The days had been unbearably hot and, despite the sea-breeze doing its best to catch the Nomad's sail, it was humid and sticky as well. During the hottest hours of the day the ship sailed with only a skeleton crew so the others could find a shadowed spot and doze until the temperatures became more bearable. Most of the sailors wore only trousers, in some cases they had even stripped down to just breechcloths so they might catch every little cooling breeze. Most of the actual sailing was done at night, guided by the stars and lit by the moon.
But this night was different. It started early in the evening; dark clouds started gathering overhead and the air became so thick you could actually see the haze of humidity. Sweat rolled off bodies in beads, as the thick, overheated air pressed too close. The two sorceresses had fled down below, hopeful- though sceptical about their odds- that they might sleep through the worst of it.
"It's going to break soon," Doubar said, eying the sky, more hopeful in his statement than certain.
Sinbad didn't hear him, clambering up the mast to make sure the mainsail had been properly furled and secured against its beam. It wouldn't do to get caught in the brewing storm with an unfurled mainsail… He did leave the smaller front sail unfurled, it would help steer the ship if it could hold the gales that might be thrown against it.
"Rongar! Is the anchor secured?" Sinbad shouted as he dangled in his own rigging, feeling as safe there as anyone else would with both their feet on solid ground.
Rongar signalled back that he was working on the anchor. Only fools dropped anchor in a storm without the shelter of a bay to protect them. The chances that the anchor would hold were slim and then it would either drag along the sea-bed after them, snagging occasionally making them turn against their will, giving up their broad flanks to the storm, or it would just punch a hole in the hull. Of course if they didn't drop anchor the heavy metal object would stay on the ship and if not properly secured it would start to shift and could seriously hurt people. Every single thing could be dangerous when you lived on a big wooden tub, and that, Sinbad reflected, was half the fun of it.
"Firouz, can you go and see to everything below decks? Everything that is not nailed to the floor has to be safely put away," Sinbad instructed. Firouz was the perfect man for this job as he was the one with the most breakables.
"Want me to check the girls' cabin as well?" Firouz asked, a little green around the gills at the thought of having to disrupt one very cranky and sleep-deprived sorceress in particular.
"I'll do it," Sinbad offered, lightly jumping down onto the deck. He really was living dangerously tonight!
His pace was sedate- there was no hurry and the heat was making rushing completely undesirable. He knocked three times and when he heard a grumble, let himself in.
Both Bryn and Maeve lay flat on their back on their cot, dressed only in a sleeveless shift of the lightest material. "We're battening down the hatches ladies. Everything that isn't nailed down should be stowed away before the storm hits," he told them, trying very hard to be a gentleman and not look at their figures through their thin shifts.
"A good storm is just what we need to break this infernal weather. I was not made for heat waves," Maeve grumbled as she got up to do as Sinbad asked.
He noted that Bryn too was making a move to help her room-mate so he made himself scarce. There was enough to do up top and watching the two women walk around in those short, lightweight shifts was seriously distracting.
When he got back on top the sky had become pitch-black. The clouds had blotted out the moon and stars so he couldn't see a thing. "Lanterns!" Sinbad yelled. "Who's taking care of the lanterns?"
Right in front of him the first lantern was lit and he noticed it was Rongar doing the lighting. Sinbad briefly nodded to him and carefully made his way to the tiller.
"This is madness," he told his big brother at the tiller.
"We've got no business being out in a storm like this," Doubar said, feeling the threat of the approaching tempest right in his bones.
"If there had been any shelter near I would have done the sensible thing and made for it but since there isn't I don't mind telling you I'm looking forward to what the night will bring!" Sinbad grinned, knowing his brother could hear his cheerfulness in the face of danger.
"I'm looking forward to seeing if we make it to tomorrow," Doubar grumbled.
Sinbad clapped his brother on the shoulder. "We always have so far!"
Without warning a lightning bolt flashed down, accompanied by the loudest crack of thunder. It hit the mast, splitting it in two and setting it and the rigging surrounding it on fire.
"Form a bucket line!" Sinbad immediately yelled at his crew, hoping to get the fire under control as quickly as possible.
The beam holding up the sail was ablaze and soon lost its mooring, crashing down in a tangle of rigging, spreading the fire over the wooden planks of the deck.
If that wasn't bad enough, half the split mast listed dangerously to one side, completely throwing off the balance of the ship- one ill-placed wave could capsize the whole Nomad right now, that is, if the fire didn't kill them all first of course.
To accompany the continuing lightning storm the wind started picking up, fanning the flames even further.
"Rongar! Help me get the longboat down!" Sinbad yelled at his strongest crewman bar Doubar, and his big brother was very busy trying to keep the Nomad's rudder under some semblance of control while they had some forward motion left. Sinbad noticed something just to his right and paused what he was doing for just a second.
Maeve and Bryn had come running up on deck when they'd heard the lightning hitting the mast. Maeve pulled Bryn out from under the falling beam before it crushed her under its weight and for a moment the two just stood there, clutching each other's arms as the deck they had been standing on just an hour before was quickly turning into some twisted hellscape.
"Hear me out for a second," Maeve turned to Bryn, trying to block out the fire for the moment. "When I make fireballs I take energy from inside me and transform it into fire outside of me, in theory I should be able to do the reverse," she said.
Bryn doubted it would work but she didn't have any better ideas and they needed to act fast. "I will talk you through it," she said, no nonsense and immediately ready to spring into action.
It went without saying that Maeve would be the one to try out this theory, she was far better with fire than Bryn was. As the two had started studying together they'd found that if the one calmly talked the other through whatever exercise they were beginning to learn, their chances of success increased greatly. So as Maeve turned back towards the fire, Bryn stood closely behind her. Bryn's palm lay over Maeve's belly button, fingers spread wide, to guide her breathing and keep her calm and later to direct the flow of energy entering her. Her other arm was locked around Maeve's hips, anchoring the red-head to the brunette's body in case Maeve could no longer hold herself up.
"Close your eyes," Bryn ordered calmly, her head angled up so her mouth was right next to the slightly taller sorceress's ear.
"Feel your breath inside your body, travelling from your nose all the way into your belly. In your belly you feel a spark, a single point of light," Bryn paused for a moment, taking the time that Maeve would need to get to that spark to figure out how she could direct the fire into the sorceress.
"Now you exhale and when you next inhale, you will take some of the energy out here and you will feed it to the spark inside you the same way you feed air to your lungs," Bryn said, unconsciously holding her breath to see if it worked.
It did, though she couldn't see it in the magnitude of the fire raging on around them, she felt it in the sorceress she held so intimately. "With your next inhale, the trickle becomes a flood," Bryn said, she knew it was probably very dangerous to let that much energy flow that quickly into Maeve, but they simply didn't have time to go for slow and safe and they had to try before they were all dead.
As instructed Maeve inhaled, but it didn't sound like a normal, human inhalation, more like a bellow in a forge being pried apart. It kept on for far too long, far too long to be healthy but Bryn actually saw the fire diminish before her eyes.
Maeve coughed and tried to double over in pain but Bryn held her up and though it broke her heart to say it she did: "Good, again."
Maeve cried out but did as she was told, sucking the energy out of the fire and into herself.
"Again," Bryn forced herself to say, struggling to hold Maeve up as her legs couldn't hold her any longer.
And again Maeve sucked at the fire, this time continuing until even the last determined flame had flickered out.
Maeve screamed out in agony, feeling like she was being burned alive from the inside out. She and Bryn fell in a tangled heap. Bryn, knowing that she had to discharge this energy somehow fumbled to take hold of Maeve's hands, trying to thread her own fingers through Maeve's.
Dermott came flying to them, low over the deck, distressed to feel his sister's anguish. Without thinking Bryn hurled all the energy puling right under her fingertips at the spell that hung around Dermott like a noose.
It felt like another lightning bolt hit, like another thunderclap deafened them and then where the bird flew, a man rolled onto the deck, hitting his head hard and laying still thereafter.
Maeve too had completely lost consciousness, but she was breathing and Bryn sensed it was exhaustion and shock that had sent her into that state. Of course now it started to rain; thick, heavy drops that came too late. Bryn tried to shield Maeve from the worst of it with her own body but soon they were drenched.
Sinbad had hardly seen any of it, too busy keeping his ship afloat, but he had sent Rongar to get the hand-axe the moment the fire seemed to be diminishing. As soon as the fire had gone out Sinbad had shimmied up the still too hot mast and started hacking away at the part that was listing so dangerously.
"Firouz! Get the girls inside! Rongar! Check for damages on the hull! Doubar! How's she holding?" Sinbad shouted as loudly as he could, all the while hacking away at the mast of his beloved ship.
Firouz sprang into action, this was no time to ask questions- though he had many- so he grabbed the unconscious man under his armpits and dragged him down the stairs into the galley before running up and helping Bryn carry Maeve down as well.
"We'd better put them in our room," Bryn said. "They'll be out of the way there."
"Good idea," Firouz agreed, if this storm lasted much longer who knew what they would need the galley for? A triage area most likely…
They managed to get the two into the cots of the girls room where Firouz quickly examined them.
"This one has quite the egg on his head, he must have hit the deck hard. I can't do anything for him now, but try to make sure he moves as little as possible. Maeve it seems… well there aren't any external wounds," Firouz summed up, feeling inadequate because he had no idea what Maeve had gone through just now and how it was affecting her at this moment.
"She'll be alright," Bryn assured him, speaking as much to him as to herself.
"Just get them dry, yourself as well, I think I'm needed back on deck," Firouz said, feeling the ship rock and lunge under his feet- the storm proper was only just beginning and they had already lost their mast.
"Go, I've got this," Bryn said, but Firouz barely even heard her, already running out the door.
Firouz ran back out on deck just in time to see most of the mast disappearing overboard with a loud crack. Sinbad, lucky boy that he was, jumped off the former mast just in time, landing safely back on deck before running to join Doubar and Rongar at the tiller. Though without any forward motion under their own propulsion, the tiller had a fairly limited use, it was the only tool they had right now and keeping the Nomad's nose into the wind was vital right now. Sinbad had already secured the little foresail, it would be no help going straight into the howling winds of this storm.
"Firouz, how are they?" Sinbad asked when he noticed Firouz had come back on deck.
Firouz grabbed a long coil of rope and headed to the tiller. "They'll live," he said curtly and started tying one end of the rope to Rongar, then tying it around Doubar as well and then tied them both to the railing- those two wouldn't be going overboard tonight at least. Firouz didn't even try the same safety measure on Sinbad, knowing the man could not bear to have his movements limited.
"The hull is fine for now, we have no major breeches or leaks," he informed the captain.
"Good, you get the men bailing, tie yourself off too before you do that," Sinbad said, just before a huge wave tried to broadside them.
The three men at the tiller threw their weight at it and just managed to keep the Nomad from capsizing while Firouz scrabbled for a handhold.
It was still pitch-black out on deck, the lanterns had stopped working the same time the fire went out and now the driving rain was making matters even worse. Still, everyone who lived on this ship knew it back to front, so Firouz had no trouble finding his way amidships again. He quickly ordered everyone to tie themselves to the ship and start bailing and then followed his own orders. Maybe they would all survive this night after all…
A flash of lightning illuminated the deck for less than a moment- just enough time for Sinbad to see one of his impermanent crew wash overboard, his line snapping the railing to which it was affixed. He was just a boy looking for adventure, which was why he had hired on to the infamous Sinbad the Sailor's ship. But that same infamous sailor had no time to think about that right now.
"Man overboard!" He called out, but didn't move from his position at the helm, leaving it to the men amidships to try and drag him out of the churning waters. In this storm, in this darkness, the odds that they would get the boy back were terrible.
Bryn came back on deck- the reason Sinbad knew this was that she was glowing with some sourceless light.
"Firouz! Tie her down!" Sinbad called out, though he knew he probably couldn't be heard above the din of the storm. Still, Firouz intercepted Bryn before she had gone two steps and gave her the same kind of leash he had given his other friends just minutes ago, tying her to the remains of the mast so she had a fair bit of range left to her movements- if she didn't get caught in the other ropes of course.
Bryn didn't mind him, too busy extending her witch-light spell until it encompassed the whole deck and they could see again.
Sinbad made a mental note never to sail without sorceresses ever again. This spell may have been a lot less spectacular than the last one, but it would contribute just as much to their salvation tonight.
He was too busy wrestling with the tiller to pay too much attention to what the sorceress was doing on deck until she appeared next to them. She started with Doubar, then moved on to Rongar and finally gave Sinbad the warm wooden cup after she had refilled it from the small keg she carried under her cloak.
"I think I love you," Sinbad said, after he'd tossed the heated rum back and felt the warmth spreading through his body.
Bryn briefly touched his shoulder, leaning in to him to say: "I've had a dozen marriage proposals in the last ten minutes."
Then she was gone again, off to the next sailor who needed to be fortified. Sinbad suspected she had done something to the rum, or maybe it was the casual touch that she bestowed on every sailor she came by that carried the spell. He felt much stronger after her visit in any case.
Sinbad considered that this storm was probably going to rage all night and try as they might, he and his men weren't capable of keeping up this pace that long. It was just too physically and emotionally draining.
The bucking tiller distracted him for a few minutes but then he reviewed the situation on deck: Most of the men were bailing, a few were clearing the deck as best they could so no one would get hit with the flying debris of what had been the mast.
"Rongar!" Sinbad shouted, though Rongar was standing right behind him at the tiller. "Get Firouz and about a third of the men and get some rest. We'll come get you in an hour or two so make it count."
Rongar nodded and waited for the two other men on the tiller to brace themselves so he could let go. As soon as the moor had dashed off Sinbad wondered if he had done the right thing letting him go, his arms and back strained against the tiller as it tried to buck and swing out of their grip. He was going to be one bruised boy in the morning- if they made it to morning.
As if they didn't have enough problems he spotted Maeve coming up on deck, wrapped in a blanket. Even with the driving rain and the rocking deck he could see she was disorientated but he couldn't let Doubar handle the tiller alone so he couldn't get to her.
He didn't need to. She made her way to him on unsteady feet, barely keeping her balance on the rolling deck beneath her feet. Sinbad released one arm from the tiller and grabbed her as soon as she was within reach, even with the blanket pulled tightly around her he could feel she was far too warm.
"You're burning up!" Sinbad told her, throwing his arm around her waist and pulling her flush against his side when it looked like she was going to stumble.
"Keep the racket down! I am trying to sleep!" Maeve insisted, telling him exactly how out of it she really was.
Sinbad desperately looked around him for anyone who could take Maeve off his hands and get her back to her room, but with a third of the crew taking their rest, he had no one to spare.
"Maeve you're getting drenched out here! Why don't you go back inside where it's warm and dry?" He tried to persuade her.
"'s too hot," Maeve drawled, her voice unsteady and her accent getting thicker. She didn't fight his steadying arm around her but she did start to try and get the blanket off of her.
The ship pitched dangerously- Doubar, for all his weight and strength, couldn't hold the Nomad alone in this weather and Sinbad was simply not paying attention so the Nomad was slowly starting to show her broad side to the waves. This could get them dead quick smart.
"Sinbad!" Doubar hollered at him, trying to make him pay attention to the problem at hand.
Sinbad quite literally had his hands full. One arm around the tiller, trying to keep them from dying, one arm around a beautiful woman who was frantically trying to undress. Sinbad felt a dreadful suspicion creep up on him: she would probably jump into the water to try and cool off if he let her go now.
"Bryn!" He hollered at the top of his voice, hoping the second sorceress could take the first off of his hands.
His voice was drowned out by the wind and rain and there seemed to be no help coming. Sinbad did the only thing he could think of: He pushed Maeve between the tiller and himself, grabbing the tiller on either side of her and using her weight in combination with his own and Doubar's to push the Nomad back into a safer position.
"Sinbad, lemme go," Maeve whined. "I don't like this."
Her struggling was about as effective as their mast was in their current situation. "I know sweetheart," he said, the term of endearment slipping out and going unnoticed be both of them. "I'm just trying to keep you safe, alright?" he said.
"I just want to go home," Maeve said miserably and obviously confused.
"I know, we'll get you home as soon as we can, alright?" Sinbad said, trying to keep her calm and hoping Bryn, or anyone else would show up soon to take her from him.
She started talking again, but this time in another language. He tried to hold her up as she slumped over the tiller, almost slipping from the confines of his arm onto the deck itself.
"Doubar, what do I do?" Sinbad plaintively asked over his shoulder. He was getting desperate now as Maeve was deteriorating right in front of him and there was nothing he could do.
"You hold on," Doubar said, because there was no other option.
So he held on, to the tiller and to Maeve for what seemed like an hour. She had periods where she barely had the strength to do anything but keep breathing and periods of complete confusion where she babbled in her native language and she seemed to relive some horrible event. Though she had been terribly hot just a little while ago, suddenly she started shivering violently.
Finally Bryn found them and without wasting any words on apologies or explanations she took Maeve from him and half-dragged, half-walked her back to their room.
The night wore on, eventually Rongar led his rested men back up on deck and Sinbad sent Doubar down with another third to rest up themselves while Rongar and another sailor took Doubar's place. His big brother was so strong, he simply couldn't be replaced by a single sailor.
But the thunder and lightning had stopped, that was a small blessing, though Sinbad hadn't even noticed when it had gone, too busy with other things. And Bryn's witch-light held out so that was good. All that was left to do now was battle the waves- the cold, enormous waves, and not die. Easy. Oh and the exhaustion, definitely battle the exhaustion.
Bryn made another round with her magically-warmed rum and whatever fortifying thing she used.
"I've had to tie her to the bed," Bryn said when she paused by Sinbad to give him his share.
She looked so scared and vulnerable that he felt he had to say something to reassure her that she'd done the right thing. "You're keeping her safe, Bryn. Do you know how long it is until morning?"
Bryn took a moment to feel her way through the clouds to the moon and from its position she could figure out the answer to her captain's question. "We're about halfway through, but the storm is starting to blow over. Just hold on a little while longer, alright?"
Sinbad shook his head. "Something else is coming," he told Bryn.
"What do you mean?" She asked, wondering if she should try and send the captain to bed if he was becoming so tired he was no longer thinking clearly, but maybe this was the famous captain's intuition that was telling him something now…
"It always comes in threes… We've had the fire, we've had the water and wind… There's going to something else," Sinbad said.
"No, that's three, fire, water, wind, that's three," Bryn said.
Sinbad shook his head. "Water and wind is just the storm… trust me on this one Bryn and keep your eyes peeled. Maybe we get attacked by a seamonster, maybe Maeve'll lose her marbles and explode the ship, maybe the crew will take this moment to stage a mutiny… something else is going to happen," Sinbad told her.
"If there's a sea-creature I will have a nice chat with it, Maeve is tied to her bunk and the crew is too tired to mutiny, even if they wanted to, which they don't. Maybe the thing that is going to happen is that she sun will start shining at midnight or some other nice thing," Bryn said.
"Maybe," Sinbad agreed, but Bryn could see he was just saying it to humour her.
Not knowing what else to say to the fatalistic captain she continued on her rounds so she could get back down where Maeve was having a very hard night.
Dermott awoke with a crashing headache and a vague memory of a dream he'd had. The floor under him just wouldn't stay still and it made him sick to his stomach. When he rolled over to vomit his head exploded and he actually saw stars flash before his eyes. He barely managed to keep from passing out again. After taking a moment to collect himself, he re-opened his eyes and saw his sister on the other side of the narrow room, tied to a bed. This, he reasoned, could not be good. The witch who had threatened him must have captured him and his sister somehow…
With infinite care Dermott managed to sit upright in his bed. He leveraged his legs over the side of the bed, careful not to step in his own puddle of sick. Standing up hurt so bad he actually went blind for a moment and he just had to sit back down. Still, stubborn ran in the family and it took two more tries for him to stand on his own two feet and take the three shaky steps to his sister's bedside.
With more effort than he thought possible he undid the knots that kept her tied to the bed. As he rested just a moment he studied his sister: she didn't look good at all, must have been poisoned or hexed or something.
"Maeve," he croaked. "Wake up," he said in their mother-tongue.
But she wouldn't wake, she just lay there. He put a hand on her shoulder, his other on the bedframe to steady himself and then he shook her.
"Dermott?" Maeve muttered indistinctly. "Lemme sleep just a little longer, I'll come play in a minute."
"No Maeve, you don't understand, we've been captured," Dermott said.
Maeve struggled to get her brothers words through the thick fog of her mind. "Who?" She asked.
"I don't know, that witch probably. We need to get out of here!" Dermott said, then tried to calm himself down because the loudness of his own voice made his head hurt even worse.
"Can't, we're on a ship," Maeve said, blearily sitting up in bed.
"Then we take over the ship and we sail home," Dermott said.
"Home," Maeve echoed.
Dermott heard something in the hallway outside their cabin and twitched his head to watch the door- he'd moved too fast and his head exploded in lights again as his stomach emptied itself.
Just as the door opened he managed to take hold of a thick tome and when his captor stepped inside he hit her with all his might.
Bryn shrugged off the glancing blow from the man who looked too sick to move, let alone swing something. "Dermott, what are you doing?" She asked.
Though she was speaking a weird language, Dermott found he could understand her. Still, the words that formed in his own mouth were in his mother tongue. "Take us home, right now!"
"Uhm," Bryn said. "Maybe we can try to speak telepathically, like we used to do, maybe I can understand you then."
She took a step towards him, hoping to calm him down from whatever his mind had conjured up. But when she stepped towards him, Dermott stumbled back and tripped over his own unsteady feet, landing hard on his butt he was unconscious again before his head hit the floor.
Bryn rushed to his side, wishing she knew what to do right now. He was too heavy for her to lift all at once so she put his head and arms on the bed first, then heaved his butt on there and then his legs. She figured she would have to tie him down too, for his own safety, but if he woke up and panicked again he could fight his restrains and bring himself even more injury.
"Bryn? I don't feel so good," Maeve said from the other bed.
Bryn whirled around, having forgotten about Maeve for a second. The Celt was still sitting up in bed, her eyes were glazed over, her skin deathly pale except for two red circles on her cheeks. Her hair stuck to her face and she was sweating profusely as her body tried to get her internal temperature down.
Bryn's maternal instinct immediately flared up at the sight of her forlorn, suffering friend. She sat down next to Maeve and pulled her friend against her side, keeping one arm around her shoulders.
"I know. I'm going to get your some water and then you're going to sleep and in the morning you're going to feel so much better," Bryn said, rubbing Maeve's arm to try and comfort her.
"Water," Maeve agreed, slumping back against the wall when Bryn stood up to go get her friend the drink.
Bryn rushed to the galley where getting a wooden cup was harder than it was at any other time during their journey: because of all the rocking about the contents of the cabinets had fallen every which way and as soon as she opened the door she was showered with the cups.
She took the time to put them all back except for the one cup she was after and closed the cabinet again. The galley was slowly filling up with injured sailors who had been flung across the deck or even overboard, their ropes being their only saving grace in many cases, still there were broken bones and bloody gashes aplenty to keep Firouz extremely busy.
"Bryn, when you get a moment, I could really use your help here," Firouz said, when he spotted her dashing for the water kegs.
"Dermott and Maeve are getting worse by the minute, I think I have to stay with them," Bryn said apologetically.
"I'll come by and check on them as soon as I can," Firouz promised her.
Bryn rushed back with the cup of water only to find Maeve had gone again, this time Dermott had disappeared too.
"Of course," Bryn muttered, she was just so tired! She jammed the cup into a tight space, hoping some of its contents might stay where it was supposed to be before rushing out the door.
Up on deck her witch-light was still working, but she couldn't see Maeve or her brother anywhere. She dashed up to the tiller.
"Have you seen Maeve or Dermott come up here?" She asked the captain desperately.
"No, I thought you had her tied down!" Sinbad said.
"Dermott untied her," Bryn said curtly, scanning the deck with her eyes from his slightly elevated vantage point.
"He doesn't even have any fingers!" Sinbad said, wondering just how bad her knots must have been for a hawk to be able to untie them.
"You missed a bit in the middle there," Bryn said. "He's a human now. I'm going back down, maybe they've ensconced somewhere down below."
Bryn ran off again, leaving Sinbad open mouthed in surprise.
She looked everywhere she could think of, even reached out with her mind to touch the familiar patterns of Maeve or Dermott but there was no trace of them. She went back to the room she'd shared with Maeve and opened herself up. Some powerful magic had been at work right here. They had either magically made their way off the ship themselves or someone else had done it for them.
The rain had finally stopped by the time Bryn dragged herself up to the deck again and even the wind was losing more force by the minute.
"They're gone," Bryn reported to the captain. "Maybe they did it themselves, maybe someone else did… They were just so confused."
Sinbad was too exhausted to register any kind of feeling except the fleeting idea to just dive overboard again, though this time it would be even more futile than the last.
"There's our third," he just said. "I'm going to bed."
The sea had calmed enough by now that Rongar and the other sailor could handle the tiller by themselves so Sinbad just walked away over the blackened planks of his beloved Nomad's deck.
Doubar and his third came back up just minutes after Sinbad had gone down, obviously having been wakened by their captain. They sent the last of the sailors who had not had any chance to rest down too and took up their posts.
Doubar and Rongar manned the tiller, silently standing on either side of it, like sentinels keeping watch.
Bryn figured she should probably go back down and help Firouz or something but she was so terribly tired she found she couldn't even move.
"Come here little one," Doubar said, his voice gruff, he held out an arm to her and she managed to put one foot in front of the other until he could pull her into his side and pat her on the back.
"You've done very well tonight," Doubar said. "But you have to take care of yourself too. You need to sleep."
Bryn promptly burst into tears. "It's all my fault. I pushed her too far and now they're gone."
Doubar awkwardly patted her back. Sinbad had told him briefly what had happened. "You did what needed to be done," he said meaning it wholeheartedly. "If you hadn't gotten that fire under control we would all have died. Now you're only feeling like this because you have been running yourself ragged. Just go on, get some sleep and by morning it will all look better."
"Everyone's been run ragged," Bryn vaguely protested, wiping at her tears.
"Everyone here on deck right now has had a couple of hours rest tonight," Doubar pointed out. "Except for you."
"I'll go," Bryn agreed easily, because she was just too tired to kick up much of a fuss right now. Still she couldn't make herself go back into her own cabin, so she just walked into the men's cabin instead and rolled herself into Rongar's hammock and promptly fell asleep.
Sinbad was back up on deck after catching barely an hour's worth of sleep. Though the storm was over, there was still plenty to do. Without a sail and with half the deckplanks burnt- some even to the point of collapsing, it was imperative that they'd get to a port as soon as possible.
After the last headcount it became apparent that- sorcery aside- they'd lost two of the crew to the water and four more had suffered broken bones: two wrists, one arm and a leg and there were a host of other, more easily treatable injuries. He was seriously broken up about the two sailors he'd lost, but the thing that was really preying on his mind is what had happened to Maeve and the now human Dermott.
As luck would have it, he didn't have to wait long. He blinked as the sun sent its rays to blind his eyes and when he opened his eyes Maeve and some foreign man tumbled onto the deck.
"Maeve!" He shouted, dashing for her to help her up.
"Ow," she said, moving gingerly and gratefully accepting his hand to get back on her feet.
Bryn came running back, no doubt she'd heard his exclamation.
"And you must be Dermott," Sinbad helped the naked guy up though Maeve still sort of hung onto him.
"Yes sir, sorry for the trouble I caused," Dermott said, ducking his head.
Sinbad pulled off his shirt and pressed it into the man's hands for him to cover up with, there were ladies present after all, well women in any case.
"Dermott, Maeve, you're alive! What happened?" Bryn asked, panting from her headlong dash up top.
Maeve unabashedly leaned into Sinbad's side, the sailor slung an arm around her to help support her. She looked so tired he really just felt like tucking her into bed. "Well," she said. "We were a little out of it last night."
"Really, hadn't noticed," Sinbad joked, because that was easier than remember how scared he'd been when he'd had to hold onto her as she hallucinated in the middle of a storm.
She shot him a look to shush him. "Dermott thought we'd been captured and when he told me I believed him, so I teleported us out of there. Only when we got to some beach, well I think I fried every last bit of my magic on that spell out of here so I passed out. So Dermott, even though he was completely out of it as well, did what has always come natural to him: he healed me. He's a great, natural healer you see, that's why Rumina was after him in the first place. But he can't heal himself, he needs me to tap into his mind and take control, so I healed him and then I used his power to get us back here," Maeve explained and then yawned, leaning her head against Sinbad's and closing her eyes.
"I'm taking you to bed," Sinbad told Maeve.
"Hmmm," she just said, halfway asleep as it stood.
Sinbad scooped her up into his arms and as Bryn opened the door for him, took her down to her cabin where he gently tucked her in. Bryn followed right behind him with Dermott, bidding the boy to take her bed and get some sleep as well. The brother and sister dropped off to sleep immediately so Bryn and Sinbad tip-toed out of the women's room.
Up in the sunlight Sinbad surveyed his ship. It was a mess. He doubted even a refitting would do any good, his beloved Nomad was fit for scrap now. He hated the very thought of abandoning the ship that had brought him so much, but the lives of his crew would always come first- he couldn't ask them to serve on a ship that doubled as a death-trap. Two men died this night, four seriously injured, a lot more superficial injuries. With some relief he reflected on the events of the night and found he could not have done anything differently.
"That was one weird night," he commented to Bryn who still hovered at his side.
"I'm engaged to half the crew," Bryn said.
"Weird night," Sinbad nodded. "I'm going to get some sleep."
The sun shone steadily on as the Nomad limped into Baghdad for the very last time, safely carrying her faithful crew home.