Francosz touched his head and winced. "And the cat was just trying to give her something," he said.

"Ugh, rats," Sova shivered. "Ships always have rats." She winced. "Oh, Francosz, what if it puts one in my bed?"

"Don't be such a... such a girl," he said contemptuously. "He doesn't like us enough. Besides, a cat only catches a few rats if it isn't hungry, and..." He grinned slowly, despite the pain from his scalp. "Sova! If we saved some of our cheese, I could make a noose and..." He leaned close to whisper in her ear. "We can get into the cabin when they're not there, and..."

"No! I'm not going to touch-" She paused at his dismissive shrug; he would get to have all the fun if she backed down now.

Papa wouldn't like me to go catching rats, she thought. It isn't clean.Her brother blinked to see her lips firm. "I want to get back at her too," Sova declared firmly. "We'll start tomorrow."

Chapter Seven.

BAYAG ISLE.

FOUR WEEKS NORTH OF BRAHVNIK.

TENTH IRON CYCLE, FIFTEENTH DAY.

"Sail ho!"

Rilla looked up sharply. The Zingas Vryka lay at anchor on the eastern shore of the island, in a creek amid sere winter rushes growing higher than her deck, four feet above the waterline. Painted blue-grey, her twin masts wouldn't show against the sky on this bright autumnal morning; the hull was the same color all along its nine-meter length. Invisible to watchers on the river north of the Witch's Isle, her two triangular sails were lowered and lashed to their booms, the long thigh-thick pine poles swinging idly against the masts at chest-height over the deck.

"Habiku's ship; she's flying the Sleeping Dragon." The lookout rose from the crossbar at the masthead and squirreled halfway down a ratline to speak more softly. "It's the Kettle Belly." That was one of the firm's older ships, a big, bluff-bowed river freighter built in the traditional style, nearly round. A single square mast, rudder-and-tiller steering, crew of fifteen on her normal occasions.

"Regular run out of F'talezon," Rilla said to Shyll as he came up beside her. "Bulk cargoes; blackrock, timber, baled hides, rough ornamental stones and steel tool-blanks, for Rand."

The teRyadn shrugged; he was not a merchant, for all the drilling Megan and then Rilla had put him through. He inhaled the set silt smell of the river, looked up at a flight of wild geese honking their way south in a V of grace. It was no worse a day to die than any other; and he didn't intend to die.

Rilla looked at him, then away. I know you loved-love my cousin. She's been gone two years. You still love her, I can see itin your eyes when you think of her.

"Do we fight?" he asked. Across the deck, Inu raised his massive head and whined sharply at the tone. The two Moryavska, Shenka and Jakov, who had been brushing his coat, paused too; that was one of the Zak words they had already picked up.

Rilla paused. "It's soon for another raid," she mused. "On the other hand, that's what we're here for... Might not be worth the risk, for that sort of cargo, but the Moryavska need blooding."

She nodded. "Sound battle quarters."

A yip from Inu, who gathered his paws beneath him and lolled his tongue, but did not get up. He knew better than to move rapidly on a ship. Danake stuck her head in the hatch and whistled softly, the crew scrambling from their quarters below or from their tasks on deck. The quartermaster already had the arms locker open and was handing out weapons. The ten Moryavska each had a Zak partner who directed them with gesticulating hands; they understood what being handed a weapon meant, and they'd learned Habiku's name. Crew filed by, each taking their weapon of choice and such protection as they could afford. The Moryavska had been equipped to their taste in the month since the raid on the slave caravan with bows of horn and elm, broad-bladed axes and stabbing-spears.

One, a squat giant six feet tall and nearly as broad, had taken a smith's forging hammer for his weapon. Moshulu grinned at Rilla, waved the massive weapon and called something cheerfully incomprehensible as his Zak partner/instructor fussed him into the boiled sharkskin jacket and bone-strapped leather helmet, hopping up to make sure the buckles were properly fastened.

"Iczak, got all you need? I hope we can do this without much killing, unless Habiku is still hiring scum." The Zingas Vryka carried a crew of forty, far more than most riverboats her size, to provide prize crews.

"Aye, Captain. Though I could wish for a Haian." The healer looked up from his bottles and bandages, preparing to go below to the lazarette where the wounded would be treated. He keptthe bone-saws and long needles used for amputations wrapped up; it would be bad for morale to let them show.

"Boryis, take the glass. If you drop it, I'll kick you in the behind with a pointed shoe so it sticks, got that?"

"Aye, Captain." He grinned at her and swarmed up a ratline with her precious spyglass. A moment later he hissed down, "She's tacking west as far around the Isle as she can."

"Temuchin!" Rilla called in a low voice to her new bosun. "She thinks she can outrun us if we happen to be here."

The crew were at their posts. The bosun nodded and whistled; he was old for his post, had been a captain with a quarter-share in his vessel before he objected to the Sleeping Dragon's involvement in shipping dreamdust south. The mushrooms it was derived from grew only in the old mines about F'talezon, Habiku had seen a potential market downstream... and had not thought it reasonable for one of his skippers to object. Temuchin had lost a daughter to the drug.

The bosun had learned to smile again, after the Zingas Vryka stole her first shipment and dumped it into the Brezhan.

Long-short. Crew ran to unlash the bindings that held the sails to the booms; the bosun whistled again, and two teams of ten broke free the halyards. They bent, gripped the rough flax cables, heaved in rhythm, bend snatch heave back, their bare feet slapping on the deck as the block and tackle at the masthead squealed in protest. They chanted as they worked, an old tune with fresh-minted words: "Make the pulleys scream-oh All together-ai-oh!

Habiku's balls are river mud-oh ...

The long triangles of canvas rose in quick jerks and short pauses, the swooping curves of the cables that edged them straining and hauling at the weight of cloth; it bellied and fluttered in the light breeze that came over the island's spine,and the hull stirred with anticipation.

Short-long-long. An empty cask went overside, holding the anchor cable for retrieval, no time to waste winching it up.

Short-short-short and the deck crew broke out the long sweeps to spider-walk the ship out into open water, six strokes and the poles were run inboard and the northing wind caught at the jibsails, luffing, thunder-cracks of rippling canvas.

Rilla stood by the wheel, one hand resting on its knurled teak; the Zingas Vryha had started her life as a ClawPrince's toy, a pleasure yacht, and had not a few touches of that sort. But she had a good turn of speed, too, and could point further into the wind than most. Megan had got her cheap at an estate sale, cheap enough to be worth the conversion costs.

The wheel jerked as steerage way came on the ship and the rudder bit into moving water. Ahh, Rilla thought. She's alive.

Shyll came up and clapped her steel cap on her head, hung the twofang and darts from their clips ready to hand.

"Will we catch them?" he said. A frown; their vessel was cutting toward the east bank, while the Kettle Belly tacked for the western shore at a flatter angle.

Rilla turned, her face tight with the excitement of the chase and the feel of the long surges as the bow caught the river swell and knifed, throwing up plumes of spray.

"Two points to port," she said to the helmswoman. To Shyll: "You've got a drylander's bones, my friend. We take our port tack to the shallows, then turn and do a long run southwest on the starboard tack. That lumbering ox isn't called the Kettle Belly for nothing, and she's square-rigged. Can't take the wind on more than a quarter, we can do twice that. We'll overhaul them inside two chiliois with the wind from the south like this. "

That was the prevailing breeze, three-quarters of the year, and the foundation of Brezhan commerce. South with the current, north with the wind; a fore-and-aft rig was like a full complement of oars, really only helpful to a warcraft, and a recent innovation on the northern stretches of the river.They cleared the lee of Bayag Isle, and the wind caught them.

The ship heeled sharply and put her port rail down, shipping spray over the deck as the wind fought the leverage of her keel.

Rilla shouted as the view opened about them, the low rocky humpback of the island dropping astern, the two chiiiois breadth of the river opening out to the south like a plain of dark blue-green. Marsh lay ahead and to port on the eastern shore; bluffs and trees over on the western bank, and the chip-shape of the Kettle Belly making sail away, her square of canvas dirty yellow-brown. The captain of the Zingas Vryka looked up at the proud swell of maroon-red above her, with the outline of a running wolf on both sails in silver-grey.

"Vryka! Vryka!" she shouted again, and the crew took it up from their stations at the ropes or crouching on the deck. Inu threw back his head and howled deafeningly, a mournful, sobbing sound that would carry clear to the western shore; some of the crew joined him, the Moryavska more tunefully than most.

Rilla glanced left; the reedbeds of the eastern shore were nearing with almost frightening speed. The depth of the river was unpredictable here, with shifting banks and snags, and the Zingas Vryka lay deeper in the water than most. It wouldn't do to hang her up on a bank after all this.

"On the other hand," she muttered to herself, "the longer our port tack, the better angle we get to starboard." A shout to Boryis in the rigging: "What color ahead?"

"Shelving to brown, Captain!"

She nodded. "Prepare to come about," she said to the second mate. Annike nodded and pushed up the wire visor of her helmet.

" 'Ware boom." The call crashed out through her megaphone, and even the Moryavska knew enough to duck; the boom was shoulder-high to a Zak.

Rilla slapped the wheel. "Come about, helm," she said. "Five points to starboard."The two crewfolk heaved and the man-high wheel turned, slowly at first and then with a blur as the bow swung away from the shore; the old illusion seized her, that the ship was still and the land turned, the blue line of the western hills coming up to starboard. And the Kettle Belly... The ship slowed as her bow came into the wind, swinging back level like a giant pendulum, her mast tops making circles against the blue sky and racking iron-grey clouds. Then the wind caught the sails again and joined the wheel to point the bow starboard in a gathering rush, canvas cracked and the booms swung across the deck to hang off the starboard quarter.

Zingas Vryka took the wind again and heeled; Rilla spoke: "In three on the sheetlines."

The second mate and bosun relayed the order, and the ropes that secured the freeswinging ends of the booms were hauled in a meter.

"Point her one to port," Rilla said, and the helm swung back a tenth-turn toward the south, into the wind. The second mate looked up sharply.

"She'll luff, that's too close to the wind."

Rilla glanced at the sails; they were taunt, only a hint of fluttering along the unsecured outer edge. She shook her head.

"Not quite... yes!" The ship heeled more sharply, the right rail almost submerged, and riverwater boiled into the scuppers; the Moryavska, Usakil, slid to the edge of the deck, amid obscene complaints about where his spearpoint was directed. The deck heaved and swooped as speed built, and curving sheets of spray planed up from the hollow bows, droplets scattering as far as the stern. Barracuda-swift, the Zingas Vryka was cutting south down the reach of the river at an angle to the wind the Kettle Belly could not hope to match.

Rilla grinned tautly, judging distance. "Twelve knots, or I'm a mutton-eater," she said. More softly, "You trained me well, daughter of my father's sister." She turned to Shyll, clutching a ratline to keep erect on the canted deck. "Still doubt we'll catchher?" she said. "Go on, get your giant jackal ready, we'll be on them in half an hour."

He laughed, gave a whoop, made a flying leap with heels high over the quarterdeck railing to land on the main deck, rolled, sprang to Inu, grabbed the greathound's ruff and planted a smacking kiss on his nose.

"Arooouff," the dog said, backing himself erect and jigging in place from foot to foot; his tail waved madly, beating out a steady bong-bong-bong on the iron neckguard of a crewman's helmet. The man lurched forward, turned, took the tail straight in the face and staggered back with a slightly stunned expression, shouldering a neighbor aside to make more room.

Inu panted into Shyll's face and licked. The teRyadn pushed his muzzle aside, laughing.

"Got to feed you more grainmash, boy, your breath alone could stun a Ri. Come on, time for your collar and harness. "

The dog dropped his ears slightly, but stood with strained tolerance as Shyll and the two Moryavska who had appointed themselves the greathound's servants equipped him for war. A leather coat sewn with bone plates covered his flanks and chest, ridged down the spine with orcas' teeth; a fitted helm strapped with steel protected head and eyes, and a spiked collar his throat. Shenka and Jakov knelt to bind on sharkskin leggings from paw to hock, boiled in vinegar for strength and rough enough to strip the flesh from a grabbing hand. A rumbling growl like rough stones grating in a mineshaft made his barrel-hoop ribs tremble beneath the fingers that buckled and strapped; half complaint at the constriction, half anticipation.

"Stand still and take it, you damn puppy!" Shyll said. "I'm not getting you killed because you're too hot in that! Sit!"

Inu sat and fluttered his lips. His pack was going to war, and he knew enough to obey the packleaders signals. The river might be too big to scent-mark, but it was theirs.

"What crew?" Rilla called to Boryis.There was a pause; they had cut south of the Kettle Belly by half a chiliois and put about, ready to run north at her before the wind, safer than an attempt to board the high sterncastle. A merchantman had a higher freeboard all about, but it was lowest at the bows.

"Nobody I recognize," Boryis called down. Rilla's eyebrows rose in surprise; Habiku had dismissed and hired lavishly, but a good half of the crewfolk of the Sleeping Dragon were still those taken on in Megan's time. The Kettle Belly had a nearly intact crew, not worth the master's attention on a milk run schedule.

"There's... twenty of them at least, not counting any below, "

Boryis continued; dismay was plain in his voice. Half again the normal complement, and if they were new-hired, less likely to make a token resistance only. DragonLord's favor on Habiku or no, most of Megan's followers remained loyal to her and her blood-kin, Rilla. "More! They're standing to battle stations, all well-armed. Some of them are taking a cover off the sterncastle...

Dark Lord swallow them, it's a steelspring!"

"What?" Rilla shouted, startled out of calm. That was a war engine, powered by steel skeins and throwing two-meter javelins; a monopoly of the F'talezonian river-fleet. "On the Kettle Belly? That's like putting a mailcoat on a milk cow!" A moment's thought.

"Out sheets; grapnelmen and archers to the bow! Well lay alongside forequarter to forequarter, and board that way."

The Kettle Belly's length, crew, mast and rigging would be between her and those shipkiller missiles. The pulleys squealed again as the lines slacked, letting the booms swing out from the centerline.

"Captain!" Boryis called. Marines! It's pig-sucking Marines!

On the Kettle-Belly? Rilla thought. What in Halya have we stumbled on? The wind was astern, now; the river straight north and south for twenty chiliois, and with near two chiliois of sailing room all that way. Feet thundered on the deck as those of the fighting-crew who favored the bow crowded forward, a deep throbbing sound as they plucked at their bowstrings inanticipation. The grapnelmen were roving the ends of their ropes to deck cleats; the three-pronged metal hooks they held ready for the circle-and-toss. The steel wire binding the ropes for a meter below the attachments glittered fierce and cold in the pale morning light. Boryis slid down a stay and handed her the spyglass by its strap.

The Kettle Belly was nearing the western shore, about to tack.

"Helm port three," Rilla said. Zingas Vryka had been nearly dead in the water with her sails luffed, bow rising and falling in short, choppy strokes as the wind put just enough way on her to balance the current. Now she slid forward, at first only a hint of movement, then gathering speed with a swift gliding rush like skis on powder snow. The hull spoke, not the complaining squeaks and rattles of holding station; this was an eager sound, the long flexing of the hull-strakes and the oak treenails that bound timber and plank, the drumming thutter of waves parting, slapping the hull like wet hands down half its length; the sails creaked and popped as they stretched, and wind hummed through the cordage.

Kettle Belly was turning, turning toward them; no choice, except to continue the tack to the western shore and ground her.

The view of her changed, from three-quarters on to her port to the narrower head-on silhouette and the blunt rectangle of her sail, fluttering its baggy fabric and then steadying as it caught the wind. The merchantman was making three knots; Zingas Vryka thirteen, with a stiff wind coming in on her starboard quarter, even better than on directly following. The two ships closed with frightening speed; she could see the streaked planks of the old freighter's hull, a missing section of rail, tangled ratlines in her rigging.

Sloppy, sloppy, Rilla thought. Filthy rokatzk wouldn't spend on maintenance. A thread of smoke from her sterncastle; hadn't they doused the galley fire? Bad practice even safely at anchor, on a ship made of tinder-dry, tar-soaked wood and cloth. She opened her mouth to call for the sails to be taken in, this was far too fast for safe boarding, when the tubby shape began to shift again. Turning to port, away from her; trying to run before thewind, a square rig did better so, but the Zingas Vryka was still much faster...

Her eyes snapped wide. "Come about, left full helm. Down, everybody down!" she shouted. Even Inu dropped, hearing the urgency in her shout.

The ship staggered in the water, swiveling to port, heeled crazily onto her starboard side as she turned broadside on, her momentum and the wind pushing at her sails and thrusting her further down. Yells, clatter as bodies and weapons tumbled across the deck; the starboard rail went under, water fountained into the scuppers and the masts bent like bows. A line parted with a crack like thunder and whipped across the deck with a force that would have cut a human in half had any been in its path. For an instant forever long she was sure the Zingas Vryka was going to capsize, but the deep keel bit and the motionless moment passed as she began to slide toward the western bank on a shallow tack.

Too slow, too slow, ran through her mind. Can't push, can't do anything. They were pinned, ants scurrying beneath a descending boot; she could feel the jelly-like resistance of the water under the keel, the Zingas Vryka gathering way slowly, oh so slowly, under the steel gaze of the murder machine.

The Kettle Belly was broadside on to them, only a hundred meters away. Faces and weapons lined the rail, jeering; the squat shape of the springsteel hunched on the sterncastle, close enough to see the oily yellow flames and black smoke trickling from the bundle of pitch-soaked rags tied behind the barbs of the missile. So close she could see the crew making their last adjustments, the javelin point raising and swiveling as they turned the wheels. F'talezonian river marines in black-enameled leather armor trimmed in blue-green; one looked at her, and she could imagine the narrow dark eyes squinting under the bowl-helmet. The marine stepped back a pace, doll-figure beside model machine. A swift jerk at a lanyard.

Chinnnng. A sound like steel hammers on steel, deep in the forge caves. The javelin flew too fast to be more than a blur, but the smoke trailed it like a long black spearshaft. Rilla stayedmotionless beside the wheel for the time it would have taken to blink and open her eyes again. The long shaft flickered by not two hands' width from her ear, and the wind of its passage whirled her about to see the black trail snick into the water a hundred meters south with a flash of white smoke.

The chaos on deck was sorting itself, Temuchin yelling, a pair of deckhands securing the broken stay and roving a new one through the blocks, and the gap between the ships opened, swelling as they ran their right-angled courses. Inu scrabbled into his place, splay-legged, still low, trying to obey the order to lie down.

On the Kettle Belly there was an orderly scurry about the springsteel; Rilla watched the marine who had pulled the lanyard turn and boot the buttocks of one of his squad, and they pumped at a pivot-mounted geared leaver. Swift hands lifted another huge finned dart into the trough, spun the aiming-wheels; Zaki work, nobody else could make gearing like that. She cursed her people's facility with metalwork as the enormous tuning-fork note of the springsteel sounded again.

"Keep down, everybody not on a line keep down," she called again, watching Deigjuburg the Moryavska rise and bend her bow; the woman ignored the foreign Zak words and loosed, a high arching shot. Deigjuburg's arrow winked as sunlight caught the head turning at the peak of its arc, high above. At a hundred and fifty meters the springsteels bolt was barely even a blur; the Moryavska woman snapped back a meter and crumpled, a two-inch hole punched through her from chest to spine by the bolt. Deflected, it pinned a crewman crouched behind her to the deck, through shield and leg and half its length into the deck planking; he screamed and twitched. The mercenaries on the Kettle Belly's deck laughed and beat swords on their shields. The sound faded as the Zingas Vryka drew away; not out of range, that would take half a chiliois, but the springsteel crew were wasting no bolts on a dwindling target. The privateer would have to come close to do damage, and they'd be waiting.

"Annike!" Rilla called, her voice flat. "See to Yahn, get him below to Iczak. Get some people aloft, form a bucket chain anddouse the sails." That would slow them, but speed was the least of their worries. "Wet sand to the deck." That was their ballast, there would be plenty. Laugh at killing my crew, will they?

Habiku. You are teaching me the color and taste of hate, the sticky feel of it on my soul, the thick sweet taste of it on my tongue. "Steady," she said to the helm and then, "Prepare to come about." Her voice was clear as the ringing of the steelspring.

Annike came up beside her. "Yahn doesn't look good," she said. "Iczak's trying to stop the bleeding... fever for sure, even if he does. How do we get past that thing?"

They looked north, across grey, choppy water to the merchantman ploughing straight upriver. Straight north at four knots, probably her best speed.

"With enormous difficulty," Rilla said sharply, then made a gesture of apology to the second mate; the question was an honest one. "All she has to do is keep twitching her ass end toward us like a horse that's about to lack; we can't close in, she's not very maneuverable but it'll be a job from Halya to get right in bows-on. Dark Lord loss Ranion for giving Habiku that springsteel, what sort of a DragonLord..." She paused; futile, and besides, everyone knew what sort of a madman the current ruler of F'talezon was.

"Hmmmm," Annike said. "And whoever's commanding that tub is no fool."

Rilla nodded and turned to the helm. "Bring her about; three points to starboard." The wheel spun, and the privateer pointed her bows north and east, following the merchantman's wake but slanting to the right to increase the distance between them.

"We're closing too fast," she said after a moment. "Reef, if you please."

Annike raised her megaphone. "Three loops in, main and fore'sl!" she called. The deck crew unstayed the lines that held the sails aloft, backed a practiced half-step. Others jumped to the booms, bunching the loose folds of canvas down on the woodand lashing them tight, making them fast with slipknots. The mass of cordage and canvas and wood flowed through their hands into new shapes as neat and functional as the first.

Rilla closed her eyes and saw the river in her mind; it tended northwest from here, F'trovanemi Isle was a long day's sail upcurrent. The F'talezonian river-base, a rocky islet armored with a castle like a dragon's scales; springsteels, rock throwers, a garrison of a thousand and half a dozen galleys with full crews, any one of them able to outrun or outfight her. It had been a calculated risk to lurk about Bayag Isle: the fleet had hung two shiploads of river pirates here only last year.

Worth it, because they were preying on the Sleeping Dragon alone... She opened her eyes again, looking north. The river swung about Bayag Isle, turned straight south and then southwest; the current slowed and dumped sand and silt, mostly in the shallows and marshes of the eastern shore. Not always.

And it changed from day to day.