Voyage of the Fox Rider by Dennis L. McKiernan

year.”

    The
Flying Fish
was a three-masted caravel, some eighty feet long from stem to stern and twenty-eight feet abeam, a swift little cargo ship plying the route between Arbalin and Rwn, a journey of seven to nine weeks, given favorable winds. Her sails abaft were lateen rigged, while those forward were square—all but the jib. Captain Dalby was her master, and she carried a crew of seventeen: two mates, a cook, a carpenter and cooper, a caulker, a cabin boy, a boatswain, and ten ordinary seamen. She had a stern castle but no fo’c’sle, and the former held three cabins—the captain’s, the first mate’s, and the second mate’s, this last occupied by Alamar, for whenever there were passengers on board, the second mate and, if necessary, the first mate as well, slept with the remainder of the Men below decks in the forward crew’s quarters.
    Alamar took his meals with the captain, always bearinga small portion away from the board—“For my fox, you know”—and Dalby was struck by the wide variety of food that this carnivore ate: vegetables and soups, breads and sweets, and even dried fruits, as well as morsels of fish and fowl and other meats. And though the captain had no objection to the taking of modest bits and scraps, still he found it curious that even though he had invited Alamar to bring his animal into the cabin to eat straight from the board, the Mage had declined, saying that Rux was too untamed, too feral. Yet in spite of the fox’s reputed wild ways, at night Alamar was often seen pacing the deck, the fox somewhere near. And unlike when he was first brought aboard, the animal ran free, no longer restrained by a leash.
    Yet even though the crew became accustomed to seeing Alamar and Rux, still at times the sailors would gather and speculate about both the Mage and his fox, though not within the hearing of either. For ever since the two had taken passage, there seemed to be strange goings on aboard the
Fish
:
    Now and again in the night a crewman would see a flicker of shadow from the corner of his eye, but whenever he looked, nothing would be there, or at times it would be the fox.
    The carpenter swore that the fox was a shape changer, and the cabin boy claimed that he had heard Alamar in his cabin talking with the fox,
and that the fox had answered!
    “I was bringing tea to the cap’n when I heard it. A high-pitched voice it were, them two talkin’…arguing fiercelike. About wot, I don’t know, and I don’t want to know, and I didn’t stop to see. Believe you me, quick as Jack Nimble I ran, I did. Didn’t spill a drop o’ th’ cap’n’s tea, neither.”
    “
Brrr!
Gives me the blank willies it does. But I take wot y’ say, matey, ’cause I ’spect as all foxes wot talk have high voices, right enough.”
    “Wull, it don’t s’prise me none, ’cause I’ve always known as foxes are more’n wot they seem. I mean, look at ‘ow clever they are and all. And their eyes, not like those of a decent dog, but instead like th’ slitted orbs o’ a stealthy cat.”
    “Ar, y’r right at that. But ’ere naow, ‘oo’s to say ‘eain’t one o’ them there demons wot Wizards are always foolin’ about wi’?”
    “Go on wi’ ye. This Rux naow, a Wizard’s familiar ‘e is and talk ‘e might, but ‘e’s all right wi’ me, ‘e is. And take my grog ‘e ain’t no demon. Let me ask you, though, ‘ave you seen many rats since ‘e’s come aboard? ‘E’s better’n a cat, I’d say, when it comes to rattin’. Y’r meals ’r’ better, too, ’cause the rats wot nibble and gnaw ’r’ probably all dead by now; kilt by Master Rux, I do trow if y’ want my honest opinion on it.”
    “That as may be, cookie, but all as I know is I’ll be glad when we finally deliver Master Rux and ‘is Wizard to the docks at Arbalin Isle.…”

    As the caravel made its way across the Weston Ocean and toward the Avagon Sea, during the daylight hours Jinnarin stayed within the cabin, but at