Passage to Dawn Page 9

Chapter 8 SEA TALK

 

  Repairs continued on the Sea Sprite for two days, preventing her from putting up her sails in full. Even so, with the strong breeze rushing down from the north, the swift schooner made fine speed southward, her sails full of wind. In just over three days, she ran the four hundred miles from Mintarn to the southeasternmost point of the great Moonshae Isles, and Deudermont turned her to the west, due west, for the open sea, running just off the southern coast of the Moonshaes.

  "We'll run for two days with the Moonshaes in sight," Deudermont informed the crew.

  "Are you not making for Corwell?" Dunkin Tallmast, who always seemed to be asking questions, was quick to interrupt. "I think I should like to be let off at Corwell. A beautiful city, by all accounts. " The little man's cavalier attitude was diminished considerably when he began tugging at his ear, that nervous tick that revealed his trepidation.

  Deudermont ignored the pesty man. "If the wind holds, tomorrow, mid-morning, we'll pass a point called Dragon Head," he

  explained. "Then we'll cross a wide harbor and put in at a village, Wyngate, for our last provisions. Then it's the open sea, twenty days out, I figure, twice that without the wind. "

  The seasoned crew understood it would be a difficult journey, but they bobbed their heads in accord, not a word of protest from the lot of them-with one exception.

  "Wyngate?" Dunkin protested. "Why, I'll be a month in just getting out of the place!"

  "Whoever said that you were leaving?" Deudermont asked him. "We shall put you off where we choose . . . after we return. "

  That shut the man up, or at least changed his train of thought, for before Deudermont could get three steps away, Dunkin shouted at him. "If you return, you mean!" he called. "You have lived along the Sword Coast all your stinking life. You know the rumors, Deudermont. "

  The captain turned slowly, ominously, to face the man. Both were quite conscious of the murmurs Dunkin's words had caused, a ripple of whispers all across the schooner's deck.

  Dunkin did not look at Deudermont directly, but scanned the deck, his wry smile widening as he considered the suddenly nervous crew. "Ah," he moaned suspiciously. "You haven't told them. "

  Deudermont didn't blink.

  "You wouldn't be leading them to an island of legend without telling them all of the legend?" Dunkin asked in sly tones.

  "The man enjoys intrigue," Catti-brie whispered to Drizzt.

  "He enjoys trouble," Drizzt whispered back.

  Deudermont spent a long moment studying Dunkin, the captain's stern gaze gradually stealing the little man's stupid grin. Then Deudermont looked to Drizzt-he always looked to Drizzt when he needed support-and to Catti-brie, and neither seemed to care much for Dunkin's ominous words. Bolstered by their confidence, the captain turned to Harkle, who seemed distracted, as usual, as though he hadn't even heard the conversation. The rest of the crew, at least those near to the wheel, had heard, and Deudermont noted more than one nervous movement among them.

  "Tell us what?" Robillard asked bluntly. "What is the great mystery of Caerwich?"

  "Ah, Captain Deudermont," Dunkin said with a disappointed sigh.

  "Caerwich," Deudermont began calmly, "may be no more than a legend. Few claim to have been there, for it is far, far away from any civilized lands. "

  "That much, we already know," Robillard remarked. "But if it is just a legend and we sail empty waters until we are forced to return, then that bodes no ill for the Sea Sprite. What is it that this insignificant worm hints at?"

  Deudermont looked hard at Dunkin, wanting at that moment to throttle the man. "Some of those who have been there," the captain began, choosing his words carefully, "claim that they witnessed unusual visions. "

  "Haunted!" Dunkin interrupted dramatically. "Caerwich is a haunted island," he proclaimed, dancing around to cast a wild-eyed stare at each of the crewmen near to him. "Ghost ships and witches!"

  "Enough," Drizzt said to the man.

  "Shut yer mouth," Catti-brie added.

  Dunkin did shut up, but he returned the young woman's stare with a superior look, thinking he had won the day.

  "They are rumors," Deudermont said loudly. "Rumors I would have told you when we reached Wyngate, but not before. " The captain paused and looked around once more, this time his expression begging friendship and loyalty from the men who had been with him so very long. "I would have told you," he insisted, and everyone aboard, except perhaps for Dunkin, believed him.

  "This sail is not for Waterdeep, nor against any pirates," Deudermont went on. "It is for me, something I must do because of the incident on Dock Street. Perhaps the Sea Sprite sails into trouble, perhaps to answers, but I must go, whatever the outcome. I would not force any of you to go along. You signed on to chase pirates, and in that regard, you have been the finest crew any captain could wish for. "

  Again came a pause, a long one, with the captain alternately meeting the gaze of each man, and of Catti-brie and Drizzt, last of all.

  "Any who do not wish to sail to Caerwich may disembark at Wyngate," Deudermont offered. It was an extraordinary offer that widened the eyes of every crewman. "You will be paid for your time aboard the Sea Sprite, plus a bonus from my personal coffers. When we return . . . "

  "If you return," Dunkin put in, but Deudermont simply ignored the troublemaker.

  "When we return," Deudermont said again, more firmly, "we will pick you up at Wyngate. There will be no questions of loyalty asked, and no retribution by any who voyaged to Caerwich. "

  Robillard snorted. "Is not every island haunted?" he asked with a laugh. "If a sailor were to believe every whispered rumor, he'd not dare sail the Sword Coast at all. Sea monsters off of Waterdeep! Coiled serpents of Ruathym! Pirates of the Nelanther!"

  "That last one's true enough!" one sailor piped in, and everyone gave a hearty laugh.

  "So it is!" Robillard replied. "Seems some of the rumors might be true. "

  "And if Caerwich is haunted?" another sailor asked.

  "Then we'll dock in the morning," Waillan answered, hanging over the rail of the poop deck, "and put out in the afternoon. "

  "And leave the night for the ghosts!" yet another man finished, again to hearty laughter.

  Deudermont was truly appreciative, especially to Robillard, from whom the captain had never expected such support. When the roll was subsequently called, not a single one of the Sea Sprite's crew meant to get off at Wyngate.

  Dunkin listened to it all in sheer astonishment. He kept trying to put in some nasty flavoring to the rumors of haunted Caerwich, tales of decapitation and the like, but he was shouted or laughed down every time.

  Neither Drizzt nor Catti-brie was surprised by the unanimous support for Deudermont. The Sea Sprite's crew, they both knew, had been together long enough to become true friends. These two companions had enough experience with friendship to understand loyalty.

  "Well, I mean to get off at Wyngate," a flustered Dunkin said at last. "I'll not follow any man to haunted Caerwich. "

  "Who ever offered you such a choice?" Drizzt asked him.

  "Captain Deudermont just said . . . " Dunkin started, turning to Deudermont and pointing an accusing finger the captain's way. The words stuck in his throat, though, for Deudermont's sour expression explained that the offer wasn't meant for him.

  "You cannot keep me here!" Dunkin protested. "I am the emissary of his tyrancy. I should have been released in Mintarn. "

  "You would have been killed in Mintarn Harbor," Drizzt reminded him.

  "You will be released in Mintarn," Deudermont promised.

  Dunkin knew what that meant.

  "When we might have a proper inquiry as to your part in the attempted ambush of the Sea Sprite," Deudermont went on.

  "I did nothing!" Dunkin cried, tugging his ear.

  "It is convenient that so soon after you informed me that Drizzt's presence aboard the Sea S
prite was preventing any pirate attacks, you arranged to take Drizzt from our decks," Deudermont said.

  "I was almost killed by that very ambush!" Dunkin roared in protest. "If I had known that the scalawags were after you, I never would have rowed out into the harbor. "

  Deudermont looked to Drizzt.

  "True enough," the drow admitted.

  Deudermont paused a moment, then nodded. "I find you innocent," he said to Dunkin, "and agree to return you to Mintarn after our journey to Caerwich. "

  "You will pick me back up at Wyngate, then," Dunkin reasoned, but Deudermont shook his head.

  "Too far," the captain replied. "None of my crew will disembark at Wyngate. And now that I must return to Mintarn, I will return from Caerwich by a northerly route, passing north of the Moonshaes. "

  "Then let me off at Wyngate and I'll find a way to meet you in a northern town of the Moonshaes," Dunkin offered.

  "Which northern town?" Deudermont asked him.

  Dunkin had no answers.

  "If you wish to leave, you may get off at Wyngate," Deudermont offered. "But I cannot guarantee your passage back to Mintarn from there. " With that, Deudermont turned and walked to his cabin. He entered without looking back, leaving a frustrated Dunkin standing droop-shouldered by the wheel.

  "With your knowledge of Caerwich, you will be a great asset to us," Drizzt said to the man, patting him on the shoulder. "Your presence would be appreciated. "

  "Ah, come along then," Catti-brie added. "Ye'll find a bit o' adventure and a bit o' friendship. What more could ye be asking for?"

  Drizzt and Catti-brie walked away, exchanging hopeful smiles.

  "I am new to this, too," Harkle Harpell offered to Dunkin. "But I am sure that it will be fun. " Smiling, bobbing his head stupidly, the dimpled wizard bounded away.

  Dunkin moved to the rail, shaking his head. He did like the Sea Sprite, he had to admit. Orphaned at a young age, Dunkin had taken to sea as a boy and had subsequently spent the bulk of his next twenty years as a hand on pirate vessels, working among the most ruthless scalawags on the Sword Coast. Never had he seen a ship so full of comradery, and their escape from the pirate ambush in Mintarn had been positively thrilling.

  He had been nothing but a complaining fool over the last few days, and Deudermont had to know of his past, or at least to suspect that Dunkin had done some pirating in his day. Yet the captain was not treating him as a prisoner, and, by the words of the dark elf, they actually wanted him to go along to Caerwich.

  Dunkin leaned over the rail, took note of a school of bottle-nosed dolphins dancing in the prow waves and lost himself in thought.

  * * * * *

  "You're thinking about them again," came a voice behind the sullen dwarf. It was the voice of Regis, the voice of a friend.

  Bruenor didn't answer. He stood on a high spot along the rim of the dwarven valley, four miles south of Kelvin's Cairn, a place known as Bruenor's Climb. This was the dwarf king's place of reflection. Though this column of piled stones was not high above the flat tundra, barely fifty feet up, every time he climbed the steep and narrow trail it seemed to Bruenor as though he was ascending to the very stars.

  Regis huffed and puffed as he clambered up the last twenty feet to stand beside his bearded friend. "I do love it up here at night," the halfling remarked. "But there will not be much night in another month!" he continued happily, trying to bring a smile to Bruenor's face. His observation was true enough. Far, far in the north, Icewind Dale's summer days were long indeed, but only a few hours of sun graced the winter sky.

  "Not a lot o' time up here," Bruenor agreed. "Time I'm wantin' to spend alone. " He turned to Regis as he spoke, and even in the darkness, the halfling could make out the scowling visage.

  Regis knew the truth of that expression. Bruenor was more bark than bite.

  "You would not be happy up here alone," the halfling countered. "You would think of Drizzt and Catti-brie, and miss them as much as I miss them, and then you would be a veritable growling yeti in the morning. I cannot have that, of course," the half-ling said, waggling a finger in the air. "In fact, a dozen dwarves begged me to come out here and keep up your cheer. "

  Bruenor huffed, but had no reasonable response. He turned away from Regis, mostly because he did not want the halfling to see the hint of a smile turning up the corners of his mouth. In the six years since Drizzt and Catti-brie had gone away, Regis had become Bruenor's closest friend, though a certain dwarven priestess named Stumpet Rakingclaw had been almost continually by Bruenor's side, particularly of late. Giggled whispers spoke of a closer bond growing between the dwarf king and the female.

  But it was Regis who knew Bruenor best, Regis who had come out here when, Bruenor had to admit, he truly needed the company. Since the return to Icewind Dale, Drizzt and Catti-brie had been on the old dwarfs mind almost continually. The only things that had saved Bruenor from falling into a deep depression had been the sheer volume of work in trying to reopen the dwarven mines, and Regis, always there, always smiling, always assuring Bruenor that Drizzt and Catti-brie would return to him.

  "Where do you think they are?" Regis asked after a long moment of silence.

  Bruenor smiled and shrugged, looking to the south and west, and not at the halfling. "Out there," was all that he replied.

  "Out there," Regis echoed. "Drizzt and Catti-brie. And you miss them, as do I. " The halfling moved closer, put a hand on Bruenor's muscled shoulder. "And I know that you miss the cat," Regis said, once again drawing the dwarf from dark thoughts.

  Bruenor looked at him and couldn't help but grin. The mention of Guenhwyvar reminded Bruenor not only of all the conflict between himself and the panther, but also that Drizzt and Catti-brie, his two dear friends, were not alone and were more than able to take care of themselves.

  The dwarf and halfling stood for a long time that night, in silence, listening to the endless wind that gave the dale its name and feeling as though they were among the stars.

  *****

  The gathering of supplies went well at Wyngate and the Sea Sprite, fully provisioned and fully repaired, put out and soon left the Moonshaes far behind.

  The winds diminished greatly, though, just a day off the western coast of the Moonshaes. They were out in the open ocean with no land in sight.

  The schooner could not be completely calmed, not with Robillard aboard. But still, the wizard's powers were limited; he could not keep the sails full of wind for very long, and settled for a continual fluttering that moved the ship along slowly.

  Thus the days passed, uneventful and hot, the Sea Sprite rolling in the ocean swells, creaking and swaying. Deudermont ordered strict rationing three days out of Wyngate, as much to slow the rising incidents of seasickness as to preserve the food stores. At least the crew wasn't worried about pirates. Few other ships came out this far, certainly no cargo or merchant vessels, nothing lucrative enough to keep a pirate happy.

  The only enemies were the seasickness, the sunburn, and the boredom of days and days of nothing but the flat water.

  They found some excitement on the fifth day out. Drizzt, on the forward beam, spotted a tail fin, the dorsal fin of a huge shark, running parallel to the schooner. The drow yelled up to Waillan, who was in the crow's nest at the time.

  "Twenty footer!" the young man called back down, for from his high vantage point, he could make out the shadow of the great fish.

  All of the crew came on deck, yelling excitedly, taking up harpoons. Any thoughts they might have had of spearing the fish dissolved into understandable fear, though, as Waillan continued to call down numbers, as they all came to realize that the shark was not alone. The counts varied-many of the dorsal fins were hard to spot amidst the suddenly churning water-but Waillan's estimate, undoubtedly the most accurate, put the school at several hundred.

  Several hundred! And many of them were nearly as large as the one Drizzt had spotted. Word
s of excitement were fast replaced by prayers.

  The shark school stayed with the Sea Sprite throughout the day and night. Deudermont figured that the sharks did not know what to make of the vessel, and though no one spoke the words, all were thinking along the same lines, hoping that the voracious fish didn't mistake the Sea Sprite for a running whale.

  The next morning, the sharks were gone, as suddenly and inexplicably as they had come. Drizzt spent the better part of the morning walking the rails of the ship, even climbing up the mainmast to the crow's nest a few times. The sharks were gone, just gone.

  "They're not answering to us," Catti-brie remarked late that morning, meeting Drizzt as he came down the mast from one of his skyward jaunts. "Never that. Suren they're moving in ways they know, but we cannot. "

  It struck Drizzt as a simple truth, a plain reminder of how unknown the world about him really was, even to those, like Deudermont, who had spent the bulk of their lives on the sea. This watery world, and the great creatures that inhabited it, moved to rhythms that he could never truly understand. That realization, along with the fact that the horizon from every angle was nothing but flat water, reminded Drizzt of how small they really were, of how overwhelming nature could be.

  For all his training, for all his fine weapons, for all his warrior heart, the ranger was a tiny thing, a mere speck on a blue-green tapestry.

  Drizzt found that notion unsettling and comforting all at once. He was a small thing, an insignificant thing, a single swallow to the fish that had easily paced the Sea Sprite. And yet, he was a part of something much bigger, a single tile on a mosaic much huger than his imagination could even comprehend.

  He draped an arm comfortably across Catti-brie's shoulder, connected himself to the tile that complimented his own, and she leaned against him.

  *****

  The winds picked up the next day, and the schooner rushed on, to the applause of every crewman. Robillard's mirth disappeared soon after, though. The wizard had spells to tell of impending weather, and he informed Deudermont that the new winds were the forerunners of a substantial storm.

  What could they do? There were no ports nearby, no land at all, and so Deudermont ordered everything battened down as much as was possible.

  What followed was among the worst nights of Catti-brie's life. It was as bad as any storm anyone aboard the schooner had ever suffered. Deudermont and the forty crewmen huddled belowdecks as the Sea Sprite rode out the storm, the long and slender ship tossing about wildly, nearly going over more than once.

  Robillard and Harkle worked frantically. Robillard was on the deck for most of the storm, sometimes having to take cover below and view the deck through a magical, disembodied eye. All the while, he enacted spells to try and counter the fierce winds. Harkle, with Guenhwyvar and a handful of crewmen beside him, scrambled about on all fours in the lowest hold, dodging rats and shifting crates of foodstuff as they inspected the hull. The Harpell had a spell to keep the area well lit, and others that could enlarge wood to seal cracks. The crewmen carried tarred lengths of rope that they hammered in between any leaking boards.

  Catti-brie was too sick to move-so were many others. The tossing got so bad at one point that many of the crew had to tie themselves down to stop from bouncing off the walls or crushing each other. Poor Dunkin got the worst of it. In one particularly bad roll, the small man, reaching at the time for an offered length of rope, went flying head over heels and slammed into a beam so violently that he dislocated a shoulder and broke his wrist.

  There was no sleep that night aboard the Sea Sprite.

  The ship was listing badly to port the next morning, but she was still afloat and the storm had passed without a single loss of life. The crew, those who were able, worked through the morning, trying to get up a single sail.

  About midday, Catti-brie called down from the crow's nest, reporting that the air was alive with birds to the north and west. Deudermont breathed a deep sigh of relief. He had feared that the storm had blown them off course and that they would not be able to recover in time to put in at the Gull Rocks, the last charted islands on the way to Caerwich. As it was, they were well to the south of their intended course, and had to work frantically, particularly poor Robillard and Harkle. Both of the wizards had bluish bags under their eyes that showed their exhaustion from both the physical and magical strain.

  Somehow, the Sea Sprite managed to veer enough to get to the rocks. The place was aptly named. The Gull Rocks were no more than a series of barren stones, most smaller than the Sea Sprite, many large enough for only two or three men to stand upon. A couple of the rocks were substantial, one nearly a mile across, but even these large ones were more white than gray, thick with guano. As the Sea Sprite neared the cluster, thousands and thousands of seagulls, a veritable cloud of them, fluttered in the air all about her, squawking angrily at the intrusion to this, their private domain.

  Deudermont found a little inlet where the water was more calm, where repairs could be done in peace, and where each of the crew could take turns off of the ship, to calm their churning stomachs, if nothing else.

  Later on that day, at the highest point on the Gull Rocks, perhaps fifty feet above sea level, Deudermont stood with Drizzt and Catti-brie. The Captain was looking south using the spyglass, though he obviously expected to find nothing but flat water.

  It had taken them nearly two weeks to cover the five hundred miles from the westernmost spur of the Moonshaes to the Gull Rocks, nearly double the time Deudermont had expected. Still, the captain remained confident that the provisions would hold and they would find their way to Caerwich. Nothing much had been said about the island since the Sea Sprite had put out of Wyngate. Nothing openly, at least, for Drizzt had overheard the nervous whispers of many of the crew, talk of ghosts and the like.

  "Five hundred behind us and five hundred to go," Deudermont said, the spyglass to his eye and his gaze to the south and west. "There is an island not far south of here where we might gain more provisions. "

  "Do we need them?" Drizzt asked.

  "Not if make good speed to Caerwich, and good speed on the return," Deudermont replied.

  "What're ye thinking then?" Catti-brie asked.

  "I grow weary of delays, and weary of the journey," Deudermont replied.

  "That's because yer fearin' what's at its end," Catti-brie reasoned bluntly. "Who's for knowin' what we'll find in Caerwich, if even there is a Caerwich?"

  "She's out there," the captain insisted.

  "We can always stop at this other island on our return," Drizzt offered. "Certainly we've enough provisions to get to Caerwich. "

  Deudermont nodded. They would make straight for Caerwich then, the last leg of their journey out. The captain knew the stars-that was all he would have available to take him from the Gull Rocks to Caerwich. He hoped that the map Tarnheel had provided was accurate.

  He hoped that Caerwich truly existed.

  And still, a part of him hoped that it did not.