The Forlorn(65)

The stern-faced man reacted far more to this than at the threatening assegai. He started and actually looked frightened. "Barrow . . . he's months overdue. How do you know about him?"

Keilin sighed. "I just do. I also know that they're dying. Sometimes I know things . . . And I'm never wrong . . ." His voice faded away. He wished he could just explain and be believed without killing. But it was a lot of faith to ask of anyone, and if he had to kill someone to get them rescued, he would.

The sea captain looked at him strangely, almost warily. Then after a long pause he said, "Put down the spear, boy."

Keilin dropped the assegai. The captain's eyes were suddenly very wide. "You knew . . . you knew I was going to fetch them, before you did that. Sven and I were shipmates once."

Keilin nodded nodded. "Yes. I knew. It was . . . right. And I promise, if they're not who I say they are, you can do to me whatever you usually do to people for mutiny."

The normal grim countenance was back. "Believe me, boy, I will. Now take that damn sharp thing off my deck. And don't ever come up here with it again. And take that shaven-haired goon of yours with you."

"I think," said S'kith slowly, in his usual expressionless voice, "that I will stay up here and make sure you keep your word."

"Out!" roared the captain.

S'kith stood impassive. "Better leave him, sir," said Keilin quietly. "And whatever you do, don't threaten him with a weapon of any sort."

It was a thirty-two-foot whaleboat, with a jury-rigged mast and sail. There were seventeen dried-out husks of men in it, some unconscious and one dead. The skeletal captain spoke with difficulty through his cracked lips. "Bloody calms to the north. We outran seven lots of Hashvilli. The eighth got us without any wind, and them with oars, just at dusk." He managed the semblance of a smile, "Sank the bastards. But the old Hedda got holed too, and was going down on us."

He sighed. "I lost my youngest boy in the fight. Mara begged me not to take him . . . but he begged harder to come along, I suppose. We've been adrift for six weeks now, and without water for the last three days. Short rations for weeks before that. That cost me my oldest son, too. But I don't think there'd have been a man alive by tomorrow."

He sighed again. "You took a hell of a chance coming to pick us up, Gabe. I'm damn glad you did o' course, but . . ."

"I didn't take a chance at all, Sven. That boy over there knew what you was. Even knew your name, an' where you hail from. Probably knows what your house number is." The captain permitted himself a rare smile. "He was all set to put his pig sticker through me if I didn't go an' fetch you."

The rescued man looked at Keilin, and reached out a hand. "Fey, is he? Had a bosun like that once, got us out of a lot of trouble."

Keilin felt his emotions roiling inside him as he shook the weak hand. "Owe you my life, boy, me an' what's left of the Hedda's crew."

"It's nothing," he muttered, and turned and fled.

Behind him the rescued man said, "Lucky man to have on board, Gabe. I'd listen really careful to what he says. But the fey 'uns are unhappy folk, mostly. That bosun of mine killed himself in the end."

* * *

"There's no way I'm venturing my ship further north, mister. Not after what Cap'n Barrow's told me." The captain's iciness was fully a match for Cap's. "I'll refund your charter, or I'll put you ashore anywhere else you're wishful of going. But not north."





CHAPTER 12


Cap paced the close confines of the cabin. His anger was palpable, dangerous. "So now we're running south again. I'll have the bastard's liver out, when we reach shore. According to all the citizens I spoke to he's the best skipper that dunghill town had to offer me. Now that castaway friend of his, that you"—he rounded viciously on Keilin—"had to persuade him to fish out of the drink, has persuaded him that it's not possible to go north. We're unlikely to get another vessel, so we're back to going overland. Where everybody and his bloody dog is waiting for us!"

There was a long silence. Finally Keilin spoke up in a subdued voice. "There is a way that nobody would be expecting us to use."

Cap turned his sarcasm on the boy. "Where, O my pocket genius? For a thief brat who probably has no idea where he is right now you're mighty full of answers, aren't you? Well? Speak, O master of geography."

"We sail south, round Cape Ebrek, and up the Narrow Sea—"

Cap interrupted, "So you have garnered some geographical knowledge from somewhere. But what you don't know is that Dunbar, at the head of the Narrow Sea, fell to the Morkth nearly ten years back. The caravan route from Dunbar to the east is no more, brat. So that scuppers your plan, which I admit was brighter than I thought you capable of."