Free The Outcasts by John Flanagan Page A

a ninety-degree angle to the right and was now surging along, slicing through successive waves. She would clear the headland easily, he saw. He realized that he’d been tensed up during the tacking maneuver and he forced himself to relax, loosening the iron grip he had kept on the steering oar. He twitched it experimentally, watching the ship respond. Behind them, the wake described a series of sudden curves.
    “She’s beautiful,” he breathed. And she was. Fast, agile and responsive, she was everything he had hoped she might be. His grin widened even further.
    “Now let’s see how fast we can take her back to Hallasholm.”

chapter seven

    I t was standard practice that a lookout was maintained at
    Hallasholm harbor, to keep an eye out for strange ships.
    A wooden tower stood at the landward end of the mole, currently manned by a junior sailor who had recently been assigned to his first wolfship. The job of lookout was a boring and often fruitless task and, as such, was usually assigned to junior crew members. As the older sailors said, there was very little for a lookout to do and most junior sailors were extremely capable of doing very little.
    There was a practical side to the arrangement, of course. Younger sailors had younger eyes and were likely to see a strange ship sooner than their older comrades.
    On this day, the lookout saw a very strange ship indeed.
    Her hull looked like a wolfship, only smaller—perhaps slightly more than half the size of a normal wolfship. And she was coming up fast, very fast. She seemed to be skimming the sea like a low-flying seabird. He could see the regular flashes of white spray at her bow as she cut through the low waves—catching up to each one, slicing her way through, then chasing down the next in line.
    But what really took his attention was the sail. He had never seen a sail like this one. It was a large, swelling triangle.
    “Ship!” he called to a small group of sailors below, who were loading stores into a wolfship moored alongside the mole. They looked up at him, then looked out to sea, following the direction of his pointing arm. But they were too low to see the newcomer.
    “What is she?” the first mate of the wolfship called up to him. Even from a distance, his annoyance with the lookout was obvious in his voice. Lookouts were supposed to report the type and number of ships approaching, not simply yell “Ship!” like a frightened maiden aunt finding a burglar in her parlor.
    “Is it one of Arndak’s trading fleet?” the firstmate added. Each year, around this time, a small flotilla of trading ships brought back goods from Sonderland and the south coast of the Stormwhite. The ships carried wool and fleeces and cooking oil and salted meats—goods that would help the people of Hallasholm get through the winter. They had been expected now for some days.
    “No. She’s not a trader. She’s a …” The lookout stopped and admitted, in a puzzled tone, “I’m not sure what she is.”
    Muttering dire insults about the mental deficiencies of young sailors, the mate crossed the mole and ran nimbly up the wooden ladder to the observation platform. The tower vibrated to his heavy tread and the lookout moved to one side to make room for him as he emerged onto the platform.
    The mate looked, frowned, looked harder.
    “Well, I’ll be … ,” he began, then stopped. The ship was coming about. The strange sail suddenly fluttered loose and was hauled down. As it slid down, another identical sail rose up the mast on the opposite side. It bellied out for a few seconds, then as the crew—he could see now there were only a few of them—hauled in the sheets, it formed into a perfect, hardened curve. The ship, which had slowed fractionally during the maneuver, now accelerated forward.
    “Well, I’ll be … ,” he began again, then realized that he had no idea what he would be. He leaned over the railing to where his crew were looking up at him. As tends to happen when