Winter Warrior (Song of the Aura, Book Two) (3 page)

   
Sleep should have been a welcome relief: when night came and Page Variand had recited an evening blessing over the ship, most of the crew came below and sprawled out on their hammocks under as many blankets as could be got; by asking, petitioning, or burglarizing. Gribly prided himself on having kept most of his former skill, and ended up with almost double the blankets the average sailor had, most of which he’d stolen from their rightful owners.

   
But sleep did not come, and for an uncountable number of minutes he lay shivering, too affected by the cold and wet to be comfortable under his ill-gotten sheets. Time passed. The ship grew quiet around him, save for the rocking of the hammocks and the gradual swell and toss of the
Mirrorwave
across the rainy bay. Eventually he dozed, but it was an uneasy, half-dreaming sort of doze and he soon awoke from it. Images of men in gray cloaks and hats with wings lingered at the back of his mind.

   
I must be going crazy
, he decided. Rolling about and wrapping himself in the furs he’d been issued during the day, the Sand Strider slipped limply out from under the covers and right into his hide boots on the wet floor below, narrowly avoiding the snoring Variand where the nymph hung out of his hammock, swinging below Gribly’s own bed.

   
The crew’s sleeping quarters were “fore o’ the stores and skyward o’ the rowing deck,” which Gribly had learned over the course of the day meant
in front of
the store-rooms and
above
the rowing deck. Soon he had traversed the length of the long chamber and reached the foot of the stairs leading up and out. Tramping despondently up the creaking boards, he struggled with the slanted trap door that led out onto the trireme’s deck.

   
Finally the blasted thing came open and he scrambled up and out. The rain that had been falling that evening had given way to a frosty, bleak night. The
Mirrorwave
was utterly silent except for the creakings and moanings that seemed inherent to any movement it made. The stars and moon were out in full force overhead, casting a pale light over everything, but there was no other illumination.

   
“Hoi, there,” called a hushed voice overhead. It was Captain Berne, waving casually at the Sand Strider from his place at the trireme’s tiller on a raised platform at the rear of the ship. “Join me on this lonely watch, will you?”

   
“All right.” Gribly was surprised at the captain’s amiableness. In his past experience he had learned all authority to lord it over their inferiors- to exploit their position. Berne seemed to defy that conception. The veteran sailor wasn’t afraid of his men’s company or their work, for certain. He even
liked
speaking to them, or so it seemed.

   
Gribly climbed the steep, sideways stairway to the place where Berne was. What was it called? He’d been told the nautical names for things so many times that he didn’t remember any of them- why couldn’t sailors say
left side
and
backwards
and
rope
like anyone else? Or was that just what nymphs called everything? When he joined the captain he intended to ask him, but Berne seemed preoccupied already. “Take the tiller, will ye?”

   
Nervous but obliging, Gribly took it and tried to hold it steady as the nymph showed him. “Like this?”

   
“Aye. Hold ‘er steady, maister Grib, and I’ll fetch us for sure something to pass the time… aye, and heat the cold, too.” Gribly waited while Berne rummaged in his many coat pockets. Finally the captain removed a small flask of something from the deepest one and took a swig. Passing it to the Sand Strider and taking the tiller back at the same time, he grinned a bit livelier than before. “Take a chug o’ that, maister. If
that
don’t warm yer innards, you 'aven’t gotten none!”

   
Something about the last sentence seemed odd to the thief, but he took the flask and lifted it to his lips, sipping tentatively.
GAH!
It was fire and ice! It was molten metal from a forge being poured down his throat! It was a thousand pounds of cane sugar and barrel of pickled desert-peppers! It was sweet and sour and a hundred other things, some good, some bad. It was intoxicating, and whatever it was, it drove out the day’s and night’s chill immediately.

   
“Whoah there
(hic)
maister Grib! Don’t be takin’ it all!” the jovial captain laughed and snatched the hide-bottle back. “Take too much o’ that and a few ‘ot coals is all that’ll be left o’ you…”

   
“What
(hic hic)
d’you mean?” Gribly questioned him. By Traveller, but was that stuff fast-working! It burned through his body like a pleasant pain.

   
“Izz fire-nectar,” Berne told him pouring some more down his own throat, “Az from them M’tant iz usink en the Black
(hic)
wood…”

   
“Oh
(hic)
,” he replied. “Strong… ztuff…” the Sand Strider found it was suddenly very hard to stay on his feet.
 
“Haven’t had…
(hic)
ztuff this strong, since, since, the ol’ Pickpocket… Ymeer…
(hic)
since I pinched ‘is ztore-room wine.”

   
Glancing drunkenly aside, he suddenly and unnervingly found Captain Berne staring at him, as if the nymph was trying very hard to place his face or remember what he’d said through the fire-nectar’s haze. An awkward silence fell and stayed there for a long time. Gribly turned uncomfortably away and stared out over the deck into the watery distance beyond. White blotches, hundreds of them suddenly loomed ahead some distance away.

   
“What is…” he turned back to ask Berne, but the nymph interrupted.

   
“I knew the thing! I knew it! You’ll be from the alliance, like az not!”

   
“Excu
(hic)
se me?” the Sand Strider asked, surprised. Berne’s odd behavior was disconcerting.

   
“The alliance, young
(hic)
thief.”

   
Gribly was annoyed and, to tell the truth, mildly embarrassed. He had spent too much time among good people in the last weeks to not be. “I didn’t… I didn’t think any of you Zain knew about that.”

   
“I knows an alliance brother when ev’r I sees one.”

   
“No…
(hic hic!)
I meant about being a thief.”

   
“All alliance brothers and si-i-sisters are thieves, young maister.”

   
The drink-addled haze about the Sand Strider broke like an egg smashed underfoot.
Young Maister? Brother Thieves?
It called to mind a number of incidents in his past life, most noticeably his flight from the Pit Strider, his might-be relation, and… the merchant who’d used the old pickpocket’s saying.

   
Gribly took a chance. “Speed, silence,”

   
“Stealth,” Captain Berne finished. “So you’ve really met us before, ‘ave ye? Know yer own kind whenst ye see ‘em?” Instantly the nymph dropped his moony expression and replaced it with one of devious knowledge. “Too strong fer drink, too fast fer followin’… It’s another one of the alliance sayings, if you’ll mind the uncultured… ah… accent.”

   
Gribly only had a slight notion of what the slippery nymph was talking about, so he declined answering. He grinned instead.

   
“Ah,
maister
Grib,” the captain smiled warmly, “I’ve been a’watching you on this short voyage. You’ll make a fine member if ye survive this blood-riddled quest of your mate’s.” He clasped Gribly’s shoulder in a gesture of brotherhood, but before he could do any more explaining (and there was a
lot
of it, Gribly suspected), the entire voyage ended quite abruptly.

   
The trireme had gone untended for only a few seconds, but due to whatever special attributes it boasted it had already reached the white blobs that had stood out against the night sky. They were a veritable forest of icebergs- the beginning of the Inkwell Bergs, where Page Variand had earlier claimed was the home of the Treele, and, farther north, the Reethe.

   
Just as Captain Berne ended his speech to Gribly, the
Mirrorwave
clipped one of the icebergs slightly. A shudder went up the side of the trireme, shaking Berne’s hand off the tiller- the loss of control caused the vessel to veer directly into the Berg’s side. “Blast!” swore the captain, struggling to regain his stance and hold as the ship careened and tossed under his feet. Gribly reached for the tiller to help just as the full force of the crash hit him and threw both he and the hardy nymph on their backs.

   
A rumbling, low and loud, filled the Sand Strider’s ears. A shadow fell over the entire ship, darker than the midnight sky. Wide-eyed and terrified, he gazed up at the sight that met his eyes.

   
“What in Vast is
that
?!?!?” shouted one of them- himself or the captain, Gribly wasn’t sure which.

   
Then a darker, more violent blackness fell, and his mind collapsed to shut it out.

~

   
Lauro thanked the Aura he was a light sleeper after his time in the desert. The first quake that rocked the ship nearly threw him out of bed, but he was awake and scrambling for his cloak and sword before it was over. The prince slept with his boots on, to save time and keep him ready for anything. Well, if
this
wasn’t anything, he didn’t know what was. Tumbling out of bed and snatching up his pittance of belongings, he was ready and rushing for the cabin door before the second shock reached him.

   
When it did, it was like nothing he had ever encountered.

   
The whole room shook like a rabbit in a wolf’s mouth. A rapid series of deafening booms and crunches echoed from beyond the wall, farther down the ship. The floor started to sway and buck, throwing Lauro off his feet at least three times before he made it to the door. Hurling himself against the door-handle, the prince managed to snap the flimsy chain-clasp and knock the door open… just as the world turned sideways and tossed him out into the hall.

   
In a few seconds he went from stepping through a door to falling down a long vertical shaft. Shouting in surprise, he flung out his arms and managed by pure luck to catch hold of the left doorpost. Everything around him was spinning and spasming uncontrollably, ropes and tools and barrels careening down at him from above- refuse from what
had
been the back of the ship, and was now jutting up in the air.

   
“What in blazes?!?” he cursed, then added a few more tasteful exclamations not fit for reproduction. Hoisting himself up, he managed to grab the doorpost with both hands and climb partially back into the room before the trireme changed position again and dumped him out onto the now-diagonal floor. It was as if a wave of titanic proportions had picked the ship up and thrown it spinning end over end into the bottomless ocean.

   
More than confused, Lauro slid painfully fast down the tilting boards, past falling debris and even a screaming nymph sailor. When he tried to throw out his arms and legs to slow himself, hardwood splinter lodged themselves under his fingernails and poked into his boots. Cursing, he plummeted straight down past door after open door, right for the narrow end of the passage, which shaped the front end of the
Mirrorwave
.

   
It was a nerve-wracking two seconds, filled with the wails and curses of the crew so rudely awakened only to be injured or die from the random direction shifts. At the end Lauro bent his knees to absorb the impact.