Chapter 26

It was almost two weeks later, when there were six people in our ketch starting our journey south and towards Aston. Together with us travelers were Tofi and Helga from the North Island and Runi from the First Island; the very same young man who had been ordered to harass me and the ladies with me - and who had then realized that the matriarch of their family would have been quite happy to see him killed, since that would have helped her in rejecting my proposal. Quite an eye-opening event, I guess.

Helga was a different thing. She was one of the two persons who had the power to talk business on behalf of the people living in those North Islands and she wanted to have a word with some people in Aston about the business. Besides that, I had a feeling that she might have a personal interest to visit the Valley, but that wasn’t my business. The really important thing was that now we had more competent sailors on our ketch which would make the trip south quite a lot faster.

We would have been ready to leave a week earlier, but the ‘weather watchers’, those people on the North Islands who followed and predicted the weather, suggested that we should postpone our departure, and two days later I was quite happy that we did so. Even though our ketch was quite a nice little ship, facing a full, late autumn storm with it would not have been fun. Especially when we, most likely, would still have been out in the open sea.

Tofi saw this trip as an excellent opportunity to teach me to sail. Instead of setting out strict rules, he taught me how to ‘read’ the wind on the sails, how to keep an eye on each sail and see how it reacts and learn by feeling the lines and watching those sails to get the most power from the wind. Then, I also needed to sense the boat - or ship - itself. How it behaved in different kinds of seas, how did it feel when the vessel was moving smoothly and most importantly - exactly how far you could push her if that was needed. I knew quite well that we had been quite far from optimum performance of the ketch when we had sailed to the Islands, but I hadn’t dared to push her. When I mentioned that to Tofi, he had become serious.

“Stian, there aren’t many old and bold sailors, if any at all. There may be some old, brave sailors, if they have been brave because of necessity.”

I got the point. Once Tofi saw that, he laughed.

“You should understand that you scared the shit out of those people on the First Island. Without any warning or any help from the island, a young man with little sailing experience sails through their secret passage directly into their harbor. They had their pants to their knees and they knew it; even if they pretended that, by kicking you out of there, everything just went away. Doing that in those conditions took guts, and the way you taught yourself the route showed Toki and me everything we needed to know. Now, trim the sails a bit. The wind has changed and we can push this nice little thing just a bit harder.”

It was pitch dark when we entered the Aston harbor and the area the shipping people used for their boats. In a way, it was unbelievable to enter the harbor like that, but the wind coming from north was light and it made our ketch easily maneuverable. Then, when Tofi and I combined our skills and Runi took care of the sails, we were able to enter the area without anybody seeing us. I could sense the banks of the river because of the people on them. That allowed us to sail upstream past the usual checkpoints and Tofi was able to sense the depth and estimate how close we were to the river bank.

Once we estimated that we were far enough, we quietly lowered the anchor and, as soon as there was a little light available, we moved our ketch to a secure position behind another small ship moored to the pier. Just like it had been there all the time.

I knew that the following day would be difficult because of the lack of sleep, but this experience had been worth it. Nobody would believe that somebody would be stupid enough to sail a boat through the mouth of the river Aston in total darkness!

Seeing a familiar ketch tied to the company pier didn’t raise any eyebrows even if somebody might wonder exactly when it had come there. It didn’t take me long to arrange a meeting for the following day with Elise and somebody from the other family. If everything went well there, then we could be on our way up the river in a few days!

“Mother Earth! For sure I will not miss the smell of that city. I don’t understand how the people can live there.”

Tofi’s voice was so full of disgust when he said that that I just had to laugh, as we both were standing at the stern of a barge on our slow way up the canal. Our partners had been more than happy. Now they had no need to buy or build a ship that could sail far enough to avoid places where our leaders were at war. There would still be dozens of things to agree - like where to move the cargo from one ship to another. There were some ideas, but no answers yet.

I turned my attention from the canal towards Tofi. In these muddy waters, I was the experienced sailor - or whatever you called the guy who manned the helm.

“In a few months you’d get used to it, and you would not even notice it. Instead, you’ll almost miss it when you spent a few days out of town.”

Tofi’s grunt told me that he didn’t believe me at all. There was a moment of silence and I noticed tired-looking Runi, who had received some special service while in Aston.

Once we had figured out that Runi was in fact totally inexperienced when it came to women, I had had a quick discussion with Elise who had then organized something for him - just as something had been organized for me after that one fight in Aston.

Kara had looked almost angry at me when she heard what I had organized. I had turned to her and shook my head. “Kara, you know what will happen to him as soon as we are in the valley. This way, it’s possible that he will not be totally out of his depth there and he may even have some of his manly pride left afterwards.”