Every time Golden Cup rolled, everybody would slide back and forth, clutching at any available handhold, including one another. Once all four of the humans ended up in a pile against Hipparan, with Lady Eskaia upside down, her head in Tarothin’s lap and her legs draped over his shoulder.
She might not have laughed so long and so loudly if Tarothin hadn’t turned the color of a ripe cherry.
Hipparan finally cut off the day’s laughter with a cough. A dragon’s cough, Pirvan decided, sounded rather like a large drain backing up, and a sound like that definitely gained one’s attention.
“If this storm is going to become worse, we have little time” the dragon said. “I understand that the ransom for Gerik Ginfrayson is small and light?”
“Ah-” Haimya began.
“Yes,” Eskaia said briskly. “I trust you do not need to know any more?”
“If you think I am going to betray you to add the ransom to a hoard, I do not have and do not need-” Hipparan said. He sounded half outraged, half amused.
“Peace,” Pirvan said. “Do I assume that you are offering to fly the ransom to Synsaga?”
“The ransom without humans to negotiate would be useless,” Hipparan snapped. “Even if Synsaga’s men did not seek my life, what of that black dragon? It may be rumor, it may not be. I must carry humans to deliver the ransom if I must deal with an enemy.”
The tone was supercilious, almost contemptuous of the humans’ lack of insight. Pirvan did not listen to the tone, but to the offer. Hipparan was saying that he was prepared to risk his life, riding the storm, to complete the quest-if some humans were prepared to match his courage.
“I know no more about riding dragons than anyone alive today,” he said. “No less, either. I do know something about negotiation, craft, and stealth. I also have a small spell at my command that may prove useful, and a dagger that I know will.” He stood and braced himself against Hipparan’s neck.
“No one should go barebacked into Synsaga’s camp,” Haimya said. She joined Pirvan, and much to his surprise slipped an arm through his. No doubt this was just to keep from being flung on her nose by the next roll.
Tarothin was rising to his feet when Hipparan coughed again. “With all due respect, good wizard, you are more needed here. Also, I fear I cannot carry more than two to shore if I am to fly back with a third. Gerik is more or less of the common size, isn’t he?” he added, for Haimya.
She nodded, then started as Lady Eskaia also stood.
“I am the lightest of the four-” she began.
“Also the most valuable.”
“The one Synsaga would most readily negotiate with,” she replied.
“The one he would most gladly hold for ransom,” Hipparan growled. Haimya looked relieved at not having to say the same; Pirvan and Tarothin kept their faces carefully masklike.
So it would be Pirvan and Haimya, with the ransom, a letter from Eskaia proving they had full power to negotiate, and everything they might need to survive the flight and the landing.
“Of course, I’ll wager that the storm ends the moment you people take off,” Eskaia said. Her smile seemed forced; her gaiety certainly was.
“Yes, and if we don’t take off, the storm will sink the ship with all hands and the ransom, too,” Tarothin grumbled. “As Hipparan said, we are not rich in time. Let us be at our work.”
* * * * *
Pirvan had once or twice dreamed of dragons. They were deep in human memory and at times, in the hours of darkness, rose to the surface.
He had never so much as dreamed of the problems of riding a dragon. Particularly a dragon the size of a house, who had to fly out of the hold of a storm-tossed ship without hitting the rigging, the water, or the railing, and preferably without even opening the hatch to the hold.
There was no avoiding the last. Tarothin made that plain.
“If a dragon can’t wish-fling himself from one place to another, no human wizard can safely do it for him. The spells for that are good for humans and maybe horses and riders. I do not even command those completely. To attempt wish-flinging on a dragon and two riders would be to send them to their deaths.”
“It will be sending even more to their deaths if the ship floods through the open hatch,” Eskaia said.
They argued various ways around this impasse and came up with a solution that had at least this virtue: it risked no one except Hipparan and his riders.
They would prepare the dragon riders’ harness and gear in the hold, likewise strap it on and lash the riders in place. Then sailors would loosen the hatch, and others from the shelter of the forecastle would pull it aside quickly with strong ropes. One man would signal the direction of the wind.
The moment he knew downwind from upwind, Hipparan would leap. One leap to the deck, a second into the air, and with prayers from all and any spells Tarothin thought useful and could safely cast, the ransom flight would be aloft.
This plan’s virtue was more a lack of offices than an abundance of virtues. It would need luck and good timing. It would also mean that the harness had to be made absolutely strong enough without testing and adjusting. If something snapped as the dragon leaped, one rider at least would need healing and the second be on his or her way alone and barebacked.
Pirvan decided that if this prospect did not alarm Haimya or Hipparan, he was not going to be the sole voice of caution, which in this situation might look too much like cowardice. Indeed, he wondered all over again how many heroes had arisen from men’s desire not to be cowards.
* * * * *
What the dragon riders were taking with them was nearly the weight of a third rider. Some of it, such as the food and water, would be consumed. But the rest included weapons, bedding, a light tent, floatbelts, spare clothing and boots, a healing pouch, a lantern, and much else that Haimya assured him would be useful or necessary even if he didn’t know what it was.
Pirvan was willing to give Haimya the benefit of the doubt. After all, she’d campaigned in the field and he was definitely a city-dweller, for all his curious mixture of skills. But he did raise the point of their carrying all of this about in the jungle.
“Oh, it’s no more than seventy or eighty pounds apiece,” Haimya said cheerfully, then laughed at Pirvan’s expression. “Also, we will probably hide much of it before we approach the camp, then retrieve it afterward. Gerik should be able to carry his share on the way out.”
This assumed that they weren’t carrying Gerik, or in such haste that they could not risk leaving the way they had come. However, Pirvan saw no reason to delay departure further by what might be called quibbling. The faster they struck, the more likely they would have surprise on their side, and nothing counted for more in this kind of affair.
Sailors ransacked Golden Cup for leather, rope, and chain to make the saddles and harness. The sailmaker personally took command of assembling them. By the time all was ready, the harness could have supported the weight of a horse and cart, let alone two humans.
Over Haimya’s objections, most of the equipment was in sacks distributed over the harness. Pirvan reminded her that they might have to be ready to fight at once, and could do so better unencumbered. He had not been planning to mention the matter of swimming if they fell off, rather than sinking like stones from the weight of their gear.
Hipparan was less discreet. Haimya turned white, Pirvan put an arm around her, she did not resist, then both of them flushed as a chorus of cheers rose around them. From the expression on his face, Hipparan was ready to join the cheering; from the expression on hers, Haimya would gladly have turned all the onlookers into frogs.
The farewells had to be said in the hold, with the gale shrieking above the closed hatch. Even with that, the straw was now sodden, and every time the ship rolled, filthy water that hadn’t yet found the bilges sloshed back and forth.