Previous Chapter: The Pursuers
An Unexpected Turn of Events
The Thief awoke feeling groggy and poorly-rested. The constant rocking of the boat had kept him awake and soured his stomach, and every time he closed his eyes the volume of his heartbeat increased to the extent that he felt as though it would pound itself through his chest. He had never been on a boat before, and his sea legs would never find him; sometimes in the open air the nausea ceased, but mostly he wished to be left alone in his cabin to wait out the journey in restless solitude. He didn’t know how he felt about Cassilda, who spoke to him little but observed him constantly, staring often with glazed eyes at his chest. He was aware that she had manipulated the outcome of the heist with sorcery and sleight of hand, and he didn’t like being used like a piece on a chess board. She spent much of her time conferring with the Northron captain, Hyperion, and the Thief’s suspicions grew. The leap off Capanne Mons had not been part of the plan. The trek through the Dash-Margot to the portal had not been part of the plan. Appearing in the middle of the sea adjacent to a Northron steamship had not been part of the plan. At least, none of these digressions had been part of the plan that the sorceress had told him. Who was to say that he was not being led like a lamb to the slaughter? She had to get the Heart out of him somehow.
He rose out of bed and paced about his quarters, trying to concoct a plan. He knew they were in the Gulf of Katan somewhere, probably past Massalia, hugging the coast of the vast wilderness that separated his home country from Rheine, Beaune, and Matera. If they drew within sight of land, he could dive overboard and risk a swim, though this was unwise, for the Thief didn’t think he could swim the open ocean, having only paddled in a little tributary of the Crimson Sea. Furthermore, he was not a woodsman, and though he knew he could travel along the coast and eventually reach Capetia, the journey would take long enough that he would be in danger of starvation or dying of thirst. Perhaps he could steal coin and bribe one of the Northrons to help him, for they were not fond of witches. This too was a bad plan, for he would be suspected in the theft, being an outsider, and Cassilda was powerful enough that she could possibly handle the entire crew through magic.
He left his quarters for fresh air and navigated through the cavernous corridors of the steamship Revenant (a curious name, he thought), hands pressing the walls as the floor rocked beneath him. After ascending a flight of stairs, he was greeted by the night’s sky shining above, the light of a billion stars brighter than he had ever witnessed atop the roofs of Capetia. It was enough to take away the breath of a cynical man, and so captivated was he that he did not notice the wizened sailor leaning against a smoke stack a yard away. When the man coughed, the Thief jumped and nearly tripped over a coil of rope, which would have sent him overboard. Incensed, he turned towards the man who quickly lighted a pipe, took a hit, and offered it to him with such stern-faced seriousness that the Thief found he could do nothing but follow suit.
“Herb from the southern fields of Lullingstone,” he said by way of explanation as the Thief erupted in a fit of coughing after inhaling from the pipe. “Strong stuff, especially for a Southerner such as yourself.”
“My lungs are burning,” said the Thief. His eyes had started to water, and a heavy feeling settled over head.
“You’ll appreciate the night’s sky more in a minute. These stars are not my own, and so I study them.” He indicated a chart lying on his lap. “I have made several additions.”
The man was clad in a simple pair of britches and a sleeveless shirt that displayed his heavily-tattooed arms. In the manner of most Northrons, the tattoos were composed of intricate fractal patterns that held a secret meaning to their owner. It was considered very taboo to ask a Northron what his or her tattoos meant, and though the Thief had met only a handful of the people, he knew better than to ask.
“I have never spoken to a Capetian at length. They call your city the Jewel of Ur. What is it like?” asked the sailor after taking the pipe from the Thief to smoke further.
“It is full of dumb peasants working themselves like cattle, fat merchants who grow rich off their labor, and so-called nobles who live so far up their own asses that they’ve convinced themselves that they can shit nothing but gold.” The Thief gestured for the pipe.
“So it is like most places in Ur. That’s a shame. Ur is beautiful and ripe with history, for people were there long before they migrated to Vaalbara. Our ancestors were Southerners, perhaps from Beaune when it was called Belgica. But while you in Ur have clung to superstition and the ancient ways, we have progressed. There are no Dukes or Barons in Vaalbara. There is no manipulation of the poor by the wealthy. Each man is evaluated by the State as a child and found their proper place. The land belongs to all, not to merchants or nobles. Our leaders are wise, yet their blood is as common as yours or mine. And so we have loyalty to the Vaalbarian Social Republic, for the State has given us everything we know, and it has not the weaknesses of men, who care only for themselves and kin. Perhaps one day you will come to my country and recognize its greatness. Perhaps one day we will come to you.”
The Thief did not feel like responding to political arguments. He had deep grudges against Capetia, yet he was not sold on the supposed superiority of Vaalbara as told to him by a Northron.
“Your captain, did he find us by chance?” asked the Thief.
The Northron looked at him strangely.
“The captain keeps his counsels to himself. Yet it is generally known that the woman paid him to arrive at that specific longitude and latitude, and so we found thee.”
“Have you wondered how we appeared in the middle of the Gulf of Katan, with no ship in sight?” asked the Thief.
“I assumed some type of sorcery,” said the Northron, to the Thief’s surprise.
“I thought you Northrons didn’t abide magic.”
“We are not in the North,” responded the sailor. “Were we in Vaalbara, the woman would be drawn and quartered, and the stone which she wears around her neck would be smashed into a million pieces so that it could bewitch none. You, my friend, though not a sorcerer (for it is plain) would be thrown into prison and then tried for associating with mages. The trial, however, would mostly be a show, and you also would end up drawn and quartered. Yet thankfully for you and her, we are not in the North.”
The Thief laughed and looked up at the stars a moment before responding.
“I do not think I wish to ever visit the Vaalbarian Social Republic. It seems your justice is too similar to the Capetian style.”
The sailor shrugged, lighted a lamp, and went back to his charts. The Thief stood for a while on the deck, listening to the sounds of the ocean. The air was warm and reeked of salt—a familiar smell to a Capetian—but it was so much stronger on the open waves. Gripping the gunwale, he stared out at the waters, looking for mermaids or sea monsters with a sort of childlike wonder. The ocean was a vast distance to him, a foreign realm, and never had he examined it with anything other than mild disinterest. It is awesome and terrible, and I have been afraid to look he thought. He suddenly noticed something on the horizon, barely visible in the starlight. He kept staring at it, trying to unravel what it was, until finally he gave up and asked the sailor. The sailor looked at it for a moment, then went and retrieved a telescope and identified the object.
“Karvi approaching. They have lowered the sails to disguise their longships. Barbaroi raiders mostly likely.” He lowered the telescope and picked up his charts.
“Barbarians? Shouldn’t you tell the captain?” asked the Thief.
“Once they have had a closer look at the Revenant they will turn away, or we will blow them out of the water. They are ferocious people, it is said, but they have enough sense not to attack a Vaalbarian steamship.”
“Still, they could try. Your people should be warned so they are not caught off-guard.”
“Warn them, then. I have my charts to complete.”
The Thief shook his head and left the sailor, resolving to find Cassilda, at least, and tell her of the approaching barbarians. He found her in the hold lying in a hammock, eyes closed, swinging with the rhythm of the ship. He knew that she came to the bowels of the vessel to be alone, yet he wondered why she did not retire to their shared quarters. Perhaps you are a terrible snorer he thought. Or maybe she avoids you out of guilt, knowing you must die for her precious Heart. The thing in his breast skipped a beat, causing him to reel and clutch his chest. He took it to be an omen—the sorceress would try to kill him—and so he leaned over the sleeping woman with mixed intentions. Her beauty always amazed him, and at that moment she resembled a goddess in repose more than a mortal woman, to the extent that he was afraid to be so close to her. The green amulet rose and fell on her breast, sparkling like her eyes. His hands moved quickly and deftly, fingers gently grasping the stone and lifting it enough so that he could undo the clasp which bound it around her neck. Of course she’ll suspect me he thought as he pocketed the periapt, But the arrival of the barbarians might give me a chance. He had abandoned his plan of telling anyone about the approaching longships as soon as he had seen the sorceress (all great thieves are master improvisors). There was a lifeboat in the stern, and though the shore seemed far away, and the risk of paddling in open waters with raiders about was great, he felt he had to act.
He had made it up to the deck when he heard shouting and the beating of drums. Someone had tossed a grapnel with a rope attached over the bulwark, and with dumb curiosity, he peered over the side. A steely-eyed man was climbing the side of the ship; he had long, unkempt hair and wore an ax across his back and clutched a long knife in between his teeth. The Thief waved at him playfully before kicking the grapnel loose and sending him into the water. A harpoon clattered against the deck next to him, and the Thief noticed several longships alongside the Revenant loaded with raiders. The distant karvi had been a distraction; the barbarians had sneaked behind them, somehow, and were now preparing to board. The sailor who had dismissed the Thief’s concerns appeared at his side with a rifle and managed to fire one shot before a harpoon took him in the chest. Staring at him lying there, glassy-eyed, blood oozing from his mouth, the Thief banished any thoughts of fighting back. Crouching down along the bulwark, he moved towards the stern, searching for the lifeboat. More Northrons were on the deck now, all armed, and someone fired a cannon at distant karvi, but most of the longships were right against the side of the Revenant, and so the fighting would be a melee. The Thief managed to throw himself behind a coil of rope as a large man came over the bulwark. The man was of a stout build, with red hair curling over his head as well as his chest, and one hand clutched a truncheon and the other a knife. A Northron fired his rifle point blank at the man, but it jammed, and the barbarian laid him down with one blow of his club and ended his life with a single jab of the knife. The deck was running red now with blood, and the screams of fighting and dying men tore through the air. The Thief had witnessed such carnage before as a youth in the Row, where gangs would sometimes cross paths and beat each other bloody, yet this was a far more mortal conflict, and the stakes were such that he could not decide when to sprint for the lifeboat, which would have to be lowered into the sea. More barbarians poured over the sides, and the Northrons’ numbers were shrinking, so the Thief finally took his chance. He leapt from behind the coil of rope and ran to where the boat was suspended and began to crank the pulley. He had lowered the boat to the level of the gunwale when a barbarian appeared on his right side and rammed his fist into the Thief’s skull, sending him sprawling into the bulwark. He was a big man with shoulders like a bull and long black hair that rippled about his face, which was stern rather than flush with rage like most of his comrades. The Thief tried to rise to make a last-ditch attempt to escape, but the big man kicked him in the stomach, knocking the wind from his lungs, making clear that he should stay where he was.
The battle was winding down, and most of the Northrons who were not maimed and dismembered had surrendered their weapons and huddled together in the center of the deck. They numbered less than ten, and there were three times as many barbarians crawling the ship, with more still in the karvi. The red-headed man who had killed the cartographer wore an enormous smile as he surveyed the Revenant, putting his hands gingerly on the smokestacks and staring up at them with awe. “What a ship!” he said, repeating the phrase many times as he examined every inch of the deck.
“Where is the captain?” he asked the remaining Northrons.
“Slain,” said one of them, pointing at Hyperion, who lay skewered against the mast.
The red-headed man frowned and shook his head.
“A tragedy, to be sure. He should have identified himself. I am Coriver, chief of the Roslagen. Do any of you know how to man this vessel?”
Nobody spoke. The Thief knew that Northrons were very secretive of their technology and did not willing share it with outsiders.
“If no one can show us how to use this ship, then your lives have no merit,” said the red-head. He took one of the men by the neck and in one powerful motion threw him overboard.
“That was our chief engineer!” shouted a young Northron with ruddy-cheeks and flaxen hair.
“Can you do his job?” asked the redhead, smiling a bear-like grin.
“I… I’m just the steward’s assistant,” stammered the youth.
“That’s a shame. I have no use for you, either.”
He had placed his hands on the youth’s throat when a loud crack rang out, and the middle mast fell like a giant oak, crushing several barbarians and displacing everyone on the deck. The Thief sprang up but froze when he saw Cassilda. She had a green ball of light between her hands, which were pushed almost together and shook with effort. Suddenly she let them apart, and the ball of light flew at the nearest barbarian and passed through his chest, burning a hole through his body in less than a second. The light traveled through the next barbarian, and the next, until panic spread over the remaining warriors, and they were tripping over themselves to leap overboard and so save themselves from the sorceress’s instrument of death. The Thief was thinking of following them when he noticed that the dark-haired barbarian that had captured him was sprinting towards Cassilda, coming at her in a curving trajectory so as not to attract attention. So distracted was she from guiding her light of death that she did not notice the barbarian’s approach until he was almost on top of her. He threw her down with a blow from his shoulder, and bound her hands with a chain, and though she screamed and hurled curses at him, they had no effect, for her amulet was missing and without it, much of her power was gone.
“It’s now or never,” said the Thief to himself, seeing Cassilda subdued and the barbarians in disarray. He looked out at the sea, at the strong waves cresting against the iron hull, the waters black and as uninviting as a bottomless abyss. He had no magic potion left to save him from a free-fall; if he jumped, he would likely drown, and because of the darkness, he knew naught which way to swim. Had Coriver not seen him and pointed his warriors in his direction, the Thief may have never jumped, but he did, disappearing into the cold ocean like a stone dropped into a well. Somehow, he managed to latch on to a barrel that had been thrown overboard, and so he rode the sea, and time had no meaning to him as his hands were rubbed raw from clutching the rope, and his eyes burned from the salt. Gradually he slipped from consciousness to a dreamlike state, and in this fugue, he passed his journey, remembering little afterwards but the taste of the sea.
The sun beat down upon his face like a roaring fire. Something crawled on his leg, something with sharp legs ending in a point. As the Thief gained consciousness, he also felt an intense thirst, as well as parched lips and aching muscles. Where am I he wondered, fluttering his eyelids and immediately blinking in the harsh light. He heard waves crashing against the shore; smelled the mingling scents of salt and rotten fish; felt the abuse and blows of the sea. Groggily, he struggled to raise his body from the sand. There, on his leg, was the source of the stabbing pain—an enormous blue crab crawled over his limb, stabbing at something attached to his right boot. With all the strength he could muster, the Thief kicked the creature, which resulted in it moving little and prompted a retaliatory blow served by the monstrous crab's gigantic pincher. Pain shot through his calf muscle as chitinous claws sank into his flesh. His hand instinctively moved to his belt, where he found his knife—thank the Lady—and with one deft lunge, the Thief severed the offending pincher, leaving it still attached to his leg. “Run, you bastard,” he spat as the crab waddled away, greenish fluid leaking from its body. It took all his might to peel the still-twitching claw apart from his flesh. As he discarded the pincher, he noticed what the crab was after—a juvenile lion shark, its twin jaws fastened tightly around the heel of his boot. What luck I must possess. Lost at sea yet washed ashore and narrowly escaping dismemberment by shark and crab—he must possess the Lady’s favor.
He surveyed the beach. There were many giant crabs like the one he had killed moving sideways across the sand, using their pincers to shift through driftwood and the carrion of the sea. The ocean looked calm and placid, as though it were sated with the sacrifices of last night. He picked himself up so as not to become a meal for any ambitious crustaceans and started walking towards the woods, which looked rather dark and foreboding to an urbanite like the Thief. There were gloomy shadows beneath the trees; the trees themselves were old and wizened like sculptures, twisted by the years into strange shapes. Odd calls came from the wood, shrill, piercing, and bassetto. Were he a woodsman, he would have recognized the cry of the loon, the chitter of the raccoon, and the rumbled of the wylfen, only the latter of which he had cause to fear; because he knew none of the sounds, he feared them all and hesitated before the forest. This was the Mawlden Forest, whose ancient beeches and elms had grown here since the beginning of time, the eldest of which had borne witness to the Age of Gods and the passing of the Faerie folk; whose children would stretch their boughs towards the sun when man was a distant memory. Even in Capetia they told stories of this realm and how its hollows were haunted by creatures never witnessed by human eyes. Those who lived on its outskirts refused to venture within its depths; only the Barbaroi had possessed the courage to carve a path through it to provide passage for their raiders, and they did so atop the bones of an ancient road, perhaps built by Wotan himself, their legendary forefather, whose kingdom passed long ago into myth.
The sight of an approaching longship, coming fast around the western shore, prompted the Thief to conquer his fears and flee into the woods. He moved quickly, tearing through briar and bramble, stomping on ferns and moss-covered logs, over-eager to put distance between himself and the Barbaroi, for he feared they may have spotted him. He ran like this for about twenty minutes, finally pausing to catch his breath at the rocky edge of a bubbling pool. The reflection in the water showed a worn and ragged face, and he disrupted the image with a splash as he cupped water in his hands and brought it to his mouth to drink. The water was cool and sweet, coming from an underground spring, and so he quenched his thirst and staved off dehydration. There was no crash of wood signaling the approach of raiders, so the Thief leaned against a stone and rested, attempting to gather his thoughts. He could go back towards the beach and follow it westward, though the trek would be hard, and barbarians likely patrolled the shore. Or he could continue into the Mawlden Forest and discover what lay within its glens and gullies. East too was an option, though he knew naught how close other lands might be. Had the Thief a map and the knowledge of his location, he would’ve realized that all those choices were equally poor, for he was equidistant from Capetia as he was Rheine, and northward through the forest was the Wotan Veldt, a wilderness populated by lions and hyenas. However, he never had the opportunity to make a choice, for so overcome by weariness was he that the Thief fell asleep and rested all day beside that pool, and upon waking, became disoriented and could not remember from what direction he came. The sun hid behind a cloudy sky, and so he ended up walking north, deeper into the forest, much to his chagrin, for the sun did uncover later in the day.
He had traveled aimlessly for many hours when he came upon a glade. A well-worn path cut through the clearing, and he followed it until it ended before a massive oak tree. Its limbs twisted towards the heavens like the feelers of a deep-sea horror; moss hung from the thick boughs, many of which lay upon the earth. There was a hollow in the truck as large as a man, and from its depths a blackness emitted, as though it were a portal to the unknown. He stared at it for some time before he noticed that there were ropes tied to its branches. Bones lay littered before the oak—human skulls, femurs, tibiae, ragged strips of cloth. Something in the oak watched him and purred like a well-fed cat, and the Thief heard its rumble, both in his feet and in his soul. He was reminded suddenly of the painting of the faun that hung in Dazbog’s tower, for the same evilness lurked within the ancient tree, an evil that was unable to be understood by any mortal or creature of rational thought. There was a clamor behind him—shouts came from the woods, following the path—and the noise broke the spell, and the Thief ran once again, disappearing further into the woods. How long he ran, he did not know, but eventually he fell over a log, and for a while lay there panting until weariness overtook him, and he slept briefly in the wild, a frightened, trembling thing, before waking and wandering further into the forest.
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