Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,272

face. “You do so know how to have fun!”

Muckles returned the laugh and clapped the huge man on the back. For the brutal cyclopian, life had just gotten a little better.

CHAPTER 7

MASTERS OF THE DORSAL SEA

HUEGOTH!” cried one of the crewmen, a call seconded by another man who was standing on the crosspiece of the warship’s mainmast.

“She’s got up half a sail, and both banks pulling hard!” the man on the crosspiece added.

Luthien leaned over the forward rail, peering out to sea, amazed at how good these full-time seagoers were at discerning the smallest details in what remained no more than a gray haze to his own eyes.

“I do not see,” remarked Oliver, standing beside Luthien.

“It can take years to train your eyes for the sea,” Luthien tried to explain. (And your stomach, he wanted to add, for Oliver had spent the better part of the week and a half out of Gybi at the rail.) They were aboard The Stratton Weaver, one of the great war galleons captured from the Avon fleet in Port Charley now flying under Eriador’s flag. In favorable winds, the three-masted Weaver could outrun any Huegoth longship, and in any condition could outfight three of the Huegoth vessels combined. With a keel length of nearly a hundred feet and a seasoned crew of more than two hundred, the galleon carried large weaponry that could take out a longship at three hundred yards. Already the crew at the heavy catapult located on the Weaver’s higher stern deck were loading balls of pitch into the basket, while those men working the large swiveling ballistae on the rail behind the foremast checked their sights and the straightness of the huge spears they would soon launch the barbarians’ way.

“I do not see,” Oliver said again.

“Fear not, Oliver, for Luthien is right,” agreed Katerin, whose eyes were more accustomed to the open waters. “It can take years to season one’s eyes to the sea. It is a Huegoth, though—that is evident even to me, though I have not been on the open sea in many months.”

“Trust in the eyes of our guides,” Luthien said to the halfling, who appeared thoroughly flustered by this point, tap-tapping his polished black shoe on the deck. “If they call the approaching vessel as a Huegoth, then a Huegoth it is!”

“I do not see,” Oliver said for the third time, “because I have two so very big monkey-types blocking the rail in front of me!”

Luthien and Katerin looked to each other and snorted, glad for the relief that was Oliver deBurrows when battle appeared so imminent. Then, with great ceremony, they parted for the halfling.

Oliver immediately scrambled up to the rail, standing atop it with one hand grasping a guide rope, the other cupped over his eyes—which seemed pointless, since the brim of his huge hat shaded his face well enough.

“Ah yes,” the halfling began. “So that is a Huegoth. Curious ship. One, two, three . . . eighteen, nineteen, twenty oars on each side, moving in harmony. Dip and up, dip and up.”

Luthien and Katerin stared open-mouthed at each other, then at the tiny spot on the horizon.

“Oh, and who is that big fellow standing tall on the prow?” Oliver asked, and shuddered visibly. The exaggerated movement tipped Luthien off, and he sighed and turned a doubting expression upon Katerin.

“I would not want to fight with that one,” the halfling went on. “His yellow beard alone seems as if it might scrape the tender skin from my halfling bones!”

“Indeed,” Luthien agreed. “But it is the ring upon his finger that I most fear. See how it resembles the lion’s paw?” Now it was Luthien’s turn to feign a shudder. “Knowing Huegoth savagery and cunning, it is likely that the claws can be extended to tear the face from an adversary.” He shuddered again, and with a grinning Katerin beside him, began to walk away.

Katerin gave him a congratulatory wink, thinking that he had properly called Oliver’s bluff.

“Silly boy,” the irrepressible halfling shouted after them. “Can you not see that the ring has no more than jew-wels where the retracted claws should be? Ah, but the earring . . .” he said, holding a finger up in the air.

Luthien turned, meaning to respond, but saw Katerin shaking her head and realized that he could not win.

“Fine eyes,” remarked Wallach, the captain of The Stratton Weaver. He aimed his sarcasm squarely at Oliver as he and Brother Jamesis of Gybi walked over to join Luthien and