‘Sir, the barges!’ Pel’s voice rang out.
‘You think I don’t see them?’ The captain wiped his face on his cloak. ‘Come about, on my order!’ He left the helm to Steven and crossed to the port rail, listening through the darkness for the armada of massive barges plying the river. The broad, flat-bottomed vessels were loaded with crates, lumber, even quarried stone. Passing between them at night was just about the most insane decision he could make. But given the circumstances, it might give them time to escape. The sailors tailing might be interested in the brig-sloop, perhaps even angry with her apparently oblivious captain, but he doubted they would risk death to investigate a boat that had, thus far, done essentially nothing wrong. His mood was turning sour; he retook the helm.
‘Captain, this is what I meant by doing something suspicious,’ Steven pointed out. ‘I’m just wondering what happens if one of those barges runs into us by accident while we’re cutting across traffic like a drunken teenager. I’ve been hoping for a chance to use a bit of magic before I get to Jones Beach, but turning away a five-hundred-ton barge loaded with masonry is more test than I need.’
‘If you don’t mind, I need to concentrate.’ Captain Ford watched upriver, timing the barge traffic, counting the watchlights and estimating the distances between them.
Alen and Gilmour emerged and Steven jumped down to join them, leaving the quarterdeck to the captain.
‘What’s happening?’ Gilmour asked. ‘We can see the navy boat’s still following.’
‘We’re taking steps to avoid them now,’ Steven said and gestured towards the centre of the river. ‘I think the idea is that if we can reach the east bank, we can run north through the city, with the river and the tide at our backs-’
‘And the schooner won’t follow us-’ Gilmour said.
‘Because he’d have to be out of his mind,’ Alen finished.
‘That about sums it up.’ Steven watched Pel and Kellin hurry amidships. Garec, who had picked up some rudimentary sailing skills, thanks largely to Kellin, helped where he could. Hoyt and Milla were asleep in the forward cabin, quite unaware that they might soon be swimming to shore.
Brexan, looking bleary-eyed, clomped up to them and asked, ‘What’s all the rutting shouting?’
‘Oh, nothing much,’ Garec said cheerfully, ‘but since you’re up, would you mind giving a hand over here?’ He was wrestling with a line affixed, through a system of pulleys, to the main spar.
Brexan traced the line to its terminus, high in the rigging. ‘What by all the gods in the Northern Forest are you doing?’ she cried, suddenly wide awake.
‘Crossing the road,’ Garec said, chuckling nervously.
Alen moved to the gunwale, watching as a veritable fleet of big-boned vessels cruised north. To Steven, he said diffidently, ‘Do you think you could…’
‘I have no idea,’ Steven read his mind. ‘It would be like moving a mountain.’
‘A moving mountain,’ Gilmour added.
‘What time is it, anyway?’ Alen squinted at Steven’s wrist in the torchlight.
‘About twenty to three. We need another hour and a half.’
‘If we live through the next five minutes.’
*
Captain Ford waited, feeling the Morning Star drift lazily towards the centre of the river. He watched, holding his breath, as a barge passed by like a floating island. From this distance he could see the crew, lined up on the port rail, staring at the madmen on the tiny sloop. Some were shouting, waving him off, or gesturing wildly with storm lanterns. Others stood in mute amazement as the Morning Star bobbed in the barge’s wake like a child’s toy. As the great vessel slipped past, averting catastrophe by just a few paces, the silence was broken as her captain, in a towering rage, shrieked insults across the bow. ‘Rutting demonpissing horsecock! Are you mad? Trying to get yourself killed, you whoring motherhumper? If I see you in Pellia, I’ll rip your miserable head from your shoulders, I swear I will!’
Captain Ford ignored him, pulling the brig-sloop around and shouting himself, ‘Now, Pel, Kellin, Garec, come about! Haul, gods rut you raw, haul away!’
With Kellin and Pel on the foremast, Garec and Brexan on the main, the partisan crew bent low with the effort of turning the brig-sloop in a hard tack straight across the river. Steven, Gilmour and Alen leaped to join them, glad to have something to do, to distract themselves from the next barge in line, another flat-bottomed monster loaded to the gunwales. Already they could hear their crew shouting and cursing, trying to turn their own ship to avoid the maniac in the way.
‘We’re not going to make it,’ Garec grunted, heaving at the main yard. ‘Even if we get her turned, there’s no wind. We’re already drifting downriver.’
Steven let go the line and Garec stumbled, almost falling. He grappled with the rope as it slid across the planks. ‘A bit of warning next time!’ he shouted as Steven ran for the quarterdeck, mouthing apologies as he went.
‘What? You have other plans?’ The bowman tried digging his toes into the deck, clawing for any purchase on the icy wood.
‘We need wind!’ Steven cried.
‘Steven, no!’ Captain Ford shouted, suddenly realising what he meant to do, ‘wait! You’ll rip their arms off!’
‘What?’ Steven shouted, ‘why?’
‘Garec, Pel!’ Captain Ford cried, ‘belay those lines – now! ’
‘But we’re not all the way over!’ Pel shouted.
‘Do it now! Both of you!’
Garec scrambled to obey and the main yard spun until the line went taut. He glanced up, saw the barge bearing down on them, her watchlights glowing like the eyes of a river demon, and screamed, ‘Now, Steven, now!’
Captain Ford had stood at the helm when Gilmour had filled the brig-sloop’s sails with hurricane-force wind and together, they had saved the ship, bouncing her off the mud reef. It had astounded him that anyone could be so powerful as to harness the very wind to his bidding.
But when Steven Taylor raised his hands to the main sheet, Captain Ford felt as though the Morning Star was about to spring from the water and take flight.
The wind was deafening, the howling roar of a winter gale. The sails filled, and all but the topmain – which ripped down the middle – held fast. The rigging was pulled so taut that the lines looked to be frozen solid. Captain Ford felt his ship heave forward, as if she had been thrown across the river. The force of the blast was overwhelming and he shouted as he nearly fell backwards from the helm. He held on, pulling hard to keep the rudder to port. Garec, Brexan, Kellin and Pel all tumbled to the deck; Brexan slid across and fell down the forward hatch, cursing Steven’s mother all the way.
Alen gripped as many lines as he could while Gilmour braced himself against the mainmast. He was shouting something, but Captain Ford couldn’t make it out over the wind; he was too busy trying to keep on course.
Finally, he turned and watched as the barge passed within a hair’s breadth of them.
Then it was over. The little brig-sloop had passed through the shipping lanes and was turning north for Pellia with the river current. The naval schooner, her sails hanging limp in the light of her watch-lights, drifted lazily backwards along the west bank. For the moment, the Morning Star and her crew were safe.
As the raised poop deck of the second barge passed, Captain Ford heard her captain shouting for his head.
‘Sorry,’ he called back, raising a deferential hand. ‘Sorry about that!’
The hoots, hollers and insults continued as the hulking vessel passed out of sight. Captain Ford corrected their course, feeling the seaward current beneath his feet. ‘We did it,’ he whispered, exhaling a long, cathartic sigh.
Steven bounded up to him. ‘You all right, Captain?’
Captain Ford laughed hoarsely. ‘Remind me never to do that again.’