Longbow shrugged. “Leave the gold with him, then.”

Sorgan blinked. “Well, I’ll have to think about that just a bit,” he said dubiously.

“Don’t you trust your cousin, Hook-Big?” Eleria, still nestled on Longbow’s lap, asked. “It’s not like the gold really means anything, does it? You saw how much of it there is in the Beloved’s cave, didn’t you?”

“It’s something to think about, Cap’n,” Ham-Hand said. “Torl’s going to need that gold a lot more than we are. He’s going to have to have something to show any new ship cap’n who might be interested. When you get right down to it, all that gold really is, is bait, and Torl’s the one who’ll be fishing after we leave.”

“It just seems unnatural,” Sorgan said. “Giving gold away really goes against my grain.”

“We’ll give you more, Hook-Big,” Eleria told him. “You worry too much.” Then she yawned. “I’m a little sleepy,” she said. “If it’s all right with everybody, I think I’ll take a little nap. And even if it’s not all right, I’ll do it anyway.” Then she snuggled down in Longbow’s arms and promptly fell asleep.

4

Veltan’s thunderbolt enjoyed herself enormously as she enthusiastically blasted a channel through the mountainous mile-long ice floes lying to the south of the Land of Dhrall. She seemed to take particular delight in the steam that came boiling out and the huge fragments that went flying each time she shattered an ice mountain. Veltan felt that she was probably overdoing things, but she was having so much fun that he didn’t have the heart to rein her in, so he leaned back and let her play.

Her first pass at Aracia’s arbitrary zone of ice left a path of slush a half mile wide. Her next pass doubled the width of the path, and the steam she generated was very much like a fog bank.

“Enough, Veltan!” Mother Sea said sharply.

“She’s not really hurting anything, Mother.”

“Oh, yes she is. The water’s starting to boil, and it’s killing all the fish. Make her stop.”

“Yes, Mother,” he replied obediently. “Could you perhaps push the slush aside, though? Ice seems to bother the Trogites, for some reason. Their ships are slow enough to begin with, and if they start being overly cautious, it could be midsummer before they reach the coast of Dhrall.”

“I’ll take care of it, Veltan, and I’ll add a little current behind them to hurry them along.”

“That would be very nice, Mother,” Veltan thanked her. He hesitated. “Would it be all right if I let my pet smash a few more of these ice mountains? I won’t let her boil the water, but she’s having so much fun that I hate to make her stop just now. She’ll get tired in a little while, and then I’ll put her to bed. I’ve been running her a little hard here lately, so she needs a bit of playtime.”

“Oh, all right, I suppose, but be sure you don’t let her boil the water anymore.”

“I promise,” he replied.

Castano was a large seaport on the north coast of the Trogite Empire, and the harbor was filled with broad-beamed vessels that were obviously designed to carry a great deal of cargo. The city itself was surrounded by thick, high walls, and what Veltan could see of it raised some memories of the town of Weros, over in the Land of Dhrall. For some reason, the more civilized people of the world seemed to be afraid of open space, since their houses were all tightly crowded together. Unlike the houses in Weros, however, most of the houses of Castano were made of stone. That made them sturdy, of course, but they were probably cold and damp in the winter. Like the Maags, the Trogites appeared to believe that the streets of their towns were the most convenient place to dispose of their trash.

Veltan saw a large encampment just to the south of the city. He assumed that Narasan’s army was there, but he didn’t stop. He was fairly sure that Narasan wouldn’t move until he received at least a token payment, so he passed on over Castano and went on to a small fishing village of perhaps a dozen houses a few leagues off to the west and rather carefully examined several fishing sloops to get a general idea of how they were constructed. Then he moved on to a deserted beach and built one of his own with a single thought. It was faster to do it that way than it would have been to duplicate Trogite coins and then spend the rest of the afternoon haggling with some smelly old fisherman.

The sloop he’d just built appeared to be a fair duplicate of the ones he’d seen in the harbor of the village, so he pushed her off the beach. It took him a little while to determine which of the ropes raised, lowered, or turned the single sail, but it wasn’t really all that complicated, so his sloop was soon running before a good following breeze back along the coast in the general direction of Castano. He found it to be quite exhilarating, and he wondered why he’d never tried sailing before. Of course, the weather wasn’t bad, and the breeze was going in the right direction, so things weren’t too difficult.

When he reached Castano he sent out a searching thought and located the soldier named Gunda, whom he’d met in Narasan’s compound back in Kaldacin. He eased his little sloop up to the pier where Gunda was conferring with several other Trogites. “Ho, Gunda!” he called.

“Is that you, Veltan?” Gunda sounded startled.

“It was the last time I looked. Is Commander Narasan anywhere nearby?”

“He’s over in the encampment just south of town. What in the world are you doing in that rickety little sloop?”

“I thought it might be easier to come here from Dhrall by boat than it’d be to walk.”

“Very funny, Veltan. Did you actually sail all the way from Dhrall in that rickety thing?”

“It wasn’t too bad. We’ve had a stroke of luck, and I think we should take advantage of it while we can. Some freakish ocean current just opened a channel through the ice floes, and if we hurry, we should be able to get through before it closes up again. Could you send for Narasan, please? You might mention the word pay in your message. That should bring him running.”

“You’ve got that much gold in that broken-down sloop?” Gunda demanded incredulously.

“Do I really look that stupid, Gunda? Let’s just say that I’ve got enough with me to get Narasan’s attention. I’ll give him the rest when we reach Dhrall. You’d better start things moving. I think we’ll want to leave here first thing tomorrow morning. That channel through the ice won’t last forever, so we’d better get cracking.”