The Mark of Ran Read Online Free PDF Page B

orders to remain constant. It was cold, but bright, as if spring had come early to the Wrywind. The swell never grew taller than half a fathom, and
Gannet
puddled along equably, as though she had been made for this crossing of the open sea.
    On the fifth morning Rol sighted land fine on the larboard bow, a tall blue line of hills, and a white-tipped mountain in their midst. He was in the coastal waters of Gascar now, at the center of the Seven Isles. Some eighty leagues he had sailed, and a few more would see his landfall. He studied the sunlit hills as though he might decipher the answers to all his questions on their slopes.
     
    The wind dropped to a moderate breeze, and as
Gannet
coasted with Gascar’s hills to port, Rol passed a few late inshore fishermen taking advantage of the unseasonally clement weather. They stopped and stared at the strange sail before continuing to haul in their catch. There was little enough in the coastal grounds this late in the year, but a last netful might mean the difference between hunger and plenty at the tail end of winter.
    Rol rounded a long promontory, wooded with tall green pine and fir and girded with gray rock. A square-rigged caravel went by, beating into the wind, her crew singing in the shrouds. Thanks to his grandfather’s endless stories Rol knew that the gilded porpoise at her stem meant she was out of Corso, to the southwest. The Corsoans, short and dark as seals, were consummate deepwater sailors, and their pilots were in high demand over all the Twelve Seas. He felt a momentary thrill of excitement. All those tall tales, they had been an education, in a way. Perhaps Grandfather had been preparing him for a day such as this.
    Ascari, capital of Gascar. It shone bright in the sunlight at the foot of its long bay. White houses with red clay roofs, a haze of smoke hanging over them, and in the harbor at the city’s foot half a hundred vessels of all ports and builds, cradled by a whitewashed mole of squared stone that arced protectively into the glittering waters of the bay. He had made very good time, and Grandfather’s sailing directions, brief though they had been, were still accurate.
    The hills surrounding the port killed the wind, and the water in the bay was calm as glass. Rol broke out
Gannet
’s heavy sweeps, and for a sweating couple of hours labored first at one and then the other, as if propelling an oversized rowing boat. A swift six-man cutter put out into the bay and hailed him as he worked. The helmsman was grinning through a salt-gray beard.
    “Hot work, even on a cold day, young ’un! We’ll tow you in, if you have a mind, take you right snug up to the wharves. What say you?”
    Rol wiped his forehead, panting. “How much?”
    The men in the cutter looked at one another. The helmsman’s grin widened. “No more than you can afford, with a pretty face like that. Give me, Aradas, a roll in the hold and we’ll scull you to port in style.”
    Rol bared his teeth, and spat over the side. “Too dear for my liking. I’d sooner sweat.”
    Aradas laughed. “Suit yourself, my proud one!” and the cutter was sculled rapidly away with its crew hooting and calling derisively.
    It was late evening by the time Rol had finally made
Gannet
fast fore and aft to stone bollards set in the harbor mole. By that time he was spent, his back aching and his hands blistered—except where the strange scar had somehow protected one palm. The first stars were out, and his breath was a pale fog before his face. He sat on the mole by
Gannet
for a while, feeling the cold stiffen his sore muscles and start to work a chill within his sweat-soaked clothing. At the base of the mole Ascari was a maze of yellow lights, and he could hear raucous laughter, shouts, clattering cart-wheels. A burst of song from the open door of a tavern. At his feet the waters of the bay plopped and hissed and
Gannet
floated, creaking. It was the ebb of the tide.
    Rol had never felt so alone.
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