Deborah Hale by The Destined Queen Page B

healers than I who can remove that barbed arrowhead from his flesh.”
    “Arrowhead?” The thought paralysed Rath for an instant.
    The unconscious crewman had a chunk of metal in his flesh. Metal, like the kind that had made the warding waters devour the Hanish Ore Fleet.
    “Gull!” He leaped to his feet and surged up the ladder toward the deck. “Turn back! Arrows! Metal! The warding waters!”
    Rath hurled himself up through the open hatch and staggered toward the tiller. The moment he saw Gull’s face, he could tell the captain had understood his garbled warning.
    But when a huge wave rose out of nowhere to slam across the Phantom’s bow, he also knew his warning had come too late.

5
    R ath’s cry of alarm and his hurried footfall on the ladder made fear tighten around Maura’s throat. For a moment, though, she did not understand what had driven him toward the deck shouting at the top of his voice.
    Then she heard the crash of a great wave and the Phantom reeled like a fighter struck hard on the head. The sudden pitch of the ship flung her sideways on top of the unconscious man. She just managed to keep from hitting the poor fellow’s shoulder and driving the arrowhead deeper into his flesh.
    The arrowhead! Rath’s words echoed in her mind and finally made sense. Could one tiny shard of metal truly be to blame for the tempest now tearing at the Phantom?
    The injured man moved and groaned when Maura landed on top of him. “What happened? Where am I?”
    She pulled herself off him, but kept low, with her arms splayed out to brace her against the next roll of the ship. “You’re in the hold. A Hanish archer from one of the ore galleys shot you down from the rigging.”
    The other injured man spoke up, his voice a bit slurred fromthe pain-easing brew Maura had given him. “You might be dead, now, if I hadn’t broken your fall. Say, lady, why is the ship rocking? Are the Han ramming us?”
    The Phantom gave another great heave…and so did Maura’s belly. She rummaged in her sash for the rest of the sea grass, popped a piece in her mouth and began chewing furiously. She’d be no good to anyone huddled in a corner retching her guts out.
    “It isn’t the Han.” Maura mumbled the words around a mouthful of sea grass.
    “No.” Rath’s voice rang out from above. “It’s that arrow.”
    He climbed back down the ladder, stopping halfway and clinging to it when another huge wave lashed the ship, sending a shower of spray through the hatch. “There are more stuck into the masts and the deck. Gull has his crew scouring the ship for them now.”
    He jumped down the last few rungs, landing on his hands and knees near Maura. “Can you get this one out?”
    “I told you, I don’t—”
    Before she could finish, Rath leaned close and whispered, “If we cannot get it off the ship any other way, Gull will have this poor fellow thrown overboard!”
    She had to try, then. She could not let a man drown because he’d had the bad fortune to be shot by a Hanish arrow. Whatever she might do to prevent it, she would have to work quickly. The ship could not take much more of this violent buffeting and still remain afloat.
    If only she had not woken the poor fellow by falling on him! Anything she did to dislodge that arrowhead was sure to cause him great pain. Maura shrank from that.
    “What can I do?” she asked Rath in an urgent whisper. “I have nothing sharp I can…cut it out with. Remember what Langbard said about Hanish arrows, how the barbs catch in the flesh if you try to pull them out.”
    “Push it through, then, like Langbard did for me!”
    “I don’t know how!”
    She heard voices overhead. Gull must be sending someone to fetch the wounded man.
    “You may know more than you think.” Rath clutched her hand. “Did Langbard share any of that skill with you in the passing ritual?”
    As she chided herself for not thinking of it, Maura marveled that Rath had. The passing ritual was the first stage of a