The captain again rubbed his muzzle. “You deserve the curse, then.”
“Yes,” said Rhys. “The staff is my constant reminder.”
“It will not harm me or my crew?”
“Not unless you try to touch it.”
“No one will do that,” said the captain, giving the staff a baleful glance. He yanked out another thorn, then, raising his head, he sniffed the air. “The tide is shifting.” He nodded in satisfaction and spat out the thorn. “Make haste, monk.”
Rhys fell into step beside the minotaur. He had to take two strides to every one of the beast-man’s to keep up.
The minotaur’s ship was anchored far out at sea, a long distance from the docks. A boat manned by stout minotaur crewmen was on hand to ferry them to the ship. Another boat, bearing Nightshade and Atta, had already set off and was crawling across the water.
Rhys sat across from the captain, who was handling the tiller. The boat jounced over the waves. Rhys watched the shoreline with its sparkling lights slip away from him. He did not curse his fate. He had brought this on himself. He hoped, somehow, to be able to bargain for the kender’s life and for Atta’s. It was not right they should suffer because of him.
The minotaur ship, silhouetted against the starlit sea, was a lovely thing to look at. Three-masted, it boasted a prow carved in the shape of a dragon’s head. Its single bank of oars were drawn up out of the water. He watched the minotaur crew rowing the shore boat and saw the muscles ripple across their broad backs. Slaves aboard a minotaur ship manned the oars, and Rhys wondered how long he would be able to keep going in their place, chained to the bench, plying the oars in time to the rhythmic beat of the drum.
Rhys was strong, or he had been strong, before this heartbreaking journey had taken its toll. Poor food, lack of food, tramping the road, and sitting in taverns had taken its toll on both body and spirit.
As if to prove him right, weariness overcame him. His head dropped to his chest, and the next thing he knew he was being pummeled to wakefulness by one of the crew, who was pointing to a rope ladder hanging from the side of the vessel.
The small boat bobbed up and down and back and forth. The ladder was also bobbing, only neither the ladder nor the boat were doing it together. At times, they were close, and at other times an enormous chasm opened between the boat and the ship—a chasm filled with inky black seawater.
The captain had already gone aboard, ascending the rope ladder with ease. The minotaur crewmen were glaring at Rhys and pointing emphatically at the ladder. One of the minotaurs indicated with hand gestures that if Rhys didn’t jump on his own, the minotaur would heave him.
Rhys lifted the staff. “I cannot jump with the staff,” he said, hoping his gesture would be understood if his words were not.
The minotaur shrugged his shoulders and made a throwing motion. Rhys had the feeling the minotaur meant he should toss the staff into the sea. He considered it likely that was probably where they would both end up. He eyed the ship’s rail, which seemed far, far above him, then, hefting the staff like a spear, he aimed and threw.
The staff sailed in a graceful arc up over the ship’s rail and landed on the deck. Now it was Rhys’s turn.
He stood on the bench, trying to time his leap with the wildly plunging boat. The rope ladder swung near him. Rhys lunged at it in desperation. He snagged it with one hand, missed with the other, and scrabbled for purchase. He very nearly lost his grip and plunged into the sea, but the minotaur boosted him from below and Rhys was able to clamber up the ladder. Two more minotaurs grabbed him as he reached the rail and hauled him over the side and dumped him on the deck.
All seemed confusion on board, with the captain bellowing orders and sailors running every which way in response, racing across the deck and climbing into the rigging. Canvas sails unfurled, and the anchor was cranked aboard. Rhys was in everyone’s way, and he was bumped, shoved, trampled, and cursed. Finally a minotaur, on orders from the captain, picked Rhys up bodily and hauled him over to where crates containing cargo were being lashed to the deck.
The minotaur grunted something Rhys did not understand. He gathered from the jabbing finger that he was to stay here, out of the way.
Holding fast to the staff, Rhys watched the organized frenzy in a kind of daze until a familiar voice roused him.
“There you are! I was wondering where you’d got to.”
“Nightshade?” he called, looking around and not seeing him.
“Down here,” said the kender.
Rhys looked down, and there was the kender locked inside a crate. Atta, woebegone, was inside another crate. Rhys squatted down, squeezed his hand through the slats, and managed to stroke the dog on the nose.
“I’m sorry, Nightshade,” he said ruefully. “I’ll try to get us out of this.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” said Nightshade morosely, peering out at Rhys from behind the slats.
The kender and Atta had been put with the rest of the livestock. A crate containing a slumbering hog was stacked next to his.
“There’s something fishy about this, Rhys, and I don’t mean the smell. Don’t you think it’s strange?”
“Yes,” Rhys said grimly. “But then, I know so little about minotaurs . . .”
“I don’t mean that. For one thing,” Nightshade explained, “do you see any other prisoners? What sort of press gang goes out and only brings back two people, one of whom is a kender—though I am a kender with horns,” he added with considerable pride.
“For another, the sight of a minotaur pirate ship anchored off a city like New Port should have the people up in arms. There ought to be bells ringing the alarm, and women screaming, and soldiers soldiering, and catapults flinging stones. Instead, the minotaurs were walking the streets as if they were at home.”
“You’re right,” Rhys said, thoughtful.
“It’s as if,” Nightshade said in a hushed tone, “no one ever saw them. Except us.”
He sat back on his heels in the crate and gazed at Rhys.
The ship was underway now, sailing over the ocean in a stiffening breeze. Catching the wind, the ship sliced through the water. Black waves curled back from the sides. Foam spattered Rhys’s face.
With the strong wind to propel them, the oars were pulled inside. The drums were silent.
The ship’s speed increased. Sails bellied out, the strain drawing them taut. The wind blew harder and harder. Rhys was nearly blown off his feet, and he clung to the rail to keep himself upright. The deck heaved, nearly plunging into the waves at one point, rising up over the tops the next. Salt water washed over the deck.
Certain they were bound to sink, Rhys looked back at the minotaurs, to see how they were reacting to this fearful journey.
The captain stood at the helm, his chest puffed out like the sails. He faced into the teeth of the wind, sucking it gratefully into his lungs. The crewmen, like Rhys, were in good spirits, drinking in the wild wind.
An enormous wave reared up beneath them. The ship slid up the surface of the wave, rising higher and higher and it kept going, taking flight.
The wave broke with a thunderous crash, far below the ship’s keel. The minotaur vessel left the sea to sail the waves of night.
Atta howled in terror. Nightshade beat on the slats of the crate.
“Rhys! What’s happening? I can’t see! No, wait! If it’s horrible, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
Nightshade waited. Rhys remained silent.
“It’s horrible, isn’t it,” the kender said miserably, and he slumped over in his crate.
Rhys gripped the railing. The wind whipped around him. The ocean dropped away. The sea boiled and frothed far beneath the ship. Wisps of clouds fluttered like tattered sails from the mast.