d actually asked about such impossible things. He suspected he was being made a fool. As I raised my forefinger, I said, “We’re sorry to bring all this down on you. I know what you’ve heard is hard to believe.”

His eyes fell to my pointing finger. I started with a tiny trickle, then increased the flow. With the sea nearly touching my feet below the dock we stood on, and the recent practice with making water to fill canteens, it came ease, almost without effort. I watched him watch my finger. I increased the flow until it became a stream squirting from the end.

He looked up and said in a soft, wondering voice, “It is all true?”

“Every word.”

He shook his head. Instead of arguing, which I expected, he abruptly changed the subject, “Our way of life here is already in danger. The Council of Nine in Dagger has raised taxes on goods delivered to the city . . . three times in the last year, alone. It’s as if they do not want our fish, or the vegetables the farmers grow. With no market to buy our fish, we will have all the catch to eat, but cannot afford to buy anything such as hooks, line for making nets, and even clothing. There is also talk of taxes for our houses and boats, which is money we do not have.”

My thoughts went back to the blackened husks and standing chimneys alongside the lake that had been productive farms a year or two ago. “I believe Will can explain all of the information better than me, but you’re right. In another year, unless something happens, this village will be deserted, the boats all sunk or on the shore rotting.”

He jutted his chin at me in a confrontational manner and snarled, “And you can change all that?”

“I don’t know. We’re at least trying.”

“So, you’re telling the truth? As wild and crazy as your story is, you expect me to believe it?” His voice rose near the end until it was almost a shout.

I increased the flow of water from my finger in response. It became a small fountain squirting straight up into the air. “No, honestly. I don’t know we can do any of what we set out to, but I do know we are going to try, with or without your help. There are other boats I see from here. One of them will take us or sell us a boat. If we have to walk, we can do that, too.”

He snorted. “Can you walk across the sea?”

I’d had enough questions. I stopped the water emerging from my fingertip and used the same tone as him, “If I understood you earlier, nobody can walk across the Brownlands either, but we did it. Remember? Do not think us fools or inept. That is a princess inside your home, and my sister and I are her servants. Will works directly for the King of Dire, and the girl, Anna, may be the most powerful sorceress in the world when she is grown.”

That didn’t faze him. He said, “And you believe all our troubles come from one mage up north? A boy?”

“In Kaon. Yes, we do. Now that I’ve taken time to explain things to you, and demonstrate at least part of them are true, you can either accept our offer or we will find another way.” I turned my back before he could answer and walked along the shore to the next house. Banging on the door brought no response, so I moved on to the next.

An old woman answered. As I introduced myself, Captain touched my shoulder. He said, “I was wrong to treat you that way and to doubt you.” He turned to the woman. “Mazie, I apologize, we’ve had a few angry words and I’ve accepted his offer to carry him and his friends south. We’d like to keep it private.”

“Quite alright,” she snapped before closing the door firmly in our faces.

Captain escorted me back to his house as if nothing had happened. However, I was fed up, frustrated, tired, and angry. We’d been fighting for our lives and those around us, ever since leaving Crestfallen. It seemed like every other person we met wanted to kill us. Yes, it was all at the direction of the Young Mage, but that made little difference. My patience and temper were on edge, and if Captain slowed us in any way, I’d find another boat to carry us.

I’d also do it without begging or explaining. As we reached his home, there were small clusters of people talking. Captain’s two sons were getting the boats ready to sail to go fishing, one tied to either side of the dock. Captain went back to the dock to talk to them. Within the space of a few words, his arms were flung wide and his voice grew sharper. While the words were hard to make out, he clearly was arguing. Demanding them to do as he directed.

The idea of taking another boat filled my mind as a good idea as he trudged back up the hillside to his house. Without addressing anyone in particular, he called to all to gather in front of him. “I will take them to Fairbanks and then on to Lander. Me. Nobody else. My sons will remain here and take the boats out fishing as usual. Nobody will know we have gone.”

Coffin said, “My boys can go with you. They will be a help.”

“No,” Captain said. “I want all of you to stay here. If spies of the Council of Nine arrive, we are fishing as always. You have come to join us and give us extra hands. They will not know of the third boat we’ll take, and any neighbors with loose tongues will not notice or they will answer to me.”

I glanced down to the edge of the water where the third boat lay upside down and wondered where he’d get another.

He noticed my look and grinned. “Do not worry. It’s now in better condition than the other two. After dark, we’ll set the mast and rig it. In the morning, a canvas sheet will cover where it used to be. Nobody will miss it.”

Captain ordered all of us going with him, which was the five of us, to go to sleep for the rest of the afternoon. He said it would be a long night and hard work. My belly was full, my body worn out, and the small house felt stuffy and overcrowded. I found a nice spot outside, out of the way, comfortably in the afternoon shade, and went into a deep sleep on the soft sand as soon as my eyes were closed.

I woke to the touch of Kendra’s hand and a whisper. “Time to go to work. Do you trust these people?”

My sleepy voice replied as my fuzzy mind grasped the question, “I trust you and Elizabeth. Will reports to the king and I trust him to do as the king says. Anna is a puzzle. After the Emma incident, I have reservations, but I can tell you that when she is inside my head, there is no deception.”

“So, she is either totally trustworthy or better at using her mind for magic than you.”

That’s my sister. She has a way with words. Insights I never see.

I sat up and got my feet under me. Kendra was waiting for my answer. “I will say two things. First, I believe her when she is talking to me but admit she might be more proficient and therefore can hide things. Second, I’ll try to be watchful for any deception.”

“Good enough,” Kendra said as she turned away.

There was only a little daylight left, the shadows were long, the worst of the heat already dissipating as well as my grogginess from sleeping. I rushed to her side and said, “Listen, that last took me by surprise because I was half asleep. Here is the rest, some of which you do not know. Anna offered, no insisted, I look into her mind. At everything. Her deepest darkest secrets. She removed her defenses and told me to enter.”

Kendra pulled to a stop and took me by my shoulders and stared into my eyes, a look of distaste on her face. “Did you? It sounds disgusting.”

“No.”

She smiled. “Good for you. There were probably things in there you should never know. Not that she is a bad person, but we all have secrets and rather than bringing the two of you closer, it would have forever put a wedge between you. You cannot unlearn anything.”

That’s what I meant about Kendra having a way with words. While I knew going deep inside Anna’s mind was wrong, I couldn’t have explained it. Without having the ability, Kendra instinctively knew why it should never happen. She also appreciated that Anna had offered.

We paused at the makeshift table and grabbed bread and slices of cheese on our way to where the others were gathered on the pier. Captain emerged from the cabin of the fishing boat on the right and when he saw us, nodded.

He took a position on the stern of the boat where he was a little higher up than us and talked to perhaps nine or ten of us. “The provisions are here, ready to load on the boat,” his arm waved to a pile of goods and barrels on the dock.

There were coils of rope in several sizes, folded sheets of canvas, tools of one sort or another, sacks of food, kegs of hooks, floats, small handlines, fishing nets, and a hundred other things. Even a stack of straw hats sat beside the long pole that would become the mast.

He continued, “To save time and confusion and to do what we need in secret from others in the village, we will work in darkness. It’ll be harder. First, all of us will gather around the boat on the shore. We will lift one side and roll it until it is upright on the keel. There are boards in place to hold it secure, and then we will push it into the water and float it to the end of the dock where my boys and I will stand and rig the mast.”

He paused and let everyone picture that. “My sons will put the mast up, and while they do that, the rest of us will stay out of the way and tie a line from the end of the dock to a tree on shore. We’ll place some old canvas over it, like a tent covering the boat we’ve been working on. With luck, anyone in the village looking this way will assume the boat is still under it.”

Elizabeth said with a note of scorn, “Do you really think it will fool them?”

He turned to her. “It only has to give them a credible excuse, if any outsider asks. They’ll say they thought I’d covered it to work in the shade but didn’t look so closely they noticed the boat was gone. Who can fault them, or disprove what they say?”

“How long will all this take?” Coffin asked. “To get the one ashore rigged and ready?”

“Not as long as you think,” Captain said. “By the time you set the tent, the mast will be in place. We’ll load the supplies next and be off before the moon rises. Again, no candles or lanterns, no shouting. I trust my neighbors more if they do not know what is happening.”

The last of the light had faded while he talked. One of his sons called softly, “The boat first.”

We gathered around it, or better said, all on one side. Everyone placed two hands against the hull. On Captain’s order, we lifted and walked forward a couple of steps as the boat rose higher. It felt lighter, balanced for a moment, then rolled. We scattered. The soft sand cushioned the hull as it finally settled almost upright. Heavy boards were placed between the hull and water, and as most of us pushed, Captain guided the bow between the greased boards.

The more we pushed, the easier the boat moved. Once it started, assisted by the slope of the ground and the slippery boards, the hull moved steadily until the bow splashed into the water. It almost went the rest of the way without our help.

Captain held fast to a rope he’d tied before we started, and he quickly ran up onto the dock as we gave the hull a final push. He used the momentum of the boat to guide the hull to the near side of the dock, and then to the end where he tied it and he started the work of setting the mast in place. We stayed out of his way. His boys had obviously raised a mast many times, and while they did that, we gathered on the beach.

We worked together and strung a rope from a pole to a tree and placed sheets of patched and dirty canvas over it. The canvas pieces had once been sails and were now little more than rags. We anchored the edges of the tent on the ground with rocks so the pounding of stakes would not wake people sleeping. Stakes were set aside for those remaining on shore to drive in during the morning.

I stepped back and admired our work. We’d hung and end flap so the inside couldn’t be seen from shore. A boat could have been under there. If someone had an imagination. The middle sagged, the whole thing was too narrow, and even in the starlight, it wouldn’t have convinced me.

Will stood at my side. I said, “Not very realistic, is it?”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

That was not the answer I expected, but similar to the one Captain had given. To see if Will’s explanation matched Captain’s I asked, “Why not? I mean, that’s why we constructed it, right? To fool them?”

“Wrong. Do not think the villagers are stupid. This is their home and they will take notice of the change right away. They’ll also realize at a glance there is no boat under there. They will also realize why it was done.”

“To hide the fact our boat has sailed?”

“Not at all, Damon,” he sounded disappointed in me. “It is here to give deniability to the villagers, to protect them. They will tell anyone, especially the army if they ask, that they thought a hull was under there. The hull that had been on the shore for weeks getting repaired. Why would they think anything different? It gives them a way to be innocent.”

“I see,” and I finally did. “If any of them happened to be outside tonight preparing their boats for departure, they would see and remember nothing. There were no lights, the moon was not yet up, and they wouldn’t hear us. Their families were safe from our actions if they saw and heard nothing.

I dumbly stood and thought to myself instead of speaking out loud again and admitting my ignorance. Fishermen by nature and occupation were smugglers, and therefore sneaky. They had probably all carried illicit cargo or escapees at one time or another. Knowing that history, they would be quick to look the other way.

My estimation of the village and fishermen in general escalated. At a soft call, we went to the end of the dock and passed the goods there from one set of hands to the next and loaded it all inside the boat in remarkably little time. We climbed in and Captain raised the single sail as the boat was released from the dock.

He tied off ropes and shifted cargo, so he had a space to move about. We were ordered to the sides of the boat to give him space to move freely. Five of us sailed with Captain. Coffin and his sons stayed to help Captain’s sons fish in the other two boats. The nearly still wind popped the sail and filled it before going slack again. He settled at the stern with a steering arm for the rudder under his armpit and adjusted the sail and rudder, then waited until the breeze picked up. As the moon rose, we couldn’t see the shore and the gentle motion of the boat had us all sleeping.

We woke with the rising sun reflecting off the water so harshly it penetrated our eyelids like on a brilliant day—only more so. There was no land in sight. Captain told us to eat, which meant to gnaw on hard biscuits and drink warm water. I could have made better water for us, but Captain started giving more orders and I didn’t wish to distract people from listening to him.

“It’s harsh on the skin out here. Tie a rope from that ring on the mast to the peak of the bow.” We did. “Use that canvas over there,” he pointed near me to a folded flat canvas, “to cover it like the tent you made on shore. Use the piggin’ straps to tie it to the rail.”

Just that. There were five landsmen, three of them women to do the job. The boat was crowded, but not lumbering from too much weight. A small amount of water had seeped inside and while that worried me slightly, Captain didn’t seem bothered, so I got to my feet and helped unfold the canvas sheet. He said the wood would swell and stop the leaks.

The sun was on our left. The tent we made didn’t reach all the way down to each side rail and I quickly realized that was intentional. The open space on both sides allowed air to move under the tent so it didn’t become stifling underneath. The straw hats, conical things looking like bowls with tall sides, made of loosely woven of straw, covered our foreheads and ears and provided shade for the backs of our necks. There were no brims, but they were not needed, we found.

The odd shape of the hats was like short, fat socks woven for the head. While providing protection from the sun, they also kept the usual wind on the sea from entering the ears, and the lack of brims gave the wind no purchase to blow them off our heads. To be honest, the others of my group looked silly in them. Only I sported mine with style as I wore it, but you wouldn’t know that if you looked at the others laughing at me posing for their enjoyment.

So, what had been a hulk of a fishing boat on the beach last night was now sailing sedately out of sight of land, complete with a cabin for shelter under the canvas. Elizabeth broke out the food, such as it was, and passed around the small hunks of hard-bread. I opened a keg of water and used a pigging to tie it to the handle and to the hole in the keg put there for that reason.

Things on a ship or boat are orderly and constructed for changes in the weather. A keg of water rolling around the inside of the hull in foul weather could sink the boat. We sailed upon a sea of glass, but later it could turn to marbles, and after that crashing waves. The tent cover helped in sun and rain, the pigging strip kept the mug near the keg, and from underfoot.

Not that there was much room to move around.

I asked Captain why we didn’t stay close to land. Being in such a small vessel so far out to sea made me uncomfortable.

“Two good reasons, but a good question all the same,” he called so all could hear. Others were as worried as me, he thought. Of course, he had experience with people who were not fishermen and didn’t know the life of a fisherman. “Next to shore are shallows that’ll rip the bottom from a boat. Rocks that lie just under the surface. Deep water, especially if you don’t have experience sailing along the shore, is always better.”

I saw several heads nod in sudden understanding.

He waited a moment, then continued, “Before too long, near midday, we’ll see land in front of us. That will be Dead Isle, a strip of land between Fairbanks and the Brownlands in the center of the sea. Nothing there, thus the name. No water, little grows, and no people that I know of.”

I found my voice. “So, we’ll sail to the east of the island and then south.”

“Hell of a lot shorter than sailing all the way down the west side, then around the southern tip and back up north again to reach Fairbanks. But you’re paying my fee, so we go where you wish.” He chuckled to himself and turned back to the tiller and sail.

Elizabeth said, “Do you have a chart or map? Or can you sketch out the shoreline for me?”

Captain slowly turned to face her. “Didn’t you understand my explanation?”

Before our eyes, Elizabeth slowly stood and squared her shoulders. She transformed herself again, as she had on the ship, from a young girl into a formidable princess. “I did. Now, would you be kind enough to answer my question?”

It appeared there would be a standoff between two people who were masters in their individual environments. Captain was as much a ruler as any king while on his vessel. Princess Elizabeth was paying for the use of his expertise and boat. It was probably the reason Captain glanced at Will and said, “Can you take the tiller and hold our course?”

“I have some experience.” With that simple comment, he moved to the stern and exchanged places.

Captain moved to the shelter we’d rigged and untied a waterproof bag. Inside, also made of waterproof skin, he removed a tube. The end cap came off and he shook out several rolls of parchment. After rejecting two, he selected a third and pointed with a stubby finger at the chart. It was marked with obstructions, shallow water indications, tidal warnings, and fishing grounds.

Elizabeth pointed and said, “Between Dead Isle and the land north of Landor, there is a narrow straight. If I’m reading your chart correctly, from that little jut of land under my finger, the water is shallow almost to the other side, forcing water traffic along the shore to the east.”

“You are correct.”

She relaxed and placed a hand on his shoulder in a friendly fashion. “I am not doubting your seamanship skills. Please understand, there are powerful people who would prevent us from reaching Landor, if possible. If you were opposing us and knew our ultimate destination, where would you place your navy? A place where two or three ships could control who passes?”

His eyes flicked to the chart and back again.

She continued, “We know the one we refer to as the Young Mage is searching for us. His army nearly trapped us on the Pearl Lakes, but Coffin helped us escape into the desert. He knows the direction we went, and there are only two places we could go to. Dagger and the coast. I have no doubt he blockaded entry into Dagger.”

Captain picked up where she left off, “So, he would surmise you went to one of the fishing villages and sailed away. You might have gone north, to your home, and there is another natural funnel where the channel is narrow and only a few boats could prevent passage.”

She smiled. “You are correct, and he tried to stop us there, too. By now he knows we are not sailing north. Fairbanks has no army or navy.”

“Which means you are going to Landor. He will block the passage between Dead Isle and the mainland to the east. I’m sorry to have given you such poor advice, Princess.”