David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

Something was going on to Cashel's other side also. He'd have to turn his head to see what it was. With a real effort of will-it meant ducking his face underwater again- he did.

TheFlying Fish was nosing back toward the whale, its prow smeared with blood and its ram skewed upward. Cashel had a vague recollection of the little ship hitting the whale at the moment everything let go in his mind and the world around him. Now its oars were backing to bring it to a halt in the crimson water.

Ilna stood in the bow with a coil of rope in her hand. "Can you catch if I throw this to you, brother?" she called. Her voice would've sounded unemotional to somebody who didn't know her as well as Cashel did.

"I can catch," he croaked, the first words he'd spoken since he shouted a warning as the whale arrowed up from the depths. Ilna tossed the coil underhanded, landing it in the water so close that Cashel could've grabbed it with his teeth if he'd needed to.

He used his right hand instead, letting go of the whale's flipper. Just then Ilna's man Chalcus dived off the bow, stripped naked and holding the end of another coil of rope.

"I'm all right!" Cashel said, but Chalcus cut the water cleanly and didn't reappear for the long moments. Ilna didn't look worried so Cashel figured things must be all right, but wherewas the fellow? A sailor on deck continued to pay out rope; a second coil was spliced onto the first.

TheFlying Fish halted, drifting slowly toward Cashel. Ilna'd tied her rope to a stanchion, but Cashel wasn't quite ready to clamber up the ship's sheer side. The fight with the whale had taken a lot out of him; almost more than there'd been. He tried to remember exactly what'd happened after he thrust the staff into the monster's jaws, but it wasn't so much a blur as tiny broken pieces of a scene painted on glass.

Sailors at the stern of theFlying Fish were dragging a fellow dressed like an officer from the sea at the patrol vessel's stern. Had he fallen from theShepherd the way Cashel had? There might've been more things going on than just the whale, too.

"Hoy!" somebody shouted. Cashel turned his head. Chalcus stood on the whale's twitching body, spinning the end of his rope overhead; it must have been lead line, loaded to sink quickly to check the depth. He'd gathered a triple loop in his left hand. "Ready?"

"Read-" called the sailor on deck. Chalcus loosed the line in an arrow-straight cast that took it into the hands of the waiting sailor. As soon as the fellow caught it, Chalcus jumped feet-first into the sea and bobbed up beside Cashel.

Cashel had begun to shiver. Not from the water, he thought; the sea wasn't nearly as cold as nights he'd watched his sheep through storms of early winter with no shelter but his sodden cloak. He'd strained even his own great strength; it'd be good to get some food in him, if he could keep it down. Or at least a mug of ale to sluice the foul dryness out his mouth. Right now it tasted like an ancient chicken coop.

Conversationally Chalcus said, "We'll be towing our prize in with us; the harbor's not so far, after all, and I've never seen or heard of a creature like this one. Have you, friend Cashel?"

"I never saw anything like it," Cashel muttered. "It's a whale, but it's nothing like the ones that pass in spring by Barca's Hamlet."

Talking helped; he suddenly understood why Chalcus paddled beside him in the bloody water, chatting like they were relaxing on a sunlit hillside. The sailor's tone was cheerfully mild, but his eyes missed nothing. If Cashel suddenly lost consciousness, Chalcus would grab him before he sank and keep him up till he could be hauled on deck like a netful of cargo.

"Neither have I seen its like," agreed Chalcus. "Nor heard of such, more to the point, for my dealings have been more in southern waters and the east than in these western wastes."

He grinned wickedly. His arms floated motionless on the surface, but his legs must be windmilling to keep him so high in the water. Chalcus' nude body looked like a deer skinned at the end of a hard winter. There was no fat on his scarred frame, none at all. His muscles stood out like the individual yarns of a hawser.

"Though perhaps I shouldn't say that, you being a western lad yourself," he added.

Cashel shook his head. "I'm from Barca's Hamlet," he muttered. "I don't know anything about oceans. As for Carcosa, if we get there-"

"Indeed, we'll get there, lad," the sailor said, bobbing like a child's toy in a puddle.

"-all I could say about it is, I've passed through the city and I was glad to get to the other side."

The mild banter was bringing Cashel back from the abyss his struggles had taken him to the edge of. He was aware of himself as a person again. Raising his head, he tried to find Sharina; the huge carcase was still a quivering wall between him and theShepherd.

"Come on, you lazy buggers!" Chalcus bellowed at the crew of theFlying Fish as they tugged on the rope he'd tossed them. They were using the light line as a messenger to draw an anchor cable around the whale just behind the flippers. "The sun'll have set before we've got this brute to land, and where's the honor if folk can't see our trophy?"

"Can you really carry this on theFlying Fish?" Cashel asked, pitching his voice low so that no one on the deck above would hear the question. "It looks to me like it's as heavy as the whole ship."

"Aye, as heavy and more," Chalcus agreed. "But we'll be all right towing the toothy devil, so long as he doesn't sink; which may happen yet, if they don't make that hawser fast some time soon. I think perhaps I…"

He looked sidelong at Cashel, judging how far he'd recovered.

Cashel laughed, snorted salt water from his nostrils, and laughed again. "I think I'm ready to go aboard, Master Chalcus," he said. "I may not have all my strength back, but I think what remains will prove an aid to hauling that rope."

He looked at his sister on the deck above. "Ilna?" he said. "See to it that this line is snubbed off, will you? I'm coming aboard, and I don't look forward to spilling myself in the water again because something slipped!"

Cashel tugged to test the line himself, then walked up the side of the vessel using his left hand on the rope to steady him. Oh, yes; he was ready for work again!

Sharina swung down from the fighting tower's battlements with a great deal more care than she'd displayed climbing it. She'd sheathed the Pewle knife; it hadn't been required as a weapon but its smooth steel weight had settled her mind at a time she needed that. Now that she had leisure and both hands, she worried that her billowing robes would catch a projection and she'd break her neck as she fell.

"Mistress?" said the balista captain as he bent to grab her hand. "Princess, I mean! Let me-"

"No!" Sharina said. As if she didn't have enough problems already!

She dropped to the deck with no problem except that her robes flew up. She smoothed them and looked around to see if anybody was laughing at her. They weren't, of course: quite apart from her being Princess Sharina of Haft, everybody aboard theShepherd was too shaken to laugh at anything for the moment.

Tenoctris had a hand on the railing, but she'd recovered to her normal state of indomitable fragility. She said, "Your Cashel is really quite remarkable. What he did just now was…"

She shook her head, then grinned wryly and added, "Ourfriend Cashel, and very definitely the world's friend Cashel. The wizard who made that attack won't have expected anyone to be able to block it. Quite remarkable."

"Yes, he is," Sharina said, a smile of contentment spreading over her face. She hadn't had time to be frightened till it was all over. Before she hopped down from the tower, she'd seen Cashel catch his sister's line. Now with theFlying Fish at a wobbly halt beside the monster, there was nothing to worry about.