For the first time, Subira found herself wishing she'd paid more attention to her father and older brother when they got into one of their endless, wearisome, and unbelievably comprehensive discussions about shipbuilding and engineering. At the time, just listening to them for ten minutes could put her to sleep; they weren't exciting subjects, after all, not like navigation or astronomy. Now, though, Subira was willing to admit that maybe she should have tried to listen anyway. Shipbuilding wasn't the glamorous subject in the world by any means, but clearly it had its uses.
She gritted her teeth and tried to think about happier moments, about the joy and love she had felt when she'd first set eyes on the freshly built Lark. It would never look that new and beautiful again, she thought ruefully, opening her eyes to behold the sea-tossed ruin that the ship had become. If they all worked as hard as they could, though, they could bring her back to the docks of Ahnatep, where she could be refitted and restored to her full glory.
If they could patch her up in time…
Glancing up at the sky one more time, Subira rushed forward, anxious to assist with the repairs. A group of older, experienced crew members with knowledge of shipwrighting had already gathered around the captain, explaining heatedly that they needed more time.
"There's no way we can get a new mast by sundown," the oldest oarsman kept insisting. "With the way this one got snapped in half, we'd have to chop down a whole new tree and lop off its branches before we could have a new mast. And if you haven't noticed…"
The muscular old oarsman gestured at the endless acres of yellowing grassland around them.
"There aren't exactly a lot of trees here, yes, I know," the captain finished the sentence impatiently. "Unfortunately, there are a lot of wild and angry horsemen here, all of whom would like nothing better than to skewer us on those long spears of theirs. We're lucky that they agreed to let us live until sundown at all. They look even less civilized than the Chaktawe and a lot more vicious."
He let out a rasping cough. "Getting a new mast is out of the question, then. We can't afford to take the time to look for stray trees in this wilderness. Can we get home without a mast and sail?"
"Without a mast and sail!" the oarsman spluttered. "We'd be better off swimming! There's no way we can get home without a sail!"
"Actually," Subira broke in unexpectedly, "there might be."
As all eyes turned toward her, some disbelieving, some hoping against hope, she plunged on, "If we've been blown north as it seems, and if the maps in the cartographer's chamber at home are correct, then we may be able to limp home by rowing. The currents along the coast tend to run south-southwest in the wintertime. If we ride the currents, we should make it back to Ahnatep in about four or five days."
Low, thoughtful murmurs greeted her words, the expressions on the crew's faces slowly lightening into something like relief, or at least resignation.
In a gentle, but grave voice punctuated by another scratchy cough, the captain asked, "And what about shoals and reefs? What if we run into one of those again?"
Subira flushed hotly, averting her face from him. "The coast should be relatively clear of those," she told him, "and at the rate we would be traveling, we should easily be able to see and avoid any reefs before they'd be a danger to us."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the captain nodding and quietly absorbing her words. On the other side of him, some of the oarsmen protested that the Lark was primarily a sailing ship, with its ten auxiliary oars only to be used briefly in times of no wind. One crew member gave her a poisonous glance and rose onto his tiptoes to whisper into the captain's ear, no doubt to argue against her.
Subira twisted her head and quelled him with a harsh glare of her own. She had erred most grievously, but she was still the ship's navigator and a daughter of the South Winds, and she had bled for this ship just like he had. He had no right to whisper insults against her. The crew member subsided, without the captain even noticing the exchange.
At length, the captain took a deep breath and began snapping out orders.
"All right! It seems we'll have no sail to get us home, so let us make use of what we do have," he called out in his powerful voice, broken only slightly by another rough cough. "Take what's left of the mast and make planks of it as best you can, to seal up the breach in the hull. The rest of you, break up some of the barrels and heat them. Collect the pitch and tar to hold the planking in place. Go!"
United by his decisiveness, the crew hurried to obey his orders, salvaging blades and axes to chop apart the remains of the mast in a wild storm of flying wood chips. Others hurried to improvise resin from the wooden barrels that held their formerly precious cargo of wadj and dyes. At first, the horsemen of the grasslands murmured to see the sailors lighting fires along the shoreline, but in time they leaned forward in curiosity to watch as Subira and her fellow sailors rendered a crude, resinous tar from the barrel wood. With infinite care, they collected the tar and carried it toward the gaping hole in the hull, where the captain led them in nailing and binding the splintery new planks in place and plastering them liberally with waterproof tar.
It was hot, tedious, and messy work, and Subira's arms and shoulders were aching long before the last barrels were rendered. The wound on her arm smarted fiercely in the heat, and she had to stop twice to tear fresh strips of linen from her sheath dress and bind the wound again. Despite his racking cough, the captain seemed to be everywhere and threw himself into the difficult labour of repairing the ship.
As the sun descended in the sky, the breach in the hull was gradually closed, plank by plank, inch by inch. The more tired they grew, the more feverishly they worked, for they knew that time was slipping past. The memory of the spear's sharp point sinking into her arm made Subira wield the bucket of tar with furious, frenzied strength as she poured the sticky, boiling resin over every inch of plank.
The sky was just beginning to turn purple as the crew fanned the last of the tar dry and began hauling the ship upright, back into the water. True to his word, the captain delivered the bales of undamaged wadj and bundles of fine dyes to the white-haired elder himself. Low grumbles and snickers echoed from the wild horsemen's ranks as the Lark slowly and inexorably slid back into the water.
"Laviku be blessed," Subira gasped, staring back at the horsemen on the shore and pressing one hand to her arm, "we did it. We're not dead. We made it."
Beside her, the captain fell into a furious coughing fit as they watched the horsemen turn away with almost perfect unity and careless grace. She turned to him.
"Go below," she said softly. "That cough sounds terrible, and you'll only sicken if you stay out in the open air any longer."
"No," the captain gasped, "I have to get us home."
"We'll get home," she reassured him. "You got us this far. You kept us alive longer than we should have. Now we just have to let the sea take us home. Go below. We'll call for you the moment we need you."
As the captain reluctantly went to rest below, Subira took the oarmaster's place and began calling out a slow, but steady beat to the exhausted crew. The currents that she had predicted would be there had already taken hold of the ship and were propelling her southward, back toward Ahnatep. Their water and stores would last them perhaps five days, just barely long enough for them to return to the city in time. Despite all that she knew would await her -- the condemnations for her mistake, the humiliation, and the disappointment of her family -- going home was all that Subira wanted now.
They would make it. They had to. And then…she would face whatever she had to face, when the time came. |
|
by Subira on January 8th, 2012, 4:05 am 
