The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  What he presented to her was open, sunny, happy blackmail. It was every bit as sinister as Prince Mather’s crude attempts to win her favor, but Hap wasn’t playing for dinner and the wearing of fancy gowns. The stakes were the kingdom. This wasn’t crude at all. Hap had yet to make any demand. He was simply opening negotiations from a position of power. Here was someone who knew how all this was done.

  He waited patiently, pleasantly, watching with serene satisfaction as the reality of Panna’s predicament enfolded her. She had no choice but to work with him. She was a strong girl, and she wasn’t stupid. But how smart was she, really? He would find out now.

  “Packer Throme did not ask to be king, nor I queen,” Panna said at last. “God has put us in these roles.”

  “As He has put me in mine. He could easily have taken me home to heaven, right there in the woods, but He saved me from that bear, and from that forest fire, for a purpose.”

  She paused for a moment, then continued. “And so God may take the kingdom away, however and whenever He chooses. He may use you to do that, and I will accept it as coming from His hand.” Her voice now grew hard. “But with all due respect to you and your office, I will not play your game.” She stood up. “Please, by all means, tell the people we are not legitimate, if that is what you truly believe. Not that you need my permission, but you have it anyway. If, however, you decide that the right thing to do is to add the blessings of the Church to the obvious blessings of God, then by all means, call for me again. Until then, I wish you only the best, and a very speedy recovery.” She curtsied, and left the room.

  He sighed and shook his head. She was headstrong, and that would create problems. But she wasn’t very smart. She wouldn’t see the end coming until she was flat on her back, wondering what hit her.

  Dayton Throme looked around him now, down at the village illumined by cooking fires. Its structures were not even huts; they were made of treated hides, Firefish hides stretched over frames made of wood or fashioned from huge, round bones. The ribs of the beasts. These were lean-tos, more shields than buildings, and like shields they were painted with the fiercest images of Firefish Dayton ever could have imagined, far more vicious than anything the Vast could conjure. That little sign above Cap Hillis’s pub was a drawing of a child’s toy in comparison.

  Now, with the sun set, families gathered around fires, surrounded by such images. Evening songs were being sung, chants that were short on melody but long on soulful harmony. Men prepared food and cleaned up alongside the women. In fact, men shared all duties with women except for actual childbearing. Women sat at family councils, war councils. They ate and drank with men. They hunted, they worked. Women shared all duties with men but for actual warfare.

  No fences surrounded this village, no lines marked one family’s area from the next, or one man’s possessions from another’s. The only barriers at all were these framed huts…and the rather dramatic ring of spears at the base of this hill. Dayton Throme’s hill. Hundreds, thousands of spears, standing upright side by side, leaning this way and that like the jack-o-lantern teeth of the Firefish from which each spearhead came. They pointed toward the stars, standing ready at a moment’s notice to be taken into battle. Until then, they were the fence that symbolically kept the madman at bay.

  But it was only symbolic. Dayton had no chains on his hands or on his feet. He could walk freely through this or any other village. He spoke with the Achawuk casually as they shared their food and he shared in their labors. And yet every evening he returned to his own small lean-to atop this hill, to be by himself until morning.

  Shackles would be meaningless anyway. There was no place for him to go. The island was full of villages just like this one. If he took a canoe or swam to another island, he would find more of the same. The few ships that ventured near over the years were destroyed, overrun just as his own ship had been, every man, woman, and child killed without so much as a blink. Everyone but him.

  And every ship had been destroyed except that singular one, that sleek and beautiful craft that had escaped a year or so back as the wind blew into her sails and rocked the warriors from her hull and rails. He had watched. He had been standing ashore, face painted. He was glad the ship had escaped. The Achawuk had questioned him about it, as though he had somehow freed it from their grasp. They spoke of it as if it were a sign. But of course, to them, everything was a sign. He himself was a sign, the madman on the hill.

  He recalled again the terror of being aboard ship as the Achawuk closed in. He felt the fear anew every time he remembered. He looked down now at his bare chest, his ragged vest open, and at the single white blade that hung around his neck. He held it up, looked at it again. It had saved him. He had pulled it from around his neck to fight, to use as a weapon. The Achawuk had recognized it immediately, of course. They had taken him ashore to safety in one of their canoes, even as they burned his ship, even as they killed all his companions. He didn’t understand what was happening to him then.

  Soon he knew. When he had arrived, a stranger brandishing a Firefish tooth, using it as the weapon it was, they believed it to be highly significant. He had stepped into a mystery, an ancient mystery. He was to them a holy man, to be revered and protected. But he was not a prophet, not like the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Achawuk cared little for his teachings, and nothing for his God. They listened with some interest to stories he told about the Son of God, sent into the world as a man. But they did not believe them.

  Dayton Throme had come to understand that he was considered not a prophet, but a prophecy. He himself was a remarkable event, and he would be followed by a more remarkable one yet. He was a precursor to cataclysm. They no more needed to reason with him than they needed to converse with a bolt of lightning, or a storm, or a Firefish. And so he was a pariah, a prisoner, and a portent, all at once.

  A holy madman.

  Over the years, they had softened toward him, as he learned to speak with them. But they never wavered. He was not Achawuk. But he was theirs, and would be until the great event occurred. Or until they all died waiting for it.

  This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

  That phrase, that scrap of Scripture, careened around inside Bran Mooring until it overflowed, and he said it aloud. Everything around him was utterly marvelous. The warm wind on his face, the angle of the decks on which he stood, the thud of the waves as the prow crashed through them right under his feet, the snap and billow of canvas above, the squawk and careen of gulls behind, and all the scrambling activity of men up and down the masts and the rigging, orders being shouted, piped, ship’s bell ringing out the hour…it was powerful, and pristine. And marvelous. But more marvelous still was the meaning of it all, clear to him as the morning sky. God’s hand was steering the ship of state toward a glorious destiny.

  Above, in the rigging, Smith Delaney paused to look down at the odd little priest at the prow, as did all the other men. Frequently.

  “What’ll one of those big Fish do if it finds that one standing there?” Mutter Cabe asked, jarring Delaney from his thoughts.

  Delaney felt the brooding within his superstitious companion, then looked down again, scanning the seas for any sign of the beasts. He saw none. He looked back at the little figure, brown robes flapping behind him, hands gripping the rail for dear life, head on a swivel, taking it all in with a palpable sense of delight. “It’ll laugh at him,” Delaney decided.

  Cabe grimaced, but one corner of his mouth rose. All the men assumed that Packer Throme had sent the priest there, but he had not. Bran Mooring was simply drawn to be in that spot, finding it the place he preferred. But the men didn’t mind. The happy little priest seemed like a cleansing agent, a purifying spirit. Sure, they were being escorted to Drammun, and Huk Tuth himself was below deck somewhere, but light and life were returning to the Chase. The ship seemed lighter in the water, swifter in the wind. She sailed easy.

  And why shouldn’t she? Packer Throme was aboard
. That fact alone was enough to turn the men’s thoughts toward better days. The stunning news about Packer’s ascent to the throne had, of course, taken them all off guard. But only for a moment. It had been almost instantly accepted as his due, his right.

  And so the men stole glances at Packer even more frequently than they did at the priest, heartened each time they saw him. He stood on the quarterdeck, a step behind Captain Haas, wearing a satin shirt and breeches.

  “Why don’t he wear robes and a crown?” a sailor asked once.

  Delaney sniffed, looking down at his royal friend. “Well, he has no need for such as that. He knows who he is.”

  The sailor thought a moment, then nodded.

  “Still,” Mutter Cabe grumbled. “A little cape or something couldn’t hurt.”

  Delaney pondered, but shook his head. “That one there, he’s a king on the inside. He don’t need a costume to show it. Look at ’im now,” Delaney pointed out, “talkin’ to a regular captain who’s more gussied up than himself is.” They all watched Andrew Haas, who stood proudly in a full naval dress uniform, speaking with Packer. “But it ain’t hard to say who’s the king among the two.” The others had to look for a while, but eventually they could see it. Or at least they thought they could.

  “Now look ’round about ye,” Delaney continued. “Who’s leadin’ who? I tell ye, even they know.” The others looked across the ocean at the scores of ships that accompanied them. The Trophy Chase was the only one with white sails, those sails billowing, her Firefish armor intact and glistening on her hulls. Behind her and to port and starboard, stretching out beyond the horizon off both rails, were crimson sails, crimson hulls, Drammune warships and troop ships. The entire Expeditionary Armada of the Glorious Drammune Military, all aligned in a flying wedge that went on for miles, and the Trophy Chase at the point.

  Word spread through the City of Mann that Packer Throme had once been expelled from seminary. He had refused to submit to church discipline, they said, even after he had been caught cheating. Everyone seemed to know someone who knew someone who had seen his official transcript, shown to him by a priest. And unlike most rumors, this one turned out to be extraordinarily easy to confirm, particularly for anyone who ventured onto the seminary grounds.

  But even those citizens who found it troubling—and most did not, preferring to view it as an amusing and youthful indiscretion or the sign of a healthy young man in an oppressive environment—even the most pious agreed it would have little import on his ability to be a good king. Except, of course, that it did suggest he might need to show a little extra contrition and humility now that he was in the seat of power.

  Another rumor followed quickly, however. This one was completely unverified and much harder to confirm, but so close on the heels of the first that it shone with reflected authenticity. This one said that the High Holy Reverend Father and Supreme Elder, Harlowen “Hap” Stanson, had made repeated efforts to meet with the new queen, and she had rebuffed him. She had refused to visit him on his sickbed, preferring to wait until he was well enough to come to see her. She demanded the respect due the throne.

  Many discussions were held over many mugs of ale as to who was in the right here, the queen or the cleric. But all agreed that things would take an ugly turn if those two didn’t work out their differences. And by the way, the Church had been strangely silent regarding Packer’s ascension, hadn’t it? What happened to the coronation ceremony, led by the Supreme Elder himself? Packer had sailed off without so much as a tip of the ecclesiastical hat. Wasn’t that odd? Yes, they all had to agree, that was very odd. But these things would be settled in due time. Packer and the Church, why, they played on the same team, didn’t they?

  But over the next few days, things became less settled. New rumors began to spread. These were darker, spoken in whispers, phrased in questions, concerning the inexperienced young woman from the fishing villages and what she was doing alone there in the palace. Wasn’t it true that Prince Ward still lived there? And wasn’t he a notorious drunk, and a womanizer? And so why hadn’t she kicked that lecher out? And what of this story that she had actually lived at the palace with both Prince Ward and Prince Mather while Packer was gone the last time? Was there something the Church knew, after all, that kept the Supreme Elder from blessing the new king? Perhaps the problem was the new queen. She was young and attractive. She was without her husband…

  As the rumors grew, Hap Stanson’s pain subsided. He rested well. He ate well. He slept well. The number of visitors in and out of the palace hospital rose. Among these were many priests, and among the priests the one most often seen was Father Usher Fell.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Mission

  “God is moving,” Usher Fell assured Ward Sennett, speaking as loudly as he dared, wanting to be heard over the raucous strings and drums of the tavern band, but not overheard by unwelcome ears. “He is moving, and He is maneuvering, and when it is all over, you shall be king.”

  Ward’s eyelids blinked lazily. Even when opened, they were half-closed. He licked his lips slowly. “You’re quite sure of that, are you?” His tongue was thick but articulate. He had much experience managing the affects of alcohol.

  “Oh, yes!” Usher Fell was only slightly abashed by the current state of the prince. The tavern was crowded; it was past midnight, but the dancing and singing were not winding down. Ward looked over Usher Fell’s shoulder and winked, slowly and methodically, as though thinking the action through as he performed it. The priest did not turn around to see the object of the prince’s momentary affection. He had seen enough of them already, just getting across the floor to this booth where he now sat across from the prince.

  “The High Holy Reverend Father—” but a sudden whoop of laughter and then applause drowned out the rest of the priest’s message.

  “What?” Ward asked, his hand cupped to his ear.

  “I said, the High Holy Reverend Father and Supreme—” but another round of laughter cut him off again.

  “Who?” Ward asked.

  “Hap! Hap Stanson!” Usher Fell fairly shouted. “Hap wants you to know he cannot be public about it just yet.”

  “Public about what?”

  “His support for you! But his message is this: Do not lose heart, or faith, no matter what you may hear.”

  “I will try not to lose…anything at all,” the prince replied, numb and thick. Then he looked confused. “But what might I hear?”

  “Rumors, that’s all. Just rumors. Ignore them. All is as it must be.”

  “All is what?”

  “As it must be!” As Usher Fell nodded assurance, a barmaid fell into his lap. Ale went everywhere, three mugs spinning across the table and onto the floor. Usher Fell pushed the girl off him roughly. Her apology came from deep inside a laugh. She didn’t try to hide her amusement as the old robed figure stood, hands held out to his sides, looking down at the enormous stain that his robe had suddenly become. The ale quickly soaked through to his skin, cold and uncomfortable. She dabbed at the table with her towel, saying things like, “I declare, a priest! My luck. Probably go straight to hell for this!” But she never lost the wild glimmer of glee. She looked up at him, towel poised to help him dry himself.

  Usher Fell snatched the towel from her hand and started blotting at his own robes. He pulled several items from his pockets, a handkerchief, a scrap of paper, a few pennies, looked them over, then shoved them back where they came from.

  “Thank you,” Ward said, standing. He shook the priest’s wet hand. He looked at the priest’s sodden robes. “Say, that’s quite a mess there.” He shook his head solemnly. “But ignore it, won’t you? It’s all as it must be.” He fairly shouted the final words.

  Usher Fell stared and blinked, unsure if he was the butt of a joke. But the prince seemed to say it without spite. “Quite. Well, good night.”

  Usher Fell made it to the door before the laughter from the back booth rang out through the pub. The priest could not tell fo
r sure whether Ward Sennett had joined in, or whether in fact they were laughing at a poor old priest’s expense. And he preferred not to know. He did not look back.

  “I’m so sorry! Here, this is probably his,” the barmaid said, still giggling, handing the prince a folded piece of parchment. “Found it down there.” She waved generally at an indistinguishable patch of wet wooden flooring. “Might be something he wants.”

  “I’ll be sure to take that right to him,” the prince said with a knowing look that assured her he was quite, quite thankful.

  But he stuffed the paper in his pocket.

  “We have found the one you seek, Your Worthiness,” Sool Kron purred, with a nod.

  The Hezzan Skahl Dramm stood up from her throne. “Who? Where?” Talon had been seated here high above the city, looking out over the sea. She liked being here; this was where she belonged. Her eyes could see only her capital and the blue waters before it, but from this vantage point her mind could envision her entire empire, and watch as it expanded far beyond the horizon.

  Kron saw the light in her eyes. “I searched the kingdom, as you requested, leaving not a pebble undisturbed. I found him. He is a slave, or was, aboard a slaver, nearing the end of his useful life. Another week and we might have been too late.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He waits in your prison.”

  Her eyes turned dark. “Prison? No…he is a guest! Free him, feed him, bathe him, clothe him in crimson! His life is worth more than a hundred thousand Zealots to us now.”

  Kron grimaced. He should have guessed this. “Yes, Your Worthiness, immediately.”

  “When he is rested, bring him to me here.” She thought a moment. “No, not here…put him in my personal guest quarters, and when he is ready, I will go to him.”

  “Of course. All shall be prepared.” Kron turned to make it so.