Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Longing Ring

by kubasik

  He had its He felt the wood grains under his skin. Even as the wheel spun, he found a grip on the edge.

  Then the river washed over him. His throat filled with water, around him a world of water and swirling bubbles. The pressure of the water pushed him, and he clung to the paddle with all his strength, fearing that if he let go he would be slammed again and again by the other paddies turning.

  "You're going to die now. Do you want to know what happened?"

  He could not even think to answer.

  Crack! The surface of the water. Light! Water splashed all around him as he gasped. The water around him ran red with his blood.

  He felt dizzy. Knew he would pass out soon. A shadow far above, Nikronallia watching his demise. J'role pressed his cheek tight against the paddle. Wishing so much that his whole life had been different.

  The paddle reached the top, then started back down to the water.

  "Tell me," he thought.

  The creature sighed. The memories flooded in ...

  The thing in the corner—the creature—said, "Give me the boy, I'll leave you and your husband alone."

  "I can't."

  "Think about it....

  He crashed into the water, barely aware of his surroundings, the memories so sharp, so real....

  Water.

  "Will he know? I don't want him to know."

  "Tell him you don't want him to talk about it. He'll only remember what he feels comfortable speaking about...."

  Air again. He wanted to die now. He could not.... How could he live any longer?

  A shadow from the sky. Death coming to finish him off, swinging down from the blue sky.

  He welcomed death.

  "Truly?" the creature asked, pathetic with hope.

  Then an arm around his waist lifted him into the sky.

  He had no idea what was happening, but surrendered to it.

  He turned his head. Captain Patrochian's was looking straight ahead as she hung onto a rope with one hand.

  Now they were on the upper deck. She lowered him gently, letting him lie on the ground.

  She called for help, barking desperate orders.

  J'role had to warn her somehow.

  He reached up, grabbed her bright yellow sash with his right hand, staining it light pink with his blood. She looked down at him, and he strained his mind. How could he tell her?

  A bitterness raced in, a fury at his mother ...

  His mother!

  He could warn the captain now if not for his mother. He could have spoken all his life.

  He could have lived his life!

  Sailors rushed up around them now. "Relax, rest. Our healer will be here soon," Captain Patrochian said. Then she noticed the stab wound. "What happened?" she asked softly.

  Nikronallia arrived on the end of a rope, landing gracefully. Whether the sailor heard the captain's question or not, J'role would never be sure, but without pause Nikronallia said,

  "He tried to steal your ledgers and escape out the window, Captain. He drew a knife. We fought ..." He trailed off, shrugging his shoulders as if to suggest the rest was obvious.

  The captain looked into J'role's face. He could see her wavering. Releana arrived. She knelt down beside him, touching him gently. Panic overcame J'role, and his breathing quickened. He knew he had to do something—he might die at any moment. If he couldn't warn the captain, perhaps he could force Nikronallia to start the mutiny prematurely—

  now—before all was in place. This might give them a chance, at least.

  With the last of his energy J'role stood and rushed toward Nikronallia. No one expected the sudden movement, and he crashed into the first officer, knocking him to the ground.

  The exertion almost made J'role black out, but he scrambled over Nikronallia’s body and pressed his mouth close against the slit that was the t'skrang's left ear.

  The muscles in J'role's mouth and tongue let loose once more, and he babbled the sounds and cries and tortured noises of the creature. He pressed his lips against Nikronallia’s scaly skin, straining to keep the sounds as quiet as he could. The creature in his thoughts squirmed with pleasure.

  Then hands were upon him and he cried out. Immediately he slapped his own hands against his mouth. His jaw and lips moved wildly against his palms, and he tasted his blood as he tried to force the sounds back down his throat.

  Someone threw him to the deck, and he rolled over and saw Nikronallia get up, clutching at his head. The next instant the sailor had drawn his sword, pointing it at J'role.

  His eyes revealed fury and hatred and a longing for a taste of vengeance.

  "Nikronallia!" The captain cried.

  Nikronallia hesitated, wobbling as if drunk, then sliced the air with his rapier and pointed the tip of his blade at the captain.

  "Nikronallia," she said again, this time with quiet surprise.

  "Your time is through," he answered, his voice raspy, still touching his head with his free hand. With a gesture toward J'role, he said, "You let this thing ...," then gave a great sob, and lowered his hand from his head. "I want you dead, so very, very badly." He laughed, as if his words both surprised and amused him, and three other sailors drew their blades.

  The mutineers looked at Nikronallia oddly, as if they knew something had gone wrong.

  But this was obviously the start of the mutiny.

  "What?" asked the captain, thoroughly baffled. "What are you talking about?"

  Ignoring her, Nikronallia said to himself, "No, not yet. Not yet." He looked around, confused. "We're supposed to ... tonight ..."

  The captain looked down at J'role, and he nodded back to her. She understood. He relaxed and rolled onto his back as Captain Patrochian drew her blades. Then he heard the sound of someone screaming a battle cry and the fight began.

  24

  He did not throw stones at his mother, though in the nightmare he does. In the nightmare the stones are sharp and rough against his hand, and he feels them rub his flesh raw.

  Blood pours forth. He hurls the stones at his mother, and as the stones float for that singular, frozen, nightmare eternity arc of fall, each one drips his blood.

  The stones are still in the air, yet forever moving toward his mother the strange paradox that only dreams can allow. The stretching of time makes J'role anxious in his sleep, as if he himself is falling forever, toward a pit bottom he cannot see. All he wants is for the stone to reach its destination; his life is stuck as the stone floats along its never-ending path.

  "Move him!" Captain Patrochian shouted to Releana, leaping forward to engage the mutineers in swordplay. Her sword clacked sharply against Nikronallia’s, then she parried one of the mutineer's blows. Voponis engaged the other two mutineers, and the deck became a flurry of silver swishes of swordplay.

  Releana ignored the captain's instructions, preferring to aid her instead. She waved her hands, then cupped them, palms facing forward. Frost formed on her hands, then a spear of ice appeared from out of her cupped hands and flew toward the mutineer who fought alongside Nikronallia. Sparkling in the sun, flakes of ice trailed the spear, then floated down to the deck. J'role, prone and helpless on the deck, looked up at the sight, thinking.

  "How beautiful,” even though he knew the observation made no sense at the moment.

  Releana's spear drove deep into the mutineer's chest. His clawed green hands flew wide as he screamed and fell back on the deck. The spear shattered, sending chunks of ice skittering around his corpse.

  Seeing his companion fall, Nikronallia made a panicked stab at the captain.

  She parried, smiling, her triangular teeth nearly ghoulish in her love of the fight. Off Nikronallia pulled back, then lunged once more, his breath forced from his lungs in an angry hiss.

  The captain parried again, then added a riposte that Nikronallia parried just before the captain's blade would have sliced through his shoulder.

  Meanwhile Voponis drove the other two mutineers across the deck. The swordplay was fas
t and sometimes the three rapiers seemed no more than a momentary sparkle of wind, somehow magically induced to reveal itself for one extraordinary moment.

  With a sudden switch in tactics, Voponis laughed with tremendous bravado, brought his rapier up and under the sword of his opponents, swung his weapon in a wide arc and sent each of the other t'skrang's swords flying off the edge of the ship. The two sailors stood stunned for a moment, then Voponis slashed the air harshly with his blade. Both sailors gasped and jumped back, vanishing from sight over the edge of the ship, splashing into the water below.

  Nikronallia saw all this and gave up his fight with Captain Patrochian. Running for a rope attached to a swinging mast, he jumped for it. With one hand on the rope and the other slashing his sword through the air, he swung over the ship shouting, "Now! A call to arms! Follow me! The time to strike is now!"

  The captain almost followed, rushing toward another rope, but Voponis caught her arm and spoke quickly in the t'skrang tongue. She looked at J'role, taking in the whole truth of what he'd wanted to warn her about: it was not four sailors who had mutinied, but the entire ship. She would need a plan. She nodded, crossed to J'role, add helped him up.

  "We've got to get to the engine room," she said. "If we can take it before the mutineers do, we'll still be in control. Come. We'll use the interior passages. Less obvious that way."

  The four of them moved quickly down the steps, across the descending decks, through the winding corridors. Voponis and Releana helped J'role, and the captain went ahead.

  Hearing shouts ringing through the ship, they came across two corpses. "They probably refused to join the mutiny" Voponis- said sadly.

  Minutes later they came across a fight between five sailors; three against two. When sailors noticed the captain and the others, the group of three turned and ran, pursued momentarily by the other two sailors until the captain called the loyalists back. Their numbers thus strengthened, they continued toward the engine room.

  They were almost there when Voponis said, "Despair . . . Grim's father!”

  J’role remembered Garlthik's desire to have Bevarden killed.

  “We can't split up now," the captain said. "We've got to take the engine room. If we succeed at that, we'll decide what to do next."

  Releana looked at J'role as if ready to comfort him, but he killed all his feelings, kept his face stony.

  As they continued on, the only other individual they encountered was the ship's questor of Garlen, who also joined the group. "I saw three crew members killed in their sleep," he said. "I awoke just in time, saw the murders, and ran off. The ship is hosting a bloodbath." He glanced at J'role's chest as they walked. "I'll tend to that as soon as we're settled,” he said. "You'll be fine."

  A terrible feeling came to J'role as they walked down the last corridor. If the engine room was so vital, shouldn't they have encountered trouble by now? But they had not. He suspected that the delayed trouble would be even worse. Though no one spoke of it, the others must have been feeling the same. Their bodies had become more tense, and their rapiers quivered in their hands.

  Reaching the door to the engine room, everyone took up a combative stance after they set J'role a few feet back on the floor.

  A hesitation. Thoughts evoking the passions of Thystonius and Floranuus. The thrum of the engine grinding the arms that pushed the paddle wheel.

  Voponis stepped forward, opened the door.

  Through the crowd of legs J'role spotted the engine room's magician. He turned from the engine, slowly, looking surprised. "What? What is it?" he asked.

  Everyone relaxed, and in that moment the wizard raised his arms and a ball of fire erupted from his hands.

  "Down!" Voponis cried, and even as they all fell back, the fireball rushed across the engine room and caught Voponis full in the chest. He screamed out, and a spray of flames cut down the corridor and splashed over J'role's head.

  The captain shouted "NO!" The acrid smell of burnt flesh cu through J'role's senses.

  Releana, screaming with wordless rage, leaped to her feet and faced the t'skrang magician. She dug her hand into a pouch on her belt and produced a pinch of dirt, which she threw into the air before her. She cast her spell and the dirt seemed momentarily suspended. The magician was in the midst of preparing another spell when he looked up, saw what Releana was doing, and gasped. Even as he was deciding which way to run, the dirt before Releana transformed into crystalline needles that shot through the air and slammed into the magician's face. The needles ripped through his green scales and pocked him with bright red wounds. He stood still for a moment eyes hidden beneath the blood then fell forward, dead.

  Suddenly the doorway filled with mutinous sailors, their swords drawn. Behind them all stood Nikronallia, smiling. "A little late, Captain!" he shouted. Captain Patrochian replied tersely. "Really? I think your death will be most timely."

  The loyalist sailors jumped up, and the two sides charged each other. Then began a fury of flashing metal and the sharp clanging of swords. Looking back J'role saw that the corridor behind them was empty. He tugged on Releana's leg. She looked where he pointed, then shouted, "Come!" She leaned down to help J'role up, and the two of them began moving away as quickly as possible from the fierce battle.

  Four mutineers appeared before them swords Drawn, Battle fury on their reptilian faces.

  Before J’role could even panic, Releana threw more crystalline darts forward in two waves, each wave cutting a mutineer. The other two t'skrang ran off.

  J'role glanced back Nikronallia and his followers drove the captain and her loyal sailors down the corridor.

  J'role and Releana made their way down several more corridors, the captain and her men following as they tried to keep the mutineers at bay. When J'role realized that they had entered the ship's supply holds he tugged on Releana's arm, pointing down a corridor to the right.

  Releana did not know why J'role wanted to turn, but she followed willingly, as did the others.

  J'role knew exactly where they were, however. Ahead, on the right, was the storeroom with the fire-coals. If they couldn't hold the engine room, J'role decided they would at least control the materials needed to make the engine work. He indicated the door, and Releana pushed it open.

  Two mutineers, alerted by the sound of the door opening, stood facing the doorway, swords drawn. Both lunged forward as Releana dropped J'role to the ground. She fumbled trying to get more dirt out of her-pouch, and the bag fell to the ground. Both mutineers drove their rapiers into Releana's shoulder. She cried out in pain. J'role struggled to get up, though he could feel his chest still wet and sticky from the blood drawn by Nikronallia’s dagger. Then a rapier appeared over his head, and someone dragged Releana out of the way. Captain Patrochian had arrived, and she cut down the mutineers with four precise stabs. "Good. Good," she said. "Everyone in."

  They got a huge wooden bar braced against the door just as the mutineers began to pound on the door to get in. From his corner spot, J'role took stock of the group: Captain Patrochian, Releana, the questor, and one other sailor. Everyone else had died or fallen in the retreat from the engine room. Including Voponis, most likely killed by the fireball back at the engine room.

  "Captain—" the questor began.

  Patrochian cut him off. "See to the boy. I need to think."

  The pounding of the door continued, and J'role did not see how the captain could contemplate anything, given the racket and the knowledge that her ship had fallen to traitors. She leaned against a wall and closed her large blue eyes.

  At least they were alive, he thought, not killed in their sleep. There was that. J role realized that sometimes sheer survival was the challenge, and success in that the victory.

  The questor approached, probed his wound, then began to speak in the t'skrang tongue, with its many long S and T sounds. A sense of well-being drifted through his flesh, and he felt the same sheltering warmth he'd known as a little boy so many, many years ago.

 
Soon he was lulled into a light sleep

  He woke when he heard the captain ask, "Why, though? Why did he do it?" The questor now stood near the, door, listening. Everyone else sat on a few scattered boxes.

  J'role was instantly alert to the question and caught the attention of Releana He made the gesture they'd invented for Throal when the had left Blood Wood.

  “Throal," Releana said to the captain.

  The captain blinked. "The dwarfs . . . ? That idiot is still . . ." She sighed, leaned against the wall. "Getting people to move forward ... is so difficult."

  "What is it?" asked Releana

  "The dwarfs. I've been trying to set up contacts with Throal. I want to use the Breeton as one of their agents to reunite Barsaive under their control, instead of waiting for the Therans to return. If they return. But some of my kind fear the power of Throal. I had no idea most of my crew belonged to that camp."