Brotherband 4: Slaves of Socorro (24 page)

The last few words took Hal by surprise. ‘We?’

Gilan nodded. ‘Of course. He’s broken Araluan law. He’s taken Araluan citizens prisoner. I’ve taken an oath to uphold the laws and protect the citizens of my country. Naturally I’m coming with you.’

‘But what about the King?’ Hal asked.

‘He’ll just have to wait his turn,’ Gilan said. Then he added hastily, ‘But don’t tell him I put it quite that way, all right?’

‘Thorn, what do you think?’ Hal asked.

The burly sea wolf shrugged his muscular shoulders and grinned disarmingly.

‘When did I ever think about anything?’ he asked. ‘And if I did, when did people ever take any notice of me? You do the thinking and planning, Hal. That’s what you’re good at. Just get me close enough to Tursgud so I can part his hair with an axe, or knock his block off with my club-hand. That’s what I’m good at.’

‘Anyone else got anything to say?’ Hal asked. He expected silence and was a little taken aback when Edvin spoke up.

‘This Socorro place, how far away is it?’

Hal glanced at the Ranger and raised an eyebrow in a question. Gilan considered for a second.

‘Maybe four days’ sailing,’ he said. ‘If the wind holds steady.’

Thorn sniffed the air. ‘Let’s hope it does. We deserve a little luck.’

Hal moved to the locker in the stern where he kept his charts and sailing notes. He rummaged around and found a chart of the Narrow Sea and the entrance to the Constant Sea. He spread the chart out on top of the locker and traced his finger down the coastline of Arrida, past the opening to the Constant Sea and on south to the Endless Ocean, following the coastline until he came to a large town marked there.

‘Here,’ he said. He frowned thoughtfully as he estimated the distance from the point where they were now. ‘Yes. A good four days. A little more if we have this headwind all the way.’ He glanced at Edvin again. ‘Why do you ask?’ He sensed there was something more than curiosity behind Edvin’s question. Edvin was the practical member of the crew.

Edvin twisted his lips together as he thought, then answered. ‘I don’t have provisions for eight days – four there and four back,’ he said. ‘I assume you plan on coming back?’

Hal smiled. ‘That was my intention.’

‘Well, when we left Cresthaven, I only grabbed a few necessities. I’ll need to put in to buy supplies if we’re going haring off on this trip of yours.’

Hal raised his eyebrows in stunned surprise. ‘Haring off?’ he said, then repeated, ‘Haring off? Is that how you describe it?’

Edvin nodded immediately. ‘Yes,’ he said simply.

Hal couldn’t help grinning at his serious manner. He checked the chart quickly. ‘All right, Edvin. We’ll put into this little port here – Polperran. The notes say there’s a market so you should be able to get everything you want there.’

‘That’ll do just fine,’ Edvin told him.

‘Then let’s get under way. Ulf and Wulf, on the oars, please. Ingvar and Stig, let’s get that anchor up.’

Hal took the tiller and waited until Ingvar and Stig began hauling in the massive stone. Water from the soaked cable puddled on the deck as they brought it in, with Stefan busy coiling the thick jute rope as they recovered it.

Once he felt the anchor break free of the rocky bottom, Stig called, ‘Anchor’s clear!’

Hal ordered Stefan into the bows again. When he was settled in position, Hal ordered the twins to begin rowing. Slowly,
Heron
crept forward.

‘Go left!’ Stefan called, pointing with one arm out to port. When the ship was on the right track, he held his other hand up, arm bent at the elbow, and Hal centred the tiller, creeping forward at a snail’s pace, waiting tensed for the next helm order.

And so, slowly, painstakingly, they crept out of the shoals until they were in clear water. Then, with a sigh of relief, Hal had the twins ship their oars and hoist the starboard sail.

Eagerly, as if she were glad to be back in her natural element,
Heron
began to slide smoothly through the waters, heading south for Socorro.

T
hey sailed south on a series of long, smooth tacks, zigzagging across the south wind and rolling the kilometres under their keel.

On the third day, Hal passed the tiller to Stig and was consulting his chart of Arrida’s western coastline, facing the widths of the Endless Ocean, when Gilan stepped close to the chart table – which was actually the lid of the locker where Hal kept his charts and navigation notes.

‘Are you free to talk?’ Gilan asked. He knew Hal was still thinking about what they would do when they reached Socorro and wanted to see if he could help plan their next move. Hal looked up, smiled and gestured for the Ranger to join him.

Thorn watched from his favoured spot by the mast. He nodded to himself, satisfied with the sight of Hal and Gilan co-operating. Two good minds at work there, he thought.

‘What do you have in mind?’ Gilan asked. ‘We should reach Socorro the day after tomorrow.’

Hal stabbed his finger at the chart. There was a narrow bay approximately five kilometres north of Socorro. The chart showed no sign of any settlement or village there.

‘I plan to put in here, make camp, then go overland and reconnoitre,’ he said. ‘I want to make sure Tursgud is there, and see where
Nightwolf
is moored. Plus I want to check out the layout of Socorro for myself– where the slave markets are, where the slaves are held, what sort of garrison they have there and so on. There’s no point in barging in blind and hoping for the best.’

Gilan nodded. ‘Socorro is a cosmopolitan city,’ he said. ‘It’s a hodge-podge of different races from around the Constant Sea and the coast of the Endless Ocean. They’re all drawn by the slave markets, of course. But even so, your Skandians, with their fair complexions, northern clothing and heavy builds, will stand out in the crowd. Might be best if someone went in ahead of the rest of you and bought local clothing. The Socorrans wear long flowing robes and headdresses that should conceal your men pretty well. Except Ingvar,’ he added. ‘It’ll be pretty hard to conceal him.’

Hal grinned. Ingvar did tend to stand out in a crowd. ‘Are you volunteering?’

‘I thought maybe Lydia and I could go in and pick up the disguises we’ll need. She’s olive skinned. She’ll pass for a local pretty easily. Plus I imagine she’s good in a fight, if that’s what it comes to.’

‘She’s better than good,’ Hal told him. ‘I’d have her guarding my back any day.’

‘That’s good enough for me,’ Gilan said. Neither of them questioned whether Lydia would be willing to join Gilan on the expedition he was planning. They knew that she would go without hesitation.

‘Then,’ he continued, ‘once you’ve got some local clothes, you can go into the city yourself and look around. Or, if you like, I could scout the place for you?’ He made the offer, but he knew what Hal’s reply would be. The young skirl was shaking his head before Gilan finished the sentence.

‘No. I said I want to see it for myself,’ he said, his eyes riveted on the chart before him. ‘If you go on someone else’s information, there’s always something left out. No offence,’ he concluded, looking up to see if Gilan was offended.

The tall Ranger smiled his understanding. ‘None taken. I’d feel the same way.’

There were a few seconds’ silence before Gilan raised another point that had been on his mind.

‘You Skandians, you recognise a ship if you’ve seen it before, don’t you?’

Hal nodded. ‘We’ve been around ships all our lives. It’s no special skill. We get to recognise features of a ship the way you recognise a face if you’ve seen it before – or a person’s way of moving and holding himself. Why do you ask?’

‘Well, I assume this Tursgud is the same. So what’s to stop him recognising this ship when you sail into Socorro harbour? I’m guessing that’s what you plan to do?’

‘Yes. I don’t plan on making my way back to this bay overland,’ Hal said, pointing to the inlet they had discussed earlier. ‘Once we’ve got the prisoners free, we want to get away as fast as possible.’

‘So my point stands. Won’t Tursgud recognise your ship? After all, it’s a pretty distinctive sail plan, isn’t it?’

‘I see what you mean. But I plan to disguise the
Heron
,’ Hal replied. Gilan cocked his head to one side in an unspoken question, and Hal pointed to the smooth, swelling shape of the triangular sail. ‘We’ll take down those yardarms and sails and I’ll rig a new extension to make the mast taller, and shape a new yardarm to take a square sail – I can cut that from our canvas weather shelter. Then I’ll take down the heron figurehead on the bowpost and replace it with something different.

‘If Tursgud is looking for us – and he probably won’t be – he’ll be looking for that triangular sail. He won’t look twice at a small square-rigger. We might even scuff up the paint on the hull a little,’ he added thoughtfully.

Gilan pursed his lips, looking up at the graceful, wing-like sail, visualising a clumsy square sail in its place. Hal would be changing the ship’s most distinctive feature, he thought. That should throw Tursgud off the scent.

‘Will she still handle well with a square sail?’

Hal snorted in sardonic amusement. ‘She’ll handle, but not well. She’ll be clumsy and she won’t beat into the wind the way she’s doing now. But the important thing is, she’ll
look
completely different. Tursgud won’t recognise us – particularly if the crew are all in Socorran clothing. We’ll look like a small local coaster. On top of that, once I’ve seen where
Nightwolf
is moored, I’ll give her a wide berth. Odds are they won’t see us until we’ve got the prisoners on board and we’re heading out to sea. And by then I’ll have our normal rig back up again.’

‘They’ll come after you, of course,’ Gilan said.

Hal shrugged. ‘I’ll face that problem when we get to it. With any luck, the wind will favour us. Otherwise, we’ll have to make sure we get a head start on them, so we’re out to sea before they have a chance to catch up.’

‘Looks like you’ve thought of everything,’ Gilan said.

‘No. I know I haven’t. There’s always something you haven’t thought of. But over the next few days, I’ll try to fill in as many gaps as I can.’

Gilan clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I like the way you think,’ he said quietly. ‘It never pays to be overconfident and it’s always a good idea to assume that something will go wrong.’

There was nothing patronising about his attitude and Hal found himself feeling secretly pleased at the Ranger’s words. His self-confidence had taken a beating after his mistake in pursuing Tursgud into the shoal waters several days before. He had spent the previous day thinking over the plan he was formulating, trying to see where he had missed an important point. That was why he had been glad to share his thinking with the Ranger. He had wanted an unbiased opinion and he’d sensed that he would get one from the tall Araluan. His own crew tended to believe that he could do no wrong. It was flattering but, in a situation like this, unhelpful.

‘We’ll see how things develop,’ he said, folding the map and putting it back in the chart locker they had been using as a table.

‘Land! Land to the east!’ It was Jesper, taking a turn on the lookout position. He was pointing to their left and instinctively the other crew members moved to that side of the ship. On the horizon was a grey, indistinct humped shape rising from the sea. A few seconds later, Jesper called again, pointing to another land mass, south of the first.

‘Land! Another cape! South-east of us!’

Hal shaded his eyes, looking at the two masses of solid land, with a gap of some thirty kilometres between them.

‘It’s the two headlands of the Narrows of Ikbar,’ he said. ‘That’s the entrance to the Constant Sea.’ The southern point of Iberion and the northernmost point of the Arridan coast formed the headlands that marked the narrow strait leading into the Constant Sea.

Ulf and Wulf had turned on their benches and were peering, like the others, at the strait. Hal saw a quick look pass between the two of them and made a mental note not to reply to anything they said.

‘Who’s Ikbar?’ Ulf said. His brother turned away to hide a smirk.

Gilan glanced at Hal curiously, saw he wasn’t planning to answer, so spoke in his place. ‘He was an Arridan demigod, I believe.’

‘Oh, don’t,’ Hal said quietly. But it was too late.

‘And what did he do?’

‘Well, Ulf, I’m not sure that he did too much of anything,’ Gilan said. ‘Just paraded round being a demigod.’

‘Just a moment,’ Hal said, taken aback. ‘How did you know that was Ulf?’

It was Gilan’s turn to be surprised. He tapped his right forearm. ‘He’s got a scar, right here,’ he said. ‘See?’

‘You mean like this?’ the other twin said, grinning widely and baring his forearm to show an identical scar. Gilan looked from one to the other, not sure what to say.

In the
Heron
’s final duel with the pirate ship
Raven
, Ulf had been wounded on the forearm by one of the pirates when he was boarding. As he fell back, his brother surged forward to avenge him – and received exactly the same injury. It was obviously a favourite tactic of the enemy swordsman to strike at his opponent’s forearm – although Hal and Stig sometimes thought Wulf took the wound on purpose so that people couldn’t distinguish between them.