“That hellcat delicate?” Jaxart spat in loathing and said, “She’s wantoning with the lover hidden in her cabin. He crept aboard at Sark, all hooded and cloaked, and hasn’t come out since. But we saw him.”
Shallah looked aft with fixed gaze and murmured, “It is no lover she is hiding but accursed evil. I sensed it when it came aboard.”
She turned her disturbing luminous gaze on Carse. “I think there is a curse on you too, stranger. I can feel it but I cannot understand you.”
Carse again felt a little chill. These Halflings with their extra-sensory powers could just vaguely sense his incredible alienage. He was glad when Shallah and Naram, her mate, turned away from him.
Often in the hours that followed Carse found his gaze going up to the afterdeck. He had a grim desire to see this Ywain of Sark whose slave he now was.
In mid-afternoon, after blowing steadily for hours, the wind began to fail and dropped finally to a flat calm.
The drum thundered. The sweeps went out and once again Carse was sweating at the unfamiliar labor, snarling at the kiss of the lash on his back. Only Boghaz seemed happy.
“I am no seafaring man,” he said, shaking his beard. “For a Khond like you, Jaxart, sea-roving is natural. But I was delicate in my youth and forced to quieter pursuits. Ah blessed calm! Even the drudgery of the oars is preferable to bounding like a wild thing over the waves.”
Carse was touched by this pathetic speech until he discovered that Boghaz had good reason not to mind the rowing inasmuch as he was only bending back and forth while Carse and Jaxart pulled. Carse dealt him a blow that nearly knocked him off the bench and after that he pulled his weight, groaning.
The afternoon wore on, hot and endless, to the ceaseless beat of the oars.