Madrenga by Alan Dean Foster

Author:Alan Dean Foster [Foster, Alan Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press

Chapter Eleven

Lie to a ship’s officer and Hammaghiri would dock your pay. Steal from a fellow sailor and he’d likely have you keelhauled. Other than that, as long as a man did his job, life on the Thranskirr was good compared to the often miserable conditions to be found on similar merchant vessels. That did not mean it was considered an easy ship: Hammaghiri worked his men too hard for it to be so designated. But it was a relatively free ship. After completing his assigned tasks, what a man did on his free time was his own business, so long as it did not interfere with ongoing operations.

Therefore no one thought it unusual or worthy of comment or notice when half a dozen members of the crew assembled on the foredeck on an evening that was clear, moonlit, and warm. It was a beautiful place to be on a calm night, listening to the melodious percussion of the bow crashing through the nephrite-green water as the moon silvered the crest of each successive swell and drifting durugonds burped drum-like mating calls across the surface.

Their joviality was false and their relaxation a pretext, however. They had assembled not to drink in the delights of an amenable night but to listen to old Korufh. About himself he had gathered those he deemed most sympathetic to his views. They were attentive. Glancing skyward, the second mate saw that the mainmast sentry was at ease in his basket-like lookout. There was no one else in view. In any event, this far forward the sound of the bow’s wave-cutting would keep cautious voices from being carried to other parts of the ship. Counting his audience at the ready, he began without preamble.

“They’re demons. I suspected so from the first. That dog—unnatural a sight to any man’s eyes, even without Quilpit’s telling of the tale that took place at the arena in Charrush. The horse: far too alert to human speech. As for their master, one moment he play-acts the perfect fool of an adolescent, the next he fights like a mystic warrior out of legend. No, the proof of it lies in their very appearance. Not to mention in their actions.”

His audience was amenable, yes—but some still remained to be fully convinced.

“What proof have we that they represent a danger?” asked one of the attentive seamen. “Did they not save us from the sea brigands?”

Having anticipated the most obvious of objections, Korufh was ready with a response. “They were in danger as much as any of the rest of us. Who is to say but that they acted to save themselves, and that our consequent salvation was but coincidental?”

Murmuring among the assembled showed that this argument held weight, as Korufh had suspected it would. He was quick to follow up on the advantage.

“If this seeming youth is a good sorcerer honest and true, and not putting forth some kind of innocent act for our benefit, why would he not declare himself such when he

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