1

Cashel stood at a distance from the other spectators, where the southern end of the hamlet's seawall gave way to grass and the natural crumbling rock of the region. He watched the trireme's crew launch their vessel, and he cried.

All the passengers were aboard. The crew had seated the mast in chocks pinned to the keel, below the deck and even the oarsmen's benches, but they hadn't set the yard as yet. They'd sewn all the canvas in Barca's Hamlet into a sail to replace the one the storm shredded. A trireme could only use the mainsail in fine weather, though, because the rig was awkward to adjust and dangerously capable of capsizing the long, narrow warship if a gust struck from abeam. On blustery days a small triangular sail could be spread from the forepost to aid the rowers.

Garric walked toward Cashel along the top of the seawall. He grinned and waved when he caught Cashel's glance.

Cashel waved back and wiped his eyes with his forearm. He didn't want company; that's why he was standing here! But he couldn't turn Garric away without making even more of a fool of himself than he felt already.

The ship's captain cried "Ready!" in a voice that was almost birdlike by the time the onshore breeze carried it to Cashel. The sailors in the surf, over a hundred of them, braced themselves against the hull and the outrigger that carried the upper two oarbanks.

The drummer seated cross-legged on the trireme's stern began to beat time on a section of hollow log: an ordinary drum's leather heads would soften in the sodden air of the ship's belly. Sailors shouted the cadence as they thrust the vessel outward, into the waves. The sea foamed about them, knee-high to those farthest forward.

"These past three days have really confused me," Garric said as they came close enough to hear each other. "It's like it was all happening to somebody else."

"I wish it was," Cashel said. His eyes were filling with tears again. He couldn't help it.

Ship's officers stood in the surf behind their men, shouting guidance as the waves rose and ebbed. The tide was a little past full, but there didn't seem to be any difficulty launching the vessel. Already the bow was free and the stern rocked with each measured thrust from the men in the water. The planking of the lower hull was black with the tar that sealed it against the sea.

Side by side with Cashel, Garric turned to watch the ship. Cashel quickly swiped his eyes dry again, though he knew it wouldn't help for long.

Thirty oars toward the bow on either side were manned, though the blades were raised and motionless for the moment. An officer leaned out from the curving forepost, watching for the abnormal swell that might lift the vessel and fling it broadside onto the shore again. Cashel was no sailor, but anyone who lived near the sea knew to respect its unpredictable strength.

The morning sun lighted the vermilion upper hull; the ship was a streak of fire on the water. The eye on the far bow seemed to blink as the spray slapped it. Garric must have noticed the same thing, because he said, "The captain told me that the eye isn't so the ship can see its way, like I'd thought. It's to scare away sea monsters."

A dozen more oars came out, spaced along the after part of the hull. The trireme was completely afloat. The bow oars began to stroke, holding the vessel steady as the men in the water gripped the oarshafts nearer the stern and lifted themselves back aboard the ship. The drummer beat a changed rhythm.

The nobles and their soldier escort clustered just forward of the mast where they were least in the way of the deck crew and the oarsmen swarming over the stern rails on both sides. In their midst stood a tall, blond woman shrouded in a winter cloak.

"Goodbye, Sharina!" Garric called. He waved both arms above his head. "Stay well! Stay well!"

He turned to Cashel and said, "I can't get over the fact that Sharina's leaving. This is all happening in another world."

Cashel began to sob openly. He knelt slowly, the way an ox falls after being stabbed to the heart. His grip on his staff steadied him.

"Cashel?" Garric said. "Cashel?"

"Just leave me alone, can't you?" he shouted. Tears choked the words to blubbering. "Oh, Duzi, I love her so much. I love her so much."

"You love Sharina?" Garric said. Even in his present state Cashel could hear the disbelief in his friend's voice. Then in a different tone Garric added, "Does she know it, Cashel?"

"No, nobody knows it," Cashel said. He was already feeling better; blurting the truth seemed to have cleansed the poison of hurt from his soul. "Not even my sister knows."

Though he couldn't really be sure of that. Ilna sometimes read his thoughts before they were even formed in his mind.

He got to his feet, still blind with tears but no longer trembling. He wiped his eyes; this time they stayed clear.

Out of embarrassment Garric didn't look directly toward Cashel. "I'm all right," Cashel muttered to his friend's sidelong concern. He supposed he really was. There was a just cold empty place where the emotions had washed out of his heart with the tears.

The ship was already well offshore. Its oars rippled in sequence like the legs of a millipede. Only two banks were in use; the storm must have smashed many of the oars, and there was nothing in Barca's Hamlet to replace them.

"I didn't know people felt that way..." Garric said. His mouth worked silently as he tried to decide how to explain what he meant, then chose to let the thought die.

"Like something out of one of your love poems, isn't it?" Cashel said bitterly. "Maybe that's my trouble—I let you read poems to me. Love doesn't belong here. It doesn't belong with people like me."

Barca's Hamlet was too small a community for any child to grow up ignorant of what went on between men and women. When a couple fought, everybody heard the words they screamed at one another. Wives clawed other women, men bludgeoned rivals senseless in muddy farmyards.

But neighbors fought over fencelines and missing sheep, too. Hot anger was natural. The queasy hollowness Cashel felt at the thought of Sharina being gone was like leprosy, a wasting foulness that he couldn't wash off.

"Well, she'll be back, you know, Cashel," Garric said, the lie patent in his brittle cheeriness. "I've been feeling really strange myself lately. I thought it was the seawolf's poison—"

He patted his right calf gently. The wounds had already closed, though the scabs would be some time clearing.

"—but you know, I wonder if it isn't a fever going around that you caught a touch of too?"

"She'll never be back," Cashel said flatly. He was no longer sad; just empty. "I'm going away too, Garric. I can't stay here. It'd remind me the rest of my life that she was here and now she's gone."

"Leave?" Garric said. "But where would you go? And look, I don't see any reason to think Sharina won't be back. Things these past few days have just confused us, that's all. They'll get back to normal."

"I don't know where I'm going or when," Cashel said heavily. "But I won't be staying here long."

He forced a smile at his friend. "Right now I'm going back to the sheep. I shouldn't have left them, but I had to watch."

Garric opened his mouth. "No," Cashel said sharply. "I don't need company. Not today."

He started for the nearby pasture, where ewes moved slowly over the new grass. At the top of the first rise he paused to look over his shoulder again.

The ship was halfway to the horizon. It was impossible to make out individual figures on the deck, but Sharina's cloak was a blob of blue.