Chane scooted back from the ridge and sat up.

Getting out of this forsaken range was an attractive prospect, but he saw holes in Welstiel's plan. Unless Welstiel knew these seafarers' language better than he suggested, they could end up embroiled in a fight before a bargain was struck. The sailors below looked more likely to rob wayfarers out of the wilderness than to offer rescuing passage to the nearest port. And even so, how did Welstiel think they would react when his monks emerged from the dark, full of witless gibbering and hungry stares?

"We will circle around and search for a path down the ridge," Welstiel said.

Chane shook his head but followed. In the end, he believed they would still have the ship-with no one left who could sail it.

Welstiel poured most of the monastery's coins into his own pouch, but he kept out a small sum of silver pennies.

Chane watched in puzzlement. "How did monks obtain that much?"

"A wealthy patron, perhaps," Welstiel suggested, but he did not care.

He filled the emptied pouch with small stones, adding the pennies on top so the pouch would clink when jostled.

"What are you doing?" Chane asked.

"Just follow me."

Welstiel led the way around the cliff until they found gradual sod shelves leading down to the beach. During their descent, he contemplated the best way to approach these marauders.

Though he could pick out a few words of the mishmash Ylladon tongue, he could not truly speak it. Perhaps they'd once had a central language, or several, from whatever long-forgotten descendants had first come to this continent's shores. Now they spoke a conglomeration of differing dialects fostered among their individual city-states. Some factions spoke old Droevinkan as well.

In his living youth, Welstiel had only had brief contact with the Ylladon, when his father came to seek his fortune on this continent. They stayed in one city-state, but his father had quickly realized that the lack of a stable hierarchy offered little opportunity for him. The Ylladon raided each other's territories as often as they raided any outsiders' they could reach.

They were parasites. Slavers, pirates, and thieves by the very make of their fragmented culture, but to call them unintelligent was rash. Their way of life had survived as long as the continent's western nations, and perhaps longer.

Still, he could think of only one reason these sailors might travel so far north. And trying to hit the lower settlements of the Elven Territories marked them as foolhardy, from Welstiel's perspective.

"Keep your sword sheathed unless I say otherwise," he advised.

Chane followed in silence as they stepped onto the beach above the cove, and Welstiel rounded the point until he spotted the campfire. He called out a greeting in old Droevinkan.

Men scurried around the beached skiffs, then poised, waiting as he entered the firelight's reach. All six drew cutlasses and thick knives, except the one with the horn bow aimed at him. In their mismatched attire and oiled-down hair, each was nonetheless dressed for efficiency in duty. Most wore leather vestments or tunics and either hide or heavy canvas breeches. Half had studded or steel-ribbed bracers on their forearms.

They were surprisingly robust; none appeared malnourished or inebriated. They quickly shifted positions, two flanking Welstiel on the shoreward side to back him and Chane into the water if needed.

"Be at ease," Welstiel called, and held up both gloved hands.

The pebble-filled pouch dangled by its string hooked around his fingers, but the Ylladon did not lower their weapons. One sailor between the skiffs glanced toward the campfire as another man stepped forward from beyond the flames.

Somewhere in his late twenties, he wore a close-trimmed beard and was rather short of stature. He barked at the others, but his gaze never left Welstiel. This man had not drawn a weapon. The sheath on his hip was too narrow for a sailor's cutlass, perhaps made for a saber instead. The sleeves of his azure shirt beneath the quilted and padded leather vest were a cleaner cut than the rest.

"Stop there," he said in the old Droevinkan, his words strangely sharpened by the accent of his native tongue.

Welstiel halted, as did Chane.

"You are the captain?" Welstiel asked, and jingled the pouch. "We seek passage on your vessel."

"Passage?" the man repeated.

He looked Welstiel up and down, snorted, and then cocked his head toward one of the two who had flanked Welstiel at the beach top.

"He captain," the young man said in his broken speech. "But he not speak your words. I am helm."

"Helmsman?" Welstiel corrected politely.

The short helmsman said nothing as the captain took a few steps down the sloping sand.

He was the tallest and bulkiest, and shirtless beneath his cloak and tunic. His thick leather vestment was adorned with spaced steel studs shaped like diamonds. Heavy armor for a seafarer.

His hair and face were hidden beneath a helm of hardened, shaped leather, with three evenly spaced flat iron strips across its skull top. The long nose guard and wide cheek and jaw wings were reinforced as well. This left only two eye loops connected to the narrow opening exposing the middle of his mouth and the front his chin. Welstiel found it difficult to gauge the man's expression.

The captain never looked at the pouch-only at Welstiel-and inched forward with a thick short sword poised in his grip. Clearly these men thought it easier to take Welstiel's money, and his attempt at barter was not even worth amusement.

Welstiel flipped the pouch up with his fingers and caught its falling bulk in his palm.

The captain paused, but still his gaze did not shift. Welstiel opened the pouch, pinching out silver coins into plain sight.

"We need passage for seven."

"Seven?" the helmsman repeated, and rattled off something to his captain.

The captain growled a few words to the man behind him. That sailor scurried off the way Welstiel had come. Another bolted along the cove's southern curve.

"Welstiel!" Chane hissed. "What are you doing?"

He stepped in, pushing back his cloak to expose his longsword, and kept shifting his head, watching all the sailors still in sight.

Again the captain appeared unimpressed, but he took a few quick glances. Not at the pouch and coins but toward the cove's far reaches, where his two men had run off.

Welstiel slowly pushed back his cloak to expose his own sword.

The captain did not seem foolish, and the mention of seven in Welstiel's party had made him wary. A piercing whistle carried from the north, and then another from the south. The captain clenched the shortsword's hilt hesitantly.

Welstiel took another step forward. The helmsman closed quickly on him, but Chane moved in to block his path.

"Let him come," Welstiel instructed.

Chane backed up one step and held his ground with a soft hiss.

"I offer more as well," Welstiel said, waiting as the helmsman translated for his captain. "Something rarer than coin."

He slowly swung his pack off his shoulder and dug inside it. At the glimmer rising from the opened pack, the captain raised his sword, its point reaching out.

Welstiel lifted his globe of three flittering lights.

"Tell him the lights never go out," he said, and waited while the helmsman explained.

The captain reached out and wrapped thick fingers around the globe. He lifted it before his face.

Its light flooded the shadowed openings of his helm. He did not appear remotely awed, but his interest was clear. A good light source requiring no fire was useful to a seafarer.

Welstiel held up both pouches and shook the one from the monastery, so that its few silver pennies made noise.