Prophet of Moonshae - Douglas Niles [135]
"No!" she cried, suddenly frantic. She took him by the arms and stared into his face. "I have to-don't you see?"
"I see one who has worked herself to exhaustion. Here, sit for a moment." Gently he guided her to a bench, and she slumped there, feeling all the fatigue he described. A feeling of utter hopelessness and dejection sapped her.
"Is there any hope? Of saving the ship, I mean?" she asked.
Brandon appeared to think before answering, but she saw the answer in the pain reflected in his eyes. "The hope we have is that we can reach the shore of Olafstaad before she goes down."
In the stern, Tavish didn't hear the conversation between the prince and princess. Indeed, she knew little at this point beyond the blistering pain that wracked her fingers and the cramps that threatened to stiffen her arms into locked positions around her harp.
Yet she had strummed the night through, and now, with the coming of dawn, she once again wanted to raise her voice in song. The magical harp had given strength to the northmen for many hours; indeed, it seemed likely that they never would have kept the Gullwing afloat without her.
"Lady bard!" cried Yak, straining to hold a plank against the hull while two sailors lashed and nailed it into place. "Give us a song to make us laugh!"
Tavish chuckled, albeit hoarsely. "I know just the one! It's called the 'Ballad of the Murderous Maid,' " she announced, strumming the first chords.
" 'A farmer saw a maiden; he took her as his wife. She didn't know her pots and pans but surely liked her knife!' "
Tavish bounced through the chorus, the pain in her fingers forgotten.
" 'The maiden, she was willin', the menfolks she dismayed, for it was her taste for killin' to which this maiden made!' " She sang heartily.
" 'The wedding night was cloudy as the couple rode away, and when they fin'ly found him, he was smilin' in the hay! His britches, they were missin', and his tunic and his bibs, but not his bride's stiletto: That was stickin' from his ribs!' "
Tavish played and sang more loudly, her pain forgotten. The music drowned out the noise of the pounding seas, ringing above the grunting and cursing of stone sore, staggering men. As the rude song unfolded, the bailers bent to their tasks with renewed energy, while the oarsmen labored to keep the stricken vessel nosed into the wind, grinning despite their weariness at the raunchy lyrics.
For a time, it seemed that new life had come to the Gullwing, and indeed the prow forced its way through the swells proudly once again. The song ran through many verses, for the maid had lived a long and productive life, and all through the choruses and notes, each time the sea swelled before them, the longship rose to meet each looming crest, foaming its way through the dark, frothing caps.
And when the song of Tavish finally faded away, the sound of the combers had changed, becoming deeper, somehow more substantial. In the bow, Alicia instinctively looked at Brandon and saw him listening carefully to the sound.
"That's surf pounding against the rocks," he said after a moment. "We'll make our landfall, perhaps more quickly than we desire."
"Headlands!" The booming cry came from Knaff, who gripped the tiller firmly on the raised deck at the stern. The old man pointed over the bow. "A rocky bluff, dead ahead!"
Brandon leaped upward, seizing the cracked remains of the figurehead and staring over the rolling swells into the mask of gray. "Starboard helm!" he cried.
Immediately the Gullwing veered to the right. Then, with shocking quickness, Alicia saw a dark mass of rock looming high above them. Waves bashed against it, exploding in chill clouds of spray. In the gray mist, they hadn't see the menace until they were upon it.
"Row! Row for your lives!" cried the northman prince. The Gullwing leaped ahead, carving a sharp curve through the storm-tossed sea. Perhaps if she had been a whole ship, she would have made it.
As it was, the weight of the waterlogged bow, coupled with