Ilse Witch

She worked her way over to Furl Hawken and began to shake him. “Wake up, Hawk!” She kept her voice low enough that anyone standing outside the door wouldn’t hear. Not that there was much chance with the storm howling all about them. “Hawk!” She slapped his face. “Wake up!”


His eyes fluttered and he grunted like a bull. Slowly he rolled onto his side, clasping his head, muttering to himself. Then he sat up, running his big hands th1rough his tangled blond hair and beard. “What hit me? I can feel it all the way down to my teeth!”

The airship did a quick pitch and roll, causing him to brace himself hurriedly with his hands. “Shades!”

“Get up,” she ordered, pulling at him. “We’ve been drugged and locked up, and the ship’s in the hands of incompetents. Let’s do something about it.”

He lumbered to his feet, steadying himself by leaning on her shoulder as the ship shook with the force of the wind. “Where’s Big Red?”

“Can’t say for sure. He’s not here, anyway.” She hadn’t allowed herself to think what might have happened to her brother. Locked in another storeroom, probably aft of this one, she told herself. They’d probably been separated to render them more manageable. Alive, though. She wouldn’t consider the alternative.

She moved back over to the door and stood with her ear pressed against the wood, listening. All she could hear was the howl of the wind, the singing of the draws, and the rattle of something not properly tied down. She sat with her back to the wall and pulled off her boot. Inside the heel, tucked into the leather, was a metal hook.

“I see they didn’t get quite everything,” Hawk chuckled, coming over to stand next to her.

She pulled on her boot and stood up. “Did they miss anything you were carrying?” she asked.

He reached under his left arm, found a small opening in the seam of his stiff leather vest, and removed a long, slender blade. “Could be.” He grinned. “Enough to get us close to some real weapons, if we’re lucky.”

“We’re Rovers, Hawk,” she said, bending to the lock in the door. “We make our own luck.”

Kneeling with one leg braced against the door, she inserted the pick into the lock and began to work it around. The lock was new and its workings easily tapped. It gave in less than a minute, the latch snapping open as she pulled down on the handle, the door giving way. She cracked it and looked out into the passageway. Shadows cast by oil lamps and ropes hung from pegs in the walls flickered and danced with the rolling of the ship. At the passageway’s forward end, a bulky form braced against the shipwalls and stared up the ladder at the hatchway.

Rue Meridian ducked back inside the storeroom and eased the door closed again. “One guard, a big guy. I can’t tell who or what he is. We have to get past him, though. Do you want to handle him or shall I?”

Furl Hawken tightened his grip on the knife. “I’ll deal with him, Little Red. You get to the others.”

They stared at each other in the dim light, breathing quickly, faces flushed and anxious. “Be careful, Hawk,” she told him.

They went out the door on cat’s paws, sliding silently into the shadowed hallway. Furl Hawken glanced back at her, then started toward the guard. The Jerle Shannara continued to shake and sway in the grip of the storm, the wind howling so fiercely that the guard seemed unable to think of anything else. A crash jarred the decking, something falling from a height, a loosened spar probably. The guard stared upward, frozen in place. Rue Meridian glanced at the doors of the storerooms closest, two only. The smaller held their water and ale in large casks. There was no extra room for prisoners in there. The other contained foodstuffs. That was a possibility, but the larger holds lay farther aft.

Another few steps, Rue Meridian was thinking, watching Hawk’s cautious progress, when the hatchway opened, and a rain-drenched figure started down the stairs.