Eskaia worked until after nightfall, helping Tarothin with lesser and greater healings until she was as exhausted as she could ever remember being. But Tarothin was even more so, from working so much magic in so short a time. The mate of the tops and Grimsoar One-Eye had to carry him to his bed in Lady Eskaia’s cabin.
By the time the cook had wrought, with no magic whatever, the miracle of hot tea, the wizard was just awake enough to drink it. Then he lay back on the pillows, smiling feebly up at Eskaia.
“Thank you is-inadequate,” he said.
She returned his smile. “It’s enough until you have the strength for more.” Then she flushed as she realized what an opening she had left, for a bawdy jest.
The jest never came. Tarothin was a gentleman. Instead he beckoned to Grimsoar One-Eye.
“Friend, if you can go to my cabin and remove from the chest under my bunk the largest of the three books there, the one with the silver quatrefoil on the cover-”
“A spellbook?” Grimsoar said dubiously.
“Quite safe for picking up and carrying,” Tarothin said. “I travel a good deal, and there’s small point in slaughtering innkeepers and hostlers’ boys by accident.
“No, the book is safe, as long as you pick it up and bring it straight here. Don’t drop it, don’t try to open it, and don’t let it get wet in wild water. That means water falling from the sky, in case you didn’t know.”
“None of that belowdecks, or if there is, we’ve more trouble than I care to think about,” Grimsoar said, and he stood with a grunt.
“Is your rib hurting?” Eskaia asked.
“A bit,” Grimsoar said. “But it was good enough to carry this hulk of a wizard in here. It’s certainly fit for carrying his books. Besides, even if it wasn’t, right now our friend couldn’t heal a sick cockroach.”
Eskaia grimaced. “Who would want to?”
“A neutral … wizard,” Tarothin said, and fell asleep again.
* * * * *
Hipparan swept in over the coast well to the north of Crater Gulf, keeping low. He could have as easily gone inland to the south of the gulf, but that would have meant a longer flight at low altitude, in darkness, over unknown terrain. More chances of accidents, and likewise more chance of giving the alarm, to human eyes, the black dragon, or even whatever odd ogres, gully dwarves, and the like might roam the jungles.
Pirvan had not seen jungle before this quest, and now that he had, he would not wish for even a gully dwarf to live in one. Anybody deserved better than an eat-or-be-eaten battle for life, in a perpetual combination of steam-bath and maze.
Hipparan seemed to hurl himself at the northern slope of the mountain, which was more heavily forested than the southern. Just at the line where the trees thinned out, he flung his wings wide and settled into a clearing as neatly as a log sliding down a greased trough into a stream.
Now Pirvan and Haimya had the trouble of getting themselves and their gear off the dragon to which all had been securely fastened for the best part of a day. For a while, it began to seem that they had defeated themselves, especially as they wanted to avoid cutting any more than necessary. If all went well, they would need three people’s worth of harness when they flew out.
Pirvan was sweating and Haimya was using language eloquent even for a former mercenary by the time everything was free. He realized that sailors really did know more about knots than thieves, even thieves who prided themselves on their skilled hands.
“The next time we do this, we’ll use chains and locks,” Pirvan said with a grunt as the last bag came free and nearly toppled him. “Those I understand.”
“Do I discern that you have everything?” Hipparan asked.
“I would say Haimya has everything,” Pirvan said. “As for me-”
Haimya hooted with laughter, until night birds fell silent and Hipparan’s crest stiffened.
“If you must laugh at the man’s jests, my lady,” he said, “aren’t there better places? And times, for that matter?”
For a moment, Pirvan thought Haimya was going to kiss either him or the dragon. Hipparan forestalled any such demonstration by taking wing in a thunder of air and a spray of dust, gravel, and twigs.
“You grow stranger each day,” Haimya said, punching the thief lightly in the ribs.
I grow fonder of you, Pirvan thought. He hoped the second was not leading to the first. There were better places and times for that, too.
* * * * *
Shilriya was the first to sight the abandoned merchant vessel wallowing in the choppy sea left by the dying storm. Jemar was the first to come alongside, as the wind favored his ship more than Shilriya’s. Neither of them wished to break out the sweeps in this kind of sea.
That the ship had fallen to pirates was evident a hundred yards off. The deck was strewn with wreckage, every visible door and port had been forced or smashed, and sea birds were fighting over the more edible parts of half a dozen human bodies in sailor’s garb.
Jemar sent a boarding party over, and it reported no surprises. At least none, save the fact that all the men were horribly wounded, and that, in spite of the damage to the cabins, nothing had been taken.
“It’s as if the pirates were berserkers on a rampage,” the petty officer said.
“Go back and search the ship from tops to bilges,” Jemar said sharply. “See if you can find any more bodies or abandoned weapons.”
“The pirates seem to have taken all theirs,” the man replied. “Leastways I didn’t see any more than what a ship like that might commonly have. Do you think-?”
“I will think, if there’s need for it. That’s part of what a chief is paid for. You save your thinking for later and go search.”
It was Zygor who solved the mystery. He’d been just barely hull-up when the other two ships came alongside, and soon afterward the wind turned dead foul. He broke out the sweeps and came thrashing up, halting a hundred yards away and putting over a boat almost at once.
“We found a few bodies,” he said, the moment he reached the deck.
Jemar heard more than the words. “Human?”
“All of them. But one of them had this in him.”
He handed the find to Jemar. It was a dagger about as long as Jemar’s hand, with an odd hilt, mostly hollow with a crossbar for gripping. Two side hilts jutted out on either side, and the thick blade tapered to a sharp point.
“A katar,” Jemar said.
“Minotaurs,” Zygor added.
The katar dagger was one of the weapons unique to minotaurs. Minotaur weapons common to all races could be used by humans, if they were strong enough. Weapons intended for a minotaur’s towering strength turned up in human hands once in a century, and even less often in human bodies-unless minotaurs put them there.
“I wonder why they didn’t retrieve that one,” Jemar mused. He explained the scene aboard the abandoned ship to Zyrub.
“The poor wretch probably fell overboard after they stabbed him, before even a minotaur could jerk it free. We said rites over him and put him back in the water with his fellows.”
Jemar was barely listening. Minotaurs in these waters were not unknown. Sometimes they appeared as peaceful traders. Even then they had the minotaurs’ vast arrogance and ferocious temper, and there had been bloody incidents.
Not, however, the massacre of a whole merchant ship’s crew. That told a tale of minotaurs on some warlike purpose, which might make less than no sense to humans.
The minotaurs did not have to make sense, however, to be dangerous. Dangerous especially to Golden Cup, which might not have survived the storm in a condition to either fight or run.
“We double the lookouts at once, wait until the others come up, then form a line of search with all five ships.”
“The usual intervals?”
“Yes.”
“It’ll be a good fight, avenging these poor bastards.”