Tahn paused the barest second.
"Tell me."
IV
The frigate, Windsong, skimmed downward like a low, lean cloud. Behind her, vague in the dim moonlight, followed four more frigates and the skating corvettes. Before her, like a gate to hell, gaped the jagged mouth of Pelo Break. Ward leaned against the bridge rail beside Resi, the scarred and battered captain of Windsong.
"Keep close to the eastern side," Ward said. "In the shadow of the cliffs, out of the moonlight."
Resi spoke softly to the helmsman, and the Windsong eased into the shadow. Ward turned and watched the following ships as, one by one, they slipped out of the moon and all but vanished. He swung back and squinted ahead. As far as he could see, high, broken cliffs reared straight from the water on both sides, angling together in the distance. There Tahn had said, they stood a scant two hundred yards apart, and the Break turned nearly sixty degrees to the west. That was the narrows. Ward turned to Resi, wondering if the old Kali fully understood the plan.
"If we do not meet them before, we wait for them at the narrows."
There was no acknowledgement that he could tell. Not even a cough. He doesn't like this, Ward thought. He relishes the fight coming, but not me. Despite Tahn's heated pep talk, I am a bad totem. But Tahn had accomplished one thing—an honor promise from each ship's captain to follow orders. Ward knew they would, as long as everything went along with fighting, but the moment something went wrong.
He remembered Tahn's bark of surprise as the plan unfolded. Then the argument, and his own firm stand that he command this force. For this was the crucial contact. The Key. If this failed—it all failed.