'Let's get going,' he said.
'Right! Up oars!' Svengal's voice rose into the familiar ear-shattering bellow that Skandian skirls used when giving orders. The rowing crew clattered into their benches, unstowing their oars and raising the three-metre long oak poles vertically into the air.
'Cast off and fend!'
The line handlers cast off the bow and stern lines that had held them fast to the jetty. At the same time, three other crewmen placed long poles against the timbers of the jetty and pushed the ship clear, setting it drifting out into the current. As the space between ship and shore widened, Svengal called his next order.
'Down oars!' There was a prolonged clatter of wood on wood as the sixteen oars were slotted into their rowlocks down the sides of the ship. The blades were cocked forward towards the bow, poised just above the water, ready for the first stroke.
'Give way alf!' Svengal ordered, seizing the tiller. The oarblades dipped and the rowers heaved themselves backwards against the oarhandles. Wolfwind surged forward through the water and the tiller came alive in his hand. The bow oarsman on the port side called for another stroke and the speed increased as a small bow wave began to chuckle at the wolfship's prow.
They were under way at last.
Chapter 12
The trip downriver was uneventful. Several times, they saw farm workers and travellers stopping on the banks of the river to gape at the sight of a fully manned wolfship slipping quietly by. Once or twice, horsemen had set spurs to their horses after the first sighting and gone galloping away, presumably to sound the alarm.
Will smiled at the thought of villagers huddled behind a stockade or in one of the defensive towers that had been built at strategic sites, waiting for an attack that would never come.
Even though there had been no Skandian raids for the past three years, the memories of those who lived near the coast were long, and centuries of raids were not forgotten quickly. There might be a treaty in place but treaties were abstract concepts written on paper. A wolfship in the vicinity was a hard reality, and one calculated to create suspicion.
Finally, Wolfwind slipped out of the sheltered waters of the estuary and turned south into the Narrow Sea. The Gallican coast was a thin dark line on the horizon, more sensed than seen. It could well have been a cloud bank. The wolfship rose and fell to the gentle slow rollers that passed under her keel. Evanlyn, Will and Horace stood in the ship's bow, feeling the regular rising and falling movement beneath their feet.
'This is a bit better than last time,' Will said.
Evanlyn grinned at him. 'As I recall, you said much the same thing last time: If this is as bad as it gets, it should be all right. Something along those lines.'
Will grinned ruefully in reply. 'What was I to know?' Horace looked curiously at the two of them. 'What's the big joke?' he asked.
Evanlyn leant her elbow on the bulwark where it began to curve up to form the bow, closed her eyes and let her hair stream out in the salt breeze.
'Aaaah, that's good,' she said. Then, in answer to Horace's question, she went on. 'Well, pretty soon after Will uttered those immortal words, we were hit by one of the worst storms Erak and Svengal had ever seen.'
'The waves were huge,' Will said. 'Positively huge.' He pointed to the towering mast, where the crew were now busy hoisting the yardarm for the big square sail. 'They came through two or three times the height of the mast there.'
Horace glanced at the mast, mentally projected it to two or three times its actual height and looked back at his old friend, polite disbelief in his eyes. Horace had learned that when people spoke of a terrible storm or a dreadful battle, they tended to exaggerate the details.
Evanlyn saw the look and hurried to Will's support. 'No, really, Horace. They were huge. I thought we were going to die.'
'I was sure we were going to die,' Will added. Horace frowned, looking at the mast again. He might be ready to suspect Will of exaggeration. Evanlyn was a different matter.
'But,' he said reluctantly, 'that'd make the waves bigger than the wolfship itself… ' He couldn't conceive of such a thing but he realised both his "old friends were nodding excitedly.
'Exactly!' Will told him. 'We were actually rowing up some of them.'
'Well, we weren't,' Evanlyn corrected him. 'We were tied to the mast so we wouldn't be swept overboard. Just as well too,' she added, remembering how helpless they had been against the massive force of the green water sweeping down the deck.
Horace gazed anxiously around him. Up until now, he'd been enjoying the light, easy movement of the ship.
'Well, I hope we don't hit anything like that today,' he said.
Will shrugged casually. 'Oh, don't worry. Wolfwind can handle anything the sea can throw at it. She's a very seaworthy ship.'
He spoke with the confident assurance of one who had been through bad weather at sea. It was also the confidence of one who had quizzed Svengal thoroughly the night before and knew there was little chance of a similar storm at this time of year. But Will didn't feel it was necessary to tell Horace that. Not just yet, anyway. He was enjoying his big friend's nervousness and the way he kept sweeping his gaze around the horizon, searching for the first possible sign of a storm.
'They're on you before you can blink, those storms are,' Will said mildly. Evanlyn gave him an accusing look. He shrugged, all innocence. She shook her head at his attempt to worry Horace.
'To hear you tell it, you've been on board ship all your life,' she said. Will grinned at her. She turned to Horace. 'What he's carefully not mentioning is that it's too early in the season for one of those big storms.'
Horace looked a little relieved at the news.
'Still, you never know,' Will said in a sombre voice and she cocked her head at him.
'Exactly,' she said. 'You, particularly, would never know. That's why you were so anxious last night, asking Svengal if there were going to be any nasty storms.'
'What'd he say?' Horace asked, sensing that Will had been pulling his leg.
'He said, "You never know",' Will replied, a serious look on his face.
Evanlyn sighed in exasperation. 'He said,' she faced Horace as she answered the question, dismissing Will with a casual wave of her hand, 'that it'd be like a millpond all the way to the Constant Sea.'
Horace looked quickly at Will, who had assumed a look of injured innocence. Not for the first time, Horace reminded himself that Rangers were a devious lot.
'That'll be fine then,' he said. He smiled at Evanlyn, who smiled back at him.
Will shook his head ruefully at the Princess.
'You're just no fun any more, are you?' he said. But he couldn't help a grin breaking through as he said it. In truth, he was enjoying becoming acquainted with Evanlyn once more.
Their paths had diverged after their return from Skandia and he knew that she would have been disappointed, even hurt, by his decision to remain a Ranger, and his turning down a commission in the Royal Scouts. He didn't know the depth of that hurt. He had been offered the commission only after Evanlyn had pleaded with her father to find a way of keeping Will at Castle Araluen. She had seen his refusal as a rejection of her and, on the few times since when they had met socially, she had made a point of assuming royal airs and maintaining a frosty distance from him. Now, in the rough and ready atmosphere of a wolfship, with so many reminders of their past adventures around them, those barriers seemed to be melting away.
'Are you all right?' Gilan asked Halt. It was the third time he had asked the question. And as he had on the previous two occasions, Halt replied in a tight voice.
'I'm fine.'
But something was wrong, Gilan sensed. His former mentor seemed unusually distracted. There was a small frown knotting his forehead and his hands gripped the ship's rail so hard that his knuckles showed white.