“Steady on zero nine zero!” ordered Hagen.
Another shell slammed through the rigging, and this time, a rain of debris pattered and clattered down onto the poop deck. Kharl looked up. One of the sails on the starboard side had been ripped loose of the bottom rigging and flapped in the wind. The footlines dangled, and the end gaff was missing.
The paddle wheels turned over a shade faster with each moment, and the ship continued to gain speed. The Seastag had passed the end of the breakwater and was now moving away from the fort at a goodly clip, the open water between the Gallosian fort and the ship increasing.
“Twenty starboard!” ordered Hagen.
Just as the ship settled onto the new heading, another shell struck just off the port quarter, close enough and with sufficient force to throw a spray of water across the forecastle. Kharl could even feel some of the spray from where he stood midships on the starboard side.
Glancing aft, he could see that once the Seastag had cleared the shallower waters seaward from the breakwater, Hagen had turned the ship onto a heading that presented only the stern to the cannon of the fort, keeping the ship’s exposure to cannon fire as narrow as possible.
Another shell exploded in the waters aft of the Seastag.
Kharl waited for another shell, perhaps to strike the ship itself, but no other shells were fired, not that he could see or hear.
Furwyl took the ladder down from the poop and crossed the deck to Kharl. “Captain thinks we’re out of range now.” He looked at the chunks of wood and line, and several pulleys, that lay across the main deck. “You and Tarkyn are going to be busy replacing gaffs and booms,” Hagen said. “Lucky they didn’t hit either of the masts square.”
“I don’t know as it was luck, ser, was it?”
“Captain did his best, and he’s good, carpenter, but there’s always luck.” Furwyl nodded and headed toward the bosun. “Bemyr! Get a crew here to clean up the mess.”
Kharl looked back into the twilight that was beginning to descend on Ruzor and the squat Gallosian fort on the breakwater. Why were people so vindictive? Hagen had done what was right, and the customs enumerator and the Prefect’s armsmen had tried to punish him and sink the Seastag because they hadn’t gotten their way. Yet they would have been outraged had they been the buyers of the brimstone, and Hagen had sold it to someone else.
He shook his head. The Prefect’s enumerator and Egen were the same sort, wanting things their own way and vindictive when they were thwarted. Did having power turn people that way?
Kharl laughed. It wasn’t as though he’d ever be tempted in that fashion. Coopers and carpenters never got that kind of power.
LV
Another five days passed before the Seastag made her way into the port at Diehl, the most sheltered harbor that Kharl had seen. A forested peninsula guarded the seaward approach, looming over the deep channel that was less than two kays wide at the harbor entrance. Once past the entry, the Seastag steamed almost due west through a bay more than thirty kays wide, and from the half day that it took to reach the actual port, more than fifty kays in length. Only the Great North Bay at Lydiar had been larger, almost an inland sea, as Kharl recalled.
Kharl had been assigned the morning deck watch the day after the ship had arrived, and Hagen had appeared almost as soon as the carpenter had taken his station on the quarterdeck, opposite the still-empty pier.
“We’ve got the copper to off-load and some of the woolens we picked up in Nylan. Expect their port-mistress anytime, or one of the assistants. Just give me a call or ring the bell twice. I don’t need to tell you, but be exceedingly polite.” With a nod, Hagen had turned and returned to his cabin, leaving Kharl on the deck under high clouds, on the warmest morning Kharl had experienced in eightdays.
As Bemyr supervised the deck crew’s removal of both hatch covers, Kharl studied the port and the land beyond. Diehl itself was the smallest port town Kharl had seen, not that he had seen many, with only two warehouses behind the port-mistress’s structure at the foot of the single pier-a structure of old and heavy timber supported by equally old and massive stone columns. The Seastag was the only vessel tied at a pier large enough for two ocean traders.
The water in the bay was a warm blue, unlike the late-autumn dark blue of the Eastern Ocean or the harbor waters at the Candarian towns and cities where the Seastag had previously ported, and the air was warmer-and moister. Beyond the port area, everything was green-differing shades of green in a canopy of trees that stretched to the horizon in every direction where there was land.
A glass passed before a silver-haired woman walked down the pier toward the Seastag. Kharl had not seen her appear, but he almost nodded to himself, thinking that the port-mistress would probably be older. But as the woman neared, he could see from the unlined face and slender figure that the woman was anything but old. He’d heard that druids were silver-haired, but the druid approaching the ship was the first he had ever seen. He continued to watch, even as he stepped forward to greet her. The silver-haired figure walked up the gangway with a grace that looked youthful and had to be mature. That Kharl knew. Women were almost always the graceful ones, while girls betrayed their age through a myriad of little traits, including a touch of uneasiness and awkwardness with their movements.
“Greetings,” Kharl offered, inclining his head. “Are you here about the cargo?”
The druid studied Kharl before finally speaking. “You are not from Recluce.”
“No. I’m from Brysta.” Kharl almost stepped back from her, so strong was the feeling of her presence…and a swirling linkage of both the whiteness-except it was unlike any whiteness he had sensed before-and a deeper blackness, although that seemed more like what he had felt from the mage in Nylan.
She paused. “Will you be here long?”
“The ship? The captain decides that. We have to off-load cargo, for you. Let me summon him. He wanted to know as soon as you arrived.”
“No…not yet. I will be back with those for the cargoes.” She turned and walked back down the gangway.
Kharl frowned, wondering what he had done wrong-or if he had.
“Carpenter? What did you say to her?” Furwyl crossed the deck.
“I asked if she were the one we had cargo for, and…she didn’t say, now that I think about it. Then, she asked how long we would be here, and I said that it was up to the captain, but that we would be here until we off-loaded. She said that she would be back with those for the cargo.”
At the last words, Furwyl relaxed. “If she said that, she’ll be back. They never tell lies.” He frowned. “I wonder why she came aboard. Haven’t seen that one before.”
“She had deep green eyes,” Kharl said, not knowing quite why he did.
“You leave them alone,” the first mate said, “if you value your life and health. Unless, of course, they ask you. Then, I hear, you’re a lucky fellow.”
Kharl understood. He’d felt the power in the woman, a strange sort of power, an intertwining of golden whiteness with deep blackness.
“I’ll tell the captain that they know we’re here.”
“Yes, ser.” Kharl looked down the pier, but the druid had vanished.
At least another glass passed. Kharl was looking forward to being relieved when noon came. When he scanned the pier, he saw two druids, both with silver hair, walking down the pier toward the ship, accompanied by another figure, a man in gray, with light brown hair.