As Grimwar watched her dubiously, Stariz whipped her arms upward and swirled them over her head. The ogre king felt a chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the weather. He heard an ominous muffling of noise, as if the very hand of Gonnas had come down to cup them, to cover the whole of the sea under its protective dome.
Within that invisible and immortal shelter, to Grimwar’s astonishment, the wind died away to nothing.
* * * * *
“They must be coming from Dracoheim-I’d bet my gold on it!” Kerrick said excitedly. “We must outrun them, then backtrack their course-that should lead us directly to the island. In this wind, we can escape without a problem.”
The great ogre ship, maybe five miles away now, came on steadily but was clearly no match for the sailboat’s nimble fleetness. Randall and Strongwind had gone to the high gunwale, where they added their weight as ballast, leaning outward to keep the sailboat racing through the choppy seas, countering the straining sails as the boat pulled along sharply with the powerful force of air.
All of a sudden the boat heeled violently, almost throwing the two men into the water. They scrambled onto the deck, pulled themselves up as Cutter lurched and slowed. In seconds the boat was rocking listlessly. The frothy whitecaps had vanished, and the sails now hung limply, like so many useless sheets drying on a line.
“What happened?” asked the amazed Highlander king.
“The wind has died!” Kerrick declared. He glanced around, saw that waves were still rolling, but that the air had grown utterly still. “But how-it’s not possible!”
“No, not possible,” Moreen agreed worriedly, making her way to the top of the cabin and gazing at the galley bearing in on them. “Unless it is magic of some kind.”
Kerrick’s heart pounded in his chest as he peered at the sky. “Well, we’d better hope the magic wanes and the wind starts up again, or we’re doomed,” he said hoarsely, holding up a hand, groping for the touch of even a faint gust.
But there was no wind.
19
Shrouds
“At last that blasted elf they call the Messenger is mine!” cried the ogre king, exultant as he saw that his oar-powered galley was closing upon the wind-powered craft. “Row faster!” he called to his oarsmen, even as the wooden blades slapped the water with increasing speed. “Give them all your strength, my brutes, and victory will be ours!”
Goldwing surged like a great, water-borne predator, closing on helpless prey. It seemed as though the ship reflected the ogre impulse in its hull, keel, and deck and leaped ahead in response to the eagerness of her master. “Yes, Sire-we will crush them!” cried Stariz enthusiastically, still standing with her arms outspread. Her eyes were open and glazed in a religious trance. Near the stern Argus Darkand shouted out a frenzied cadence, and the drummer pounded his drum. The ogres pulling the oars maintained their impressive pace with strong strokes, the hull sliding even faster through the smooth and windless waves.
“Straight ahead!” Grimwar ordered. He stared at the sailboat, every feature of which he hated-the teak deck, the smooth hull, the low cabin and the vast sheets of white canvas. He was thrilled to see those sails hanging utterly limp, useless. The boat looked crippled, like a duck that had fallen, broken-winged, into a pond.
“Full speed! Make for the middle of the hull-we’ll smash the boat to kindling and haul the elf aboard as a captive of the crown!”
The king’s mind whirled, savoring the tortures and torments he could inflict upon this prisoner, the troublesome outlander who had made himself an enemy of the throne. There would be pokers to heat, barbed hooks to sharpen that would, very slowly, rend the elven flesh.
“This is a prisoner who must be put to death-at once!” snapped the queen. “We dare not leave him alive. I myself will cut his head from his scrawny neck!”
Grimwar shook his head in irritation, turned to glare at his wife.
“This fellow has come out of nowhere to vex me for eight years,” he retorted. “I will learn a few things from him, then I will select the manner of his punishment. There will be plenty of time to kill him, and I don’t intend to be hasty about it. Rather, his will be a death to relish.”
“No, he must die at once!” cried Stariz, her voice shrill. “Too often has he challenged us and thwarted the clear will of Gonnas! Consider the danger, Sire! Promise that you will slay him as soon as he is hoisted aboard.”
“I tell you, no!” growled the king, although he was surprised at her vehement interest in the elf’s fate. “Let us talk about this when we have him wrapped in our chains.”
The galley rocketed forward as the rowers put their backs into accelerated strokes. The ogre king licked his lips, anticipating his enemy’s humiliation, imagining the slender sailboat cracking under the impact of the mighty galley. Goldwing drew closer, as the vulnerable sailboat sat motionless, save for its gentle bobbing in the swells. Now Grimwar could see several people scrambling about on the deck. Obviously, they knew they were helpless, and it pleased him immensely to imagine their fear.
The collision was only minutes away. Grimwar laughed aloud at the revenge he had savored for eight long years.
* * * * *
The wind had fallen away completely. The sails hung limp. The ogre galley loomed larger with each passing heartbeat. Kerrick felt a sensation of utter helplessness, knowing he couldn’t budge his boat, couldn’t evade the warship.
“The paddles?” Strongwind asked desperately. “You have two of them-can’t we try to row?”
“Bah!” Kerrick declared in disgust. “The oars can maneuver us around in a harbor, but they’re no match for that!” He pointed at the ship surging toward them under the power of two hundred oars.
“By the gods, what would I give for some wind!” he cried in exasperation.
Moreen suddenly looked up. “What did Dinekki give you?” she asked. “That wreath she gave you when you set out for your home… she said it had some kind of power.”
“Yes,” Kerrick said, trying to remember the old woman’s words. What had she told him?
The chiefwoman had already darted through the hatch, down into the small cabin. Moments later she came out, carrying the delicate circlet woven of slender, almost threadlike fish bones.
“She said it would help if you were in trouble and needed protection.”
Yes, she had said that it would protect his boat, somehow. The details escaped Kerrick. Then he remembered.
“Throw it on the water, she said, and it will hide the boat!”
Moreen’s one good eye flashed with hope as she looked at him. She cast the object over the side and into the rising swells of the Dracoheim Sea. She murmured something, a prayer to Chislev Wilder, he imagined.
Immediately fog churned upward, a white veil of mist erupting like a funnel cloud. The vapors were silent but roiled and swelled like living things, sweeping outward with churning frenzy to wrap the sailboat and the surrounding sea in a murky embrace, expanding quickly, shrouding them from view in all directions. It swirled through the air, explosively expanding until it surrounded them, rising upward to form a shield that obscured all glimpse of the sky, the sun. Even the top of the mast vanished in the haze.
Motioning to Randall and Moreen, who had joined him in the cockpit, Kerrick pulled the two oars from their racks. He explained urgently, pointing toward the bow.
“Stay as silent as possible, but row! Push us in that direction! We’ll try to slip out of the galley’s path and hope they can’t see us in the fog!”
Moreen nodded. “It’s worth a try,” she noted hopefully.