Rory drank the whole cup of brandy in one gulp and stared past Erik.
“What was her name?” Erik asked.
Rory didn’t answer. He just stared.
“What was her name?” Erik asked again.
“Sorry, lad,” Rory finally said, shaking his head. “What was that?”
“What was your ship’s name?”
“Ah, Lady Freedom,” Rory replied, “and that’s what she was—my freedom.”
“But now she’s gone?” Erik asked.
“That’s all that’s left of her, lad,” Rory said, pointing to a broken, wooden plank with the faded letters ‘LADY’ painted on it.
“Pirates took her from me. Sailed with the navy for twenty years, fighting pirates and never had a problem. I sail my own ship for four years, and then she’s gone. One bolt from a scorpion rips right through Lady Freedom’s hull, and down she goes, my crew, and all my dreams. I swallowed sea water for three days before I floated ashore.”
“That is all you have left of your ship?” Erik asked.
“Aye. The last piece I have of her,” Rory replied sadly. “I didn’t have the balls to kill myself, so I figured I’d fight anyone I could—maybe die that way. But no one would kill me. So, I figured I’d just find a quiet bar somewhere and drink myself to death.
“I found this here bar—called The Green Ghost then—and sat where you’re sitting for a whole year and drank. After I realized I wouldn’t die from that either, I bought the bar from the old woman who owned it. She didn’t want much for it, which was good because I didn’t have much. I built the stables and the rooms in the back and renamed it The Lady’s Inn. This coming summer will be ten summers running this place. But serving . . . serving is good for a man.”
“I just want to make enough coin to go home and save my father’s farm from Hámonian nobles,” Erik said, watched as Rory quickly drank two more cups of brandy. His eyelids began to droop, and he leaned hard to one side.
“Bah,” Rory replied with a sickened looked. He spat on the floor. “Hámonian nobles. What a disgusting lot. They’ll stick their cocks in anything.”
Erik didn’t want to get into a conversation that reminded him of his dreams and just drank quietly.
“Well, lad,” Rory said, slurring and straightening as he realized he was drifting too far to one side. “I hope you don’t wind up like me—an old drunk, sitting in his own, rundown bar, whose only way to get by in this world is to be a lackey for the Messenger of the East.”
Erik perked up at the name—The Messenger of the East. He’d heard that this was the herald of Golgolithul, the second most powerful man in the most powerful country of Háthgolthane.
“The Messenger of the East?” Erik asked.
“Aye, the Black Mage himself,” Rory said, using one of the many names given to the Messenger. “He’s coming to my bar. Everyone thinks he’s coming to see you lads off. He doesn’t give a pig’s shit about all the young fools sailing east.”
“Why is he coming then?” Erik asked.
Rory’s head tilted back for a moment. Then he sat up, eyes wide open, and drank yet another cup of brandy. He poured himself more, and then looked to Erik, who shook his head.
“Mercenaries,” Rory said, another disgusted look on his face. “Not even real soldiers. He’s meeting a group of mercenaries here, the same day the Golgolithulian ships are sailing east.”
“Why?” Erik asked, leaning forward in his chair, his elbows resting on the table.
“I don’t quite know,” Rory conceded, shrugging lazily. “The Messenger of the East comes by my bar six months ago looking for a discreet place to meet, something off the beaten path. He had heard I once served the east. Well, my bar is well out on the outskirts of the city, and I tell him for the right price, I can be as discreet as he wants me to be.
“He tells me he’ll pay me a hundred gold pieces, half then and half when he comes back, but he doesn’t know when that’ll be. I tell him that’s a good price to keep me discreet, and that I trust he’ll come back with the other half. By the Shadow, even if he never comes back, fifty gold pieces is more than I make from one summer to the next.
“Now I just got word last week that he is coming. He says he’ll be here at four hours past noon. Ships sail out every month taking you lads east, so it’s convenient for him. Doesn’t look so suspicious. I hear some of the best mercenaries in all of Háthgolthane will be here on his personal invitation.”
“Four hours past noon,” Erik repeated. “That would be late afternoon, yes?”
“Aye,” Rory replied. “An invitation-only meeting.”
Erik had heard of this way to keep time—hours—but they didn’t use it on the farmstead. Morning, noon, afternoon, evening, midnight—these were the simple ways they used to tell time. Erik sat back in his chair, his eyes staring behind Rory.
“Will any of them have servants? Maybe porters to carry their things?” Erik asked, ignoring Rory’s concerns.
“Probably,” Rory replied, smiling and shrugging again. “I don’t have much experience with mercenaries. They’re not welcome most places. Dishonorable lot. I would suppose though that some might hire a few lads to carry their things.”
“Will the reward be large?” Erik asked.
“To the mercenaries? Aye, big,” Rory replied. “The Lord of the East pays well for this sort of thing. But failure? Well, I don’t even want to think of what failure means. A reward for a simple porter, I don’t know. Depends on who hires you, I guess.”
Rory drank more brandy and smiled at Erik, eyes half-closed.
“Service does a man good,” he said once again.
Rory and Erik sat for a while, Rory drinking and Erik thinking.
“Well,” Rory said with a final sigh and clapping his hands to his chest, “I am not a smart man, but I have always done one thing, and that is to follow my heart. Follow your heart, Erik. It will seldom lead you astray. Follow your heart. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ve once again drunk a little too much.”
As Rory staggered off, Erik continued to sit, just staring at the warped and stained wood of the table. He thought of fighting in the armies of Golgolithul. He would be traveling to some place he never heard of, killing someone, or being killed by someone, he never knew. He thought of Rory, fighting for another man for most of his life only to wind up crushed and lost, feeling like he had no purpose.
His thoughts then turned to his farmstead, and of his mother and father and two little sisters, his mother’s garden, even his uncle’s orange brandy. Two years goes by so fast, he thought regretfully. Erik sat at his table, staring at nothing.
With the few candles, his body cast long shadows across the room, and the semi-darkness seemed fitting. His eyebrows curled into a look of disappointment. He looked around the bar, the warped wood, the smell of stale air, the sound of waves crashing on the shore as the tide rose. So different from the chatter of crickets and the songs of night birds, the waning smells of flowers closing with dusk, his mother’s clean and well-lit dining room. A small smile crept across Erik’s face.
I could be sitting at my mother’s table right now, sharing a bo
wl of warm soup with Simone. She would be my wife by now. Maybe she would have my son in her belly. Father might have given me a plot of land to farm. Her father would have added to it. Brok’s a good man. Maybe he would have given me a cow and a bull, some chickens. Maybe some pigs. I would work, just as my father did and his father before him.
Instead, Erik sat alone in a dingy bar, his thoughts lingering on what might have been.
Chapter 34
THE THICK, WOOL COWL OF Patûk Al’Banan’s cloak shadowed his eyes well from the harsh reflection of the sun against the South Sea. Then again, the South Sea always seemed much brighter to him for some reason. The Gulf of Shadows—the bit of ocean that flowed inland into Antolika and eventually became the Shadow Marshes—always looked subdued, black even.
The Sea of Knives and the Eastern Ocean seemed to swallow the sun up, their waters so deep they looked purple. And the waters that flowed around the Feran Archipelagos, although technically part of the South Sea, didn’t have the same luster. Perhaps it came from the wildness of those waters, the untamed chaos of unclaimed territory that let them blaze a fiery blue like that.
Patûk found it beautiful in a way, and yet here was that imposter, leading his country to ruin and wanting to rule everything. Hadn’t he learned anything from history? Some of the world needed to stay unclaimed, uncharted, untouched. He stroked Ambrose’s nose gently. The destrier, hard, weathered, mean, and loyal like him, snorted and stamped its feathered hoof in approval.
“My lord, we have news.”
Lieutenant Sorben Phurnan had rushed to the general’s side and knelt, eyes trained on the ground before him. As much as he tried to act servile and subdued, he always carried that noble haughtiness. Even now, kneeling before the general, his back just looked too straight, his head not low enough, his shoulders too square. Patûk couldn’t put his finger on it, but he didn’t like it.
Patûk decided to let the lieutenant kneel there for a while. He continued to watch the sun, setting beyond the hills of the Western Tor, cast an animated, wrinkled imitation of itself across the crystalline water. He saw, from the corner of his eye, Sorben Phurnan lift his head, a scowl strewn across his face, but when Patûk pretended to turn, the soldier dropped his chin to his chest. The general smiled to himself.
“You do not like waiting, yes?” Patûk Al’Banan finally turned to the lieutenant.
“I will wait as long as you wish me to wait.” His subordinate’s head stayed low, his eyes trained on the ground.
“That is a good answer.” Patûk Al’Banan smiled, although no mirth existed in his voice. “A packaged answer, but a good answer, nonetheless. Your father taught you well. You may stand.”
Lieutenant Sorben Phurnan stood, head still slightly bowed.
“You can’t wait for the day when men will bow to you, can you?” Patûk sneered as he gathered a length of his cloak up in his right arm so he might walk a little easier without it tugging at his heels. He saw a small smile creep along the lieutenant’s face.
“Well,” Patûk added, and then he dropped his length of cloak and stepped close, His breath quickened, his hard face tinged with red as his eyes squinted and teeth clenched. “It may never happen, you pompous, blood-sucking worm.”
Sorben Phurnan ducked, the general’s words a whip, and he backed up so quickly, he fell back on his heels.
“I get tired of hearing about your abuse of my men,” Patûk hissed. “This is not Golgolithul, and this is not the courts of Fen-Stévock.” He spat when he spoke the name of the Eastern Kingdom’s capital city, named after the Stévockians, the family from which the current Lord of the East hailed.
When the Aztûkians controlled much of the Eastern Kingdom’s senate, Fen-Aztûk proved the capital city, but the Stévockians quickly moved it when they gained control. Patûk Al’Banan jabbed his index finger into the lieutenant’s chest. “These are my men, my soldiers. If I hear of abuse again, I will kill you. Do you understand, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, General,” Sorben Phurnan said quietly as he bowed quickly and backed away even farther from his indignant leader.
“Now, what is this news you have?”
Sorben didn’t answer at first. He looked over his shoulder and jerked his head sideways. A scout, kneeling just out of the general’s sight, rushed forward and knelt just behind the lieutenant. Patûk looked at Sorben, fire in his eyes.
“Speak,” Sorben Phurnan said harshly at first and then, remembering the general’s words, softened his tone and repeated, “Speak.”
“My lord,” said the scout, a man no younger than the lieutenant but without the good fortune of noble birth. His close-cropped hair and broad shoulders and lean waist, a scar just above his right eye and a missing half ear, showed a life of service to Patûk Al’Banan. “We have word of the Messenger.”
Patûk Al’Banan’s posture changed. He stepped back a bit, cleared his throat, and straightened his shoulders. “What word, soldier? Quickly.”
“Yes sir,” the scout acknowledged. “Our spies have discovered that his presence is expected in Finlo.”
“With the imposter?”
“No, my lord,” the scout replied and scooted back on his knees, fearful of the repercussions his response might bring.
“What brings the Herald to this place? And without his lord?” Patûk asked calmly.
“I’m not sure, General. But we discovered a call going out to certain men—soldiers, mercenaries,” the soldier explained. “Our intelligence says the Lord . . .”
He stopped quickly. Acknowledging the Lord of the East as such in front of General Al’Banan brought a knife to the tongue at best.
“Our intelligence says the usurper is gathering such men for a mission. Some task of importance—the search for something he holds dear to his family.”
Patûk tapped his fingers on his steel breastplate. He turned back to the sun’s reflection on the South Sea, slowly fading with the onset of dusk.
“Men from all over have heeded his call,” the scout continued. “Men from Háthgolthane and Antolika, my lord.”
“Are the Antolikans so starved that they would serve the man who wishes them slaves?” Patûk muttered, more to himself.
“They are barbarians, savages with few desires other than gold and women,” Sorben replied.
“What have I told you about listening to my own counsel?” Patûk spat.
“My lord,” Sorben Phurnan said quickly, dropping to a knee along with the soldier.
They, the soldier and the lieutenant, waited a long time while Patûk stared at the ocean. Darkness finally overcame the rolling hillocks in which they camped. Ambrose stamped and snorted at the chill night the sea brought.
“My Lord,” Lieutenant Sorben Phurnan dared to interject, “shall we attempt to intercept the Messenger?”
Patûk turned quickly on his heels. “And come against the Soldiers of the Eye? No, that would prove folly.”
“Then infiltrate, my lord? Shall we send men to this meeting disguised as mercenaries?”
“No,” Patûk replied. His voice was now even and cool. “No, we will wait and bide our time. We will wait for our opportunity, and when it co
mes, we will strike. It is the fashion of this imposter to beckon the services of men under a banner of righteousness. No doubt these fools will jump at the chance to serve that bastard. We will wait and follow.” Patûk turned to the soldier. “Rise.”
The man did as he was told, his head still bowed.
“When is he due in Finlo?”
“Within a week, my lord.”
“What is your name?”
The soldier hesitated at the question, but finally answered, “Bu, sir. Sergeant Bu.”
“And you are one of our spies?”
Bu nodded.
“You are now Lieutenant Bu,” the general said with a smile, “and now in command of our scouts and spies. You have done well. Send Lieutenant Kan to me. Tell him you have been promoted and, as a result, so has he. I have another assignment for him.”
Lieutenant Bu bowed low. “Thank you, my lord.”
“You will position our spies to watch for the Messenger. Report to me when he reaches Finlo.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Bu replied and, with another low bow, turned on his heels and left.
“Lieutenant,” said Patûk, with his back to the other.
“Yes, my lord,” Sorben Phurnan replied with a visible scowl on his face.
“Bring Captain Kan to my tent when he gets here.”
Sorben bowed again, grumbling under his breath as Patûk took up his cloak in his arm again. Without another word, he grabbed Warrior’s reins and led the destrier back to his camp.
Chapter 35
“MY LORD, WE HAVE ARRIVED at Aga Kona.”
Andragos straightened his robes. He had dozed off, something he rarely did. He had become unaccustomed to long carriage rides as of late, feeling rather uncomfortable despite the relative luxury in which he traveled.
A Chance Beginning Page 17
