He tried not to remember that those men had crews, as he struggled to maintain the bearing Tarrant had chosen. He tried not to think about the fact that if those men wound up in the water, all they had to worry about was drowning. If this boat went under with the Hunter inside it, unable to save himself while any hint of daylight remained—
Not much danger in that, he thought grimly, as the sky overhead went from pearl gray to ash gray to a steamy charcoal. A film of rain enveloped the horizon, and Damien could only pray that he was still where he belonged, in the middle of the Serpent, and not north or south where the rocky shores lay hidden in the mist. Soon it would be dark enough that even the Hunter could come out ... and Damien wouldn’t have complained if he did.
“Tell me again how this is less dangerous than being on land,” he muttered, as he fought the wheel into a new and hopefully more promising position. Damn the man for going below without doing something to control this storm! It was little consolation that without it their enemies in Seth would surely have overtaken them by now. Damien would trade this cold, rainy Hell for a hand-to-hand conflict any day.
At last, after what seemed like an eternity, the wind began to abate. Numbly, Damien noted that they were still afloat. It seemed nothing short of a miracle, for which he gave thanks as he tried to unclench his hands from the wheel, to force life back into his strained and frozen flesh. There was a pain in his shoulder blades that felt like a spear had gouged into his flesh there, and his feet were soaked and aching from the cold ... but he was alive. That was worth a few deep breaths, surely. He watched foam-topped waves break against the prow with considerably less fury than before, and muttered a quick prayer under his breath. Please, God, let that be the worst of it.
It was.
At sunset Tarrant rose up from his hiding place within the cargo hold, and came to where Damien stood, shivering and exhausted. Without a word he took hold of the wheel and nodded for the ex-priest to withdraw. It took Damien a minute to get his flesh to respond, so frozen was he in that attitude. At last, stiffly, he started back to where the turbine still churned, meaning to feed it more fuel. “I’ve already taken care of it,” Tarrant informed him, as he swung the boat about on a new heading. For a moment Damien could neither move nor respond, then he walked a few steps to where a narrow bench was fixed to the deck and fell down onto it, heavily.
“It would have been nice if you’d done something to calm down that storm,” he muttered.
“I did. As much as any man can, who conjures wind in such a hurry.”
“I meant during the day.” Hell, what was the point of this? But he couldn’t stop the words from coming, not after all those hours. “It was dark enough—”
“I did," the Hunter snapped. “Forgive me for not coming up on deck to make a show of it. Or did you think that the storm died down just in time out of liking for us?” He glanced toward the shore as if judging their distance from it, then back at the water directly ahead of them. “Weather-Working is a risky art, Vryce, I told you that before. Under the circumstances, I did the best I could.” He glanced back at Damien; the look of concern on his face was almost human. “Get some sleep,” he urged. And then, dryly: “I’ll wake you before the fun starts.”
He started to respond, then didn’t. His mouth framed a question, then lost it. With a groan he forced himself to his feet-no easy task, that, not once he had allowed himself the luxury of sitting, down—and started back toward the cabin. There should be a comfortable place in there somewhere, if the horses didn’t trample him while he looked for it. Definitely worth the search.
That decided, he sank down to the deck beside the bench, lowered his head to the rain-washed wood, and drifted off into a sound and untroubled sleep.
Waves against wood. Wind slapping canvas. For a moment he couldn’t place where he was, and then it all came back to him. Along with the pain.
“God,” he whispered. His neck, the only part of him that hadn’t hurt earlier, was cramped from his awkward sleeping posture. He tried to massage out the knot that had formed in it while pushing himself up to a sitting position. “Where are we?”
Tarrant was still at the wheel. “Check the furnace,” he said, without turning around. Damien muttered something incoherent and moved to obey.
There was still fuel, but not much. He stayed around for a minute to watch it burn, reveling in the feel of its heat upon his face, and then climbed back up to the captain’s perch.
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah,” he affirmed. “If you don’t count that the horses nearly killed me.
The Hunter glanced at him. “My Working didn’t hold?”
“They’re scared and they’re hungry; you’ve got a lot to Work against.” Heavily he sat down on the bench once more, gazing out at the water ahead. It seemed to him that there was something dark along the horizon, that might or might not be land. “You bringing us in?”
“Unless you’d care to spend another day on the water.”
“Please.” He shivered melodramatically. “Don’t even joke about it.”
It seemed to him that Tarrant smiled ever so slightly. Damien studied his slender hands resting on the wheel, so elegant, so confident-so different from his own anxious grip—and asked, “So when the hell did you learn to sail?”
“When I accompanied Gannon and his troops to Westmark.” The Hunter shifted the wheel slightly to the right, toward the land ahead. “Unlike you, I take every opportunity to expand my store of knowledge.”
“You also had a crew to back you up.”
“You did fine, Reverend-” Damien heard his quick intake of breath as he caught himself. “You did fine,” he said softly. “We’re still afloat, aren’t we? That’s what matters.”
Damien stood again and studied the view; the thing that might be land was growing steadily larger ahead of them. “So where are we?”
“Halfway between Hade and Asmody, if I judge it correctly.”
Farther east than they’d planned on. “How can you tell?”
“I have Vision, remember? To my eyes this whole region is alive with power, and the Forest-” he nodded toward the darkness ahead and to the left of them, "-is as bright as a beacon to my eyes.”
Something occurred to him then, that never had before. “You’re never really in darkness, are you?”
It seemed to him that the Hunter smiled slightly. “Not as you know the word. Although when we were out in the ocean there were nights that came close. And the Unnamed—”
He stopped then, unwilling or unable to say more, but Damien could see the muscles along his face and neck tense as he remembered. What had the Unnamed done to him, there in his custom-designed Hell? Damien didn’t want to ask.
“So what now?” he said quietly.
Tarrant exhaled softly, accepting the reprieve. “Calesta will no doubt expect us to put into Hade or Asmody, and continue northward from there.”