The Captain’s voice: But, Priestess Argo, I cannot take the ship into Aptor. We already have lost ten men; I cannot sacrifice…
And the storm. Jordde smiled. If it is like this tomorrow, how can I take her through the rocks?
Her nostrils flared; her lips compressed to a chalky line. She regarded Jordde.
The Captain’s thoughts: What is between them, this confused tension. It upsets me deeply, and I am tired….
You will pilot the boat to shore tomorrow, Argo hissed. They have returned with the jewels!
The Captain’s thoughts: They speak to each other in a code I don’t understand. I am so tired now. I have to protect my ship, my men; that is my job, my responsibility.
Argo turned to the Captain. Captain, I hired you to obey me. You promised this when you took my commission, and you knew it involved danger in Aptor. You must order your Mate to pilot this ship to Aptor’s shore tomorrow morning.
The Captain’s thoughts: Yes, yes. The fatigue and the unknowing. But I must fulfill, must complete…Jordde, he began.
Yes, Captain, answered the Mate, anticipating. If the weather is permitting, sir, I will take the ship as close as I can get. He smiled, a thin curve over his face, and looked back at Argo.
Chapter Twelve
Roughness of sand beneath one of his sides, and the flare of the sun on the other. His eyes were hot and his lids orange over them. He turned over and reached out to dig his hands into the sand. One hand closed.
He opened his eyes and rolled to his knees. The sand grated under his kneecaps. Looking out toward the water, he saw that the sun hung only inches above the horizon. Then he saw the ship.
It was heading toward the estuary of the river down the beach. He stood up and looked around. He was alone. The estuary was to his left. He began to run toward where the rocks and vegetation cut off the end of the beach. The sand under his feet was cool.
A moment later he saw Iimmi’s dark figure run from the jungle, heading for the same place. Geo hailed him. Panting, they joined each other. Together they continued toward the rocks.
As they broke through the first foliage, they nearly bumped into red-haired Argo, who stood, knuckling her eyes, in the shadow of the broad palm fronds. When she recognized them, she joined them silently. Finally they reached the outcropping of rocks a few hundred feet up the riverbank.
The rain had swelled the river’s mouth to tremendous violence. It vomited brown water into the ocean, frothed against rocks, and boiled opaquely below them. It was nearly half again as wide as Geo remembered it.
Although the sky was clear, beyond the brown bile of the river, the sea snarled and bared its ivory froth to the early sun. It took another fifteen minutes for the boat to maneuver through granite spikes toward the rocky embankment.
Staring down into the turbulence, Argo whispered, “So fast…” But that was the only human sound against the roar.
The boat’s prow bobbed in the swell. At last her plank swung out and bumped unsteadily on the rocks. Figures were gathering on deck.
“Hey,” Argo said, pointing toward one. “That’s Mom!”
“Where the hell are Snake and Urson?” Iimmi asked.
“That’s Snake down there,” Geo said. “Look!” He pointed with his nub.
Snake crouched near the gangplank itself. He was behind a ledge of rock, hidden from those on the ship, but plain to Geo and his companions.
Geo said: “I’m going down there. You stay here.” He ducked through the vines, keeping in sight of the rocks’ edge and the heaving foam. He reached a sheltered rise, just ten feet above the nest of rock in which the four-armed boy was crouching.
Geo looked out at the boat. Jordde stood at the head of the gangplank. The eighteen feet of board was unsteady with the roll of the ship. Jordde held a black whip in his hand; the end went to a box strapped to his back. With the lash raised, he stepped onto the shifting plank.
Geo wondered what the contrivance was. The answer came with the hollow sound of Snake’s thoughts:
That…is…machine…he…used…to…cut…tongue…with…only…on…whip…not…wire…So Snake knew he was just behind him. As Geo tried to understand exactly the implications of what Snake had said, suddenly, with the speed of a bird’s shadow, Snake leaped from his hiding place and landed on the end of the plank, recovered from his crouch, and rushed out toward Jordde, apparently intending to knock him from the board.
Jordde raised the lash and it fell across the boy’s shoulder. It didn’t land hard; it just dropped. But Snake reeled and went down on one knee, grabbing the sides of the plank. Geo was close enough to hear the boy scream.
“I cut your tongue out once with this thing,” Jordde said matter-of-factly. “Now I’m going to cut the rest of you to pieces.” He adjusted a control at his belt and raised the lash again —
Geo leaped for the plank. The sudden swell of anger and fear defined the action, but once on the end of the plank, facing Jordde over crouching Snake, he wondered how wise it had been. Then he had to stop wondering and try to duck the falling lash. He couldn’t.
It landed with only the weight of gravity, brushing his cheek, then dropping across his shoulder and down his back. He screamed: it felt as if the whole side of his face had been seared away, and an inch-deep crevice burned into his shoulder and back the whole length it touched him. He bit white fire, trying not to leap aside into the foaming chasm between rocks and boat. As the lash rasped away, sweat flooded into his eyes. His good arm, which held the edge of the plank as he crouched, was shaking like a plucked string on a loose guitar. Snake staggered back against him, almost knocking him over. When Geo blinked the tears out of his eyes, he saw two bright welts on Snake’s shoulder. Jordde stepped out on the plank, smiling.
When the line fell again, he wasn’t sure just what happened. He leaned in one direction. Snake was a dive of legs in the other, then only four sets of fingers over the edge of the plank. Geo screamed again and shook.
Two sets of fingers disappeared from one side of the board and reappeared on the other. As Jordde raised the lash a fourth time to rid the plank of this one-armed nuisance, the fingers worked rapidly forward toward Jordde’s feet. An arm rose from beneath the plank, grabbed Jordde’s ankle, and the lash fell far of Geo. He was still trembling, trying to move back off the unsteady plank and keep from vomiting at the same time.
Jordde lost his balance, but turned in time to grab the rail of the ship’s gate. At the same time, one leg, then the other, came over the side of the plank. Snake rolled to a crouch on top of the board.
Geo got his feet under him and stumbled off the plank. Back on the rocks, he sat down hard. He clutched his good arm across his stomach, and without lowering his eyes, leaned forward to cool his back.
Jordde, half seated on the board, lashed the whip sideways. Snake leaped a foot as the line swung beneath his feet. All four arms went spidering out to regain equilibrium. The whip struck the side of the boat, left a burn on the hull, and came swinging back again. Snake leaped once more and made it.
Suddenly there was a shadow over Geo, and he saw Urson stride up to the end of the plank. His back to Geo, the big sailor crouched bearlike at the plank’s head. “All right, now try someone a little bigger than you. Come on, boy; get off there. I want my chance.” Urson’s sword was drawn.
Snake turned, grabbed at something on Urson, but the big man knocked him away as Snake leaped diagonally onto the shore. Urson laughed over his shoulder. “You don’t want the ones around my neck,” he called back. “Here, keep these for me.” He tossed Geo’s leather purse from his belt back to the bank. Snake landed just as Jordde flung the lash out again. Urson must have caught the line across his chest, because his back suddenly stiffened. Then he leaped forward and came down with his sword so hard that had Jordde still been there, his leg would have been severed. Jordde leaped back onto the edge of the ship, and the sword sliced three inches into the wood. As Urson tried to pull the blade free, Jordde sent his whip singing again. It wrapped Urson’s midsection like a black serpent; and it didn’t come loose.