Chapter 356: A Light in the Rigging

The sailor pulled from the water slept through most of June sixteenth.

When he woke, he asked whether we had found his brother.

Evelyn was sitting beside the bed. She asked for the brother’s name, wrote it down, and sent someone to check the lists from Orselle.

Then she waited with him.

His name was Bastian. He had been a sailmaker before the war, although the uniform drying in a bag beside his bed belonged to Surtr’s navy.

“They gave us coats,” he told her. “Said everyone aboard had to wear them.”

He kept looking at the bag as though it might speak against him.

“We will ask you about the ship when you are ready,” Evelyn said. “First, we are looking for your brother.”

The answer came shortly before midday.

His brother was not among the living men recovered from the water or the prisoners taken at the cove. He had not been identified among the dead brought ashore either.

We could tell Bastian only that we had not found him.

Evelyn gave him that answer herself.

He turned toward the wall and asked to be alone.

She left the bell within his reach and went no farther than the room outside.

I heard the rest that afternoon.

Bastian had asked to speak to someone about the ships, and Eliza invited me to attend after the healer said he could manage a short conversation.

He sat propped against pillows, holding a cup with both hands. One wrist was swollen from the hours he had spent clinging to the broken hatch cover.

“My brother might still be aboard,” he said.

“He might,” Eliza replied. “We have not stopped checking.”

Bastian looked at me.

“You pulled the wind away from the little boat.”

“I tried.”

“I saw it. Before I lost the spar.”

He swallowed and looked down at his cup.

“There are people on the carrier who would bring it into your harbor if they could. Most of the sailors are from places the army took. The soldiers keep the food locked and the boats watched.”

Eliza pulled her chair closer.

“Who would be willing to act?”

He named the carpenter first. Then the cook. Then a woman who had been a coastal pilot before her town surrendered.

Eliza wrote each name without changing expression.

When he had finished, she asked how he knew.

That was when he began telling us about the lantern.

They had discussed escape before the attack.

Never all together. Never in the same place twice if they could help it.

The sailors knew the grain carrier was being sent toward a defended harbor with engines fixed above decks built to carry sacks. They had seen how the recoil strained the timbers during practice. They had heard the soldiers laughing about what would happen if the ship caught fire.

The coastal pilot had suggested taking the vessel while most of the troops were ashore.

The carpenter said they would need somewhere to go.

The cook had watched a fishing boat approach Orselle beneath a white cloth and decided they might have an answer.

“A lantern high in the forward rigging,” Bastian said. “Covered twice, then left showing. It meant the forward watch was ours.”

“Did you ever use it?” Eliza asked.

He shook his head.

“Everything happened too quickly. The dragons came. The steering broke. Men went over the side.”

His hands tightened around the cup.

“I don’t know who is left.”

We did not turn one frightened man’s account into an order to board a ship.

Eliza compared his names with those given by the escaped fishermen. Two matched. A prisoner from the landing party remembered the pilot and complained that the civilian crew had been slow to obey commands throughout the voyage.

That was useful without meaning quite what he intended.

Rusk sent a request for a drawing of the carrier’s lower decks. Bastian agreed to help, though the first attempt exhausted him before he finished the passage beside the galley.

We stopped there.

Meanwhile, the dragon patrols found where the fleet had sheltered.

The damaged carrier lay behind the southern headland, attended by one of the narrow vessels. The other five ships held farther out, shifting position with the weather and keeping watch over the approaches.

Rusk studied the reports with Baldr.

Then he sent for me.

Before I left, Adriana insisted I sit down long enough to eat.

She had brought the meal herself, though someone had helped her carry Julian’s tray. Evelyn joined us midway through the bread and looked pleased to find that neither of us had mistaken tea for lunch.

“Bastian?” I asked.

“Resting,” she said. “His breathing is easier. He will need time before that wrist can bear weight.”

Adriana set a bowl beside me.

“And you?”

“My wrist is fine.”

She gave me a look.

I put down the spoon.

“I am tired.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That was considerably more useful.”

Evelyn’s fingers brushed mine beneath the table.

We ate for a while before Adriana spoke again.

“The dwarven council has approved the full agreement. Their messenger arrived this morning.”

I looked up.

“And the elven representatives?”

“Two communities have agreed. Others are still discussing it. Melody says we should take the answers we have and leave them room to send more.”

“That sounds like her.”

Adriana smiled.

“Mary says it sounds like someone who has spent too much time asking strangers to trust her.”

Evelyn leaned back in her chair.

“Perhaps they both have.”

The signing took place before my departure on June seventeenth.

There was no great assembly. The representatives wanted their copies settled and messengers on the road before another day was lost.

Varda stood beside the dwarven delegation. Iriel accompanied the elven representatives, looking almost as tired as the healers she had been helping since the rescue from the mountain road.

Their agreements named the help each could provide: guides, warning posts, healers, engineers, and volunteers assigned under commanders they had met.

They also named the help they could ask for.

That part mattered just as much.

One of the dwarven delegates tapped the clause about trapped mining settlements.

“We are not asking you to promise you can reach every tunnel.”

“We cannot,” I said.

“We are asking you to answer when we tell you where people are.”

I signed beneath the final page.

“That we can promise.”

Melody watched from beside Mary, her ears angled forward as each seal was placed.

When the last copy was finished, the dwarven delegate turned and thanked her by name.

She looked surprised for the space of a heartbeat.

Mary looked as though she had been waiting for someone else to notice.

Rusk’s proposal was waiting in Orselle.

It involved a boat, a fisherman who knew the southern rocks, and considerably less armor than I preferred.

“We cannot tow a damaged carrier through the harbor while the rest of the fleet watches,” he said. “Even if its crew takes it, they may be attacked before they reach us.”

Baldr indicated the sheltered anchorage on the chart.

“The narrow vessel beside it is supplying men for the repairs. It also carries the soldiers guarding the boats.”

“Then we have two ships to worry about.”

“And five farther out,” Rusk said. “But the tide gives us a short interval when the carrier’s stern will face the rocks. A boat can approach from there without crossing the open anchorage.”

I looked at the chart.

“To make contact.”

“If the signal appears.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“We go home with wet boots and try something else.”

I found that part of the plan reassuring.

The fisherman who would guide us was named Pell.

He was one of the men who had escaped with the water boat before the attack. His injured companion remained at Greykeep, improving slowly under Evelyn’s care.

Pell knew the cook Bastian had named.

He also knew a narrow cleft beneath the headland where fishing boats sheltered when a squall caught them too far from the harbor.

“The rocks show their teeth when the water drops,” he told me. “We go in while the tide still covers the lowest ones. We come out when I say.”

“You are very certain about that last part.”

He looked at my pale hair, then at the chart.

“Your Majesty, if you want someone who will argue politely with the sea, choose another boatman.”

Rusk grunted approval.

We chose Pell.

Thor disliked the small boat.

She disliked the narrow approach, the uncertain signal, and the fact that there would be no room for a large reserve beside us if something went wrong.

She had come through to inspect the plan herself, leaving Lexander with the home reserve.

“I dislike all of that too,” I told her.

“Good. Then you will remember why you are there.”

“Contact first. Nothing more unless there is a clear opportunity.”

She nodded.

“Baldr commands the relief if we need it. I will stay at the harbor with the strike boats. You do not turn a conversation into a private invasion because someone waves at you.”

Pell, who had been checking the boat’s fittings, looked up.

“Does he do that?”

“He has a developing respect for restraint,” Thor replied.

I decided it was unnecessary to defend myself.

We went out after dark.

There were six of us in the boat: Pell, two sailors, two experienced scouts, and me.

My sword lay wrapped beneath the seat. I wore a plain coat and kept the light from my eyes dimmed as much as I could manage.

Pell gave me an oar.

“Can you row?”

“Yes.”

“Then try to remember the others are doing it too.”

The boat moved quietly beyond the harbor wall.

I could have filled the sea with fog. Instead, I kept the water around us from slapping loudly against the hull and let Pell choose our path through the darkness.

The work required less power than the battle had.

It required patience I found harder to summon.

Above the headland, Ossira passed once against the stars and continued inland. She would watch the outer fleet from a distance without circling directly over us.

We reached the cleft and waited.

The lantern appeared well after midnight.

At first, it might have been any light carried by a sailor working aloft.

Then it vanished.

Returned.

Vanished again.

When it reappeared, it remained fixed high in the forward rigging.

Pell held up one hand.

Nobody moved.

We watched the decks below it for signs of soldiers gathering or boats being lowered to meet us.

Nothing changed.

At last, Pell dipped his oar.

We crossed the dark water toward the carrier’s stern.

The broken steering platform hung above us like a torn balcony. Ropes and temporary braces had been fixed around the damage.

Somewhere aboard, a man coughed.

Pell gave a low whistle.

A rope ladder dropped beside the hull.

The woman waiting above wore a patched coat and carried a kitchen knife.

She pointed it at me until Pell climbed high enough for her to recognize him.

“You brought strangers,” she whispered.

“I brought help, Marda.”

That was the pilot’s name from Bastian’s account.

She lowered the knife only slightly.

“Who?”

I drew back my hood.

Her eyes widened.

Then she swore softly at Pell.

“You brought a king in a fishing boat?”

“He can row.”

She stared at him, then looked back at me.

“Bastian?” I asked.

Her expression changed at once.

“Alive?”

“At Greykeep. He gave us the signal.”

She pressed a hand over her mouth before turning toward a shadow near the hatch.

“Tell Tomas.”

Bastian’s brother came up from below so quickly that he struck his shoulder against the hatch frame.

He stopped in front of me, breathing hard.

“You are certain?”

“He was pulled from the water north of Orselle. His wrist is injured. He has been asking for you.”

Tomas made a sound that was almost a laugh.

Then he sat down abruptly on a coil of rope.

Marda gave him one moment before touching his shoulder.

“Later. We need you.”

He wiped his face with both hands and stood.

We moved into the cramped space behind the galley, where the cook and carpenter waited with two other sailors.

The captain slept beneath guard near the main cabin. Eighteen soldiers remained aboard. More could cross from the escort if an alarm sounded.

The sailors controlled the forward watch, the galley passage, and the lower deck where most of their companions slept.

They did not control the engines.

“Can you steer her?” I asked.

The carpenter spread a rough drawing over an overturned bucket.

“Enough to keep her nose where the pilot wants it if we rig a steering oar over the quarter. Not enough to run.”

“Can you tow her?”

“With boats and the right wind.”

Everyone looked at me.

I studied the drawing instead of answering immediately.

“I can help with wind. I cannot make this hull outrun five ships.”

Marda nodded.

“We need the soldiers off the engines and the escort kept from boarding us. Then we can reach the mouth of the bay before the outer ships know what is happening.”

One of our scouts slipped back to the fishing boat with the agreed message for the waiting relay.

Baldr would decide whether the support boats could reach us in time. If not, we would leave with whoever could safely fit into the boats we had, and attempt nothing larger.

The carpenter watched the scout go.

“I have been repairing this ship for eleven years,” he said.

His hand rested on the drawing.

“I would rather take her with us.”

We waited in the dark while the ship creaked around us.

Tomas sat beside the passage door, listening for footsteps.

After a while, he asked about the man who had found his brother.

“A harbor patrol,” I said. “They were still searching after the battle.”

“For your own men?”

“For anyone they could find.”

He looked down at the coat he wore.

Then he unfastened it and folded it beside him.

He was still in enemy service when the night began. Removing a coat did not tell us everything about that service.

But I understood why he did it.

At last, a hand tapped softly against the outer hull.

Our scout returned with Baldr’s answer.

The support boats were approaching beneath the headland. Thor would lead the boarding party against the escort if it tried to intervene. The dragons were in position to watch the outer fleet.

We had a short window before the tide turned against us.

Marda looked at the carpenter.

He folded his drawing.

“Then let us take our ship home.”

The first part happened quietly.

The cook opened the passage to the lower crew spaces. Sailors moved through it carrying belaying pins, rope, and whatever else they had kept out of the soldiers’ hands.

I went toward the engines with the scouts.

Two guards stood beside the nearest ammunition locker. One turned when he heard us.

I put ice around the latch before either could reach it.

“Weapons down,” I said.

The nearer man stared at my face.

The other shouted.

Quiet ended there.

Someone rang the ship’s bell. Boots hammered overhead. I struck the shouting guard’s sword aside and drove him against the rail while the scouts forced his companion to the deck.

Behind us, the sailors surged into the passage.

Marda’s voice rose above the noise.

“Keep them away from the boats!”

The captain emerged with a crossbow.

He fired at the first man he saw.

Tomas stumbled against the hatch frame, a bolt in his upper arm.

I reached the captain before he could reload.

The ice beneath his boots took his balance. Our scout knocked the weapon away, and two sailors held him while we secured his hands.

Across the deck, three soldiers formed around the second engine.

They had oil ready.

For a moment, I thought they meant to fire at the harbor.

Then one lifted a lantern over the ammunition.

I froze his hand to the lantern’s handle before he could throw it and drove a sheet of ice across the open containers.

Flame guttered behind the glass.

The man screamed, more in surprise than injury, and dropped to his knees when the scout caught his shoulder.

“Do not break it,” I warned.

The sailor beside him took the lantern carefully.

Only then did I let the ice loosen.

The escort had heard the alarm.

Men crowded its rail while a boat was lowered between the two ships.

Before it could cross, Thor’s first launch emerged from the darkness.

“Stay aboard and put down your weapons!” she called.

An arrow struck the water beside her.

She answered by throwing Mjolnir through the escort’s empty steering frame.

Timber burst outward.

The boat beneath it stopped lowering.

I saw her hammer return, bright against the dark sea.

The carrier jolted beneath my feet.

Our sailors had cut the lines holding us to the escort.

Marda shouted from the stern.

“Wind, if you have some to spare!”

I turned toward the torn sails.

The ship moved reluctantly.

Its damaged rigging creaked as I filled only the canvas the carpenter had told me could bear the strain. At the stern, sailors hauled on the makeshift steering oar while Marda called corrections.

Two harbor launches secured tow lines at the bow.

We crawled out of the anchorage.

Behind us, the escort’s crew had begun arguing with its soldiers.

I could hear the shouting even over the water.

Then a white cloth appeared above its rail.

Thor’s launch drew closer, and the first of her soldiers climbed aboard.

There was no sudden peace. A struggle continued near the hatch, and someone went down before the weapons were finally thrown onto the deck.

But the escort did not follow us firing arrows into our backs.

That was enough for the moment.

The outer fleet reacted as we cleared the headland.

Signal lamps flashed between the ships. One began turning toward us, oars beating at the water while its crew struggled to bring its sails around.

Above it, Ossira descended far enough that everyone aboard could see her.

Tareth crossed its bow from the other direction.

They did not attack.

They made the cost of pursuing us obvious.

I raised mist between the carrier and the ships beyond them, leaving a clear strip ahead where the harbor launches needed to see.

Marda watched the shore and the stars until the fog hid both.

Then she watched Rusk’s shaded signal lantern, carried in the leading boat.

“Steady,” she called.

The carpenter repeated it to the men at the steering oar.

The carrier creaked, turned, and followed the light.

We reached Orselle as dawn spread across the water on June eighteenth.

The harbor chain lowered just long enough to admit us.

People lined the quays despite the watch’s efforts to keep room for the docking crews. Some recognized the hull before anyone aboard shouted its name.

She had been called the Summer Lark before the army painted over her lettering.

Her home port lay farther down the coast, under occupation.

But several of her crew had relatives in Orselle.

They began calling to one another across the shrinking strip of water.

I stood back from the rail while Marda brought the damaged ship alongside with an expression of furious concentration.

Only when the last line was secured did she put both hands over her face.

The carpenter sat down on the deck beside her.

Neither said anything for a long time.

Thor brought the escort in an hour later with its weapons secured and a prize crew aboard.

We had taken two ships out of the blockade.

The other five remained beyond the headland.

On the Summer Lark, thirty-four sailors had sought our protection. Six others asked to be landed somewhere they could make their own way after questioning. Eighteen soldiers and the captain were in custody.

The smaller ship carried another twenty-three crew and twelve soldiers. Their circumstances would take time to sort out.

We had three wounded among our boarding parties. One sailor from the escort had died during the struggle at its hatch.

Tomas’s wound was painful but treatable.

The healer told him so twice before he stopped asking whether it would prevent him from going through the gate.

“What is through the gate?” she finally asked.

“My brother.”

She tied off the bandage.

“Then I suggest you stop moving that arm until we get you there.”

Rusk inspected the captured engines before anyone began unloading them.

Ordel’s specialists would examine the workings. The ammunition would be moved under guard to a secure store away from the houses.

The Summer Lark herself would be repaired for cargo if her owners could be located and the claim settled. Until then, her crew agreed to help make her safe.

The smaller vessel could serve as a patrol ship once its damage was repaired and a willing crew assigned.

“That does not end the blockade,” Rusk told me.

“No.”

He looked toward the harbor mouth.

“But they will have to wonder about every lantern their crews light now.”

I followed his gaze.

Across the quay, a sailor was lifting a little girl into his arms while she refused to stop holding his collar.

“So will we,” I said. “We should keep watching for them.”

Tomas went through to Greykeep before I did.

By the time I reached the infirmary, he was sitting beside Bastian’s bed with his injured arm in a sling.

His brother had caught his good wrist and appeared determined never to release it.

They were arguing.

“I told you to stay below.”

“You were in the water.”

“And climbing the rigging was supposed to help?”

“Apparently. Someone saw the lantern.”

Evelyn stood just outside the room, smiling faintly.

“They have been doing that for ten minutes,” she whispered.

“Should we stop them?”

“Their breathing is steady, and neither is trying to stand. I am inclined to allow it.”

She looked at me properly then.

“You need sleep.”

“I know.”

Her eyebrows rose.

“That is an unusually cooperative answer.”

“I have been rowing.”

Adriana was waiting in our rooms with the curtains partly drawn.

She had heard enough to know I was alive, tired, and likely to pretend a chair counted as a bed if someone put another report in my hands.

There were no reports on the table.

There was water, bread, and a note from Mary stating that the afternoon council could proceed without my attendance.

Adriana helped me unfasten my coat.

“Did you find his brother?”

“Yes.”

“And bring him home?”

“They are arguing in the infirmary.”

She smiled and pressed her forehead against my chest.

For a moment, I simply held her.

Then she took my hand and led me toward the bed.

I woke in the late afternoon to sunlight across the coverlet and the sound of children beyond the open door.

Julian was explaining something about sails.

Garrick Valewood corrected him gently. Carol objected to a boat that could not go in whichever direction she wanted. Seraphina suggested more wind. Ignatius wanted to put the wooden bird aboard.

I sat up slowly.

Evelyn, reading in the chair nearby, looked over her book.

“Better?”

“Considerably.”

“Good. They have been waiting to hear about the ship.”

I looked toward the doorway.

“Which version?”

She smiled.

“The one where people found their way home.”

We told it around the little wooden boat.

I left out the parts that would have followed the younger children into their sleep. Julian listened closely enough that I knew he understood there were things to ask about later.

For now, he wanted to know how a damaged ship could steer.

Garrick found a scrap of wood and showed him how an oar set behind the stern could turn the hull.

Carol put three figures aboard.

Ignatius added the bird.

Seraphina supplied a carefully controlled puff of warm air that moved nothing except the corner of Julian’s paper.

Evelyn gently redirected her attention before the experiment grew more ambitious.

Adriana sat beside me with one hand resting loosely over her stomach.

“A lantern,” Julian said after a while. “That was how you knew?”

“It was how we knew to look closer.”

He considered that, then asked his grandfather whether they could make a tiny one for the boat.

“Wooden,” Garrick said immediately.

Julian smiled.

“I know.”

The last report arrived near supper.

The remaining ships had moved farther from Orselle’s harbor. They were still watching the coast, but one had been sent south, and the others now kept boats between their own crews when transferring supplies.

We had not won the sea.

We had opened a little more room upon it.

I set the report aside and looked at the unfinished lantern Julian had left near the wooden boat.

Beyond our walls, patrols would be watching real lights through the night.

Some would mean danger.

Some might mean that someone, aboard a ship they had never chosen, had finally found the courage to ask for help.

I hoped we would be close enough to see.