* * * *
The next morning the eastern sky was blood red at dawn, a bad omen for mariners. A long swell rolled down from the north. The wind was fitful and toward mid-day it stopped completely. The waves chased each other down and flattened the ocean into a lifeless reflection of the brassy sky. Felic leaned against the stern rail. The steering oar, untended, swung in restless arcs.
Chessa supported Gwenay up to the quarterdeck and to Felic's side where she stood worrying the edge of her royal cloak with nervous fingers. Felic made her aware of the distant shape of the Dagran vessel closing with them. Gwenay's voice was tight with fear. "Are they gaining on us, Felic? Can't you do something?"
"Perhaps."
"But what?...You alone against so many?"
"We will find out before long." Felic did not look back at the other ship, but to the north where black clouds were rolling high on the horizon. "And we may get some help...a storm is brewing."
"I feel something is wrong," she shuddered, "the air is strange on my skin." She threw her head back and seemed to be straining to see through the inflamed flesh that closed her eyes. "Will it be a bad storm?"
"I don't know yet. It may just be a passing squall or," he paused, then went on. "It will be very bad. I'm almost sure." he admitted. "Let Chessa help you below." He called Chessa aft. "Pigeon, help the queen below and prepare her cabin for the storm. Put away everything that can be broken or thrown about. Then go to the spare sail locker. Find a small triangular sail, very heavily sewn, and bring it on deck. Quickly, now."
She hesitated. "What's going to happen, Felic?
"We're going to have a one-sided fight or a storm...maybe both. Now move!"
She guided Gwenay off the quarterdeck and down the companionway. Felic worked quickly to drop the two yards and lash them lengthwise along the deck, forming a safety rail from mast to mast at chest height. He refurled the sails, carefully tucking and tying the material so that it could not work free in the coming blow.
Chessa brought the storm trysail on deck. It was raised part way up the main mast and stretched flat, fore and aft.
They had been too busy to follow the progress of the Dagran galley. It was hidden from the deck by the rise of the quarterdeck and the stern rail. A wail from Chessa who had gone back for a look sent Felic to the rail. The Dagrans had halved the distance. The rhythmic rise and fall of their sweeps could be discerned and the ship looked like a giant water spider crawling at them.
"Chessa, let's get to work!" Felic's tone cracked with authority. "Everything on deck must be lashed securely...forehatch battened."
With a minimum of words they hurried the deck into readiness. Then, with nothing to do but wait, they stood in silence watching the details of the pursuing vessel multiply as it approached. The prow was carved and painted to resemble a wolf's head with open mouth. It was still too far to make out individuals, but the blue and white pennant hanging limp from the masthead was the private burgee of the Arnak family.
As they watched, a breeze stirred the pennant, then a second puff whipped it free off the mast for a moment. The sweeps stopped suspended over the water. Breeze patterns riffled the surface everywhere to the north of them. The sweeps disappeared into the Dagran ship, and sudden activity on deck indicated they were hoisting sail.
Chessa looked at Sun-Eagle's furled canvas.
"I know what you are thinking," Felic said, "but it is a stupid time to shake out the sails. I am counting on their inept seamanship."
The Dagrans sheeted their huge square sail home and it bellied with the captured wind. The ship heeled and the roll of white foam below the figurehead indicated they were making speed. Sun-Eagle was whipped by a rush of air that rattled the rigging. Felic belayed the steering oar with a loop of rope. The wind came in gusts, growing stronger with each succeeding blast, but the Dagran galley was taking each gust in stride, heeling its rail into the water. The waves grew larger; white caps rode the long crests.
"What are they doing?" Chessa asked, indicating a cluster of men working on the galley's foredeck.
"They are loading a thruster."
"What is a thruster?"
"It is like a catapult. It uses a heavy ballast stone cranked up from the bilge for power. When it is triggered, the stone drops and its weight throws the missile from its cradle. Sometimes they throw heavy spears with many points like a pitchfork. Sometimes the spear head has two backswept knife blades to cut sails and rigging."
"Can it reach us from there?"
"Yes."
Chessa's hand fumbled for his and he held her tight to stay her trembling.
On the Dagran ship, Stet-Arnak hooked his arm through the windward shrouds on the stern castle and fought to keep his ungainly torso perpendicular to the pitching deck. He was sallow from fear of the elements and from the upsetting motion of the vessel, but he refused to let the ship's master shorten sail. On the foredeck the thruster crew struggled to keep their footing as they cranked at the windlasses. In the cradle of the weapon was a pottery bomb. The shaft of the missile terminated in a clay shell bristling with shards of glass. Inside, an acid mixture awaited the alkaline charge that would build up pressure and cause it to burst on impact, sending fragments in all directions.
The thruster crew stood by waiting to get within range. The leader gauged the distance, correcting the helmsman with hand signals. As the galley started up a long wave, he armed the clay bomb with a scoop of white powder and sealed the opening. At the moment the ship hung in balance at the crest of the wave, he jerked the trigger rope. The missile took off with a whoosh, streaming bright ribbons from the haft. An attached whistle screamed a warning to its victims as the weapon arced up and started down in line for a direct hit. Felic and Chessa watched with tightening throats, but their peril was allayed when a fresh blast of wind forced it off course. It plummeted into the water in the lee of the Sun-Eagle.
On the yacht Felic laughed in relief. "It looked like a shard-pot. Some fish is going to have a bellyache."
Chessa's answer was blown away by the fury of the wind as the full force of the storm struck them. Rain and spray, driven horizontally, lessened the visibility and the world darkened as black clouds covered the sun. They could see the other ship, now in serious trouble, heeling precariously into the rollers with its big square sail ripping and flapping in shreds. The Dagrans hacked at the weather shrouds trying to let the mast go over and relieve the pressure that threatened to founder their vessel. The storm closed down and the galley was lost in the violence of day turned to night. Stinging sheets of spray and hail lashed the yacht's decks. The sound of air and water in combat was deafening.
Sun Eagle skidded diagonally down the face of a wave as Felic fought the steering oar, straining to prevent the little ship from broaching and rolling. In the trough, he brought the bow into the wind and motioned for Chessa to take over. He went forward, hugging the safety rail formed by the yards. He tied a line between himself and the capstan and, working with his back humped into the storm's fury, he rigged a line to the lash-up of spars and sails that he had improvised for a sea anchor. He tossed the bundle overboard. The line streamed out, became taut, and gradually the bow of the yacht leveled out into the eye of the wind. Green water sweeping the waist battered him as he inched his way back to the quarterdeck. He rejoined Chessa at the helm. They secured the steering oar with restraining lines and fought their way through the companionway and into Gwenay's cabin.
Gwenay was on the floor, clinging to the pedestal of the table. She was frozen in fear by the darkness that pitched and rattled her. Her only orientation was the pillar of oak locked in her arms. If she felt the spray that followed Felic and Chessa through the companionway, she gave no indication.
The motion of the Sun-Eagle was sharp--a twisting and yawing like an angry dog fighting his leash. Felic braced his feet and helped Chessa get ensconced on one side of the table. He took the opposite side and they fa
ced each other feeling frail and vulnerable in the violent gloom--numb to all but the roaring power of the elements. They sat thus, utterly silent, Chessa watching Felic's face for a portent of their chances, and Felic keening his senses to the wrack and strain of the yacht's timbers.
Their world was the little box of the room. Time after time it would rise with stomach-sinking speed, with the Sun-Eagle standing on her transom. Then came a moment of suspension before the yacht leveled out and fell into a dizzying slide into the next trough. The pattern repeated with endless variations. Every so often, as they ascended, the impact of solid water smashing the deck would force a spurt of spray through tiny leaks around the hatch.
Inside the cabin the noise was deafening. Felic worked his way around the table and shouted in Chessa's ear, "I've got to go up...she can't handle it this way!"
Chessa looked at him dumbly, uncomprehending. The yacht slewed off a wave crest into another plummeting rush downward. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the table. Felic made reassuring gestures for her to stay as she was. He indicated he was going on deck. There was a flicker of response in her eyes, then her face became set, immobilized. She had withdrawn into a corner of her mind that sheltered her from the maelstrom.
Felic waited for the pause at the bottom of the trough, then he slid back the hatch and hunched into the blasting spray. The waves breaking over the bow had increased in frequency. He knew the storm was building, and that the yacht did not have the buoyancy in the bow to charge the monster seas. It was imperative to turn and run downwind before the Sun-Eagle buried her nose in the heaving, uplifting water that towered about her.
He fought his way forward to the capstan. There he hung on with arms and legs while the deck pushed him up and up. A roar of water, louder than the rest, came from above. He looked up. The yacht was almost perpendicular against the face of a concave wave. The roar came from the curling lip of the crest breaking overhead. He braced himself and waited. There was a pregnant second as the yacht sped upward to meet the churning crown. Then came the compressing smash of the water's weight as it tried to rip him from the safety of the capstan.
The yacht shook herself free of the invading wave and emerged from the spindrift with water pouring off her decks. While she hung in balance, Felic prepared for the coming maneuver. He placed his dirk in his teeth and gauged the time available for the movements he must complete to cut away the sea anchor and turn the yacht while she lay in the trough.
Again he had to give first priority to hanging on as the little ship started her slide down the back of the wave. The stern lilted high above him and the hull skittered down, slithering on a pad of foam. As she hit the trough, she was angled into the start of a turn. Felic sawed at the line. It was chafed half through and quickly parted. As the deck rolled uncertainly beneath him, Felic ignored his safety rail and chanced a crazy, careening run aft to the steering oar. He threw off the restraining ropes and brought the helm over, giving her a boost in the direction she was headed.
He had to get the bow around before the next sea caught her. Sideways she would broach and founder. Slowly she began to swing. She came sideways to the advancing seas and stopped. There was nothing Felic could do but wait, jaws clenched in grim acceptance of whatever fate had to offer.
She started to rise into the next wave and the steering oar found leverage. The extension vibrated in his grip and the pressure increased until it took all his strength to fight it. The stout oak curved under the strain. The yacht was turning--slowly at first, but gaining momentum, the pressure eased, he knew he had won. As the next wave started to carry Sun-Eagle skyward, Felic had her stern to the wind. Now he must fight the tiller, stay with it through the storm and try to outguess the whim of every sea that shoved them forward.
For a while, running before the storm seemed like a welcome relief. The wind and spray lost some of their sting and fewer seas broke over the transom. But it was exhausting. The hours wore on, Felic began to live for the moments of rest he could give his aching muscles when Sun-Eagle lolled in the troughs. He began to feel smaller, as though he had shrunk physically. He slumped at the steering oar, water streaming down his face, to all appearances beaten by the endless march of waves. But each time the yacht pitched off a crest, he found another spark of strength to draw from, and he would force his tortured body to fight on.
Somehow he made it through the long night. The clouds blew on ahead and left him with a sliver of moon, a wild half-light appropriate to the monstrous surging forms that surrounded him. The wind abated and he felt the motion of the seas loosen up, as though giant muscles below the surface had relaxed. He began to doze in a semi-sleep, still aware of the demands of the steering oar, but oblivious to the moments between. He was not conscious of the dawn until the rising sun struck him full in the face. He forced himself to rise above his exhaustion and take stock of the situation.
To Chessa the storm had lasted forever and, at the same time, had never really happened. She felt Gwenay gripping her arm and heard her speaking, but she wasn't listening to her words. Instead she listened to the other--the lack of noise--and she felt grateful.
"Tell me," Gwenay's voice persisted. "Tell me what it is like."
"Oh...what?" Chessa was confused by the sunlight in the cabin.
"It's better, isn't it...the storm, I mean." Gwenay squeezed her arm, trying to force a response.
"Yes. It's better. There's sunshine, and I think the wind has stopped."
The cabin's motion was still severe, but the urgency that had characterized the little ship's twisting battle through the night was absent.
On deck, Felic felt it also. He went forward and plumbed the well. Sun-Eagle's sluggish response was due to the burden of water in her bilge. He hooked up the pump handle and began. When Chessa came on deck she felt instant pity for the haggard figure manning the pump. "0h, Felic! You look so tired. Can't you rest yet?"
"We're sinking," he answered glumly.
Chessa didn't know what to say. She was too elated at surviving the night to accept his blunt statement.
He looked at her with sagging eyes and repeated himself. "We're sinking. Sun Eagle is sinking--leaking and sinking."
"Sinking? How bad is it? How long will it be?"
"I'm not sure."
"Here, let me pump." She took his arm and pulled him aside. He gave in willingly, giving her a small child-like smile of trust in her authority. He dropped spread-eagle to the deck, hooked an arm around a stanchion, and closed his eyes.
Chessa gritted her teeth and pumped.