“Aye,” said Carse. “And the Sky Folk will carry word ahead.” He laughed. “Let us see if they can stop Rhiannon by flinging pebbles from the cliffs!”
He left her then, ordering her to remain where she was, and went out on deck.
They were well along the channel now, racing under a fast stroke. The sails were beginning to catch the wind that blew between the cliffs. He tried to remember how the ballista defenses were set, counting on the fact that they were meant to bear on ships coming into the fiord, not going out.
Speed would be the main thing. If they could drive the galley fast enough they’d have a chance.
In the faint light of Deimos no one saw him. Not until Phobos topped the cliffs and sent a shaft of greenish light. Then the men saw him there, his cloak whipping in the wind, the long sword in his hands.
A strange sort of cry went up—half welcome for the Carse they remembered, half fear because of what they had heard about him in Khondor.
He didn’t give them time to think. Swinging the sword high, he roared at them, “Pull, there, you apes! Pull, or they’ll sink us!”
Man or devil, they knew he spoke the truth. They pulled.
Carse leaped up to the steersman’s platform. Boghaz was already there. He cowered convincingly against the rail as Carse approached but the man at the tiller regarded him with wolfish eyes in which there was an ugly spark. It was the man with the branded cheek, who had been at the oar with Jaxart on the day of the mutiny.
“I’m captain now,” he said to Carse. “I’ll not have you on my ship to curse it!”