Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [93]
Oh not even his Luck could save him there.
He still had food in his rucksack and water in the bottle that he hadn’t even touched. He’d bought his dinner in the first decent tavern he’d walked into. It might be better for everyone if he didn’t put his nose out of the cabin until, say, noon, or thereabouts.
Besides, he was still plenty tired. More sleep would be very welcome.
So he rummaged in his “pillow,” and pulled out a packet of what looked like a cross between good dark bread and a cracker, wrapped in oiled paper. It wasn’t quite bread, whatever it was; it had a very chewy crust and dense interior, and had a nutty flavor to it, and left him feeling quite satisfied. A little more wriggling and rummaging got him his water bottle, and a few sips of that and he was ready to sleep again. If he’d been in a bunk, the ship’s obvious sideways list would have probably made it difficult to sleep, but in a hammock it didn’t matter. He closed his eyes and never minded the slap of the waves against the hull.
But it was a peal of thunder that shook the ship that woke him with a start.
His heart hammering, he tumbled out of his hammock and peered out the porthole. What he saw raised the hair on the back of his neck and sent cold, cold chills down his spine.
They were still sailing through relatively calm water and sunshine—but looming directly in their path, covering half the sky and all of the horizon, was a Baba Yaga of storms.
The clouds were blue-black, and laced with lightning. More spears of lightning were lancing into the ocean beneath the clouds. And those clouds were racing toward them at the speed of a falcon—he heard shouting overhead as the crew tried to react, and the fear in their voices told him that this thing must have sprung up, literally, out of nowhere.
Hearing their fear made his chest tighten. Then the porthole went black and he was tossed to the floor as the storm hit them.
A gout of cold seawater surged through the porthole as he struggled to his feet again, drenching him and everything in the cabin. He fought his way to his feet, coughing and spluttering, and managed to get to it and slam the cover shut, locking it in place, before being thrown to the floor again.
He lurched upward, grabbed the door frame, and wrenched the door to his little cabin open. There had to be something he could do to help the crew—he didn’t know what, but there had to be something! But as he clawed his way up to the hatch, pushed it open enough against the wind to squeeze out onto the deck, he wished that he had stayed below.
Overhead, the black clouds boiled and seethed, lightning was striking all around them—waves towered high threatening to break over the bow. The little ship somehow managed to crawl to the top of a wave as he held onto a stanchion, hands frozen in place, then plunged down the back side of it with a sickening lurch. Icy spray whipped around them, and foaming water sloshed over the deck as the ship wallowed drunkenly from side to side. There was no rain—not that it mattered. Or maybe it did, because rain would have hidden the most terrifying thing of all.
Just off the starboard bow was something he had only heard and read of, never seen. A whirling, white column of air and water that began in the clouds and ended at the sea. He stared at it in horrified fascination. A waterspout; it had to be. It didn’t seem to be headed for them yet, but—
A clamor behind him made him look up; the captain stood there on the bridge, wrestling with the wheel, as the ship heaved and shook and dove in the huge swells. Three or four of his men were causing all the ruckus, shouting at him over the roar of the wind in the rigging and the rolling thunder, telling him that the Sea King must be angry with them, saying that someone had to be sacrificed or they were all doomed—they shook their fists and screamed at the captain while clinging to whatever they could that was not the wheel, and the deck bucked and rolled under their feet.
That was when the captain glanced down and saw him