The King’s Buccaneer

Amos grinned. ‘Well, get your fill of gawking, then. We leave at first light to catch the tide.’

Ghuda’s eyes narrowed. ‘We leave?’

Amos’s grin widened. ‘I’m Admiral Trask. Arutha told me you two would be traveling with us.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Ghuda.

‘Ha!’ barked Amos. ‘Obviously that strange friend of yours hasn’t told you. You and he are coming with us, to Crydee.’

Ghuda turned about slowly, talking to himself as much to Amos. ‘Of course he didn’t tell me. He never tells me anything.’

Amos clapped him on the back in a friendly manner. ‘Well, I’m not sure why, but you’re welcome. You’ll have to share a cabin with the little man, but you seem used to his company. I’ll see you in the courtyard before dawn tomorrow.’

‘Of course we’ll be there.’ After Amos left, Ghuda shook his head. In a sour tone he muttered, ‘Why are we going to Crydee, Ghuda? I haven’t the vaguest idea, Ghuda. Shall we go find Nakor, Ghuda? Certainly Ghuda. Then shall we strangle him, Ghuda?’ With a single nod of his head, he answered himself, ‘With great delight, Ghuda.’

Nicholas hurried along the soldiers’ marshaling yard, where an afternoon drill was under way. He was looking for Harry.

The young Squire was where Nicholas expected to find him, watching the team from Krondor getting ready for a football match with the visiting team from Ylith. The sport, played by Prince of Krondor rules – codified some twenty years earlier by Arutha – had become the national sport in the Western Realm, and now city champions challenged one another regularly. Years before, an enterprising merchant had erected a field and stands near the palace. Over the years he had improved it and expanded it, until it was now a stadium that could easily accommodate forty thousand spectators. It was expected to be full next Sixthday when the match was played. The visiting Ylithmen, the North Precinct Golds, were playing Krondor’s champions, the Millers and Bakers Association Stonemen.

Nicholas arrived to see an attack drill, in which five Stonemen descended upon the goalkeeper and three defenders and, with three deft passes, scored a goal. Harry turned and said, ‘I hate to miss the match.’

Nicholas said, ‘Me too, but think of it: a sea voyage!’

Harry regarded his friend and saw an excitement in Nicholas he had never seen before. ‘You really want to go, don’t you?’

‘Don’t you?’

Harry shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Crydee sounds like a pretty sleepy place. I wonder what the girls are like.’ He grinned at the last and Nicholas grimaced in return. Nicholas was as shy of girls as Harry was shameless. Still, he enjoyed being around Harry when he flirted with the younger girls in the court and the servants’ daughters, because he thought he might learn something – as long as the Squire wasn’t bullying them, as he had the day before. At times Harry could be charming, but at other times he got too rough for Nicholas’s taste.

Nicholas said, ‘You may miss getting put in your place by the local girls, but I feel like I’m getting out of a cage.’

Harry’s usual bantering manner vanished. ‘It’s not that bad?’

Turning away from the practice, Nicholas walked back toward the palace, Harry falling in at his side. ‘I have always been the youngest, the weakest, the … cripple.’

Harry’s eyebrows went up. ‘Some cripple. I’ve got more bruises and cuts from sword practice with you than everyone else combined, and I don’t think I’ve touched you more than twice in a year.’

Nicholas’s crooked smile made him look like his father as he said, ‘You’ve scored a point or two.’

Harry shrugged. ‘See. I’m not bad, but you’re exceptional. How could you be considered a cripple?’

‘Do you have the Festival of Presentation in Ludland?’

Harry said, ‘No, it’s only for the royal family, right?’

Nicholas shook his head. ‘No. It used to be that every noble child was presented to the people thirty days after birth, so that all could see the child was born without flaw.

‘It fell out of practice in the Eastern Realm a long time ago, but it was practiced widely in the West. My brothers were presented, as was my sister – all the children of the royal family, until me.’

Harry nodded. ‘All right, so your father didn’t wish to show you off to the people. What about it?’

Nicholas shrugged. ‘It’s not what you are, sometimes; it’s how people treat you. I’ve always been treated as if there was something wrong with me. It makes it hard.’

‘And you think things will be different in Crydee?’ said Harry as they left the precinct of the stadium and reached the gate to the palace.

Two guards saluted the Prince as he passed, and Nicholas said, ‘I don’t know my uncle Martin well, but I like him. I think I may have a different life in Crydee.’

Harry sighed as they entered the palace. ‘I hope it’s not too different,’ he observed as a particularly pretty maid hurried past. He watched her until she vanished through a side door. ‘There are so many possibilities here, Nicky.’

Nicholas shook his head in resignation.

The rowers pulled and the longboat backed away, as heavy lines ran out to the stern of the ship. Upon the docks Arutha, Anita, and a host of court functionaries stood, bidding Prince Nicholas good-bye. Anita had a glimmer in her eyes, yet she held back her tears. Nicholas was her baby, but she had seen three other children leave home before, and that kept her in balance. Still, she kept a tight hold on her husband’s arm. Something in his manner made her uneasy.

Nicholas and Harry stood near the bow, waving to those upon the docks. Amos stood behind them, his eyes fixed upon his beloved Alicia. Nicholas looked from his grandmother to Amos and said, ‘Well, should I begin to call you “Grandfather”?’

Amos gave Nicholas a baleful look. ‘You do and you’ll swim to Crydee. And when we clear the harbor, you’ll call me “Captain”. As I told your father over twenty years ago, Prince or not, upon a ship none is master save the captain. Here I’m high priest and king, and don’t you forget it.’

Nicholas grinned at Harry, not quite ready to believe that Amos could turn into some sort of raging tyrant once they were at sea.

The harbor crew continued to tow the large ship clear of the royal quay, then cast off. Amos shot a glance at the harbor pilot and shouted, ‘Take the wheel, master pilot!’ To the crew he shouted, ‘Set all topsails! Make ready mainsails and topgallants!’

When the first three sails were deployed, the ship seemed to come to life. Nicholas and Harry felt the movement beneath their feet. The ship heeled slightly to the right as the pilot brought it about. Amos left the boys to their own devices and made his way to the stern.

Slowly the ship moved through the harbor, majestically passing dozens of lesser craft. Nicholas watched every detail as the crew sprang to answer the pilot’s commands. Two smaller coastal cutters were entering the harbor mouth as they approached. Seeing the ensign of the royal house of Krondor atop the mainmast, they dipped their own Kingdom flag in salute. Nicholas waved to them.

Harry said, ‘Not very dignified, Your Highness.’

Nicholas threw an elbow into Harry’s ribs, laughing. ‘Who cares?’

The ship turned into the wind near the harbor mouth, bringing it to a virtual halt. A small rowboat came alongside and the pilot and his assistant hurried down into it, turning command of the ship over to Amos.

Once the pilot’s boat was clear, Amos turned to his first mate, a man named Rhodes, and shouted, ‘Trim topsails. Set mainsails and topgallants!’

Nicholas involuntarily gripped the rail, for the ship seemed to leap forward as the wind filled the sails. In the brisk morning breeze the ship sped through the water. The sun began to burn through the early morning haze and the sky turned a vivid blue. Above, sea gulls flew after the ship, waiting for the day’s garbage to be tossed over the side.

Nicholas pointed down at the bow wake, and Harry looked over to see dolphins racing the ship. Both boys laughed at the sight.

Amos watched the landmarks of the harbor fall away behind, then he consulted the position of the sun above the harbor. Turning to the first mate, he said, ‘Due west, Mr Rhodes. We make for Sorcerer’s Isle.’

For six days they tacked against the prevailing westerly winds, until the lookout called, ‘Land ho!’

‘Where away?’ shouted Amos.

‘Two points off the starboard bow, Captain! An island!’

Amos nodded. ‘Look for the headlands, Mr Rhodes. There’s a cove to the southwest that we can lie in. Pass word that we’ll only be laying over for a day or so. No one is to leave the ship without permission.’

Rhodes, a laconic man, said, ‘No one’s going to wish to set foot on Sorcerer’s Isle without a direct order, Captain.’