"Ten from ten," Donfil reminded.

"These frail boats that line the ship..." she pointed to the five-oared whaleboats on either side of the vessel "...they go in the wildest white water and chase the leviathan. Ye hear me, heathen? Thou must look the whale in his age-old eye and grin in his jaws. Drive the iron trough to the deeps of his soul and follow as he trails across the ocean. The whale can be a hundred feet in length and crush a boat with a waltzing touch of his tail. Blood laid over the seas, outlanders. Ten from ten against a door... This will be no sport."

"Why not have me chilled? Easier than this?" Ryan stared down the stocky, muscular woman.

"Cheaper, as well. Have thee gutted and dumped in the cut for a finger of jack. Not that I paid that puking brownholer Rodriguez much. Just said I wouldn't break all his fingers and slice off the lids of his eyes if he had thee black-sleeped. Heathen harpooneer comes as a surprise."

"Still doesn't answer the question. Why not have me chilled?"

She hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and spit it over the leeward side of the ship. "Why art thou here, outlander? Because thou didst strike at me by chilling that mindless fool, Clegg. He was of use. I found times to use him." To Ryan's disgust, the woman hiked her skirts up with her right hand, showing pallid, muscled thighs — showing as well that she wore no underwear. She rubbed her fingers into the tangled mat of curling hair, licking her lips greedily as she watched Ryan's face. "Aye, thou seest what I mean. I used him well, and he never failed to rise to me. No man fails me, outlander. Or he's hauled from bow to stern and the barnacles rip him to salted pork."

"You stinking, murderous slut." Ryan took a half step toward her. Instantly the tunnel mouth of her .44 Astra was drilling into the air between them.

"I stink because I don't bother washing. I murder because it gives me power and pleasure. And I'm a slut because I... That thou canst find out when I need to use thee, Ryan Cawdor."

"Never," he gritted.

"We sail for many a month. Neveris a flensing long time, cully. Don't say 'never.'"

"I'd not..."

"No," Donfil warned.

"Pagan's right, outlander. Open thy mouth to me without being told, and thou couldst lose thy tongue." She stepped in close and reached out with her free hand to pinch his cheek hard. "I have the power — the total power — on this ship, Ryan Cawdor."

It was a close call whether he broke her neck with a single chopping blow of the side of his hand — and died within moments of her — or stood still, hands clenched, and took the pain and the humiliation from her.

Pyra Quadde hadn't lived as long as she had by making wrong judgments. She smiled at him, pinching, her breath coming faster. "Oh, this is good, outlander, Thou art not a weak piece of deck rag like so many of the others have been. Thou wouldst so like to kill me and thou canst not. Life is worth keeping, isn't it, Ryan Cawdor? Isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is."

"Yeah, ma'am, it is."

He could feel a warm trickle of blood on his cheek where her ragged nails had punctured his skin. "Yeah, ma'am, it is," Nothing in his voice betrayed his desire to tear the woman's face clean off her raw skull.

"Good." She closed her eyes a moment and swallowed hard, trying to calm her own obscene pleasure at his pain.

"You want us to work?" Donfil asked. He was talking to Pyra Quadde, but his eyes were watching Ryan, trying to read if his friend was about to discard both their lives by attacking the woman.

"Yes, heathen. Thou canst go below and get sea-boots. Watch thy pagan head on the low beams. Ye can both go in the whaleboat of the first mate. Name's Cyrus Ogg."

"Ogg?" Ryan said, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his cheek, feeling the blood already beginning to crust and dry.

"Want thy backbone to twinkle at the noon sun, outlander? If not, no jests about Cyrus and his name. Kinda touchy, he is."

"Am I harpooneer?" Donfil asked.

"Thou gettest a fifteenth lay on the Salvation — oil, meat, bone and ambergris — and thou dost question whether thou art harpooneer? Fins over! I thought thee not a fool. Thou shalt be lead with the irons and Ryan Cawdor shall be a plain oarsman."

She pointed toward the bow, where a hatch framed a square of darkness and the top of a flight of stairs, going belowdecks. Donfil led the way. It wasn't until Ryan was out of sight of Pyra Quadde that he touched the livid pain of his torn cheek. He wasn't about to give her more pleasure by letting her know how much she'd hurt him.

Krysty and the others were still locked in their attic bedroom, sweltering below the tiles of the roof of the inn. There were sec men all around, inside and out, and they'd seen no glimmer of a chance of escape.

J.B. was constantly on the move, restless at his inability to do anything, staring out toward the quay and the harbor beyond. "Must have sailed with him by first light. Offshore wind and they're probably close on a hundred miles to sea by now."

"Think he's still alive?" Jak asked, lying on his bed with his arm thrown across his eyes.

"Ryan? Probably. Bitch'll use Donfil. Ten from ten with the spear. She'll know about that. Ryan? She wanted him dead, then that's what he'd be by now."

"We got a chance?" Lori asked.

"While we live, we have hope, my dearest child," Doc told her.

Krysty couldn't speak. She felt too close to choking on hopeless tears.

Chapter Nineteen

The Salvationwas a typical whaling ship. If a skipper from Victorian times had been time-trawled along with Doc Tanner and dumped aboard her, he'd have felt completely at home.

She was one hundred and twenty feet long and just under thirty feet wide. The crew comprised thirty-two officers and men. Pyra Quadde had her cabin in the stern, beneath the afterhouse that held the ship's wheel. The two mates had their own tiny cabins under the midship shelter. Everyone else messed together in the forecastle, in the rounded bow of the vessel.

The Salvationshipped three masts. From the bow they were the fore, main and mizzen. She carried four whaleboats, each thirty feet long, slung on davits, two to a side. A few paces forward of the mainmast was the tryworks, the ovens that would render the flesh of the whales, providing the clear, valuable oil that would be stored in the hundreds of barrels that rested in the depths of the hold.

The only large space in the whole of the whaler was the blubber room. It ran more than two-thirds the length of the ship and was where the busiest and bloodiest work of the long cruise would take place. The carcasses of the slaughtered creatures would be hauled alongside and tied there. Men would scramble down onto them, using long-handled knives to strip away great chunks of blubber. This was heaved aboard and cut up in the open space to be boiled down in the brick-and-iron oven.

One of the sailors pointed out to Ryan during that first afternoon that the Salvationwas bark-rigged. This meant that the stern mast, the mizzen, carried a fore-and-aft sail rather than being fully rigged like a normal sailing schooner, enabling the actual running of the vessel to be worked by fewer men. That left as many sailors as possible to man the fragile whale-boats once the prey was sighted.

To the surprise of both Ryan and Donfil, the crew seemed to accept them on board without any obvious hostility. It became clear that Clegg hadn't been the most popular of mates, too ready with his fists. Most of the men were happy to show them around, telling them what their duties would be in such and such a situation. But any attempts to press them about their captain met only sideways glances and a tightening of the lips.