The Outlaws of Ennor

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He couldn’t stay below decks, it was too stomach-churning with the ceiling apparently remaining still while his head and belly told him it was swaying violently to and fro, whirling wildly through the roiling waters. Instead, while his companions groaned and bemoaned their fate between bursts of retching, the tall knight with the soiled white tunic made his way up to the deck.

Sir Baldwin Furnshill sniffed the air and felt his temper improving as the wind flung salt spray at his face. It was refreshing, invigorating. He walked carefully to the mast, grabbing at stanchions and ropes on the way, and, when he reached it, took hold of a convenient cord and leaned back so that he could stare up at the sail.

Some twenty or more yards above him, Baldwin could see a man sitting with his buttocks resting on a short plank of wood. Like all the sailors, this fellow seemed unworried by the ship’s movement. He held on with an arm hooked about a rope, his thighs wrapped about the mast in front of him as he surveyed the horizon with a careless ease. Baldwin had noticed so many other sailors up there, all demonstrating the same indifference to height. The knight, who treated even short ladders with a degree of trepidation, felt quite faint to think of being so high. One slip, he told himself …

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