Pinquickle's Folly by R. A. Salvatore

Author:R. A. Salvatore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S/Saga Press
Published: 2024-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12CABIN ARREST

Quauh was somewhat taken aback by the size of Port Mandu as the dinghy approached, or rather, the lack of size. She was long enough, fifty feet by Quauh’s rough estimation, but very narrow, with a beam barely above a dozen feet. She had a very tall mainmast sporting a triangular lateen-rigged mainsail of typical size for a ketch, though it only went about three quarters of the way up that mainmast, with the crow’s nest much higher. Her mizzen was typically proportioned to the ship, as were the jib and staysail up front. To her surprise, though, she noted a third small sail up front, a second staysail—or maybe a second jib.

Quauh had never seen that design before, and it gave her pause as she climbed up from the dinghy to the deck. She understood immediately that Port Mandu wasn’t built for cargo, but for speed and maneuverability, particularly in shallower waters. The captain’s gaze kept going back to that strange jib design as the dinghy crewman came up behind her and pushed her along. Her experience solved the clues quickly and made her realize that it would take some clever sailors to properly handle those three small forward sails efficiently, but if they did, was there any wind at all that Port Mandu couldn’t use to serious advantage?

“Well, what did you get?” barked a man (though his gruff speech pattern made it sound more like “whajagit”), forcing her sensibilities back to the situation at hand. She immediately connected the man standing before Massayo to the name she had heard, Wilkie Dogears, because he did indeed have large ears, sticking out wide through his long and thick black hair. And to make it even more obvious, those flappers were adorned with huge feathered earrings that hung down to his collarbone, like the bouncing ears of an Alte Anxellin shortsnout, a breed of dog Quauh’s family had kept for all her young life. He was a thick man, with a round belly and broad shoulders, though nowhere near as tall as the towering Massayo. His beard was huge and full, ringed with hair spikes all about the bottom, braided and tied with metallic baubles, silver and gold.

His waistcoat, pants, and boots were black, trimmed in red, and fancy—or once-fancy, for the clothes, like Captain Wilkie himself, had clearly spent many years at sea.

“They hadn’t much to give,” Massayo replied. “Their prey ran aground at the reef and broke up.” He pointed to starboard, toward the obvious skeleton of the Uey, and Quauh grimaced and did not look. She didn’t need to see her failure again.

“Not much they showed you, you mean. You know the little darlings buried what they looted.”

Massayo shrugged. “Did you want me to start digging up the beach with all the damned Chezru soldiers about? I’d have started a fight there, and Captain Thorngirdle would have left us all dead on the sand. You would have cursed my name all the way to the beach beside the Behrenese boats for the revenge fight.

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