Foxmask by Juliet Marillier Page B

cold, and bleeding! Don’t you know how to sail this thing?”
    Goaded out of his shock, Thorvald now saw Sam’s bulky form slumped on the deck, looking more dead than alive. The bright stream of blood moving down cheek and neck, soaking shirt and tunic, made a note of vibrant color in a dawn storm-dark, ocean-green, shadow-gray. Thorvald edged aft and seized the steering oar, knowing his puny efforts to maintain control were useless against the malign force of the elements, but understanding the need to try. A fight to the death, this was, man against nature; he must hang on and hope some higher power, if there were such a thing, would eventually grow tired of toying with them. He’d sought a challenge and he’d got one: the hardest game he’d ever played.
    Creidhe was tearing something up, she was wrapping a bandage around Sam’s head and pressing on the wound with her hand. Her mouth was set very tight; the rays of dawn light creeping between the heavy clouds showed her even paler than before, as if she, too, would lapse into unconsciousness any moment. Now she was trying to move Sam away, just enough to give Thorvald room to maneuver in his desperate efforts to keep the
Sea Dove
under some kind of control, though indeed, without the use of oars or sail, the best he could hope to do was keep her from being swamped. Creidhe subsided onto the decking with Sam’s head in her lap; he was too heavy for her to shift, and now she held one hand over his crudely bandaged injury and hooked her other arm around the nearest timber as the sky rumbled above them and the water surged and retreated, rose and fell, determined to dislodge them. A stain of blood already marked the linen—Creidhe’s shift?—that circled Sam’s head. Creidhe looked up at Thorvald where he strained against the shuddering pull of the steering oar. Strands of wet hair were plastered across her face, and her eyes were full of shadows.
    â€œSorry,” she said. Whether it was for the plight they were in, or simply for being in the way, there was no telling.
    â€œMe too,” said Thorvald.
    The
Sea Dove
fled through another lowering day, another chill night in which Sam lay groaning under the two blankets. Thorvald and Creidhe stared into the darkness, numb with exhaustion but still doggedly maintaining their watch, one over the injured man, the other on the water, the stars, the movement of the battered craft. They did not talk much. Creidhe wiped Sam’s brow, fed him sips of water, helped him roll from one side to the other. He seemed to be improving just a little. Thorvald did his best to keep some control over their course, though it seemed to him the boat was not responding as it should. He thought the steering oar was damaged, but he did not mention this to Creidhe.
    They sighted no land on the second day after losing the mast. The wind died down, the seas became calmer, and the chill crept deep into their bones. They covered Sam with all the warm clothing they could find, for in his weakened state it was important that he not surrender to the cold and give up altogether. The fisherman was sleeping a lot, but when he woke he was talking sense now, and trying to make helpful suggestions, which was a good sign. The next night, Thorvald heard Creidhe muttering from time to time, and wondered if she was losing her mind; that would surely be the last straw. But after a while it came to him that she was praying, or something very like it, though she spoke in the old tongue of the islands and he was not fluent in that language. He remembered that Creidhe’s sister was a priestess; that her mother, too, was skilled in the ancient ways of their faith, which had to do with earth and ocean, the ancestral lore of standing stones, the paths of moon and sun. Creidhe chanted with her eyes closed. There was no telling whom she addressed, nor what she asked them.
    If it made her feel a little better, Thorvald