by Trey Myr
“We need to go after them,” Marjory’s voice brought me out of my brooding.
“What?” It took me a minute to parse what she said.
“We need to go after them,” she repeated. “I have to help my brothers.”
“They took out the whole town without much trouble. Do you really think the two of us would be able to fight them?”
“I can’t just abandon them!”
“I get your point, Marjory. Shatter it, Richard might be a dick, but he’s still my brother and if he got taken too, I certainly don’t want to leave him with raiders. But what good are we going to be to them?”
“Couldn’t…” Mable’s hesitant voice stopped what could have turned into a shouting match, judging by Marjory’s thunderous expression. “Couldn’t we tell someone? There has to be someone who can help.”
“That’s… not a bad idea, really.” I mused. “A Shaper working with raiders is bad news, and the Whites, at least, will want to deal with them, since without Gerald’s Rest they’re a border city again. And I know they have a decent force.”
“We should at least see if we can find out where they’re going,” Marjory argued. “We’re a lot faster than anything the Whites have, and we might still have a trail to follow.”
I didn’t want to even consider trailing the army that razed my home town, but I had to concede Marjory’s point. The longer we waited, the harder the raiders would be to follow, and between getting to Whitecliff, the time it would take us to convince the Whites that there’s a real threat, and getting back to Gerald’s Rest, we’d be at least a week before we could start following them. And having a real target would definitely make it easier to get the Whites to mobilize.
“We’ll do it,” I nodded at my gunner. “We’ll try to find out where their base is, and then we’ll lead the Whites over to deal with them.”
The dwarf’s expression calmed down a little, and she thumped me on the shoulder in approval. We still had a few things to deal with before leaving. I had to make sure my brother was still alive, for one. And we still needed food and water, even if I cringed a bit at taking it from the Boar’s kitchen without paying. I also wanted to check the Forrester mansion before leaving. I was sure that the raiders had taken the Patterns with them, but I still had to look.
And there was one more thing.
“Mable…” I started.
“I’m coming with you!” The serving girl declared. She’d stopped crying and detached from me during my argument with Marjory, and I could see a determined expression on her tear streaked face. “You’re not leaving me alone here again!”
I tried to convince Mable to wait on the Swift while I checked the Forrester mansion and my brother’s bakery, but she refused to even consider it.
“I can’t be alone,” she shuddered after I suggested it. “I just… I can’t.”
In the end, she grasped my hand and held it for the entire time we remained in Gerald’s Rest, and only reluctantly released me when the three of us got back to the Boat and sailed on, and even then she stayed as close to me as possible after I took the wheel.
My brother’s bakery was empty. It didn’t necessarily mean he was still alive, but if I wanted to catch up to the raiders, I couldn’t afford to check the whole city and at least I could hope that they took him. The Forrester mansion had been stripped clean. The Patterns were gone, of course, but so was everything else that was even a little valuable. The mansion was obviously the greatest concentration of wealth in town, so it did make some sense for them to concentrate on it, but I was still confused that they ignored the rest of the town.
And I still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some significance to the fact that they’ve taken everyone older than eighteen and younger than twenty eight. There was something important about that age range, but I just couldn’t remember what it was.
We had one more stop to make before leaving town. We were running low on food, and taking time to hunt for food would mean taking longer to catch up to the raiders. I’d planned on buying food in Gerald’s Rest, but that was obviously not an option any more. It’d been long enough that the more perishable types of food had spoilt, but the Boar and Barrel still yielded enough salted, canned and smoked goods to see us through the chase. I felt bad about taking anything, but unfortunately Henry and Agnes were both long past their twenty eighth birthdays, and no longer had any need for anything left in the tavern.
Chapter 11 – The Chase
We didn’t know which direction the raiders took after leaving Gerald’s Rest, but they didn’t really have a lot of options, and the passage of so many people, not to mention the Ogres, had to leave a trail big enough that we’d be able to follow.
Looking from above, it was easy to see one such trail, and it led straight in the direction of the destroyed Outpost, so it wasn’t very hard to guess where the raiders came from. It was, however, the only such trail, which meant that they had to have left town in the same direction, back towards the wilds.
Following the trail meant that I had to keep the Swift low enough to see it, which in turn meant that we would be visible from the ground. Which was a problem, since I really didn’t want the raiders to know they were being followed. To prevent us from being seen, I sent the Hawks ahead of us to look for whatever rear guard that raiders had, and kept the Boat far enough behind that I’d be able to stop before we were seen.
Once we caught up, of course. Mable said that the attack happened two weeks before we got back to Gerald’s Rest, and while the raiders were doubtlessly slower than the Swift, it would still be at least a week before we could overtake them.
It was also impossible to sail at night. I would have liked to keep sailing with the Sailor at the wheel, but we needed to have enough light to actually see the trail, which meant that night travel was just not happening.
We also had to do some adjustments to sleeping arrangements. Marjory and I were used to sleeping on board the Swift, high enough above ground to be invisible and safe from nearly everything. What we didn’t have, however, was enough room for another cabin. Marjory already had her own cabin, which was taking up a large portion of the hold, and we still needed enough room for food and water. There was also part of the hold which was completely sealed between Marjory’s cabin and the part we used for storage. The Swift had closed it off to keep the Boat Pattern hidden, and I had no intention of opening it in the near future.
I was, by then, used to the Attire protecting me from the cold weather, and I offered to let Mable sleep in my cabin while I slept on deck, but she was still unwilling to get more than half a meter away from me, and it was definitely too cold for her to sleep outside.
Once again, the Swift came to our aid. She somehow absorbed the folding desk and the cot, and replaced both with a mattress that covered the entirety of the cabin floor. It made getting to the Deckhand Pattern very inconvenient, but in return it gave us just barely enough room for two people to sleep inside.
I was afraid of Marjory’s reaction to me and Mable sleeping together, but the dwarf just shrugged when she saw the new layout of my cabin, and made sure to kiss both me and Mable goodnight before heading to her own bed. I had no idea what to make of her behavior, but after the rush to reach Gerald’s Rest, seeing the town in ruins and worrying about my brother, I was far too wrung out and tired to give it much thought.
I lay down on the bed with Mable curled up against me with her head on my shoulder, and held her. I could feel her tense shoulders start to relax slowly, heard her breathing even out into the steady rhythm of sleep, and it wasn’t long before I joined her.
I was alone in the cabin when I woke up, and I could hear Marjory and Mable talking out on the deck. The sun was still barely peeking over the horizon, and it would be a few more minutes before we could see well enough to follow the raiders’ trail. I’d been planning on eating cold preserved food in order to save the time it would take to land and cook a real breakfast, but when I stepped out of th
e cabin I could see Marjory kneeling next to a pot, and it was obvious that she’d been using her fire aligned vim to heat up the contents, which Mable was busy stirring.
My Attire did a very good job at protecting me from the cold weather, but the smell of hot porridge on what promised to be an icy morning was a very welcome surprise. Especially since neither Marjory nor I were capable of anything more than the most basic of cooking, and that even the simple porridge Marble was preparing smelled like something that came out of Agnes’s kitchen.
The women had both fallen silent as soon as I opened the cabin door, and I started to worry that whatever problem was caused by Mable sleeping with me was less avoided and more postponed.
It hadn’t been long since Marjory and I first slept together after raiding the giant ant nest, but we’d been spending the evenings in each other’s arms since, even if the Swift’s size made actually sleeping together inconvenient enough that we still maintained separate cabins. And while we hadn’t talked about the precise nature of our relationship, it was clear that we were something more than just an employer and a mercenary, or a captain and his officer.
And I’d certainly seen much more solid and long term relationships ruined because a man, or sometimes a woman, had an eye for Mable.
I stood at the entrance to my cabin for a few seconds while Mable used the same spoon she stirred the pot with the taste the contents and nodded at Marjory to signal that the porridge was ready. The dwarf stood up and approached me, still without saying a word. I was getting more and more worried, and it seemed like it took her forever to walk the few meters between us.
After what seemed like years but couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds, Marjory was standing close enough that I had to look down to see her, and poked my belly with her finger.
“We’re keeping Mable,” my gunner said in a firm voice.
This was about as far from what I expected her to say as she could get, and I stammered for a moment, unable to answer her.
“Um, what?” I managed, eventually.
“When this business with the raiders is over, and we’ve found the missing people from the town, we’ll be going back to hunting the wilds for vim and loot, right?”
“Errr, yes?” I ventured, still utterly confused.
“Well, Mable is coming with us. A dwarf can only live on burnt wolf stew for so long before she wants some properly cooked food, and Mable will make a great ship’s cook.”
“It’s a boat, Marjory,” I pointed out. “And it barely has room for us. Besides, I’m sure Mable will prefer to get off at Whitecliff and find somewhere safe to work at.”
“Swifty will take care of us. Though once you rank up, you need to make a cabin big enough for all three of us,” the dwarf added, clearly for the Boat’s hypothetical ears. “And then I’m sure Mable can get off as much as she wants.”
I honestly had no idea how to even begin to answer that, and my stomach chose that point to announce that it would like some of that porridge now, please, so my only reply was “we can talk about this after we find the raiders and see if we can rescue the townsmen and your brothers.”
I passed by the dwarf and went to sit next to Mable, who handed me a bowl of delicious smelling porridge.
“Don’t let her steamroll you,” I told the serving girl, who was busy ladling out another bowl for Marjory. “I can’t get you to Whitecliff until we find where the raiders are going, but I certainly won’t force you to stay when we go back for reinforcements.”
“I’ll think about it,” she smiled shyly, and I was struck by the difference between the timid girl sitting next to me and the confident and seductive serving woman who’d been haunting my dreams for years. “I don’t know why, but I feel safe here. I’m not sure I’ll want to go to Whitecliff. I think I’ll just always be afraid that there would be another attack.”
She shuddered at the thought, handed Marjory her bowl, and started ladling a third one for herself.
“I’m just not sure why you two would want me here. You’re a Shaper with this wonderful Boat, and Marjory is your gunner, but I’m just a serving girl used to earning extra coin on my back.”
“Ship’s cook,” Marjory answered with her mouth full of porridge. It was far too hot for me to eat yet, but the dwarf wasn’t even a little bothered by the scalding food. “Swifty will get bigger soon, and we’ll get more crew, and they’ll all need to eat.”
“I don’t know where you get that,” I told the dwarf. “As far as I can tell, the Boat isn’t even close to ranking up. And we don’t have any idea how big she’ll get once she ranks up.”
I took a spoonful of porridge and blew on it to cool it down, then took a bite. Mable had added honey and cinnamon to the oatmeal, and a few more spices I couldn’t easily identify, but which gave the otherwise simple meal a richer, more satisfying taste.
“I will admit that having a cook around would be very welcome,” I added, before settling down to finish my unexpectedly tasty breakfast.
The only reason I missed the raiders’ trail on the way to Gerald’s Rest was that we were in a hurry to reach the town. Now that we were looking for it, it was obvious that dozens, if not hundreds, of people had passed by recently. The grass was completely trampled for at least fifty meters to either side of the Swift, leaving tracks that even a blind man could follow.
What I couldn’t see, however, was any sign of a camp. I estimated the Swift’s speed at around fifteen kilometers per hour, and we had ten hours of light to sail, which meant around a hundred and fifty kilometers per day of sailing, more than four times as fast as a soldier at forced march. Of course, raiders should be far from being able to march like a disciplined army, and raiders burdened by unwilling captives should have been slower still, which meant that we should have seen their camp after at most half a day of sailing.
“What’s bugging you?” Marjory asked me during lunch. Mable had once again taken advantage of the dwarf’s fire vim to assist her in cooking, and we were all sitting at the Swift’s bow so I could see the trail and command the Sailor while eating. “You’ve been sitting there and brooding since I started heating up the stew.”
“We should have seen the raiders’ campsite by now,” I answered. “They’re either moving a lot faster than they should be, or they’re marching throughout the night without stopping.”
“Does it matter? It’s not like we’re rushing to fight them before they reach wherever it is they’re going.”
“I still don’t like it. They shouldn’t be able to take out a town that easily, and yet they did. They shouldn’t be able to move faster than the Swift, and yet they do. Things just don’t add up.”
“Maybe we should call it off?” Mable joined in hesitantly.
“I can’t abandon my brothers,” Marjory shook her head vehemently. “They would have come after me, and I blasted well am going to come after them.”
“We can’t let them vanish into the wilds,” I added. “Not with the Forrester Patterns. If they can take out the Outpost and Gerald’s Rest like this, they’ll be a disaster with the Patterns.”
“We’re just going to see where they go,” Marjory reassured Mable. “We know that we can’t fight the kind of force that took out the town, so we’re not going to try.”
We fell into a brooding silence after this, and by the time the sun got low enough that we had to stop, we still hadn’t seen any evidence that the raiders had stopped to rest at any point. Dinner was a quiet and miserable affair, as I couldn’t help but consider what else the raiders might be capable of that I hadn’t accounted for, and if they might, somehow, know that we were following them.
Mable was still unwilling to sleep alone, and we shared my cabin again. Neither of us was in the mood for anything other than sleep, and I was starting to really miss the confident, seductive serving girl I knew before the attack. That Mable would have gotten me out of my funk with barely an effort.
✽✽✽
We were back at the Out
post around noon the next day, and I stopped the Swift briefly to pick up my Deckhands. They’d done a good job at burying the soldiers, and I think we were all very glad not to have to see the massacre again. There was still no indication that the raiders had stopped at any point, and while the Outpost was a lot less inhospitable with the soldiers’ bodies buried, we still didn’t linger and sailed on as soon as the Deckhands were on board.
It started raining when we left the Outpost, and the miserable weather matched our mood completely. Under the heavy clouds, darkness came even earlier than it normally did, and being unable to see the trail, we were forced to stop soon after.
“That is quite enough,” Marjory announced in the middle of another quiet dinner. Mable’s cooking continued to be much better than anything the dwarf or I could manage, but it still couldn’t manage to get our spirits up.
We were all huddled up under a canvas awning the Deckhands had attached to the front of my cabin. They’d have to take it down before we could sail again, but at least we could eat in a relatively dry place. Marjory placed her bowl on the deck and got up, then marched out into the rain, leaving Mable and me to wonder what set her off, and what she was doing.
We didn’t have to wonder long, since the dwarf was back a couple of minutes later, carrying a barrel nearly as tall as she was. A barrel I had no memory of bringing on board the Swift.
She set the barrel down next to us and took off the lid, and I could instantly smell the pungent odor of alcohol.
“I did not accept a position on this boat for us to sit around like the shattering is returning.”
“You didn’t exactly accept a position on this boat,” I countered and took a mug full of something that she handed me. “It was more like announcing that you were my gunner without me ever offering you the job.”
“That’s because it wasn’t you that offered,” the next mug went to Mable, who sniffed it carefully. “Swifty offered me the position, and I accepted.”
