Sailor's Sacrifice

Rina sheltered below deck as the storm raged.

She had not told Captain Lenchegg all, but she knew he had guessed much. The ink on her skin may have marked her as touched by the spirits, but then half the crew wore simple totems to invite their blessings. She fled, he clearly knew, and if he feared her pursuers it had not stopped him taking her coin and inviting her aboard.

A light rain had begun to fall as the ship pulled out of port. The Sevenstring was a nimble, two masted coastal trader, and so the crew did not appear overly alarmed when the winds first picked up. Enge, the first mate, had laughed about the better time they’d make down the coast, which was surely good news, as the Shavari Delta was still weeks away.

That laughter had waned as the storm waxed to full. Tempestuous winds had forced the Sevenstring away from the coast. The cargo now shifted with the cresting of each wave and though it was expertly tied down, Rina saw the ropes straining under the constant assault. Should she inform the crew? Loose cargo would be dangerous below decks, but refastening the ropes was a distraction they could ill-afford.

The timbers of the ship’s frame rattled with another crack of thunder. Above Rina, the hatch opened and she caught the glimpse of lightning reflected in a wall of dark cloud. Enge’s face was silhouetted so that she could barely make out his features, but his worry was palpable.

“Captain wants to see you.”

“Now?” She had been sent below when the storm began in earnest, lest she add to the deck’s clutter.

Enge shrugged. When she tried to cross the hold, another treacherous wave caused her to stumble. Enge offered her a calloused hand, and helped her up the ladder.

--

Lenchegg was not on the deck, which was a riot of wind, water, and straining sailors. In the captain’s cabin, he pored over his most precious possession other than the Sevenstring herself: the ship’s maps. He spared Rina a glance as she entered, but kept his hands on the corners of the table, keeping the maps in place and his own footing stable.

“Captain?”

“There are half a hundred sheltered bays that might spare us from this tempest, but we can reach none of them while the wind blows us from the shore. You are a Goja are you not? How do we appease the spirits of this storm?”

“I am not a Goja, sir.”

The captain made a deprecatory gesture. “You are one, or soon enough to be, or perhaps were one, chased away by some Lemuirean Lordling. Tell me, what wrong have we done?”

Enge shifted uncomfortably, braced in the doorway against another battering wave, “some of the men say it was the taking of a woman aboard sir, that it is not their place.”

Lenchegg snorted. “Clear enough how little they know then, eh? ‘Twas men that the spirits cast into the sea, not women upon the land.” Both men made a gesture to ward off bad fortune.

This was familiar to Rina. Men who otherwise cared little for the spirits or gods deciding themselves wise when the fates turned against them. Lenchegg had the right of it, so far as the lore went, it was men who’s despoiling character had led to the spirits driving the from the shores of the Vrengr homeland, so that its houses were headed instead by womenfolk.

“The spirits are silent, sir. If they have ill-will, I have not heard it.” Which was true, if not all of the truth.

“Then a divination we need, eh?” Captain Lenchegg encouraged her. “Have you bones, for casting? A bowl might do, but what water we have willn’t stay in it.” The casting of bones and the use of a seer’s bowl were the most common tools used by hedge witches and Goja alike. Desperate as he no doubt was, Lenchegg might have suggested the reading of entrails, if there were any animals aboard. Or if the Sevenstring had crew to spare.

“I have neither sir. Perhaps if we cannot make it to shore we should lower the port sail and weather the storm.”

The captain’s glower sprung up as quick as had the storm itself. “Lest you have it from some weather sprite, I’ll be captaining this vessel myself, m’lady.”

Enge spoke into the ensuing quiet, “Ensvar has some bones sir. Bought ‘em from a seer in Whitehaven. Could do the trick.”

Lenchegg gave Rina a wary stare, before nodding. He set his chin and his brow unfurrowed; resolved, he barked his orders to the mate

“Fetch Ensvar and Rudi as well. Boy used to throw nets down this way, and might know some current that can bring us in. The lady here can bless the bones and we’ll know it’s no errant or blasphemous thing to throw them. Tell Coplin to tighten the port sail, but keep it aloft unless it looks to tear free.”

“Aye sir.”

---

Rina waited for the desperate men to assemble. The wind wailed, the surf tossed the Sevenstring to and fro like a child’s toy before all six of them were gathered around the captain’s table. Rudi was the ship’s boy, with little more than a shadowing of curly hairs at his chin, worn for the pride of their flowering. He jumped from foot to foot in a mixture of eagerness and fear, but offered no more counsel than the careful notations of currents on the maps themselves. He clutched the ship’s lantern to him as if its simple light might ward off the sky and storm. Ensvar was missing an eye and three fingers and seemed the kind of man who might look for a charm against bad fortune, though he thought the bones offered little hope on that account.

“Ain’t done anything but rattle and fall like dice or chips.” He muttered as he passed the leather pouch to his captain.

“Will you say the words, Goja?” Lenchegg asked of her, doubt edging his words, holding the opened pouch toward her.

Fear clouded Rina’s mind. Of the lies she had fled from, the unknown she fled toward, and the howling winds that threatened to consume all. “Spirits of sea and shore, of wind and current, guide us. We are blind to your needs, so guide us. Grant us the boon of your sight and so guide us.”

Lenchegg seemed satisfied. “Where lays our fault, and the doom lying upon us?” He paused, seemingly unsure, and glanced toward Rina, who gestured to the table between them. He cast the bones.

Outside, a great wave crashed into the ship’s hull, and the five lurched, as light was thrown to shadow. Rudi crashed to the ground, but kept aloft the ship’s lantern in an impressive display of agility. It flickered, but remained alight. The bones, Rina reasoned, must surely have been thrown to the floor. She stood and placed both hands to steady herself at the table.

The bones were perfectly aligned. The finest, razor thin, formed the feathers of a fletched arrow, a dozen pieces of varied size formed the shaft, while the largest, carved from a human knuckle, formed the head. It lay upon the captain’s table and pointed between Rina’s hands.

Lenchegg and Ensvar both made the traditional warding gesture, as the former collected his feathered cap from the floor where it had fallen. Rudi had gone pale as death, while Enge muttered under his breath about the curse of a woman aboard. Rina felt the blood drain from her face as the bones lay still upon the table, until another wave crested and they scattered. Ensvar hurried forward, sweeping them into his palm with decidedly more reverence than he had earlier displayed, refusing to meet Rina’s eyes.

“I do not understand Goja,” Lenchegg admitted, rubbing anxiously at his thinning hair before setting his cap right. “Is this storm of your calling? Did I wrong you when I asked for coin?”

“I am not a Goja,” Rina repeated, growing suddenly weary. After months of waiting, of fear, anxiety and of doubt, only now the spirits intervened, to accuse her.

“But you are touched by the spirits, you hear their will? You bear the marks.” Enge spluttered, ever the expert.

“I am inked, but the Vrenir tribes tried to make of me what I am not. I can listen to the Realms of the Spirits, and the Courts of the Fae, but they do not bend to my will. I could not be what the Vrenir wished, and so I left, before they could discard me.”

“Enough,” Lenchegg concluded, accepting the bones from Enge. “Spirits,” he intoned carefully, aware and assured as he had not been on the first throw, “what can we do to forestall our doom?”

The bones fell to the table. In the lantern light, Rina could see their simple carved markings. The upturned palm on the largest of the bones marked it as another bare throw, with a simple rather than figurative meaning. Each of the bones had a directional marking, front and back. Each was pointed outward from the table. The message, again, was clear. Away. Outside. Beyond.

“I need to leave,” she spoke into the silence.

“We all need to leave, lady,” Lenchegg declared. “We’ll make for the nearest inlet. Enge, have the mainsail raised. It’s our doom to wait for this storm to pass.” The men made to carry out his orders.

“No.” It seemed sudden, but there was a sense of peace and rightness in the decision Rina made, even as her voice cracked at the sharing of it. “I need to leave, now. I am your offering to appease the spirits of this storm.”

“I’ll be hearing nothing of that, now.” Lenchegg declared. “It’s clear enough you’re overwrought and melancholic. Ensvar, see the lady below.”

---

It made sense, in a frustrating sort of way, that Lenchegg had accorded weight to her opinion only to a certain point. Perhaps if she’d been less hostile in rejecting the title of Goja he sought to confer? But no. Lies within lies. That was what she fled, and what she refused to be ruled by.

She heard the men struggling against the wind and storm, seeking the shore even as the waves pummeled the Sevenstring .

Again the hatch was opened. It was the captain himself, and by the light of Rudi’s lantern reflected in his face the man had aged a decade in the past hour. “Come.” He said simply, “If you’ve wisdom to share, now is the time.”

Emerging on deck, Rina saw that things had indeed worsened. The mainsail had torn and been tattered in the wind, the rigging was loose, and the sailors passed before her amidships with a tangible sense of panic. The shore, still visible, had shrunk into the distance. Ensvar and Rudi walked behind Rina and the Captain. To bear witness.

“Do you maintain your reading of the bones?” Lenchegg asked her, his voice despairing.

“It is as you say, that I am touched by the spirits, marked by them. They have claimed me as the price of your passage.”

“I will be called murderer for this. Blasphemer. You will not be there to gainsay it.”

“I will not,” she confirmed for him. She did not try to ease that burden.

When she reached the railing she climbed it. His hands held to her waist firmly, lest the wind tear her from the deck.

Rudi was crying, the heaving of his chest upsetting the lantern’s illumination. Ensvar seemed overwhelmed, as his hands made the warding gesture again and again, without ceasing.

There were eyes there, beneath the tempestuous waves. Eyes and teeth and scales. She saw them here and now clearly, as nothing had been clear from the safety of the hold. She wondered, idly, how it was that the storm did not upset them from their watching place.

Lenchegg held her tightly, and as he whispered, Rina heard the cracking of his voice that spoke of a man pushed past the brink. “I do not understand,” he wept.

Neither of them, in that moment that Rina was cast from the ship, could tell whether she jumped or was pushed. Only that she fell into the darkness of a roiling sea, and was swallowed by it.