Then Gerik swore again, more softly "By all the foul creatures of the Abyss, what are you doing here, friend?"
"Eh…" was the first thing Elderdrake said. He realized that that might not tell his hosts much, so he tried harder the next time.
It came out, "Ahhhh-" followed by "-choo!" as he sneezed violently.
Then he started coughing. Ellysta managed to pull Gerik's shirt over her head, ran to the kender, and knelt beside him.
"Mishakal be merciful!" she exclaimed. "He's burned, bruised, lame, and wearing what looks like someone's stolen bedclothes. Where have you been?"
Between coughs, Elderdrake tried to tell his story.
In the intervals between the thunder, however, he also heard shouts outside, and even worse, pounding feet on the stairs. When pounding fists on the door joined the pounding feet, Elderdrake wanted to sink into the floor. He started shaking, and found that he could not stop.
"Gerik," Ellysta said firmly. "Put some of our clothes beside the brazier. Don't set them on fire, just warm them up while I take our friend out of these rags.
"And call off those hounds of yours barking in the hall. They have no work here!"
Gerik laughed.
Ellysta stood up, and Elderdrake had a moment to appreciate the fine sight she made, with her hair spilling down her back and long legs thrust out of Gerik's shirt.
"Now what is funny?" Ellysta asked.
"The gods have put me in charge of commanding women, from the day of my birth," Gerik replied.
"You are going to regret that day, if your guards come charging in here like Solamnic heavy cavalry!" she threatened.
Gerik was still laughing as he moved to the door and shouted through it. "There is no cause for alarm. One of the kender was sick and lost his way. Send a messenger to Shumeen, and also to Lady Serafina."
Elderdrake heard mutterings outside the door. It sounded less like disobedience than who would have these unwelcome tasks. Shumeen was hard to find, like any good kender, and Serafina was not soft-spoken toward those who awoke her when her husband was visiting.
Finally the voices died away and departing footfalls replaced them. Elderdrake's one remaining dread was that Shumeen would come quickly and find him here, like this.
"Gerik, turn your back," Ellysta said. She went over to the brazier, picked an undershift and girdle from the pile there, and handed them to the kender.
"Put these on. They're warm, and they'll be a better fit than anything of Gerik's that I'm not wearing myself."
Then she turned her back, and Elderdrake endured another coughing fit.
Gerik feared that the kender would cough himself into exhaustion, but Elderdrake was made of tougher fiber than that. He managed to greet Shumeen in Ellysta's borrowed garments, rather than his bare and battered skin.
Shumeen did not help matters by laughing until Gerik was ready to shake her and Ellysta looked ready to help him. But she finally put an arm around Elderdrake's waist and led him off, murmuring things like "no more sense than a frying pan" and "soothing syrup" and "ask the cook for hot bricks."
When the kender were gone, Ellysta turned to Gerik. "We will be as chilled as he, if we stand about like this much longer."
Gerik nodded, groping for words. "If we wish-if we don't wish to be cold-let me take the other clothes off the brazier-"
What he wanted to say was that if they were to go on, they could retire to her bed, and if they were not, he could retire to his.
Ellysta laughed. "I couldn't expect you to put on my shift the way I put on your shirt, of course. So perhaps we should exchange garments."
She drew his shirt off. Gerik swallowed, and dropped the shift.
"Beautiful," he whispered.
Ellysta flushed. "Even-the wounds?"
"Honorable wounds do not mar beauty." Gerik wished he could be sure that was original.
Then he knelt before Ellysta, and with great gentleness kissed each of the honorable wounds. She sighed. He stopped worrying about whether he was saying anything original. Shortly thereafter, neither of them were using words at all.
Ellysta did weep before they slept, but on Gerik's shoulder, with joy and hope. Then they fell asleep so deeply and so swiftly that they barely remembered to pile the bedclothes over themselves.
Chapter 7
To landward, Pirvan saw mostly the early-morning mist, hiding not only the hills beyond Karthay but the greater part of the city itself. Only the tallest towers and the topmasts of the greatest ships thrust dark above the pearly grayness of the mist.
To seaward all seemed brightness. A spring sun cast golden light that danced across the tops of the swells rolling in from the northwest. The swells hinted of storms farther off, but here they barely had the power to make Wavebiter's deck sway under Pirvan's feet.
Indeed, it looked too peaceful a sea to bear the weight of a fleet sailing to war.
Pirvan forced his mind away from that thought, as he would have forced a stubborn horse away from a flooded ford in a river. Too many in the ships bound for Suivinari Island seemed persuaded that they were outward bound not to penetrate its mysteries but to fight any minotaurs there.
The knight did not know what the captains of the fleet might think on this matter. He was certain that if a fleet determined on fighting minotaurs met minotaurs whose honor would, as always, require them to fight back, much blood would be shed to little purpose.
It was a pity that Vuinlod's motley population did not include some minotaurs, but they had never been great ones for settling in human lands. Nor would free minotaurs have been welcome of late in those lands, and not only because they would have doubtless tried to liberate their enslaved comrades.
At least the fleet had Darin, raised by the minotaur Waydol and more capable of thinking like one than any human Pirvan had known. A pity that he was likely to find no counterpart among any minotaurs the fleet would encounter. Waydol might not have been unique in his notion that honor required one to learn as much as possible about one's foes before one drew a weapon, but his breed was certainly rare-and not only among minotaurs.
Pirvan thought of his son and home, now menaced by those who seemed unwilling or unable to learn. He hoped that Sir Niebar's knights and men-at-arms had a safe and swift journey to Tirabot, and that once there they discouraged House Dirivan and anyone else from folly.
Without foreswearing his part in this quest, however, Pirvan could do no more than hope that the loud beating of the drums of war would not drown out reason.
Someone was beating a ship's drum now, not far off. Pirvan heard a drum aboard Wavebiter reply, and looked over the railing.
Off to port, a high-prowed Karthayan boat was approaching under six oars, heading straight for Wavebiter. A man with a mate's formal sash sat in the stern sheets, with features betraying his sea barbarian ancestry, hung about with fine Karthayan weapons.
The boat pulled alongside; the rowers tossed oars. The mate leaped from the boat's gunwale to the ladder built into Wavebiter's side and scrambled lithely to the deck. It was almost like watching the ghost of Jemar the Fair.
The mate's scramble was quick. For all her three masts Wavebiter was not high-built. She was of a new breed of ship, designed for sailing but with sweeps that could keep her off shoals in a calm, fit to carry loads that a galley could not with fewer hands than a galley needed, and at the same time shallower of draft than a deep-built merchanter.
Pirvan could see how such a ship might be useful, but also saw reason in the complaints of old sailors, that such a ship could be a villainously bad sea boat. No storms had blown to test Wavebiter in the voyage from Vuinlod, but Pirvan was aware that both he and Haimya had thoroughly lost their sea legs.