EverMage: Clash of Chaos by Trip Ellington

Author:Trip Ellington [Ellington, Trip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-03-29T22:00:00+00:00

Days became weeks, and the weeks passed quickly, clipped of their edges by the early nighttime of the approaching winter. It was a continuous struggle for Deinre on the rigging, though he felt with each passing day that he was making a kind of progress, even if that progress was minor. He still found himself tangled in the rigging or, when the ship made a wide turn, buffeted by the flying boom of the mizzenmast that had swung starboard and plowed into his chest when he wasn’t paying attention.

The main deck and quarterdeck were places of constant action and more than constant danger. Lost in the confusion, he found that it was easy to be attacked by the many moving parts. Although Deinre still did not have a complete understanding of what each of those parts was, he was gradually beginning to learn how to avoid the most problematic.

He’d learned to go barefoot and ignore the splinters like the other sailors. The deck was constantly made slick by the steam and algae of the surf despite how often the crew scrubbed away at it. Wearing boots was an invitation to plunge overboard.

He’d also developed the habit of always walking with a straight back, except when there wasn’t room enough down below-deck. In the beginning of his time onboard, he’d shuffled constantly around in a permanent crook to avoid the boom, rigging, or sails. After a few weeks, he’d developed such a pain that he’d been unable to walk for days afterward. Better to take the occasional hit than live with a chronic stoop. Better still was to know what was dangerous and work on avoiding it.

For the other crewmen, about thirty in total, it seemed watching Deinre injure himself was a source of daily amusement. They went out of their way to make the work on board as hazardous as possible. They told him nothing about the jobs he was assigned and left him to figure out the rigging and tying and untying the sails without a word of advice.

It might have gone on this way for months and Deinre might have remained miserable and ignorant had Olaf not come to his rescue. The old mariner could sympathize with Deinre—he’d been sold into the High Keep Mariners by his father when he turned thirteen to pay back an unfortunate debt, and he’d slogged his way through the ship in much the same way as Deinre.

“It gets easier,” he promised his pupil daily. “But you have to have a thick skin. That’s part of the reason they’re doing it, you know. Give you a skin of leather. There’s no room for landlubbers on deck.”

Olaf showed him how to knot the taut lines, how to bunch the sails on a windy day, how to heave the anchor up so that he didn’t break his back and so on. Sometimes the other two galley slaves helped as well, though Deinre never held conversations with them like he did with Olaf. One of them

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.