“Fine!” muttered Mogget. “Wet, cold, and full of holes. Another fun day on the river.”
Lirael and Sam looked at each other. Lirael took a deep breath. Charter marks flowered in her mind, and she let them flow into her lungs and throat, circling there. Then she whistled, and the pure notes leapt up into the sky.
Answering the whistle, the river behind them darkened. Ripples and white peaks sprang up across the water and streaked across towards Finder and her waiting sail.
A few seconds later, the wind hit. The boat heeled over and picked up speed, the rigging adding its own whistle at the sudden pressure. Mogget hissed his lack of appreciation and hastily sprang back from the bow as spray flew over where he’d been a moment before.
Still Lirael whistled, and Sam joined in, their combined weather spell weaving the wind behind Finder’s quarter, at the same time stripping it away from the guardboat, whose sail lay limp and airless.
But the guardboat had oars, and expert rowers. The cantor sped his call, and the oars dipped in faster rhythm as the galley rushed forward to intercept Finder, water suddenly foam-ing around its bow, the bright metal of the ram gleaming in the sun.
Chapter Forty-One
Free Magic and the Flesh of Swine
“They’ll be within bowshot in a few minutes,” warned Mogget gloomily, gauging with a jaundiced eye the distance to the galley, and then the proximity of the western shore. “I suppose we’ll end up having to swim for our miserable lives.”
Lirael and Sam exchanged glances of concern, reluctant to agree aloud with the cat. Despite their spell-woven wind and their current scudding run across the water, the galley was still too fast. They were as close as they dared to the shore, and were rapidly running out of river to maneuver in.
“I guess we’d better heave to and risk the presence of enemies among the guards,” said Sam, who was acutely aware that he had already injured two constables. “I don’t want any of us to get shot because they think we’re smugglers or something, and I definitely don’t want to hurt any guards. Once they find out I am who I am, I’ll order them to let you go. And who knows? I might be lucky. Maybe Ellimere hasn’t ordered my arrest after all.”
“I don’t know—” Lirael started to say, her voice anxious. There was still a slight chance they might get past. But she’d hardly said a word when the Dog barked in interruption.
“No! There are at least three or four Free Magic creatures aboard that boat! We mustn’t stop!”
“Smells all right to me,” said Mogget, shuddering as more spray spumed in over the bow. “But then I don’t have your famous nose. However, as I can see a half dozen archers getting ready to shoot, perhaps you actually can smell something.”
Sam saw that Mogget was quite correct. The guardboat was angling to cross their path, but six archers were already formed up on the forward deck, arrows nocked. Obviously they intended to shoot first and make polite enquiries later.
“Are the archers human?” asked Sam quickly.
The Dog sniffed the air again before replying. “I cannot tell. I think most of them are. But the captain—the one with the plumed hat—has only the semblance of a man. It is a construct, made from Free Magic and the flesh of swine. That odor I cannot mistake.”
“We have to show the human archers who they’re shooting at!” Sam exclaimed. “I should have brought a shield with the royal blazon or something. They’d never dare shoot at us then, even if they’re ordered to.”
“Of course!” said Lirael, suddenly slapping herself on the forehead. “Here, take this!”
“What!” shouted Sam, throwing himself back to clutch at the tiller as Lirael let go. “What do I do? I don’t know how to sail!”
“Don’t worry, she steers herself,” Lirael shouted back as she crawled forward to the storage box in the forepeak. It was a matter of only twelve feet, but Lirael found it hard going, since Finder was heeled over at a sharp angle and the boat kept leaping up and then coming down with a bone-jarring smack every few yards.
“Are you sure?” Sam shouted again. He could feel the pressure on the tiller, and he felt that only his white-knuckled grip was keeping them from veering sharply into the riverbank. Experimentally, he opened his fingers for a second, ready to grab hold again immediately. But nothing happened. Finder kept her course, the tiller barely moving. Sam sighed in relief, but his sigh became a choking cough as he saw a flight of arrows snap away from the guardboat—straight at him.
“Too far yet,” said the Dog, casting a professional eye on the arrows’ flight, and sure enough, the arrows plunged into the water a good fifty yards away.
“Not for long,” grumbled Mogget. He jumped yet again to try to find a drier spot. He seemed to have found it near the mast when a slight twitch of the tiller—without Sam’s cooperation—caught a small wave and neatly sloshed it in and over his back.
“I hate you!” hissed Mogget in the general direction of the boat’s figurehead as the water drained away from his feet. “At least that rowboat looks dry. Why don’t we just let ourselves be captured? We’ve got only the Dog’s nose to say the captain is a construct.”
“They’re shooting at us, Mogget!” said Sam, who wasn’t entirely sure whether Mogget was joking.
“There are two other constructs on board besides the captain,” growled the Dog, whose nose was still vigorously sampling the air. She was getting bigger, Sam noticed, and fiercer-looking. Clearly she expected a fight, discounting whatever Lirael thought she was doing up at the bow.
“Got it!” exclaimed Lirael, as another flight of arrows sped towards them. This time, they splashed into the river no more than two arms’ lengths away. Sam could probably have touched the closest one.
“What?” shouted Sam. He simultaneously reached into the Charter to begin making an arrow ward. Not that it would be much use against six archers at once. Not when he wasn’t up to his full strength.
Lirael held up a large square of black cloth and let it flap into the breeze, revealing a brilliant silver star shining in the middle of it. The wind almost tore it from her grasp, but she clutched it to her chest and began to crawl back to the mast.
“Finder’s flag,” she shouted as she pulled out a halyard and started to unscrew the pin in a shackle so it could be put through an eyelet in the banner. “I’ll have it up in a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute!” screamed Sam, who could see the archers about to loose again. “Just hold it out
!”
Lirael ignored him. Quickly she fitted the shackles at each end, screwing in the pins with what looked like deliberate slowness to Sam. He was about to lunge forward and grab the damned flag when Lirael suddenly let it go and pulled on the halyard—as five more arrows leapt towards them from the guardboat.
Finder reacted first, nudging the tiller over to turn the bow into the wind. Instantly, she lost speed, the sail flapping and clapping like maniacal applause. Sam ducked as she did it, and the tiller smacked him in the jaw, hard enough to make him think he’d been shot—at least for a moment. Then it swung back again, just missing him, as the boat returned to her original course.
But those few seconds of lost speed had been vital, Sam realized, as the arrows that should have struck them plunged into the water only a few feet ahead.
Then the great silver star of the Clayr billowed out from the mast, shining in the sun. Now there could be no doubt about whose boat this was, for the flag was not just a thing of cloth but, like Finder herself, was imbued with Charter Magic. Even in the darkest night, the starry banner of the Clayr would shine. In the bright day, it was almost blinding in its brilliance.
“They’ve stopped rowing,” announced the Dog cheerily, as the guardboat suddenly lost way in a confusing pick-up-sticks jumble of oars. Sam relaxed and let the beginnings of the arrow ward fade away, so he could start checking whether he’d lost any teeth.
“But two archers are still going to shoot,” the Dog continued, making Sam groan and hurriedly try to reach for the Charter marks he’d just let go.
“Yes . . . no . . . the other four are overpowering them. The captain is shouting . . . it has revealed itself!”
Sam and Lirael looked back at the guardboat. It was a mess of struggling figures, accompanied by shouting, screaming, and the clash of weapons. In the middle of it, a column of white fire suddenly appeared, with a whoosh loud enough to make the Dog’s ears crinkle back and to make the others flinch. The column roared up twelve feet or more, then slid sideways and arced over the side.