The Betrayed

by Igor Ljubuncic

  Luckily, Captain Horace was a man of vision, a man who valued gold more than anything else, it seemed, and he made sure the discipline and morale remained high, even when the ship’s doctor’s attempts to cure Ewan failed miserably. Not even the leeching of his blood helped much.

  Armin saw the week of fever as a test of his own endurance and negotiation skills. Using the best social tactics he could spin, he tried to assuage the sailors, wielding his knowledge against their primal fears.

  The tense situation reached an apex after Ewan failed to show on deck one day, staying below and murmuring in some strange language. That day, Armin learned two things: that Captain Horace had some of his men flogged and that Ewan could speak Keutan when semicomatose.

  Armin’s resolve almost faltered soon thereafter. He began to worry about a mutiny. Some of the sailors would be more than satisfied with half the payment he had already given their captain. The prospect of a violent, bloody rebellion became a palpable danger. The weather deteriorated, adding to their misery. They were all alone, with not a speck of land in sight.

  Fortunately, Ewan came out of his delirium the very next day, slightly pale and thin, but no different than he had been just a few weeks earlier. His almost nonchalant demeanor unnerved even the most ferocious would-be mutineers. The sailors started to fear him, avoiding him, even so much as eye contact. Only Horace would talk to the boy.

  Ewan’s isolation strengthened his relationship with Armin. The investigator took pity on the boy and gave him some of his books, after being pleasantly, if not really, surprised that the boy was literate. Cuddling in the dark, narrow cabin they shared, Ewan wasted candle fat reading the rare scripts. He never said anything, but his face spoke volumes.

  The turn of the year was only days away. On the ship, the sense of time eroded, becoming a dull monotony between shifts. Horace gripped Armin’s maps like a sacred artifact, navigating toward the unfriendly destination. By all estimates, Ichebor’s treacherous waters were only leagues away.

  Ewan and Armin shared each other’s company on the deck. The boy was dressed in a light, salt-eaten jacket, oblivious of the ravaging chill. Armin wore layers of fur and wool, his teeth chattering. A native of mild, rainy winters in Sirtai, he found the open-sea desolation a torment for his bones.

  “I think I’m a monster,” the boy blurted.

  Armin looked at him, but Ewan evaded eye contact. “I would not say so.”

  Ewan closed his eyes. “What else? I hardly feel the cold. I do not sleep at night. Sometimes, I even forget to eat. The only thing that reminds me to is seeing you do all those things.”

  Armin patted the boy on the shoulder. “Don’t despair. You are not a monster.”

  “I have read the books, sir. I know what you think. But I’m not a Special Child.”

  Snowflakes flurried in a torrent, making him scowl. Armin huddled deeper inside his cowl. “My profession is a criminal investigator, Ewan. I’m not a man of feelings and hunches. I am a man of facts, solid facts, evidence, and logical relations between people and events. I do think that you are a Special Child. I find the evidence highly supporting that…theory.”

  “What am I supposed to do then?” Ewan croaked.

  “That is for you to find out. Soon.” They turned toward their invisible goal. “But there must be a reason. We have not met by chance. You have not come all the way from your monastery to Eybalen by chance. Some deep, hidden instinct guided you.”

  Ewan’s lower lip quivered. “I…Several times, people tried to attack me. And every time, some sort of fever seized me. I would lose control of my body and…when they tried to hurt me, my body was like stone. Last night, I tried to hurt myself. I took a hammer and hit myself on the knee. It was as if a mosquito bit me. I hardly felt the blow that should have shattered my leg. If I didn’t know what I was doing, I might have never even felt it.”

  Armin would have been shocked only a month ago. But no longer. Losing a wife took away something from you, some simple innocence. What remained was hard, cold dedication.

  “Why do people want to hurt me?” the boy whispered. “I have done nothing wrong.”

  “People are people. They usually divide strangers into two groups. They see you as either prey or a predator. I think that all your attackers thought of you as prey. Even easy prey. But then, since you are a Special Child, you proved to be nothing such. This is very difficult for others to accept. When the hunter becomes hunted, his hatred is tenfold stronger, and he is more prone to retaliation.”

  “How am I supposed to live my life then? Will I be treated this way everywhere I go?”

  Armin smiled sadly. “The Sirtai people do not believe in your continental gods, but we have our own faith. We believe in cause and effect, in reason and result. We believe that everything in this world has a place for some reason, some purpose. Sometimes, we know of the result, but not the reason. Sometimes, it is the other way around. I believe you will find your reason, even if you do not understand the result yet. You have been blessed with your special gift for a reason.”

  Ewan squared his jaw. “I don’t want it.”

  Armin would not look away. He waited until Ewan met his stare. “I have lost my wife trying to decipher the murders of several rich Caytoreans. I arrived to Eybalen for work…and my wife was killed before my eyes. Life is a hard and cruel affair. Wanting it to be otherwise has nothing to do with the way it is. But you can try and make a difference. You can embrace what life throws at you and give it a meaning. You will find the reason. My wife did not die without a reason. And if I have to go to Ichebor to find out, then I will go to Ichebor.

  “Our meeting wasn’t by chance. In the last days, ever since hearing your story, I’ve come to realize that. I suspect that I am supposed to take you to Ichebor. There, my purpose in this quest will be fulfilled. By then, you will have realized yours.”

  This seemed to cheer the boy a little. He grunted, his spirits slightly lifted.

  “What do you expect us to find on the island?” Ewan asked.

  Armin frowned. “Some link to all the events unraveling before us in the world, the wars, the destruction of the Territories, the rise of Feor, your own change. The books indicate that Damian’s fortress was located at the very island we are now seeking. It is also the place of his trial and banishment. Many things lead to these abandoned isles.”

  “You think Damian and Feor are one and the same, sir?” Ewan asked, his politeness returning.

  Armin rubbed his baby-smooth chin. “Evidence shows this to be true.”

  “Why don’t the gods interfere? Why don’t they protect us?” the boy wondered, mostly to himself.

  The investigator had no answer. He stood by the rail, staring into the leaden horizon, watching the clouds and sea collide into a single mass of depressing gray.

  “Land ahoy!” the morning lookout shouted.

  The deck exploded into a ripple of thuds, sailors rushing toward the called sighting. Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the ashen blush spoiling the monotone horizon coalesced into a solid mass of jagged rock. The first of the hundreds of the Broken Islands loomed before them.

  “Spit my liver, the charts are correct!” Horace cried.

  Armin felt a weight lift off his chest. Up until this very moment, the chance for trouble aboard the ship had been quite high. Smugglers were hard and unforgiving people, driven by greed. Their hope of a good profit was their only motivation.

  Now that their hope had been restored, Armin found it easier to concentrate on the grim task ahead.

  Horace let his men celebrate for a short while before sending them back to their posts. The easy part of the voyage had been completed.

  The captain was a successful smuggler for the simple reason of being thorough and careful. He liked the maps he had, but he preferred solid, firsthand experience. Until he had personally sailed the narrow channels between the blasted deserted islands, he would not be fully at ease.

  Holding the map before hi
m, Horace steered the ship himself, slogging at a snail’s pace, most of the sails furled. Speed was a killer in uncharted shallows. Lookouts craned over the ship’s sides, staring at the water, trying to glimpse the bottom. However, the sea was choppy and dark and unforthcoming.

  Silence and professionalism engulfed the ship as veterans set to their tasks. They inched forward, battered by wind and snow and waves that hurled spray over the deck, but the elements slowly tapered off as the Tenacious waded into the protected canyons between the islands.

  At night, they anchored. Horace did not wish to risk his ship. Getting stranded meant a certain death in these cursed waters.

  Three days before the turn of the year, they approached their destination. It looked no different from the dozens of similar formations all around, a gray heap of ragged peaks and rocks and sparse vegetation, without a bird in sight.

  “That is our island,” Ewan murmured in a quiet tone.

  “There,” one of the lookouts cried.

  Squinting against the wind, they stared, trying to discern the details. On a rocky beach about four cables away, an old abandoned wharf stretched, half its timber washed away or collapsed. It looked like half the jaw of some gigantic beast. Beside it, like shells of huge mollusks, broken carcasses of old boats lay in ruin atop the scree.

  “That is our island, indeed,” Armin whispered.

  Before them, tiny teeth of submerged land poked out of the water surface. Horace brought the Tenacious to a groaning halt and would not go any further. This was as shallow and as far as he would sail. Armin knew well that this was far more than any guild shipmaster would dare.

  “Two weeks,” Horace said.

  “And then you send a party looking for us,” Armin emphasized.

  It would be horribly easy for the captain to abandon them on the island. The investigator hoped the man had some honor—or that he loved gold so much he would never turn away from it. In the past weeks, Armin had done his best to convince the captain, in the most benign and unthreatening ways, that he was a highly influential man in Sirtai, with deep political and military connections. He said nothing of the wizard or the spells that had been placed on him for his protection in the hour of need, but he hoped his cover story was enough to make Horace believe betraying him would cost him more than just losing half the payment. Armin also made sure the captain knew Armin was on this mission on behalf of many other people, all of whom would notice and mind his disappearance.

  One of the rescue boats was prepared for them, loaded with provisions, firewood, lots of blankets, grapnel hooks and spears, and even a crossbow.

  “We’ll stay here,” Horace said. He did not like the idea of his ship being static and vulnerable, even if it were hundreds of miles away from civilization. On their way to Ichebor, they had seen no other ship, not even pirate vessels. No one dared or cared to go that close to the cursed archipelago.

  The truth was probably more the latter, Armin thought. Some deep instinct was ingrained in the soul of every god-fearing continental. They did not know why these islands were considered so unlucky, why they were feared and shunned and never populated, but they could feel there was a reason, just like a man could feel someone watching him at night.

  Ewan clambered down the rope ladder. Armin followed. His generous swaying made some of the mariners chuckle with glee. Finally, there was something they had bested the landlubber at, finally a weakness that cracked his smooth, composed behavior. The investigator ignored them.

  The two of them took some time adjusting their rhythm, rowing in opposite directions and wrong sides of the little boat, making it zigzag. The waves brought them up and down, making Armin almost sick. On board the ship, he had found the stay inside the cabin, without any visual reference by which to gauge the undulation, intolerable. Despite the cold, he had spent most of the time on deck, except when he needed to read, afraid to wet his precious books.

  He found the experience of rowing the boat more bearable, but only just. Ewan did not seem affected, but he’d been ignoring most of nature’s influences lately.

  They rowed until their boat groaned to a halt in a bed of pebbles. After jumping into the icy water, they dragged the boat away from the tide line, the two oars drawing random lines in the gravel.

  Their island was a huge affair. It looked at least several miles across. Hills, heaped atop one another as if in panic and rush, bubbled away in a haphazard fashion. There were no trees anywhere, only scrawny bushes.

  Armin made another mental check mark. Another mystery solved. One of the victims had been a chief carpenter for the carpentry and woodwork guild.

  Hiking large packages onto their backs, the two men headed inland, their feet skidding on the knife-sharp shards of rock. Dark, forbidding, jagged hills watched them silently.

  CHAPTER 43

  King Vlad was furious.

  “How could this have happened?” he shouted.

  Archdukes Radik and Alexei stood nearby, quiet, watching their king oscillate from murderous rage to panic. At their feet lay the bodies of the small and entire group of priests in Vlad’s retinue, all of them with their throats sliced.

  “We have no idea, Your Highness,” Radik said.

  “This might be the work of enemy assassins,” Alexei offered in a low tone.

  Vlad grimaced. “Who?”

  Other nobles were approaching, congregating on the slaughter, apprehensive looks masking their faces. “Maybe those were the Eracians. Their leader is a godless man. It stands to reason that he might try to murder the clergy,” Alexei said.

  King Vlad spun around. “Assassins in our camp,” he growled. Suddenly, he reached for the hands of one of the soldiers guarding the perimeter and wrestled a crossbow from his hands. The council of Vlad’s lieges stiffened.

  “Anyone could be an assassin,” the king said, looking around him, whipping his head about violently. “There,” he said, pointing at one of the soldiers. “That man could be an assassin.” He aimed and fired. And missed.

  The lords cringed as the crossbow twanged. They all let out a small sigh of relief as the bolt flew off mark. The soldier started, yelped, and dove for cover.

  “That man is one of our soldiers, Highness,” Duke Maris spoke in a soft tone, as if berating a demented child, which was not far from the truth, he thought.

  “Enemy assassins would make sure to stay out of plain sight,” Radik added.

  “You can put down the weapon, my king. We are safe here,” Alexei pleaded.

  King Vlad the Fifth looked at his men. Finally, he gave up the crossbow. “This is an ill omen. Maybe the gods are telling us we should not proceed with the attack.”

  Duke Maris made half a step forward. “On the contrary, Your Highness. These foul murders are an act of desperation by our enemies. They know we are here and that they cannot defeat us in open combat. So they resort to cowardly acts.”

  A few weeks earlier, the lords had been vehemently opposed to any attempt of fighting the Eracians. Their goal was to plow into the Territories and carve up new arable duchies for themselves. This was the promise Queen Olga had given them.

  After their king had vowed to move against the godless leader of the Eracian forces, despite their best attempts to dissuade him from straying from the original plan, they had all begun to fear the war to be spinning out of control, becoming a religious quagmire instead of a simple military conquest. But their alarm had been quickly quenched.

  The Eracians, for all the wild rumors of their successes and horrors, were a small army, with half its forces consisting of peasants and mercenaries. All combined, they were only half as many as the Parusites, with just a tenth of the cavalry they possessed. The odds showed a promising outcome.

  Their initial opposition had subsided. But their aversion to the patriarchs had not. The nobles all knew that it was the priests who had convinced their king to attack east. It was sheer luck their gamble had paid off in the end. But their next move might have been suicide. This w
as why they had to be removed.

  Archduke Radik had sent envoys to the mercenary leaders in Adam’s camp, offering them gold and amnesty if, at the crucial moment in the upcoming battle, they decided to change their allegiance. To his great surprise, the envoy had never returned. This was a distressing development of events. Mercenaries never refused money.

  Still, despite the small setbacks and occasional qualms, the Parusite lords were not really worried. The Caytoreans seemed to have vanished, having abandoned the eastern and central Territories, moving their forces even further west. This allowed the Parusites to advance into Caytor without the fear of exposing their flanks. In the north, the Eracians seemed reluctant to budge from their enclave by the border.

  The only real problem remaining was Adam the Godless, with his twenty thousand men, lodged in and around a large city called Roalas. Despite his impressive record of victories against the Feoran rabble, this man had no chance against the superb Parusite knights. They only needed to defeat him, and then both the eastern Territories and a sizable chunk of Caytor would be theirs. Plus, they would have defeated the heathens, a real boon for Parus.

  This campaign, which they had believed to be a curse, was turning into a blessing. And now, the patriarchs were all dead. There was no one left to drip poison into their king’s ear. He would heed only their advice now.

  “Our scouts report a force of twenty thousand men at most, half of them peasants,” Alexei said.

  “They have almost no cavalry or heavy infantry,” Radik suggested.

  “By defeating this Adam, we will have assured our claim on the captured Territories. Neither the Caytoreans nor Eracians will have any strength left to challenge our presence. And we will have gained twice the territories originally intended.”

  “And we will have defeated all of these infidels. Our gods will be pleased.”