“Gilan challenged the Shurmel to a duel and killed him,” he explained.
Selethen nodded several times. “That’s a good result. The world will be a better place without him.”
Gilan nodded, but added a qualification. “The cult did elect a new leader,” he said. “But he might not enjoy the position too long.” He described the battle at Ephesa and their encounter with Umar and his tribe of wild nomads. At the mention of the Aseikh’s name, a smile touched Selethen’s lips.
“Umar is a good ally to have. And his men are great fighters.”
“When we left Ephesa,” Gilan told him, “he was planning an attack on Scorpion Mountain.”
Selethen shook his head sadly. “A fine idea, but doomed to failure, I’m afraid. Their lookouts can see across the desert for miles. At the first sign of an attacking force, they all withdraw into the labyrinth of caves under the mountain.”
“Except they won’t see an attacking force,” Hal pointed out. “They’ll see what they assume are their own troops returning from Ephesa. Umar and his men will be in disguise and the Scorpions will actually be expecting to see their own troops returning.”
A smile spread slowly across Selethen’s face.
“Now that is a cunning idea.” He assumed a mock frown of thoughtfulness. “Although cunning is not a word I would associate with Umar. Was this his idea?”
Gilan looked at the ceiling.
Thorn let out a brief, explosive laugh. “It was Gilan’s idea. He’s as cunning as a sea snake, he is!”
Selethen smiled again. “I might have known it. Cunning is a word we associate with Rangers.”
Thorn slapped Gilan on the shoulder and nearly sent him sprawling across the coffee table. “This lad has cunning he hasn’t even used yet!”
Gilan recovered and glared at the old sea wolf. “I wish you’d be a little less effusive, Thorn,” he said.
Thorn shrugged happily. “No idea what the word means!”
Selethen concealed his own smile. “I trust you’ll dine with me tonight?” he said. “Your entire crew.” He addressed the invitation to Hal, who nodded his thanks.
“We plan to sail for Araluen tomorrow,” he said. “But we’d be honored to be your guests tonight.”
“We’ll try not to be too effusive,” Thorn added.
Gilan cast a sidelong glance at him. “That’d be a first,” he muttered.
• • • • •
The return voyage down the Constant Sea was uneventful. The weather was fine and the winds were favorable. All in all, it was much like a pleasure cruise.
Even when they sailed through the Narrows and out into the Endless Ocean, the fine weather stayed with them, and Heron rolled the kilometers under her keel day after day. Eventually, the green shores of Araluen could be seen on the horizon as they entered the Narrow Sea. They sailed past the reefs and shoals where Tursgud had so nearly trapped them. This time, Hal stayed well to seaward of the treacherous stretch of water.
Lydia, Hal and Stig stood by the steering position, enjoying the rhythmic lift of the ship over the succeeding swells, and the constant groan of timbers and cordage as she rolled and pitched gently. There was a companionable silence about them, then Lydia, her face turned to the wind, said, “I can see why you love this. It makes up for all the bad weather and gales and salt water drenching everything. This is wonderful!”
“You’re becoming a real deepwater sailor.” Stig grinned and she nodded happily.
Hal, who was steering, had a sudden impulse. “Would you like to steer her?” he asked.
Lydia’s eyes went wide open. “Could I?”
He gestured to the tiller. “Why not? I think you’ve earned a turn at the helm.”
Gingerly, she took the tiller, feeling the vibration of the water running past it. As she took hold, she unwittingly released the pressure Hal had kept on the tiller and allowed the rudder to straighten. The ship instantly tried to go downwind. She felt a moment of panic.
“Meet her!” Hal said briskly and she frowned at him. She had no idea what that meant.
“Push the tiller away from you,” Stig explained. She did and the bow swung back upwind. But now it went too far and she saw Ulf and Wulf turning to stare at the steering platform.
“Back!” said Hal, and as she did the bow swung to port again.
“Now center the rudder,” Stig added. “That’s it! Hold her there.”
“Bring it up a little,” Hal said quickly.
“But not too much. That’s enough!” That was Stig again.
“Remember, if you want to go to port, you push the tiller to starboard,” Hal said.
She glanced at him, concentrating fiercely on the tiller. “Why?”
He shrugged. “That’s just the way it is. A little to port.”
“Now ease it,” said Stig.
Lydia laughed. They were like two mother hens with their precious chick of a ship, she thought.
“It’s not as simple as you make it look,” she said. The two friends looked at each other and smiled. Lydia felt a great sense of contentment. She felt that she truly belonged with this ship, and particularly with these two young men. And as she had that thought, she felt the same old confusion. A part of her was saying that, one day, she would have to choose between them, but another part was telling her that she never wanted to have to make that choice. She twitched the tiller once more and laughed as the ship responded to her command.
“I thought you just held it in one position the whole time,” she said, indicating the tiller.
“No,” said Hal. “The sea is moving constantly and you have to constantly make little adjustments to keep it all going smoothly. You can’t take it for granted.”
“Just like a friendship,” she said, smiling. And Hal nodded.
“Maybe that’s why the word ends in ship,” he said.
• • • • •
Lydia continued to steer, gradually getting the feel for the ship, until they sighted Cresthaven Bay. Then Hal took over and they sailed into the anchorage with a sense of homecoming.
They were surprised to see a wolfship moored alongside the jetty. She was one of the older models, still fitted with a square sail.
“That’s Wolfcall,” Thorn said, “Rugen Cloudseeker’s ship.”
The crew on the other ship called greetings to them and hurried to take mooring lines and bring Heron alongside. As the two hulls bumped and ground together, the skirl of the other ship moved to its waist.
“Permission to come aboard, Thorn?” he called out.
Thorn frowned. Rugen had always been a tactless dolt, he thought.
“Ask the skirl,” he said bluntly.
Rugen made an apologetic gesture. It was sometimes hard to remember that a man as young as Hal could be a skirl.
“Sorry!” he said. “Permission to come aboard, Hal Mikkelson?”
Hal shook his head at Thorn. Sometimes his old friend could be a little too prickly on his behalf. He gestured to the other skirl to board and Rugen stepped lightly across the gap between the two ships. He strode aft and clasped Hal’s hand, then Thorn’s.
“Welcome back,” he said. “Was it a successful voyage?”
Hal smiled wearily. So much had happened in the preceding weeks. They seemed to have been gone for an age.
“Yes,” he said eventually. “Yes, it was. But tell me, Rugen, what are you doing here?”
Rugen was a tall and cadaverously thin man. His long, bony face creased in a smile.
“We’re your relief,” he said. “Your tour as duty ship is finished. You’re going home.”
Epilogue
Heron sailed through the breakwater into Hallasholm harbor.
She bore the marks of her long voyage. Her hull was stained with salt, and the seawater had stripped away sections of
the paintwork on her planks and mast. Her sails, once snowy white, were stained and gray now, and the port sail showed a large rectangular patch, where a sudden gale had blown it out after they rounded Cape Shelter into the Stormwhite. Her rigging was worn and frayed and had been spliced in a dozen places.
But if the Heron looked tired, her crew was anything but. They lined the sides of the little ship as Hal brought her up into the wind, then allowed her to drift downwind to the jetty. Eager hands onshore sent mooring ropes sailing out over the gap between shore and ship and hauled her in tight against the stone wall, quickly looping the hawsers around bollards to hold her fast.
Heron had been sighted some time ago and word had gone round the town. Consequently, the crew’s families had all gathered on the jetty to greet their sons. As the crew piled ashore, scrambling over the bulwarks and leaping onto dry land, the jetty became the scene of a dozen excited encounters, with everyone talking at once as mothers, fathers and siblings all plied their young men with questions, seldom waiting for the first to be answered before asking another.
Most common was the request for reassurance. “Are you all right? You’re not hurt, are you?”
Ulf and Wulf’s mother went pale with anguish as her sons tactlessly described Ulf’s brush with death.
“I thought we’d lost him for sure, Mam,” Wulf said enthusiastically. “One of the tribesmen stabbed him with this great knife and cut him from here to here.” He demonstrated the extent of Ulf’s wound, exaggerating more than a little. “There was blood and gore everywhere!”
His poor mother grabbed Ulf into her arms. “But you’re all right now?” she said anxiously.
Ulf shrugged off her concern with all the careless impatience of youth. “Of course I am, Mam. I mean, it was only a knife wound!”
His mother turned away, shaking her head, wondering how many more of her hairs had gone gray in the last thirty seconds.
Karina was one of the first to the jetty. She waited until her son stepped ashore—last to leave the ship, as usual. Then she stepped forward and embraced him, holding him far longer than he expected her to, hugging him to her, too full of emotion for words. When she finally released him and stepped back, her eyes were moist.
“Loki’s beard,” she exclaimed. “I swear you’ve grown five centimeters!”
Hal laughed. Stig, who was close by and had a strong affection for Karina, asked her, laughing, “How about me, Hal’s mam?”
The diminutive woman looked up at him before replying.
“You’ve grown at least ten, you gawky lout,” she said fondly.
Stig laughed, hugged her, then pushed through the crowd to where he could see his own mother, as always, standing back from the crowd. Karina watched him go, a little sadly.
“I hope there’ll come a day when she forgets about her husband’s shame and enjoys the fame her son has gained,” she said. Hal nodded agreement. Then Karina turned to regard Thorn, who was standing expectantly by. She took in his clean, albeit crumpled, linen shirt and roughly combed hair and beard.
“So, how are you?” she said coolly. She eyed his wooden hook. “Did you lose anything this time?”
Thorn grinned and placed his wooden hand over his chest. “Only my heart, to a beautiful Araluen girl!” he declaimed dramatically.
Karina’s face darkened with fury. She stepped back from him, her hands on her hips, every inch of her bristling with anger.
“What Araluen girl?” she roared, her voice carrying over the general sounds of rejoicing and reunion on the wharf, and stilling all those around her. “Who is she? Where is she?”
Hal stepped forward and laid a calming hand on her shoulder. He could feel the tension and the rage in her body.
“Mam, I think he means you.”
Karina looked at him. Looked at Thorn, who was smiling artlessly at her, and the rage went out of her like air out of a punctured bladder.
“Eh? Oh . . . then why didn’t he say?”
She stepped primly toward Thorn and held up her cheek to be kissed. When he tried to turn her face to kiss her on the lips, she resisted.
“That can wait till the wedding,” she said.
Thorn looked around in surprise. “Oh? Is someone getting married?” He recoiled in pain as Karina’s elbow jolted into his ribs.
“Someone had better be,” she said grimly.
He nodded quickly. “Oh, yes, of course.” He sought Hal’s eyes and shrugged helplessly.
Hal rolled his eyes at the shaggy old sea wolf. “You’re a silver-tongued charmer, aren’t you?”
Thorn opened his mouth to reply, realized there was nothing he could say, and shut it again. He was saved by Svengal’s voice bellowing from the back of the crowd.
“Make way for the Oberjarl! Make way for the Oberjarl!”
Erak swept through the crowd as they parted before him like minnows fleeing a shark. Truth be told, he had no need for Svengal to announce him that way and he suspected that his old first mate only did it to annoy him.
The burly Oberjarl stopped, facing Hal. “Welcome back. I trust it all went well?”
Hal nodded. He noticed that Erak had carried out rather crude repairs on the beautiful staff that Kloof had destroyed. He had mounted the silver knob and ferrule on a rather crooked branch that he had found on the foreshore. Erak had never been much of a craftsman.
The Oberjarl let his gaze travel around the crew, who all nodded cheerfully at him.
“I see you’ve still got that dog,” he said. Kloof was lying on the jetty, her nose on her paws, her tail swiping the air behind her.
“Um . . . yes. I see you’ve repaired your staff,” Hal said.
Erak looked at him coldly. “And my ax,” he said. “That boy spent days diving for it in the harbor. Thought I might need it if that dog of yours ever came back.”
“Ah, well, actually, I brought you something from Arrida,” Hal said.
Erak stopped pretending to be angry. In spite of his pretended irascibility, he had a soft spot for the Heron and her motley crew of misfits. And he loved getting presents.
“Arrida? What were you doing in Arrida?”
But Hal brushed the question aside. “It’ll all be in my report.” He turned. “Jesper, bring the staff, please.”
Jesper stepped forward, bearing the scorpion staff that Hal had taken from the Shurmel’s cave. He passed it to Hal, who presented it formally to Erak. The Oberjarl’s eyes glowed as he let his crooked branch staff fall to one side and ran his hands lovingly over the smooth ebony shaft, touching the grotesque scorpion figure with reverence.
“Well now, isn’t that something?” he crooned softly. “It’s a real work of art!” Erak fancied himself as a connoisseur of fine art, it has to be said. “It’s beautiful.”
Hal shook his head. “It’s something, all right,” he said quietly. “But I’m not sure if the something is beautiful.”
Standing apart from the noisy throng, Lydia watched proceedings with a sad little smile on her face. It was times like these when she missed her grandfather most. The Skandians were such noisy, demonstrative and family-oriented people. Apart from the other Herons and Karina, she had no strong attachments in Hallasholm and she didn’t want to intrude on her shipmates’ family reunions. Quietly, she collected her gear and made her way unnoticed to the house in town where she stayed with a kindly widow.
Several hours later, her landlady found her, sitting on the porch, looking at the sun setting over the ocean. The widow, Agathe by name, was a motherly type. Her own daughter had moved away to another town when she had married recently and she enjoyed having this quiet, reserved girl staying with her.
“What’s this? Not dressed for the party?”
Lydia looked up. “What party is that?”
“There’s always a party to welcome home the duty ship,” Agathe told her. ?
??And seeing how you’re one of the crew, you’ll be one of the guests of honor. Now get yourself bathed and dressed and I’ll brush your hair and make you beautiful.”
Lydia gave her a wan little smile. “Not sure if that’s possible,” she said and Agathe looked at her for a few seconds, her head on one side.
“You really mean that, don’t you? You have no idea how stunning you can be with that olive skin and those dark eyes and that beautiful glossy hair.”
The younger woman flushed slightly. “I don’t have anything to wear,” she prevaricated.
Agathe smiled. She had been expecting that response. “Aaah, yes you do. I bought a beautiful yellow dress for you at the market last month. You’ll be the star of the party, believe me!”
And she was. An hour later, as she walked into the square where tables and casks of ale were set up, and three lambs were roasting on spits, every head turned to watch her.
“Lydia! Good to see you!” said a familiar voice. She turned to see Rollond, prepared to gently discourage any overtures he might make. She was surprised to see an attractive black-haired girl holding his arm, most possessively.
“Have you met Frieda, my fiancée?” he asked.
Lydia smiled sweetly at the girl. She didn’t know why, but she felt a sudden pang of jealousy. It was all right for her to rebuff Rollond’s advances. But for him to find another girl was not quite so easy to take. Rollond and Frieda exchanged a few words with her, then moved off to the food tables.
She stood awkwardly for a moment, feeling a vague sense of loss and looking for the familiar faces of her shipmates, when suddenly she was engulfed by half a dozen girls her own age.
“Lydia!” they cried excitedly. “Come and join us! You look fabulous! How do you do your hair that way?”
She found herself being dragged toward the girls’ table, where she was plied with questions and compliments. Truth was, Lydia had become something of a celebrity among the young women of Hallasholm. She was a woman who did things her own way, who joined with her men friends in an adventurous, dangerous life. She was a skilled hunter and tracker. She had fought in battles and was regarded as an equal by the young men who were her shipmates. She had even been inducted into their brotherband—being referred to as a “Sister of the Brotherband.”