Authors: Nicholas Anderson
"It's a
nice day, isn't it?" Dane said.
Why are you having
such trouble saying it?
he
asked himself. He
realized then he had not once let his gaze stray out to sea. His eyes and
his thoughts he fought hard to keep from wandering in the direction of the
isle.
"It is
indeed," Elias said, "But you didn't visit me to talk about the
weather."
"I'm
sorry," Dane said. "I'm not meaning to waste your time."
"I never
consider such walks wasted," Elias said.
"Right,"
said Dane, "Well I guess you've heard by now about the ship that came in
yesterday?"
"From Haven?"
Elias asked and nodded. "And
I've heard of the one you'll be leaving in later today."
"You
have?" Elias did not seem the type to hang out with the gossips at
the docks.
Elias smiled.
"Half of your crew came to receive their last rites."
Dane
nodded. "Some of them think it's a fool's errand, a suicide
run."
"What do
you think about it?"
"I try not
to."
"There's
many a good man going with you."
“That won’t be
enough.”
"You
feel the need for more soldiers?"
"My father
won't give me any more soldiers."
"Well, I
don't know that I'll be able to change his mind for you; your father's tighter
with his fighting men than he is with his money."
"Actually I
was hoping you could help me in a different way," Dane said.
"We have many good soldiers, men who have dedicated themselves to warfare
since they were boys, but I think it would be good if we had one who'd
dedicated himself to prayer."
Elias turned to
him. "You want me to go with you?"
Dane held up his
hand.
"Only if you're willing."
Elias's face
darkened. "I am willing. But I cannot."
Dane could only
nod; having already asked too much to also demand he give his excuse.
Elias offered it
anyway. "The festival of Kran begins next week.”
"Of
course," Dane said. "And they've asked you to slaughter the
pig. I'm sorry, I'd almost forgotten."
"That's alright," Elias siad.
"It's not
anything you need to keep track of."
Kran was the
household deity of Dane's ancestors. The god the Hallanders had served
long before there was an Emperor to unite everyone under the worship of
Shammath. And they served Kran still now that the Empire had
crumbled. His Seat, the solitary peak that dominated the harbor, was
where Elias had won his fame. Kran’s festival was the biggest event of
year, nearly two weeks of partying, and the main sacrifice, the sacrifice of
the boar, was the biggest part of a the festival. It was a great honor to
be chosen to do the sacrifice, an honor usually reserved for the senior
priest. Not the kind of honor you could refuse, especially if you were
one of the youngest priests.
“No, it's only
right you should do it," Dane said. "Especially after all you
did for us on the mountain."
"I had my
own reasons for climbing the mountain," Elias said. He turned to
Dane, "I'm sorry. But I'm sure you can get one of the other priests
to go with you. Someone more experienced than me."
Dane smiled
wryly. "I doubt any of the others will want to join us. We're
taking very little wine and the only woman going with us is married."
Elias
smiled. "There are many good men in the priesthood. You just
haven't hung around the temple long enough to get to know any of them."
The thought of
asking a priest other than Elias to go along depressed Dane. He trusted
most of the priests no more than he trusted the gods they claimed to serve.
Maybe Elias was right. Maybe they were good men. But they
were still only men. Elias was something more. What he’d done on
the mountain had proved that.
Dane admitted it
might be good to have a god or two in their corner. But if he couldn’t
have Elias Wick to stand between said gods and him, he preferred to take his
chances alone.
Laughter rolled down from the
Hallander feasting hall as Dane passed by on his way to the docks. It
was full dark now and torches blazed in sconces beside the huge double
doors. Dane had been in the hall earlier in the evening for his father’s
commissioning of him and the other men bound for Haven. But he had left
before the feasting began, seeing no point in joining in his father’s sham of a
celebration. He imagined most of the men saw through it, too.
But why should they hold back?
Might as well feast at his father’s expense tonight if he was going
to sacrifice them tomorrow.
Dane had already
said his goodbyes. They hadn’t taken long. There weren’t too many
people he cared to see again. He imagined the feeling was mutual.
Leech was the main person he felt he owed a farewell to, but their final
conversation had been a disappointment. Leech had just kept asking him
questions about when he would be back and what he’d do when he got back and
what it would take to get out of his position as Dane’s father’s nutritionist
and open a real practice and whether needle and catgut or saw and tourniquet would
be most useful if he wanted to get into battlefield medicine.
In the end,
Dane’s attempts to say goodbye to his friend had made him feel so sappy and
awkward he’d abandoned them all together.
Dane’s footfalls
echoed dully as he crossed the dock. Rawl Johnson, one of the sentries
left to guard the boat and belongings, leaned against the inside of the
bow. Rawl’s attention was on the knife in his hand. Dane stopped a
few paces away and watched him for a moment. Rawl passed his blade back
and forth between his whetstone and a piece of leather; stoning, stropping,
stoning, stropping.
Dane smiled
wryly. He wondered if the boy had any idea what he was doing.
“You'll wear it down to a nub if you don't stop that,” he said.
Rawl looked up
with a start.
"Sorry, sir.”
He
sheathed the knife and turned away. "Just won’t stay in its
sheath." His cheeks burned red, but maybe it was just the ruddiness
of the torchlight.
Dane nodded
towards the hall. "Why don't you go get a drink?"
"I'm here
to watch the ship, sir."
Dane stepped
down into the
Bloodwake
. “I can
watch the ship. Your brother’s up there, right?"
Rawl nodded.
“Then why don’t
you join him.”
“He’s probably
had a bit too much by now, sir. Probably making a fool of
himself
.”
“How old are
you?”
“Be 20 next
month, sir.”
“Then you’re
still allowed to make a fool of yourself. Get out of here.”
Rawl tucked his
whetstone and leather strap carefully in the pack at his feet and hopped up
onto the dock and headed off.
The other
sentry, Fletcher Dibsy, was reclining against a coil of ropes by the mast.
Dane kicked his foot and the man leapt to his feet.
“You going to
get up there yourself or would you rather stay here and sleep?"
"I'm sorry,
sir."
"Sleep
while you can, soldier. We're not on Haven yet."
"Yes, sir,
I mean, sorry, sir, I mean…" Fletcher swore under his breath.
Dane
smiled. "Why are you still here?"
"Sorry, sir."
Fletcher stepped quickly
around Dane with his head down, crossed the gangplank in a single stride, and
started jogging up the hill after Rawl.
Dane watched the
two men enter the hall. He had met them only this morning at the muster,
along with Rawl’s twin, Paul.
The smile faded
from Dane's face as he sat down on one of the barrels roped to the deck. Normally,
he liked to be alone to think, and during the last two days he had been too
busy to let his thoughts wander and he'd hardly had a moment alone. But
now he was alone and his thoughts brought him no comfort. While the sun
shone it had been easy to banish dark imaginings of the mysterious isle, but
now the sun had fallen and the hour to disembark was at hand. The
darkness crept over his thoughts as well. As he brooded, he faced the sea
and so he did not see the figure that stole down the dock and slipped onto the
ship and into the hold below deck.
A short time
later a second figure came down the dock, but this one called to Dane and he
turned around to see Elias Wick, the priest.
"You still
have that extra space?"
Dane could not
hide his smile as he stepped to the gunwale near the gangplank.
"It's called a berth when speaking of a ship, your holiness, but I would
clear thirty such spaces to make room for men such as you."
"One will
do." Elias tossed him his bag. "I'm a light packer."
Dane hefted the
traveler's pack in his hands. "This is all you’re
bringing?" He was a little disappointed. He had hoped Elias
would bring an arsenal of spiritual tools;
amulets to ward
off evil and stones to set up invisible walls and whatever else it was
priests carried around with them.
The really good
stuff.
It didn't seem the bag held much more than a change of
clothes.
Elias
shrugged. "For a man like me, Captain, the material is largely
immaterial."
"You'll
miss your festival," Dane said, trying to sound like he was warning Elias,
encouraging him to reconsider, but finding it hard to keep the relief and
excitement out of his voice.
“They can find
someone else to prick their pig."
"Won't that
upset your boss?" Dane said.
Elias
smiled. "Kran is a local diety, Captain. And we're going to be
a very long way from home."
Dane was silent
for a moment,
then
said, "You know, this is just
a military expedition. No one expects you to come along."
Elias sighed,
and looked northwest into the blackness that hung over the surface of the deep
there. "I was chosen to stand between these people and the
Darkness," he said.
"But your
festival; they wanted to honor you." Dane did not really want to
talk Elias out of
going,
he only wanted to make sure
Elias knew what he was getting into.
Or had an idea
about it.
None of them really knew what they were getting into.
"I've
always believed, or hoped at least, that the gods count our service to our
fellow man more valuable than the sacrifices we offer them."
"But, you'd
be the youngest priest ever to lead the festival."
"That's
part of why I decided to go. There are better men to do it and there'll
be other years for me to. I think I should use my youth for
exploring. Who knows, maybe we will discover a new god there. A god
we have not known. The god we've all been looking for."
"Do you
know Joseph Leit?" Dane had decided to broach one of the questions
that had been coming to him out of the darkness. If he could not keep the
thought from weighing on him, perhaps sharing it would lighten the burden of
it.
“Not as well as
I'd like. He seems like an honest young man. Why do you ask?"
"Has he
ever spoken to you about dreams?"
"Not that I
recall."
"Do you
have any sense about him, about whether he might have some prophetic ability or
something?"
"I think we
all have more spiritual ability than we realize," Elias said.
"That's part of the reason I'm excited about this trip, it'll give me a
chance to get to know many of the men better. We might all discover new
things about who we are."
Dane relaxed a
little. He felt a certain peace in the fact the priest was hopeful about
the trip; looking forward to it, even. Maybe that was why he had asked
Elias to come, not to have a different type of warrior but to have a man of peace.
"Do you want a drink before we shove off?"
Elias looked
toward the hall and smiled and shook his head. "No thanks, I've just
passed through there. I thought I'd come down here and enjoy a last few
minutes of quiet."
Dane did not
know if that meant he was supposed to be quiet or not, but he didn't really
have anything else to say anyway. He fell back upon his thoughts.
It was not long before the sound of singing reached his ears, cascading down
from the hilltop hall. His father must have given the farewell toast and
the crew and the fellow revelers were lifting up their voices in a final
song. Soon he saw flickering pinpoints of light filing down from the hall
and he knew it was the crew coming down to the docks with torches and whatever
well-wishers accompanied them.
He watched the
trail of lights climb down the hill like a trickle of lava. Soon he
could hear the voices of men and a few women. He moved to stand by the
gangplank. He nodded to each man as he came on board, sometimes slapping a
back or greeting a man by his name and sometimes shooting out a hand to
stabilize one who was unsteady with drink on the narrow gangplank. Tipper
Long, shock of dark hair falling forward to shield his serious, silent face,
nodded to Dane as he stepped aboard with his dog, Dioji. Kit Forsythe,
master navigator and the ship’s steersman, followed. Bailus Conley, House
Hallander’s weapons master, the man who had trained most of the soldiers in the
expedition and Dane’s second-in-command, boarded next. Then
came
a group of men and two more dogs.
Aaron and Edric Embries, Markis Evans, Franklin Moore with his dog,
Blackthorn, and Owen Manies with his one-eyed mongrel, Wink.
Dane
was glad to have the dogs. He wasn’t so sure about the men. He had
fought alongside each of them but that didn’t mean he had any particular
affection or trust for any of them. There was a weight and sincerity to
Aaron’s and Owen’s handshakes that made him
think
better of them.
Paul Johnson
came next, looking back over his shoulder as he conversed with Fletcher
Dibsy. "Good evening, men," Dane said as Paul stepped off the
plank and onto the deck.
"Oh, hello,
Captain," Paul said, turning to face him and then turning his head again
to continue what he had been telling Fletch. "No, Dibs, I ain't
scared.
And for two good reasons.
One,” he
held up the first finger of his right hand, "I ain't never been scared of
nothing in my life."
Behind Fletch,
Rawl grunted as he dropped down the gangplank. Paul ignored his brother
and continued, raising the first finger of his left hand as he said, "And
secondly, because if fat old Lord Felcrist tries to burn his ugly mark in my
hide, I'll shoot him through both eyes before he can so much as blink."
"Right,"
said Rawl, "’Cause I'm sure it never occurred to Old Ben Cross to try to
defend himself."
Benjamin Cross
was the branded man who had washed up in the boat from Haven yesterday.
He had been identified later that morning and buried the same day. Dane
had not known Ben but he had felt he should go to the funeral since he had been
the first to find him. It had not been easy in any way, but the hardest
part had been the questions. Everyone, especially those closest to Old
Ben, but also a lot of busy bodies who'd never heard of him 'til now, wanted to
know what had happened. They all directed their questions at Dane and, of
course, he didn't have answers for any of them.
"Speaking
of marks on the skin," Fletch said, "I'm thinking of getting myself a
tattoo."
“Oh, yeah?"
Paul said.
"Of
what?"
"Your sister's name."
"Gross,"
Paul said blandly.
“Why don't you
just stick with a branding, Fletch?" Rawl said. "It'll be
quicker, cheaper, and everyone knows she drags you around like a dumb old ox
with a ring through its nose.”
“Speaking of
your sister,” Fletch said. “Do you think we’ll be back in time for my
birthday? She’s promised to bake me a cake.”
“Have you tried
our sister’s cooking?” Paul said. “You should be glad you’re
getting out of here.”
The young men
were pushed forward by those boarding behind them.
Kids
, Dane
thought.
They're sending us out there with a crew half full of kids.
Dane’s attention
was drawn from the young soldiers back to the dock by an all-too-familiar
laugh. He turned to see Baxter Hullman ambling down the dock. Ever
the good old boy, Bax was shouldering his way through the press of onlookers
good-naturedly.
Smiling, slapping people on the
shoulder, shaking hands, returning a loud “thank you” and a smile that was
almost a laugh in itself to everyone who shook his hand and wished him luck.
The show, the bravado, the charm was nothing new to Dane; it’s what he’d expect
of Bax on a night like this. What surprised Dane was that Bax was
followed by the last person on earth Dane had expected to see at the docks that
night – his young female captive from Alistar. Olive skin, almond eyes,
hair with the sheen of dark silk, the girl would have stood out anywhere in the
Hallander towns. But something about the way she carried herself, the
poise, the calm, the utter un-slavishness of her, held Dane’s eyes. He
could already feel the rage roiling inside him before Bax jumped down into the
boat. Dane knew what was going to happen, but he watched it anyway.
The girl followed. From the dock, she placed one foot on the
Bloodwake’s
gunwale, pivoted on it, and
stepped lightly down onto the deck. As he moved towards Bax, Dane
registered and squared all this somewhere in the back of his mind.
The ease of her movements.
Alistarian.
Island born.
She was used to ships.
Bax was
continuing his glad-handing routine down the deck of the ship. Dane
stepped right into his path. Bax turned to him and for a moment the smile
dropped from his face. Then one corner of his mouth twisted up into a
half-hearted sneer. “What do you think you’re doing?” Dane asked.