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.She was faithful to the last.The skull-pounding chant became an endless tortured scream.All the thunders of the universe descended at once.I had let fly seconds too late.The first thing I noticed was the gentle whisper of the ship moving slowly through quiet seas.Then the damp fog.I rolled onto my back.The mist was so dense I could barely make out the albatross perched on the foretruck.I sat up.There was no pain.Not even the ache of muscles tormented by the exertions of combat.I rubbed my leg.It was whole.But I had not imagined the break.There was a lump, no longer tender, at the fracture site.My cuts, scrapes, and bruises had all healed, their only memorial a few new scars.It takes months for bones to knit, I thought.I stood, tottered to the rail overlooking the maindeck.The bone held.My shipmates, as puzzled as I, were patting themselves, looking around, and murmuring questions.Fat Poppo kept lifting his shirt, fingering the line across his belly, then flipping his shirt down and glancing around in embarrassed disbelief.Lank Tor stared upward, mouthing a silent "How?" over and over.The sails were aloft and pregnant with wind.I turned slowly, surveying the miracle.Maybe we were beloved of the gods, I thought.The fog seemed less dense a-head.Light filtered through.The Old Man sensed it too.He began clumping round the poop in suspicious curiosity, leaning on the rails, the sternsheets, trying to garner some hint of what had happened.He paused, stared past me.In a voice that was but a ghost of his usual thunder, he called Toke and Lank Tor, conferred.In a minute, quietly, they were about their work.He called to me to keep a sharp lookout.The boatswain and First Officer took in sail.XIAnd now we drift, barely making steerage way.Every man remains self-involved in the mystery of our survival.The fog is thinning.I can see the water now, like polished jade, an algae-rich soup in which the only ripples are those made by Dragon's cutwater.Yet there is a breeze up top.Curious.A dozen birds are perched in the tops, silently watching us, moving only when the Kid or another topman pushes by.Spooky.The Old Man is as much at a loss as anyone.He is ready for anything, expects nothing good.He sends one of Tor's mates round to make sure we are all fully armed.The fog gradually breaks into patchlets.But the low sky remains solidly overcast.It is no more than two hundred feet up.It is so thick, the light is so diffuse, that there is no telling exactly where the sun stands.Sometimes the cloud dips down, and the maintop ploughs through, swirling it like a spoon does cream in a cup of tea.I check my arrows, mourn my banded lady.She was a truer love than any I have ever known, was faithful to the end.Not like this blue and white.She is as fickle as that bitch I killed in Itaskia.Heart's desire.The dead sorcerer promised it.Then what am I doing here, sailing to a rendezvous with the ghost ship? A queasiness not of wind or wave stampedes through my stomach.I will face a grim opponent, if the wizard did not lie.And without my deadly lady.The bowman there, they say, is at least as good as I.This is my desire? Then I have fooled myself more thoroughly than anyone else.I wish I could talk to Colgrave, to make sure there aren't any last-minute changes in plan.Like a chess opening thoroughly planned beforehand, our initial moves will go by rote.We have discussed them a hundred times.We have taken a score of vessels in dress rehearsal.I am the Old Man's key piece, his queen.He relies on me heavily.Perhaps too heavily.I am supposed to take out that legendary bowman first.Before he can get me.Then I take the dead captain, the helmsman, anyone taking their places, and, as we go hand to hand, their deadliest fighters.Dragon's prow slices through a final cloud.I see her! A caravel emerging from a fog bank directly ahead, bearing down on us.I wave to Colgrave.It's Her.The One.The Phantom.I can smell it, taste it.Its taste is fear.The sorcerer did not lie.Even from here I can see the bowman on her forecastle deck, glaring our way
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