The Silver Arrow (19 page)

With the fog lifted, the Golans
could see better closer to the tree line, and one of them spotted
Samuel between the trees. “There,” he said, pointing, and they
followed in a gallop with their arrows still notched.

The Golans approached the edges
of the tree line where Samuel had veered right, still hidden from
view. They could see horse tracks from their position that joined
the crowd down the slope, but he was gone. They stood there for a
minute, looking, before turning their horses around and riding back
into the woods.

Even moving within the crowd,
Samuel kept looking over his shoulder at the tree line, expecting
his assailants to burst out into the open. He saw nothing, but kept
searching until his view became obscured by one of the old
buildings.

*********

Still tense, Samuel looked
around as people passed by; after a minute, he decided to look for
an inn while trying not to be conspicuous. Until this point, he
hadn’t given any thought to how he would get to Bremah.

He decided to dig through
Iseac’s saddlebag and was relieved to find a purse of coin buried
underneath a bunch of clothes. Looking around, he chose an inn
called the Fishers Bait and made his way in.

The place was packed with
travelers from different parts of the world. From the way some of
them were dressed, and from what Faray had once told him on one of
their trips to Bayshia, these were sailors.

He’d never seen so many
gathered in one place, and he was beginning to wonder if the town
was a shipping port. Samuel also realized that he was the youngest
person in the room. For this early in the morning, the place was
reasonably packed, with a few open tables and chairs aged from long
use. A young woman was cleaning one of the tables. She had some
resemblance to the man behind the bar. His daughter, maybe, Samuel
thought.

The slim man behind the bar was
past his middle years, with the skin of one who has spent more than
a considerable amount of time under the open sky. His eyes were
sharp and he had a beak of a nose.

“Welcome to Fishers Bait, young
master,” the man said in that friendly tone unique to most
innkeepers. “What can I get for you?” he asked.

“Something hot…and maybe
information,” Samuel said almost as an afterthought.

“Leera!” he called to the young
woman cleaning a table. “Could you get our young master here
something hot from the kitchen?”

“So what would you like to
know?” the innkeeper asked Samuel.

“Do you know of any ships
leaving directly for Bremah from this port? Or one heading that
way?”

“Well, there aren’t really that
many that go from Lufgard to Bremah directly; they normally stop at
Kadan’s Gate first. But…” He paused for a second. “You might be in
luck, if what I heard one of
The Night Meadow
crewmen say is
true.”

The sound of a swinging double
door drew the innkeeper’s attention for a brief second to the
person who was approaching. It was the young woman returning with a
tray that held a bowl of soup and flat bread.

The innkeeper returned his
attention back to Samuel.

“Where can I find this
ship?”

“Oh…yes, just follow the
Hallboat Road, you can’t miss it. Find the first mate. They are
normally the loudest people.”

“Thank you,” Samuel said,
placing four copper coins on the table instead of three.

“I don’t charge customers for
information.”

“I know, but I want to,” Samuel
said.

“Well, then, I better be
returning to my other customers.” He swept the coins of the table
and left.

Samuel hurriedly finished his
soup. It was nice and hot with chunks of fresh fish, but he ate it
absentmindedly, his thoughts now set on that ship, even though he
was still concerned about the danger out there, which kept him
vigilant.

Samuel tried to focus on his
bowl of soup, but he continued to scan the tables around him for
the eyes he felt were watching him; each time, it was the same. No
one was looking.

He took even more caution when
he was out of the inn, making sure to stay within or close to other
groups heading in the same direction. When he realized he would
have no cover on Hallboat Road, he got on Durack and galloped as
fast as he could till the ships hidden behind tall oak trees came
into view.

He’d never seen such massive
structures floating on water before; from his count, there were six
of them, with the pier extending far into the river. He dismounted
and started walking along the pier looking for the ship known as
The Night Meadow
. The ships were magnificent as he went on
each dock, and on the fourth one, he found it.

The ship was made of dark oak
with the base painted black; like the others, it was well kept. The
wood was so well polished that even with its weathered look, it
still had some of its luster. Three massive poles like spires rose
from the ship, with massive fabrics rolled up on poles across
them.

As Samuel drew closer to the
front of the ship, he could hear the voice of a man speaking at the
top of his lungs some distance away. The first mate, he thought, as
he passed the wooden stairs that led into the ship, guarded by one
of the crewmen, who was watching everyone passing by.

“I already have enough dead
weight now; pick it up,” continued the voice that was now clearer.
“Move it, we don’t have all day. Be careful with that.” The first
mate did not cease his endless stream of remarks that the crew took
in stride as they moved cargo into the ship. Nothing escaped his
gaze, and you could tell looking at the crew that they knew it
too.

“How does one secure a place on
a ship?
”
he wondered, unsure of what to do as people walked
past him. He stopped an older man with thinning gray hair. He
looked local and someone who would know what to do.

“I need a place on this ship,”
he said, pointing. “Do you know where I can secure a pass?”

“Yes,” he said nasally, “you
have to talk to that man over there.” He pointed to a figure on the
dock.

“Thank you,” Samuel said just
as the man lifted the handle to his cart and walked away with the
wheel squeaking behind him.

He was glad to know it wasn’t
the first mate he had to deal with, until he saw who he was
supposed to barter with−he looked even more menacing. But he was
determined. He remembered how his father dealt with different
traders. Composing himself, he walked over to the man who held the
fate of his family.

After the bartering deal was
done, Samuel had secured a pass to the ship without losing
everything in his purse. He made his way through the crowd by the
dock to the ship.

Once cleared, he began making
his way up the wooden stairs with Durack, who was skittish even for
a well trained horse. As Samuel made his way up the steps, he
noticed a well dressed man in fine linen moving through the crowd
that parted on his approach. He was accompanied by eight others
whose clothes were well cut, but not as fine. A high nobleman, he
suspected, as they rode to the first mate.

Seeing the nobleman
approaching, the first mate bowed his head in greeting, and the man
acknowledged his salute with a wave of his hand.

After a few seconds of watching
them talk, the first mate left his post and began to personally
escort the Lord with his entourage, who followed behind him.

Samuel and his roommates were
settling in when a broad-shouldered crewman walked into their
cabin.

“I need all of you out,” the
crewman said, gesturing to everyone in his view. The man’s shirt
was partly unbuttoned in the front, with his well-defined muscular
arms showing in his sleeveless shirt. No one said anything at
first, as everyone began gathering their things.

Samuel, like everyone else,
recognized the man immediately; he was the one who had checked his
pass before he boarded the ship.

He followed his cabin mates,
unsure of what was going on or the reason why they were being
moved; the little sense of safety he’d been fostering was beginning
to disappear.

“Why?” he thought to himself in
despair, wondering if he was ever going to get a break. Nothing
seemed to be going his way.

“What is going on?” one of the
passengers asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough,
just watch your head as you step out,” the crewman replied.

“Head down, please,” the man
said once they were outside on the deck, gesturing for them to
continue.

Forming a single file, they
began making their way down the wooden steps that could admit two
at a time. As Samuel approached the steps with several of his cabin
mates already down and waiting in a cluster at the dock, he heard
the familiar voice of the first mate.

“We only need six, Rex. The
rest of them can stay.”

Those words did not sink in at
first until Samuel saw the woman in front of him stop midway, turn,
and began making her way back up. He was suddenly flooded with
relief. Those that were off the ship swarmed the first mate, their
voices rising as they gathered around him.

Samuel went back to his small
corner of the room, and soon a new group stepped down into the
cabin. They were all well dressed and some of them looked around in
disgust. These people were part of the group that came in with the
wealthy Lord. It all made sense, then; they were the reason why
some of the people in his cabin were removed from the ship.

Samuel placed his hands behind
his head as he laid back; for the first time in a long time, the
knot he felt in his stomach seem to slowly loosen.

After a few minutes of men
screaming overhead on opposite sides of the ship, they finally left
the docks. He felt the strange sensation of the ship in motion.
They were on their way; Samuel took in several deep breaths and
closed his eyes, not thinking for once about what lay ahead.

“We have to find him.” Mosley
heard Tremay saying as he approached. His commander was staring
into the distance, his cloak as still as the man wrapped in it.

“Tracking him will be a little
more challenging now…and the Agoras are as useful to us as stone,”
Tremay said. “I can’t let them go, nor do I wish their lives
ended.”

His commander’s deep and level
tone carried the strength and power of a man whose physical and
mental state was sharper than a razor’s edge. Mosley knew he was
already formulating a plan even as he spoke.

“There are rumors that they’ve
been attacking small towns and villages, and what I saw here
confirms my fear. Whoever commands them is getting bolder, sending
them this far for the Anamerian.”

Even as Tremay was talking,
they heard a snarling sound. It came from one of the Agoras who had
regained consciousness, the noise cutting between Tremay’s
sentences.

They did not turn to see what
was going on, ignoring the sound that was a few yards from them,
confident that the Agoras would be dead if they made any sudden
move or were any threat.

“Since they don’t speak in our
tongue,” Tremay said as if he was never interrupted, “trying to
forcefully extract the information from them will achieve nothing.
What I need is someone that can retrieve the information directly
from their heads. We need to send word to the Patrons, but first I
need to know what happened here.”

“The Agoras were led by a
human,” Mosley said, describing their leader as best he could
remember. “The man also commanded a team of Golans.”

Those words had Tremay turn to
face Mosley; there was a quizzical look in his eyes, a little
flicker that, for Mosley, spoke volumes, coming from his
commander.

“We were heading to Bayshia
from Tru’tia when we were drawn by an unusual scene that led us
into Chartum-Valley. We found the town’s courier dead on the road
from arrows that were Golan’s. The town, for the most part, was
burnt to the ground. Everything in this town−from the buildings,
its people, and even their livestock−was destroyed.

“It appeared from the carnage
that nothing was spared, but we found an only survivor. A young man
named Samuel. Actually,” he said, pausing to rephrase the
statement, “he found us. During the siege, he and his family found
refuge in what used to be a mining tunnel, but they were
discovered. Samuel managed to escape, but his mother and brother
were captured.

“Samuel said he saw his family
consumed in flames that did not burn the way normal fire did.”

It would have been hard to
believe until he saw it with his own eyes, Tremay realized. “And
how did he describe it?” he asked.

“He said he saw a man create a
ball of fire in his hand that expanded till it enveloped everything
around the wagon that held his family just before it disappeared.
The young man was one of the people we were going to search for in
Bayshia, and were surprised to find in Chartum-Valley. The
Anamerian promised to help Samuel find his family. Why, I don’t
know, but first he wanted to get him to a Patron.

“Something about the Anamerian
was tied to the boy,” Mosley said, as if talking to himself. “I
could sense a connection between him and the boy that I cannot
explain.

“We were on our way to Kadan’s
Gate to sail to Bremah when we were ambushed. Iseac sent the boy
away on his horse while we held them off, and as soon as we were
bound, Golans were sent after him.”

Tremay was quiet for a second
after Mosley was done speaking.

“We will find this young man
you call Samuel, but first there are growing rumors of things
appearing out of the shadows, attacking villages and small towns.
If anyone saw these Agoras this far south from the abyss, it will
fan the flames of these rumors even more. We need these two alive
to extract what we can from them without drawing any attention.