The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [73]
"No, just sensible, to keep out of the way of a wizard," Hawkril grunted, "but I take your point: any Aglirtan ruler who doesn't react hard and swift to meddlings or invasions invites more such unwelcome intrusions. So Silvertree will strike once we're out of Adeln."
"Cheerful to be around, aren't you?" Craer replied, stretching. "Well, ther-"
Then the world exploded in thunder-thunder that came down out of the sky to crash on the foredeck.
The procurer and the armaragor stared openmouthed at the tumult of bouncing stones, splashing oil, and flying shards of crockery just long enough to realize that the sky itself wasn't raining stones-they were tumbling down onto the boat from the cliff overhanging the river, in a cloud of crushing destruction that was coming swiftly closer to two adventurers lounging on the afterdeck.
"Sargh!" Craer gasped, diving for the aft hatch.
"Graul, sargh, and bebolt!" Hawkril cursed, almost crushing the smaller man in his leap down the hatchway. Amid the dense rattle of stones bouncing on the cabin roof, they heard many shrill smashing sounds as long jugs perished and the smell of oil rose strongly in the air-cooking oil.
The hatch was locked… and, as the armaragor's first snarling pull on its handles proved, barred from within. Hawkril growled, set his shoulders, and pulled until the veins stood out along his arms and the wood literally bulged under the force of the armaragor's hauling.
Bulged, but did not break. Stone crashed crazily around the two adventurers, numbing the burly warrior's hands and shoulder enough to break his grip on the door. Hawkril fell back, hard, against the hatchway steps, and groaned at the pain of that landing, as the rain of stones fell away aft.
Craer risked his neck to peer up at the edge of the cliff above, where he saw nothing, and then along the length of the boat. Its decks were awash in glistening oil, with the shards of shattered long jugs everywhere, outnumbered only by the heaped stones.
"About a cartload," Hawkril grunted, gaining the decks with a gasp and putting a hand to his back with a wince. Craer was skidding and trotting down the unsteady boards to the forehatch; an instant later, he tore it open and bellowed into the boatmaster's angry and astonished face: "Up on deck while you've still got one! Someone's emptied a cart of stones all over the oil jugs, and they've probably got friends waiting to hurl torches at us at the next bend! You may not have a boat much longer!"
No crew beyond the dumbfounded boatmaster himself had made it up the steps by the time the boat came to the second bend-and received its first flaming visitations.
Hawkril, Craer, and the boatmaster cursed and crouched and burrowed under ropes and tarpaulins in unison as the arrows came humming. A fiery volley of fire shafts zipped hungrily into the decks all around, and oil caught light with a roar, flaring up into man-high flames in an instant.
Even before the blazing ship slid out of the bend and the last arrows fell harmlessly into the river, astern, Craer was down the hatchway and hauling a surly sailor up from a table strewn with cards and coins by the throat of his greasy smock. In the lantern light from a candle cage dancing on its ceiling-beam peg, five startled faces stared at him, brows drawing down in anger.
"Up above," the procurer snarled into the face of the man he held, "and hurl the jugs overboard, or this whole boat'll flare up like a torch, and us with it!"
"You're going to tell us what to do, little man?" another of the sailors sneered. "I think not."
"You can get up on decks and work-or snap and snarl at me down here and die in the flames," Craer told them hotly, "and right now I don't much care which. It's hero time, and this boat's sailing straight into a short, hot future as a pyre!"
He let the astonished man in his grip fall back into his seat with a crash, vaulted