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From A Wizard of Earthsea (pg 38 ):

Now instead of running before the storm they must row across the wind's way, and it was hard; waves striking the ship abeam pushed her always south of their new course...

'Must' occurs twice more in quick succession shortly after that, between otherwise past tense verbs in the passage.

Just prior to the above quote, the master of the ship has been speaking to the hero, Ged: But he said to Ged, 'Boy, you speak like a Seamaster, but I tell you...'.

Hi AC, thanks for the link, and sorry for taking so long to reply (I have very limited internetr access at the moment).

Hmm, but the switches in tense illustrated in the link's quoted passages seem much more functionally motivated (i.e. sound, sensible, emulable) than Le Guin's, don't you think? For a start, the switch of Ackroyd's (in the 'So What? sublink) leads into a substantial stretch of 'free indirect discourse' in 'the narrative present' (as opposed to Le Guin's habit almost of using 'must', presumably for no other reason than 'had to' would've been too much for her to type - or am I just being a pernickety old s*d? ).

Or it could be some idiomatic usage of sorts.

"Must" used to be the remote form of "mote". This is simply archaic usage.

Thanks for the info, Andy (I could do with a dictionary that provides more etymological info). Yeah, I guess Le Guin is just trying to make the storytelling sound that bit more strange, mysterious and Olde Worlde, something like that.