If this is heroism, give me honest night’s work, he thought.
* * * * *
Their troubles were almost over when Hipparan climbed aboard the raft. It had taken all the purchased and spell-toppled logs, as well as lashings that used most of the spare cordage aboard Golden Cup and some scores of feet of vines as well.
“If we needed any more, we’d have to start tearing up our clothes,” Kurulus said. “Although some of us might look better after such work than others,” he added, with a grin at Haimya.
Pirvan kept rude words off his lips with an effort, and knew he’d lost the battle to command his face before it began. Fortunately Haimya was not looking at this display of unseemly jealousy.
She stared at the mate, then smiled. It barely missed being the smile of a cat about to take a mouse by the throat. She did not move a finger, but she somehow managed to look as formidable as if she’d already drawn her sword.
“My apologies, Ma’am,” the mate said, bowing. He tried to doff his hat, but it was glued to his hair with mud. “But only a blind man could fail to notice that you’re more than commonly handsome.”
“I do not insist that men blind their eyes,” Haimya said, with a real smile now. “Only bind their tongues, at least when there’s work to be done.”
“As indeed there is,” the mate said. It was not quite a groan.
Once the raft was assembled, it took a further while to persuade Hipparan to board it. He was reluctant to wade, no one wanted the lashings tested by his jumping, and the raft drew too much water to let him climb aboard dryshod.
So they had to buy more logs, split them, and make a gangplank long enough to reach from reasonably firm mud to the raft. At least they had the consolation that they’d built the gangplank with steps, so Hipparan might be able to climb aboard. No one dared even think about what hoisting him aboard might do to her laboriously repaired rigging.
By now everyone aboard the ship knew that they were going to be taking a dragon aboard. The fact that it was a good dragon did not ease everyone’s mind, even those who had seen Hipparan fighting ashore. Sailors were notoriously superstitious, and the only one who claimed much knowledge of dragons was Tarothin. Of course, he had saved the ship and done other marvels, but no wizard was infallible.
Most of the crew muttered, frowned, or stared. Three went farther, or at least attempted to. They tried to desert.
Two stole a boat and rowed ashore. The Karthayan soldiers promptly caught them as they blundered about in the jungle, making more noise than twice their number of ogres. The soldiers also returned them to Golden Cup, and the punishment they received was as much for what the Karthayans charged for this service, as it was for the act of desertion.
A third man took more thought-or at least it seemed so at first. He slipped overboard from the seaward side of the ship and swam out into the inlet. Perhaps he intended to reach the watchful galley, throwing himself on the mercy of fellow sailors. Perhaps he merely intended a landfall beyond the reach of the garrison.
Whatever he intended, he never accomplished it. The boat setting out after him by the light of Lunitari saw him swimming strongly. Then he threw up his arms, screamed once as if his soul were being torn apart along with his body, and vanished.
Cramp, current, curse, or something in the water, no one knew, and few cared to speculate aloud. The grumbling became muted, and the desertions ceased.
It did not hurt that the next day Hipparan scrambled up the gangplank from the raft onto the deck without missing a step. In language that seemed to have become more flowery in the few days since his appearance, he thanked the crew for its hospitality and swore not to abuse it. Then he slipped down into the aft hold, which had been cleared for his accommodations, at the price of a good deal of labor made more exhausting by the damp heat of the inlet.
Pirvan watched the hatch cover slide back on, then he sighed.
“It’s not over yet,” Haimya said. “Though I admit I’ve seldom seen a horse go into a strange stable with as little fuss.”
“Did I say it was over?” Pirvan asked.
“That sigh expressed hope at least.”
“Yes. I hope he’ll consider that he now owes us something, for all the work we did. He only cast a spell and knocked down some trees. Or is casting a spell as much work for a dragon as it is for a human wizard?”
“I suppose that it’s different with each dragon, as it is with each wizard.”
“We can always ask Tarothin,” Pirvan said.
“But will he answer?” Haimya asked. Then the sour look left her face. “Wager. Hipparan still considers us in his debt.”
“Accepted. What is the forfeit?”
Haimya grinned. “The loser massages all the winner’s most painful muscles.”
Pirvan could not have replied except in a nod, but that seemed enough. Within, he was wondering how he could possibly lose the wager.
* * * * *
They spent another day at the inlet, loading barrels of fresh water, bundles of firewood, and baskets of fruit and salt fish. Then, that evening, the captain inspected the ship, and they sailed at dawn the next day, riding the ebb tide out past the galleys, to open water, which some had doubted they would ever see again.
Three days later, Haimya stood in a corner of the hold, holding a strip of soft metal. The hold was dimly lit with brass lanterns, and in the pallid light the metal had no sheen to tell her what it might be. She had no intention of testing it by bending or gouging with a thumbnail, even if Tarothin had not warned her firmly against any such thing.
Tarothin stood beside Hipparan, just under the dragon’s hurt wing. The mage wore a loincloth and sandals and held his staff in one hand. In the other he held a brass ewer.
Straddling Hipparan’s half-curled tail was Lady Eskaia. She wore a tunic that left shoulders bare, likewise her legs to past the knee, and nothing on her feet. She was squeezing a sponge on to a ragged gouge in the dragon’s scales. The liquid that dribbled down was bluish and foul-smelling-or was the smell just the hold, after three days of holding a dragon under the northern sun?
Hipparan seemed clean enough in all of his habits, but he was a large animal, and large animals in confined spaces left their mark. Haimya had mucked out worse stables as a girl, however, so she had only to recall her old art of pushing the smell to the back of her mind and getting on with her work.
“Is that the last wound?” Tarothin asked.
“Why don’t you ask me?” Hipparan said before Eskaia could speak.
“I was asking both of you,” Tarothin said, his voice edged.
They were all sweating from the heat of the hold, but Tarothin seemed to have run a race or rowed all day in a galley. He had also drunk three jugs of water and one of wine, and eaten the greater share of a basket of bread, cheese, and sausage let down from the deck an hour ago.
“I’ve doused every wound I could see,” Eskaia said. “Is that every wound you can feel, Hipparan? If not, I have the strength if Tarothin has the potion.”
Eskaia’s voice sounded as warm as it had when she had talked with Jemar the Fair. Then Haimya started, as Eskaia lifted the hem of her tunic to wipe her face. Mercifully, she was wearing reasonably discreet men’s short-drawers in red silk under the tunic. Haimya would not have cared to wager that her mistress wore anything under the tunic above the waist.
Haimya wondered for the tenth time whether her mistress was questing for knowledge of magic and the ransoming of Gerik Ginfrayson. No, that was unjust. Say it, rather, questing only for those things she had admitted.