David Tallerman - Prince Thief

“Get it overboard!” I bawled.

But my guidance was no longer necessary. Navare was directing, with short gestures and brief, snapped commands. In a moment the net was shaken loose and dashed over the boat’s side, with Navare, ten guardsmen and myself straining to weigh down our edge.

For all that, the shock when Saltlick caught hold threatened to wrench my arms out of their sockets. I’d been so certain he was at the bottom of the sea that I’d hardly thought to prepare myself. Even if I had, I could never have anticipated how damned heavy he was. With a dozen of us straining in a knot of arms and legs against the boat’s side, it still seemed certain we’d be dragged overboard — as if we were fishermen who’d snared some prodigious monster from the deeps. It was impossible to imagine we could hang on; already, the craft was tipping alarmingly.

Then huge fingers closed over the boat’s side, and some of the tension went out of the net. The fingers sprouted an arm, a couple of guardsmen grasped onto that, and Saltlick loomed into view. I let go of the net; I couldn’t have held on a moment longer anyway. Spray splashing around him, Saltlick hauled himself over, crashed to the deck.

I heard rather than saw the snap of the last rope holding us in place, the thud of the anchor being hefted onto the deck. It was all I could do to crawl out of the way, to let the oarsmen take their places.

I lay back, exhausted, as we pushed our way out towards the cave mouth and open water.

It didn’t take the palace soldiers long to recover the second boat.

It started as a speck barely visible in the cave mouth, unthreatening as a fly drowned in a drinking cup. Yet it meant only one thing: for reasons I couldn’t begin to guess at, Ludovoco had no intention of giving up the chase.

It was sheer chance that our numbers about equalled those of our pursuers. As the hours wore on, it became apparent that their nautical knowledge was no better or worse than ours either. They couldn’t catch us; even if they could have, there wasn’t much they could have done. But nor could we lose them. There were times when we would find some current and draw away, when fog or darkness would obscure them for a while. Those breaks never lasted long, however, and never gave me much hope that we’d seen the last of our persistent new friends.

The fact that all they could do was keep pace with us begged a question that troubled me more with each passing hour: what did they hope to achieve? The likeliest explanation was that the palace guardsmen were readying for a fight when we arrived at our destination — and perhaps they’d already guessed where that might be. If Ludovoco had realised we were seeking an alliance with Kalyxis and the far-northern tribes, it was too great a threat for him to ignore.

Then again, maybe they had no plan at all, and were only trailing us as spies. Either way, the frustration lay in not knowing — and more than that, in their inescapable presence. Just because our adversaries posed no great threat while we were on open water, that didn’t mean we could risk their getting too near, let alone ignore them.

I did my best, however, and tried to lose myself as well as I could in the routine of the days. There was something hypnotic in watching the water slide by, the ever-present mountains drifting past. On their farther, Castovalian side, those mountains rose in gentle, wooded hills that softened their stark outlines; here, they presented their backs to us, a rugged wall of stone that jutted and receded like the fortifications of some gargantuan city. Every so often there would be a beach of grit and pebbles, its edges smudged by the driving surf, and even more rarely a narrow cove of white sand, with knotty trees eking out a slim existence on its crevassed slopes, but for the most part there were only the cliffs, climbing in layers and topped with jagged pinnacles that scratched the sky.

The boats were fast, surprisingly so for their size. They were also unlike anything I’d seen, very different from the craft that plied the inland waters of the Casto Mara or for that matter the skiffs that fished from the eastern ports of Goya Mica and Goya Pinenta. They were high in the stern and bow, and also higher at the sides than the river boats I was used to. Within, a half dozen thwarts made room for twelve men to row in tandem, six to either side — and row we did, for the wind was strictly against us, an unsteady billowing that brought spatters of rain from a dull, iron-grey sky.

It soon became apparent that someone at some time had made the judgement to sacrifice royal comfort for royal safety, for there was no shelter on board. A complex arrangement of hooks and pegs in the stern suggested some way to rig a canopy, where presumably Panchetto could have lazed and watched others labour on his behalf; however a quick search of the holds had revealed nothing that could be hung there. At least there was water, and food as well — all of the dried or salted variety and much of that past the point of being edible, but enough to complement our supplies in an emergency.

We worked the oars in shifts, through the day and night. No one was spared, not me and not Estrada, not even Saltlick, though it took an hour’s hard work to balance the other rowers enough that he didn’t send us curving off route, and it was clear that the effort caused him pain. I’d found myself worrying more and more about him; for while Estrada and Navare had managed to get the bolt out and wrap his leg, fresh blood continued to splotch the bandage and he still strained to stand. It wasn’t like Saltlick, who normally recovered from injuries the way others did from hangovers.

All of it — worry for Saltlick, the unsheltered cold of the nights, the shifts of hard labour, the lack of decent food and the ever-present menace of our shadows from the Palace Guard — worked to drag at my already miserable humour. By the second day I could hardly bring myself to speak to anyone, and the fact that everyone on board was too busy to notice only aggravated me more. By the third day, I knew my mood could sink no lower, and that there were only two things likely to relieve it: reaching our destination or a good fight. Given that we still had a day or more of travel before us, it was clear which was more likely.

As for a suitable sparring partner, there could be only one choice. I couldn’t bring myself to torment Saltlick, the guardsmen had done nothing to incur my ire and Mounteban’s buccaneers were too frightening for me to so much as go near them. No, there was only one person I had good reason to vent my anger at: the woman who’d led me to be on this accursed boat in the first place, who had driven me into danger after danger since the instant I’d set eyes on her.

All that was missing was the opportunity. Estrada had slipped into her mayoral persona from the moment we’d set out, conferring with Navare, tending to Saltlick, acting as go-between for the guardsmen and buccaneers — who were urgently in need of one — and generally behaving like the interfering termagant she was. She’d hardly spoken more than a word to me and when she had, my abrupt answers had discouraged her from trying again.

I’d thought we might get through the rest of the journey that way, and if the prospect added to my irritation, I was also a little glad. I’d taken by then to fantasising about how I’d wait until we landed and then disappear at the least opportune moment, or of twenty other ways I could make it clear that I’d been an unwilling passenger, practically a kidnappee. Better that, I’d decided, than a slanging match I might conceivably come out the worse from.

I should have realised Estrada was too much the busybody to leave the decision in my hands.

It was late in the third evening, the waters fading from the colour of dried blood to the purple of stale wine. Sick to death of our resident cook’s culinary efforts, which had yet to extend much beyond hard biscuit, dried olives and salt meat, I’d ended up leaving a good proportion of my meal, for all that my stomach was growling. In frustration, I pushed my bowl away and it tipped over, spilling its miserable contents.