. .

He raced up the stair and almost stumbled over Zamara’s body. Kormak did not have time to see whether he was dead or merely unconscious. He threw his enormous strength against the wheel. It was like wrestling with a giant. He could not budge the rudder.

He looked up as another monstrous breaker approached. He drew deep within himself and shouted a challenge to the wall of watery death looming over him. Slowly, painfully he forced the wheel to move. The prow of the ship turned. He prayed to the Holy Sun that he had done enough.

The Kraken’s Reach rode up the long swell, crested the wave and began to the long drop down. His eyes swept the deck looking for Rhiana. Was she there? He thought he could make her tall figure in the gloom. She moved towards him. Her face was pale and desperate. She knew how close they were to sinking.

She clambered onto the sterncastle and looked down at Zamara. She checked the pulse on his throat and shouted, “Still alive.”

“Get back up front and guide me towards the lights,” Kormak said. “Use mindspeech.” He pulled the elder sign from under his tunic and wrapped the chain around the pommel of his sword where it emerged from the scabbard.

I will do that, a flat voice whispered inside his head, so small as to almost make him think he was imagining things.

“Hurry,” he said. She raced back to the prow.

***

Left. Lost in a world of fatigue, soaked to the skin, Kormak responded to the voice in his head. His arms ached from forcing the great wheel into motion and from clinging to it when the giant waves swept over the ship. The cracked mast hovered over him, threatening death if it should topple.

Enough. Hold her steady. We’re heading into another wave.

He forced himself to grip the wheel, even as the ship fought him, the rudder trying to swing in the rip of the current.

The wind froze his flesh. The wheel fought his control. His hands were frozen into claws.

Hold her steady. The lights are closer.

Kormak opened his eyes just in time for more spray to set them stinging. He did not want to take his hands from the helm to wipe them so he squinted into the rain. Was Rhiana right? Was there a glow on the horizon? Or was it just a storm lantern swinging in the wind?

Where were the sailors? Why did Zamara not get up and help him? He felt as if he was sailing through some cold hell on a ship crewed by the dead with only the voice of madness in his head for company.

The wind howled and roared and gibbered like an insane god. Perhaps the ship was cursed. Perhaps some taint left over by the Quan had doomed them all.

Hard left!

Kormak swung the wheel.