Six days out from Zagekhan, the sun shone clear upon the autumn waters of the Saagar Sea. Chill westerly winds chopped the water while wispy clouds stretched across the sky like the whorls of a giant’s fingerprint.
The Zeedrak ran across the waves like skates on gray ice, and as was their custom, they fished for most of their meals to conserve weight for more valuable cargo. Usually, one casting of their net was enough to stock the cook’s pot for dinner.
Drawn fish clung to the deck in gray and red pools as the crew finished cleaning the catch for the evening. Buckets of seawater, hauled up to swab the deck, ran back over the sides as gulls dove into the scum around the ship. Down below, the cook prepared fish, boiling them down, heads and all, into the dinner stew.
Asman vomited over the bow until his stomach was once again empty. His wounds ached as he coughed and sputtered. Water sprayed up from the choppy sea, rinsing his face. He couldn’t stay below deck in the surgery anymore, it was too cramped, too rank with the odor of salted fish, sour wine, and human sailor’s feet, to say nothing of the bucket he retched in since yesterday, and his ire had risen along with his gorge.
He hauled himself above and settled down onto a small deck that served as the head.
One hefty arm dangling over the side, he wished that he could finally spew out his heart and die. His nausea was so bad that he couldn’t even chew blackweed without his gizzard tightening up. To keep the crew safe in case he lost his sanity, he exiled himself to this isolated part of the ship.
He sighed, the past week was a blur. He couldn’t remember what happened after he’d been shot. Coming to on deck of the Zeedrak had been like waking from a fever dream.
Once his head and wits cleared, he negotiated passage to Port Myskatol. Captain Helduur agreed, but as long as they remained in the harbor and didn't dock. The captain didn't want Eldervost to get their hands on his cargo.
His stomach heaved once more. Nothing but bile came up.
When he wasn’t vomiting, he managed to rest, curled up on the deck. The crew would stick their heads over the rail and peer down at how his bulk filled the entire head. The sailors dared each other to go down and rest their heels on his ass while they shat. No one took up the challenge, so they lashed a temporary head to the port side stern.
A sharp wooden tapping rang above his head. Asman looked up and saw one of the human sailors in a shaggy thrum cap looking down at him, “Oy there Mister Bugbear?”
Asman rumbled in response in a deep basso but shut his eyes as his stomach lurched a bit from looking up.
“Pardon me Mister Bugbear? I hate to be bothering you. I’d never dream of it! Only, I am to pass on to you a message from the bosun. Actually, sir, twernt the bosun himself, right? He’s not likely to speak to me as I’m only an able body.”
Asman cracked an eye and arched his brow. The sailor’s eyes widened a bit. “Aye, sir! I can see I be taking your time! I’ll get to the point!” Gulping, he continued, “So, the bosun told the master rigger, what grabbed me and said, Lohl, you get right to the head and tell that hairy monst…”.
Lohl stopped himself as his mind caught up with the words. “I-I-I meant, he meant, I’m sure, ah.”
“What!?” rumbled Asman with an acrid belch.
“Aye, sir! We are to pull into Port Myskatol soon after the first watch, Mister Bugbear!” expelled Lohl, increasingly terrified.
“When?”
“Ah. Ah. Yes. Oh! Yes, you should see the shore soon after you hear the watch bell strike seven! Very good sir?” he said, clearly wanting to be anywhere but there.
Asman inhaled to respond and threw his head over the side to vomit once more.
“Ah, right, sir. G’day Mister Bugbear!” Lohl squeaked as he finally scurried off. Asman could hear the rest of the ship’s crew roaring with laughter.
As the sun sank below the sea, the Zeedrak drew closer to Port Myskatol. The ship’s pitching steadied and Asman’s gut quieted. He climbed up off the head and returned to the main deck, taking great care to not stumble. Below deck, in the still stale air, he gathered his meager belongings and returned topside to watch the city’s lamp lights flicker into view while the harbor drifted into sight.
His skull was muddled and throbbing from blackweed withdrawal, he felt his temper burning hotter every day. He shook his head, hoping to dislodge the increasingly violent thoughts. No luck.
A sudden wave of nausea rolled over Asman. He burped, a sour taste filled his mouth and he grimaced as he sucked in the night sea air. But all he could smell was the effluent of the city on the wind. He screwed his eyes shut.
A poke on his forearm broke his fugue. Looking down, he saw a wrinkled and sun-browned human with a short beard and white hair holding what looked like a white rock up to him. “You haven’t ate much this week, have ya son?” said the man through an astounding mustache.
Asman blinked and looked at the rock. The old man held it up higher. “Take it now!” he said, waggling it up at him. Asman plucked the rock from the old man’s hand and sniffed it. It had a bready smell. A biscuit! His stomach, for the first time in days, growled instead of lurched and he began to gnaw on the ration.
“You have water?” he asked hopefully.
The old man laughed, “Somethin’ like, but it does the trick and washed down the crumbs.”
He pulled a bottle from a nearby barrel and uncorked it. “This is the cap’n’s concoction. He swears that it keeps a crew in top shape for any voyage.”
Asman took the bottle and popped the last of the biscuit into his mouth, crushing it. He put his nose to the bottle and inhaled a sharpness that burned his nose, yet it didn’t lessen his appetite, which was thankfully returning. He took a mouthful and swallowed. His face and throat burst into flames and he gasped for air.
“Bad!” Asman yelled, his eyes watering.
Yet, to his surprise, his nausea finally ebbed and his head cleared. However, his queasiness soon shifted to anxiety and agitation. Now that the sea sickness was diminishing, his craving for blackweed would likely get worse.
“So sorry, that’s right, bugbears don’t brew spirits,” said the old man with a chuckle “Not to worry, this be useful for the health.”
He took the bottle back and took a long pull from it and smacked his lips. “Yes, that’ll do. A good mix of sweet water, rum, fruit, and herbs. Our Cap'n said that this will keep your teeth in your head as long as your wise enough to not get ‘em knocked out!”
The old man smiled, showing an incomplete set of yellow teeth. “Shame that I were short a few before sailing with him!”
He stopped the bottle back up and smacked his lips again. “Now, normally, I don’t go and bother the passengers, but you as being a bugbear, it gives me some questions.”
“What do you want?” Asman said as he searched for his blackweed pouch out of habit. He kept forgetting that it had been lost during his float in the lake.
“Such as, what’s it has brought you across the sea to Eldervost? What were you floating in the lake for and why did you curse that Assembly vessel so?” asked the man with a tilt to his head.
Asman looked him over and considered the diminutive human, with his motley attire and wise blue eyes, and wanted to crush his smug face. He took a deep breath, he had never been without blackweed for nearly a week.
“I am here to look for my uncle. He came to Port Myskatol earlier this year and we haven’t heard from him for many months. I hope to find him.”
The old man didn’t look all that surprised at Asman’s charge. Rather he looked at the bugbear through half-closed eyelids.
“Shouldn’t be too hard to find him in Myskatol, not too many…” he paused to choose his words, “foreigners stay long in that city.”
He spat over the side and looked at the shore with contempt. “Not that the locals want to stay either.”
He took a new bottle and a small burlap sack from the barrel and held it out of Asman, smiling. “Here, since you are traveling so l
ight, keep these on you. Might be the cleanest meal you’ll have for a few days.”
Asman took them both in one hand and stored them in his haversack. “Thank you old man. Now, may I ask your name?”
“Me? I’m Bosun Shorec and no need to thank me. It’s what’s due, you hadn’t eaten a single meal from the galley on this trip. We’d hate to be known for flim-flam, you paid for passage and a meal a day. Those rations are enough for a few days, for a human,” he laughed.
“Now, I’ve got to get these lag-a-bouts up and ready to make port. So, if’n you’ll excuse me.”
Asman watched the small man hop down the stairs and begin yelling at the crew. He felt guilty for not telling the truth. It went against everything his uncle had taught.
Yet, he knew that traveling to Eldervost was, in every sense, stepping into the snare and he needed to use guile, deceit, and every other dishonorable tool the humans so freely wielded if he wanted to succeed in his mission. He chided himself for his weakness. He could not fail! He had to triumph, for himself if not for his uncle.
13
Sharpe was having that dream again and he knew it. Its frequency was increasing as his plans for Eldervost came closer to completion. But no matter how aware he was of dreaming, he could never escape it.
He was much younger and stalking through the Gebrochen Wastes with his vanguard, back when he was the Exarch of the Archweiler. Only a few days away from civilization, the Assembly’s procession made its way through the swampy morass of dead trees and murky fens, creeping through the night by the dim light of the midnight sun. The humans of the Grand Duchy of Eldervost had long considered the region uninhabitable, only useful for its peat moss and the rare veins of bog iron.
They moved quietly towards the cobold settlement that tainted their lands. The True Realm of the Pure Humans. These filthy little rats had been intruding on the Fatherland at any opportunity for generations and it was his mission to cleanse the nation of any sub-human corruption he found.
Surrounding the encampment, they saw the cooking fires and heard the savages beating hollow logs with crude clubs. His hatred for the filth before him grew even hotter. He whispered a command down the line. Spare no creature.
Keeping to the shadows, they moved forward until they were mere feet away from the gathering, hidden behind brush piles and primitive huts. The drumming grew frenetic and Sharpe wasn’t sure what they were doing, but their guttural yips and snarls chilled his heart.
Peering from behind a hut, he saw their shaman wearing a loincloth and a bugbear skull as if it were a helmet. Hanging from its neck was a golden medallion bearing an inscription Sharpe couldn’t see from his hiding place.
In front of a large bonfire, the creature conducted the ceremony and led a grotesque choreography for the tribe. As the dance ended, it pointed away from the fire. From the darkness came a shrill scream.
A tall cobold came forward carrying what appeared to be a cat, mewling and tiny. Another, smaller cobold fought to follow it, screaming, held back by others. Sharpe guessed that it was a female from the two rows of engorged teats down its belly.
The tall cobold handed the little creature over to the shaman who raised it high in the air. The shaman was whipping his head back and forth in ecstasy when Sharpe realized that wasn’t a cat.
Suddenly shaman flung the cobold infant into the bonfire and its mother’s scream tore through Sharpe’s eardrums. He could bear it no longer and motioned his troops to charge.
His men roared as they began their assault and Sharpe headed straight for the shaman, eager to wipe the world clean of this abomination. The crude priest spun around, barking orders to the rest of the beasts, demanding retribution for this sacrilege. Sharpe sprinted towards the shaman, his broadsword out, ready to strike.
The shaman wrapped his claws around the medallion on his chest and lifted it above its head, cackling with mad glee as he faced the oncoming human. Poised to strike, Sharpe hesitated as the medallion began to glow purple and throw off red sparks. In the distance, he thought he could hear echoes of chattering teeth rolling in the twilight. Like the sound of summer cicadas chewing with a thousand mouths.
Sharpe spied movement on the ground around the screeching shaman and he stopped short, gaping at the horrific sight. Millions of worms covered the ground like a wet, writhing carpet. The shaman laughed and squealed at the top of his lungs, each breath ending in a spasmodic scream as the worms crawled up its body.
Revulsion flooded the Exarch’s muscles, snapping him out of his dark trance. His very being was charged with disgust. Stepping towards the worm-laden shaman, he lifted his sword. In an instant, he swung his blade with all his enraged might, cleaving the cobold’s head like a watermelon.
The top of its skull tumbled down and rolled into the fire. What remained on its body was a mouth grinning wide in a mortal rictus. Hand fisted around the medallion, the creature fell at Sharpe’s feet, silent and still on the bare earth. The bare earth! Where had all the worms gone?
The foul sounds that accompanied the shaman’s ceremony were now silent. Only the glorious clamoring of righteous slaughter filled his ears.
Sharpe stepped on the cobold’s chest and pulled the medallion from its grasp.
The thing was heavy, like lead, but had the luster of unpolished brass. Its oval shape was convex on one side, flat on the other. The flat side bore a series of runes, the likes of which he had never seen before. No creature in the realms of the living wrote in those letters, he was sure. The convex side bore a figure carved in relief. A humanoid wearing a robe, its face was odd though. Blurry. Obscured.
It extended a hand towards the viewer, two fingers pointed up, an oversized eye looked out from its palm. Morrow Sharpe brought it closer to the fire to inspect it better.
The cries of dying cobolds filled the air as he tried to see the face of the figure on the medallion, but no matter how he looked at it, it seemed to shift and writhe. ‘Surely,’ he thought, ‘it must be a trick of the light.’
Two small red points of light appeared on the dark face and it seemed to shift its attention towards the medallion’s new holder, recognizing him. A whisper formed behind his eyes, wordless and seductive. Sharpe gasped and but didn’t drop it. He gripped it tight and held it to his chest. It was so warm. He never wanted to let it go.
He woke, gasping in the dark, disoriented and clammy with sweat, his heart raced in his chest. He could hear it pounding in his ears like the cobold drums that night long ago. Where was he?
His hand fumbled under his nightshirt, gripped the medallion resting there. He never took it off. Even after he learned the cost of bearing it.
Being bound to the Harbinger for all these years had a price. But the power that came from the binding was more than worth it and soon he would make good on that investment. Soon.
✽✽✽
The last of the chill spring winds of Verdantlight competed with the warm summer sun as Sharpe stood on the immense stone docks in the naval yard. Looking out over the host of shabby boats that formed a floating shanty town in Port Myskatol’s harbor, he wondered if the humans that lived in that harbor hamlet had the wherewithal to even buy blackweed.
As he pondered, a horn sounded from the watchtower that guarded the harbor, notifying dock-hands that a ship had returned from abroad.
He looked across the water and saw what he’d been waiting for, the green and gold sails of Vicar Fingerhut’s came into view.
He watched the ship enter the harbor and lower its sails. It dropped anchor and dragged to a halt. Later, navy guide boats would come out and bring it slowly to the docks where its long-awaited cargo would be unloaded for treatment.
A dingy was lowered into the water and four passengers in black Assembly robes were rowed across to meet the Primus.
Sharpe smiled as Vicar Fingerhut joined him on the dock.
“Welcome home Osric,” the Primus said with a thin smile as Fingerhut clambered onto the dock to greet his master. “
I trust that your journey was successful and you secured our goods?”
The Vicar bowed and answered, “Yes, your worship, we have twofold of what we’ve acquired in any of our other excursions in the bugbear lands.”
Eyes narrowing, the Primus remarked to himself that Fingerhut seemed to have finally shaken off some of his more cowardly qualities. ‘It seems that sending young Osric off was just the medicine needed to bring forth his Spirit!’ Sharpe thought.
“Splendid. Unload the blackweed at once and get it treated and ready. ”
“Certainly your worship,” the Vicar acquiesced. “Shall we distribute the final project along the usual channels?”
“Of course,” Sharpe paused, giving some thought, “except, I want you to box up any remaining shake and deliver it to the poor out there.” He indicated the boat village floating in the harbor.
“Upon my Word, have the District Wardens go on a goodwill visit and distribute blackweed to the poor and needy in that wretched village,” he commanded.
The Vicar bowed his head, “Yes, your worship”, he said, a little less eager at this needless and surprising benevolence.
“If you have need of me, I have been summoned to the palace,” Sharpe said offhand, his voice dripping with distaste. “The Duke, bless his throne, wants to express concern regarding the Assembly’s recent financial involvement in blackweed trade.”
“Indeed, your worship?” Fingerhut said, definite mirth in his voice. “We look forward to our blessed ruler’s sagacity on this topic, certainly he will enlighten us all.”
They laughed together at the absurdity of anything profound ever being uttered by the doddering excuse for royalty that currently occupied the Ducal Palace.
The Necrosopher’s Apprentice Page 13
