The two continued observing, Stansolt with a telescope trained on the main operations (which consisted to all appearances of leaning against boxes) and Dirant with an eye toward the rear in the event that a Dvanjchtlivan marine was sneaking up behind. For all that he deemed an end of that sort worthier than the petty smuggling scenario, he esteemed a long life above both.
In the course of that, Dirant detected an approach far grander than the most flamboyant Dvanjchtliv could contrive, to say nothing of a sailor holding an oar in a threatening posture. He tapped Stansolt on the shoulder, and together they watched the Impetuous and Irresistible Daughter cruise toward the islet. There could be no mistake about its identity when what led the way was the enigmatic protrusion at last freed from concealment just as when an heir is at last presented to the kingdom's subjects. If anyone doubted the identification, perhaps deluded into thinking a hundred other ships must bear the same feature, Divine Guidance (Emanation) would cure the misapprehension provided the doubter were a Ritualist who had learned the ability or else gave credence to such a person. From that distance, the effect on Dirant was more of a breeze which threatened to muss his hair rather than to freeze him. A sign more legible to Stansolt so long as he held the telescope was seeing Urvs Beutands on the deck, though not in command. That role went to Innars Rakin.
The Daughter joined its smaller, spikeless companion in the secluded port, a feat difficult to credit which added renown to the sailors and the people responsible for the expansion both. Her crew disembarked and made for the back of the cave out of sight where doubtless a restaurant had been built, its head chef a former apprentice in the royal kitchens in Sissals to judge by the funds lavished on the rest of the enterprise, whatever it was. As much as Saueyi resented the unprovoked depredations, not that it welcomed any that could be argued to be provoked, the looting thus far had been selective. The robbed temples and manors had their treasures, but any accountant who reckoned the expenses and the income must declare the thing a loss, for which reason the purpose of the raids remained as obscure as its perpetrators.
The Obenec sailors and Dvanjchtlivan marines withdrew as well, leaving Utenec to begin loading on the Daughter crates previously used for leaning. Some of those crates were sealed there at the dock, revealing themselves beforehand to contain variously swords, spears, shields, and silver of the sort with which one might pay one's private fleet.
“Mr. Dirant, it has been a blessing as always. The gratitude of your country isn't something I can claim to dispense, but I'm certain you have it. Withdraw to the boat and back to Wawamd. Wait a few more days before taking passage to Ipakolmar, and continue your routine throughout if you can bear to do so.”
The person inclined to disregard Stansolt's instructions belonged to a class other than Ritualist, one which required far more Gumption, but Dirant did have one concern before he went. Or rather two concerns, but for the second, he supposed he could make it back himself provided he took breaks. Staying silent on that point, he asked the more salient question. “Do you have another boat hidden here for yourself?”
“Ah, as to that, Mr. Dirant.” Stansolt smiled, not as expansively as Beutands had but not far short. “Captain Rakin has just delivered it.”
Finding the fishing rods undisturbed either by fish or by raiders, the former to be expected since weights had been substituted for hooks, Dirant did not take it upon himself to remove them when they might stand forever as a monument to boldness. Straightaway he shoved the boat into the surf and scrambled inside in a 44 Coordination sort of way, neither adeptly enough for a skipper to clap and call him a natural nor yet in the manner of a chubby fellow on his way back from the well.
He made sure to row far enough that a pursuer would need confidence in his swimming before he took his first break. After that, he circled the island in order to achieve the reverse of the bearing or heading or whatever the proper term may be from that which the boat headed to get there, and if Stansolt Gaomat had changed his mind about his method of departure, there was his chance.
He had not. The Impetuous and Irresistible Daughter emerged from the cove behind Dirant, and on its deck stood a Sivoslofer rather than a renowned son of Ililesh Ashurin, or an infamous one. Naturally even Stansolt, expansive as his capabilities were, could not handle a great vessel alone, and on that account he had hired a crew. A small contingent of pink-shirted Obenec, ten or so, raised the sails and so forth.
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The defection prompted Dirant to consider the reputation of Obeneut's residents. Which was poor. Everyone of sense understood the general distrust of the Obenec to be the vestiges of pillaging expeditions which had petered out centuries ago rather than an indictment of their modern conduct. That is, everyone who had the sense not to involve Obenec in his commercial ventures and therefore lacked familiarity. Those without such sense, in anecdote at least, insisted the Obenet's unfavorable reputation to have its renewal in every transaction, and there were these sailors in presumed violation of their terms of employment.
In their favor, perhaps they had commendable reasons such as a proclivity for prompt action which might be argued to be courage, a pious distaste for a profane scheme to use what might be a relic bequeathed by the very gods in cowardly assaults against the blameless Saueha, or outrage upon being informed by Stansolt that the actual plundering was to be done by Dvanjchtlivs rather than honest Obenec pirates, a division of labor kept secret from the new hires. On reflection, only one of those was unambiguously commendable, and that presumed a reverence which Dirant had developed but knew to be far from universal.
The study of the Obeneutian national character could be better carried out in Wawamd if not in Greater Enloffenkir or even, a more energetic plan, in Obeneut. Moreover, the scene, already suitable for a play too exciting to be critically regarded, had nothing to gain by having a Ritualist hover at the side of it. Dirant rowed toward Combem entirely satisfied in his own performance and confident in Stansolt's.
The raiders meanwhile did not accept it as a moral lesson that someone should make away with the new flagship of their marauding fleet. Boats left the grotto, a wondrous cavity possessed of infinite capacity, and stirred up the sea with oars worked by Muscle worthier of regard than what a single Ritualist applied to the task. The foremost of them succeeded in coming alongside the Daughter, presuming Stansolt had not already changed her name to Grenlof Forever. The first to clamber up, with the fervor of an anxious father and with an adroitness unimaginable in Fennizen, was Urvs Beutands, who directly engaged his creation's new captain in a discussion inaudible to Dirant but which he perceived to end unsatisfactorily, unless it had been Beutands's intention all along to dive off the Daughter's side as a part of the launching ceremony.
That conjecture had its refutation in the behavior of the buccaneers who climbed up after and offered violence rather than their congratulations on a propitious maiden cruise, but they fared the worse for their intemperance. Each had a short audience with the Battler's sword before making the same dive with this difference, that where they caused a splash, the waters reddened.
What displeased Dirant about the scene was that he remained close enough to see it. Soon the raiders gave him a new cause to reject complacence. The other ship, smaller but equipped with a larger crew and a company of marines, emerged from the grotto after the fashion of a manager who steps out of his office and presently begins to vex subordinates who by their sloppy work merited his condemnation as much as he deserved theirs for the gap between the criteria by which he judged performance and what aided the firm in fact.
Sacrificing the use of his arms for the rest of his life seemed to Dirant worthwhile if it got him away from the course of those two ships. Three complications prevented the trade. First, he lacked the physical control required to disable himself. Second, doing so would not increase his speed. Third, the course changed when Stansolt grabbed the wheel and swung the Impetuous and Irresistible Daughter around. He further called for his Obenec allies to abandon her, or if he did not, they abandoned her nevertheless.
The Daughter dug its possibly sacred spike into the hull of the pursuer, and as planks twisted and split, Stansolt made a dive which far exceeded Urvs Beutands's in grace and demonstrated thereby the reason professional divers preferred to make independent leaps rather than relying on external assistance. The spike drove ever deeper, as irresistible as the ship's name promised. Dismay, panic, and dereliction of duty were the expected results, but instead valiant marines treated the ram as nothing but a metallic causeway convenient for boarding and subsequently reclaiming their queen of the Northern Sea.
Then, for a period brief enough that it might have been doubted to exist (and certainly would be so doubted by any who heard of it later), the sea flattened. Those natural processes which churned the great seas and oceans ceased as completely as work during the manager's absence. For the first time since perhaps the world's creation, the Northern Sea assumed what must have been its initial form, a vast and placid mirror in which the equally youthful sky might admire its unblemished reflection.
