Through the Wildwood (24 page)

“Don’t fall over them wings,” a gruff voice said sharply from not too far away and from above him. It was Peg, and he was grinning like a child with the frosting spoon in his hand. “If you go overboard in the dark we might not be able to find ya, besides that I’m not sure Captain Willie would heave the old
Sea Hawk
around for a man-eater.”

Vanx started to respond, but the look in the seaman’s eyes showed that he wasn’t trying to be offensive. He said, “If I fell overboard I might make it to Little Haven before you mates.”

Peg laughed. “Well, well,” he said. “At least one of you has some spunk about you. The others couldn’t keep their guts down.”

“I don’t think either of them has been out into the deep sea before,” Vanx replied. He pulled himself from the wing-formed rail of the bow and strode to a place under where Peg was hanging in the rigging like a three-legged spider. “Probably not even in a bay.”

“Aye,” Peg agreed. “I could take off my stub and hop this deck in a tempest better than either of them could walk it in this calm.”

“How’d you lose the leg?” Vanx asked.

“That’s not a question you ask a man,” Peg snapped, and even as the words came out of him his demeanor softened. “Since you’re a half-blooded heathen, I’ll let it pass.”

Vanx narrowed his brows and rolled his eyes. He wasn’t going to let the old stubble-faced sea dog intimidate him. “Tell me or not, what do I care?”

Peg chuckled at that too. “You do got some spunk about you, there’s no doubt.” He swung down through the rigging on arms as thick as tree limbs and landed before Vanx with a hard thump on the deck.

“Call me Vanx.”

“It’s Peg then, if you didn’t already guess. Though my name is Leory.” He offered his hand for Vanx to shake. Vanx took it and winced at the strength of Leory’s grip. Peg noisily clanked over to the rail. “Shark,” he said softly.

Vanx hurried over and looked down into the nearly black water. “Where?”

“No man!” Peg barked out a laugh. “A shark took my leg. Well, not really took it off or nothing, but it could have.” He held his arms out in a big empty bear hug. “Its mouth was this big and it clamped down on me and pulled me down. It held me under ‘til I nearly drowned, but then just like that, it let me go. Them teeth ripped the meat to the bone, and poisoned my blood with the green rot. They ought to call me Lucky, not Peg.” He grinned, and in the orange light of the deck lantern, Vanx realized the man’s teeth weren’t teeth at all, but painted wood.

“I was nearly eaten, then drowned, then bled out by that cursed sea beast. Old Nepton himself was on my side though, and Cap’n Willie pulled me out, tied me off, and rowed me to Hellton with his own arms.”

“How did you end up in the water in the first place?” Vanx asked.

Peg licked his lips at that and gave a nervous glance around.

“Go on, tell him, Peg.” Yandi showed two of his three teeth as he walked up. “Tell him about the Mother Earl.”

“Yes, Peg, tell him.” Prince Russet’s wild-haired silhouette blocked most of the lighted rectangle of the portal that led below deck. “I love the story, even though I’ve heard it told a dozen times.” The prince gave Vanx a nod of respect then clasped Peg on the shoulder. “The only thing is, when you and our over-esteemed captain tell it, you two weren’t trying to take the Mother Earl, you were trying to save her from pirates.”

“We weren’t trying to take her,” Peg insisted.

“Captain Willington and Leory here used to be pirates,” the prince told Vanx. “Go on back to your work Leory, I’d hate to have to pike your head on the mast pole for lying to me.”

Peg’s roughspun demeanor vanished as he nodded several times, then darted back up into the rigging. Yandi crept away before the prince had the chance to notice his presence. “The captain of Mother Earl sank their ship, and only two longboats made it to shore; one with four men, the other with only our Captain Willie and about three-fourths of Leory.”

“Isn’t it a human tradition that a ship’s captain go down with his vessel?” Vanx asked.

“I wasn’t a captain then,” Captain Willie boomed jovially. Another lantern was lit and Vanx saw that not only had the captain been in earshot, but at least half a dozen other men were hanging or lingering as well. It occurred to him then that his keener sense of hearing and vision were somehow dulled out here at sea. Before he could think about it further, Captain Willie continued speaking.

“I was High Picaroon.” The captain must have seen Vanx’s look of confusion at the term. “That’s what the leader of the boarding marauders is called. We was trying to take that fat-bellied merchant ship for a prize, and I’m proud to say it.”

“Had she been a Parydon ship, you’d have been beheaded,” Prince Russet said with a boyish grin. “But she was out of Harthgar and you managed to cripple her so that she drifted all the way to Oradyn.”

The prince turned to Vanx then, the excitement of the story showing vividly on his lamp-lit face. “Father had to hunt the captain down, but it wasn’t hard. Rumors of Peg’s injuries had spread and the king’s guard rounded them up.”

“Aye,” Captain Willie grinned through his huge beard. “Saved Peg’s life, that stint in the royal dungeons did. Your father found the tale as intriguing as you do, my prince. The fact that Harthgarians were smuggling untaxed Parydon goods out of the kingdom through Coldport gave the king just enough reason to confiscate all that booty.”

“The captain here smooth-talked my dad into giving him a position on a ship, and after he took over the Royal Falcon in a typhoon after Captain Morgan was swept overboard, he was given the
Sea Hawk
to command.

“I thought the
Sea Hawk
was your ship,” Vanx asked the prince curiously. He glanced at Captain Willie and then up at Peg in the lines above and had no trouble picturing them as pirates. In fact, they seemed more like pirates now than any sort of Royal Seamen.

“I get to decide where we are going and sometimes who comes along,” Prince Russet said respectfully. “But make no mistake, when we are at sea the captain here is at command. Even over me.”

“Who’s going to be in command when we venture onto Dragon Isle?” Vanx asked and immediately regretted the question. A murmur of unease and even a groan of despair came from the seamen who heard.

“Well that cat’s out of the sack now,” the captain shook his head. “All you eavesdroppers heard it right. After we leave Zyth we’re headed to Dragon Isle. Once we are there, about a third of the crew will go ashore with these men. What we are after is the only thing that can save Gallarael Martin, the Princess of Highlake.”

“I’ll not set foot…”

“I hope I don’t get the short straw.”

“That island is cursed—plum full of dragons too.”

The crew erupted all at once. It was Prince Russet’s voice that rose over them. Another, even the captain’s, might not have been enough to yield them. “I will be going ashore with those of you who come. There will be healthy compensation if we succeed in this. I’m certain Vanx will lead us well; he’s half Zythian. Zyths have a way with the dragons, or so I’ve read.”

Vanx gave the prince a look of shocked disbelief. Did he just say that Zythians have a way with dragons? The grin on Prince Russet’s face was devilish and full of delight. When he caught Vanx’s glare, he only shrugged, reached out and gave him a confident pat on the back.

That night Vanx dreamt of a cavern full of molten rock and a red-scaled beast with sword-slitted eyes the size of wagon wheels; a creature whose only desire was to char him with its fiery breath before consuming him in its hungry maw. In his dream he was terrified of such a thing, and when he woke, that feeling didn’t change.

Chapter Two

Vanx had never seen Little Haven from the sea. The enormity of the steep, jagged bluffs that met the ocean there was staggering. From horizon to horizon, cold gray stone rose up out of the water like a fortress wall. Vanx remembered standing at the top of the wall as a boy. He was with his mother as she tossed wreaths of petal hearts and tear blooms to Nepton each year on the day of his father’s death. From that vantage the cliffs seemed like a sheer free-fall to the sea and nothing more. He peered over the edge on his first visit and remembered the dizziness that came over him. As he grew older, the view became less and less daunting. He would have guessed the drop to be about forty or fifty paces down from the windblown scrub plain above. Looking up from the swift-rolling surface of the water, it seemed like thrice that height. Perspective, he decided, was something to always be considered.

Lavern, as this place was called in the Zythian tongue, meant “breech” or “break”. Over the years the name was distorted by humans and the quills of the mapmakers. Lil’ Lavern was now known across the realm as Little Haven. In truth, beyond the narrow gap in the cliff wall was a haven from the brunt of the open sea, so the mistake was understandable. The Zythian name, however, described the hidden bay more properly. It was a breech in the rock face that cut back into the island. On the maps it looked like a crooked finger poked into the land, but from the sea it was all but undetectable.

As the
Sea Hawk
slid down a trough into the opening, the stony cliff sides engulfed them. Sheer, jagged walls rose up on either side of the spectacular cut. The opening wasn’t wide — barely five hundred feet across — and it narrowed gradually. Horizontal lines rich with coral growth rimmed the water’s surface and marked the seasonal tide lines. Farther up, thick bands of coppery-colored sediment and sparkling gray granite uniformly striped the faces of the cliffs.

From a previously hidden perch high overhead, a red-and-black banner began waving on a pole and a horn blew three short blasts of welcome. A plethora of squawking gulls and long-beaked divers were startled from their haunts. In a wheeling cacophony they circled around for a curious look, then lazily landed again.

Captain Willie ordered the plain Parydon banner run up the mast and Yandi gave a long, slow, bellowing return blast, followed by five short blasts. Vanx was told that their response signaled that they wished to dock and would pay with hard coin for the space.

Here in the channel the sea still rose and fell with a rhythmic yet unpredictable force. But as they turned the crook in the finger, the waters calmed to a stillness that was such a contrast to the swells behind them that he had to reconsider which name for the harbor described it best. If this place was anything it was a little haven from the sea.

The sun was still high overhead and most of the fishing vessels were out filling their nets; the harbor was mostly empty. A small longboat manned by several young yellow-haired, golden-eyed boys towed a rope out to the ship. The end of it was hauled aboard and as the men pulled it taut, Vanx saw that it was connected to a mooring post that was separated from the bulk of the docks by a corner of stone, which by its coppery color, appeared to have fallen from the wall above. Only a portion of the stone rose above the surface, but Vanx could tell that it was massive. Seeing it caused him to look up and try to locate any suspect overhangs or fractures above them.

“It fell a few hundred years ago,” Captain Willie chuckled, seeing Vanx’s distress. “You come from this land, you should know as much.”

“Maybe I should,” Vanx grinned at his own foolishness. “I’ve been here—well, up there,” he pointed to the top of the long switchback stairway carved into the cliff. “At least twenty times, but I’ve never been down here. My father died at sea and—” Why he stopped speaking, why he had even said that much about his private life, he didn’t know.

“You’ve the salt of Nepton in your blood, it’s plain,” the captain observed. Captain Willie turned away suddenly and shouted. “Pull! Pull you fargin maidens! We’ll be trying to moor in while the fishermen are laughing at us from their cups at this rate!”

“Heave,” Peg called out. “Heave.” Gradually a rhythm to the crew’s efforts formed so that the
Sea Hawk
began a slow but steady course toward the mooring pillar.

“We are too small a ship for an oar deck, and there’s no wind in here,” Captain Willie explained before changing the subject completely.

“They have the best honey fire a man’s ever drank up at the Treasure Chest Inn, and the girls—” he started to say.

Vanx knew why Captain Willie bit his tongue. Throughout the years, several of his own folk had assumed that his mother was a whore, so the notion wasn’t new to him.

“She wasn’t,” Vanx said, glad that he could say so without it being a lie. “She met him in Parydon proper and sailed with him on his galley
Foamfollower
, at least until I was conceived. It was my father’s first run from Flotsam to Coldport without her aboard that an icy storm weighed them down and laid her over.” Vanx shrugged and decided that he would take a small amount of time for himself and throw a wreath for his father in his mother’s name. “At least that’s the story I was told.”

***

Captain Willie was shocked, for he’d heard of Marin St. Elm, the captain of the infamous
Foamfollower
. As he remembered the stories his grandfather told him, he knew the young maverick had kept a young heathen woman aboard with him. They’d called her the ship witch.

Several of the
Foamfollower’s
crew, half-frozen and nearly starved, had made it to Coldport in a longboat. They told the harbor master there that Captain St. Elm could have joined them, but chose to honor those of his crew who had drowned by leading them through Nepton’s deep himself.

“I forgot how long-lived your folk are,” Captain Willie said after a few moments. “I’ve heard the tale of the
Foamfollower
and I reckon that makes you a bit older than me. I would have never guessed as much. They say Captain St. Elm was a true sea mage. My gran said he was born of a witch himself.” Just then the
Sea Hawk
banged into the unforgiving mooring pillar with a deep thump and the captain’s eyes flared with rage.

“By the fargin barnacles clinging to my arse, you saggy-titted niddies are going to scrub the deck down to the splinters for that. Yandi, Peg, what in the name of…”