Thirteen
'Keep her thus until four bells,' Hawkwood told the helms shy;man. 'Then bring her one point to larboard. Arhuz!' 'Skipper?'
'Be prepared to send up the mizzen topsail when we alter course. If the wind backs call me at once. I am going below.'
'Aye, sir,' Arhuz answered smartly. He checked the xebec's course on the compass board and then swept the decks with his gaze, noting the angle of the yards, the fill of the sails, the condition of the running rigging. Then he watched the sea and sky, noting the direction of the swell, the position of clouds near and far, all those almost indefinable details which a master-mariner took in and filed away without conscious volition. Hawkwood clapped him on the shoulder, knowing the Seahare was in good hands, and went below.
He was exhausted. For days he had been on deck con shy;tinually, snatching occasional dozes in a sling of canvas spliced to the mizzen shrouds, and eating upright on the xebec's narrow quarterdeck with one eye to the wind and another to the sails. He had pushed the crew and the Seahare very hard, straining to extract every knot of speed out of the sleek craft and keeping the helmsmen on tenterhooks with minute variations of course to catch errant breezes. The log had been going continually in the forechains and a dozen times a day (and night) the logsman would cast his board into the sea while his mate watched the sands trickling through the thirty-second glass and cry nip when the time ran out. And the line would be reeled back in and the knots which had been run out by the ship's passage counted. So far, with a beam wind like this to starboard, the fore-and-aft rig of the xebec was drawing well, and they were averaging seven knots. Seven long sea-miles an hour. In the space of six days, running due south, they had put almost a hundred and ninety leagues between themselves and poor old Abrusio, and by Hawk-wood's calculations had long since passed the latitude of northern Gabrion, though that island lay still three hundred miles eastwards. Hawkwood had decided to avoid the narrow waters of the Malacar Straits, and sail instead south of Gabrion itself, entering the Levangore to the west of Azbakir. The Straits were too close to Astarac, and too easily patrolled. But a lot depended on the wind. While veering and backing a point or two in the last few days, it had remained steady and true. Once he changed course for the east, as he would very soon, he would have to think about sending up the square-rigged yards, on the fore and mainmasts at least. Lateen yards were less suited to a stern wind than square-rigged ones. The men would be happier too. The massive lateen yards, which gave the Seahare the look of some marvellous butterfly, were heavy to handle and awkward to brace round and reef.
He rubbed his eyes. A packet of spray, knocked aboard by the swift passage of the ship's beakhead, drenched the fore shy;castle. The xebec was riding the swell beautifully, shouldering aside the waves with a lovely, graceful motion and almost no roll. Despite this, seasickness had afflicted his supercargo almost from the moment they had left the shelter of Grios Point, and they had remained in their cabins. A fact for which he was inordinately grateful. He had too much to think about to worry about a sparring match between Isolla and Jemilla. And the boy, whose whelp was he? Murad's in.the eyes of the world, but Hawkwood had heard court rumours about his parentage. And why else would Golophin have inveigled a passage out of Hebrion for him and his mother if there was not some Royal connection? Here he came now, hauling him shy;self up the companionway and looking as eager as a young hound which has sighted a fox. Alone of the passengers he was unaffected by seasickness, and seemed in fact to revel in their swift southward passage, the valiant efforts of the ship. Hawkwood had had several conversations with him on the quarterdeck. He was pompous for one so young, and full of himself of course, but he knew when to keep his mouth shut, which was a blessing.
'Captain! How goes our progress?' Bleyn asked. The other occupants of the quarterdeck frowned and looked away. They had taken to Richard Hawkwood very quickly once he had proved that he was who he had claimed to be, and they thought that this boy did not address him with sufficient respect.
Hawkwood did not answer him for a second, but studied the traverse board, looked at the sails, and seeing one on the edge of shivering barked to the helmsman, 'Mind your luff.' Then he looked humourlessly at Bleyn. He had been about to go below and snatch some sleep for the first time in days and he was damned if some chattering popinjay was going to rob him of it. But something in Bleyn's eyes, some element of un shy;abashed exuberance, stopped him. 'Come below. I'll show you on the chart.'
They went back down the companionway and entered Hawkwood's cabin, which by rights should have been the finest on the ship. But Hawkwood had given that one to Isolla, and retained for himself that of the first mate. He had a pair of scuttles for light instead of windows and both he and Bleyn had to stoop as they entered. There was a broad table running athwartships which was fastened to the deck with brass runners, and pinned open upon it a chart of the Western Levangore and the Hebrian Gulf. Hawkwood picked up the dividers and consulted his log, ignoring Bleyn. The boy was staring about himself, at the cutlasses on the bulkhead, the battered sea-chest, the quadrant hung in a corner. At last Hawkwood pricked the bottom left corner of the chart. 'There we are, more or less.'
Bleyn peered at the chart. 'But we are out in the middle of nowhere! And headed south. We'll soon drop off the edge of the map.'
Hawkwood smiled and rubbed at the bristles of his return shy;ing beard. 'If you are being pursued, then nowhere is a good place to be. The open ocean is a grand place to hide.'
'But you have to turn eastwards soon, surely?'
'We'll change course today or the next, depending on the wind. Thus far it has been steady, but I've never yet known a steady westerly persist this long in the gulf. In spring the land is warming up and pushing the clouds out to sea. Southerlies are more usual in this part of the world, and heading east we should have a beam wind to work with again. Thus I hesitate to lower the lateen yards.'
'They're better when the wind is hitting the ship from the side, are they not?'
'The wind is on the beam, master Bleyn. If you're to sound like a sailor you must make an effort to learn our language.'
'Larboard is left and starboard is right, yes?'
'Bravo. We'll have you laying aloft before we're done.'
'How long before we reach Torunn?'
Hawkwood shook his head. 'This is not a four-horse coach we are in. We do not run to exact timetables, at sea. But if the winds are kind, then I would hazard that we should meet with the mouth of the Torrin Estuary in between three and four weeks.'
'A month! The war could be over in that time.' 'From what I hear, I doubt it.'
There was a muffled thump on the partition to one side, someone moving about. The partitions were thin wood, and Bleyn and Hawkwood looked at one another. It was Jemilla's cabin, though the word 'cabin' was a somewhat ambitious term for her kennel-like berth.
'Do you know much about this King Corfe?' Bleyn asked.
'Only what Golophin has told me, and popular rumour. He is a hard man by all accounts, but just, and a consummate general.'
'I wonder if he'll let me serve in his army,' Bleyn mused.
Hawkwood looked at him sharply, but before he could say anything there was a knock at his door. It was opened straight after to reveal Jemilla standing there, wrapped in a shawl. Her hair was in tails around her shoulders and she looked pale and drawn, with bruised rings about her eyes.