The next arrow went wide, as Karrilke steered the boat a little off the wind and then on again, their wake showing a sudden kink. The arrow after that went into the sea, a dozen paces short. Even rowing at ramming speed, the raider was now falling back, unable to keep up with the nor’easter lifting the fishing boat south.
“Lown! Take hold here!”
Lown came back to the tiller. Karrilke bent down over Ferin.
“You’re a brave lass, and your shot saved us, I reckon,” said the captain. “Nothing’s ever sure at sea, but there’s a good chance now we’ll have you ashore soon after dawn, and to the healer.”
“How far is it from your Yellowsands to the place where the . . . the Clayr are?” asked Ferin. “In the ice.”
“The Clayr’s Glacier?”
Karrilke scratched her head. Ferin noticed that all the while they were talking, the captain kept a sharp eye over the stern. The chanting and the splash of oars from the raider could still be heard, though more faintly.
“I don’t rightly know,” continued Karrilke. “I suppose you’d take the south road to Navis, and keep going southwest to Sindle and from there north again, following the Ratterlin. On the royal roads, that is. There’d be lesser ways, I suppose, going west from Navis. Maybe five or six days, mounted. Someone’ll have a map in Yellowsands.”
“Good,” said Ferin. She tried to say more, to fend off what she thought of as shamefully passing out, but was unable to resist the tide of weakness and pain that was rising in her body.
Karrilke caught Ferin’s head as the young woman’s eyes rolled back and she slumped sideways. Laying her carefully on the deck, the captain looked over the stern again. The raider was still lit by the red fires that were not fires; the oars were pulling at the same swift pace, as called by the sorcerers. But it was falling behind with every minute.
Despite this, the raider was still following them.
For the first time, Karrilke wondered what would happen if it followed them all the way into Yellowsands. The Sky Horse raiders had never done so before, not in her memory, but then Karrilke had also never been pursued before by a raider full of Free Magic things that rowed all night and did not rest . . .
Yellowsands was a fishing village, not a walled and garrisoned town. The fisher-folk would fight to defend it, of course, but even if most of the boats were in, there would only be sixty or seventy people of fighting age, with perhaps half a dozen Charter Mages. And these latter were not expert in fighting spells; they knew only simple magic, mostly to do with the sea and fishing, like Karrilke herself.
Presuming the wind kept up, as it promised to do, Karrilke reckoned they would get to Yellowsands soon after dawn, perhaps an hour or even two ahead of the raider. But that was very little time to prepare a defense against a dozen wood-weirds and as many shamans and witches, in addition to their keepers.
The closest Guard post was in Navis, sixty leagues south. There was a rural constable in Yellowsands, but only one. Megril, a young annoyance if ever there was one, always poking her nose into honest fisher-folks’ business. Karrilke tried to remember if Megril had the keeping of a message-hawk for emergencies. Long ago, Yellowsands had maintained its own militia and message-hawks, but there had been peace for years, ever since King Touchstone and the Abhorsen Sabriel had set everything back to rights.
Karrilke cleared her throat, and tried to speak conversationally. She was never really afraid at sea, or had long ago trained herself not to show it, but the thought of Free Magic constructs rampaging through her village scared her. She had three more children at home, and her husband, a woodcutter . . . he would be first into the fighting with that long double-bladed axe of his . . .
“Lown,” she said. “Do you recall if that Megril has a message-hawk? Or anyone in the village?”
Lown made a face, the usual reaction to the mention of the rural constable.
“Don’t know about Megril,” he said. “Doesn’t Aulther have a pair, for the markets?”
“Aye, I’d forgot,” said Karrilke, brightening. Aulther was the fisher-folks’ factor and banker, who sold most of their catches to the Fishmonger’s Guild in Belisaere and arranged the cargo vessels that took the salted batith south. His birds probably only flew to and from the fish market in the city, but it would be a way to send a warning and to ask for help.
Not that any help could possibly arrive before the raider.
“As soon as we berth, you run to Aulther,” said Karrilke. “Ask him to send a bird to the closest Guard post if he can, or to the fishmonger’s if he can’t, asking for help along as the village is about to be attacked by a dozen Free Magic constructs, their sorcerers and keepers, from the Sky Horses and maybe other tribes with them.”
“We are? I mean, we will be?” asked Lown. He was young and had never seriously fought against anyone, so he was more excited than afraid. For the moment.
“I reckon,” said Karrilke. “Soon as you done that, you run home and have Da gather up everything for traveling he can get together real quick and meet us by the Charter Stone. Tell him about the raiders, and to pack food and water for all of us, three days, for traveling.”
“Food and water? Traveling?”
“We can’t fight off a dozen wood-weirds,” said Karrilke. “Have to get everyone in the village out, take the road and try and stay ahead of ’em, get to the old tower on the south road. Tolther and Huire will bring the girl to the stone, I’ll go to Megril and get her to sound the alarm, and I’ll fetch up Astilaran. Oh, get my harpoon from the house, and the old leather cuirass. It’s hanging up with the garden tools.”
“What . . . what about the catch?” asked Lown.
“We leave it.”
“We . . . leave it?” asked Lown, his voice squeaking high in surprise.
“Better to stay alive,” said Karrilke. She slapped the deck affectionately with her bare foot. “No point dying over salted fish. Besides, it’ll keep, provided she stays afloat.”
“What do we do if they sink her?” asked Lown. He was the least imaginative of Karrilke’s children, which was helpful sometimes, sometimes not.
“Raise her,” said Karrilke. “Build another. Worry about that if and when it happens. How long till Yellowsands, you think?”
Lown looked up at the sky, roughly fixing their position in relation to the six stars that made up The Beggar; cross-checked that with the Buckle of the North Giant’s Belt, sometimes called Mariner’s Cheat; and finally imagined an invisible line drawn through Uallus, the fixed red star a little east of north. After that he sniffed the air a few times, and gazed out upon the sea, taking note of the swell and other indications. A land-dweller would have sworn all the sea looked the same: dark and mysterious, barely illuminated by stars and moon. But to Lown it was familiar, and he knew where they were.
“Reckon we should hear the Mouth Buoy soon,” he sai
d. “Even over that racket those raiders are making.”
The “racket” was the continuing chanting of the sorcerers, now only a far-off conjoined sound, that could have been some great seabird calling in the night.
“Aye,” said Karrilke. “Listen for it and make the turn. I’m going for’rard to talk to Tolther and Huire.”
“Will do, Captain,” said Lown. He bent his attention ahead, listening for the harsh ring of the cracked bell that swung atop the ancient barrel buoy, once a tun of western wine, triple-caulked with tar to keep it afloat. The buoy marked the mouth of the Yellowsands channel, the only sure entrance to the winding way through the treacherous drifts and bars of sand that gave the village its name.
Karrilke had considered silencing the bell on the buoy, so the channel entrance would be harder to find, but she dismissed the notion as it would take precious time. The raider was a shallow draft vessel and so could pass many of the sandbars anyways, and she suspected the Sky Horse raiders were following them by some sorcerous means in any case.
The captain forgot the buoy and went forward, one eye on the sails, ready to call for them to be trimmed if she saw them shiver or heard them flapping.
Ferin lay on the deck near Lown’s feet. She was quiet, no longer writhing with fever. Simply a lump under her fur cloak, the only sign she was still alive the occasional quiver of her lower lip as she breathed in and out.
Chapter Twelve
A QUIET CONVERSATION, EVERYTHING IMPORTANT LEFT UNSAID
Flying to the Clayr’s Glacier
Nicholas Sayre woke slowly, his teeth aching and his eyes blurred from a cold wind that was blowing hard across his face. For several seconds he couldn’t work out where he was, because there was only blue sky above and when he tried to move he found himself restrained, tied around the waist and secured behind his back. He was sitting, too, which was strange, particularly as he was also slumped at an angle, his head hanging down over the edge of something . . .