All of this took ten days-disagreeable and nerve-wracking days for Blade. He was the captain of a ship as helpless as a beached whale. Every day spent here meant one more day when either pirates or Imperial galleys might enter the cove and finish the work done in the battle.
Thanks to Blade's driving leadership and the hard work of everyone under him, Kukon's work was finished first. On the eleventh day he took her out to sea for a brief trial cruise. On the morning of the twelfth day, Kukon's men saluted their shipmates who lay buried on the shore of the cove, then weighed anchor and set sail for the Five Kingdoms.
Chapter 16
The voyage from the coast where the cove lay to the nearest landfall in any of the Five Kingdoms normally took a week in good weather. Blade hoped they could slip across the Silver Sea without seeing anyone or being seen. Although Kukon and her men could now fight something more than three old women with brooms, Blade still had no wish to risk his undermanned, battered ship against an enemy. A few of the hotter-headed crewmen thought otherwise, but Luun and Dzhai kept them in line.
Kukon made it across the Silver Sea without even sighting another ship. She also made it in five days instead of a week, but she nearly went to the bottom in the process. A freak gale blew up out of the northwest, driving them along faster than Kukon had ever gone before. Both the jury-rigged masts were lost, as were half the remaining oars. But the oars didn't matter, because no one was rowing. Those who weren't manning pumps and buckets to keep the galley afloat were huddled in corners out of the wind and spray, vomiting or praying or both.
Blade, Luun, and Dzhai got very little sleep during those five days. If they were not urging on the men at the pumps, they were struggling with the tiller. If they were not struggling with the tiller, they were helping to lash the cannon securely. Several of the wounded died, and several able-bodied men were maimed when half the water barrels broke loose, smashing themselves to pieces and drenching the powder all over again.
Dzhai found a grim amusement in joking with Blade about the weather. «It's your fault, Captain. You prayed too hard to the weather spirits to send us concealing weather. They heard you, and they do their best for those they hear!»
Blade nodded, trying to match Dzhai,'s tone. «I know. But I didn't ask them to hide us by sinking us to the bottom of the sea!»
The storm finally began to fade on the fifth day, although gray seas still rose high around the laboring galley and her weary crew. The men at the pumps worked in water only up to their knees instead of up to their waists. Even the seasick began to crawl out of their corners and get back to work. Once more luck and seamanship and a stout ship had brought them safely through.
The island rose out of the sea to greet them, looming against the dawn. The face it presented to them seemed to be all towering gray cliffs and enormous, jagged boulders with white fringes of foam as the last dying waves of the storm broke over them. The wind had died away, and the boom of the surf and the scream of gulls clearly reached Blade's ears.
«Where are we?» asked Dzhai.
Blade frowned. «That should be the West Cape on the island of Parine.»
«Should be?» said Dzhai.
Blade shrugged. «If my navigation is right, it should be.»
That was a good-sized if. For five days the storm had completely shut out Blade's view of the sun and stars. The island rising out of the sea before them should be Parine, seat of a semi-independent principality under the Kingdom of Nullar. In any case, they were not going to make a landing here, whatever the island might be. Anyone who didn't die in the surf would face a first-class job of mountain-climbing on the cliffs. Blade mentally flipped a coin to decide whether they should turn to port or starboard, then nodded to Luun.
«Starboard. We'll look for an easier landing spot.»
As Kukon ran to within a mile of the cliff, Blade saw red smoke whirling up from a signal fire just inland. Small figures scuttled along the top of the cliff, and then three white smoke puffs appeared as three cannon fired, seemingly as signals or warnings rather than with the idea of hitting the galley. As a precaution, Blade ordered the rowers up to fast cruising stroke and held them at it until they were a good three miles offshore. At that distance nobody on land could do more than make faces at them.
As Kukon swept along the coast of the island, Blade became more and more certain he'd found the correct landfall. The island seemed endless. The coast remained steep and rugged, but inland Blade could see the green of fields, vineyards, and olive orchards. A single mountain like a black stone tooth rose against the sky, a faint shimmer of snow still crowning it. All of this matched what Blade had learned of Parine from the charts and sailing instructions salvaged from the officers' cabins.
Kukon rowed steadily along the coast throughout the morning. Fishing boats began to scuttle frantically for shore as they sighted the approaching galley. Finally they rounded a tall headland crowned by a square-towered castle and found themselves off the narrow entrance to an almost completely landlocked harbor.
«That's Parine,» said Blade decisively. There was no other island in the whole Silver Sea this large and with a harbor like the one they saw before them. «Let's go in and pay our respects to the prince.»
«Princess, Cap'n,» said Luun.
«Princess?»
«Aye.»
Blade extracted from Luun a brief explanation. The current ruler of Parine was the Princess Tarassa, widowed daughter of the previous ruling prince and regent for her son until he reached the age of eighteen. As he was now only five, Parine faced a long regency. It was said the King of Nullar doubted the wisdom of leaving a woman in charge of such an isolated and valuable part of his realm. However, no one on any of the nine islands that made up the principality would submit to any other rule. The princess was a formidable woman, not necessarily loved but greatly respected and trusted by her subjects. So the King of Nullar held his peace and Princess Tarassa held the regency of Parine.
The principality itself was neither wealthy nor poor. Its people seldom made great fortunes, but equally seldom went hungry. The islands had few trees, so the principality had few ships. It did have good, strong forts and notoriously tough fighting men. It had defended itself magnificently a hundred years ago against the usurping Emperor of Saram and had fought off pirates raids several more times since then. By now all nine islands had a firm reputation as nuts too tough to be worth cracking.
Kukon rowed in through the entrance to the harbor in the shadow of high cliffs crowned on both sides by heavily armed forts. Inside the harbor, three oared gunboats took up a raking position off her stern. Two more rowed up to her bow. An officer standing by the mast of one shouted across.
«Ship your oars, bring your men up on deck, and we'll tow you in. You've got five minutes; then we open fire.»
«Friendly bastards, aren't they?» said Dzhai sourly, as he started giving the necessary orders.
Blade wasn't surprised. This was a Dimension where everybody seemed ready to behave like hungry wolves. The only way a small principality like Parine could survive was by looking like too tough a mouthful for even the biggest and hungriest wolves.
The gunboats towed Kukon up to the main quay and rested on their oars, guns loaded and aimed, while the mooring parties tied the galley firmly in place. A welcoming committee came down the quay, two officers on horseback and two more in sedan chairs. All four came stamping up the gangplank onto Kukon's deck as if they owned it and faced Blade as if he were a criminal under interrogation.