Goldenhand by Garth Nix Page A

died away. Tolther grimaced.
    â€œWhen the wind shifts, even by only a few points, we get it for a while, then whoever it is eats it up again.”
    â€œWill they catch us?” asked Ferin.
    â€œNot if I can help it,” said Karrilke, suddenly appearing next to her son. “Tolther, stand ready on the foresail sheet; trim it for any gust we can catch.”
    â€œHow close are they?” asked Ferin. She struggled to sit up higher, but found she couldn’t move her leg without suffering intense pain, which lessened if she kept still. Looking down, she saw it was greatly swollen around and above her ankle. Slowly, she looked away again, as if there was nothing of importance there, and instead picked up her bow. “Are they within bowshot?”
    Karrilke looked down at her odd nomad passenger.
    â€œMaybe for you,” she said. “From the stern. But I came to ask if you know how they can still be rowing at full pace. It’s been nine hours, more or less. The wind-eating, I’ve seen that before. Not often, but it’s known. But this rowing . . . any normal folk would have collapsed a long time since.”
    â€œI know nothing of the sea,” said Ferin. “If you help me to the . . . the stern? I will look, and perhaps even kill the witch or shaman who steals our breeze.”
    â€œYou shouldn’t be moved,” said Karrilke. She hesitated, then said, “As it is, the healer might have to take off your foot.”
    Ferin shrugged.
    â€œMy foot, as my entire body, is nothing,” she said. “I must get the message I carry where it needs to go, and that means this boat must get to shore. Help me up.”
    â€œIt is easy to be brave when you are young,” said Karrilke. “And have little knowledge of pain. But you are right. Better to lose a foot than a life.”
    The broad-shouldered woman bent down and lifted Ferin up under the arms. As her ankle dragged across the deck and her leg jerked and hung down when she was upright, Ferin blacked out from the sudden, intense pain. Only for a few seconds, but when she came back, the pain was still there, and she gasped several times as she tried to steady her breath. Her hand had also opened, and her bow had fallen.
    â€œBring . . . bow . . . and . . . arrow case,” Ferin managed to get out.
    â€œI’ll go back for ’em,” muttered Karrilke. She maneuvered Ferin over her shoulder and carefully made her way astern, keeping one hand ready to grab at a stay or rail as the deck rolled and pitched under her feet, far less than she would have wanted, for it meant they were slowing again. There was almost no breath of wind, and the sails hung limp and useless.
    The rowers’ chorus could be clearly heard now, even without the benefit of a breeze to blow their chant to the fishing boat. They were close, and closing.
    Karrilke laid Ferin down by the post of the tiller, as gently as she could. Ferin hung over the rail, fighting back the pain, trying to focus her eyes on what lay behind, the dark mass that looked like a monster eating up the silver wake of their own passage.
    There were small fires aboard the pursuing raider, spots of red light, that perhaps to some would suggest lit torches, a strange thing to have on a wooden ship. Ferin knew better. As she continued to look, and her eyes adapted to the starlight, she noted that most of the ship’s oars, though over the side, were held or lashed high. Onlysix oars a side stroked the water, but those six moved deep and with inexorable force.
    â€œOnly six a side are actually rowing,” she said. “But those twelve are wood-weirds, or something similar. Untiring, and easily four or five times as strong as the strongest warrior. There must also be at least twelve witches or shamans aboard, with their keepers. No, thirteen, for the wind-eater could not also command a wood-weird.”
    â€œNo ordinary raider,” said Karrilke, who had