Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,262

out on the mast’s crossbeam, slipped overboard and was gone without a cry. Leary himself took an arrow in the arm.

“Keep to it!” the captain yelled to Jeannie.

The woman refused to look back at their pursuers, and blocked out the growing shouts of the Huegoths as the longship rapidly gained. The wind did not favor Finwalker any longer; her turn had put the stiff breeze straight in off her starboard bow. Her sails had been appropriately angled as far as possible, and she made some headway, but the Huegoths dropped their sail altogether, and the pounding oars drove the longship on.

More arrows sliced in; more of Finwalker’s crew fell. Jeannie heard the roars, heard even the rhythmic beating of the drum belowdecks on the longship, prodding the rowing slaves on.

Huegoths called out taunts and threats, thinking they had the boat in their grasp.

Jeannie blocked it all out, focused on the shoreline, its features barely distinguishable through the heavy mist. There was a particular jag signaling the reef line, she knew, and she pictured it in her mind, trying hard to remember it exactly as it had appeared on those two occasions when she had gone through Nicker’s Slip. She focused, too, on the bell tower of Gybi monastery and on the steeple of the meetinghall in the town, further ahead to the south, recalling the angle. She had to calculate their angle so that the two towers would line up, three fingers between them, at the moment Finwalker passed the jag and entered the reef line.

Leary gave a shout and fell to his knees beside her, holding his now bleeding forehead. Beyond him, Jeannie noted the bloody arrow that had just grazed him, embedded deep into Finwalker’s rail, its shaft shivering.

“Hold steady,” Leary implored her. “Hold . . .” The captain slumped to the deck.

Jeannie could hear the oars pounding the water; smoke began to drift about her as more of the flaming arrows found their deadly hold. She heard a Huegoth call out—to her!—the barbarian apparently excited to find that a woman was on board.

Jeannie couldn’t help but glance back, and saw that a pair of massive Huegoths were standing along the forward edge of the longship, preparing to leap aboard Finwalker. The longship could not come up beside Finwalker, Jeannie realized, because its oars would keep it too far away for the Huegoths to board. But positioned just to the side and behind, the prow of the longship could get within a few feet of the fishing boat.

They weren’t much farther away than that right now, and Jeannie wondered why her fellows weren’t shooting the brazen Huegoths dead. Then she realized, to her horror, that none of Finwalker’s crew could take to their bows. Most of the crew lay dead or wounded on the deck, and those who could still function were too busy battling fires to battle the fierce men of Isenland!

Jeannie turned her eyes back to the reef and the shore, quickly determined her angle and made a slight adjustment, putting a few extra feet between Finwalker and the longship.

She saw the jag, instinctively lifted her hand up between the images of the bell tower and the steeple, thumb and little finger tucked back tight.

Three fingers—almost.

Finwalker groaned and shook, her starboard side scraping hard. She leaned hard, but came through, and though her seaworthiness had surely been compromised, the reef was behind her.

The longship did not fare so well. Her prow hit the rocks, bouncing her to the right, and she plowed on, her left bank of oars splintering and catching, swinging her about. Nicker’s Slip was a narrow pass, and as the seventy-foot craft hooked and turned, her stern crunched sidelong across the gap, into the reef. Huegoths tumbled out by the dozen, and those poor slaves at the oars fared little better as the great ship split in half, to be battered and swallowed by the dark waters.

Jeannie Beens saw none of it, but heard the cheers from those crewmen still standing. She pulled Finwalker hard to starboard, angling for shore, for she knew that the boat was taking water and was out of the fight.

The little boat had scored even, one-to-one, but more important, the daring heroics of Finwalker did not go unnoticed, not by the Bae Colthwyn fisherfolk nor by the Huegoth raiders. Leary’s decision had been based on the captain’s belief and hope that this was not a full-scale invasion force, but a powerful probe into Gybi’s defenses. No doubt the