Raymond E. Feist - The Chaoswar Saga - A Kingdom Besieged, A Crown Imperilled, Magician’s End

Sighing, Martin lay down, putting his head on a pack someone had set down behind him. ‘Ylith.’ After a moment as his eyes grew heavy, he said, ‘If Robert is bottled up in Carse, and Gasson cut off up in Yabon. …’

Bethany came and lay down behind him, snuggling in close as if to keep him warm for the night. Bethany closed her eyes and was quickly asleep as well.

Brendan saw his brother slip into deep slumber and turned to look at the two sergeants. ‘With Father dead and Hal in Roldem, that puts Martin in command.’

Ruther looked at Magwin. The two sergeants were the oldest members of the garrison, save for Swordmaster Phillip who was with young Henry in Roldem for the Champions Tournament at the Masters’ Court. Finally Magwin said ‘Title or not, that makes him the King’s Warden of the West.’

Ruther looked at the sleeping youth and said, ‘Now all he needs is an army.’

JIM GROANED.

His arms felt as if they were about to fall off, yet he knew he had another half-hour or more of pulling hard on the oars of this boat. He glanced over his shoulder and at once regretted it. Sorcerer’s Isle didn’t look a foot closer than it had the last time he had looked.

His Keshian guide Nefu had proved as wily a smuggler as he had hoped, and if he had the chance he’d use him himself, if Kaseem would let him. They had run up the coast on a downwind tack, then turned and run before the wind northward. Twice they had seen sails on the horizon and Nefu had deftly sailed away before they were noticed.

They had reached an imaginary line between the south-west tip of the island nation of Queg and the distant point of Land’s End over the horizon, and found that it was just as Nefu had feared: heavily patrolled by Keshian warships. He had quickly produced both a Keshian flag and a courier’s pennant and affixed them to the mast. As long as he kept sailing, didn’t get stopped and have to answer questions it would be fine. Though Jim judged it likely that Kaseem abu Hazara-Khan had provided Nefu with a fairly comprehensive set of false papers. There was a likelihood that because Kaseem had been betrayed and his network compromised that many of those patents and passes were no longer valid, but unless those who stopped the smuggler were privy to the most recent changes in the top echelons of government, they might get them through. Jim also knew that had he been in charge, Nefu would have a packet with a lot of impressive-looking seals that were to be opened only by a specific noble, one who wasn’t on whatever boat was stopping them.

He was relieved they had not had to test those ploys. For Nefu was even more resourceful than Jim had imagined. They sailed along the line of ships, staying to the east and looking as if they were bound on imperial business for some destination behind the lines, until sundown, at which point Nefu sailed around in a lazy circle until he was where he wished to be. He had lowered the sails and sculled the ship silently through the darkness. Sculling was a primitive means of propelling a boat, probably used centuries before sail or oar. Jim was amazed to see the long oar come out of the hold; it was in sections that were quickly fitted together and put over the stern as the rudder was hoisted out of the water by means of a clever winch-and-cable mechanism. Then Nefu and two of his men fixed the twenty-five-foot-long oar in a iron cradle bolted to the stern of the boat, slipping it through a cut-out that Jim had assumed was a common feature to allow water splashing up on the deck to run off.

Sculling took a lot of power, and this oar was massive, so two men worked it. It was a slow and tedious way to move a boat, but move the boat it did, and silently they crept between two sentry ships anchored along the line Jim had drawn on the imaginary map in his mind.

By dawn an exhausted crew raised the sails and they set a course for Sorcerers’ Isle. They took down the Keshian pennants and kept a sharp watch for Kingdom warships.

A day later they came within view of two things simultaneously: a smudge on the north-eastern horizon which Nefu claimed was Sorcerers’ Isle, and a dot of white to the south-east that the lookout claimed was a squadron of Kingdom warships.

Despite Jim’s assurances that he could convince the commander of any Kingdom squadron they were there on official business, Nefu declined to see if Jim could effectively keep him and his crew out of a Kingdom prison and his boat from being confiscated. The fact that Jim was without identification of any kind, that the Kingdom was in a state of war, and that there was no guarantee that this particular squadron commander had ever met Baron James Jamison all weighed heavily in the smuggler’s decision.

Hence Jim found himself rowing furiously against the current trying desperately to take him away from his destination. Not for the first time that morning did Jim curse Destan for disabling his Tsurani transport orb.

Jim’s shoulders ached and his back hurt and he knew that this was the first time in his life he was seriously beginning to feel his age. At forty a man’s body begins to betray him, and it’s only male vanity that makes him not believe it.

Jim was well past forty.

He worked hard at staying fit, drinking little and eating well, but the rigours of his trade, both as leader of the Mockers and supervisor of the King’s Intelligence Service, conspired to keep him from taking care of himself as much as he should.

Never in his life had he regretted that fact more than now.

As he pulled hard on the oars, he wondered if it might really be time to settle down and start that family. Assuming there was still a Kingdom in which to raise them after this war was over.

Of course if Kesh was victorious, he could probably find employment in Roldem.

Then he wondered if Franciezka was honest about her feelings for him. He had been thinking of her a great deal lately, a fact which both did and didn’t surprise him. It did because he had walled off his feelings towards women early in life, a necessity given his career; it didn’t because Lady Franciezka Sorboz was far and away the most interesting and devious woman he had ever encountered. Life with her would never be dull. And it didn’t hurt his little daydream that she was still the most arrestingly beautiful woman he knew. But most of all, she was the most intelligent woman he had ever met, and he had met a lot of intelligent women. They had to be intelligent to put up with the idiots they married. That then raised the question of how they could marry idiots and still be called intelligent, at which point Jim decided to put aside the question and concentrate on something simple, like who had started this war, why, and how he could convince Pug to save the Kingdom.

Jim kept rowing.

The boat rose and fell and in the distance Jim could hear the sound of surf but he refused to look behind, knowing this to be a cruel joke being played by Kalkin, God of Thieves. He knew if he looked the island would be back where it was when Nefu had first put him over the side into this boat.

Twice more the boat lifted and then Jim remembered there were rocks along the western shore of the island and then he looked.

White surf crashed against a massive rock face and Jim started frantically pulling with his right oar, while backing with his left, pulling his little boat around onto a southerly course.

He had rowed until he felt his arms would fall out of his shoulder sockets, and now he let the boat drift. He just shipped the oars, sat back, and watched. Currents took the boat around the island, slowly moving past the rocks to an open, sandy area. Jim had been to Sorcerers’ Island more than once, but he hardly considered himself an expert on geography. His usual landing site when he came by ship was on the south-east corner of the island, and he was now at the south-west.