The Gray Lady’s captain wasn’t waiting for either the galley or the bolts to arrive. Yelling his own orders, he brought the sailing ship around to port so hard that the Mechanics and Mages on the deck all staggered to the rail and held on tightly. Several crossbow bolts thudded into the deck, one striking so close to Asha that she stumbled to the side, off balance.
Before she could fall Mechanic Dav had lunged away from the rail and caught her.
Asha gazed at the Mechanic dispassionately. “You help.”
“I… I don’t want you hurt,” Mechanic Dav said. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
Alain saw one corner of Asha’s lip bend into the tiniest of smiles. “I am well. Back to your duties, Mechanic Dav.”
Alain had assumed that Mechanic Dav’s interest in Asha was all about her beauty. Certainly from his reactions that was what had first attracted him to her. But now Alain wondered if this Mechanic Dav was wise enough to see the woman within Asha’s Mage exterior. The thought cheered him even through his weariness.
Mechanic Dav went back to the rail, where Alli made a low-voiced comment that drew brief, tense laughter from Mari and Bev. Alain wondered what the women found amusing.
The ship kept turning, the spars and booms swinging overhead. The sails rumbled as they lost the breeze then caught it once more. The Gray Lady cruised into another heavy bank of fog and lost sight of the pursuing galley.
Alain heard the captain cursing as he jumped down from the quarterdeck and raced forward. Alain managed to get back to his feet and followed, wanting to know what might be needed. The captain reached the bow and grasped some rigging tightly, peering ahead. “Hide and seek, Sir Mage,” he explained in a near whisper. “And the rocks of the breakwater not far off, if I’m any judge.”
A splashing noise and the wash of water past a hull sounded clearly through the white mist enveloping them. Before anyone could do or say anything, the shape of a galley shot into sight, heading right across their path. “Hard a-starboard!” the captain yelled back to the quarterdeck. “Bring her about!”
The Gray Lady had built up enough speed that she heeled far over under the command of her rudder, port side rising up as the starboard side dipped. Her bowsprit swung past the bow of the galley, looking as if it had missed striking the other ship by a matter of a hand’s-width. Then the Gray Lady was swinging parallel to the galley as it swept past close aboard.
The oars on the near side of the galley had no time to swing up vertical and safe. Still poised out from the galley’s hull, they formed a thicket which rushed past the Gray Lady as the sailing ship bore away in the other direction. With a series of cracks, crashes, and moans of tortured wood which merged into one long roar, the oars on that side of the galley disintegrated into a flurry of splinters and broken stumps. Over the sound of rending wood, Alain could also hear the screams and yells of the oar handlers being bludgeoned by the impact of the Gray Lady against their oars.
Before Alain could grasp what was happening it was over, the two ships losing each other in the fog again, the Gray Lady wearing back to port under her captain’s commands and the crippled galley wavering as it vanished into the mist. He looked aft and saw Mari staring after the galley, her face bleak. Knowing her, Alain was certain she was tormented by the fading cries of the stricken oar handlers.
The sails rumbled again as the breeze faltered, then the wind swung around to come from another direction. The captain cursed, using a number of words that Alain had not heard before despite his time among soldiers. The meaning of the words was clear enough, however. Nursing the Gray Lady onto a new heading, the captain got her speed up again, calling nearly constant commands to the helm to adjust the course and to his crew to trim the sails to make the most of the wandering winds.
They cruised through another clear patch, then another bank of dense fog, then into another open space, this one as large as the grand coliseum in the Imperial capital of Palandur. And in a picture that could have been drawn from one of the coliseum spectacles, a second Syndari galley was angling through the same gap, so close a stone could have been thrown from the deck of the Gray Lady to that of the galley.
Mari shouted commands from amidships and the Mechanic weapons thundered. Alain saw splinters flying from the area around the galley’s tiller and wondered that none of the officers or sailors there had been hit. Syndari crewmembers dove hastily for cover, abandoning their stations for the moment. Amid the sailors, Alain caught a glimpse of a Mage’s robes.
“Niaro!” Asha called across the gap, her voice still lacking emotion but loud enough to carry easily. “Even now you lack strength and skill!” She wagged the blade of her knife derisively at the other Mage. “The Syndaris could not afford a real Mage!”
Alain stared back at Asha, wondering why she was taunting Niaro so. While the other Mage had been able to help find the Gray Lady even in the fog, with so little power in this particular spot on the ocean no Mage could hope to manage any major spells alone. But as Alain looked over at Niaro, he saw that Mage stagger toward the rail of the galley and then collapse.
A moment later, with no hand on the wheel, the Syndari galley swung away, vanishing into the mist again.
“He’ll be back,” the captain noted, his face grim.
“He will have more difficulty finding us,” Asha announced with the closest thing to a satisfied smile Alain had ever seen on her. “Their Mage tried to match you in spell work, Mage Alain, and all his strength drained to nothing. Niaro will give no more aid to the Syndari galleys for some time.”
“You mocked him,” Alain said. “Like an elder toying with a very young acolyte.”
“And Niaro responded as a very young acolyte would,” Asha said. “With anger and little control.”
Alain nodded to her. “I am fortunate to be your friend, Mage Asha.”
“Yes. You are.” She nodded back to him.
The crewmembers in the rigging had been calling out to one another now that secrecy was impossible, but the captain shouted a command. “All hands, quiet!”
The Mechanics and Mages, who would normally have ignored the command of a common person, fell silent along with the crew at Mari’s gesture. Alain, marveling at her ability to exercise control over both Mechanics and Mages, watched the captain of the Gray Lady, who was leaning slightly forward over the rail near the bow, not just staring into the mist but also listening intently. A small smile came to the captain’s lips as he heard something. “Oars are very useful, Sir Mage, for making a galley move when wind is lacking, but sails make little noise by comparison, whereas the oars of the galleys splash and creak enough to mask the sounds of other things. And a wise sailor always listens for the sound of danger.” He paused, apparently not looking at anything but listening very carefully. “Hold on,” he muttered very softly to himself.
The Gray Lady shot through a thin sheet of fog, in and out in a flash with the remnants of the mist rapidly dissipating now. Ahead, a low bank of fog still remained, obscuring the sea in their path. Glancing upward at the now-visible sun, Alain saw that the Gray Lady was going almost due north.