Page 109 of The Crown of Moonlight
Cathal spins away, eager to escape.
I stay only long enough to grit out the answer Flora needs.“That’s why you have to choose your Rider carefully,” I say.“There may be no way for him to save himself, but he could choose to let you live.”
My magic is still low after the air I wielded back at the village this morning, and I need to conserve it if I can.I join Niall and Sean at the bow, where they’ve been trying to contain the fog despite the ripping wind.
“Has the concealment failed enough for the cutter to have spotted us?”I ask.
Niall peers ahead through the fog, but the white sail of the cutter ghosts through the mist, here one moment and gone so thoroughly the next moment that she seems like a hallucination.
“I can’t be sure, Chyr.”
No sooner has he said that than the boom of a cannon answers the question for us.
We’re approaching the mouth of Loch Moadar where it joins the Sea of Islands.A faint line of waves marks a sandbar or rocky reef, and the channel snakes perilously thin.Even if the cattleboats weren’t behind us, there’d be no room for us to swing about, and we’ve no hope of running past the cutter.She is built for speed and armed for war.
The helmsman fights to hold the tiller against the wind.Old scars stand out white on his knuckles from previous battles where the tiller has fought him back.
“What do you want to do?”Sean asks.
The birlinn is a trader, not a ship of war, but the Domhnall men have grown accustomed to evading Vheara’s ships.
“Prepare for battle,” I order.
“Aye, Your Highness.”
To conserve weight, there’s no coxswain aboard, so the helmsman shouts the order himself.
The drum pounds, and the oarsmen stow the oars.Two of them run to brace the mast.Others throw up shields along the gunwales and ready javelins that will have little effect against a ship armed with cannons.
“Sean, Cathal, with me.”I run to the back, and Cathal presses a power rune on the dark skin above his ear to let me reach out to Daire.Cathal’s runes are not as strong as Daire’s, so his range for mind-speak is more limited.I let out a breath when I can hear Daire’s voice in my mind.
“You need me up there?”Daire asks.
“There’s a cutter closing fast.We’ll need both wind and water to push it back.”
“And Lorcan?”
“Lorcan, can you hear us?”
There’s no answer.Then I feel Daire’s rune flare, and Lorcan’s voice sounds in my mind.He and Daire have a rapid-fire conversation in our heads to coordinate Lorcan covering both his own position and Daire’s on the cattleboats.
Sean creates a bridge of air for Daire to cross over to the birlinn.Sweat beads on Sean’s brow, and the precision rune at his temple glows brighter as he strains to hold the air still long enough.The rune makes it easier for him, but I bloody well hope he won’t be close to spent by the time he’s finished.Precise magic, like a bridge, costs far more to create and hold.
His hands tremble.Air eddies within the bridge’s span, starting to bleed off along the edges.He grunts as he tightens it up and anchors it in place.
I set my jaw and watch Daire’s every step until he’s close enough for me to grasp his arm and heave him up.Wasting no time, he runs forward the moment his feet hit the deck, with the rest of us close behind.
Flora is there already, working.She’s forcing waves of water and wind against the cutter, driving it away from us.Then the cutter’s cannons fire again.
The blast steals my hearing.A black hail of grapeshot flies towards us, threatening to shred through sails, mast, and flesh.I rush to Flora, my hands up to deflect the bits of iron, but the birlinn lurches and slides backwards through the water, knocking me off balance.
Chapter 41
Sails in the Storm
Flora
I
