Трой Деннинг - The Veiled Dragon

The witch rolled her head away from Fowler. “Perhaps I was just too weak.”

The captain checked the tourniquet on her leg, then laid his leathery palm on her forehead. “You’re losing no more blood, but you do feel cold as a barnacle.” He grabbed her chin and pulled it around so he could look her in the eye. “You wouldn’t be thinking of dying on me, would you Witch?”

Ruha tried to chuckle and failed. “Not without your permission, Captain.”

Fowler glared at her from the corner of one eye. “Aye, that’s good.” He grabbed the collar of his tunic and turned it inside out, displaying the Harper’s pin Ruha had given to him. “I’ve every intention of collecting on your promise—and don’t think you can squirm out of it, like you did with Arvold.”

Ruha managed a weak smile. “Get me to Pros, and you shall have your ship.”

“That I shall, Witch—and it’ll be easier than you think.” The captain grinned broadly, then stood and turned toward the front of the raft. “Arvold, man your paddle!”

The caravel’s bowsprit shot over the dune crest, less the twenty yards from the raft. Beneath the giant spar, illuminated by the pearlescent sphere of a silver glass lantern, hung the magnificent sculpture of a square-snouted dragon. With its delicately curled horns, ball-shaped eyes, and lustrous green scales, the beast looked nothing like the wyrm that had destroyed the Storm Sprite . The figurehead’s glowering face appeared more reproachful than vicious, and there was nothing in its expression to suggest bloodlust or insatiable greed. Still, the thing was clearly a dragon, and that was enough to give Ruha pause.

The caravel’s great prow burst through the back side of the dune, hurling curtains of spray high into the air. Ruha pointed at the figurehead.

“Do you see that, Captain Fowler? Is that not a dragon’s head?”

The witch sat near the back corner of the raft, her mangled thigh extended before her. During the twenty minutes it had taken Fowler and Arvold to paddle into the caravel’s path, everything below the tourniquet had grown numb and cool to the touch, and now the leg was beginning to turn blue, as she could tell whenever the moon’s silver light flashed across her bare flesh.

When Captain Fowler did not comment on the figurehead, Ruha asked, “Why does the caravel carry such a thing on its bow? Could that be the reason the dragon attacked it?”

Fowler set aside the plank he had been using as a paddle. “I think not, Witch. Half the prows on the Dragonmere bear figureheads of such fiends, to scare off monsters of the deep.”

Ruha studied the figurehead more carefully, then shook her head. “That carving does not look frightening to me.”

The captain had no time to answer, for the bow of the great caravel was already slipping past. Along the wales stood a dozen dark figures, all shining storm lanterns over the rail. Both Fowler and Arvold jumped to their feet and waved their arms in excitement. From the shadows behind the lantern bearers emerged a figure holding a large bow nocked with a white, round-nosed arrow.

The man loosed his bowstring. The white shaft sailed over the raft, trailing a thick dark cord. Fowler let the line fall upon the planks, then grabbed it and pulled the arrow aboard. He snapped the shank at its base, then he and Arvold started to thread the rope through the raft lashings. As they worked, the caravel continued to lumber past, taking up the rescue line’s slack at an alarming pace. The lantern bearers walked toward the great ship’s stern, trying to keep their lights focused upon the raft. The heaving sea made their task an impossible one, forcing Ruha’s companions to labor in an irritating kaleidoscope of flashing beams. By the time the pair finished, the rescue line was stretching taut and the lantern bearers were standing atop what remained of their ship’s battered poop deck.

“Hold fast!”

Resuming his place at the front corner, Arvold fell to the deck and grabbed the edges of the planks. Fowler dropped beside Ruha, flinging one arm over her shoulders and pinning her to the wet planks. The witch had barely twined her fingers into the lashings before the rescue line snapped tight and jerked the raft so violently it left the water.

The flimsy vessel splashed into the water an instant later. From that moment on, it seemed to Ruha that they spent as much time traveling beneath the surface as they did above it. Every time they came to another sea dune, the rescue line would drag them through its steep face, burying the raft under a foamy torrent that threatened to sweep the witch and her companions into the Dragonmere. A moment later, they would emerge on the other side and drop into the trough, then slam into the face of the next dune and disappear beneath the raging sea.

Between dousings, Ruha gasped, “Surely, there is a—” She grunted as they slammed into a trough. “—a better way to bring us aboard!”

The caravel pulled them through another sea dune. When they came out the other side, Fowler asked, “Can you fly, Witch?”

“That is bird magic,” Ruha answered. “If I could fly, why would … ugh!… why would I have hired you to sail me across the Dragonmere?”

After they plunged through another dune, Fowler said, “Then this is the only way. In a sea this rough, a big ship like that can’t be stopping to take aboard passengers!”

They slammed into another trough; then the ride smoothed out as they entered the caravel’s wake. The ship’s crew hauled the raft up to the stern corner and lowered a rope. Fowler tied Ruha in first, and the line tightened around her chest. She rose alongside the rudder more than fifteen feet before she reached the somercastle and began to scrape along its back wall. The witch bit her lip to keep from crying out. Though her mangled leg was too numb to feel anything, she had many other cuts and bruises that protested the rough treatment.

After a painful ascent of another ten feet, several pairs of hands caught her beneath the arms and pulled her into the ruins of a luxurious officer’s cabin. The walls, or rather what remained of them, were draped with silken tapestries depicting fanciful scenes of domestic bliss, and the floor was covered by wool carpet as plush and finely loomed as those woven by Ruha’s own people.

A pair of rescuers leaned over the witch, and she gasped. Both men had smooth, yellow-tinted features, with small noses and narrow, slanted eyes. Neither face matched the one she had seen in her vision, but they obviously belonged to the same race as the man in the mirage.

The elder of the pair, a distinguished-looking man with graying hair and a yellow patch over one eye, spoke to the other in a lilting language of short syllables and fluctuating pitches. Both men were slight of build and no taller than Ruha herself, and they wore high-necked tunics with long sleeves and hems that swept the floor.

When the first man finished speaking, the second bowed to him, then bowed to Ruha. “Please to allow me to present Mandarin Hsieh Han Liu, Imperial Minister of Spices to Emperor Kao Tsao Shou Tang, Jade—”

The one-eyed man hissed at the speaker, who continued his introduction with barely a pause, “Jade Monarch of Shou Lung and of all Civilized Lands.”

The one-eyed man bowed to Ruha, who sat upright and dipped her chin in return. Across the cabin, several more small, yellow-skinned men were hauling up the other end of the rescue line, which they had tossed down to the raft once she was aboard. Anxious to avoid being dragged overboard if their hands slipped, the witch began to untie herself.

“I am called Ruha.” She spoke directly to the one-eyed man, who could hardly have corrected his translator without himself understanding Common. “I thank you for saving my life, Minister Hsieh.”