Written in Blood

by Span, Ryan A.

  I couldn't remember much of what happened after. A number of rocks hit me, body, legs, head. I saw one sailor impaled like a rag doll. Another ‒ our captain ‒ was sucked out to sea by the treacherous currents. I screamed, but my voice was lost between the swells and the howling wind.

  I saw Sir Erroll making the swim of his life, dragging his squire with him. Yazizi hung on to the shattered remains of the boat with bitter determination to cut all the animals free. Most of our horses never stood a chance. The truly spirited ones thrashed among the breakers and desperately battled their way towards the shore.

  Adar quickly disappeared below the surface. He didn't know how to swim.

  What happened to the others, I didn't know, until I awoke on the beach. Lungfuls of salt water violently left my body, great wracking coughs that rattled all the way down my body. My eyes wouldn't focus. Most of me was bleeding. How on Earth had I survived?

  The woman's face swam into focus above me. Her hood was pulled back, so droplets of rain and spray danced from her hair. She put a hand to my cheek, shockingly warm against my skin, red lips pursed with worry. I hadn't realised I was cold, but that touch threw it into razor-sharp perspective. I was soaked to the bone. I wrapped my arms tight around myself and discovered it didn't help at all.

  “Karl,” she whispered. She sounded intensely relieved, even glad. “I've been looking everywhere for you. How do you feel?”

  More water came up before I could even think about answering her. Coughing, I sputtered, “Like a corpse.”

  “You look alive enough for me. Let's get you out of the wind, soldier.”

  She took my arm and helped me to my feet. The world spun and distorted in front of my eyes, so that the sharp grey fjords looked miles high. Step by step I let myself be guided to a cave plunging into the rock face. It was mostly filled with water, deep pools you could lose a hip in, but drier than anywhere else on this beach.

  I found Faro already there, stretched out unconscious next to a small, waterlogged fire, his head laid on top of a salvaged pack. Yazizi knelt by his side, methodically drying his skin with a rag. Penn came in and out, dragging more of our sodden equipment under cover. Two horses ‒ Zayara and the woman's mare ‒ were tied to a boulder by the cave mouth. Joined, I noted in open-mouthed astonishment, by Aemedd's bedraggled yet smug-looking camel. What did it take to kill that awful monster?

  The woman gave me a sloshing bottle of wine, already uncorked. The same bottle I'd bought in Dunoghan. I lifted it to my lips and drank like a man dying of thirst. It tasted like one part seawater to two parts sour red, but right then it was like manna from heaven. Warmth slowly spread out from my stomach to my frozen fingers and numb toes.

  “Who is still missing?” I asked, my mind beginning to clear.

  “Sir Erroll. Adar. The Professor is on one of the big rocks out in the surf, and he refuses to risk the swim. The sailors... We've found bodies. One of them might still be alive somewhere, but I doubt he'd want to throw in with us.”

  I found myself sitting down without any memory of doing it. However, I wasn't too far gone to make myself useful. I fought off a wave of dizziness as I pushed to my feet. “If Aemedd's not in any immediate danger, we can worry about him later. We should get all the supplies we can get our hands on before they're washed away. We'll keep our eyes open for the knight and the boy in the meantime.”

  She smiled like a teacher whose prize pupil had just said something terrifically dim. “That's what we've been doing without you, Karl, and we weren't about to stop.”

  Flushing red, I nodded. The lady was in charge. I shouldn't treasure any illusions to the contrary, because she would always be two steps ahead of me, if not four or five.

  I took another long pull of the wine bottle and threw myself back into the rain. If anything, the weather on the beach was worse than out on the water, and the loose footing made for a treacherous walk. It was like wading through porridge, if the oats were hard as rocks and covered in sharp edges. The icy sea lapped at my ankles and tried to knock me over almost as much as the gale-force gusts of wind. Every few seconds, another flash of lightning would ignite the sky, followed by blasts of thunder so loud they rattled my teeth. We were right next to the heart of the storm.

  The salvage ‒ an oilcloth package here, a flask there, and a hundred bits of individual flotsam ‒ didn't amount to much, but that didn't discomfit me too much. As an experienced campaigner I kept everything I really valued close at hand. My well-weighted purse was safe inside my tunic. My weapons stayed on my belt, cinched tight, except my spear. That rankled, but it would be easy enough to replace. The only thing I didn't have was my...

  My breastplate.

  Panic surged into every limb. My heart accelerated from a trot to full gallop, pulsing behind my eyes. I dropped everything I'd collected. Nothing else mattered while I ran clumsily up and down the beach. Part of me wanted to call out, as if the thing could shout back.

  Logic dictated it should've been at the bottom of the sea by now. Instead, it was lying half-buried in the loose grit not far from where I'd woken up. The leather straps had snapped, probably while I was tumbling in the violent surf, tearing the plate from my body. Despite getting submerged in salt water and lying exposed on the beach, the bronze shone as bright as ever.

  I cradled it, trembling with relief. Then I went to gather up everything I'd dropped, using the plate as a large bowl. I couldn't wear it with the straps in such a state, but that didn't matter. The only thing I cared about was having it back.

  When I looked out to sea, I could barely make out the distant lanterns of the frigates, turning back in the direction of Saltring.

  Aemedd was there too. He clung blue-fingered to his sliver of stone protruding from the waves, some fifty or sixty yards offshore. He'd climbed just high enough to avoid getting swept off or smashed against the rocks. Good luck to him. I narrowly resisted the urge to wave.

  I carried my pile of found things to the cave and decided to take another break with my salty, watery wine. Cheating death caused a man some awful thirst. I barely got started before the bottle ran out. Cursing, I threw it into one of the many puddles and left it to float. My immortal soul for a skin of cactus juice!

  I went out again, feeling a little reinforced by the drink, and started shoving individual things into my pockets. I passed Penn along the way and resented his presence even more. Oh, cruel sea, that left the most unworthy among us still walking and breathing. I only prayed there would be justice in the next world, because there clearly wasn't any in this one.

  Of course, the world could still surprise me.

  I was scrubbing something shiny out of a mound of seaweed when the mound began to cough wetly. It groaned and spat up more water, and I hurried to claw the green slime away. There was a bronze roundshield underneath, still attached to its owner by a death grip. Sir Erroll's face was black and blue on one side, his eye swollen shut. Something had torn a huge gash in his maille and gambeson, leaving a pattern of sickly yellow bruises underneath, but somehow hadn't cut the skin. That went beyond luck and into the realm of divine intervention.

  I dragged the knight further up the beach and signalled Penn for help. We lifted him each to an elbow, back to cover where Yazizi had coaxed our tiny fire into something a little more welcoming.

  “Is he alive?” she asked, more out of curiosity than concern.

  I nodded. “Not by much, though.”

  The girl pushed him onto his side ‒ I was amazed someone of her size could move the old bull ‒ and placed a palm against his forehead. Her expression remained blank. “He'll live. He may run a fever, but so may the rest of us.”

  Now there was a cheerless prospect. I grimaced, leaving Sir Erroll in her care, and prepared myself for more beachcombing. I froze in mid-step as I reached the cave mouth.

  I'd already had the fright of my life when I realised my breastplate was missing, but this came a good second. I went so far as to jump backwards and give a startle
d shout.

  A figure stood a few feet outside the cave, outlined in repeated flashes of lightning. Water dripped from him, sloshed down from his clothes in sheets, as if he'd just walked out of the briny deep. Seaweed clung to arms and legs. He held a sword, point so far down it dragged along the ground behind him. His face was downturned and hidden by drenched brown hair.

  “Adar?” I said.

  The boy didn't respond. He swayed into a corner and sat down. Stared into space with the bronze sword across his legs. Penn and I decided to leave him to it.

  Something had gone very wrong in that child's head. When I looked into his eyes, I didn't see the innocent farmboy I'd met in Newmond. I didn't really know what I saw. The only sure thing was that I wanted to be as far away from him as possible.

  The woman returned from her own expedition, empty-handed but glad to see everyone alive. She took the compass from Sir Erroll's belt and began to work out where in the world we were. If we couldn't find ourselves on a map, we'd never be able to reach the fifth artifact.

  Further beachcombing became a game of diminishing returns. We didn't bring back much except driftwood for the fire. Nothing but a few minutes of entertainment when the scholar finally decided to make a swim for it. He made one of us wade out partway to catch him. Penn volunteered, and I agreed. Better him than me.

  The spy tied a rope around himself and left the other end in my care. He went right up to the end of the line, almost twenty yards, with water up to his shoulders. Aemedd detached. He paddled awkwardly through the churning water, chilled and terrified. His head went under once or twice, but he always bobbed back up, wailing and spitting water the whole time. The current did most of the work propelling him to shore.

  We got him up on the beach, where he kissed the ground and praised God and the Saints for his survival. He looked like a shaved cat in a dressing gown. I wondered if he'd ever dare to set foot on a ship again.

  “I can't believe we all walked away from that wreck,” he said as we escorted him to the fireside. “The odds against it are... well, fantastical.”

  I cleared my throat. “Don't speak too soon, Professor. We still have a ways to go.”

  He seemed to sober up a little, helped by the crackling warmth. It did all of us good to sit and dry out a little. “How long until the soldiers find us?”

  “Overland from Saltring, a day or so, if we're lucky. If the terrain is as rough as it looks.”

  “It is,” said Penn. “I've heard all about the Giant's Teeth. Horses have to be walked.”

  “Mm. Either way, we'll have to move a great deal sooner than any of us would like.”

  I didn't like saying that out loud. We needed rest, the squire especially, but we couldn't afford it.

  The fire drove the numbness out of my bones. When I felt up to it, I crawled over to our pile of salvage and started to repackage everything we could still use for travel. There wasn't much left in the way of food and drink. We'd have to resupply in the first village we came to. Keeping that in mind, I nicked one of the wineskins for my own personal use. Nobody would miss it.

  “Ten leagues,” said the woman, suddenly, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Fifteen, at most. We're two days' hike away!”

  “That would be true for men who could walk, Milady,” came the surprising response. I never expected to hear Aemedd weigh in so forcefully against her. “We are considerably diminished.”

  She turned deadly eyes on him across the fire. “What else do you recommend, Professor? Capture? Capitulation? Shall I find us a white flag to wave so the nice Duke can give us his invitation for tea and biscuits?”

  All the force went out of him in an instant. He cast his eyes down and didn't speak again. I didn't know whether he'd survive a forced march, but there'd be no sleeping in the saddle this time.

  The woman kept poring over the compass and map and didn't move again until we ran out of wood for the fire. Then she went to our makeshift infirmary, where Yazizi cared for our unconscious.

  “Wake them,” she said. “I want them walking within the hour, I don't care how. Professor, assist her however you are able. Byren, Saldette, load everything you can onto the horses. Whatever's left, we'll have to carry it.”

  Nobody argued. Nobody wanted to be the next man shamed by that wicked tongue.

  I forced my creaking bones into action. Everything hurt. Now that I was warmer, less numb, I could feel all the bumps and bruises I'd collected in the shipwreck. It was like I'd lost a fistfight with the entire world. If only I had my spear to lean on.

  The pungent smell of burnt seaweed and other nasty ingredients wafted out of the cave while we worked. They were heating a metal dish over the embers of the fire, improvising some smelling salts. To my amazement, it worked. Sir Erroll came round while I watched, spitting up more water. Faro wasn't far behind.

  We didn't have time to celebrate, but the mood lifted a little. Our group was reunited and out of mortal danger. At least for a while.

  Aemedd scraped the blackened concoction into a tiny box, then threw the dish away. They'd ruined it in the process. I finished rigging the last of our packs and took a long look out into the world.

  “I don't think the weather will improve anytime soon,” I said.

  The woman nodded. “Then we may as well get going.”

  The woman proved to be better than any of us with a backstaff and a compass. Once she took charge of navigation, rather than letting Aemedd and Sir Erroll muddle their way through, we moved across the land like an arrow. Up a break in the cliffs, then across the maze of fjords and inlets into more hospitable country. Clumps of crab grass began to peek out between the crags and boulders. Here and there, the last of the autumn flowers greedily drank the rain.

  We wore what remained of our heaviest clothing against the pounding storm. Harsh winds blowing off the sea covered the land with an unseasonable chill. I found myself starting to sniffle, and I wasn't the only one. The weakest among us took turns riding the surviving horses. Everybody else walked, even our highborn leaders. I was almost impressed.

  From time to time I took stealthy sips from my commandeered wineskin to keep my strength and my mood up. The vile weather bothered me a lot less with my head buzzing nicely, and it took the edge off my aches and pains. Much of the march went by without me taking notice of practically anything.

  “What does she plan to do when she has her next prize?” Yazizi asked, slumped next to me on one of our too-brief rest stops. “The Dargha will catch up with us.”

  I grinned. “She's throwing the dice. If we keep a wide enough lead, we'll have the artifact and be on our way long before they arrive. They're sure to lose the trail once we reach the mountains.”

  “They will not.”

  Her certainty took the smile right off my face. She stared straight ahead, blank as a wall. I wanted to tell her the old saw that you couldn't track an elephant in the Catsclaws, but she believed her words more than I believed mine.

  First we had to make it to the mountains.

  We forded a stretch of shallow rapids, some outlier of the Tallfarn or Northfarn. It shimmered with hundreds of young salmon and leatherfish battling the frothy current. Any other day, any other time, we would've stopped to catch some ‒ especially with most of our food adrift in the Salt Sea. Right now we couldn't afford a minute's distraction.

  Things got worse when we reached the end of the nice, solid fjords. Sopping through streams and puddles one minute, the next ankle-deep in Northern clay. The rains had softened most of the ground to awful, sucking mush. It nearly pulled the boots off my feet with each step. We used broken branches and bits of driftwood as walking sticks to help us through.

  “This is unreal,” snarled Yazizi, sinking in up to her knee. She pulled herself free with my arm and Zayara's reins. The plucky palfrey was struggling as much as her human. “In all my life I have never seen such awful country!”

  “Welcome to the North,” I said, grinning. “Pitch, peat, pigs and ever
ything else a man can make out of mud.”

  “I am beginning to understand why they'd envy the South.”

  “I have to confess,” I looked up to let the sky wash my grey-spattered face, “I rather prefer this to the Tzan.”

  She sniffed with injured dignity. “You will never make a proper tribesman, Karl.”

  There was a tremor to her voice, and I realised she was shivering from the wet and cold. I drew my cloak a little tighter. I would've given it to her if I thought I could spare it.

  On my other side, Faro stumbled, plunging a hand into the slurry. I took him by the elbow and dragged him back up. He panted, swayed, leaned on his staff with both hands. Pain was written all over his face. Wordlessly, I pulled his arm over my shoulders and soldiered on.

  “Thank you,” he gasped as soon he had breath to spare.

  I shook my head. We couldn't spare a horse right now, and I wasn't about to leave anyone for the dogs.

  He went on, “We were in the market. Almost done. Yazizi came to get us. Then soldiers arrived. Grabbed my reins. I had to...” He swallowed.

  “First time?”

  Nodding, he rubbed his eyes, smearing mud across his forehead.

  “You're still alive to tell the tale. That's the important bit.” It was the best I could think to say. Everything else, a hundred platitudes about how hard it is to kill, sounded trite in my head. “Try not to think about it. Drinking helps.”

  I offered him a sip from my skin. He took it, gratefully.

  “It's better than flogging your friends,” he said at length. We both left it there.

  The sky lightened as the hours wore on. Torrential rain faded to drizzle, and the wind slowly died down. All for the better. I didn't know how much longer we could've carried on. As it was, we made a raggedy convoy, strung out over a span of fifty yards or more, plodding single file. People stumbled, fell behind, and found they didn't have the strength to close the distance again.

  Even I had gone soft. Too much riding, and before that, too many weeks lost in a wine cup. My legs felt like chewed sausage. If I were still a man of the King's Own, I could've run all this way and not been out of breath.