by PT Hylton
“Let’s hope,” Abbey muttered. She’d known the Barskall were coming after them and that there were over a hundred of them left, but knowing and seeing were two different things. The approaching swarm of drugged-out warriors provided all the motivation they needed to quicken their pace.
The final guard tower proved to be the biggest challenge, since the men inside had been given longer to prepare. They had waited inside their station until Abbey and her crew were almost on top of them, then burst out and attacked in a tight formation. Fannar dove into the midst of them, swinging his seax with uncanny speed and precision. Olaf was right behind him, taking advantage of the chaos Fannar created.
Abbey worked the edges, grabbing men and using her newfound magic to reduce their weight to almost nothing before tossing them over the edge. The fall from the final guard station was only fifty feet, but it was enough, especially with the jagged rocks below.
When they were close to the bottom, they almost ran into a man and a woman. Abbey skidded to a stop on the rocky path just in time to avoid colliding with them.
The man and the woman both carried two buckets across their shoulders, just as Abbey and their friends had earlier. They looked perplexed and frightened at the sudden appearance of strangers sprinting toward them down the path.
The woman looked up the mountain, and her eyes widened as she spotted the mass of Barskall warriors.
“Trust me,” Abbey told them, “you do not want to go up there. Do you have a wagon? We need a ride.”
The man and the woman exchanged a worried glance. Abbey could see from the look that they did have a wagon.
“We need the money for the water,” the man replied.
Olaf cocked a thumb up the path. “Sorry to tell you, but they aren’t going to be paying you today. They’ll more likely trample you.”
“We’ll pay for a ride,” Abbey offered impulsively and immediately regretted it. She wasn’t even sure they had any coins.
“How much?” asked the woman.
Viktor stepped forward holding out his sword, which was still wet with blood. “This has got to be worth something, right? I’m not using it anymore.”
The man and the woman exchange another look, but this one was filled with hope rather than worry. If Barskall was anything like the Kaldfell Peninsula, an iron sword was beyond the means of most villagers and would be seen as a status symbol.
“Where do you need to go?” the man asked.
Abbey glanced up the stairs toward the Barskall warriors, who were growing uncomfortably close. “Let’s get to the wagon, then we’ll talk.”
The villagers left their buckets where they fell and ran the rest of the way down the mountain with Abbey and her crew.
The wagon was waiting nearby, and they all piled in. The man took the reins and set the horses to galloping as soon as everyone was aboard.
“Where to?” he asked over the pounding of the horses’ hooves.
Abbey turned to Viktor. “You said you knew where they took the Storm Callers.”
He smiled proudly. “I do. Or I did. Wait, I think I do. Havert. Or Hobert. Something along those lines.”
“Is there a town with either of those names?” Abbey asked the woman.
She nodded. “There’s both.”
“You gotta be kidding me,” Olaf groaned. “I thought towns here didn’t even have names.”
“The ones that matter do,” the man called from the front.
Fannar looked offended, but said nothing.
“It’s on the eastern coast,” Viktor said absently. “Or was it the southern coast?”
“It has to be Havert, then,” the woman said. “Hobert is inland.”
“Thank the sea,” Abbey said. “How far is it?”
“About a day’s journey,” the woman replied.
“Add a half day if we want to travel off the beaten path,” the man added. “I assume we want to avoid royal involvement.”
“Indeed we do,” Abbey affirmed. “Take us to Havert. And on the way, Viktor is going to explain everything he knows about Dahlia’s plan.”
***
Dustin sat in the back of a wagon, hands tied as it bumped along the road. He groaned as his bruised body was rudely jostled against the wooden bench.
He had no idea where they were going. He hadn’t exchanged a word with another person since Abbey, Fannar and Olaf had escaped with Viktor, but he’d seen the fury in Dahlia’s eyes and that had been enough to keep him going.
There was also a lot for him to think about. Abbey had been flying, or at least floating. She’d been both terrifying and beautiful as her eyes glowed black and she rode his wind.
Magic had never come easily to Abbey; she’d often told him that. So how the hell had she managed to pull off a magical feat he hadn’t even known was possible?
At least it had gotten her to safety, which was more than he could say for Clemens. Dustin had to admit to himself that the man was almost certainly dead at this point.
Some mission this had turned out to be! Not only had they failed in their original goal of stopping Dahlia, but their first mate had been killed and their Storm Caller captured.
On the plus side, they’d rescued the king’s secret stormcalling master. But Dahlia had a whole mess of his students to help her carry out her plan, whatever that might be. Could Viktor really make that much of a difference?
The wagon rumbled to a stop, and Dustin waited. While the vehicle had been moving a light breeze had rolled through the back of the wagon, but now that it was still, the heat was stifling. Beads of sweat soon formed on Dustin’s brow.
After a long while, the back of the wagon opened and Dahlia climbed in. She was carrying his staff.
Dustin said nothing as she sat down across from him.
She regarded him for a full minute before speaking. “You were trained by Harald, correct?”
He nodded.
“Hmm.” Dahlia looked down, studying the staff in her hands. “Harald was a solid Storm Caller. A bit temperamental, but a dependable man.”
Dustin said nothing. Best to let her do the talking.
“For all the things Harald was, he wasn’t creative,” she continued. “He was no innovator. I think we can safely say you didn’t learn your ability to Storm Call without seawater from him.”
Dustin hadn’t expected that. He’d thought she’d be angry about Viktor or Tor or even Thunderclap, but he had never considered that her primary concern would be his ability to call storms on dry land.
This time she didn’t even give him a chance to respond before continuing, “We knew Harald was your only official teacher, and that you went straight from his mentorship to your post on The Foggy Day. Then you disappeared into the mountains of Kaldfell for a few days, and you came back with this new ability.”
She leaned forward and looked him in the eye. “The way I see it, there are two possibilities. Either you met a rogue Storm Caller in the mountains who taught you this technique, or you came up with it on your own. And neither scenario seems plausible. I’ll be honest; I’m stumped.”
Dustin met her eyes, but didn’t respond. She still hadn’t asked him a question.
“And you know what? I don’t even care where you learned it. I’m more interested in the how. Show me how to Storm Call without seawater, and all your transgressions will be forgotten. I’ll put you on a ship to Holdgate this evening, and we’ll part as friends.”
Dustin couldn’t help himself. “A ship to Holdgate? What about the Storm Wall?”
Dahlia smiled. “That won’t be a problem much longer. Answer my question. How do you do it?”
He thought for a moment, trying to concoct some lie that would appease her. But he decided the truth would serve him best. “There’s no secret. It’s just something I can do.”
She held up a finger. “Now, I know that’s not true. That would imply you were some sort of stormcalling genius, but you barely passed your Testing. I had Viktor try to figure it out,
and he actually is a genius. He taught himself stormcalling with no instruction. You know what he told me? He told me what I already knew to be true: stormcalling without seawater is impossible.”
That belief, Dustin knew, was the very reason she couldn’t do it, but he wasn’t about to say that.
“I’ll ask one more time. Will you teach me how to Storm Call without seawater?”
He met her eyes and simply answered “No.”
She pointed the staff at him and activated the amphorald. A wave of energy slammed into him, knocking him over the edge of the wagon and onto the dirt road.
He laid on the ground, trying to regain the breath that had been knocked out of him. When he looked up, Dahlia was standing over him.
“If Tor were here, he would do this differently. He’d spend days, weeks even, getting the information out of you. He was patient. I am not. I don’t have the time to waste on long interrogations.” She grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet. “We’ll be at our destination in a few hours. I trust that you’ll change your mind by then. Otherwise, I’ll give you to the sea.”
She looked toward the front of the wagon. “Driver, help him back onto the wagon.” She turned back to Dustin. “Oh, and whatever you decide, I’m keeping this staff.”
Then she walked down the road to another wagon.
Dustin was still coughing when he felt the driver’s hands on his shoulders.
“Wow, that was intense,” a familiar voice remarked.
He turned and saw Clemens smiling at him. He was dressed in a Barskall guard’s uniform. “Pretty cool, huh? I stole a guard’s uniform back at the school, and I’ve been undercover ever since. I took care of the two guards riding with us, too. I’ve been sitting up front with two dead bodies for hours. It was gross. ”
“What are you—” Dustin started, but then he began coughing again.
“Don’t try to talk,” Clemens said. “I’ve got it all figured out, anyway. I asked myself, ‘Clemens, what would the boss do in this situation?’ So we’re going to steal this wagon, beat them to their destination, and then ambush the hell out of that crazy bitch.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“The only reason the Storm Wall ever worked was because of the small number of ships trying to break through,” Viktor told them. “It was designed to discourage single vessels from crossing over. Their theory was that we dirty Barskall wanted to come over to raid your villages, and if you made it difficult we’d give up. And they were kind of right.”
Abbey noticed that Viktor was a lot more articulate now that he was relaxed and traveling in the back of the wagon. He still occasionally had trouble finding the right word to get his point across, but it was happening more rarely as their journey progressed.
“But Dahlia doesn’t want to sneak one or two ships through,” Viktor continued. “She wants to move her entire fleet.”
Abbey tilted her head at that. “Barskall’s not known for having a mighty fleet.”
“Perhaps not, but King Elias has been working—what do you call it?—covertly to change that. He’s been building ships for years to prepare for this moment, and now he has two dozen warships ready to sail. The original plan was for Captain Tor to lead the fleet, but it sounds like you all changed that for him.”
“Damn right we did,” Olaf proudly claimed.
Abbey leaned forward. “Why do you know all this? You’re just the crazy Storm Caller they kept locked up in the school, right? I mean, no offense, but it’s true.”
Viktor smiled weakly. “It wasn’t meant to be that way. Before they built the school, I lived in the castle with King Elias and his advisors. They had me attend all the important meetings, and I watched this plan forming from the beginning. But after a while, they got sick of all my questions. And my mind… Well, I used to be sharper.”
“What happened?” Olaf asked.
Viktor looked at the floor of the wagon. “I don’t know. King Elias pushed me to increase my skills, and the harder I was pushed, the more difficult it became to find my words.”
Fannar patted him on the shoulder. “You’re doing a damn fine job speaking now, my friend.”
Viktor nodded. “Somedays I can.”
Abbey gave him a moment, then gently tried to redirect him to his story. “You said you were in on the plan from the beginning?”
“Yes. This was years ago, but the idea was to put the Storm Wall off balance with a long series of attacks on the Farrows themselves. If we made them think the islands were our target they’d start defending them strongly, which would force them to gather more of their stormships near there. They’d station more of their fighters on the islands rather than on the ships. We knew we would have to let a lot of warriors die attacking those beaches for the plan to work, but King Elias didn’t care. Once they had their defenses focused on the islands we’d unleash our fleet and destroy their stormships, which was the real goal all along.”
Abbey shook her head. “A dozen of Holdgate’s best stormships crushed in one blow.”
“Makes sense though,” Fannar agreed. “It would be much easier to have them gathered in one place rather than having to track them down on the open sea.”
Viktor nodded. “And after that was accomplished, we were to move on to Holdgate and take the city.”
“Good luck with that,” Olaf growled. “Tor tried the same thing.”
“With one ship,” Abbey reminded him, “albeit a powerful one.” She looked at Viktor. “How many Storm Callers have you trained over the years?”
Viktor thought about that for a moment. “Perhaps a hundred, including the half-trained students Dahlia just took from me.”
“And how many of them are loyal to the king?” Abbey asked.
Viktor looked troubled. “I don’t know. I would like to believe they are more loyal to me as their teacher, but it might be an illusion. Or delusion. Is that the word?”
“Yes, that’s the word,” Abbey reassured him with a smile. “What makes you think they’d choose you over the king?”
“My method of stormcalling is not like yours in Holdgate. The way I understand it, your Storm Callers are more precise. I’ve heard it said they can call down bolts of lightning.”
“I’ve seen them do it,” Abbey confirmed.
Viktor nodded. “My stormcalling isn’t like that. I can call a storm, but I can’t control a specific gust of wind or a certain wave. I can use my powers from further away, though. Many miles away, in fact.”
Olaf nudged Abbey, “Like those storms down near Algon.”
“Yes.” Abbey frowned. The thought of Barskall Storm Callers already on the other side of the Storm Wall was troubling.
Viktor continued. “My pupils and I can Call together, combining our magics to produce more powerful storms. It takes total trust in one another, and it’s a very spiritual experience. Every one of my Storm Callers has spent hundreds of hours training with me, our powers mingling to create something larger. I believe that has to count for more than a king’s orders.”
Abbey wasn’t so sure.
“So why are you such a big secret?” Olaf asked. “Why doesn’t the king want anyone to know he has Storm Callers?”
Fannar grinned. “I can answer that one. King Elias has long made it a point of pride that the weak people on the Kaldfell Peninsula need magic while we Barskall use nothing but our fists and our steel.”
“And your seiderdrek,” Abbey added.
He laughed. “That too. But to admit to using storm magic would be like admitting weakness, and the king would never do that. Now that I think about it, King Elias was probably using Storm Callers to aid in our attacks on the Farrows, but I never saw any. He must have kept them hidden away somewhere.”
The rest of the trip to Havert was uneventful. They learned that the man and the woman were named Georg and Linda and they spent much of the day in pleasant conversation with them, listening to funny stories about their lives in the shadow of the mysterious school.
Georg was extremely cautious, taking routes that avoided the larger towns and having Abbey and her friends lay down in the wagon bed anytime another traveler approached.
It was wise to be careful, but Abbey was beginning to worry that they were losing too much time. They’d had a head start when leaving the school, but Dahlia could have easily caught up if she was heading to Havert via a more direct route.
They stopped for the night far away from any village and camped in the long grass.
Abbey lay on her back gazing at the sky. The stars looked brighter here. Some of them seemed like tiny specks of light floating in front of her eyes. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch them.
She turned to Fannar. “As much trouble as I’ve found here, I must admit Barskall is beautiful.”
Fannar grunted his agreement. “The people here are good, too. Most of them, anyway, though they are superstitious. Many believe seiderdrek was a gift from a trickster god repaying a debt to the Barskall. He made it addictive to punish us for forcing him to repay it.”
Abbey laughed. “Really?”
“That’s not the half of it. Villagers believe the strangest things. Sea monsters, a crack in the mountains that spews forth demons, you name it.”
Abbey thought once again about the story Liv had told her about the man called Nacht. “Legends aren’t all bad. They can inspire us.”
The next morning, the quiet group rose early and started toward Havert. They knew a fight was coming; there was no avoiding it now.
Abbey ran through her mental to-do list. Save Dustin and Clemens. Steal the Barskall Storm Callers’ loyalty from the king. Stop the fleet from crushing the Storm Wall. Kill Dahlia.
Any way she looked at it, it was going to be a busy day.
After a few hours on the road, Georg drew the horses to a slow walk. “Are you sure you want to go to Havert?”
“Of course,” Abbey answered. “Why do you ask?”
He nodded down the road, where Abbey saw a thick column of smoke rising in the distance.
“Because it appears to be on fire.”
***
