Whether by Druk's favor, Tuabir's and Brora's good seamanship, the stout hull of Thunderbolt, or merely common garden-variety luck, they made Tuabir's intended landfall only two days beyond his intended three weeks. Watching Cape Xera loom out above the gray feathers of mist that spread across the gently heaving swells, Blade had a feeling of relief that he quickly reined in. It was a case of «so far, so good.»

«Now we need to find ourselves a port,» he said. «One where Indhios isn't likely to be in control. And one where the garrison isn't going to be so nervous that they sound the alarm and call out the fleet before we can explain ourselves.»

«Srodki is the nearest,» put in Tuabir, looking at the chart.

«Aye, and part of the Chancellor's personal holdin' too. We'd be a flea leapin' into a furnace if we went in there,» said Brora shortly.

«Then what of Pyreira?» said Tuabir. «It's next beyond Srodki. We'll be in more danger of storms than of men if we go on cruising hither and yon offshore.»

«True indeed,» replied Brora. «Aye, Pyreira it must be, then. But I little like passin' north about the Ayesh Islands this time o' the year. Be we get a norwester and we've a good chance o' bein' driven straight among'em.»

The northwester that Brora had feared was already beginning to rise by nightfall when they rounded the northern tip of Grand Ayesh. Thunderbolt pitched with a steadily fiercer motion that forced Blade to hang on to the railing as he walked back and forth with Tuabir, inspecting the rigging. By midnight, they had to abandon any attempt to use the oars. The rowers could hardly sit on their benches, the oars as often as not flailed uselessly in the air, and the pumps were hard at work to throw out the water that poured in the oar ports every time Thunderbolt stuck her nose in deep. If they had been in no haste, they would long since have turned and run before the gale. As it was, it was nearly two in the morning before Tuabir came up to Blade and suggested that course of action.

Blade agreed. For all the small-boat sailing he had done in Home Dimension and his crash course in seamanship here, he was still an amateur where Tuabir and Brora were professionals.

To run before the gale, Thunderbolt first had to be turned broadside to the rising sea, an operation even Blade knew to be dangerous. The tiller was triple-manned and the rowers took their places. One side's rowers were ready to push, the others to pull, in order to swing the ship around before the waves could capsize her.

The darkness was now almost total. The wind blew sheets of spray out of a blackness as deep as that of the Pit itself. Only by judging the motion of the ship could Tuabir tell the best moment to turn. Blade saw him standing spraddle-legged as the deck heaved under him. Then he cupped both hands over his mouth and bellowed into the gale, «Coming about!»

Blade felt the motion of the ship change from a pitch to a roll and clung to the railing as the deck tilted over to a fifty-degree angle and green water sluiced over the leeward railing. For a long moment Thunderbolt hung there, tilted over at a preposterous angle and lurching slowly around onto her new course. The deck was just beginning to tilt back to something more normal when with a tremendous boom and crash a wave larger than any before roared out of the night. Thunderbolt heaved herself up in a wicked corkscrewing motion. From aft Blade heard a tremendous smashing and splintering sound.

As the wave passed away under them and the water poured off the decks, Blade saw Tuabir coming rapidly forward. «The rudder's gone!» he gasped.

Blade had a short moment's we're-doomed feeling, then said, «We'll have to steer with the oars. Thank Druk this is a galley.»

«Aye. A sailing ship would be finished here. And if we can't keep off the rocks, we'll be finished too. Druk grant us a beach for a landing place.»

For the next three hours, there was nothing but the whistle of the wind, the hiss and boom of the waves, the monotonous clanking of the pumps, and the occasional thumpings of the oars. Tuabir and Brora made no effort to keep the men continuously rowing. Only when Thunderbolt threatened to swing round again broadside to the waves did Brora bellow orders, in a voice that was beginning to crack with fatigue and strain, to keep the oars moving until the ship was safe again.

Tuabir hoped the gale might drive them far enough east to let them clear the northern tip of Grand Ayesh. Once clear of the land, they could ride out the gale at sea and then when it subsided row back to the first convenient landing place. But when a miserable gray dawn crept tentatively over the sea, the long, dark line of Grand Ayesh's north coast was clearly visible, stretching too far to leave them with any hope of clearing it.

There were nowhere near enough boats for all the men aboard, and even if there had been, no boat could live in the boiling surf that thundered around the approaching rocks. Their only hope was to cling to Thunderbolt herself until she took the ground, then swim for it, unless by some miracle they drove ashore on sand, in which case the ship might stay in one piece long enough for the gale to subside.

Except for a handful of men at the oars to keep the ship end to waves that were getting shorter and more jumbled as the water shoaled, the whole crew was up on deck now. Brora was busily making ready a long rope, with which he hoped to swim to shore. At Tuabir's orders, most of the crew discarded seaboots, long coats, and everything else that might weigh them down in the water. Most of them, like Blade, stripped to shirt and trousers, a dagger, and a pouch on their belt. Blade's pouch, apart from a flint-and-steel lighter, held Duke Khystros' signet ring and the notes on the pirate conspiracy, securely wrapped in oiled leather.

The seas were steep and ragged now. The wind blew the spray from their tops in a continuous sheet. The men aboard Thunderbolt were as wet as if they had already been in the water. A jagged black slab of rock reared itself out of the water to port, the waves geysering spray in fifty-foot sheets as they beat against it. The water was shoaling fast now. Blade and Tuabir stood in the very bow, trying to pierce the gloom and spray and make out what kind of land lay dead ahead.

Then there was a grinding, a cracking sound, and a tremendous jolt that seemed to slam Blade's spine up through the top of his head. Not a man aboard Thunderbolt remained on his feet. The ship lifted again, but not fast enough to keep a green wave from crashing down on her and sweeping the length of her upper deck. Blade felt himself being stretched out by the tug of the water like a man on the rack and saw half a dozen men with a less iron grip than his go sailing over the side with despairing cries. The ship lifted and surged forward. Then she struck again, harder, and a third time, harder still.

At the third shock, Blade felt the whole ship strain and then sag and, looking aft, he saw the deck already beginning to buckle. Some submerged rock had driven up through Thunderbolt's bottom, snapping the keel like a twig and impaling the whole ship like a butterfly on a pin. She was still rising and falling as the waves surged under her, and the grinding and splintering as her timbers began to pull apart rose to equal the thunder of the waves.

Looking forward, Blade saw that by a small piece of good fortune, they were less than a hundred yards from a sandy beach. But by a larger piece of bad fortune, most of that hundred yards was a spouting cauldron of foam as the waves broke and died on a maze of submerged rocks. Blade could see sullen gray and black masses looming amid the white. But Thunderbolt would carry them no farther. It was time to rely on their own muscles. Blade looked at Tuabir, who nodded, then stepped forward and shouted over the wind: