The Ruby Knight

edge an’ have a look at your vessel?’ Kurik suggested. ‘It might just could be that we could strike a bargain.’
    The tar-smeared fellow drained his tankard and rose to his feet. ‘Come along then,’ he said, moving towards the door.
    ‘Kurik,’ Sparhawk said quietly in a pained tone, ‘don’t spring surprises like that on me. My nerves aren’t as good as they used to be.’
    ‘Variety keeps life interestin’, Cap’n,’ Kurik grinned as they left the tavern in the wake of the fisherman.
    The boat was perhaps thirty feet long, and it sat low in the water.
    ‘She appears to have a leak or two, mate,’ Kurik noted, pointing at the foot or so of water standing in the hull.
    ‘We were just patching her,’ the fisherman apologized. ‘I hit a submerged log and sprung a seam. The men as works for me wanted to get something to eat before they came back to finish up and bail her out.’ He patted the boat’s rail affectionately. ‘She’s a good old tub,’ he said modestly. ‘She responds to the helm well, an’ she can take whatever kind of weather this lake can throw at her.’
    ‘An’ you’ll have her patched by mornin’?’
    ‘Shouldn’t be no trouble, mate.’
    ‘What thinkee, Cap’n?’ Kurik asked Sparhawk.
    ‘Looks all right to me,’ Sparhawk replied, ‘but I’m no expert. That’s what I hired you for.’
    ‘All right then, we’ll try her, mate,’ Kurik told the fisherman. ‘We’ll come back down come sun-up an’ settle up then.’ He spat on his hand, and he and the fisherman slapped their palms together. ‘Come along, Cap’n,’ Kurik told his lord. ‘Let’s find us some grog an’ supper an’ then a bed. ’Twill be a long day tomorrow.’ And then with that rolling swagger, he led the way up from the lake-front.
    ‘Would you like to explain all that?’ Sparhawk asked when they were some distance away from the boat-owner.
    ‘It’s not too difficult, Sparhawk,’ Kurik said. ‘Men who sail on lakes always have a great deal of respect for saltwater sailors, and they’ll go out of their way to be accommodating.’
    ‘So I noticed, but how did you ever learn to talk that way?’
    ‘I went to sea once when I was about sixteen. I’ve told you that before.’
    ‘Not that I remember, no.’
    ‘I must have.’
    ‘Maybe it slipped my mind. What possessed you to go to sea?’
    ‘Aslade,’ Kurik laughed. ‘She was about fourteen then and just blossoming out. She had that marrying sort of look in her eye. I wasn’t ready yet, so I ran away to sea. Biggest mistake I ever made. I hired on as a deck-hand on the leakiest bucket on the west coast of Eosia. I spent six months bailing water out of the bilges. When I got back to shore, I swore I’d never set foot on a ship again. Aslade was very happy to see me again, but then she’s always been an emotional girl.’
    ‘Was that when you decided to marry her?’
    ‘Shortly after that. When I got home, she took me up to her father’s hayloft and did some fairly serious persuading. Aslade can be very, very persuasive when she sets her mind to it.’
    ‘ Kurik! ’ Sparhawk was actually shocked.
    ‘Grow up, Sparhawk. Aslade’s a country girl, and most country girls have already started to swell when they get married. It’s a relatively direct form of courtship, but it has its compensations.’
    ‘In a hayloft ?’
    Kurik smiled. ‘Sometimes you have to improvise, Sparhawk.’

Chapter 19

    Sparhawk sat in the room he shared with Kalten, poring over his map while his friend snored on a nearby bed. Ulath’s idea of a boat was a good one. Sephrenia’s statement that it would indeed evade the Seeker’s most dangerous means of tracking them down was reassuring. They could return to that lonely mud beach where the Earl of Heid slumbered and resume their interrupted search without looking over their shoulders for signs of a hooded figure sniffing at the ground behind them. The Zemoch skull Berit had found on the murky bottom had almost precisely pinpointed Bhelliom’s location. With only a little luck, they would be able to find it within the space of a single afternoon. They’d have to return here to Venne for the horses, however, and that was the problem. If, as they had surmised, the Seeker’s blank-minded cohorts were lurking in the fields and woods around the town, they’d have to fight their way out. Under ordinary circumstances, fighting would not have concerned Sparhawk; it was what he had trained a