Page 79 of Minor Works of Meda

Above us, the sky darkened and turned heavy as strange, bestial spell-work crackled in the air. The clouds drooped low. Each wave was taller than the last, a wind lashed slope we climbed up one side of only to plunge down the other. I took the ropes back. Oraik wasn't good enough to sail a storm.

We were approaching another wave when the drake’s face burst through it. I screamed so loud it felt like claws in my throat.

Kalcedon rammed a bolt of power straight into the thing’s mouth. The drake plunged straight down just in time for us to coast over its jaws. I was certain it would swallow the ship whole but we were on the downslope of the wave now, and onto the next.

“Don’t you know other spells?” I yelled. The wind howled furiously, snapping my hair into my face. A fat raindrop chose that moment to hit my forehead. “Put it to sleep!”

“Keep sailing,” he bellowed back.

“The storm’s bad. It’s moving fast.”

“What do we do?” Oraik was low in the wolf’s sloshing belly, one hand gripping the storage chest to keep him from sliding across deck with each wave’s buck. The other hand shielded his face as if to protect his eyes from the thickening rain.

“There!” I yelled, as something emerged from the water to our right—not a face this time, but what had to be the creature’s tail.

“Horns,” Kalcedon had time to snap, as he curled his hands into sigils and shoved too much power into a sleep-spell.

The tail smacked down. I felt a pulse of power again, but low, far beneath us and moving lower.

“I think it worked,” I said optimistically. Hoped might have been more accurate.

We hit the next swell at a bad angle. Foam and salt sea washed over the wolf, dragging us low under the water’s weight. The rain drove down, each drop like a stinging slash from the dark sky.

“The storm’s not lifting,” Kalcedon yelled.

“I’m not blind.” Whatever magic the creature had used was not so simply undone.

“We could try to clear it,” Kalcedon offered.

“You can’t even call a wind!” I shouted in disbelief.

“No, but you can,” he answered.

“We can’t waste your power. We might need it.”

“So, what, then?” Oraik asked cheerlessly. “Do we just drown?”

“We’ll go south,” I shouted. “To Temor. We might outrun it, headed that way. Start bailing.”

“Can’t we hold course to Rovileis?” Kalcedon asked. Oraik hunted down the bobbing water jug and started to scoop the sea back out.

“Not unless you fancy drowning. I can’t sail through this.”

Another swell rammed into the wolf, popping us up into the air before we crashed down to the other side of the wave.

I had no clue how far we were from land. Nothing was visible apart from the blue-black waves, frothy and tall as hills, beneath the charcoal green sky swirling ominously above. A rumble and crack snapped through the air. A bolt of lightning to the left illuminated the whole sky for one wretched moment.

“What can I do?” Kalcedon yelled.

The rain fell in earnest now, big drops of water smacking onto my head and hands. I squinted at him. The storm was loud, too; roaring waves, the snap of the sail.

“Come here,” I called. “Take the rope.” He dragged himself across the short deck. His fingers scraped against my palm as he wound the damp sail-rope around his arm. I could barely see through the haze of rain. The side of Kalcedon’s thigh burned tight against mine; shoulder to shoulder.

“What do I do?”

If we kept going as we were, we’d be dead before much longer. The wind was too strong and unpredictable.

“Reef the sail. Pull it in,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, my eyes fixed not on him but on the mast. A rope ran from there to the front of the ship. I grabbed the triangular storm jib from the chest and lurched forward across the heaving deck, bent half-over.

---