“Looks like we’re in for a blow, men,” she said when Marcus had assembled the hands in front of her. “For the moment, we’ll run before the wind and try to get ahead of the worst. Raoul, Samuel, Marcus, trim the sail. The rest of you, to the hold. Lash down everything heavy, and have buckets ready to bail if the water gets high. Should this thing catch up with us, we may drop anchor and furl sail. There won’t be much warning, so listen for my shout.”
She glanced toward the new men in the crowd. Emrich was looking pale, Sence watching the faces to either side of him, and Raoul surprisingly composed. None of the three looked close to breaking, thank God. All she needed was to have a man go off his head in the middle of a storm.
“Be wary, all of you. This is new ground for all of us…well, not ground,” she joked, by way of easing the tension, “but new. No knowing what storms in this part of the sea might be like. No foolish chances, aye?”
“Aye, Captain,” came the chorus.
“To your duties, then, and may God see us through this safely. Marcus, I’ll take the wheel. Come to me with any questions.”
“And what should I do?” Erik asked, falling in at her side as Toinette hurried toward the prow of the ship.
“Help below, if you’ve a mind. Try not to go overboard. Unless you can magic away this weather, you’re a strong back at the moment.”
“I fear that it’ll be the second. Weather…” he spread his hands. “John’s already been silvering the water, same as the fishermen used to do back home. I wouldn’t be capable of much more.”
Toinette nodded, unsurprised. No wizard she’d ever met, Artair or his daughter Agnes included, could command the weather well enough to stop a storm in its tracks—particularly not at sea, where ocean water played merry hell with magic in any case. Throwing silver coins into the waves and being careful not to whistle was the best any man or woman could do, even if they were sorcerers.
“Get on below, then,” she said. “Keep your head down and your wits about you. Even we can drown if the sea’s bad enough, and if a falling crate takes your head off, I doubt it’ll grow back.”
“So noted.” Erik flashed her a smile. His skin had tanned over the last month, and his teeth were very white against it, another legacy of their shared blood. “A man might be forgiven for thinking you cared, with talk like that.”
“It looks bad to let the passenger die. Especially if he’s paid already.”
* * *
Below the deck, the men had uncoiled great spools of rope and were tying them around the barrels and boxes of provisions, making them fast to the wall by means of iron hooks. Gervase and Franz were telling Emrich about storms in the past. The others were silent, save for Yakob, who was steadily praying as he worked. Erik caught the names of saints Elmo, Peter, and Brendan: nicely scattered among nations, though he’d no notion of whether that would make the prayers more effective or not.
Descending, Erik joined the group of them. He got a few startled looks at first, but the men accepted him quickly and without question, save for saying “m’lord” when they told him what to lift and where to put it.
It was hard work, but physically well within his means: the dragon-blooded were slightly stronger than most men even in human form. Lifting and carrying were almost an enjoyable change from the last month of enforced idleness.
The worst of it was the hot airlessness of the hold. Neither heat nor cold could truly harm Erik, but they could be damned uncomfortable, and this was. The whole place also reeked of unwashed sweat, which he was mostly used to, and of terror, which he hadn’t smelled in a good few months. Franz and Gervase might talk a good game, Sence and John might maintain a stoic silence, but all of them were afraid.
When the ship veered hard to port, Erik stumbled and fell against the wall. A brittle scratch of laughter went up. “Should’ve stayed out of the wine, m’lord,” Gervase said, extending a hand. Even his joking voice was shaky, and the hand Erik clasped was cold.
“Och, I’m weak and a sinner,” Erik jested in reply. “Especially about the legs, it seems.”
“No better way to learn than a storm,” said Franz. “Here. Hold while I tie up. My lord,” he added.
Obediently, Erik took his place in front of a great barrel of salt beef. As the ship turned again, he braced his arms against the weight and considered the prospect of being killed by a cow—several cows, in truth, but that would do very little for his pride. It might, however, be a fitting vengeance for the beasts.
“Do you think we’ll outrun it?” he asked Franz.
The sailor, tall and dark with a luxuriant mustache, shrugged. “Could be. Captain knows her trade, but none know these waters. Or these winds. There.” He yanked a knot tight and then stood back, prompting Erik to warily do the same.
Ropes held. Barrels stayed in place. From above, a clap of thunder rolled slowly across the sky.
Profanity in three different languages filled the hold. Yakob’s prayers got more intense, but he also grabbed a stack of large buckets from the corner. “Half of you go, half stay,” he said to the others, motioning toward the ladder. “I’ll pass them up.”
Erik followed the other men, climbed swiftly, and emerged into a world of greenish-purple light.
* * *
Saint Elmo’s fire. Toinette had seen it a time or two before. Some held it to be a good omen; she knew only that it went with storms and sea.
Usually it came toward the end of the storm, though, not at the beginning. Then too, it had typically been blue or green, without the violet hue that made it look sickly and diseased, and it had confined itself to the mast rather than spreading all across the deck. The difference might have been down to the sea, yet a feeling in the pit of her stomach said,This is uncanny.
Gripping the ship’s wheel, she uttered the Latin words—visio dei—she’d learned at Loch Arach in her youth, calling on the aid of spirits that would let her see the hidden world of supernatural forces—and nothing happened.
