Adrift

by Travis Smith

  4

  The Stranger stumbled back into the sunlight after quite literally running himself to exhaustion. If he’d been capable―physically or rationally―of traveling in a straight line, he would still be deep in the thickets and likely incapable of transporting himself any further, but as it turned out he had slipped and stumbled and been pushed aside by brambles and branches until he popped out of the trees into dazzling sunlight and stumbled down a short embankment to roll to a stop on the rocky shore. It was here that he found new motivation to get up and moving again.

  5

  The men in the vessel were under the employ of a grungy, waspish mariner most commonly known as Slougher. Whether this nickname arose from the way his scaly, necrotic skin flaked off his burned, inbred, derelict face or from the fact that he unfailingly seemed to smell of mud and feces, none of them knew, but few had chanced a vocal speculation in the past.

  Slougher had rounded up his small crew of outlaws and harriers after a messenger skiff had brought a request from Reprise. The man in question, a man of some importance to The Baron, had gathered his few belongings and his family and stowed upon a stolen slave ship to seek a life elsewhere. Well, this obviously weighed on The Baron’s mind as not only an act of treasonous effrontery, but as a personal attack due to their history, for he sent out messengers to Fordar, Sodar, and various villages in Reprise to offer a description of the wanted men and women and to announce a sizable reward for the capture and return of the boy and anyone else who could be managed.

  “Dead or alive is acceptable,” the emissary had proclaimed cryptically, “in all cases except for the boy.” The Baron wanted that one alive and well, and likely with good reason. How diplomatic would the new leader seem having ordered the execution of a newborn babbie? Besides, good, strong slaves were hard to come by these days, and to raise a slave worker from a babbie had always proved most profitable.

  Regardless of The Baron’s intentions, a sizable reward was a sizable reward, and a reward as sizable as the one that messenger suggested could go a long way in the old-fashioned townships of Fordar … especially if a couple of Slougher’s beneficiaries met with unfortunate accidents along the way. And Slougher had a good feeling about his chances of finding this family of scared runny bunnies. He’d had his share of travels, and he’d earned a fair living working outside what little law remained in this world as a bounty hunter.

  They couldn’t sail across the tempestuous Great Sea separating Fordar from Reprise, and they couldn’t sail away from either country in the opposite direction, for those uncharted seas would more likely than not send their stolen ship straight off the edge of the earth and into eternal oblivion. The most likely path this family would take would be an easygoing southerly sail into Sodar, where they may very well be holed up in any forsaken pit. But if they were as fearful as Slougher suspected they were, they’d underestimate the vastness of these two large nations and remain desperate to light out for more distant lands. Lands like Fordar. And if they were to sail straight away from Sodar to Fordar, the winds and currents and squalls would undoubtedly push their craft south-way still, where they’d stay within sight of the small, nearly uninhabitable island below and give Slougher’s men an easy target to cut off in an opposing path.

  Today, however, Slougher awoke feeling intuitive and fortunate. He had ordered the crew to set their course around the far side of the small island based on nothing more than a serendipitous hunch, and now, as his ship neared a small cranny where the crew could dock and stretch their legs, he saw movement in the brush up the shore.

  As the crew followed Slougher’s gaze and waited expectantly for his orders, a dying, bloody man burst forth from the tree-line and rolled unceremoniously onto the shore.

  Slougher knew of only one man who had consistently inhabited this island, and this was most definitely not that man.

  6

  The Stranger collapsed face-first in the hot sand and was forced to widen the sides of his mouth to allow in shallow bursts of air without tasting too much dirt.

  “Yar! State yer name, stranger!” a voice called from somewhere close in a thick, guttural accent.

  The Stranger, who had been losing his grip on his consciousness when the voice called out, re-seized it with invigorating force and snapped his aching head up to look for the source.

  “Mind ye, now, don’ dally abou’! State yer bidness ’fore I skew yer like a shkrimp!”

  He looked straight ahead for the source of the calls but stayed oblivious for a passing moment before noticing the small boat just offshore. On board were at least ten gaunt seamen in ragged attire armed to the teeth with sharp, gleaming scimitars.

  The last time he’d seen pirates like these, he’d watched them slay his parents, abduct his wife and son, and shoot him point-blank in the chest. This flash of recent memory provided enough energy to jolt The Stranger back to his feet and set him running again, back into the dense trees.

  The men on board the vessel all voiced their disapproval at once, and while the captain yelled unheard threats from the front of the ship, the crew splashed and rowed frantically to get to shore to give chase. The Stranger heard the first splashes of feet and bodies falling into the shallow water just as he entered the trees. He had a decent head-start and quickly turned to the left off the path, then left more, then back right, hoping that soon―very soon―he’d be behind enough thick leaves to obscure him from the view of the combing foot-soldiers and allow him the opportunity to double back around them and rest.

  He’d forgotten all about his debilitating thirst and cramping muscles for the moment, but his lungs and chest were unbearable. Every breath was shallower than the last, and every movement required more oxygen than the one before it.

  Footfalls and noisy grumbling approached rapidly, and just as The Stranger heard the crashing tear into jungle, the voice called, “Pan out! Comb the brushlan’, an’ keep ’im alive ’til ye’ve got the boy!”

  They wanted a boy. To what boy could he possibly lead them at this point? Certainly not his boy. They already had him, and were the odds even minutely tilted more in his favor, The Stranger would have had half a mind to make them lead him to the boy. As soon as he could get this slug out and recuperate for a moment …

  As the crashing and scuffling spread out and drew nearer, he cut a harder line in the perpendicular direction in the hopes of escaping the sights afforded them by their forward stride. Every breath grew more and more excruciating, and he knew he had only a nearly impossible window of opportunity to duck into a ditch or hole now before the pirates passed, but still he fled, each step increasing the chances that the men would pass and leave him unnoticed. Each step also brought an increasing dread that he would hear the call of one of the approaching men or, worse, feel the blade slide into his back. He had been given a second chance, and only one purpose remained: to save what was left of his family. He couldn’t go out like that, a sword in his back before he’d had half an opportunity to recover from his last assault.

  Finally, after he thought he had pushed his luck far enough, The Stranger collapsed and partly dove, partly rolled, into a fair-sized rivulet in the earth. He dared not look up and observe the passing party. Had twenty or more jumbled footsteps not been piercing the silent jungle, his painful rasping and wheezing would almost surely get their attention. He hoped with all the mental strength he had left that the men in the party weren’t astute enough to think to stop and listen for his current position.

  7

  The men were not astute enough to think to stop and listen for The Stranger’s current position. While their leader may have been, he was currently clouded by his greed, muted by the roar of his clamoring crew, or otherwise occupied.

  The Stranger lay face-down and listened for what seemed a lifetime. Every passing moment brought with it a certainty that he would feel a knife in his back or, maybe, nothing at all and all would merely switch to blackness as a sword deftly removed his head, but they needed
him. They wanted him to lead them to a boy, which he most definitely could not do. No boy existed at that moment to whom The Stranger could lead anyone.

  The clambering drew ever closer (at one point, the stomping deafeningly close, The Stranger dearly wished he would have thought to throw some sticks or leaves or grass or sand over his back to conceal himself a bit more thoroughly) and finally faded away at last. After several excruciating moments, the noise appeared to be very far in the distance, an afterthought of the serene silence of the jungle air.

  But suddenly The Stranger realized that the jungle air wasn’t serenely silent and that, unless he wanted to encounter at least one other obstacle that he certainly couldn’t overcome right now, he would not be afforded the opportunity to rest longer yet and wait until the search-party had traveled out of ear shot completely. A loud, low, grumbling growl erupted from slightly behind and to his left. As the clicking intensified in urgency and pitch, it became evident that whatever was producing it was not a creature that would bow out and allow a wounded man to pass peacefully.

  The Stranger stood and walked as swiftly as he could in a straight line back toward the beach without looking over his shoulder.

  8

  If he could get into the pirates’ skiff, perhaps he could sail away and assess his wounds for the first time onboard. That would gain him plenty of time and assurance that he wouldn’t be bothered yet again by unidentified jungle beasts or hoards of plundering kidnappers.

  When The Stranger broke from the trees into the dazzling sunlight for the second time, he once again felt intolerably more faint and dizzy than he had moments before. He stumbled to his knees on the sand and hung his head in exhausted, somewhat relieved, silence. Moments passed before he finally opened his eyes and began to investigate his injuries. He couldn’t do this with sand all over his sweaty, bloody hands, so he crawled to the shoreline to rinse them provisionally in the seawater. It would be impossible to remove all the salt and sand from his fingertips, but this would have to do for now, as no fresh water was around.

  In his desperation, he cupped his palms in the small waves that ran in and sipped the salty water gingerly. Even with such small swallows, The Stranger gagged and choked on the bitter drink, but he continued to attempt to quench his unyielding thirst until he spluttered and dry heaved over the wet sand.

  At last he sat upright and slowly, delicately prodded the most prominent wound in his chest, the entry wound of the musket ball. It had barely missed his heart but likely punctured a lung. The wound was just off-center of his chest and slightly below where his ribcage came together. As soon as his fingertip touched the fouled skin, he groaned sharply and drew his hand away painfully quickly. Unable to even withstand touching the wound’s surface, how could he dig his rough, calloused fingers inside and retrieve the ball on his own?

  He squinted his eyes and braced himself to plunge his fingers into the wound. A stick to bite would have been ideal here, but to crawl all the way back to the trees and find a suitable branch would cost the man time and energy that he simply didn’t have. What if he passed out from the pain? Merely blacked out and lay unconscious in the sand until the tide came in and drowned him or the men came back to find him unmoving by their boat.

  This wouldn’t do. The Stranger stood up and leaned on the edge of the beached vessel. He pushed conservatively on the hull, but it didn’t budge. He wouldn’t have the strength to do this on his own. He grunted and groaned as he pushed harder still on the boat in an attempt to get it floating back out to sea, but the contraction of his abdominal muscles made his chest feel like it would surely pop and blow his ribcage outward in a spray of blood and bone and gore.

  He had the time to wonder despairingly what he was supposed to do now before the emaciated man with the long, scraggly beard and the red, diseased skin stepped out from behind a large rock jutting out of the sand a mere two body-lengths away.

  “I’s prepared to torture the where’bouts of the babbie outta ya, but ye seem to be doin’ fine work o’ that yer own self.”

  9

  The Stranger started and had a short-lived urge to attempt another escape. He turned and stumbled as he struggled to dash in the opposite direction, but Slougher stepped easily forward and seized the back of his loose, tattered shirt.

  He pushed The Stranger forcefully to his knees in the shallow water and firmly planted the tip of his curved blade under the man’s dirty, blood-stained chin. This couldn’t be the end. After all the running and hiding, to be so effortlessly captured, to fall so easily into this deranged man’s trap, to be so sickeningly predictable … It was insulting.

  “What’s yer name?” Slougher asked, not so demanding now that The Stranger’s life was almost literally in his hands.

  The Stranger opened his mouth and, for the first time this day, tried to speak. “I don’t …” His voice was dry and barely audible. He didn’t know what to say anyway.

  “Where’s yer babbie?”

  So it was his son these men were after. Could they possibly be working against Baron Bernard’s crew? If that were the case, why was his life so clearly in danger now? “I … I don’t …” The Stranger tried again.

  “All righ’,” Slougher said reasonably as he looked up and glanced toward the tree-line casually. Red sores on his dry, cracked face were practically pulsating in the intense heat. The Stranger noticed, before Slougher forced him face-down in the salty sea, that the man’s beard from this angle appeared to be mangy and patchy. It matched his diseased skin rather well.

  When his torso submerged, a white-hot supernova of pain appeared in the center of his chest. While the scrapes and bruises on his face stung, they were completely muted by the screaming agony inside his chest. The sand had been bad enough, but the water allowed salt to penetrate the wound far more deeply than dry sand could have done from the surface with blood steadily flowing out.

  He screamed and writhed under Slougher’s firm grip for a moment before the man allowed him to come back up, sputtering and choking and sobbing, to a seated position. “I don’t know!” he finally managed to croak.

  Slougher seized his hair and whipped his head to the side; he leaned in close to inspect The Stranger’s temple before prodding the corner of his eye with the sword’s tip. “That a scar thar?” he asked gruffly.

  The Stranger was squeezing his eyes closed tightly, bracing himself for the end, but only the strange question came. “Y-yes,” he managed.

  “From when ye’s a boy?”

  Another confused pause. “Yes. How―”

  “A man come to me ’n’ says, ‘Sluff, how’d ye like to earn a hones’ buck ’n’ per’aps a piece of yer soul back fer doin’ a vurry special task fer the powers-that-be over in Reprise?’ Now when ’at same man, a courier o’ The Baron hisself, describes to me a traitor’t done stole a slave ship, property o’ Reprise leaders, ’n’ runned away ’n the dead o’ night wit’ ’is agin’ parents an’ a kidnapped boy, he takes pains to point out ’at man in question’s got a fair-sized scar off t’ side his left eye. A scar give to ’im by The Baron hisself when they’s younguns.”

  The Stranger’s agonizing chest heaved as he struggled to stay conscious enough to understand at least every third word of Sluff’s thick accent. He tried to interject. “B―but … you have the wrong―”

  Slougher cupped his free hand in the water around his ankles and slapped it painfully against The Stranger’s bleeding chest wound. The Stranger’s words were cut off as a short, tortured wail escaped his throat.

  “Now ’fore ye go tellin’ me I got the wrong anythin’, mind ye I lit out wit’ me crew to practice me ol’ trade, one o’ the few thin’s I’s ever been any good et. Now I waked up this morn’ wit’ a feelin’ I sh’d like to sail aroun’ side o’ dis deserted rock t’ see what I see. Low ’n’ ’hold, I find me a stranger looks as though he been to the edges of the Great Sea ’n’ back ’n’ slayed e’ry Punisher Beastie o’ the Ol’ Stories in one night. I found me a
stranger ’at matches my description to the letter, and I got a purty good idear ’at iffin we strolled on down dis coast we’d come up on that same stole craft o’ the Barony.”

  His cracked lips spread apart in a malicious grin revealing a handful of blackened-yellow, decaying teeth. “So I’ll ask ye once more: Where’s yer boy?”

  The Stranger’s breath came more raspy and irregularly with each passing moment. “The Baron already got my son,” he said quietly, a painfully dense cloud of rage and desire and misery passing through his mind for the first time since he awoke on the beach.

  “Yer lyin’,” Slougher said plainly, but he had taken a moment’s pause at this game-changer.

  “It’s why I’m so hurt,” The Stranger pleaded. “It’s why I’m shot,” he choked.

  As the scimitar’s tip began to draw fresh blood from The Stranger’s soft throat with its steadily increasing pressure, he realized he was doing nothing for this villain besides taking away his vain fantasies of wealth and prosperity.

  “Yer lyin’, I said,” Slougher growled as he leaned down, his reeking, steaming face mere inches from The Stranger’s own, “an’ even in yer current state, ye look ’n’ smell a might sight better ’n the men ’n’ women I been travelin’ wit’. If ye stay my curiosity in the matter, I may have half a mind t’ flip ye face-down ’n’ thump yer rump ’til yer bleedin’ lung fills wit’ seawater ’n’ blood ’n’ come.”

  Any hope of convincing this man collapsed at the seriousness of his claim. The Stranger believed every word. But if now was his time to die, he damn sure wouldn’t let it be under the blade or dick of this filthy criminal.

  He tentatively opened his eyes and glanced at the tall rocky cliffs not far down the beach behind Slougher. When he began to cry, the tears weren’t faked, but his profession was sheer deceit: “Okay. Okay, I’ll take you to my son.”

  10

  Slougher turned to follow The Stranger’s gaze toward the cliffs, and his face lit up with a wicked, joyful grin. Good, he was blinded by his greed.