by Jackson Lear
I grabbed onto a pair of legs. They were attached to someone holding onto the capsized row boat. Someone else clung onto me. Legs, arms, and bodies writhed in the water while shouts of, “Hold on!” from the ship offered zero comfort to my shivering limbs.
We were dragged through the water, apparently moving at a solid running speed while several crests of waves cascaded over us, drenching my head and shriveling my balls. A disconcerting numbness kicked in almost immediately, foggying my mind and loosening my grab around someone’s legs.
A dozen hands reached down, grabbing on and pulling us over the edge and onto the cold wooden deck.
“Everyone get below!” shouted Bren.
I was dragged down the narrow stairs, my heels thumping as I tried to right myself. An oar soared above my face, a sailor rowing for his life with sweat streaming down his forehead. Alysia and Zara wrenched free my cloak, jacket, tunic, trousers, and boots, leaving me with in my soggy undergarments as they ran their hands across my chest to warm me up.
“Don’t die,” muttered Alysia.
Zara peeled off her cloak. Wrapped it around me. Slapped me across my face. “Stop being lazy and help get us out of here!”
I stared back at her, barely coherent.
“Now!”
I climbed to my feet and threw myself at one of the oars – we all did – two to an oar to speed us away as fast as possible. My heart burst from the ordeal, the exhausting run and flight down the stairs, running the row boat back and forth, the ice bath from hell, and now rowing for my life.
Arrows hit our ship, thunking heavily into the wooden boards, one piercing our sail. Someone up above hissed, taking a hit in his shoulder.
The thunking eased, then silenced completely. The first-mate continued shouting. Jarmella did the same. “They’re still coming!”
We rowed – half of us with practically no experience at all, the other half seething at our ineptitude.
“Duck!”
Arrows rained upon us again, the archers now standing at the end of the pier with us well within their range. Everyone from the top-side threw themselves down below, rocking the ship as they scrambled to get under cover.
We were two hundred yards out. The northerners were renowned for being able to hit a target four hundred yards away. At this point they were aiming blind, hoping that an arrow would get lucky and find its mark. When that seemed to fail they turned their aim onto the sails.
One of the crewmen yelped; an arrow slicing along his arm. The captain fell through the opening, landing face-down beside me, gasping with an arrow piercing his throat.
The first-mate didn’t let up. He ran to the front of the ship, barking and gesturing. One side needed to row faster than the other to steer us. Then he started snapping at each of the soldiers, swapping them around so that the decent rowers were evenly placed and the bad ones were less of a liability.
Eight archers hailed us with arrows, turning our ship into a porcupine as each bowman loosed two full quivers until we finally slipped out of range.
The first-mate continued shouting at us, equally terrified of owing his life to imperial soldiers yet now having to bark at them to keep us all going.
The water sloshed around the side of our ship as our speed settled. Gaynun peered up over the edge. We all held our breath, wondering exactly how far a vampire could jump at full speed. Could they actually reach a quarter of a mile? How was their aim? What happened if it crashed into the winter water?
We never found out. By the time we did reach a quarter of a mile we started to let our guard slip.
“I don’t see any boats or ships coming after us,” said Gaynun.
The first-mate clapped his hands together in a ‘keep going’ gesture. Our pace eased but we had settled into a decent rhythm.
Half a mile out, Loken climbed up to the top. “I think we’re okay.”
The first-mate barked at a couple of the sailors. They released their oars, passing the duties over to the soldiers on hand, so the sailors could work the sails. There wasn’t much in the way of wind but the night was young and we still had a chance. The problem was that most of us hadn’t slept now for two full nights in a row. The soldiers and I were trained in that. The sailors weren’t, and they started tripping over themselves as their vision failed them.
The first-mate seemed to calm down once we were a mile from the coast. He clapped a couple of people on the back – soldiers mostly – giving us a heavily accented, “Good.” Perhaps he remembered that he was alive thanks to us.
Alysia lit a lamp. Checked the captain. Dead. She gently closed his eyes.
Loken called out. “Saskia? Help us with the injured.”
“Yes sir.”
It was too difficult getting Mikael with his broken hip and twisted leg back up to the top so Loken, Saskia, and Alysia remained below deck and patched everyone up with basic stitching while rummaging about for jagged arrow heads.
After finally getting an appreciative, “Okay,” from the first-mate, he released me and a few others from rowing duty.
I was a bloodied mess. An ax had slashed my face and arm. I was covered in nicks. Burned from the noxious cloud. Arrows had sliced me. Glass splinters covered the back of my hand … and I was one of the better-off survivors. Alysia stitched my face while Saskia worked on the less serious cuts with a powder followed by a bandage.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” muttered Alysia.
“We all are.”
She jabbed a stitch through one cheek. “This will leave a scar.”
“I’ll grow a beard.”
She fell silent, still tending to my wounds. “Is Draegor …”
“Dead?”
Her eyes cracked as she locked onto me.
“Yeah. He’s dead.”
She grimaced as she stabbed me again in my cheek. “We needed one of them to kill him. Not one of us. If they call for your head in recompense the governor will order my father to give you up. It was supposed to be a peaceful mission.”
“A peaceful mission to help a warlord overthrow a king.”
“You know what I mean.”
“His people abducted our people on imperial lands. He gave the okay to have us each tortured. We were prisoners. You were about to be butchered. We broke out. He got in the way.”
“You went to find him.”
“Then history will need to say otherwise.” I held my attention on Alysia. “We were abducted. We were prisoners. We broke out.”
Alysia sighed. Moved onto wrapping my ankle. “The ends do not justify the means.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
“Okay, fine, if there was no other way then I would be okay with Draegor dying, but I wanted his people to do it, not ours.”
“It stopped being diplomatic long before Zara and I came to get you. We were abducted. That alone is an act of war. We were prisoners. That would compel your father to send an infiltrator or a thug to secure your release using the best judgment of whoever he sent. We broke out and exacted justice fairly. Their alliance is in tatters. If we all leave now no one really needs to go to war.” I took a swig of blood wine, the last I had in the hope that whatever vampire blood there was in it would help to heal my wounds a little quicker.
Alysia scowled and looked away. “I have injured to tend to. You shouldn’t put too much weight on that ankle for a while.” She got up. Left.
I rung out my clothes, now in a full and unhealthy sweat that was just as likely to kill me as a fight to the death, and started to consider lighting a fire to warm me up. It would have to wait.
I did a quick head count. Tried again. Checked up top and ran through the list of names. Trod carefully through the underside of the ship, avoiding a face-full of oars with every step and checking to see who was where.
Someone was missing. I checked again. Ran through our escape as best I could remember.
Zara caught that look in me. “What is it?”
“When was the last time you saw Berik?
”
She got there quicker than I expected. “On the roof.”
“Great. We’ve just left someone behind.”
Chapter Seventeen
Loken hauled himself up and down the longboat. “Berik?”
He wasn’t on board.
“Who was the last to see Berik?”
“I don’t think he came back from the rooftop,” said Kilmur.
Loken fell silent, turning from one injured member of the vanguard to another. “Seriously? No one saw him come back?” He was met by a sea of agonized faces.
The realization curdled through my stomach. To think that Berik might have been trapped in a nearby room through our escape, calling out to us while knowing that we were leaving him behind.
Loken pointed to one soldier after another. “Who went up with him? Magnus? What happened?”
“I was blindfolded, sir.”
“Me too,” said Arvid.
Loken stopped in front of Jarmella. The mage was as distraught and guilt-stricken as they came. “What happened?”
Jarmella spluttered over a garbled answer. “I … I don’t know, sir. I think …”
Loken held one hand up. Didn’t even blink. “Deep breath. Start again. What happened?”
Jarmella searched the faces among the soldiers, desperate to see that Berik was still with them. “They took him away. I thought he went back to you in the dungeons, I swear.”
Loken’s chest swelled as he struggled to keep himself in check. “You told me that was everyone.”
“I … I’m sorry … I saw Magnus and Arvid with you. I swear I thought they returned him.”
I interrupted. “I thought Berik was taken back to the dungeons as well.”
Loken shifted his anger onto me. “Did you see him?”
“I saw them take someone out of Jarmella’s room in a hood. Jarmella told me it was Berik. A couple of minutes later I saw the same people lead a hooded person into the dungeons.”
“That was Magnus,” growled Loken. He looked to the top of the ship, no doubt considering a whole host of bad ideas – whether to turn around and go get him or to leave Berik behind for good. “Fuck!” Loken stormed up top. We kept sailing forward.
Jarmella fell to the side, sobbing. Saskia went to comfort her.
A few faces turned towards me. I don’t want to say that they appeared confrontational, but they needed to look somewhere. So I gave them something to do: “Strip the dead mercenaries. Divide up their dry clothes amongst anyone who went overboard.”
I carried a warm cloak up top. Found Loken at the aft of the ship, looking back at Brilskeep in the foggy distance. He turned slowly, looking me up and down, skeptical of the enemy outfit I had donned. I stood bare foot, utterly numb, with my boots firmly between my fingers in case I was forced overboard in a hurry. I handed over a spare cloak.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
Loken started to strip and wring his clothes out. “Can you swim?”
“A little. If Berik has been caught and kept alive, how much does he know?”
“He’ll know as much as the rest of us,” said Loken, still with an icy tone in his voice. “That woman. Elizandria. What exactly did you talk about?”
“She wanted me to get all of us to leave before a massacre happened.”
“Of course she did. And we just killed four of her people. So why did she choose you of all people?”
“Because the rest of you follow orders no matter what the cost.”
He lingered, anger rising through him. “So you’ll jeopardize the mission here and leave everyone else to pick up the pieces of your mess?”
I ignored his eagerness to pick a fight, mostly because I didn’t want to be thrown into an icy lake with miles to swim and thirty soldiers looking the other way. “Has Berik ever been interrogated before?”
“No,” growled Loken.
“If he confesses everything he knows, how much trouble will that get us in?”
“You now care about trouble?”
“All right, let me put this plainly to get through your bad mood: there is a vampire still alive in Brilskeep. If Berik is turned into one of them he’ll lose all loyalty to Ispar, to General Kasera, even to his own family.”
“He won’t.”
“He will. In literally a heart beat he will. Give him some human blood and it’ll be the greatest high he has ever experienced and he’ll want more, all the time, until he’s dead. He’ll want to terrorize everyone he knows because that’s how transformed people operate.”
“He won’t.”
“No? Have you ever heard vampires on a feeding frenzy?”
“No.”
“Then how about werewolves? Lavarta said that someone in your army lost a bunch of horses to werewolves a few years back. Was that you?”
A shadow fell over Loken’s eyes, drawing his attention away. “Yes.”
“Right. Same kind of thing. A big enough bite from either of those creatures and one of us turns to their side. It’s not just a maybe he will turn. You know he will. So let’s start again: if Berik willingly tells the vampires everything he knows, how bad will that be?”
Loken simmered, gripping the guardrail with such force that it should’ve burst within his grip. “I don’t know. I doubt he knows much of use about Agnarr or whatever Miss Kasera knows or intended to do, but he knows an awful lot about General Kasera and our journey here. He knows that Miss Kasera is married to Commander Lavarta, that the commander is stationed in the new fort in Anglaterra, he knows where the fort is located, how it’s defended, who the senior members are, how secure the nearby towns are, and everything between the fort and Erast.” Loken turned his sullen look towards me. “And he knows a lot about you.”
“More than just our time together?”
“More than that. The general wanted you dead up until a few months ago. When you strolled into his compound he went to make sure it was the last time you or anyone like you did so, so we worked on its defenses. Then one day he announced that he’d hired you, but we had to keep that to ourselves. His old man warned me in particular just before we set off with Miss Kasera.”
I remained quiet, figuring that Loken would either succumb to a forceful blurting out or become so riled up that honor compelled him to remain silent.
“What exactly happened to Delen in Torne?” he asked.
“He died.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“He walked into a trap. The people who set it killed him.”
“Set by people like you?”
“By mercenaries, yes.”
Loken stared back, trying to figure me out with some cavalry insight bullshit. “Why is it that everyone seems to warn everyone else about you?”
“You should ask them. Not me.”
“I have. Even Kasera Senior – I don’t think you even met him – cautioned me. He said that despite you selling out your own people and being a cold-blooded killer there are some who seem quite fond of you. He emphasized that this could become a problem, since Miss Kasera and Zara might rule in your favor over mine, especially over military matters. You’ve never been in the military have you, Mr Raike?”
“No. Never have been. Never will.”
“So why would Senior believe that his granddaughter would listen to you instead of me? I mean, I appreciate that you helped Día, and I saw how effective you were in Torne, but I’ve known Miss Kasera for fifteen years. I taught her to ride. I joined her on several excursions and I was present for her wedding. I led the honor guard. And then I saw her defend you with her life. So what are you, her secret lover?”
I snorted.
“It’s either that or blackmail,” said Loken.
“He’s not black mailing me, Lieutenant,” said Alysia, as she stopped behind me. “And go easy on the accusations. Raike is a member of my household. He’s been vetted as thoroughly as anyone in the vanguard.”
Loken held his tongue, a snarl rising throu
gh his features as he fought off a retort. Wisdom superseded as he gave her a diplomatic nod. “My lady.” And went to check on the troops.
Alysia rested her hands on the guardrail beside me. “I need to know what happened in the castle while you were on your own.”
“I was taken up to the roof by the vampire and the bear. Beaten. Threatened. Then someone came to say that you had requested to see me. I was released. I met you. Was ambushed again, this time by mercenaries. The blue-eyed mercenary queen talked to me on the rooftop while Zara was nearby. She wanted me to get us out of Brilskeep before a massacre happened. She said it was going to be inevitable at this point, that too many noble warlords were riled up and that tonight they were going to strike. Before any deal could be struck the bear returned. He dragged me away and threw me back into the dungeon. There I waited until Elizandria opened one of the murder holes in the ceiling. I climbed out. Got a dagger from her. Was advised again that we should leave. I decided it was a good idea.”
“You decided?”
“Yes.”
“Despite everything I have asked of you.”
“Yes. Despite all that I decided that getting us all out of Brilskeep was a better idea than staying.”
Alysia squinted back at me. “And if there was no massacre planned at all and we … you … were responsible for causing one?”
“I’m sure by now Zara has told you of the dead people we found in the great hall. We didn’t cause that. Something else was happening. You don’t just set off an explosion under a castle unless you can take out a lot of people at the same time. Whatever happened tonight, they’re going to blame us for it. No question there. But even before all of that happened I had seen enough to know that we were in a shitty situation, one that was about to get a lot worse. It was time to leave.”
Alysia jammed her lips together and shook her head. “You did not have that authority.”
“I had the responsibility. I still do. Yours was to try the diplomatic approach. Through no fault of your own you didn’t have enough time for it to succeed. Mine is to get you out of trouble if it finds you.”
She strained a look, forcing herself to remain calm and collected like she had always been trained to do, but even so she was starting to shake with nerves. “I wanted you to give me a chance and you took that away from me.”
