by Mel Odom
Lowering his head back to the foul-smelling bucket, Darrick let go again.
"They brought you in here last night," the shaggy-haired warrior continued, "and you was fighting them all. A madman, some thought. And one of the Peacekeepers gave you another taste of the shock staff she carried."
A shock staff, Darrick thought, realizing why his head hurt so much and his muscles all felt tight. He felt as if he'd been keelhauled and heaved up against the barnacle-covered hull. Several of the Peacekeepers carried mystically charged gems mounted in staffs that provided debilitating jolts to incapacitate prisoners.
"One of the guards suggested they cave your head in and be done with it," the warrior said. "But another guard said you was some kind of hero. That you'd seen the demon everybody in Westmarch is so afraid of these days."
Darrick clung to the bars and took shallow breaths.
"Is that true?" the warrior asked. "Because all I saw last night was a drunk."
The ratchet of a heavy key turning in a latch filled the holding area, drawing curses from men and women held in other cells. A door creaked open.
Darrick leaned back against the wall to one side of the bars so he could peer out into the narrow aisle.
A jailer clad in a Peacekeeper's uniform with sergeant's stripes appeared first. Dressed in his long cloak, Captain Tollifer followed him.
Despite the sickness raging in his belly, Darrick rose to his feet as years of training took over. He saluted, hoping his stomach wouldn't choose that moment to purge again.
"Captain," Darrick croaked.
The jailer, a square-built man with lamb-chop whiskers and a balding head, turned to Darrick. "Ah, here he is, captain. I knew we were close."
Captain Tollifer eyed Darrick with steel in his gaze. "Mr. Lang, this is disappointing."
"Aye, sir," Darrick responded. "I feel badly about this, sir."
"As well you should," Captain Tollifer said. "And you'llfeel even worse for the next few days. I should not ever have to get an officer from my ship from a situation such as this."
"No, sir," Darrick agreed, though in truth he was surprised to learn that he really cared little at all.
"I don't know what's put you in such dire straits as you find yourself now," the captain went on, "though I know Mr. Hu-Ring's death plays a large part in your present predicament."
"Begging the captain's pardon," Darrick said, "but Mat's death has nothing to do with this." He would not bear that.
"Then perhaps, Mr. Lang," the captain continued in frosty tones, "you can present some other excuse for the sorry condition I currently find you in."
Darrick stood on trembling knees facing the ship's captain. "No, sir."
"Then let's allow me to stumble through this gross aberration in what I've come to expect from you on my own," Captain Tollifer said.
"Aye, sir." Unable to hold himself back anymore, Darrick turned and threw up into the bucket.
"And know this, Mr. Lang," the captain said. "I'll not suffer such behavior on a regular basis."
"No, sir," Darrick said, so weak now he couldn't get up from his knees.
"Very well, jailer," the captain said. "I'll have him out of there now."
Darrick threw up again.
"Maybe in a few more minutes," the jailer suggested. "I've got a pot of tea on up front if you'll join me. Give the young man another few minutes to himself; maybe he'll be more hospitable company."
Embarrassed but with anger eating away at his control, Darrick listened to the two men walking away. Mat would have at least joined him in the cell, laughing it up at his expense but not deserting him.
Darrick threw up again and saw the skeleton take Mat from the harbor cliff one more time. Only this time as theyfell, Darrick could see the demon standing over them, laughing as they headed for the dark river below.
"You can't take him yet," the healer protested. "I've got at least three more stitches needed to piece this wound over his eye together."
Darrick sat stoically on the small stool in the healer's surgery and stared with his good eye at Maldrin standing in the narrow, shadow-lined doorway. Other men passed by outside, all of them wounded, ill, or diseased. Somewhere down the hallway, a woman screamed in labor, swearing that she was birthing a demon.
The first mate didn't look happy. He met Darrick's gaze for just a moment, then looked away.
Darrick thought maybe Maldrin was just angry, but he believed there was some embarrassment there as well. This wasn't the first time of late that Maldrin had been forced to come searching for him.
Darrick glanced at the healer's surgery, seeing the shelves filled with bottles of potions and powders; jars of leaves, dried berries, and bark; and bags that contained rocks and stones with curative properties.
The healer was located off Dock Street and was an older man whom many sailors and longshoremen used for injuries. The strong odors of all the salves and medicants the thin man used on the people he gave care to filled the air.
Fixing another piece of thin catgut on the curved needle he held, the healer leaned in and pierced the flesh over Darrick's right eye. Darrick never moved, never even flinched or closed his eye.
"Are you sure you wouldn't like something for the pain?" the healer asked.
"I'm sure." Darrick stepped away from the pain, placing it in the same part of his mind that he'd built all those years ago to handle the hell his father had put him through. That special place in his mind could hold a whole lot more than the discomfort the healer handed out. Darrick looked up at Maldrin. "Does the captain know?"
Maldrin sighed. "That ye got into another fight an' tore up yet another tavern? Aye, he knows, skipper. Caron is over there now, seein' about the damages an' such ye'll owe. Seein' as how much damage ye been payin' for lately, I don't know how ye've had the wherewithal to drink."
"I didn't start this fight," Darrick said, but the protest was dulled by weeks of using it.
"So says ye," Maldrin agreed. "But the captain, he's heard from near to a dozen other men that ye wouldn't walk away when the chance presented itself."
Darrick's voice hardened. "I don't walk away, Maldrin. And I damn sure don't run from trouble."
"Ye should."
"Have you ever known me to retreat from a fight?" Darrick knew he was trying to put everything he'd done that night into some kind of perspective for himself. His struggles to find something right about the violence that he constantly got himself into during shore leave had only escalated.
"A fight," Maldrin said, folding his big arms over his broad, thick chest. "No. I've never seen ye back down from action we took together. But ye got to learn when to cut yer losses. The things them men say in them places ye hang out, why, that ain't nothin' to be a-fightin' over. Ye know as well as I that a sailin' man picks his battles. But ye-by the blessed Light, skipper-ye're just fightin' to be fightin'."
Darrick closed his good eye. The other was swollen shut and filled with blood. The sailor he'd fought in Gargan's Greased Eel had fought with an enchanted weapon and snapped into action quicker than Darrick had thought.
"How many fights have ye had in the last two months, skipper?" Maldrin asked in a softer voice.
Darrick hesitated. "I don't know."
"Seventeen," Maldrin said. "Seventeen fights. All of 'em partly instigated by yer own self."
Darrick felt the newest suture pull as the healer tied it.
"The Light must be favorin' ye is all that I can tell,"Maldrin said, "for they ain't nobody what's been killed yet. An' ye're still alive to tell of it yer own self."
"I've been careful," Darrick said, and regretted trying to make an excuse at once.
"A man bein' careful, skipper," Maldrin said, "why, he'd never get in them fixes ye been into. Hell's bells, most of the trouble ye're in, a man what's got a thought in his damned head would think maybe he should ought not be in them places."
Darrick silently agreed. But the portent of trouble in those places had been exactly
what had drawn him there. He wasn't thinking when he was fighting, and he wasn't in danger of thinking on things too long or too often when he was drinking and waiting for someone to pick a fight with.
The healer prepared another stitch.
"What about the captain?" Darrick asked.
"Skipper," Maldrin said in a quiet voice, "Cap'n Tollifer appreciates everythin' ye done. An' he ain't about to forget it. But he's a prideful man, too, an' him havin' to deal with one of his own always fightin' while in port during these edgy times, why, it ain't settin' well with him at all. An' ye damn sure don't need me tellin' ye this."
Darrick agreed.
The healer started in with the needle again.
"Ye need help, skipper," Maldrin said. "Cap'n knows it. I know it. Crew knows it. Ye're the only one what seems convinced ye don't."
Taking a towel from his knee, the healer blotted blood from Darrick's eye, poured fresh salt water over the wound, and started putting in the final stitch.
"Ye ain't the only man what's lost a friend," Maldrin croaked.
"I didn't say I was."
"An' me," Maldrin went on as if he hadn't heard Darrick, "I'm near to losin' two. I don't want to see you leave Lonesome Star, skipper. Not if'n there's a way I can help."
"I'm not worth losing any sleep over, Maldrin," Darrick said in a flat voice. The thing that scared him most was thathe felt that way, but he knew it was only his father's words. They were never far from his mind. He'd found he could escape his father's fists, but he'd never been able to escape the man's harsh words. Only Mat had made him feel differently. None of the other friendships he'd made helped, nor did remembering any of the women he'd been with over the years. Not even Maldrin could reach him.
But he knew why. Everything Darrick touched would eventually turn to dung. His father had told him that, and it was turning out true. He'd lost Mat, and now he was losing Lonesome Star and his career in the Westmarch Navy.
"Mayhap ye ain't," Maldrin said. "Mayhap ye ain't."
Darrick ran, heart pounding so hard that the infection in his week-old eye wound thundered painfully. His breath came in short gasps as he held his cutlass at his side and dashed through the alleys around the Mercantile Quarter. Reaching Dock Street, he turned his stride toward Fleet Street, the thoroughfare that went through the Military District where the Westmarch Navy harbor was.
He saw the navy frigates in the distance, tall masts thrust up into the low-lying fog that hugged the gulf coastline. A few ships sailed out over the curve of the world, following a favorable breeze away from Westmarch.
So far, Raithen's pirates had presented no real threat to the city and may even have disbanded, but other pirates had gathered, preying on the busy shipping lanes as Westmarch brought in more and more goods to support the navy, army, and mercenaries. With almost two and a half months gone and no sighting of Kabraxis, the king was beginning to doubt the reports Lonesome Star had brought back. Even now, the main problems in Westmarch had become the restlessness of the mercenaries at not having a goal or any real action to occupy them and the dwindling food stores that the city had not yet been able to replace since the action against Tristram.
Darrick cursed the fog that covered the city in steel gray.
He'd woken in an alley, not knowing if he'd gone to sleep there or if he'd been thrown there from one of the nearby taverns. He hadn't awakened until after cock's crow, and Lonesome Star was due to sail that morning.
He damned himself for a fool, knowing he should have stayed aboard ship. But he hadn't been able to. No one aboard, including the captain and Maldrin, talked with him anymore. He had become an embarrassment, something his father had always told him he was.
Out of breath, he made the final turn toward Spinnaker Bridge, one of the last checkpoints where nonnaval personnel were turned back from entering the Military District. He fumbled inside his stained blouse for his papers.
Four guards stepped up to block his way. They were hard-faced men with weapons that showed obvious care. One of them held up a hand.
Darrick stopped, breathing hard, his injured eye throbbing painfully. "Ship's Officer Second Grade Lang," he gasped.
The leader of the guards looked at Darrick doubtfully but took the papers Darrick offered. He scanned them, noting the captain's seal embossed upon the pages.
"Says here you sail with Lonesome Star," the guard said, offering the papers back.
"Aye," Darrick said, raking the sea with his good eye. He didn't recognize any of the ships sailing out into the gulf as his. Maybe he was in luck.
" Lonesome Star sailed hours ago," the guardsman said.
Darrick's heart plummeted through his knees. "No," he whispered.
"By rights with you missing your ship like you have," the guardsman said, "I ought to run you in and let the commodore deal with you. But from the looks of you, I'd say getting beaten up and robbed will stand as a good excuse. I'll make an entry of it in my log. Should stand you in good stead if you're called before a naval inquest."
You'd be doing me no favors, Darrick thought. Any man caught missing from his ship for no good reason was hungfor dereliction of duty. He turned and gazed out to sea, watching the gulls hunting through the water for scraps carried out by the tide. The cries of the birds sounded mournful and hollow, filtering over the crash of the surf against the shore.
If Captain Tollifer had sailed without him, Darrick knew there no longer remained a berth for him aboard Lonesome Star. His career in the Westmarch Navy was over, and he had no idea what lay ahead of him.
He wanted nothing more than to die, but he couldn't do that-he wouldn't do that-because it would mean that his father would win even after all these years. He walled himself off from his pain and loss, and he turned away from the sea, following the street back into Westmarch. He had no money. The possibility of missing meals didn't bother him, but he knew he'd want to drink again that night. By the Light, he wanted to drink right now.
THIRTEEN
"Master."
Buyard Cholik looked up from the comfortable sofa that took up one long wall of the coach he traveled in. Drawn by six horses on three axles, the coach had all the amenities of home. Built-in shelves held his priestly supplies, clothing, and personal belongings. Lamps screwed into the walls and fluted for smoke discharge through the sides of the coach provided light to read by. Since leaving the ruins of Tauruk's Port and Ransim almost three months ago, almost all of his time had been spent reading the arcane texts Kabraxis had provided him and practicing the sorcery the demon had been teaching him.
"What is it?" Cholik asked.
The man speaking stood outside on the platform attached to the bottom of the coach. Cholik made no move to open one of the shuttered windows so that he might see the man. Since Kabraxis had changed him, altering his mind and his body-in addition to removing decades from his age-Cholik felt close to none of the men who had survived the demon's arrival and the attack of Raithen's pirates. Several of them were new, gathered from the small towns the caravan had passed through on its way to its eventual destination.
"We are approaching Bramwell, master," the man said. "I thought you might want to know."
"Yes," Cholik replied. He could tell by the level ride of the coach that the long, winding, uphill trek they'd been making for hours had passed.
Cholik marked his place in the book he'd been reading with a thin braid of human tongues that had turned leatheryover the years. Sometimes, with the proper spell in place, the tongues read aloud from profane passages. The book was writ in blood upon paper made from human skin and bound in children's teeth. Most of the other books Kabraxis had provided over the past months were crafted in things that Cholik in his past life as a priest of the Zakarum Church would have believed to be even more horrendous.
The bookmarker made of tongues whispered a sibilant protest at being put away, inciting a small amount of guilt in Cholik as he felt certain Kabraxis had spelled them to do. Nearly all of his days were
spent reading, yet it never seemed enough.
Moving with the grace of a man barely entering his middle years, Cholik opened the coach's door, stepped out onto the platform, then climbed the small hand-carved ladder that led up to the coach's peaked, thatched roof. A small ledge was rather like a widow's walk on some of the more affluent houses in Westmarch where merchanter captains' wives walked to see if their husbands arrived safely back from sea.
The coach had been one of the first things Cholik had purchased with the gold and jewels he and his converted priests had carted out of the caverns with Kabraxis's blessing. In its past life, the coach had belonged to a merchant prince who specialized in overland trading. Only two days before Cholik had bought the coach, the merchant prince had suffered debilitating losses and a mysterious illness that had killed him in a matter of hours. Faced with certain bankruptcy, the executor of the prince's goods had sold the coach to Cholik's emissaries.
Standing on the small widow's walk, aware of the immense forest around him, Cholik looked over the half-dozen wagons that preceded the coach. Another half-dozen wagons, all loaded down with the things that Kabraxis had ordered salvaged from Tauruk's Port, trailed behind Cholik's coach.
A winding road cut through the heart of the forest. Cholik couldn't remember the forest's name at themoment, but he had never seen it before. His travels from Westmarch had always been by ship, and he'd never been to Bramwell as young as he now was.
At the end of the winding road lay the city of Bramwell, a suburb north-northwest of Westmarch. Centuries ago, situated among the highlands as it was, the city had occupied a position of prominence that competed with Westmarch. Bramwell had been far enough away from Westmarch that its economy was its own. Farmers and fishermen lived in the tiny city, descendants of families that had lived there for generations, sailing the same ships and plowing the same lands as their ancestors had. In the old days, Bramwell's sailors had hunted whales and sold the oil. Now, the whaling fleets had become a handful of diehard families who stubbornly got by in a hardscrabble existence more with pride and a deep reluctance to change than out of necessity.
