by Travis Smith
Suddenly, John’s pervasive apathy slipped away and the world regained a clarity he may never have known; he shifted his gaze and saw the sign that would change everything once and for all.
3
When the peaceful monarchy of Reprise was overthrown and dismantled from within, it took mere days for news to travel to Fordar. The rapidity of this hearsay suggested to those individuals willing to ponder it that Baron Bernard had preemptively sent men on a journey across the Great Sea weeks before enacting his actual attack plan.
Nevertheless, the small coup involving no more than fifty rebels appeared to have been massively successful. Their success was most likely due to the fact that they took orders from a set of demoralizing leaders and instigators whose principal aim was to destroy the untroubled way of life and seize control of every individual, at least in Fordar and Reprise, if not the minor outlying nations as well as the uncivilized nation of Sodar. This rebellion had gone relentlessly and heartlessly for the head of Reprise and, in most regards, Fordar also. After The Baron gained control of the central government in Reprise, the rest would theoretically be simple.
Bernard’s contingent of men arrived at Fordar in lavish ships just a step below those belonging to the king himself and rapidly set out to gather the lowest and most dangerous of the criminals and outsiders that could be found, and in nearly no time at all, the crew had grown to an enormous number. This clan travelled from town to town in all directions of the compass and set forth extirpating all sense of community that had existed for generations upon generations among the people of Fordar. Entire townships were burned to the ground, dissenters and peacekeepers and individuals who resisted the shift in power were publically executed, and the mentally handicapped and children who couldn’t think or fend for themselves were imprisoned and enslaved.
Slowly but surely, the dynamic of the world had begun to shift from white to black. Maria could feel it in her own home as surely as she could feel it in the streets of Lexen, her home district which was located just a ways south of Mitten, the largest district and center of Fordar’s government and commerce activities.
It became evident very rapidly that any opposition to the new movement was far from unwelcome, and her husband took to the new ways of life with a rapidity that made Maria fairly uncomfortable with her marriage as a whole. After weeks of discomfort and growing unease at the changes she was observing, she turned to look out the window of a small market shop one day to witness her husband with a small group of peacekeepers—who now carried weapons at all times. The men brought out a gagged and bound young woman and forced her to her knees, where Maria’s own husband, with whom she had shared a bed and home for most of her adulthood, slit the poor girl’s throat in front of a small crowd of frightened onlookers.
Maria immediately dropped her goods and fled through the back of the shop. She ran furiously for as long and as far as she could until she reached the shipyard at the mouth of a small river opening into the Great Sea. There she hid and wept, staring out at the open ocean and mourning, wishing desperately for a return to simpler times when death and chaos didn’t roam the streets and invade her peaceful home.
Just before sunset a brawny man with a wet face and a single pack of foods and clothing came hustling into the boathouse where Maria was hiding. He froze at the sight of her and finally asked gruffly if she owned the ship that was tied there. When she denied owning any ships, he asked if she would cause him any problems were he to take the boat unlawfully. She proclaimed that nearly every walk of life appeared to be unlawful as of late, and the large man dropped his pack, sat huskily on the ground, and put his head between his knees.
Robert’s wife had been murdered in the streets after she had been overheard making a comment about the tranquility of times of yore. When Maria discovered that she was hiding in a boathouse commiserating and crying with a man whom her very husband had recently widowed, she burst into tears and voiced her unwarranted shame with herself and her much more appropriate shame for her husband.
Robert and Maria spent the night making love aboard the docked boat and consoling each other with equal efforts incited by their own feelings of loss and misery. When morning came, Maria pleaded with Robert not to leave Lexen and Fordar right away. She insisted that a better plan could be enacted between the two of them, but her words possessed little conviction even in her own ears. Nonetheless, her vulnerability and longing had forced her head-over-heels off the cliff of love or something as close to love as she was ever likely to come again. In a matter of minutes after meeting Robert, a man who seemed large and powerful enough to single-handedly execute every man present in the market at the time of his wife’s murder, Maria needed him as strongly as she’d ever needed her own husband. The man had the body of a fighter but the heart of a lover, and that represented the principles upon which the world had grown so strong and healthy. Maria was still not convinced that a world of that strength could be overwhelmed so rapidly by what had started as a small band of miscreants.
But even a world that had existed for generations in blinding Whiteness held a profound vulnerability to abundant Blackness just waiting to spill forth from any small cracks in the surface.
Maria convinced Robert not to flee, to stay in Fordar and remain her reminder of and naïve hope for a world that was. The two spent the next several weeks living under the radar of the patrolling officers and becoming closer and closer and falling more in love. Maria began thinking of herself with her maiden name and sneaking off during the day to be with Robert and avoid her husband, who was becoming increasingly alienated from her and bringing home increasing amounts of wealth each day, wealth that was, no doubt, seized from those he had executed and imprisoned himself.
Before long it became apparent that Maria’s life and freedom was coming close to an end. She could survive in absolute opposition to the man under her roof for only a matter of time before she herself became an enemy of the state subject to termination.
She went to Robert at last and agreed that the two of them should steal a vessel and flee the country.
They had sailed for a short time in peace before they heard the gunfire just after dusk.
4
The cloud of bloody seawater surrounded a mortally wounded man who seemed to be getting tortured by a ghastly looking pirate. John couldn’t have decided which of the two looked more haggard if he’d wanted to. The weight that he’d borne throughout his time on this island vanished in an instant, and he held no doubts that this was the sign he had sought for so long. Should the crumbling precipice upon which he stood give way and, in an unfeeling act of cosmic irony, plummet to the frothy seas below, John felt so light and free that he could have spread his arms and glided to the man’s rescue below.
But the crag didn’t collapse—this one would hold a few more moments yet—and John swiftly stepped backward as the reality of what he was seconds away from doing caught up with him. He stared wide-eyed at the rock face with the bold crack running along the fragile façade in a perfect arch, but this was no time for catharsis. That could come later should his protector souls pull through for him and grant him life after the events that would soon follow.
He plummeted headlong toward the trees behind him. Stumbling at first, then picking up impossible momentum down the steep slope leading down from the cliffs, John careened toward the trees with only one coherent thought: I need a weapon.
When he reached the tree line and began searching frantically for a stick or rock long and sharp enough to serve as a usable weapon, John’s towering vantage point lent a sight that gave him pause. Three similarly garbed pirates were yelling curses and pushing each other through the thicket below, making their way down the hill and away from a larger group of men heading in the other direction and from John himself. Spending time enslaved and tortured in Reprise and then transported to the even more lawless land of Fordar, John had seen plenty of men like these. Men with long, curving blades in their hands and scores of sma
ller blades decorating their waistbands. Men who plundered and punished without heed or direction. Men who may very well have lashed and barked orders at innocent slaves like his own wife and son he’d abandoned so long ago.
John found their weapons far more tempting than a mere stick or rock, and with so many of these men suddenly on the island, he’d need something more reliable with which to strike swift, deadly blows anyway. He barreled into the thickets toward the two men who had broken away from their group to comb the island. Whether these men were after the old man or just here to torture stranded inhabitants like himself, this was his chance to right his wrongs. Or to make a start of it, at the very least.
Unmindful of the branches and vines slapping off his face, arms, and legs, caring not whether he lived or died, John raced down the hill, through the trees, over fallen logs, and around patches of thicket. The two men upon whom he was rapidly encroaching remained oblivious to the last second of his approaching stampede of footfalls. They were tearing and swearing just as loudly as he, and they didn’t see him coming until he hurtled headfirst into one pirate’s lower back. The ruffian’s head whipped back with the impact of John’s tackle, and his companion immediately began shrieking and blindly swinging his blade.
“He’s here! He’s here!” the lout screamed, but his entire posse had already been screaming mindlessly in every direction, and his echoes were lost amongst the trees.
5
Maria and Robert had struggled to remain just out of sight of the shorelines of Fordar (a task which the rare scope they had found aboard the stolen ship greatly aided), but when they reached the southernmost tip of the nation and entered open sea, keeping track of where they were became a much more difficult task.
With nowhere to go and nothing left to lose except their lives, the couple sailed south until Fordar was no longer in sight. Worry and concern gradually faded to peace of mind and a serenity that nothing but being alone on the open sea can create. After many days of scrupulously scanning the rear horizon through their scope for any sign of pursuers, the pair finally stopped sleeping in shifts and began to enjoy the company of one another.
Maria was lying in their small cot, entangled in Robert’s sleeping body, when the first panic had occurred. She was stroking his hair and enjoying the gentle rise and fall of the waves upon which their directionless vessel floated. The dark, silent sea held endless opportunities for their future together, and so long as they sailed southward during the days, they both agreed that they would let the nights choose the subtle variations in their course that would ultimately determine their final destination.
When the deafening gunshot pierced the silent night, Maria snapped out of her devoted daze and sat bolt upright, unmindfully squeezing Robert’s wrist and hyperventilating.
“They’ve found us!” she called despairingly.
6
John remained upright and continued running for a full seven steps with the hooligan riding his momentum. At last the two fell, face-first, with John landing on top of the man’s back. Sword long-since tossed away and nowhere to be found, the pirate writhed and scrambled beneath John’s scant weight. He clawed at the dirt and cawed loudly until John seized the back of his head and slammed his face forcefully into the ground, stilling the man’s resistance.
The other pirate finally regained his senses and was swiftly approaching John from behind, but John had been bottling up his rage and heartache and shame, and the pressure inside was finally ready to escape, not in a slow leak, but in a powerful explosion. John stood and turned, using his momentum to swing one leg out to strike the approaching pirate. He hardly felt it when the blade sliced his thigh and his shin and foot connected with the ruffian’s arms and face. The pirate’s curved scimitar left his talentless hand and landed point-first in the earth. John, heart pounding and rage building, fell upon the shocked pirate with relentless, fatal force. He shoved his fist almost entirely in the man’s open mouth, breaking what few rotted teeth remained in his head and silencing his panicked bellows once and for all.
Fists covered in the pirate’s blood and his own, John continued pounding the man’s head until his moving stopped completely. All the while John imagined all the things he’d have liked to have done to his only slightly more presentable slave-driver. At last his wrath was slaked, and he was overcome yet again with warm, comforting clarity. He stood and calmly plucked the blade from the dirt and drove it unflinchingly into the pirate’s chest. The battered man didn’t move, but a river of blood pulsed and poured forth from the wound like a poorly designed fountain. John turned and plunged the sword into the other man’s back. This man did writhe and give a coarse grunt, but John twisted the already curved blade like a lever, and the pirate stilled at last.
With sunlight filtering down through the dense canopy of trees above, John walked with his bright red glistening blade until he found the second sword that had flown out of the pirate’s grasp as he was tackled. A clean, shining blade in his left hand and a gory, blood-soaked blade in his right, John set off toward the larger group of remaining men.
7
When the gunshot awakened him in the dead of night, Robert had squeezed Maria close, and the two sat in silence for several minutes. One more gunshot rang out, and it became clear that the source was a great distance away. The two swiftly went to the small ship’s deck and scanned the dark horizon for any indication of the disruption. What he saw had instilled a dread so grave in Robert that he nigh sank to his knees in desperation. The only thing keeping him upright was the frightened, fragile Maria clinging to his arm. He’d stilled himself for her sake if nothing else—in that moment every hope of escape he’d ever held had withered.
A large ship—one whose intricate, elegant sails indicated could very likely be a vessel of the crown himself—had intercepted a smaller slave ship in the dark, moonless night. The craft was far off on the horizon, but Robert could clearly make out the sails all alight without using his scope. Through the device, however, he could see governmental men pacing about on board, taking captives of their own and setting fire to everything that would burn.
“Come on,” he whispered to Maria, “we must make off.”
He seized the wheel and steered their boat swiftly in the opposite direction. If those men were as highly ranked in Reprise as their attires suggested, they surely possessed much more powerful sight-extending devices than the one he’d found on this stolen ship. An urge had arisen to order Maria below the decks until he felt sure they were safe again, but what good would that do? The odds of such seemed fairly low at that point. Besides, Maria was his lover and his equal. She had been through as much as he, and they’d come out together, like-minded, and embarked on this endless journey through the rest of their—what was likely now to be—short-lived lives.
He could make out something else in the distance ahead of the direction they had begun travelling. He tried looking through the scope but could make out no form in the encompassing darkness. When the sun finally began to rise behind them, they had learned that the thing they were approaching was a small island—an island that very likely helped spare their lives for the time being.
Now, after having sailed all the way around to the west side of the island, they looked back to find the small skiff of several pirates headed directly for them.
8
“This is bloomin’ fuckery. The gimpy arsehole c’d be anywheres! I say ’e’s dead ’n a ’ole four steps into the bush, more likely ’n not!”
“Stay yer grousin’, Bludger. Yer makin’ it ’otter ’n’ stickier out ’ere ’n it already be!”
“We been hustlin’ ’til we cain’t husle n’more! Alls I’m sayin’ is we be less likely t’ find the fuge ’n t’ find our own crew ag’in! ’n the chances o’ that’re pretty bloomin’—GLURG!”
Bludger’s speech was stalled as his head was unsuccessfully severed to the spine from behind. The result was effective nonetheless. His own sword dropped from his hand as his body wa
s flung to the ground, jets of blood flowing forth from the wound made by one of John’s dull blades.
Bludger’s two companions stopped and turned to see John standing with a bloody sword in each hand and a maddening look in his eyes. They each raised their own cutlass in just enough time to block John’s double-bladed downward swings. Wordlessly, the pirates fought side-by-side as this deranged jungle man swung their own crewmen’s blades against them. John swung faster and more erratically with each attack these rogues blocked. The pirates backed slowly away and attempted to each gain any semblance of an upper-hand, but John swung with such brute force and surprising determination that they were forced to remain on the defense.
At last the man on John’s left retreated and dove backward out of his range. Because this was John’s non-dominant hand, the powerful swing that connected with nothingness caused him to stumble to his knee. The man on his right was still too shocked to act upon this momentary vulnerability, but the first pirate dove back in and kicked John squarely in the chest, driving him backward onto his back in the dirt.
“Where’s the boy?” he said, approaching and pointing his cutlass at John’s exposed throat.
“He’s killed Bludger!” the other pirate, still shell-shocked, chimed in.
“More fer us,” John’s assailant said unflinchingly. “Take us to ’im.”
But John knew nothing about what these men were saying, and he cared even less. He’d done his time on this forsaken island, and he would either die right here and now or slay these men where they stood. There was no time for talk.
He curled his legs in and thrust them together at the knees of the man who stood above him before the second man could regain his senses. One leg popped backwards at the knee, and the other buckled and twisted to the side, bringing him screaming to the ground at an obscenely awkward angle. The pirate dropped the sword and fell upon John, who slid one blade into the soft skin beneath the man’s chin and pushed the body off of himself.
