“Hands to the braces!” Wyatt shouted as he spun the wheel and the Harbinger turned away from the oncoming ship. “They’re onto us now.”
Arista heard a faint shout across the water and she could see movement; small dark figures loped across the deck. As she saw them, a chill ran through her. Like anyone, she had heard tales of the Ba Ran Ghazel—the sea goblins. They were the stuff of legends. Nora, Arista’s nursemaid, had told her fairy stories at bedtime. Most often the tales were about greedy dwarves that kidnapped spoiled princesses, who were always saved by a dashing prince in the end. But sometimes, she spoke about the Ghazel. No prince ever saved a princess from them, no matter how dashing. The Ghazel were vile creatures of the dark, inhuman monsters, the children of a malevolent god. Nora’s tales of the Ghazel always included villages burned, warriors killed, and children taken—not to be ransomed but to be feasted on. The Ghazel always ate their victims.
When Arista was sitting in her bed, wrapped in blankets, surrounded by pillows, and safe in the warmth and light of a crackling fireplace, Nora’s tales were fun. She always imagined dwarves as nasty little men and fairies as tiny winged girls, but the Ghazel she could never conjure entirely—even in the vast imaginings of her childish mind. They were always as they appeared now: distant threatening shadows exhibiting fast jerky movements that no human could make. Nora had always begun her stories the same way: “Not all of this story is true, but enough is…” Looking out at the ship, and the dark figures on the deck, Arista wondered if Nora had realized just how true they were.
The Harbinger pivoted under Wyatt’s deft hand, sheering away to the left. Arista and Myron lost sight of the Ghazel ship. They ran back to the stern, where Wyatt stood holding the wheel with one hand while looking back over his shoulder. The Ghazel ship had matched their tack and was coming up on their stern.
“Everyone to the lee side!”
“Oh, now which side is that?” Arista asked Myron.
“Opposite of windward, ah—right now it is the starboard side.”
“What in Maribor’s name is wrong with left and right?”
As soon as they reached the starboard rail, she knew why Wyatt had ordered them there. As he cranked the wheel, the wind pressed the Harbinger’s sails and bent the ship over on its beam, forcing it dangerously close to capsizing. The starboard side rose higher and higher.
Arista wrapped her arms around the rail to keep from sliding and Myron did the same. Farther up the deck, Magnus looked terrified as he clutched the side, his feet skidding and slipping on the wet boards. If the ship had flown before, it was doing something unheard of now. They no longer dipped and rose, but like a bar of soap running across a washboard, they hammered the crests as they went. The ship felt like a stone being skipped across a lake.
“Ha-ha!” Wyatt jeered, the wind ripping the words from his mouth so that she barely heard him. “Match that with your overweight trow!”
She watched Wyatt, with his feet in place against the stock, his arms holding the wheel, hugging it to his chest like a lover, his hair blowing, the spray bathing him. He wore a grin and she was not certain whether she should be happy or concerned. The rest of them hung on in desperation as the race sent them across the luminous sea.
Arista noticed the pain in her arm lessening, the ship righting itself, their speed dropping. She glanced at Wyatt and saw a look of concern.
“They’re stealing our wind,” he grumbled.
“How are they doing that?” Alric asked.
“They are putting us in their wind shadow, moving their ship in line with ours, blocking it—depriving us. Hands to the braces! Starboard tack!”
The ship was nearly flat now, allowing Hadrian and Elden to run. They cast off ropes and pulled the yard around again, the big sail flapping as Wyatt turned the ship to catch the wind from the other side. Overhead, Royce moved among the top lines, working the upper sail.
“Haul those sheets in!” They caught the wind once more and the ship set off again. “All hands to port!”
Arista was ahead of him, already running across the deck to renew her grip on the rail. She knew what was coming this time and got her feet planted securely before the side of the ship rose. Beyond the stern, she could see the following ship already turning to mimic their action, the great black sails with the skull-like symbols flapping loose as they came around. They were much closer now. She could clearly see the creatures crawling across the deck, climbing ropes. Dozens of them had gathered near the bow. It frightened her to see them move. They skidded along on all fours like spiders—a shipload of huge black tarantulas—so tightly packed they climbed over each other just to move about.