Robin Hood | The Stormwhite Between Them

Chapter 8

Song: El Dorado by Stellar

Erak glanced up at the wind-driven clouds racing across the sky, as he did Robin joined them, raring to go.

"It'll be just my luck if this is the first one since I was a boy that does last a month," he muttered.

Svengal considered the thought. "I suppose when you think about it, the fact that it hasn't happened in such a long time might make it more likely that it'll happen again now."

Erak frowned at him. "You're a great comfort," he said. Then he turned to face his ship, walking towards it. 'In any case we should get the charts and see if we can figure where they might have gotten to.'

Svengal fell into step beside him. 'Let's see if we can guess, you mean.'

Erak grunted. 'That too. In any case we need a plan.'

Robin to had fallen into step beside them as they reached the ship. 'Here boost me up and I'll grab them,' she offered.

Erak turned his back to his precious ship and interlocked his fingers and holding them out for Robin to step on. As her soft toed boot made contact with his hands, he launched her upwards, over his head. She grabbed the railing and pushed herself up, disappearing into the boat. When she came back, she had the waterproof oilskin wrapped around the charts tucked under Erak's vest to protect them further from the rain which she had untied to fit them, even though the vest was massive on her.

They strode into one of the huge tents they had constructed. Clearing the ground from sleeping mats, Erak knelt down and spread a chart out before them and pondered it.

'We're trying to figure out how far these pirates might have gone before they had to put in to shore,' he explained.

Svengal leaned over the chart. "Well, let's see where they could have taken shelter."

He made a circling gesture over a section of the coastline with his forefinger.

The others leaned closer. Svengal was pointing to the eastern coast of the Stormwhite, a politically unstable area where a number of small independent states, each more quarrelsome and vexatious than the other, had for years competed with one another to secure a section of coast for themselves. Some were barely larger than the cities or large towns that were their nominal capitals. Others might stretch for ten kilometres or more along the coast and into the hinterland behind—until a jealous neighbour annexed territory from them.

There were at least a dozen of these troublesome city-states and the situation between them was one of constant flux. The mapmakers of the time had long ago given up trying to keep track of them, and had arbitrarily marked the territory as belonging to Teutlandt. The rulers of Teutlandt blandly accepted this. But since their country was itself constantly racked with internal disputes and power struggles, they had no opportunity to actually claim the land granted them by mapmakers.

But then, Erak thought, mapmakers were notoriously lazy and they rarely travelled to this section of the world.

"They'd been gone about five days before that storm really turned nasty," Svengal said. "I figure they would have gotten about this far."

But Erak was shaking his head once more. "In a wolfship, maybe. But this pirate ship is fast with the wind on her beam like that, she would have been pretty much on her fastest point of sailing."

He paused, screwing his lips up in concentration as he moved his finger farther down the coast from the point Svengal had indicated.

"They could well have gotten this far," he said, and all three leaned closer, studying the chart.

"There's a trading port there," said Robin suddenly, they looked to where she was pointing. 'They probably docked there. I'll wager that's where we'll find them.'

"Then that's where we'll look for them," Svengal said, studying the chart intently and imprinting its details on his memory.

'We can't just sail her in their and dock her, our kind raids this coast. They'll see WolfWind and sound the alarm.' Erak pointed out.

'I think I have a plan for that.' Robin smiled at them.