Roland Green - The Wayward Knights

Torvik Jemarsson raised the dwarven-work telescope to his eye and peered northward, trying to pierce the haze. If they were not in sight of Suivinari Island-the Drowned Mountain, as some called it-then their navigation from Vuinlod had been fearfully inaccurate.

The young mate of the top would have wished for a spell in the telescope, to make it a mist- and fog-piercer. But it was only sound bronze and the best lens glass, worked with skills Torvik trusted, even though he had never met the dwarves who possessed them. Any dwarves who had won the confidence of both his father's old comrade, Sir Pirvan the Wayward, and his mother's present companion, Gildas Aurhinius, a retired Istaran general, had to be very singular dwarves indeed. Torvik would not have gone to sea in a vessel of dwarf making, for dwarves did not know the ways of water, but he would trust them for anything short of that.

He also did not wish for a wind to disperse the mist. This far north, it was summer or spring all the year round, with heat-spawned storms rising between one watch and the next, and reaching fearful intensity with hardly more warning. Torvik remembered an old desert barbarian saying:

"Be careful what you beg of the gods. They may send it."

So he would not risk the gods sending more wind than Kingfishers Claw could endure. In these waters the reefs, the mists, and the minotaurs were enough danger.

"Ahoy, the foretop!" came the hail from the deck. "What do you make out?"

Being mate of the top, it had been only plain sense for Torvik to station himself atop the first of the ship's three masts. It had also put a safe distance between him and Yavanna, mate of the deck. She was half again his size and twice his age, and thought that his rank owed more to his lineage than to his skill. Most of the time she stayed within the bounds of manners, but sometimes she brooded until there was an edge in her voice, as there was now.

"Something too solid for a fogbank and too high for a reef," Torvik called down. "I will tell you more when there is more to see."

"How does it bear?"

"The highest mark is three points off the port bow," Torvik replied.

He could read Yavanna's unspoken thoughts after she growled acknowledgment.

From that measurement, they might well be coming straight into the tangle of reefs off Suivinari's southeastern end.

If so, then straight on lay only destruction. Bearing farther to starboard put them on a long beat to windward before they reached the human beaches. Farther still to port, and they risked sailing blithely up to the part of the island that the minotaurs regarded as their territory-and defended with all the usual minotaur ferocity.

Yavanna must have already given orders, because as Torvik finished examining choices, he felt the ship heel as the helm went over. He had just decided to put the telescope away for a few moments when a rift appeared in the mist.

A cone of pale brown rock leaped skyward from the sea, as perfect as if it had been sculpted. Grayish smoke curled from the summit, and white steam from vents on the flanks.

"The Smoker, dead ahead!" Torvik shouted. His voice embarrassed him by nearly breaking.

The message still reached the deck. Yavanna called all hands on deck to prepare for landfall, and only then ordered the helm put over again. She knew her work; no need to weary the helmsmen or set the masts to swaying as if they were riding out a gale.

They had made a good landfall. Within hours-rather than days-Kingfishers Claw would be anchored off a beach of white sand, with fruit-bearing bushes all around it, and a stream of the purest water known to sailors flowing within easy reach of watering parties.

She would also be days, rather than hours, from the minotaurs.

Kingfishers Claw had only a short beat to the southeast before she was clear of the last reefs that trailed out to sea like the stinging tentacles of a jellyfish. She came about, and with a leadsman taking soundings, crept in toward Mikkledan's Cove.

The water was murkier than usual off Suivinari, and Torvik saw no dolphins, either dived or broaching. The other lookout saw the same, and did not care for it.

"They could have fled some ramblings of the Smoker," Torvik reminded the man. "Or they could all be Dargonesti who have changed back to their elven form and are somewhere off at a feast in the depths where we could never see them."

The man looked as if he craved further reassurance, but before Torvik could refuse it, the captain came on deck.

"Ahoy, the foretop!" the captain called. "See anything unusual?"

Torvik had studied the water until he had lost hope of finding anything there. Now he pulled out his telescope and studied the white sand. Parts of it seemed less white and far less smooth than usual, but that could be merely a recent ship with a lubberly crew. Mikkledan Cove had been known to host watering parties from three ships between one sunrise and the next.

Something long and dark lay at the water's edge, however. Long, dark, and with the sea washing over it so that Torvik could make out little. His curiosity began to itch. He licked his lips and called down: "Somebody abandoned a ship's boat on the beach. I can see that much."

A silence long enough to stretch men's nerves followed. Then Captain Sorraz shouted: "All hands prepare to take in sail and anchor. Landing party! I want volunteers, and every one of them armed!"

Torvik winced. The orders were what he would have given, but he would not have ordered the landing party armed where all could hear. Naturally superstitious sailors could easily become fearful of some unknown menace lurking in the cove.

The men scrambled out of the first boat to touch the beach almost before the boat had stopped. Torvik led. It seemed to him that they were less eager to be on dry land than they were to solve the mystery of the overturned boat.

It stayed overturned for some while after they reached it, for it was a massively-built craft, each plank as thick as a man's arm and each rib nearly as thick as a man's body. Only the youngest sailors failed to recognize minotaur work.

It did not ease anyone's mind to see that some of those thick planks and one of those stout ribs had been shattered like clay pots struck by a hammer. At last, enough men had mustered the nerve to find handholds, and at Torvik's signal they heaved the boat upright.

Those around the boat were not the only ones who gasped in horror. Yavanna's party guarding the way inland, and Sorraz's men resting on their oars just outside the surf line, also lost countenance at what the righting of the boat displayed.