3.
“Many apologies, Stillwell!” Sashi called out. “We’re doing the best we can!” He tugged at the rope, thicker than his own arm, to little avail.
“Do better!” came the response.
“Tell him if he don’t like the ride, he can jump from there,” Dozer said through clenched teeth as they slowly lowered Stillwell to the beach in a modified bosun’s chair.
“Dozer says that if you don’t like the ride--”
“Belay that, Mister Mousashi!” called out Vacamar. “What Mister Stillwell doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“How much farther?” Yerzle asked with a gasp. The rough wood of the spoke tore at his palms, and his feet were slipping on the deck. “I can’t keep this up much longer!”
“Only about six feet,” Portia reported from where she stood at the gunnel beside Sashi. “Now five... four....”
The windlass jerked, Vacamar called out a panicky “Ahoy!” and the axle spun violently, knocking Yerzle in the back, and sending him sprawling to the deck. Stillwell let out a dismayed trumpeting, then cried out in pain as he hit the ground. Yerzle scrambled to his feet and rushed to the gunnel. “Stillwell! Are you all right?” Dozer, Vacamar, and Portia crowded around Yerzle and Sashi to check on their friend.
Below on the sand, the bull elephant lay on the beach moaning in pain. “Stillwell!” Portia called out in concern.
Stillwell opened one eye a fraction, looked around, then opened both eyes fully. “I landed on something,” he said, then sat up. He felt at his injured leg. “But I don’t think I hurt myself any worse.”
“Where’s Mister Pauly?” asked Vacamar. “He was supposed to guide you to the ground.”
“I’m not sure,” Stillwell said. “I couldn’t see him below me, so--” The canvas seat of the bosun’s chair, splayed across the sand beneath Stillwell’s considerable bulk, began to writhe and undulate. Stillwell yelped in surprise, and struck down hard upon the largest bulge in the seat, producing a squawk of pain.
Stillwell peeled back the canvas and the Lendri’s first mate crawled out from beneath, glaring at his assailant. “Found him!” Stillwell called out to Vacamar.
“If yer done,” Dozer said, “then get offa the seat and outta the way, so we can get the rest down!” With a grunt, Stillwell rolled himself off the bosun’s chair and Mister Pauly dashed several paces backwards to avoid being caught again beneath the young bull elephant.
Dozer and Vacamar reeled in the rope with the windlass, pulling the seat back up on deck. When it arrived, Yerzle and Sashi removed the canvas seat and attached the ropes to either end of a large wicker bathing chair they had found. The slavers really did have an amazingly diverse amount of loot on board.
“All right, Portia,” Yerzle said when they’d finished. “It’s your turn.”
Portia, dressed in her new-found outfit of tunic, breeches, and vest, was examining her new sword, a narrow blade the length of her arm. She turned it this way and that to catch and reflect the sunlight, and didn’t seem to have heard Yerzle. “Portia!” he repeated. “Hey!”
She finally looked up. “Have you seen the pattern in my sword?” she asked. “Lombir steel, the finest in the Middle Kingdoms! I still can’t believe this ship’s filled with so much high-quality stuff! Those slavers must have never put ashore to sell anything, even though they would’ve needed to do deal with their captives somehow. Why take them, otherwise?”
“You picked a good one,” Dozer observed, casting an eye to the mottled pattern on Portia’s sword. “But are you sure it’s the type for you?” Even from where he stood at the windlass, Yerzle could see how the steel looked like running water when the light caught it just right. It was an elegant weapon, with tiny elaborate runes in filigree near the cross-guard and a pommel in the shape of a clenched fist, far more refined than his own plain broadsword or the heavy bearded axe that Dozer normally carried.
“I wouldn’t have taken it if I wasn’t,” Portia said testily, and waved it beneath Dozer’s snout before sheathing it. “I grew up learning how to use one of these, even if I wasn’t ever going to rule, myself. I wasn’t ever going to be Queen, either. What else was I going to do to fill my time? I’ll be much more useful in a pinch with my new sword than with that little apple-carver I used to carry, certainly.”
“I think Jain might debate that,” Yerzle said, “if she was still alive to debate things. Are you really sure that the sword is all you’ll have?”
“When the Duct closed, it closed hard,” Portia said. She leaned against the bathing chair and sighed. Yerzle could see that after three days resting aboard the dhow she was stronger and her face was less sunken, but she still tired quickly and moved carefully. “I can feel the magic,” she continued, stretching out one hand and staring into the middle distance. “I know it’s there, and I can reach out to it, but I can’t take hold and direct it. It may come back, or I may be cut off from it forever; I suppose only time will show me which is true. Until I know for sure, I’ll need to keep the blade handy.”
“If that’s yer choice,” Dozer said, “I can live with it. C’mon, lad, let’s get offa this tub.” Dozer, Vacamar, and Yerzle muscled the bathing chair over the gunnel, to be lowered in place of the bosun’s chair. Sashi put several bundles of supplies in the chair, and then Portia carefully climbed in.
After seating herself, she cast a dubious eye at the set-up, then peered nervously over the edge at the distance to the beach below. “Is this really the best way to do this?” she asked.
“You want to get off my ship,” Vacamar said as he looked down into the chair, his hands on his hips. “There’s no gangway, so you can either climb down the ladder, or ride down in the chair. You told us you didn’t think you could make the climb. It appears your options are limited.”
“It’s not your ship,” Portia grumbled. “The Lendri was wrecked by the kraken.”
“I’m claiming it by salvage,” the bull said. “Mister Pauly and I will find a town along the coast, and establish the claim. Who could challenge us? Not the slavers, whatever you did with them.”
Yerzle saw Portia wince at the mention of the missing slavers. Despite several early attempts by himself and the others to find out, she had refused to say much except that she had not killed them, and they had dropped the subject. “Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. She waved her hand imperiously. “Lower the chair.” Once again, Yerzle, Vacamar, and Dozer operated the windlass while Sashi guided the load. This time, there were no mishaps.
“If you change your mind, you can still catch up to us,” Yerzle said to Vacamar as he strapped on his own sword. “Once we get to that village Sashi and I found, we expect to be there a few days at least, to let Stillwell heal some more. From there we’ll figure out exactly where we are, and how to get to Farien.”
He cleared his throat self-conciously, and his ears flattened against his head in embarrassment. “Sorry about wrecking your ship, and all....”
The captain clapped Yerzle jovially on the shoulder. “Maybe hunting a leviathan with a greenhorn crew wasn’t my best idea,” he admitted. “There’s enough loot left on this wreck to make up for it, though. If we need to, we’ll come after you, but I don’t think it’ll come to that.”
The others had already climbed down, and Mister Pauly had climbed back up, leaving only Yerzle to disembark. “Good luck in the city,” Vacamar told him, offering his hand. Yerzle shook it enthusiastically. “And good luck with the wreck,” he said, then climbed down to the beach.
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