This Forsaken Earth Read Online Free PDF Page B

and crew cannot hold off the entire navy of a great power single-handed.”
    Gallico opened his mouth, but what he said was not what had been in his eyes. “Shall we weigh anchor, then?”
    “Yes. And set a course due east. Get us out in blue water, Gallico.”
    “You’re the captain,” the halftroll said, and his huge frame disappeared through the doorway with startling swiftness.
    Rol stared after him. I’m become like Grandfather, he thought. I can mix truth and lies and make them sound the same.
     
    Due east they steered, the wind on the larboard bow and the yards braced round as sharp as they could haul them, a quilt of staysails keeping the courses company, and all bellied taut and drawing with creaks and groans as the wind continued to freshen into a blue-water blow. They made better than forty leagues a day for three days, and then the wind began to fail them. It backed round, became whimsical and inconstant, and both watches grew weary trying to guess its next move. Four more days of wallowing and twitching and cursing Ran under their breath for his capriciousness, and then the storm-god or his spouse grew tired of toying with them, and let go their bag of winds.
    The true southerlies off Cavaillon began, no more than a zephyr at first, then growing in brashness until the air was washing through the rigging with a hiss of glee. They altered course to west-nor’west, took the wind on the quarter, and spread courses, topsails, topgallants, every stitch of canvas they could rig on the yards. They were four hundred long sea-miles from Ganesh Ka, but at this constant ten knots they would run it off in two days.
    Or would have, if Ran had not decided otherwise. The splendid southerlies slackened a day later to a steady breeze, no more. Their speed came down, and soon they were cruising along sedately with the beakhead barely pitching. They resigned themselves to it, as mariners must if they are not to go mad, and the convalescing wounded, at least, were glad of the ship’s easier pace. There was less banging of stumps or twisting of broken limbs, or bumping of burnt flesh.
    Thirteen days and nights had passed since the battle with the Bionari. Though Kier Eiserne made a formal and lugubrious report to his captain every morning concerning the fragile state of the Revenant ’s hull, the days of sailing were uneventful. They were well found in stores, fresh and preserved, and all of the more obvious damage to the ship had been repaired, even down to the replacing of starboard number three’s gun carriage. Giffon was able to come on deck and sun his pallid, moon-shaped face more often as his charges healed, and Rol made a point of inviting him to dinner in the great cabin more than once.
    The Revenant ’s captain never dined alone. Gallico and Elias Creed were permanent fixtures—Gallico seated on a specially strengthened stool—and often the gunner or the bosun or the carpenter would be invited also. The youngest of the topmen would serve the food, one standing behind each diner, and they were compensated for their servitude by drinking glass for glass with the guests and joining in the conversation whenever the whim took them. Though the ship’s company was in many ways a rigid hierarchy, it was not an oppressive one, and when dinner was over the diners would repair to the quarterdeck and join in the tale-telling and song-singing which usually sprang up in the waist with the last dogwatch.
    A clear night sky, with skeins of cloud drifting ghostlike before the magnificent sweep of the stars. The moon was a wide-bladed sickle halfway back to the full, and the ship was coursing along at no more than four knots, the sails drawing without strain to the yards. Rol stood at the break of the quarterdeck and listened along with most of the crew as the bosun, Fell Amertaz, a man as hard and fearsome as any pirate in a landsman’s imagination, sang a ballad of his native Augsmark, the tears trickling unashamedly into his