by PT Hylton
“What’s wrong with his magic school?” Benjamin asked. That was something he’d been wondering about ever since he first heard about it. He’d been technically in charge of the school for a while, so he personally knew the difficulties associated with getting the school up and running. And yet, Simon had somehow made it thrive in just over a month.
Karoline chuckled. “What’s wrong with it? It’s a shell game! A con! The school doesn’t even exist.”
Benjamin exchanged surprised looks with Jarvi. “What do you mean, ma’am?”
She waved him away. “You can keep your ‘ma’ams.’ But to answer your question, he’s got quite the scam running. You saw the recruiters out there on the docks, I’ll bet.”
“We ran into one of them,” Captain Roy confirmed. “The man tried to intimidate us with fire magic.”
Karoline’s eyes widened. “Ah, then you had an encounter with more than just an average recruiter. He must have been a firehand. They’re Simon’s closest disciples; call themselves the Faithful. There’re only a few of them left in the city, I think.”
“I guess we’re just lucky,” Benjamin said with a weak smile. He thought it better to leave out the fact that he’d run the man through with his sword. “You were saying the school’s a scam?”
She nodded. “And what a scam it is! The recruits get people to sign up. Young, old, man, woman—it doesn’t matter. They’ll take just about anyone. Did you notice how empty the streets are? That wasn’t just because it was night. They’re like that during the day, too.”
“Yet we noticed the port is nearly full,” Captain Roy pointed out.
“I’ve noticed it too,” she said grimly. “Simon and his friends are quite the recruiters. They sign people up as they’re getting off their ships, and the people never return. I’ve got three dozen small abandoned vessels docked out there with no one paying fees. It’s a nightmare.”
“I don’t understand,” Benjamin said. “How do they get so many people to sign up?”
“Ah, that’s the brilliant part. They approach the person, asking if they would like to get paid to learn magic. Who’d say no to that? Especially in Algon, a city that’s traditionally been left behind by its magic-wielding neighbors. And with the pay they were offering, most found it impossible to resist.”
Benjamin waited, curious to hear what the scam was. It seemed like a fair deal so far.
Karoline continued, “Somewhere near the end of the conversation, the recruiter will mention almost in passing that if the person proves unable to learn magic, they’ll be enlisted in Algon’s new standing army instead. They frame it like it’s a good thing, that they’ll be guaranteed a job even in the unlikely event that magic isn’t for them. The truth is something quite different.”
“How so?” Jarvi asked, though there was a twinkle in his eye that made Benjamin suspect his old friend might have already figured out the recruiters’ game.
“They take them to the magic school and give them a bullshit ‘magical aptitude’ test. ‘Can you guess the number written on this paper?’ ‘How many pebbles are in this cup?’ That type of thing.”
Benjamin nodded along. He was starting to understand. “Let me guess—very few people ever pass the test.”
Karoline chuckled. “As far as I can tell, no one ever has.”
“Holy hell,” Captain Roy cursed.
“But by that time it’s too late. They’ve signed the contract, and now they’re conscripts in the Algon army. They’re marched off to Simon’s secret base in the mountains the very next morning. As far as their families know they’re in the magic school, unable to contact outsiders for the first year, but in truth they’re preparing for Simon’s invasion of Holdgate.” She sat back in her chair and raised her eyebrows. “Thankfully for me, I have eyes and ears in places even Simon can’t guess. You run the docks for fifty years, you get to know some people.”
“I’ll bet you do,” Captain Roy said.
“So what about the attacks on the water?” Benjamin asked. “If Simon’s at this camp in the mountains—”
“Oh, I don’t believe he is,” Karoline corrected. “I think he’s on Kraken. I have ships on the lookout for him. They spotted him on the coast near a town called Podroar just yesterday.” She turned to Roy. “Do you know it?”
Roy grinned. “There’s not a village on Kaldfell’s west coast I couldn’t find blindfolded.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not,” Karoline confessed. “I wouldn’t recommend confronting him, but if you insist on it that’s where he is. Or at least where he was yesterday.”
They made small talk for a few more minutes just to be polite, then took their leave and headed back to the dock.
The sun was starting to rise by that point, and even after Karoline’s words, Benjamin was surprised to find the streets so sparsely populated. He saw three recruiters between Karoline’s home and docks, but very few people for them to recruit. The people he did see on the street—maybe half as many as Benjamin would have expected—avoided the recruiters like they were carrying the pox.
“So are we really going to—what’s the word?—hunt him?” Viktor asked when they’d almost reached their vessel.
“I’m not sure,” Benjamin admitted. “For all we know, he hasn’t even encountered The Foggy Day. But if he has—”
Something up ahead caught his eye. It was so unexpected that for a moment he couldn’t understand what he was seeing. Even after he understood, it still seemed pretty unbelievable.
Abbey, Dustin, and Hekla were climbing into a pathetic little skiff.
He stood there for a few moments gaping at them, then realized they were preparing to depart.
He ran to their skiff at a near-sprint. When he reached them he put a hand on their boat, panting, a wide smile on his face.
Abbey looked just as shocked as Benjamin felt. “Father? What are you doing here?”
He thought for a moment, then chuckled. “Honestly, I don’t even know where to start.”
“Me either,” Abbey said. She jumped off the skiff onto the docks and grabbed him in a big hug.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Fannar sat in the tent watching the sunrise through the opening, waiting for the fight of his life to begin.
The woman who’d taken him to see Eril stepped through, momentarily blocking his view. “Just wanted to let you know that the search for your seax continues. It turns out it’s been traded a few times since you got to camp, and we’re still trying to figure out who has it now. Don’t worry, though—we’ll find it.”
Fannar just nodded. They’d given him his choice of weapon for the duel, but there had only been one possibility in his mind. That seax had been in his family for generations, and there was no way he was going into this fight with anything else.
“Can I get you something while you’re waiting?” she asked. “Ale, perhaps?”
He shook his head, then paused. “Actually, there is something you can bring me.”
He was a little surprised when she agreed to his request. She came back five minutes later with Elliot, Gideon, and Olaf in tow, all of them with their hands tied.
“Here we are again,” Elliot said with a grin after the women left. “Why are we always getting tied up? Is it possible we’re just bad at our jobs?”
“You’re looking at it the wrong way,” Gideon said. “We always get out of our bonds eventually, don’t we? Maybe we’re very good at our jobs.”
Fannar spent the next few minutes explaining what had happened since he’d last seen them.
“I don’t understand,” Olaf said. “Why didn’t he just refuse to fight you, and have you killed outright?”
Fannar grinned. “He’d already declared me a rival warlord. To refuse me single combat would have been seen as cowardly.”
“Now you just have to beat him,” Elliot said. “Shouldn’t be a problem for you, right?”
Fannar hesitated. “You haven’t seen him. Eril is a tower of
muscle. Besides that, he’s sure to be high on seiderdrek.”
“But that’s an advantage,” Gideon pointed out. “He won’t have your control.”
“I hope so, but… A guy like him has had access to all the seiderdrek he wants for years. He may have built up a tolerance to the psychological effects. It’s possible he’ll have the speed and the strength, but not the lack of control.”
The group fell silent for a minute, then Olaf pointed to a table in the corner. A large vial of seiderdrek sat on top of it.
“Maybe you should fight fire with fire.”
Fannar grimaced. He hadn’t asked for the drink but they’d placed it in the tent for him anyway, assuming he’d want it. In truth, it was very tempting. The draught would give him a better chance in the battle, and it would also make him oblivious to pain if things didn’t go his way. It almost seemed foolish not to drink it.
After a long moment Fannar said, “You know, after everything we’ve been through, if I’m going to die I want to do it with a clear head.”
Only a few minutes later the woman returned. She stuck her head through the flap and spoke in a solemn voice. “It’s time.”
Fannar nodded, then he turned to his friends. “Will you cheer me on?”
“Just to be clear,” Olaf said, “if you lose they’ll probably kill us too, right?”
“Oh, definitely,” Fannar confirmed.
Olaf nodded. “Then I’ll be cheering very loudly on your behalf.”
They made their way to a clearing past the warlord’s tent. As they reached it, the massive gathering of Barskall began to jeer at Fannar, hurling insults about his size, his strength, his manhood, and the likelihood of his parents being some form of insect.
Gideon put a hand on Fannar’s shoulder. “Pay no attention to them, my friend. Let your heart harden with every insult.”
“Easy for you to say,” Fannar told him with a grin.
A young man ran up and whispered something to the woman. He then handed her a weapon: Fannar’s seax.
“Ah, they found it!” Fannar said.
The woman nodded and handed it over. “Apparently a butcher was using it to behead chickens.”
Suddenly the crowd roared its delight, a sure sign Eril had arrived.
“Salt and seas, you weren’t kidding,” Elliot muttered when he saw the warlord.
Eril was dressed only in animal-skin leggings. He raised his arms into the air and howled with battle-fury.
Gideon shook his head. “It’s all showmanship. A man like that will be overconfident.”
“True,” Olaf agreed. “He’s probably never lost a fight in his life.”
“You’re not helping,” Gideon told Olaf.
Fannar took a step forward. “Well, it’s now or never. Wish me luck, gentlemen.”
With that, he walked to the center of the clearing.
There was no horn, no bell, no announcement to signal the beginning of the fight. This combat had no rules other than, “The last man alive wins.”
Eril stalked over to meet Fannar, letting his massive broadsword drag on the ground behind him. He glared down at Fannar, and when he spoke his voice was slurred with seiderdrek. “Ready to begin, little warlord?”
Fannar didn’t bother answering. Instead, he stepped to his right and swung at Eril’s left side—the side where the sword wasn’t.
Eril moved with uncanny speed, bringing his sword around and blocking the blow. Fannar pressed the attack, swinging at the big man’s legs, his neck, and his face. Eril anticipated every blow.
Finally Eril made an attack of his own. Fannar dodged, but he had to step backward to do so, putting his enemy out of the range of his seax.
“Not bad,” Eril said. “Much better than I expected, but not good enough.”
The warlord attacked again, and again Fannar dodged. He knew that avoiding the blows was his only chance of survival. With a sword that big and a warrior that strong even before he had consumed seiderdrek, Fannar knew that straight-out blocking the sword could permanently damage his weapon.
Eril struck again. And again. And a third time. With each attack, Fannar’s escapes grew more and more narrow. The big man was just too fast, not to mention his reach advantage. Fannar knew he had to find a way to get in close—it was his only chance.
Then Eril stuck a fourth time, and Fannar noticed something. Each time he missed, Eril brought his sword back almost to his right shoulder, leaving his left side exposed.
Now that Fannar had spotted the weakness, he needed to exploit it—but that would mean surviving another strike.
He stepped forward just a little, and sure enough, Eril took a big swing at him. Fannar was ready. He dodged left, leaping out of the way. Even so, the tip of blade came within two inches of his nose.
As the sword whooshed past him, Fannar set his feet and prepared to strike. The moment Eril instinctively brought his sword toward his right shoulder, Fannar lunged forward, thrusting his seax with all his might.
There was a satisfying crack as the seax slid into the warlord’s side. Fannar wasn’t taking any chances; he pushed the blade in all the way to the hilt and yanked upward, ensuring as much damage as possible.
Eril took a step forward and raised his sword as if he were going to attack again. Then his eyes lost focus and he collapsed to the ground.
For a long moment the crowd was silent. Fannar thrust his bloody seax into the air and let out a victorious shout.
Elliot, Gideon, and Olaf ran to the center of the clearing.
“Holy shit, you did it!” Elliot exclaimed.
“I told you guys he could do it,” Olaf said. “Didn’t I tell you guys?”
Gideon looked even more shocked than the rest of them. “What does this mean? What happens now?”
The chant started softly, but quickly gained momentum until every warrior in the crowd was screaming, “Fannar. Fannar. Fannar!”
“It means we get to live.” The victorious Barskall grinned at his friends. “Also, it means I’m the new warlord.”
***
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” Benjamin asked his daughter.
She gave him an annoyed glare. He’d asked the same question three times already in the last hour. “I’m sure. It’s pretty much on our way. I don’t see why we wouldn’t stop.”
After their sweet reunion on the docks of Algon things had quickly gotten serious, and there had been fierce debate among the group. They’d shared their stories, Abbey telling them how The Foggy Day had been destroyed and that they’d learned the Algonian army was already on its way to Holdgate, and Benjamin sharing what they’d learned from Karoline about the size of the Algonian army, and the possible location of Simon’s ship Kraken.
The central question had become clear: confront Simon and attempt to free the crew of The Foggy Day, or head straight to Holdgate to warn them of the impending danger?
The debate raged even as they began the journey north from Algon in their pathetic little fishing vessel. In the end, though, Abbey’s key point won the majority over. They didn’t have to choose. Podroar was in a cove, but it was basically on the route to Holdgate. It would be foolish to not attempt a rescue.
Besides, if they had a shot at taking Simon down, they had to take it.
Benjamin was the last holdout against the plan, but Abbey suspected he actually held the same view as her. He had the annoying habit of playing devil’s advocate in order to get others to think more deeply and logically about their positions.
“May I point out that we are on a tiny fishing boat and they have the flagship of the Algonian fleet?”
Clemens grinned at the former blacksmith. “You may, but it’s not going to help.”
Eventually they settled on a strategy for the attack. They’d come in hard and fast, using Dustin and Viktor’s combined powers to zoom their fishing vessel alongside Kraken before those bastards even saw them coming.
Every time Abbey saw Dustin and Viktor stormcall togethe
r she was left in awe. Working in concert, they’d have been able to make short work of Kraken if sinking it wouldn’t have also killed their friends.
Instead, the fighters would have to board Kraken and free the crew of The Foggy Day as quickly as possible.
Abbey wasn’t sure it would work, but she was certain that she’d rather face Simon up close than from a distance where he could use those deadly fireballs most effectively. With the element of surprise on their side, they just might have a chance.
After a bit more discussion, Benjamin was satisfied with the plan and dropped the pretense that he was against the idea. “So this Simon is a fire-magic user, huh? Maybe I can teach him a bit about how we did it in the old days.”
Abbey didn’t reply. As much as she hated to admit it, Simon’s fire magic was in a whole different class than her father’s. She wasn’t about to tell him that, though. It was something he’d have to see for himself.
Guilt crept up in her stomach as she looked at Benjamin. She hadn’t told him about Simon’s connection to her mother yet. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him to know, but this cramped fishing ship with absolutely no privacy didn’t seem like the place to bring it up.
Part of her knew that was just an excuse. Truth was, she didn’t want to see him hurt. She remembered how it had felt when she’d learned he’d hidden his past from her. She could only imagine how he’d react when he learned his wife had lied to him for years.
“We’re almost at the entrance to the cove,” Dustin called from the bow. “Hang on tight, people!”
Abbey glanced at her father. “You sure you’re not getting too old for these crazy battles?”
Benjamin laughed. “No way. I think this is the secret to staying young.”
“Speak for yourself,” Jarvi grumbled. “I’m definitely too old for this.”
“Here we go!” Dustin shouted.
A powerful wind hit their sails at the same moment a massive wave lifted them, and the ship shot forward into the cove. To Abbey’s excitement and relief Kraken was still docked there, just as the old woman Karoline had told Benjamin and his companions.
