Read Online The Elder Gods by David Eddings, Leigh Eddings - Free Book Online Page B

his face. “Has anybody happened to see any towns on that coast?” he asked.
    “None so far, Cap’n,” Ox replied. “If we want anything to eat, we’ll probably have to chase it down without no help.”
    “Better find a river or a creek first,” Hook-Beak decided. “Let’s get the water casks filled before we go hunting. Hungry’s bad, but thirsty’s worse.”
    “Not by very much,” Ox said. “If my belly starts growling any louder, the people hereabouts will probably think there’s a thunderstorm coming their way.”
    “Would you look at the size of them trees!” Ham-Hand exclaimed, staring at the thickly forested shoreline. “I ain’t never
seen
trees that big afore!” Ham-Hand was perhaps a bit overly excitable, but this time Sorgan could see his second mate’s point. The forest stretching up from the beach consisted of huge trees that were twenty to thirty feet through at the butt and rose like huge pillars to a height of at least a hundred feet before they sprouted a single limb.
    “They do seem just a bit overgrown, don’t they?” Ox agreed.
    “A
bit?
” Ham-Hand said. “You could carve two
Seagull
s out of one of them trees and still have enough wood left over to cook breakfast.”
    “We can’t eat trees,” Sorgan told him. “Let’s get the water casks filled and then go hunt up something to eat before Ox starts chewing up the sails or the anchor.”
    The
Seagull
sailed south along the forested coast for a league or so until Ox spotted a wide creek that emptied out into a small bay. Ham-Hand swung the tiller over hard and beached the ship on a sandy strip nearby. Then most of the crew went to work filling the water casks while Ham-Hand led a small party back into the forest in search of game animals.
    The hunting party returned empty-handed along about sundown. “We seen some tracks, Cap’n,” Ham-Hand reported, “and some pretty heavy-traveled game trails, but we didn’t jump nothing worth wasting no arrows on.”
    “We can get by this evening, I expect,” Sorgan told him. “The Fat-Man put out some setlines right after we beached the
Seagull,
and he brought in some pretty good-sized fish.”
    “I ain’t all that fond of fish, Cap’n,” Ham-Hand said.
    “It beats eating leaves and twigs,” Sorgan said, shrugging. “Did you happen to run across any signs of people back there in the woods?”
    “Nothing I could swear to, Cap’n. Nobody’s been chopping down trees or building bridges or such. There
might
be folks hereabouts, but they ain’t left no sign. I don’t know as it’d be a good idea to leave the
Seagull
beached overnight. Might be better if we anchored a ways out, just to be safe. If there do happen to be folks living around here, maybe we should get to know a little about them afore we let down our guard. I sure don’t want to be the main course at no dinner party.”
    “Good point there,” Sorgan agreed. “See to it.”
    The
Seagull
moved carefully southward along the coast for the next few days. The crew found game animals—wild cows and a very large variety of deer—but they didn’t encounter any people.
    “There’s
got
to be people here someplace, Cap’n,” Ox said one afternoon about a week after they’d first made landfall.
    “Why?” Hook-Beak said.
    “There’s always people, Cap’n—even along the coast of Shaan.”
    “Let’s hope they ain’t like the Shaans—if there are people here,” Ham-Hand put in. “I could go for a long time without meeting folks who eats other folks.”
    “It might just be that we made landfall too far to the north,” Sorgan said. “It’s still summer here, so we don’t really know what winters here are like. It might just be that any people hereabouts live farther south.”
    The
Seagull
continued south along the empty coast, but an hour or so later Tree-Top called down from the topmast. “Ho, Cap’n!” he shouted. “There’s a village on up ahead. I don’t see no people about, but there’s