"Janny Wurts - Wayfinder(2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wurts Janny)

cried Tebald over the wear of patched canvas. Young, and a friend of Juard's, his
jutted chin and narrowed eyes were wasted.
Blind behind swaths of black rag, the Wayfinder stood serene before
aggression, his thin hands draped on the tiller as if the wood underneath were alive.
Darru argued further. "Without a fresh spring, a castaway would perish."
"It has rained twice in the past week," the stranger rebuked. "Oilskins can be
rigged to trap water, and the seabirds are plentiful enough to snare." Ciondo's spare
smock flapped off his shoulders like an ill-fitting sail, the cuffs tied back to keep
from troubling his sores. The linen bindings covering his wrists emphasized
prominent bones; a man so gaunt should not have been able to stand up, far less
command the muscle to mind the helm. But Sabin could see from where she stood
that the sloop held flawless course. The wake carved an arrow's track astern.
Ciondo glowered and said nothing, but his hand strayed often to the rigging
knife at his belt.
"We should put about and sail back," Tebald said.
Darru was more adamant. "We should let you swim back, stranger, for your
lies."
The Wayfinder answered in the absent way of a man whose thoughts are
interrupted. "If I prove wrong, you may kill me."
At this came a good deal of footshifting, and one or two gestures to ward ill
luck. No one voiced the obvious, that they could kill him only if malfortune went
elsewhere and they lived to make good such a threat.
The night wore on, and the stars turned. The wind settled to a steady
northeast, brisk and coldly clear. Moonset threw darkness on the water, and the land
invisible astern. Once, Darru repeated the suggestion that the wager be abandoned,
that the sloop seek return by the stars. He spoke to Ciondo by the mainmast pinrail,
but was answered in gruff-voiced challenge by the Wayfinder aft at the helm.
"Would you take such a chance, just to keep Juard's doom a clear certainty?"
Darru spun in vicious anger, jerked back by Ciondo's braced hand. "Don't
provoke him! He is in'am shealdi, or how else does he steer without sight? Find
faith in the straight course he sails, or else give the decency of holding your tongue
until you have true cause to doubt."
"Grief for your son has turned your head," Darru muttered, shrugging himself
free. But he could not argue that lacking clear stars or a compass, no ordinary man
could keep a heading hour after hour without mistake.
Night waned. Sabin slept through the dawn curled against a bight of rope. She
dreamed of waves and white horses, and the rolling thunder of troubled seas until
Tebald's shout awakened her. "The Barraken Rock! Dead off our bow, do you
see!"
She opened her eyes to a dazzle of sunlight, and the soured smell of seaweed
beached and dried. "Juard," she whispered.
No one noticed. Ciondo stood as a man frozen in place by the foremast stay;
the more volatile Darru gave back laughter and cried to his fellow crewman, "Where
were you an hour ago when the spit rose out of the sea?"
 "Sleeping," Tebald confessed. His awed glance encompassed the scarecrow
figure who guided the tiller with a feather touch, and whose eyesight was yet swathed
in cloth. The mouth that showed underneath seemed turned up in detached
amusement. Tebald leaned down and ruffled Sabin's hair as he passed, his
discomfort masked by a shrug.
Peevish and oddly unrefreshed, she tried a kick that missed at his ankle.