While the sail handlers brought the long, curving boom and its flapping sail back to the deck, the designated rowers were unstowing the white-oak sweeps and fitting them into the oarlocks. By the time the sail was furled and wrapped around the boom, the rowers were on their benches. They spat on their hands, rolled their shoulders and stretched their muscles in readiness for the hard pulling that lay ahead.
Wolfwill rocked gently in the waves, a hundred metres off a low, featureless shore. There were no hills or trees in sight. Just bare brown sand and rock that stretched as far as the eye could see. And directly ahead of them, what appeared to be the mouth of a small river was just visible.
'Ready, skirl!' called the lead rower. It was Nils Ropehander, Will noted without surprise. Nils was one of the bulkiest and strongest in the crew. He was a logical choice as lead rower and he would set a cracking pace for the others.
He was also not the most intelligent or inquiring of men and Will had noted over the years that those qualities, or lack thereof, often were the mark of an excellent rower. With nothing else to distract his mind, such a man could concentrate completely on the necessary sequence and rhythm of the rower's craft: Up, twist, forward, twist, down, back.
'So that's it?' Halt said, looking keenly at the gap in the low-lying coastline. 'That's the mouth of the Assaranyan Channel?'
Gundar hesitated. He glanced at the sun and the horizon, then down at the parchment chart he had spread on a small table beside the steerboard.
'According to this Genovesan chart I bought before we left Toscana, that's it,' he said. 'That's assuming that any Genovesan could draw an accurate chart. I've heard their skills lie more in the area of people-killing than map-making.'
'That's true,' Halt said. Genovesa had a long seagoing history but in more recent times the city had become infamous for its highly trained assassins, who worked as hired killers throughout the continent – and occasionally, as Halt and Will had discovered not long ago, in Araluen.
'Genovesans aren't so bad,' Will said. 'So long as you manage to shoot them before they shoot you.'
'Let's go a little closer,' Gundar said. 'Oars! Give way! Slow ahead, Nils!'
'Aye aye, skirl!' Nils bellowed from his position in the bow of the ship. 'Rowers! Ready!'
Sixteen long oars rose as one, swinging smoothly forward as the rowers leaned towards the stern, setting their feet against the stops in front of them.
'Give way!' Nils shouted. The oars dipped into the water and the rowers heaved against their handles, with Nils calling a relaxed cadence for the first few strokes to set the rhythm. Instantly, the wolfship came alive again, cutting through the calm water as the oars propelled her forward, a small bow wave gurgling under her forefoot.
'You're planning to row through?' Halt asked Gundar, glancing at the telltale strip of wool at the masthead. It indicated that the wind was slightly aft of the beam and he'd learned over the past few days that this was one of the ship's best and fastest points of sailing. Gundar noted the glance and shook his head.
'We'd lose too much distance to leeward,' he said briefly. 'This channel's too narrow for that. We'd go forward, of course, but we'd lose distance downwind. Have to make our way back again too soon. Not a problem in the open water where we have plenty of sea room, but awkward in a confined space like this.' He peered carefully at the coastline, now much closer to them.
'Nils!' the skirl called. 'Up oars!'
The oars rose, dripping, from the water. The rowers rested on them, keeping the blades clear of the sea. Accustomed to physical work as they were, none of them was even breathing hard. Slowly, the ship glided to a stop once more, rocking gently in the small waves.
Gundar shaded his eyes, peering at the narrow opening – barely thirty metres wide. He glanced down at the chart and the navigation notes that had come with it, sniffed the breeze, then squinted up at the position of the sun in the sky. Will understood that this was all part of the instinctive navigation system that the Skandians relied on. Some of them, Oberjarl Erak, for example, were masters of the art. It seemed that Gundar was another adept.
But obviously, it never hurt to ask a second opinion. The skirl looked around and sought out Selethen. Of all of them, he had the most knowledge of this part of the world.
'Ever been here before, Selethen?' he asked.
The Wakir shook his head. 'I've never been this far east. But I've heard of the Assaranyan Channel, of course. This is where I'd expect it to be. Further north and south, the land becomes more hilly.'
They all followed his gaze along the coastline. He was right. Here, the coast was flat and low lying. On either side, north and south, the brown, dry land rose into low hills.
'What exactly is this Assaranyan Channel, anyway?' Will asked.
Evanlyn, who had studied the route of their journey before she left Araluen, answered. 'It's a channel through the narrowest part of the land mass here. It runs for forty or fifty kilometres, then opens into a natural waterway to the Eastern Ocean.'
'A natural waterway?' Will said. 'Are you saying this part isn't natural?' He gestured towards the unimpressive-looking river mouth ahead of them.
'People believe it was man-made – hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago. It runs straight through this low-lying area – that's why it was built here.'
'Of course,' Will said. 'And who built it?'
Evanlyn shrugged. 'Nobody knows for sure. We assume the Assaranyans.' Forestalling Will's next question, she went on: 'They were an ancient race, but we know precious little about them.'
'Except they were excellent diggers,' Alyss said dryly.
Evanlyn corrected her, but without any sense of superiority. 'Or they had a lot of time and a lot of slaves.'
Alyss acknowledged the point. 'Perhaps more likely.'
Will said nothing. He stared at the opening to the channel. It seemed so insignificant, he thought. Then he thought of the labour involved in digging a fifty-kilometre channel through this harsh, dry land. The prospect was daunting.
Gundar seemed to come to a decision.
'Well, as my old mam used to say: if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck.'
'Very wise,' Halt replied. 'And what exactly do your mother's words of wisdom have to do with this situation?'
Gundar shrugged. 'It looks like a channel. It's in the right place for a channel. If I were digging one, this is where I'd dig a channel. So…'
'So it's probably the channel?' Selethen said.
Gundar grinned at him. 'Either that, or it's a duck,' he said. Then, cupping his hands round his mouth, he yelled at Nils. 'Let's get moving, Nils! Slow ahead!'
The lead oar nodded. 'Oars! Ready!'
Again there was the squeak of oars in the oarlocks and the involuntary grunt from the rowers as they prepared for the stroke.
'Give way all!'
Wolfwill surged forward again, gathering speed with each successive stroke, then settling to a smooth glide across the water. Gundar, eyes squinted in concentration, leaned on the starboard tiller to line the bow up with the centre of the channel.
They fell silent. The only sound was the creak and groan of the oars in their oarlocks as they swung up and down, back and forth, in unison, and the occasional grunt of exertion from one of the rowers. The sheer immensity of the task undertaken by those ancient people settled a kind of awe upon the travellers as the ship glided smoothly down the dead straight channel.
It had to be man-made, Alyss thought. No natural river was ever so straight. As they moved away from the ocean, the dull brown desert enveloped them on either side and the freshness of the sea breeze, light though it had been, was lost to them. The channel grew wider as they progressed, until it was nearly one hundred metres across. Erosion over the centuries had widened the channel considerably. On either bank, the immediate ground looked soft and treacherous for another twenty metres or so.