“I don’t want to lose the chance of this ransom. We’d make a mistake to let this much coin slip through our fingers. Our dreams would slip away,” said the Captain. “Let’s get the boy safely on the boat. Then you and I will talk to Khirtan. We won’t admit we have the boy. We’ll get him to talk. Figure out his true intentions. Then we decide what to do. Please, Maja, you owe me that. You can’t ask me to give up my dreams without at least knowing.”
9
AN HOUR LATER, Maja and the Captain paddled a small canoe towards the campfires on the embankment. The rain had disintegrated to a foggy drizzle and what lightness once remained in the sky had darkened to near black. A cool wind cut across the sea blowing ocean froth off the crests of the waves.
Maja glanced behind her. The Sea Eagle’s mast and ropes creaked in the rocking sea. Garu was visible still, a featureless silhouette against the glow of the cabin lamp. Sri was well hidden in the cabin, last seen hunched over a bowl of reheated fried rice and salted fish scooping the food towards his mouth with his blood-stained fingers. The boy had not even looked up when she had said that he was to wait while she returned to the shore.
A sudden gust of wind sprayed water on her back and neck. Her heart suddenly raced. She was putting all her trust in Captain Pak right now, and she wanted to believe that his strategy was the right one, but she had seen the rotten heart of Khirtan. She knew the depths into which he would burrow to serve his master.
“We’ll only talk to Khirtan? That’s all we’ll do?” asked Maja peering over her shoulder at the Captain, who paddled at the rear of the canoe.
His face was lost in shadow. “We’ll figure this out. Get the coin. Get away from all this.”
“I still think we’re making a mistake. They’re going to kill the boy. I can feel it.”
Captain Pak laughed. “He’ll have to kill the whole lot of us to do that. Trust me. You overestimate him. I’ve seen men like him in the past and I know how to deal with him. I didn’t survive all these years on the edge of the Empire doing what I do without knowing how to handle a blow hard.”
“We say nothing about having the boy, right?” She pulled her paddle out of the water and turned around so she was facing him.
“Do I look like an idiot?”
“I don’t like this. I have a bad feeling. Khirtan, we can’t trust him. We should turn back. Gather the men to the Sea Eagle. Leave as soon as possible.”
“Too late,” he said pointing his paddle towards the shore.
She looked. The men around the campfires had risen, and several of them, yellow-armored, approached the breakwater. The others did not move from the fires, but huddled and sprawled in the shelter of the lean-tos.
Captain Pak waved his paddle overhead. “It’s me, boys.”
A pair of the Duke’s men stomped through the waves, the water exploding with each step. More yellow-armored men rose. Maja tried to peer past them to see why the pirates were also not roused but the approaching men blocked her view. The other pirates should have been up greeting their captain. Khirtan sat in a lean-to near the shore, the flickering firelight revealing a thin smile stretched across his face. He had recognized her.
Maja leapt out of the boat and into waist-deep water.
Captain Pak cursed as he struggled with the suddenly rocking boat. “What are you doing?”
“They’re not getting up,” she said pointing past the soldiers to the pirates lying on the beach.
The Captain looked and he too jumped out of the boat. But it was too late. A half dozen of Khirtan’s men arced in front of them, spears clutched in their hands. Maja glanced back at their ship, Garu motionless on the prow. She likely could swim faster than the soldiers, even with her leather armor vest, but the moment she turned or ducked beneath the water, spears would be thrust and hurled. They were too close for her to escape, and they had already seized the Captain by the arms and pulled him back towards the beach.
Four of them stood before her, the water lapping against their fungal armor.
“He just wants to talk,” said one of them. “We want the boy.”
“Who is the boy? Why is he so important?”
The man shrugged.
Maja stepped forward and the men closed as if to seize her by the elbows. She grabbed her swords and pulled them several inches from their scabbards. “I’ll come but touch me and you die.”
Khirtan waited beneath the shelter of the lean-to. The human bones piercing his face glowed white. He sat on a stump, his long legs pulled up near his chest, and slapped another seat beside him. He smiled. He turned a staff of gray, rotting wood over and over in his hands. “Join me. We’ll chat.”
She ignored him and scanned the pirates clumped on the ground. They looked unharmed. No visible wounds. Breathing deeply as if in sleep.
Captain Pak made to speak but Khirtan lifted a hand. “I drugged their wine.”
Maja repressed a shiver. She remembered the days hanging from the iron manacles, the gasping thirst, the cup brought to her lips, the water sickeningly sweet from some fungal toxin, then the haze of needles, knives, and saws, the distant echo of her companions screaming.
She reached for her blades. Better to go out beneath the drop of swords.
“I’ll let them wake in the morning,” said Khirtan. He switched the staff in his hands and leaned forward. “But if you draw those blades, they’ll wake to the gulls tearing their intestines out.”
Maja paused. Khirtan lied. He always lied. This she knew. She also knew that whether she drew the swords or not those men would wake with their bellies sliced open. She had to figure a path out of this mess: save the drugged pirates, escape the Duke’s soldiers, and get the boy away from Khirtan.
“What do you want?” asked Captain Pak.
“The boy. Nothing more.” Khirtan spoke to the Captain but he kept his gaze upon Maja.
“Why’s he so important to you?”
Khirtan twisted one of the bones piercing his cheek. “He’s important to the Duke. He matters nothing to me. But I do need him.”
“And the Duke? What will he do with him?”
“Do you have the boy?” asked Khirtan looking past the Captain at Maja. His gaze sent a chill up her spine.
“What will you do to him?” asked Captain Pak.
Maja surveyed the beach around them. The soldiers had retreated to form a wide circle. They were far enough away that they could not all attack her at once, which meant that if she and the Captain were quick that they might be able to cut their way out of their captors. Maja eyed the dark stretch of sand leading towards the forest spot where she and the boy had hid. Once inside the dense foliage, they would be impossible to track, especially at night. She turned towards the Captain to give him a signal.
Then her gaze drifted to the drugged men. They would not see the dawn. She really owed them nothing. They were not sworn blood brothers. But she knew what Khirtan would do to them. She could not allow this.
“The boat,” said Khirtan. He pushed off his knees and unfolded to his full height. He towered even above Maja. He pointed his rotten staff to the sea. “The boy is on the boat, isn’t he?”
“How much coin?” asked Captain Pak.
Khirtan strode forward so that he passed between Maja and the Captain. Too close for her comfort. She fought against the cold prickling sensation that engulfed her skin. “Too late for that.”
Without warning, Khirtan whirled about, lashing out his staff. Maja reacted without thought, rolling to the ground and in a single motion drawing both swords. Even so Khirtan nearly hit her with the staff, the rotting wound coming so close that the breeze of its passage lifted her hair.
Captain Pak was not so quick and the staff smashed his shoulder. But rather than knocking him down as Maja would have expected, the wood exploded into a cloud of ochre dust. The Captain raised both hands too late to defend himself.
Khirtan reversed his swing. Maja leapt back to avoid the dust flying off the shattered staff. She gri
maced as the air filled with the sour stench of ferment. Some alchemical fungus.
Captain Pak groaned. His face was caked in the spore dust. Maja waited for him to draw his sword and charge at Khirtan. That was the Captain she knew, the man she followed. But instead, Captain Pak coughed. He held his trembling fingers before his eyes. He wheezed and sputtered, white spittle flying from between purpling lips.
Khirtan, laughing, strolled towards him. Captain Pak, still trembling, made no motion to reach for his sword, his hands before his spore-covered face. Then the muscles of his legs suddenly tightened and his knees locked as if he stood on a ship tossed at sea. He turned towards Maja, lips moving, struggling to form words. Then his eyes rolled to white and he collapsed to the sand.
The swords quaked in Maja’s hands. She wanted to charge at Khirtan. To cut him down on the sands. To be done with his vileness forever. But she could not move. Her legs felt as if her feet were buried beneath the sand and her muscles constricted as if they were about to freeze up.
The swords trembled so fiercely in her hands that she thought that the blades might fly out of her grips. Then she saw why. The fungal spore, the foul powder that had burst out of the staff, stained her hands.
She sucked in air. An invisible hand tightened around her throat.
Khirtan laughed. He looked at his soldiers and thrust a hand towards the sea. “Get to the boat. Bring the boy back. We have a prize to deliver.”
The men rushed past Maja, keeping enough distance from her trembling swords. While her body was not quite paralyzed, she did not have full control over it. Instead, she stumbled over the sand, tottering with each step, in the direction of the waves.
Khirtan laughed again. “Going somewhere, my sweet? After I kill the boy, we’ll finish what I started with you. Bring you back to my chambers. Put an end to what we started years ago. The White Demon will finally be sent back to hell.”
Maja tried to flee but tripped over the dunes and fell hard with a grunt. A few body lengths away the warm sea hissed over the sands. The stench of rotten fungus enveloped her. The silhouettes of the trees tilted and spun. Each breath rasped between her lips. On top of that, she was suddenly overwhelmed with an irresistible desire to sleep. Her eyelids fluttered and dropped trying to welcome her into darkness and irresistible slumber but she knew that if she succumbed to the effects of the toxic spore that she would wake in a nightmare with ropes bound around her wrists and ankles and the last thing she would see in this life would be Khirtan with his sharp instruments of death. She could not give in. She dragged herself, swords in hand, towards the waves. Maybe if she could wash the spores from her face and skin she could recover. Then Khirtan would meet the Sun and Moon Swords. He would pay for everything he had done to her and her Sword Demon brothers and sisters. The balance would swing back in favor of justice instead of tyranny.
She was an arm’s length away from the lapping water when she was kicked so hard in the ribs that she was lifted up off her hands and knees.
Khirtan stood over her. He kicked again and she curled into a ball. The pain was excruciating. Hot bolts of pain raced up her ribs. But worse than the pain was that his blow had knocked her swords from her hands.
“If you insist,” he said, “I can finish this now. But I’d rather not. So unsatisfying.”
She tore her fingers into the sands trying to drag herself towards her swords. After all this, to die at the hands of Khirtan. After all this, to die without her swords.
She stretched toward her swords. They seemed impossibly far away as if the world stretched. With her swords, she could not defend herself. But she refused to let him think that he defeated her. She turned to spit at him.
Khirtan towered above her, the undulating blade of a kris dagger in his fist, his lips curled in a snarl. He raised his hand, ready to drive it down, ready to finish what he had started years ago.
Maja spat. A blur crossed the sand. Khirtan folded sideways, let out of sharp bark, and flew into the waves. Someone tangled with Khirtan. Maja followed the two figures with her gaze as they tumbled in the water. A sudden thud stopped the fight and a shadowy shape rose from the sea.
Maja’s vision blurred. She stretched for her swords. She would not go down without a fight.
A calloused hand closed around her wrist and dragged her towards the water. She could only make out shapes, the trees, the dark line of the sea, the figure bent over her. He spoke but she could not decipher the words.
He thrust her head beneath the water and dragged her face across the sandy bottom. Fingers intertwined in her hair and she was lifted for a sudden gasping breath before she was plunged in the water again. A palm wiped her face.
She recognized Hanu’s smile. Her throat bubbled with emotion but her lips fumbled numbly. He plunged her face beneath the water again.
She was pulled up again. Garu’s silhouette perched unmoving on the ship against the slow paddle of canoes towards him.
Maja heard words spill from her lips. “The boy! He’s on the boat! We need to protect him!”
Yellow-armored men furiously paddled their canoes back towards the shore.
“Get up!” screamed Hanu. He dragged her by the hair until she stood on her knees. She panted. She ran her hands over her face. The spore was gone. Hanu had rescued her.
She rose to her feet and stumbled. The toxin still surged through her body. Her hands shook uncontrollably and tears streamed down her cheeks. Hanu appeared double before her.
Hanu grabbed her arm and jerked her in the direction of the jungle. “We’ve gotta go. Now.”
She tore her arm free. Captain Pak lay crumpled on the beach near the campfires. Khirtan, his face covered in blood and sand, had lifted himself to all fours and crawled back towards the canoes and his men.
Maja took a step towards him and fell to one knee. She puked burning vomit. The bottoms of the canoes scraped against sand.
“We have to kill him!” howled Maja.
Soldiers leapt out of the boats, splashing into the water.
“Run, Maja, run!” Hanu dragged her to her feet but not before she had scooped up both swords and while for a single small moment she thought to turn back to the Duke’s men, she instead stumbled wildly across the sands – leaving the Captain, abandoning the boy – and followed Hanu into the dark uncertainty of the jungle.
10
THE RAIN POUNDED relentlessly from the dark skies. The thick canopy overhead did nothing to mute the sting of the drops. Maja huddled beneath a giant leaf held overhead.
Hanu sat some distance away from her, squatting against the trunk of a tree, his own leaf stretched between hand and hook. He stared in the direction they had come, into the chaotic tangle of brush and vine. She followed his gaze but the only thing she saw were small leaves trembling beneath the raindrops.
She inhaled deeply. The ground here smelled of freshly turned earth, a heady sweetness of worms and beetles. She fought the uneasy sensation that if they stayed in this spot too long, the worms would turn towards them and the beetles would alight on their shoulders, pincers tearing at flesh.
After Hanu dragged Maja off the beach rescuing her from Khirtan, they had run, or rather stumbled, through the jungle. Luckily the storm and the night hid their passage. Hid them from the close and furious pursuit of the Duke’s men. At first, Maja had not been sure they would get away. The voices of the men had been close, magnified in the darkness of the jungle as if the men breathed down their necks, but after some time the voices faded beneath the hiss of the rains and the howling wind. Hanu had insisted that they keep moving, and even though Maja was exhausted, she followed him until they reached the small knoll on which they now hid beneath the spreading limbs of a giant banyan tree.
The paralysis and double vision brought about by the spore magic slowly trickled out of her body. Only now as they rested, Maja could move her limbs freely and the strength had returned.
Everything had gone wrong. She had only meant to protect the boy from th
e Duke and his men. She had made a mistake swimming out to the Sea Eagle and an even bigger mistake returning to the camp at the shore. She never should have let Captain Pak with his dream of the idyllic blue lagoon convince her to meet up with the torturer. If it weren’t for Hanu coming when he did, she would be tied between stakes, watching Khirtan limp towards her, his tools clattering with each step.
She choked back a bubbling sob.
“The spore still bothering you?” asked Hanu. She could hardly make out his shape in the near blackness.
“I fucked up,” she said.
“You should have just fled with the boy,” said Hanu. “Going to Captain Pak was a mistake. You know him. All the coin he can gather into his arms. Now we’re even deeper in this shit.”
Maja closed her eyes. The screams of the dungeon filled her ears. She imagined Sri on the beach, ankles and wrists bound, stretched between stakes driven into the sands. She imagined the cuts already made, his skin peeled back, organ and muscle exposed, a growing stain of dark sand around him.
“We need to go back,” she said, opening her eyes and standing.
“Oh, you are crazy.”
She threw the leaf to the ground. The rain washed over her face, hard painful drops. “We can’t leave the boy.”
“Actually we can.”
“They’re going to kill him. We can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
Hanu stared at the pooling water on the ground beneath his feet. “Let them take him. We hide out here until they push their ship back into the waves. We salvage what we can and we move on.”
“You said it before that the boy is our way back to the God-Emperor. Don’t you want that?”
“I don’t know any more. I mean I do, but… Maja, we can’t just walk back down to that beach. I’m not willing to die for this.”
“You came back for me.”
He stared at his feet.
“The boy means something to them,” said Maja. “We can’t let them get their way.”
The Rise of the Fallen (The Rotting Empire Book 1) Page 7
