Sons of the Oak

by David Farland

“In this fog?” Borenson asked.

  Stalker looked darkly toward the shore, still shrouded in thick fog. “’Aven’t you ’eard? There’s trouble at the palace.” He hesitated, looked to see the reaction of Borenson and the children. It wasn’t that he liked to watch folks squirm, it was that he wanted to see how well they handled pressure. There was a saying where he came from: “You never really know a man until you’ve spent a week with him in a leaky ship.” He continued. “It’s a fierce assault, powerful Runelords. Lowicker the Brat is ’untin’ for the queen, no doubt. We ’eave off in five minutes, fog or no.”

  Borenson took the news like a warrior. It seemed hardly to faze him, but Stalker knew that he had to be worried. Even the boys surprised the captain by adapting unreadable expressions.

  Myrrima dropped her bundle to the deck, sighed heavily. “I’ll be back in a bit.” She quickly climbed down the ladder.

  Stalker needed to hurry. The boys were worth a fortune, and he needed to make a clean getaway. He had a pair of deckhands that still hadn’t reported for duty—probably off drunk or whoring or both. Most likely, they’d come running when the fog lifted. But by then he planned to be far out into the open sea.

  Stalker grunted a “Good morning to you,” turned, and went trundling off.

  Fallion peered out into the fog and petted Humfrey, who was sleeping soundly in his tunic pocket. Fallion had heard a warhorn and shouts, but had only thought that soldiers were parading at the palace, not hunting for him.

  Men are dying now, he realized, dying to keep me safe.

  The battle would be fierce. Queen Lowicker, whom many called “The Brat,” might not need many men to take the palace. A couple of dozen champions rife with endowments formed the heart of any army.

  Borenson gave Fallion a reassuring pat on the back, though he felt no assurance himself. Given a choice, he’d not have run off with the boys to the far side of the world. But the Earth King, using his prescient powers, had warned him to do so, and he suspected that though he might face some troubles, he would make it to Landesfallen safely.

  So far, everything looked to be going well. Borenson had evaded the pirate captain who was searching for them, and assassins that had struck at the palace.

  Soon, he’d be on the open sea, and anyone who might be searching for them would have a hard time following their trail over the open waters.

  Draken, Borenson’s five-year-old son, dared ask the question, “Are we on a pirate ship?”

  Borenson let out a breath, knelt where the children could huddle close, and whispered, “Look, these are merchant marines. It’s true some of the Great Houses of Landesfallen have a history of pirate blood, but so does your house, Draken. I was born on Orwynne, an island not far off the coast from here, and your great-grandfather worked as a privateer back during the Hawks War.”

  Draken looked up at his father and asked, “So we’re pirates?”

  Borenson laughed in defeat. “You could say that.”

  But what Borenson was really saying went deeper, Fallion knew. Most of these men probably had pirate blood in them. Some may have even worked as pirates.

  Borenson was trusting the advice of the Earth King in sailing to some faraway corner of the world, but that didn’t mean that they were out of danger.

  Fallion peered up through the fog with new eyes at the sailors. Something deep inside him trembled as if in warning. He was riding a pirate ship to the last place in the world that he wanted to go. Borenson wasn’t taking him to safety. Borenson was taking them into greater danger.

  “Why Landesfallen?” he asked.

  Borenson smiled, knelt close. “Your father warned us that the ends of the Earth are not far enough. Right? So we have to go farther.”

  Fallion didn’t understand.

  “When we get to Landesfallen,” Borenson said, “one of the oldest and safest harbors is at Garion’s Port. It’s a good deepwater port, in a horseshoe bay. The entrance to the bay is flanked by two huge stones that thrust up from the water. Those two stones are called the Ends of the Earth. That was what your father’s message meant, I believe. We have to go beyond the Ends of the Earth, beyond Garion’s Port into the wilds of Landesfallen.”

  “Are you sure?” Fallion asked.

  Borenson looked thoughtful, nodded just a bit. “I’m as sure as I can be. There’s no better place for a person to get lost. The last we heard, your father was heading that way. He met Daymorra nearly a year ago, and the islands where she lived were not far from Landesfallen.”

  If that’s true, Fallion reasoned, then we’re going to where my father died.

  Fallion imagined his father in the stronghold of some pirate lair, a port shrouded beneath the vast boughs of the legendary stonewood trees. There he envisioned pirates holding his father in chains and torturing him for their own amusement.

  I’ll find out how he died, Fallion thought. And I’ll avenge him, if I have to.

  The children quickly began to explore the ship. The decks had been scrubbed clean by salt and sun and water and wind. Everything looked immaculate. They walked the main deck and could see down through a metal grate to the oarsmen’s galley, where crewmen had begun taking seats on stark wooden benches.

  Along the way, they passed small wooden catapults with iron baskets. Piles of iron shot were laid out neatly nearby.

  At the prow, the children climbed out onto the serpent’s long neck, painted golden white on the bottom going to sea green on the sides and black on the back. The long crocodilian jaws were full of oversized teeth, and the serpent’s eyes shone like silver shields.

  Fallion’s heart hammered at the sight, and he climbed out on the neck, his legs straddling both sides, as he peered down into the water. On the hull of the ship, sea stars in orange and purple crawled among anemones like bright flowers of green and gold. Minnows darted in the shadow of the boat, and some leapt to the surface as a sea bass drove up from the depths.

  Fallion was in for a grand adventure.

  He could smell smoke faintly, and realized that the fog had begun to lift. Then he remembered that Myrrima had been down in the coracle, and most likely, she’d cast a spell while out of sight to lift the fog.

  An animal shrieked behind him, and Fallion turned to see a sea ape—a silver-haired gorilla standing eight feet tall, with a spiked club in one hand, yowling at them. It had yellow fangs and a deep red mouth. Its fur was long and wispy, like the fur of a yak. It raised the club as if warning the children to get down from “my spot.”

  Fallion quickly began to back off his perch, but some sailor shouted, “Yeep. Yeep!” and the ape leapt up and raced over the forecastle on its knuckles.

  “Did you see that!” Jaz cried from the head of the serpent. “A real sea ape!” His face split into a grin so wide that it looked as if he could swallow a plate.

  “Yeah,” Fallion said in awe. Sea apes were great swimmers and powerful warriors. Sailors from beyond Inkarra sometimes kept them, not as pets, not even as slaves. Instead, the sea apes sometimes became attached to a person, developed a deep reverence for him, something that was said to go beyond love or even worshipfulness.

  I shouldn’t be smiling at the thought of seeing a sea ape, Fallion thought. Mother is dead.

  For a few minutes, he’d managed to forget. But now the memory of the loss hung over him like a pall, and his spirits fell.

  Fallion noticed that the ship had begun to move, and he could see the oars splashing the water, raising whitecaps.

  None too soon. The fog began to lift rapidly. For long minutes the children just sat on the bow, as if leading the way, while the ship set off for the far side of the world.

  Fallion watched for a long hour as they made their way out to sea. The fog lifted altogether, and he could see columns of flame rising from the white towers at the Courts of Tide, a plume of gray smoke like a rising thunderhead.

  Behind them, from the harbor, came a smaller ship with black sails, almost as if it were giving chase.
<
br />   Fallion didn’t know if it was really trying to intercept them, but he imagined the ship to be full of enemy troops from Beldinook, powerful Runelords hunting him, led by Asgaroth himself.

  Fallion suddenly felt trapped. For the next few months, his whole world would be bounded by the rails of the vessel, and somehow he suspected that he was not alone. Asgaroth had been hunting him since birth.

  Would the locus just leave? He could be anywhere. He could be here now, on this ship, inside one of these men. Or he could be on the ship that followed.

  He won’t leave me alone, Fallion realized.

  As if to prove his fears, Captain Stalker took the helm and eyed the black ship suspiciously.

  He ordered the sails unfurled, and once they were full of wind he watched for a long time as the black ship began to lose ground. He told the helmsmen, “We can outrun them. Keep this course through the night until second bell, then set course due east.”

  19

  STREBEN

  It is in the nature of things that we often get to choose our friends, but rarely get to choose our enemies.

  —Iome Sarinnika Orden

  That afternoon, Borenson held his long knife at the ready, his right leg forward, his left foot half a pace back, toe pointed out, while his shoulders hunched low and his buckler formed a moving target, protecting his side. It was the classic fencing stance, and like most practiced fencers, Borenson’s thighs and calves were overlarge, evidence of his long hours of practice.

  But so were Fallion’s. The calluses inside his thumb and on his palms fit perfectly against the haft of his blade. Indeed his hand fit the blade so well that it seemed an extension of his body. Only the buckler was unfamiliar. It was an Inkarran device, called a viper, much used on the far side of the world. It was shaped like a teardrop, thick in the middle while the bottom portion tapered into a sharp blade for stabbing. The sides were sharpened so that they could be used as a slashing weapon. The viper was equally handy as defensive armament and as an assault weapon.

  Fallion danced back and forth, sometimes feinting an attack in the Deyazz style of fighting with scimitars. It was a form that Fallion liked. It tempted opponents, causing them to strike at imagined openings. But a good fighter in the Deyazz style was always careful to keep his body moving in unexpected directions, so that the opening disappeared even as the opponent committed to his attack.

  Borenson smiled. He liked the game.

  Borenson lunged, blurring in his speed, aiming his long knife straight at Fallion’s eye. Though the knife was blunted, a puncture wound to the eye would still be fatal.

  Fallion dodged left, swinging his head mere inches. Fallion was trained to block such a blow with his buckler, bring it up so that the edge clipped the ganglia on the opponent’s wrist, numbing his hand and most probably disarming him.

  But Fallion dove under the attack, striking Borenson with the blade of his viper, a blow up into the armpit. At the last instant, he pulled his punch, lest he puncture the armpit for real, and the crowd of sailors that looked on, hanging from the rigging and leaning against the railings, shouted “Two!” cheering, even as Fallion leapt back to avoid reprisals.

  Two points. Not an instant kill, but a slow one, one that would weaken an enemy, wear him down. The blow would have severed Borenson’s artery, causing him to bleed to death in a matter of minutes.

  Borenson pushed the attack, lunging while Fallion was off-balance. The boy leapt to the side, putting a mast between him and his opponent. Borenson rushed in, but Fallion leapt to his right again, keeping the larger man at bay.

  The sailors cheered as if it were a dogfight.

  Captain Stalker peered down from the forecastle and watched with dull interest.

  “Pretty good, eh?” Endo asked. “For a kid?”

  “Good,” Stalker replied. Stalker had an eye for fighters. In his youth, his master had supplied gladiators for the arenas at Zalindar—old warriors from Internook, captured slaves from Innesvale—and so he was no stranger to blood sport.

  But Fallion astonished him. In retrospect, he should have known that the boy would be well trained. But many a clod could be trained. No, Fallion had a gift for fighting, Stalker decided.

  Even that should not have surprised him. He was bred for it, over hundreds of generations, sired from Mystarria’s greatest warriors.

  The combination of breeding and training very nearly awed Stalker.

  And right now, he was trying to decide if Fallion was merely exceptional for a child, or if he might someday grow to be the best he’d ever seen. “The boy is young yet, but give him six years …”

  “A Son of the Oak,” Endo said. It was a compliment, a reminder of the spooky way that the world was changing, with a new generation growing up stronger and smarter than their elders, better in so many ways.

  “Aye,” Streben jested, “he may only be nine, but he fights like a ten-year-old.”

  Several men laughed nearby, but somehow the jest angered Stalker. He didn’t like someone making sport of another for being good at what he did. That was a pastime for losers.

  Streben was his sister’s son, and at seventeen he was a tall boy, lanky and strong. He fancied himself a fighter. But he had a cruel streak and a cowardly one.

  Oh, he had enough bravado to kill a man, but he’d only done it once, and he’d done it from behind. He had a penchant for picking fights at port. One night, after such a skirmish, he’d ambushed a man in the night, and then bragged about it when they were far out to sea, beyond the reach of any lawmen.

  The boy rolled to the side to avoid Borenson’s next few blows, keeping the masthead between them, and Streben laughed. “Boy knows ’ow to run!”

  But Stalker realized what the boy was doing. He was playing out the fight in his mind, making it real. If Borenson had been a real attacker, he’d know that he was bleeding to death, and he’d press the fight even as Borenson was doing now. At the same time, his quickened heartbeat would pump the blood from his armpit ever faster. By now he’d be down a mugful of his life’s blood, and his head would be reeling from the loss. A few more seconds, and the boy would be able to take him with ease.

  Borenson feinted left and attacked right, his long knife going slightly wild, as if he were losing focus. He was into the game, too.

  The boy struck him a blow to the thigh, one so close to the crotch that many of the sailors actually cried out in sympathetic pain. Another two-point blow.

  The crowd cheered wildly, and Fallion smiled. He’d been practicing for three hours, doing all that he could to “prepare” himself, as his mother had warned him to do.

  But in his own mind, he was doing more than perfecting his skills. He was playing to the crowd, trying to win their approval. He needed not to win just their applause, but their hearts. Someday, he thought, some of these men may form the core of my army.

  His eyes went to the right, where Rhianna watched him, a worried smile on her face.

  The small moment cost him dearly. Borenson suddenly lunged like a wild man, slashing with his knife, three blows that Fallion could barely parry. The big man’s knife rang against Fallion’s small shield, and each blow numbed Fallion’s arm.

  The fight is everything, Fallion told himself. Focus on the fight.

  The cheering faded from Fallion’s mind as he watched Borenson’s piercing blue eyes. You could always tell when a man would strike by watching his eyes. An accomplished fighter like Borenson wouldn’t warn you by focusing on the spot he’d attack, but his pupils dilated a tenth of a second before he struck.

  Fallion had to concentrate on his footing. The pitch and yaw of the vessel was still unfamiliar, and his center of gravity rolled with the ship.

  Borenson’s pupils went large. Fallion dodged left, just as Borenson’s shield bashed him in the chest, sent him flying, knocking the wind from him.

  Fallion tried to suck air, knew it would be no use. He had to end the fight now.

  Borenson rushed and Fallion leapt
up and lunged forward, under his reach, bringing his knife point up under the sternum.

  “Three!” the sailors shouted. An instant kill.

  The sailors in the rigging cheered wildly. Borenson was huffing. He grinned at Fallion, peered over to Rhianna.

  Fallion was still trying to suck air. He felt as if he’d lose his breakfast any moment.

  “You puke on that deck,” Borenson jested, “and you’re going to have to clean it up.” Then more softly he added, “Hold it in.”

  Fallion nodded. Borenson poked him in the stomach. “That,” he whispered, referring to the blow, “was for showing off. Always keep your mind in the fight.”

  It was a hard lesson, but Fallion knew that he would rather learn it now than in a real fight.

  Fallion got to his knees, tried to hold in his breakfast, struggling for air. Sweat rolled off of him.

  The sailors were still cheering, and Captain Stalker smiled in grim satisfaction.

  “You saw that!” Streben shouted. “The big fellow pulled his punches. I was that good when I was the kid’s age!” He began to jeer.

  Stalker turned to his nephew, gave him a dangerous look. “You’re not that good. You couldn’t beat the kid on the best day of your life.”

  That caught Streben’s attention. There is nothing that a coward hates more than to be reminded of his own weakness.

  Several sailors nearby caught the mood and jeered at Streben, “Go ahead, show us what you’ve got.”

  Streben looked away in embarrassment, trying to ignore them, but the jests grew crueler.

  “Right,” he snarled, shouting down at the boy. “You fight me? You want me?”

  Fallion looked up at Streben, not quite understanding. Streben shouted another challenge, and Borenson stepped between them and said, “The boy isn’t taking challenges. This isn’t the arena.”

  But Streben grinned maliciously, taking the boy’s reluctance for cowardice. “Why not?” he demanded. “It’s a matter of honor.”

  Stalker said nothing for a moment. He already knew what Streben was made of: cruelty, cowardice, and stupidity, all wrapped up in a deceptively strong frame. Sometimes he told himself that if Streben wasn’t his nephew, he’d have hurled him overboard long ago.