Chapter 12

For a moment Green thought of leaving the ship and making his way on foot.

Miran protested loudly. “This is ridiculous. Why can you not fight on deck like two ordinary men and be satisfied if one gives the other a flesh wound? That way I won’t stand the chance of losing you, Ezkr, one of my top topmen. If you should slip, who could take your place? This green hand here?”

Ezkr ignored his captain’s indignation, knowing that the code of the Clan protected him. He spit and said, “Anybody can wield a dagger. I want to see what kind of a man this Green is aloft. Walking a yard is the best way to see the color of his blood.”

Yes, thought Green, his skin goose-pimpling. You’ll likely see my blood all right, splashed from here to the horizon when I fall!

He asked Miran if he could withdraw a moment to his tent to pray to his gods for success. Miran nodded, and Green had Amra let down the sides of his shelter while he dropped to his knees. As soon as his privacy was assured, he handed her a long turban cloth and told her to go outside. She looked surprised, but when he told her what else she was to do, she smiled and kissed him.

“You are a clever man, Alan. I was right to prefer you above any other man I might have had, and I could have had the best.”

“Save the compliments for afterwards, when we’ll know if it works,” he said. “Hurry to the stove and do what I say. If anybody asks you what you are up to, tell them that the stuff is necessary for my religious ritual. The gods,” he said as she ducked through the tent opening, “often come in handy. If they didn’t exist it would be necessary to invent them.”

Amra paused and turned with an adoring face. “Ah, Alan, that is one of the many things for which I love you. You are always originating these witty sayings. How clever, and how dangerously blasphemous!”

He shrugged, airily dismissing her compliment as if it were nothing.

In a minute she returned with the turban wrapped around something limp but heavy. And within two minutes he stepped out from the tent, clad in a loincloth, leather belt, dagger and turban. Silently, he began climbing the rope ladder that rose to the tip of the nearest mast. Behind him came Ezkr.

He did get some encouragement from Amra and the children. The Duke’s two boys cried out to him to cut the so-and-so’s throat, but if he was killed instead, they would avenge him when they grew up, if not sooner. Even the blond maid, Inzax, wept. He felt somewhat better, for it was good to know that some people cared for him. And the knowledge that he had to survive and make sure that these women and children didn’t come to grief was an added stimulus.

Nevertheless he felt his momentarily gained courage oozing out of his sweat pores with every step upward. It was so high up here, and so far down below. The craft itself became smaller and smaller and the people shrank to dolls, to upturned white faces that soon became less faces than blanks. The wind howled through the rigging and the mast, which had seemed so solid and steady when he was at its base, now became fragile and swaying.

“It takes guts to be a sailor and a blood-brother of the Clan Effenycan,” said Ezkr. “Do you have them, Green?”

“Yes, but if I get any sicker I’ll lose them, and you’ll be sorry, being below me,” muttered Green to himself.

Finally, after what seemed endless clambering into the very clouds themselves, he arrived at the topmost yard. If he had thought the mast thin and flexible, the arm seemed like a toothpick poised over an abyss. And he was supposed to inch his way out to the whipping tip, then turn and come back fighting!

“If you were not a coward you would stand up and walk out,” called Ezkr.

“Sticks and stones will break my bones,” replied Green, but did not enlighten the puzzled sailor as to what he meant. Sitting down on the yard, he put his legs around it and began working his way out. Halfway to the arm he stopped and dared to look down. Once was enough. There was nothing but hard, grassy ground directly beneath him, seemingly a mile below, and the flat plain rushing by, and the huge wheels turning, turning.

“Go on!” shouted Ezkr.

Green turned his head and told him in indelicate language what he could do with the yard and the whole ship for that matter if he could manage it.