"Right thing?" Mica demanded. Pure amazement animated his features. "What the hell kind of question is that, Bowman?"
He and I and Priest had rigged us a couch of folded sail and were lying back staring at cloud castles while dangling fishing lines over the side. Fishing was something I had not done since boyhood.
I could not remember that far back. I just knew that I had liked to fish.
"It's a valid question," Priest insisted. "We have come to the crossroads of righteousness, Sailmaker. We stand at the forking of the way...."
"Oh, knock it off, Priest," I grumbled. "Don't you ever give up?"
"I think I got a bite," he replied.
"Take it easy, Bowman," Mica said. "He's getting better."
That he was, I had to admit. I used to loathe Priest because he insisted on being our conscience while remaining one of the worst sinners himself.
Priest dragged a small fish over the side. "I'll be damned."
"Doubtless. We're all damned. We have been for ages."
"That's debatable. I meant the fish."
It was a little speckled sand shark about sixteen inches long. Not exactly what we were after. I started to smash its head with my heel.
"Why don't you just throw it back?" Mica asked. "It ain't hurting nothing."
Trouble was, the shark did not want to go. Not with our help. Its little jaws kept going chompity-chomp. Its skin sandpapered the hide off my fingers when I tried to hold it so Priest could get his hook back.
It died before we could save it.
"You was talking about doing the right thing," Mica told me. "What made you say that? I never heard the Bowman talk that way before."
I gave him a look.
Priest took his side "He's right. Colgrave's the only man here meaner than the Bowman."
I did not agree. At least, I had never thought of it that way. I rated Priest and Old Barley meaner than me any day.
The Kid came up and joined us. He had been keeping a low profile lately. He seemed to be completely tied up inside himself. Ordinarily, he was our number-one showoff, our number-one mouth man.
I was at the end of the sail couch. He sat down beside me. Amazing.
I kind of liked the Kid. Really. He reminded me of myself when I was younger. But he had no use for me. I never understood, unless it was true that I looked like somebody he had hated before coming aboard.
"Hey, Bowman. What do you think?" he asked.
"Hunh? About what, Kid?" Why was he asking me? Anything.
"About this. About us coming back." He sat up, started making himself a fishing line of his own. He fumbled around. It was obvious that he had never fished in his life. I helped him get it right.
And I asked him why he was asking me.
"Because you're the smart guy now that Student's gone. Toke. Lank Tor. They're just zombies. And the Old Man wouldn't give me the time of day if I begged."
"Kid. Kid, I...." I let it drift off unsaid.
"What?"
I forced it. "I never much cared about anybody. But it hurts me to see you here, so young."
He looked at me strangely, then smiled. That smile was worth a ton of gold. "I earned it, Bowman."
"Didn't we all?" Mica mused.
"That we did," Priest declared. "The sins on our souls...." He shut himself off, said instead, "The question is, are we going to go right on deserving it?"
Mica got a bite. He hauled in another goddamned shark. This one was more cooperative. Or we had gotten better at handling them.
"Kid, I don't know what to think. That's the gospel. I'm lost. I go half crazy worrying about it sometimes."
A body plopped down the other side of Kid. I glanced over. It was the Trolledyngjan, the final addition to our mad crew. We had picked him up off an Itaskian warship we had taken in our next-to-last battle. He had been confined to her brig.
He had a name, Torfin something, but nobody ever used it. He was one long drink of silence. I don't think he had spoken twenty words the whole time he had been aboard. He did not say anything now. He just looked at me and Mica.
We had tried to kill him once. Before he had become part of our crew. Back when we were raiders. We had attacked his ship. He had tried boarding us. Me and Mica had dumped him into the drink.
And then he had turned up aboard the Itaskian, and Colgrave had decided he ought to replace Student or Whaleboats.
A treaty of forgiveness passed between us without words being spoken.
Trolledyngjan said, "There be tales told in the Fatherland of the Oskoreien. The Wild Hunt. They be souls of the damned who ride Hell's stallions through the high range hunting the living."
The Kid passed him a hook and some line. He started fiddling with it. "What're you driving at?" I asked. "We be the Oskoreien of the sea." He baited his hook and flipped it over the side. We waited. Finally, he continued, "They tell of the Wild Hunt that they be hating none so much as they be hating one another."
We waited some more, but that was all he had to say.
It was enough. It made me think. He had stated a truth and had posed a question in a characteristically oblique Trolledyngjan manner.
Hatred had always been the one shared, unifying emotion aboard Dragon. And we hated each other more than any outsiders.
Only, we were getting along now. More or less.
The others saw it too. Even the Kid. "What's it mean. Bowman?" the boy asked.
"I don't know."
The changes were progressing. I no longer knew myself. If ever I had.
Fat Poppo laboriously clambered to the forecastle deck. His appearance was another declaration of how the crew regarded me.
"Welcome to the philosophy klatch, Poppo," I said. "What brings you dragging your ass all the way up off the maindeck?" He seldom moved if he did not have to, so fat and lazy was he.
He dropped to his knees behind me, whispered, "In the trees across the cove. Under the big dead one you guys been calling the hanging tree."
I looked. And I saw what he meant.
There were four of them, and they wore livery. Soldiers.
The honeymoon was over. "Mica, slide down and dig up the Old Man. Tell him to take a gander at what we've got under the hanging tree. Try to keep it casual."
Colgrave had been holed up in his cabin since we had dropped anchor. He was studying the wizard's things. He would not appreciate being disturbed.
But this was important. Maybe I made a mistake. The rest of us might not have been recognized. We were well-known, but there was nothing really unique about our appearances. Not the way Colgrave's was unique.
I reached for my bow and quietly strung it behind the mask of the railing.
IX
Jolgrave strode from his cabin dressed for a day at court. Mica dogged along behind him as he climbed to the poop. He turned his one grim eye on our watchers.
"The dead captain!"
It carried clearly over the water* Brush crackled. I leapt to my feet and pulled an arrow to my ear.
"It's them! That's the Archer!"
"Bowman. Let them run."
I relaxed. Colgrave was right. Wasting arrows had no point. I could not get them all. Not through the trees.
Still, a gesture seemed necessary....