“I knew I had to get to open sea afore the Maw finished the job, so I ordered the mains to half—the most I dared open her up in such wind. Even that was temptin’ fate, for I’s lucky to have kept me masts as long as I had.
“So I cleared the channel and limped away from the isles. Shortly the winds blew themselves out and the seas calmed—relatively, o’course—so I ordered the mains to full and looked back to the warship, who was just breastin’ the mouth o’ the strait.
“Now, I don’t know if the Crafter was smilin’ on me or the Maw was ill for me whuppin’ her again. But as the warship breasted the channel, she dipped prow first into the waves. When she righted again, she wobbled a mite, and started to keel over! She must’a scrubbed at the same spot I had and, sittin’ much lower, she ripped her innards out.
“I started a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ and a-wavin’ me hat. Me men musta thought I’d taken leave o’ me senses, for they rushed up to me. Then, seein’ the wreck o’ the Earthen Rank vessel, they commenced to takin’ leave o’ their senses as well! Ah, but it was grand...”
Sal, who’d been completely engrossed in Mikel’s story, laughed and applauded his host’s triumph.
“Aye, ‘twas quite a time,” Mikel admitted, basking in the glory of earlier years. “We finally limped into port, where the Headman o’ Deitrich welcomed me passengers with open arms. Seems he was a fan o’ King Titus hisself.”
“Did you ever see them again?” Sal asked.
“The Count? Oh, aye. You could say we was closer’n stitchin’ for the rest o’ his life.”
Sal caught the note of sadness in the old man’s reminiscent smile. “What happened?”
“What always happens,” the old pirate answered with a too-casual shrug, staring long into his cup. “The Highest caught up with him, killed him and his wife.”
“Not the kids?”
Mikel shook his head. “Nah, they was off sailin’ the high seas with good ol’ Uncle Mik when their parents met the Crafter. ‘Twasn’t long after that I left the waters to younger folk, and settled in Deitrich to care for the tots.”
“Are they still alive? What happened to them?”
“Anika, the daughter, turned up missin’ about fifteen years ago. When she was twelve, a local mage found her possessed o’ the gift o’ magic, so he helped her ascend. My, how her sapphire eyes sparkled with pride! ‘Twas good for her, aye. Gave her an outlet for all the pain o’ the years, and maybe even a wee hope o’ revenge someday. Anyways, the mage trained her ‘til she was seventeen, when she surpassed him. So I shipped her off to Bastion, get her schooled up proper, don’tcha know.” The old man paused, offered up a sigh, then added, “She disappeared a month later. The boys and I ain’t seen her since.” He chased his words with a sip of brandy.
Sal sat in respectful silence for a moment before asking about her brothers.
The old man chuckled. “Well, the boys, both a shade younger than Anika, each had their own way o’ dealin’ with the pain. One turned to his noble blood, the other turned to... less noble pursuits. But they were good lads, angry at the world but birthin’ no greater trouble than other boys their age. That all changed when Anika disappeared. They felt—and mayhap rightly so—that the Highest had taken her as he’d taken their parents. So they turned their anger on him, each in his own manner. Good ol’ boys though they are, it tickled ‘em to be thorns in his flesh, aye… makin’ their way the only way they know how,” he said with a wink and a proud grin.
“‘That’s just a little bit more than the law will allow’,” Sal sang to himself absently.
It was a wonderful tale, but something in the old man’s eyes suggested that there was more to the story. He was toying with Sal, holding something back, apparently something that Sal should know. Having come that far, Sal took the bait.
“What are you not telling me? Did I miss something?”
“Aye,” the old man laughed, slapping his knee. “I’d say ye have.”
Mikel just chuckled and watched Sal with an amused eye, obviously not going to give up his secret that easily. “Well, what is it?” Sal demanded impatiently.
The sailor-cum-furrier took a steadying breath, easing his laughter. He took another sip of his brandy—a long pull, slow and easy—smacking his lips at the last. “Give a boat her head, me boy, and she’ll catch the wind,” he assured with a slight dramatic flourish, then settled back to enjoy Sal’s confusion.
Frustrated, Sal went over the story, shaking out any solid facts he could remember. Let’s see... Displaced nobles. Rebels. Count of House Nograh. Aitaxen. Outlaws.
Brothers.
The brothers du’Nograh!
“Reit and Retzu!” Sal exclaimed.
The old man burst into renewed laughter, clapping his hands. “A brilliant bit o’ deduction, milord mage, sure’n it is. And as yer prize, ye get the honor o’ cleanin’ out me cookin’ kettle.” With that, Mikel refilled his brandy cup and stretched out on his bedroll, still chuckling.
Sal’s mind whirled as he hitched up the kettle, lugging it to a nearby stream. As he worked, pieces began to fall into place. The passionate brother, angry at the world, sees the Highest as the law of the land, so attacks him from outside the law. He maybe even steals from the rich, more out of spite than to feed himself. When he gets old enough, he joins the Silent Blade and learns the arts of the shol’tuk adherent, which he hopes one day to use to defeat the Highest.
The sensible brother, on the other hand, remembers his nobility. He goes back to his homeland, to his fathers holdings, where his people would surely embrace him, keep him safe. Buoyed on the love and admiration of his subjects, he is empowered. He organizes his scattered people, and tries to rekindle his father’s dream of freedom.
Remembering King Titus and his court, the people of Aitaxen and the surrounding areas rally behind the idealistic young noble, swearing fealty to him. Rather than allow Reit to become a martyr for his newborn ‘Cause’, the Highest makes him an outlaw, probably placing a bounty on his head, payable only if Reit is captured alive. With Reit imprisoned, the rebellion would fizzle, the people too afraid of losing their revered leader to provoke the Highest.
But before the Highest can lay hands on Reit, Retzu returns to Aitaxen. Together, they go into hiding. Retzu, now a skilled assassin, teaches the rebels how to evade the forces of the Highest, and live among the general populace undetected. Reit’s people go into hiding with the brothers, and the Resistance is born.
Sal sat down heavily, his half-scrubbed pot forgotten. He had to be wrong. Reit’s way too young, he thought, rechecking his math in his head. If Anika was seventeen when she disappeared, and her disappearance moved the brothers to align themselves against the Highest, then they would have been teenagers when the Resistance was born!
Sal reeled. How could a dang kid start a rebellion?
“Joan of Arc,” he muttered, answering his own question. Joan of Arc hadn’t been much more than a kid herself—about nineteen—when she led the French people against the English invaders. And Reit was younger still—fifteen or sixteen—and traveling alone when he met his future wife on a boat headed upriver toward Bayton, likely on the very trip that ended with him taking up a dead king’s rebellion. So, improbable? Maybe, but not impossible.
Sal suddenly felt a wave of pity for his friend. Such responsibility, at so young an age. So much pain. So alone.
He found a new respect for his friend, and he dwelt on the revelation long into the night. He couldn’t help but wonder... if he’d lived the same life as Reit, had to suffer the same hurts, would he come out of it even half as strong?
***
Sal and Mikel ambled eastward along the highroad for almost two weeks. Conversation came easy to them, and both enjoyed the talks thoroughly, but Sal always felt a bit guilty about how one-sided the conversations were. Sal liked the old codger, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell Mikel the truth of how he wound up in that prison cell. It wasn’t that he didn’t tru
st the old man—far from it. But without Jaren there to corroborate his story, he was afraid he’d come across as being a few rounds shy of a full clip. So he just parried most questions about himself with a vague “you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Eventually, Mikel stopped asking. He liked to talk about himself anyway, so any offense that Sal might have incurred with his secrecy was short-lived.
But the closer they came to the city at the end of the highroad, Scholar’s Ford, the more Sal began to worry about problems with his identity. How could he, a man from a completely alien culture, hope to find a place even in the melting pot that the Ford was reputed to be?
Luckily, the old man had been thinking along the same line. “Beggin’ yer pardon, but ye don’t seem at home in yer duds. I can’t say where yer from, but sure’n ye ain’t from any place from around here. And if it caught me eye, sure’n it’ll catch a few others. So ye needs somethin’ to ward off any unwanted attention.” The last he said more to himself than anyone, thumbing his chin thoughtfully as he held the reins loosely in one hand. After a moment, a mischievous light caught his eye, and Sal felt his belly knot up in dread. “How’d ye like to be Earthen Rank, me boy?” Mikel asked a bit too cheerfully.
Sal goggled at the old man. “How the heck would I pull something like that off?” He cut his question off abruptly, just short of saying that he wasn’t even from this world. No use in sending the old man for a loop this close to Scholar’s Ford. “I don’t know a thing about the Earthen Rank.”
“Not much to know,” Mikel shrugged. “Ye’d be a mage pressed into service on the field o’ battle. If me memory serves, there’s a mite of an uprisin’ in the Southern Plains, ‘bout a week west of Eastwind Delta. Nothin’ much to speak of, but it’s as good a place to start as any. Also explains why yer Unmarked.”
“Huh? What do you mean, unmarked?”
“No, no, no... Unmarked,” Mikel repeated, placing a certain emphasis on the word, giving it a feeling of status, of rank. “A mage is considered Unmarked if he is Rank but has not completed his military trainin’ at one o’ the Earthen Rank Camps. Completion o’ such trainin’ is marked by the Segmented Fist bein’ tattooed on the soldiers forehead. And Bastion boasts one o’ the best Camps in the Mainland, so it’s less’n nothin’ to find an Unmarked seekin’ passage from Scholar’s Ford to Bastion. As well it should be the best Camp, havin’ the Granite Spire there to oversee things.” The old man grimaced as if he’d eaten something bad, then pressed on. “As a Rank soldier, ye should be able to spin a convincin’ story without too many eyes lookin’ at ye queer-like.”
“You really think I can pull it off?”
“Passin’ for a soldier? Oh, aye, lad. In a pinch. Yer departure from Caravan should be enough to school ye. Although,” Mikel paused, scratching his right cheek just under his orbit, “we’ll need to see about that there.”
His eye! Sal had almost forgot about his natural eye. Having ascended in Caravan, a group that had already accepted him as a stranger, and then crossing paths with Mikel, he’d never given any thought to how the world in general would react to a mage that had only one gemstone eye, and a diamond one at that. But with Mikel’s mentioning, all Sal could do was think about it. And none of those thoughts were good ones.
“We won’t reach the outskirts o’ the Ford for another few days yet,” the old man said casually. He seemed for all the world to just take it for granted that everything would be alright. Sal just looked at him with a kind of mixture of loathing and envy, wishing he could have that kind of confidence, and hating him that he could pull it off so smoothly. “Give ye plenty o’ time to come up with a good story, aye. Wish I could help ye, but I never knew much o’ the arcane. T’weren’t me cup o’ blackbrew, don’tcha know. I prefer a more hands-on method meself. What I can do for ye now...”
Reaching behind him, the old man rifled through one of the myriad dusty packs. How Mikel could tell one pack from another was a complete mystery to Sal. But in a moment, his leathery face lit with delight. “Aha! There ye are!” He withdrew his hand from the pack, pulling out a wide doeskin strap and handing it to Sal. “That should give ye a few ideas, so it should.”
At first, Sal wasn’t sure what to think. He just held up the tattered soft-leather strip and turned it this way and that in his hands, wondering what it was the tottering old codger had in mind. And then it hit him.
“An eye patch,” he said, half wondering, half confused. It would certainly satisfy the occasional mundane who would look at him curiously, but considering the secondary visual spectrum inherent to any gemstone mage, he still wasn’t sure how he would pull such a thing off.
“Oh, not to worry, lad,” Mikel said, waving his hand dismissively at Sal’s unspoken confusion. “Not to worry. Yer pretty swift, and ye got better’n a day or two to work on it. I got no doubts ye’ll come up with something. If ye don’t, ye’ll likely die a horrible death. Amazing how somethin’ like that can inspire great ideas...”
***
Midway through the third week, they came to a certain knoll. Though a bit higher than most, Sal saw nothing different about this hill, highlighted in the late afternoon sun though it were, but Mikel seemed more animated. At the crest of the hill, he saw why.
The highroad unwound before them, leading down a gentle slope toward the river port of Scholar’s Ford, still a good ten miles distant and larger than life.
The city had a great wall around it, with roads leading in to it from the north, west, and south. On its eastern border was a sizable river, with an enormous bridge stretching from the city to the far side of the water. Smaller satellite villages could be seen up and down the banks on both sides, with ferry boats running to and from the far shore.
They continued downhill toward the city, and traffic began to pick up as smaller tributaries fed into the highroad. Hub city that it was, the roads leading to and from Scholar’s Ford were packed with farmers, merchants, smiths, artisans, minstrels, mages—buyers and sellers, all coming to the Ford to do business.
Sal may have been a country boy, but he was American. He was no stranger to capitalism, and the crowded streets that personified it. Even from so far away, he was able to pick a muffled din of the humanity that flooded the Ford, and in a way it was comforting to be back amongst people he understood, at least on some level. Mikel, on the other hand, started fidgeting nervously, getting more and more anxious with each passing mile.
The highroad continued to fill, packing the crowd tighter around the wagon as it neared the city. One boy, in awe of the sights before him, accidentally let go of the chicken he’d been holding. The bird’s flight plan took it right into Mikel’s face, beating him almost senseless with a flurry of beaks, claws, and feathers.
That was it. “Confound it all,” Mikel muttered irritably as he reined the mule in, stopping dead in the middle of the highroad, and started spewing every excuse that came to mind. “It’s me furs, ye understand,” he said at one point. “Sure’n I can’t leave me livelihood unattended long. ‘Twould be me ruination, aye.” But the old man’s eyes kept flicking toward the bustling town, and Sal saw the truth of the matter. A wanted man tends to stay away from civilization. Especially one who’s a bit rusty at hiding “in the Highest’s own shadow, don’tcha know”. He could say what he wanted, but Sal knew different. The old man had been out of the game too long.
Sal clapped Mikel’s shoulder fondly, and gave a reassuring smile, which Mikel returned sheepishly. Sliding to the ground, Sal reached back into the wagon and retrieved his pack and sword. Mikel hopped down to join him.
He had dressed in the dead mage’s leather armor that morning, so he was already in character for the role he would be playing. Sal slung his sword and attached it firmly to his back, then shouldered his pack. Mikel handed him a bulging coin purse—”Ye never know when ye’ll need a pint, aye.”—which Sal secured to his belt. Finally, he tied the leather eye patch over his natural eye, completing his disguise.
�
�I take it ye’ve thought o’ somethin’ to say ‘bout that?” Mikel asked.
“Yeah. I had an accident when I was younger, which took my eye. When I was brought to the local emerald for healing, I ascended to the Emerald Tile. In the process, my left eye went gemstone while my right eye never healed to the point that I could use it again. Rather than try to heal it again, I keep it this way as a reminder of my past mistakes.”
“Say... yer pretty good at spinnin’ a tale, so ye are,” the old codger breathed in awe. “I’d almost believe it meself, if’n I didn’t know th’ better.”
Sal shrugged off the praise self-consciously. “Hey, Mik, thanks for everything you’ve done for me. You know you didn’t have to.”
“Bah, and away with ye,” the old man said, waving away the gratitude as if unwarranted. “Now, be sure ye keep hold o’ yer emerald magic. I still ain’t sure’n how ye’re able to let go of it and all, but don’t ye be doin’ it in public. Trouble’s best uninvited.”
“Oh, aye, ye drilled it into me brain so as I hear it in me sleep now, don’tcha know,” Sal chuckled in his best Mikel voice, garnering a hearty laugh from the elder outlaw. The old man had admonished him on more than one occasion to maintain a firm grip on his magic. For Sal to release his hold on Emerald at an inopportune moment would bring the kind of attention that an outlaw would just as soon not have.
“Ye make powerful sure ye give me boys a howdy-do from the old man, aye?” he reminded, pumping Sal’s hand warmly as the good-byes drew to a close.
“I’ll do that,” Sal promised, then turned toward the teeming city, waving over his shoulder as he walked away.
“Fare thee well, me boy! Take care!” Mikel shouted, waving at the swiftly receding figure as he entered the throng, flowing inexorably toward the Ford. Had Sal been able to hear over the din, he might have heard the old man’s voice morph into one decidedly younger, picking up a hint of long yellowed accents that Navy Lieutenant James Salvatori would have recognized immediately. “I’ll be seein’ ya soon, sir. Betcha dollars ta doughnuts.”
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