They might bring the Lady’s Luck about, but Kyle was confident they’d never spot him here in the dark of night amid the waves. Holding the sword beneath the pack, he drew out the water-bladders he’d half inflated, and began blowing into one. It would be a long swim to shore and he’d have to keep topping up the bladders, but he should make it – provided he didn’t freeze to death first.

*

Dawn saw a man drag himself by his elbows up through the surf, his hands mere pale blue clubs. He lay on the beach of coarse gravel, half in the waves, exhausted and immobile, warming himself in the gathering light.

Later in the morning, Kyle pushed himself up and blew on his hands. He pulled at his wet clothes then faced inland. Eroded cliffs topped by scrub and brush hid what lay beyond, but he knew what awaited him: a broad flat steppe-land of grasses and copses of trees, arid, a near desert in regions, that swept all the way east to the foothills of the near-mythical Salt range.

He drew the sword from his shirt, wrapped it in the empty sack, and tucked it through his belt. Then he pushed back his sodden hair, tied it with a leather strip, and set off.

Chapter IV

CHAPTER IV

A STORM CAUGHT them while still west of the southern Bael coast. Master Ghelath saw them through, bellowing commands, solid on the deck though chilled blue from the spray. The towering cliff-high waves would have overpowered Havvin at the tiller arm had not Bars and Amatt taken hold to follow the canny old pilot’s orders.

Storms were one of the main reasons Shimmer hated these deep ocean crossings. It seemed to her that no frail construct such as a ship should dare challenge the might of such vast depths and lengths of open water. The pitching and yawing below decks made her sick; that and the clattering of loose equipment and the ominous groaning of the mere finger-widths of timber that separated her from the cold dark depths. The noise and stink of vomit drove her to seek the fresh air above decks – even when ‘fresh’ meant gale-force winds and driving sleet.

She found Lean and Sept taking their turn at the tiller arm, following Havvin’s commands yelled above the crashing of waves. K’azz was also above decks, an arm round the mainmast, staring forward into the roiling cloud cover. She climbed the stern to the pilot’s side, noting the length of line that secured him to the tiller arm. The old man, his long white hair a plastered layer upon his knobbly skull, sent her another of his intimate winks.

She planted her legs wide, lowered her head against the blowing spray, and offered him an uncertain frown.

The old man laughed his amusement. ‘Know you why Master Ghelath named her Mael’s Greetings?’ he called.

‘No,’ she shouted back.