Perilous Seas by Dave Duncan Page B

“
    “Not
now, they’re not! Or so I’ve heard. “
    “Well,
they were! But I did try to keep Darad off you. And I haven’t been back
since. “
    “Not
at all?” Rap thought he saw a shiftiness.
    “Well
... once. Just for a few minutes. I wrote a letter that Andor needed, a letter
of introduction. And he’d trapped me, because he called me in a room
where lots of people had seen him going in. They would’ve seen me if I
tried to leave.”
    Rap
chuckled. The gang of five exploited one another without scruple. He wondered
how many little tricks they had like that. Jalon glanced around nervously, then
looked doubtfully at Gathmor, who was glaring at him. “Rap, I need some
help!”
    “Don’t
we all?”
    “No,
immediate help! I have to compose an epic, a jotunn war song.”
    “Good
luck.”
    A
flicker of anger appeared in Jalon’s washed blue eyes, or perhaps it was
only fear. “Kalkor told me to. You know the sort of thing he wants?”
    “No.
Do you?”
    “Oh,
yes. It’s to be about the battle of Durthing.”
    Gathmor
snarled, and Rap stretched out a hand to restrain him as he struggled to sit
up.
    “It’s
not my idea!” the minstrel squealed, flinching. “But there’s
a convention to these battle songs. Every man has to be mentioned, so I have to
talk to every man aboard and get his name. Then I have to fit him into a verse,
telling of his exploits. That’s not hard; I’ll just lift stuff from
all the old classics. But I need to know the names of their opponents, see?
They have to be in there, too.”
    “And
these brutes didn’t think to ask who they were killing? “ Rap asked
bitterly.
    Jalon
nodded. “Please, Rap?”
    “Why
bother? Call Darad:”
    “I
daren’t! Kalkor says if I call any of the others he’ll put his eyes
out!”
    His
distress and his red face made Jalon seem almost farcical. The sequential gang
had a man for every situation, and Darad was the man for this one, never Jalon.
    “Have
you five ever been trapped like this before?”
    The
minstrel shook his head, looking ready to weep. He was much better at singing
about warfare than he was at being involved in it.
    “All
right!” Rap said, ignoring Gathmor’s growls. “I’ll list
the best fighters in Durthing for you. They’re dead, so it won’t
hurt them. But you’ll owe me, Master Jalon!”
    Jalon
nodded vigorously. “I won’t forget, Rap. And the others will
remember and be grateful, too. “
    That
seemed doubtful. Even more doubtful was the possibility that Rap would ever be
able to collect on the debt.
    Jalon
was too fine an artist to displease any audience, and probably too great a coward
to disappoint this one. By nightfall he had completed his jotunn battle song
about the sack of Durthing. It was all pure fantasy, and a stupendous success.
It listed every member of Blood Wave’s crew by name and credited him with
some gruesome exploit or other. Even Rap could tell that most of these tales
were verses pirated from well-known ballads or epics, but that did not seem to
matter at all. The jotnar cheered and roared and applauded every line.
    And
when at last the blood-soaked narrative drew to its close with the youngest and
most junior of the raiders, who turned out to be the oversized Vurjuk, the baby
giant who so much reminded Rap of his boyhood friend Katharkran. For the
finale, Jalon had saved a famous feat of arms attributed to the ancient jotunn
hero Stoneheart. Legend told how Stoneheart had pursued three mighty foes up a
great tree and there hacked them to pieces, so that when he departed the
branches were all decorated with severed limbs and organs and the grass around
was drenched with blood. In Jalon’s version there were six enemies, not
three, and all were dismembered single-handedly in midair by young Vurjuk and
his ax. The sailors screamed with joy, rolling around in their mirth, while the
juvenile champion turned an excited fiery red and cheered with the rest of
them, quite willing to pretend that