Andre Norton - The Warding of Witch World

A shadow had loomed out of the fog to where she sat in the bow seat of the wavereader and a blow had sent her into darkness before she really knew what had come upon them.

She did not remember their coming to Dargh the accursed; they must have dragged her still-unconscious body. The screaming had aroused her to life—pleas and cries which sent her near to madness. Among them she was sure she detected Vargas voice—and young Kertha… There were other screams and an insane howling and she had somehow managed to shut herself back into the darkness.

But her body would not let her spirit escape and she awoke again. As she tried to move, she found she was trussed like a swimmer intended for the market. It was very dim, but she could see enough to understand that she lay in a stinking hole and that she was not alone in her captivity. Someone was moaning in a monotonous cry, and she nearly gagged on the stench of blood, human waste, and general filth around her.

“Audha?”

Her own name had roused her further. She was at least able to turn her head and see a second prisoner almost within touching distance.

“Rogar?” she ventured. Rogar Farkerson was kin, her mother’s cousin, and he had been one of her teachers in Sulcar lore over the years. She had been proud that he had spoken up for her when the captain was choosing a wavereader.

“You are wounded?” he asked quickly.

His question made her aware of her aching head. But she could not detect any other hurts.

“No.” She refused the aching. “We—we are on Dargh?”

For a moment he did not answer and then when he spoke his voice was harsh.

“We are. That slime out of the fog took us! But—we have a chance, maybe—those left of us. Lothar is speared, but they do not know our stock, these demons. They believed him sore hurt and did not take care in his binding, being very eager for their—their feasting.”

Audha swallowed convulsively. She forced from her mind the memory of those cries.

“Now they lie like drunk. Dargh needs fear no attack—the ice has closed in. We—we they are keeping for further sport and eating. Better we died cleanly in the sea. Lothar now works to free Tortain. For Hugin we can do nothing, he is near sped—may the Great Gate open for him soon. Now—can you move closer to me, girl? They use hide for their ties and hide can be chewed—and I, thank the Wind Ruler, still have a full set of teeth well used to tough chewing.”

So they had won free, the four of them. Once he could crawl again, Rogar had made to the other side of that place and bent over a shape lying there. A moment or two later the moaning stopped.

“I think his kin will claim no blood debt,” came Lothar’s voice out of the shadows. “You have served a comrade well and we shall send a lantern a-voyage for him and the others.”

Audha had been listening to any sound from outside. The walling about her seemed to be made of skins laced together, though under them, mostly hidden by refuse, was a pavement of stones. Also this cage appeared to be half sunken below the surface of the ground.

Roger and Tortain went to work on the hides on their upper walls. One could not possibly use teeth there, Audha thought, and nearly laughed hysterically, but it seemed they had found tools of a sort—cracked and sharp-edged bones. She moved up beside Lothar. Though she was no wisewoman healer, she knew something of wound tending, as did all the seafarers, among whom many skills had to be used.

She had not even light enough to see how badly he was hurt. At her questioning he admitted that a spear had cut him in the shoulder. She had no supplies, but she helped improvise a sling to give him what ease she could and he assured her that the wound had stopped bleeding and perhaps was hardly more than a graze.

The hide split at last. There was more light beyond, but they were facing away from it. Probably fires of some size still burned before the straggle of huts. Audha gagged again at the newest of foul odors—burned flesh.

Indeed their gruesome feast must have reacted on the demons like drink, for the prisoners could see nor hear no stirring at all. It might be that the raiders had so seldom such a large supply of food at hand that they had eaten themselves into a stupor.

The four worked their way out of that noisome prison and kept the firelight at their backs. Audha touched Lothar and whispered: “Wave wash.”

With her ears as their guide now, they made a wide detour around the rest of the huts they could sight and came to a beach. Not only a beach, but a good choice of the skin boats drawn up out of the water’s touch.

Even together they might not have been able to launch a ship’s boat, but the skin one slid along and they gingerly took their places in it. Rogar stumbled on two paddles laid in safekeeping at the bottom and, armed with one of these, Tortain with the other, they had forced a passageway.

Once out from land, they could see better the fires on the shore—and worse. There was the Flying Crossbeak , crushed between a rocky cliff and a giant berg, smashed past all hope. Ice floated here also, but it was in smaller pieces and, though Audha feared for a space that it might follow the strange and uncanny action of the bergs and herd them back toward the hellish island, these seemed to follow no pattern.

So they had won free from Dargh, but to what purpose? Lothar’s hurt showed in the morning to be much worse, and later he raved in delirium. Audha had held his head on her knee, but she had no water to give him when he called for it.

They had to stop paddling after a while, for their hands were blue with cold. So now they floated under the morning sun—but not back to Dargh.

There were no supplies on board. Oddly enough, Tortain, a bear of a man, was the first to fail. His heart, Audha thought, gnawed out of him. And then Lothar. Now it was another day, another night, another day since they had won free. Why did she live? She was sure Rogar was close to death. The sun that first morning had showed a fearsome bruise down his jaw and neck, though he had made no complaint.

Sulcar courage, Sulcar skill—all for nothing. She could watch the wave patterns now and they were drifting southward away from that monstrous trap of the bergs. But why, her mind worried dimly with the idea, had those bergs seemed to act with purpose against their ship? She knew of no power strong enough to command the flow of ice.

Drums were beating somewhere and it was icy cold. There was death in that cold. Trusla opened her eyes. Dream—no, someone was pounding on the door of their cabin. Inquit was already astir in the dark and she felt Kankil against her, whimpering.

There was lantern light outside as the Latt shaman slid open the door. And people in the passageway. Berg—somehow that struck into Trusla’s mind—one of the bergs about which they told such legends must threaten the Wave Cleaver now.

She struggled into her clothing, an act which should have been easy after all the weeks she had practiced it. Inquit was back pulling on her own furred gear. The Latt shaman was muttering to herself what sounded to Trusla like some kind of an invocation, and she hesitated to break into that with a question.

But she was behind the shaman, Kankil having made a leap from the bunk to hold to her mistress; when they went out.

It was Captain Stymir and with him the old seamaster Joul, no longer a ship’s ruler but given all respect and welcome aboard any ship he chose to honor with his presence because of his vast lore of knowledge.

“She—she is like one mindless!” The captain broke into speech as soon as he again sighted the shaman. “If you have the healing touch, wisewoman, do you aid her. Two voyages has she made under my flag and a better wavereader no ship could wish for. Now—in the night she runs screaming across the deck and would have thrown herself overboard had Hansa not caught her. He still holds her fast, she fighting and screaming.”