Holdar hoisted his tankard again. "Then we'll tow her ahind, laddie buck, yea, for she's too long to lade… though I might say, a little sloop like that, she could be faster than my carrack. You might want to sail her instead, yes?… if your business in Jute be urgent, that is."
Egil shook his head. "I think not, Captain Holdar. The Boreal is no place for such a craft with an untrained crew. We'll take the Flyndre instead, and drop off nigh Jute."
Later that same day, Orri's wife, Astrid, bartered the sloop to Arin for her horses, glad to be rid of the craft. "All we did was keep it up. 'Twasn't useful in Orri's trade, him with his longship and all. The horses, now, we can use them to travel inland to see my kith, though Orri's likely to balk a bit at visiting those he'd rather not."
The sloop bore the name Brise, a Gothonian word none there knew the meaning of.
The long summer twilight fell, then darkness, and the citizenry of Morkfjord continued its celebration of the arrival of the Gyllen Flyndre, while Arin and Egil held hands and were the recipients of many a stare. At long last, Egil retired to his stone cottage. Late in the night, Arin lifted his latch and slipped into his bed.
The next morning the new lovers awoke to find Aiko outside, resting on her tatami, her back against the door, her swords unsheathed and lying across her lap.
A week later the Gyllen Flyndre set sail towing the sloop behind, the small craft's canvas furled, her hatches battened tightly, her hold filled with stores.
Aboard the carrack, Arin, Egil, and Aiko leaned against the taffrail and looked down at her, the Brise bobbing aft on a long pair of ropes in the wake of the Flyndre.
Through the long notch of the fjord, the carrack made her way toward the sea, riding outward on the morning wind and tide. Finally they came to the open waves, the Boreal calm on a summer's morn, a splendid day for sailing, though with this ocean one could never tell, the Boreal perhaps the most fickle of waters in all the world.
Southwesterly they turned, a mile or so out from land, following along the coast, the braw wind bearing them at a goodly clip through the slow rolling swells.
Arin took a deep breath of the salt air, then said, "On our way at last, we three, toward the court of the mad queen. I only regret-"
The remainder of her words fell unspoken, for in that same moment hoarse raw screams erupted from the cabins below. In a flash, Aiko's swords were in her hands and she leapt down from the poop deck to the deck below, Egil on her heels, his Fjordlander axe at the ready, Arin coming last, her long-knife in its sheath.
And the screams crescendoed upward in pitch, upward in horror, as unremitting terror gripped a tortured soul.
CHAPTER 35
As sailors on deck turned toward the sound of the screams, Aiko flung open the door to the aft quarters. In the dimness at the far end of the hallway, she saw a shadowy form scramble down a rear ladder toward the holds below, taking the shrieks with it. To the right, one of the cabin doors swayed to and fro, the tiny quarters empty.
" "Ware!" called Egil, but, gripping her swords, Aiko plunged after, the pommels of the weapons clattering on the rungs as she clambered down. Egil followed, with Arin close after.
They came into the crew's quarters, and men, startled, were looking in the direction the yowling form had fled. Their heads swiveled around as Aiko darted past, then Egil and Arin. "Oi, naow, what's all this-?" called out a crewman, but his words were left behind as down another ladder plunged the trio, chasing after the screamer.
Now they came into a darkened hold, and among the bales of furs they could hear a blubbering and hissing, a voice sissing out in a loud whisper, "The bilge. The bilge. They'll never look there. Never." Then-"Eee! Eee! Trolls! They're coming! They're coming! They're going to get me! Yaaaaa…!" and horrified shrieking filled the air once again.
Egil freed a hanging lantern from its short chain and used the striker to light it. Then holding it high in his left hand, his axe in his right, he followed Aiko toward the screams-which suddenly stopped, to be replaced by a sobbing and scrabbling sound.
They rounded a pile of bales to find a man on all fours scratching at the deck planking and sobbing and babbling to himself, "The bilge, the bilge, get into the bilge." He was a dirt-streaked, disheveled old man, who looked up at them with a blind white eye, his mouth stretched wide in fear, lips pulled back from brown-stained teeth.
It was Alos.
He shrieked and scrambled back from them, his arm outstretched to hold them at bay, all the while howling, "Trolls! Trolls! Eee…!"
As sailors swarmed down the ladder behind, Arin, her long-knife now in hand, snapped, "Aiko, what says thy tiger?"
Aiko shook her head. "Nothing," she growled. "Nothing at all." With a flip of her wrists, Aiko reversed her grips on the pommels and sheathed her swords, then stepped toward Alos.
The old man's eyes flew wide with terror. "Eeee-" he shrilled, then clapped both hands across his mouth to stifle his own screams, and squeaking and sissing he scuttled backward into the shadows and away, seeking refuge in the darkness among the bales.
"What d'ye think she be?"
"I dunno, Cap'n," replied thirty-year-old Alos, helmsman of the Solstrale, a merchant kravel out of the port of Havnstad in Thol. "Ne'er seen a thing like her."
Astern, a dark ship, long and slim and driven by both wind and oars, continued to draw closer, her black hull cleaving the waters and her dusky sails bellyed full.
"She looks to be a two master, Cap'n," added Alos, shading his eyes against the setting sun, bloodred on the horizon. "But her sails, wing-on-wing… huh, they both have the look of our mizzen."
Captain Borkson grunted and nodded. "Lateens, lad, both main and fore… like a ship o' th' southern seas. What a southern ship'd be doing in th' Boreal…"
Alos shook his head. "Southern may be her sails, Cap'n, but her oars, well now, I'd think they be northern-Fjordlander or Jute. D'ye reck' she's one o' them, fitted up with new riggin'?"
"Well, what e'er she be," said Jarl, the Solstrale's first bo's'n, "she be o'ertakin' us. A full eight candlemarks ago she stood on th' rim, and now she be halfway here. I make it she be runnin' near two knots faster than we."
"Aye, that she be," replied Borkson, "an' I nae like th' look o' her. Alos, fall off t' th' larboard, four points. We'll see if she j'st hap's t' be on th' same course or 'stead be tryin' t' o'erhaul us. Jarl, pipe th' riggin' t' make th' most o' th' wind."
"Aye aye, Cap'n," replied Alos, spinning the wheel as Jarl piped the signals to the crew.
The Solstrale heeled over as the ship swung to larboard, and the crew trimmed the sails to catch the wind now quartered off the port stern.
Moments later the black ship heeled over as well, her lateens now both set to starboard, her oars stroking the sea.
"Jarl, run up th' pennons askin' her t' identify hersel'."
Jarl piped the crew and signal flags were lofted. As the pennants ran skyward on the halyard, Alos said, "If she's a southerner, Cap'n, she might not know the Boreal codes."
Borkson did not reply… and neither did the black ship, and the wind in her sails and beat of her oars did not slacken.
"I think she still be o'erhaulin', Cap'n. Four miles astern, I gauge," said Jarl.
"Run up our own colors, Jarl," said Borkson.
As the sun set, again Jarl piped the crew, and the blue-and-yellow flag was lofted into the gathering twilight.
But still the black ship gave no indication of her identity, and her oars churned against the water.
"She be haulin' us in like a fish on a spindle, Cap'n, a fish t' be gaffed, I might add," said Jarl.