The Warrior's Tale (The Far Kingdoms, Book 2) by Allan Cole Chris Bunch

Author:Allan Cole, Chris Bunch [Bunch, Allan Cole, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2010-01-15T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SOUTH TO KONYA

The next day we set to. By the gods, it was wearisome. By the time we were done and our galleys rode at anchor looking as if they’d just been launched with the blood of the sacrifices fresh on their prows, any of us who’d dreamed of buying a small boat to play within our twilight years had discarded the notion. Amalric always had little use for ships, except as a necessary way to move his goods from one port to the next, but my feelings became stronger: I wished I could become the Greatest of Evocators, and pave the damned seas so no one save those who were demented, and I include all sailors in that lot, would need water for any other purpose than bathing.

It might seem I’m railing on, and I suppose I am. But let me tell you just what we had to do to make just one galley seaworthy once more:

First the ship would be stripped of anything removable, so it rode high in the water, and then it was rowed close inshore, until it grounded on a rock-free bottom. Then it would be dragged further into shore and when the tide fell, heavy logs, padded at the end, kept the ship from rolling onto its side.

Next we started scraping the hull free of the barnacles and seaweed. In the process we scraped enough skin off our hides to make belts for an army. Then all those shellfish we scraped off died and began to rot. By midday our brave warship smelled like a dockside latrine. This task, I’d been told by Klisura, required no shipwrights ability beyond having a large neck and small helmet, so the Guard would be perfectly suitable. I growled, then saw he was attempting a joke, and regained my good humor. That lasted until I realized I’d have to set the proper example for my women and be the first to wade out and begin scouring away.

“I thought,” Sergeant Ismet said, from where she labored a few yards away, “we were going to be noble huntresses and all that, instead of scullery wenches to these tubs.”

“Pleasure,” I managed, “comes after business.”

It wasn’t that we were being taken advantage of — Cholla Yi had Klisura and the other shipmasters driving the sailors even harder. Nor were we doing the worst job conceivable, which came after the ship’s bottom was sufficiently clean. This job was for the fleet’s various petty offenders, both the handful from my Guardswomen who needed more severe punishment than a boot or backhand from her sergeant or a week jakes-cleaning, and the much greater number of sailors who’d fallen afoul of their masters-at-arms.

All rotten ropes had been stripped off the ships and tossed in a great pile on the foreshore, and the punishment parties were assigned to pick the tarry ropes apart, strand by strand. These threads were then driven into the space between the ship’s planking, using a tool like a narrow chisel and a mallet.

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