The jozhal thought for a moment, then said, “I can’t hide the masts.” He pulled a small wand from his stomach pouch.
At the end of the stick was a tiny mask. “But I can disguise them as giants.”
Kester rubbed her lumpy head in thought, then shrugged. “Go ahead and try,” she said. “I don’t see how ye can make matters any worse.”
With that, the tarek returned to her usual station, and Nymos scurried off to work his magic on the masts. The Shadow Viper skirted Mytilene’s shore slowly, steadily riding lower in the dust as Agis grew sicker and more fatigued. Soon, in addition to his nausea, the noble felt feverish and weak, and rivulets of bitter-smelling sweat ran down his brow. He began to think he would have to call for a chaperon to keep him alert, then Kester’s voice boomed across the deck.
“Foredeck squads to their ballistae!” she ordered. “Crew one, raise the keel. All others, furl the sails!”
At the far end of the ship, a dozen sailors worked the ballistae windlasses, cranking back the arms on three separate engines. Within moments, the weapons were loaded with heavy harpoons, the ends tipped with barbed heads as thick as a dwarf’s body.
On the main deck, a group of nervous slaves gathered around the capstan and leaned into the crossbars, winding a thick black rope around a massive wooden drum. As the line was gathered up, it pulled the keel-a mekillot’s shoulder blade-out of the deck’s center slot. The bone had been laboriously carved into a finlike shape, and polished to a smooth sheen to keep silt from clinging to it.
While their comrades struggled to raise the keel, the rest of the slaves crawled up the masts and out onto the yardarms. Slowly, they pulled the heavy sails up to the wooden beams and secured them into place with quick-release knots. By the time they had finished, the Shadow Viper’s progress had slowed to a near standstill.
Agis heard Nymos utter a magical command word, then saw the jozhal standing amidships, gesturing at each mast with his tiny wand. A trio of giants appeared where the masts had been. They were all somewhat smaller and less hairy than Fylo, with lanky builds and rough, sun-bronzed hides. On the shoulders of the first sat a ram’s head, on the second an eagle’s, and on the third a serpent’s.
“Man the plunging poles!” Kester ordered. The tarek was peering through her king’s eye, her gaze fixed far ahead of the ship. “Ahead slow.”
The crew took their positions and began to push. To Agis, this part of the journey seemed to take as long as the trip around the island. Once he almost retched, while another time he found himself gasping for breath as though he had been running. Still, the noble managed to hang on, and soon the craggy silhouette of a shoreline loomed just a few dozen yards off the bow.
“Ready the gangways,” Kester called, still peering through the king’s eye.
The slaves had barely moved to their positions when a lookout’s voice echoed down from the crow’s nest. “Giant to starboard!” There was a short pause, then he added, “Four more to port!”
“So much for disguises,” Kester growled, lowering her king’s eye. “How close?” she yelled, raising her gaze to the top of the mainmast.
When the tarek saw three beasthead giants standing on her deck, her leathery skin went pale. At first, Agis thought it was Nymos’s illusion that had flustered the tarek, but he quickly realized that was not the case.
“Not beastheads!” the tarek gasped.
In the same instant, a hulking silhouette came into view off the port bow, six braids of hair sweeping back and forth like pendulums as he waded out to intercept the Shadow Viper. Although the dust curtain prevented the noble from getting a good look at the giant’s face, he could see enough to tell that it was more or less human, with a blocky shape and a hooked nose as long as a battle-axe. As the noble watched, the colossus lifted his arms over his head, raising a huge boulder as high as the Shadow Viper’s tallest mast.
“Go away, you filthy Saram!” he boomed.
As the giant cocked his arms to throw, Kester yelled, “Fire at will!”
Agis heard the sonorous throb of a skein releasing its tension. A tree-sized harpoon rasped off a ballista and sailed straight at the titan’s chest. It struck with a loud crack, burying itself squarely in the target’s sternum. The giant’s breath left him in a pained gale. The boulder he had been holding slipped from his hands and plunged into the dust. Casting a slack-jawed look of surprise at the Shadow Viper’s bow, he lowered his hands and closed his fingers around the shaft, narrowly missing the ship’s bowsprit as he pitched forward.
As the firing crew cranked the ballista arms back into the cocked position, Kester whooped in joy. “That’ll teach ye to raise a stone to us!” she yelled.
“Should Nymos drop his spell?” Agis asked.
“Not now,” came the reply. “Let ‘em think it’s beastheads killin’ their friends, not the Shadow Viper.”
She had hardly finished speaking before a second boulder sailed out of the dust haze and crashed through the rigging, tearing the crow’s nest from the mainmast and snapping ropes from the spreaders. Followed by the body of the screaming lookout, the rock bounced off the keel and plunged through the main deck.
“All back!” Kester yelled.
The slaves dipped their plunging poles into the silt and began to push the Shadow Viper away from the shore. Kester cursed them for being too slow, then peered into the floater’s pit. “Keep us light an’ lively, Agis, or we’re lost!”
Two more giants came into view just beyond the bow, waist deep in silt and coming after the ship as fast as they could plow ahead. The leader held a huge boulder in front of himself, using it like a shield to protect himself and his companion from any more attacks.
“Tell the slaves to raise their poles,” Agis said.
Kester furrowed her heavy brow. “Why?”
“Do you know what ice is?” the noble replied, turning his concentration inward. Without waiting for a reply, he opened his spiritual nexus wide, allowing his life-force to flow through the dome in a torrent. The sea in his mind lightened from a turbid brown to a pale yellow.
Agis heard Kester’s voice yell, “Raise poles!”
The noble took a deep breath and visualized something he had seen only once in his life, on a bitter cold morning during a hunting trip into the high mountains: a frozen pond. In his mind, the yellow waters around the caravel turned the color of ivory and became as hard as a rock. The frost spread steadily outward, changing the sea into an endless white plain, as vast as the stony barrens and as smooth as obsidian.
The noble did not stop there. He visualized a pair of outriggers stretching down from the ship’s gunnels. Where the floats should have been, there were obsidian runners, as sharp as swords and thick enough to bear the immense weight of the Shadow Viper. Agis imagined these outriggers growing longer and longer, lifting the caravel’s hull out of the ice until it sat free, ready to shoot across the frozen sea at the slightest impetus.
A boulder crashed down on the deck of the bow, drawing the noble’s attention away from his preparations. It smashed through a rack of spare harpoons and upended the foremast. As the great staff toppled over, a giant’s angry voice jeered, “You other Saram will die, too!”
“Push off, Kester!” Agis yelled. “And tell everyone to brace themselves.”
“Fast to stern!” yelled the tarek, not bothering with the warning Agis had suggested.
The slaves lowered their plunging poles and pushed. The Shadow Viper shot away from the giants like an arrow from a bow. The ballista crews, who had been holding their fire for the most opportune moment, triggered their weapons. The skeins throbbed and a pair of harpoons whooshed away. The first lance sank deep into a giant’s stomach. He bellowed, clutched the shaft, and crumpled forward into a dead heap.