I managed to reach the bench and take hold of the oar shaft, slippery and soaked with seawater and rain. The Vralian beside me gasped thanks. And then we both set our back to the task of battling the waves and keeping the ship upright.
It went on for hours, each one more miserable than the last. My arms ached; my healing scars strained as they hadn't for weeks. Time and again, waves crashed over us, nearly swamping the ship. I was drenched to the bone, cold and shivering. The wind was buffeting, changing directions. There was no way to run before it. Iosef's men managed to get the sail furled. It didn't matter. The sea had its way with us, sending us leagues off course.
It saved the last of its fury for dawn. I saw it; we all saw it. An island, looming in the grey light. Outlying rocks. A gathering wave, striking us sidelong. The ship canted on its side. I was lucky, I was on the lower end, digging my nails into the sodden wood of my oar shaft. The wave hurled us against the rocks, hard. There was a loud crack as our hull was breached.
I saw men tumble and fall.
I saw Urist flung from his bench, hurtling toward the railing.
I don't remember seeing his thigh-bone snap, and I don't remember grabbing him, keeping him from going overboard. I don't remember the captain shouting for everyone to abandon the ship, which like as not I wouldn't have understood anyway. Not in that panic. All I remember is Urist's face, ashen beneath his warrior's markings.
"I can't swim," he grated.
"I can," I said. "Enough for two.”
The ship groaned and settled, creaking. Bilge water rose around us. Men were babbling and shouting. Those who weren't wounded were already in the sea, swimming for the island's shore. The ship creaked and lurched lower. I slid my arms under Urist's, holding his face clear of the water, and gauged the distance.
"It was a damn good try." He grimaced. "Leave me.”
I shook my head. "Not a chance.”
Having struck its final blow, the storm's fury had abated; or at least, it had moved onward, passing over the sea. Still, it was a long, hard swim in cold, choppy water. I slid over the lower railing, now underwater, and hauled Urist over it. He cried aloud as his broken leg, unsupported, dragged in the water. His entire body jerked at the pain of it.
"I'm sorry!" I gasped raggedly, treading water. I got him in a headlock, wedging my forearm under his chin. "Just try to hold still. Please!”
Urist closed his eyes and nodded against my arm.
Elua knows how, but I got him ashore. I kept my death-grip on him, kept his face above water. Forced my aching, leaden limbs to keep reaching, fighting the cold water that sought to leach my strength. I wasn't hale, but at least I was whole. It came down, in the end, to counting each breath I drew and reckoning it a victory. My chest ached, but my lungs kept working. The island's rocky shore was strewn with bone-weary Vralian sailors. By the time we reached the shallows, I was too exhausted to stand. I towed Urist as far as I could, crawling over rough rocks, then sat with my hands laced under his armpits and scooted backward, dragging him inch by inch onto solid land.
"You're safe," I said in a raw voice.
Urist opened his eyes and grunted. "Look at that bitch. Still sitting there.”
I followed his gaze. He was right. Out there in the grey drizzle, the ship, listing and half sunken, was hung up on the rocks. We might as well have stayed, clinging to the foredeck. I laughed helplessly. What else was there to do?
"How's your leg?" I asked Urist.
He rolled his eyes around at me. "Hurts like hell. Think I might puke. What do you expect?”
"Not much," I said wearily. "Not with my luck.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
There are sizable islands in the Eastern Sea; populated islands, islands with ports large enough to warrant being regular stops on the trade routes.Unfortunately, this wasn't one of them.
Once we'd dragged ourselves ashore, assessed the wounded and counted the missing—one of the ten crewmen hadn't reached the island—it didn't take long to determine that we were in a bad situation. No food, no fresh water, no shelter. No sign of habitation anywhere along the barren, stony shore or the pine forest behind it. No sign of the mainland coastline we'd been following. No sign of other ships on the vast grey expanse of the sea.
Aside from the man who'd gone missing, there was one in worse shape than Urist, a fellow named Kirill. He'd swum to shore unaided, then collapsed into unconsciousness. Someone said he'd taken a sharp thrust to the belly with an oar shaft. Other than that, the rest of us sported nothing worse than bruises and grazes.
Captain Iosef gave us time to catch our breath before he began issuing orders; pointing to the ship, to the forest. His voice was tired and cracked, and I was too weary to make out a word of what he said. Five of the most stalwart sailors plunged back into the surf and began swimming for the wreck. Two others began trudging toward the forest, carrying the unconscious Kirill with them. Iosef approached us, bringing Ravi to interpret.
I listened, then interpreted for Urist. "Says we're going to have to set and brace your leg if you don't want to lose it.”
Urist didn't blink. "Just do it.”
It was an ugly process. We slit his breeches to the hip, laying the leg bare. The snapped bone hadn't breached the skin, but it tented it obscenely.
"Don't look," I advised Urist. He didn't. Captain Iosef and I conferred through Ravi, who looked sick. Elua be thanked, Iosef had set broken bones before. I'd only seen it done. I straddled Urist's torso, squeezing it tight between my knees, and took a hard grip on his upper thigh, holding him still. I could feel the jolt run through him, his entire body straining as Iosef pulled carefully on the lower portion of the broken bone, easing it in place. Urist didn't scream, but he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.
Iosef said somewhat cheerful. "Half done," Ravi translated.
We finished the job when Iosef's men returned from their excursions, using straight, sturdy branches to brace the leg from hip to ankle and lashing them in place with a long length of linen bandage salvaged from my pack."Done," Ravi said.
"Gods and goddesses, I could use a jug of uisghe" Urist said weakly.
Thus began our first day of being shipwrecked. We moved Urist farther up the rocky beach and set him beside poor Kirill, who still hadn't awoken. Two men set about building a makeshift shelter, and three others set out in search of fresh water, our most urgent need. The rest of us spent the day swimming back and forth to the wrecked ship, diving into the sunken hold and swimming in blind darkness, grasping whatever we could and hauling it out. The ship shuddered and quivered as we clambered over it, but it sank no further, held up by the rocks that breached its hull.
In the end, our tally looked a bit less hopeless. We'd salvaged a few parcels of hard biscuits wrapped in watertight oilskin and a pair of undamaged waterskins, and one of Iosef's men had found a spring-fed pond in the forest. A flint striker to kindle fire—that had been in my pack, a gift I'd received long ago in Jebe-Barkal. An axe, an adze, and other tools for repairing the ship, which proved useful for building a shelter. Several lengths of rope. Sodden blankets. One of the powerful hunting bows Urist and I had brought, though its string was likely spoiled by the saltwater and we hadn't found the quiver.
At least there was food and water. Iosef doled out a rock-hard biscuit apiece. I broke off chunks and held them in my mouth, waiting for the waterskin to be passed so I could soften them with a mouthful of water. I was too tired to chew.
I have never, ever in my life been as exhausted as I was by the end of the day. If there was any hidden blessing, it was that I was beyond caring what had become of our mission, at least in that moment. All I wanted to do was lay my head down and sleep. If Kushiel had appeared on that island in all his terrible glory and offered me Berlik's head on a flaming platter, I wouldn't have had the strength to take it.
Our shelter was a simple affair, a lean-to such as hunters might build to spend the night in the woods, built on a larger scale. We lashed layers of untrimmed green pine branches atop it to keep out the drizzle and spread pine mast over the stony soil, then packed ourselves beneath it, laying down in our damp clothing and sleeping the sleep of the dead.
At least I didn't dream.
Morning dawned bright and clear, but it brought two unpleasant revelations. Kirill had died in the night without ever waking. His belly was hard and distended, and I thought he must have been bleeding inside. On the heels of that discovery, we found a second body washed ashore; Pavel, the sailor who'd gone missing.
The ground was too hard to dig a proper grave; it had been difficult enough to sink poles for the shelter. Iosef shared out biscuits for our breakfast, and then we set about building a cairn some distance from our campsite.
It was hard work, but none of us begrudged it. It could have been any one of us lying in their places. With everyone save Urist lending a hand, we made short work of it, burying them under a vast mound of stone. When we had finished, we all gathered around and Iosef gave an invocation in Rus. I paid close attention and caught a few words I understood; death and peace and Yeshua.
It surprised me, a little. I hadn't thought of them as Yeshuites, except for Ravi. Of a surety, none of them were Habiru. I asked him about it later.
"Yes, of course," he said. "Didn't you see the cross on the sail? Tadeuz Vral only trusts the loyalty of men who have acknowledged Yeshua.”
"I saw it," I said. "I thought it was Vral's insignia.”
"In a way." He shrugged. "It is a sign that he rules in Yeshua's name.”
I frowned. "Why not the khai?”
"You sound like my old Nonna." Ravi looked amused. "You know the khai?”
I sketched it in the hard-packed dirt. It was a character formed by combining the Habiru letters Khet and Yod to make khai. Living, the word meant; a symbol of the resurrection of Yeshua ben Yosef. All the Yeshuites I'd ever met in Terre d'Ange wore pendants with the symbol. Ti-Philippe had told Gilot that Joscelin had worn one for a long time. He would have been wearing it when he taught Micah ben Ximon how to fight in the Cassiline style.
"Ah, well." Ravi peered at my work. "Tadeuz Vral doesn't speak Habiru, let alone write it. He chose the cross to show his faith. To remind us of the cross that Yeshua died on," he added, seeing my perplexed look.
"Huh." I wasn't sure what I thought about that.
"It speaks to Vralians," Ravi said. "The khai doesn't.”
He erased the character I'd drawn, murmuring a quick, reverent prayer in Habiru. And then we spoke no more of Vralia or Yeshua, for Captain Iosef summoned us all to confer over a midday biscuit.
I sat beside Urist and listened. I understood only one word in twenty, but one thing was clear; our captain was not a man given to despair. And neither, it seemed, were the Vralians. They listened and nodded as he spoke, pointing and offering suggestions.
What it came down to, I learned later from Ravi, was a realistic assessment of our situation. Our most pressing need was food, since the biscuits wouldn't last. There was an abundance of birdlife on the island, and fish in the sea. We needed to get the bow working as best we might and fashion arrows, and we needed to find the ship's fishing nets or fashion new ones.
Our second most pressing need was getting the hell off the island. Iosef thought we couldn't have been driven that far from the trade routes in a single night; that we might be near enough there was hope a distant ship might spot us. He proposed that we keep a lookout posted and build a signal pyre on the eastern shore.
He also thought there was also a good chance that he was wrong; that we could linger here for months without sighting a single ship. That our hope of salvation would pass us by in the night, unseen. That our pyre would go unremarked in the bright light of day. And if that happened, if we were still here come winter, no one liked our chances for survival.
To that end, Captain Iosef proposed we repair the ship.
"Is he serious?" I asked Ravi when he told me. "Can it be done?”
"Oh, he's serious." He gazed out at the listing, half-sunken ship. It lay almost a hundred yards from the shore, most of it deep water. The ship might be stable now, but there was a gaping hole in the hull, and it was filled with water. It was impossible to imagine we could shift it without having it sink like a stone. "And I have no idea. I hope he does.”
Over the course of the next three weeks, we found out.
I know the precise duration of the time, because Urist kept track of it, marking each day with a slash on one corner-pole of our shelter. It would have driven him mad to lay idle all that time while we labored like oxen, but mercifully, Captain Iosef thought to put him to work. Urist spent long hours laboring over the hunting bow, unstringing it and rubbing the string with handful after handful of wool pried from a sunken bale, rinsed in fresh water and laid in the sun to dry, still greasy with lanolin; and after that, a mixture of pine rosin I gathered from the forest for him. It took two of us to restring it when he'd finished, but the string held when drawn.
Most of what we did those first days was salvage. The early going was rewarding. Everyone cheered when one of the fishnets was found, and for my part, I whooped with joy when a sailor named Yuri came up grinning, my sword-belt in hand. Dive by dive, piece by piece, we retrieved most of our belongings, exclaiming over boots, belts, and hunting knives. We found the second bow, and Urist went to work on that, too.
We whittled stakes for the nets and fished. The first day that we brought in a haul large enough to feed everyone was a glorious thing. Silvery herring, dozens of them, flopping on dry land. We spitted them on sharpened sticks and roasted them in the campfire, tearing them to pieces with our fingers, stuffing chunks in our mouths and spitting out bones. Elua, it was good!