Darkness, having once made an appearance, quickly descended on the sea. The rain dropped from torrent to trickle; the wind ebbed. «Praise the good god, lads,» Thrax shouted to the crew. «I think we've come though the worst.»

A couple of sailors took him literally, either reciting Phos' creed or sending their own prayers of thanks to the lord with the great and good mind. Maniakes murmured a prayer of his own, part thanks but more a fervent hope the storm really was over and would not resume with the dawn.

«Break out a torch, boys!» Thrax yelled. «Let's find out if we have any friends left on the ocean.»

Maniakes would have bet a dry torch or, for that matter, any means of setting it alight, could not be found anywhere aboard the Renewal. He would have lost that bet, and in short order, too. Even in darkness, more than one sailor hurried for the torches wrapped in layer on layer of oiled canvas. And the cook had a firesafe, a good-sized pot in which embers were always smoldering. Thrax took the blazing torch and waved it back and forth.

One by one, other torches came to life on the Sailors' Sea, some close by, others so far off they were hard to tell from stars near the horizon. But there were no stars, the sky still being full of clouds. The ships that had survived the storm crawled across the water toward one another. When they got within hailing range, captains shouted back and forth, setting forth the toll of those known lost and, by silences, of those missing.

«It's not so bad as it looks, your Majesty,» Thrax said, somewhere getting on toward midnight. «More will join us tomorrow morning, and more still, blown so far off course that they can't see any torches at all, will make straight for the imperial city. Not everybody who isn't here is gone for good.»

«Yes, I understand that,» Maniakes answered. «And some, like that one transport out there somewhere—» He pointed vaguely past the bow of the Renewal. «—can't show torches because they haven't got any fire left. I think it's Phos' own miracle so many of our ships have been able to make lights. But still—»

But still. In any context, those words were ominous, implying lost gold, lost chances, lost hopes. Here they meant lost ships, lost men, lost animals—so many lost without any possibility of rescue, as when the dromon had broken up in the raging sea not far from the flagship.

Not all the survivors had stories like that to tell, but too many of them did. Maniakes did what he could to piece together his losses, bearing in mind what Thrax had said. They came to somewhere not far from a quarter of the force with which he'd set out from Lyssaion. He hoped not too many of the ships Thrax reckoned scattered were in fact lost.

«And speaking of scattered,» he said around a yawn, «where are we, anyhow?» He yawned again; now that the storm and the crises was for the moment past, he felt with full—perhaps with double– measure how tired and worn he was.

«To the ice with me if I know exactly, your Majesty,» Thrax answered. «We'll sail north when morning comes, and we'll sight land, and we'll figure out what land we've sighted. Then we'll blow where we're at, and how far away from Videssos the city we are, too.»

«All right,» Maniakes said mildly. He was no sailor, but he'd spent enough time at sea to know that navigation was an art almost as arcane as magecraft, and less exact. Knowing how to find out where they were was nearly as good as knowing where.

He undid the rope that had been around his waist so long, he'd almost forgotten it was there. Nothing worse than gentle chop stirred the Renewal's deck under his feet as he walked to the cabin. He opened the door as quietly as he could. Lysia's soft snores did not break their rhythm. He lay down in wet robes on wet bedding and fell asleep himself.

A sunbeam in his face woke him. For a moment, he simply accepted that, as he had clouds at sunset before. Then he sketched Phos' sun-circle over his heart, a sign of delight. He'd never known anything more welcome than a day of fair weather.

Still in those wet robes, he went out on deck. Sailors were busy repairing storm damage to the railing, to the rigging of the square sail, and to rips in its canvas. They'd taken it down fast when the storm struck, but not fast enough.

Thrax pointed north. «Land there, your Majesty. If I remember the shape of it aright, we're not so far from the imperial city as I would have guessed.»

«Good,» Maniakes said. «Aye, that's good.» Spotting small sails on the sea between the fleet and shore, he pointed in his turn, off to the northwest. «Look. All the fishermen who weren't sunk yesterday are out after whatever they can get today.»

«What's that, your Majesty?» Thrax hadn't noticed the sails. Now he did, and stiffened. «Those aren't fishermen, your Majesty. Those are cursed monoxyla, is what those are.» His voice rose to a bellow: «Make ready for battle!»

The fleet could hardly have been less ready to fight, battered by the storm as it was. All Thrax had wanted to do, all Maniakes had wanted to do, was limp into Videssos the city, unload the warriors and animals, and take a little while to figure out what to do next. Once again, the Avtokrator wasn't going to get what he wanted. The Kubratoi in their single-trunk boats were making sure of that.

«Dart-thrower's going to be useless,» Thrax grumbled, pointing to the engine at the Renewal's bow. «Cords are sure to be too soaked to do any good.»

Maniakes didn't answer at once. Till this moment, he'd never actually seen any of the vessels the Kubratoi had been using for years to raid his coast. They were, he discovered, more formidable than their name suggested. Each one might have been hewn from a single trunk, but the Kubratoi had taken forest giants from which to make their boats. Some of them looked to be almost as long as the Renewal, though of course they carried far fewer men. Along with their sails, which were made of leather, they were propelled by paddles—and propelled surprisingly fast, too.

They had spotted the Videssian ships, either before they were seen themselves or at about the same moment. Maniakes had expected that would be plenty to make them flee. Instead, they swung toward the Videssians. The paddles rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell. Yes, they could make a very good turn of speed.

«We'll smash them,» Maniakes said.

Now Thrax didn't reply right away. He looked distinctly less happy than Maniakes would have liked to see him. At last, he said, «Your Majesty, I'm not worried about the dromons. The transports are a different game, though.» He started shouting orders across the water. Trumpeters echoed his commands. The dromons slid toward the less mobile, less protected vessels they were shepherding to the imperial city. They were none too soon in doing so, either, for the Kubratoi had no more trouble figuring out the way the game needed to be played than did Thrax. Their monoxyla were also making for the slower, beamier ships in the Videssian fleet.

«Maybe we ought to let them try to board one of the troop transports,» Thrax said. «I don't think they'd be glad they'd done it.»

«Something to that,» Maniakes agreed, but neither one of them meant it seriously, as they both knew. Maniakes put that into words: «Too many things could go wrong. They might get lucky, or they might manage to start a fire—»

«Wouldn't be easy, not today,» Thrax said, «not with the timbers soaked from yesterday's storm. But you're right, your Majesty: it could happen.»

One of the dromons, oars slashing the water, rushed at a monoxylon. The Kubratoi not only managed to avoid the bronze-shod ram at the dromon's bow, they sprayed the Videssian ship with arrows. A sailor fell splash! into the sea.

Another single-trunk vessel got up alongside a ship transporting horses. The Kubratoi didn't try swarming aboard the vessel, but, again, shot arrows at it as rapidly as if they were shooting at Videssian soldiers from horseback.