However, the effort seemed pointless. They weren't the target. All the aggression seemed to be aimed at taking down Shay's barge. Two of her Guards jumped between her and incoming arrows before Shay finally dove down into the safety of the River.
Three ghost-white Vin soared through the air to land on her barge.
Son of a biscuit! Forgot about the ups on those creepy white guys!
They immediately tore open crates. Leon tried to target them, but the enemy fire had shifted to the surrounding barges, and he was forced to dive down and take cover.
Meanwhile, the Vin wasted no time looting their treasures from Shay's gear. One of them pulled up the queen's journal and leaped off the barge. A second Vin lifted the box of Amber Stones and crouched down to make his escape when a dozen hollow reeds rose out of the water and turned him into a floppy pale pin cushion. Before the third Vin could respond, they did the same to him. Then, closer to the north shore, Leon heard the compressed puffs of dozens of oversized spitballs. Any of the surviving aggressors quickly retreated out of reach and discontinued slinging their arrows and stones.
Everything was quiet for a time, then Ben's voice spoke up, "Leon. Looks like you made it, boy. I didn't peg you as a survivor, but it’s good to know I can still be surprised."
"Ben! You told me you were one of the good guys, what happened?"
"Oh, come on now, Leon! Grow up! There is no good or bad here. There's only survival or failure. Cooper told me you had some secret metal object. How about we make a deal? Pull the barges over, and I'll give you Shana in return for the scrap metal and the rest of those glowing rocks."
Kyra squeezed Leon's arm in encouragement, perhaps she thought he needed it. But Leon had given up being so easily ensnared. "If Shana's out there with you Ben, you tell her she made her choice when she dove off that ledge. I didn't leave her. You tell her I'll always be her friend, but I heard her loud and clear at the slaver's port, and I'm not interested in rehashing that conversation."
Ben lost patience and cursed before continuing, "I'm done fooling around, boy. This is your last chance, throw me the stones and the metal object!"
"Come and take it!" Leon yelled at the top of his lungs, with just a bit of his bear heritage tinging his voice with raw power and emotion.
There was a long silence afterward. Then Ben's mocking voice struck one final time, "You're a fool Leon and a traitor to your kind! You are going to be stuck here in some mythic level invasion while we head back for reinforcements. Don't worry, though, I'll make your old man pay for all the trouble you've caused me…with interest!"
Leon screamed in blind rage and lurched forward ready to swim ashore and rip the man to pieces. The only thing that held him back was three pairs of brawny arms. Still, he fought against their combined strength, finding reserves he didn't know he had. He dragged them all toward the edge of the barge. It wasn't until soft but strong hands gripped his face and pulled his head around, allowing him a glimpse into the pale blue eyes of the most beautiful woman he knew that the fight in him finally slipped away.
Kyra drew him close and whispered in his ear, "Don't give in to his lies, Leon! Can't you see he's just trying to provoke you? He hasn't won, not yet!"
Chapter 29
Ben and his men disappeared after their partial failure at the Narrows. Leon was thankful for a brief window of peace and quiet. It gave him a chance to spend hours just talking with Kyra and, for the first day at least, it gave her brothers a chance to get to know him better. That first morning on the Brindle, their interest spiked all the more when he and Kyra explained how he was sort of from the Remnant. Though the revelation caused his stock with them to soar initially, it somehow dwindled back to normal over time.
They pestered him endlessly, nudging him to relay stories of his world, then they took turns solemnly shaking their heads in disproval or flat out laughing at how backward so many of his responses seemed to them. Kyra took a twisted sense of pleasure in allowing Leon to squirm under her brothers' inquisitions, but the smiles he received after suffering through those trials on her behalf were somehow always worth the hassle.
Like Gus used to say, sometimes you’ve just got to grit through the rough ride up to enjoy the pretty view down!
Before the first day ended, Leon convinced Kyra to hop barges with him and they were both able to spend time with all his companions over the next couple of days.
Kyra didn’t take to Haddie quite as quickly as Shana had the first night they met, but Leon noticed their friendship developing more naturally, budding slowly as they spent more time around one another. Haddie had certainly lost some of the spunk she possessed when Leon and her first met. Strangely though, it seemed to make her an even better match for Reed.
Though Reed was still fighting his own struggles, her sometimes quiet moods did wonders to draw him out of his head as he attempted to distract her from the types of dark thoughts they both shared. Leon suspected it also helped her to truly get to know his quiet friend on a deeper level, especially since Reed had finally become moderately proficient in common Fayden. Their relationship was growing at a slower but richer pace than before.
Reed’s new friends were interesting as well. Through snippets of conversation between them and Reed, Leon put together that those men had been shackled next to him and Rezz in the slavers' cages. Though they had been out for his blood on the night of the wild hunt, their shared circumstances, paired with the constant cruelty of the slavers, served to forge a bond between them all that went deeper than casual friendship. Somewhere along the journey, those men elected to take up the Blade when Reed made them the offer.
Initially, they feared reprisals when they learned they would be traveling to the Otterkin Kingdom, but Haddie and Sved forgave them the moment the men apologized for what they had done to them and their companions. There was an unspoken understanding between all of them that the deeds of that night would never be brought up between any of them again.
Surprisingly, the one person Kyra really seemed to enjoy talking to most, apart from Leon, was Dimples. It turned out that the stoic Hootsi was a bit of a shepherd himself.
In addition to the Anastashe cats, his clan raised goats, similar to Ferschall’s, in their arid homeland. Leon found that Kyra was able to draw out details from his past that Dimples had never before discussed. He had simply never felt comfortable asking the types of questions about the Hootsi way of life that Kyra asked, mostly due to a lingering sense of shame over having been loosely associated with the men who slaughtered Dimples’ men.
However, once Dimples warmed to Kyra’s questions, Leon was able to join the conversation as well. The three of them exchanged many stories on ranching and animal husbandry, and Leon found himself warming more and more to the man's quiet confidence. Dimples, for his part, still held Leon’s gift with animals in the highest esteem. He hadn’t yet learned any of his Bladed gifts, but his adoration for powerful animals made him hope he might someday find he had access to something along those same lines.
Shay and her people remained cordial while maintaining a standoffish presence. Gone though were their cavalier attitudes and mocking laughter. Leon suspected they were well aware of the insult their kingdom had leveled against the Haberkorn heir.
Rezz was quiet. His eyes never left the northern shoreline, even a day after the attack was over his silent vigil continued. When Leon finally asked him why he was so uptight, he responded, "My people are hunters, Leon. They would never give up a fight so easily. Something is off, and I want to be ready when they spring the trap." The Vin Ranger's words sent a shiver down Leon's back and sobered him from the relaxation he had so easily embraced.
Soon though, Leon was distracted from his thoughts of pale-faced phantoms when Ferschall took a moment to pull him aside for a few questions of his own.
"Leon, when you all came through the Royal Tree, and the tree died, you had to have done something wrong, yes? What specific method did Ben use to open the portal?"
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Leon considered the question carefully, then walked Ferschall through every step of the events of his last night back on the ranch.
"Hmm, yes. I suspected something like that, but you've shared more than I ever hoped to learn as well." He smiled his gap-toothed smile. "The method of carving the door into the exposed wood has been lost to us Bladed here in Fayden for generations, yes? You just confirmed the process for one of the most hotly debated techniques in recent history! One cut the outline of the portal out in one long cut, and then push the door inward! For centuries, many of our kind have suspected just such a process, but no one dared risk a Royal to prove a theory."
Ferschall returned to the original topic. "So, Ben received the direction from his father, yes? But he used a knife not a Blade to hack away the bark in small strips? No wonder the great tree died when the portal closed."
"Well, don't hold back. How come it died?"
"Wetting the wood with blood is tradition, but it is not necessary when one has a Blade. In order to restore a Royal after a portal is used, the bark must first be stripped in one solid sheet, yes? Then once the path is no longer needed, the sheet must be placed back over the portal. Only when these proper steps are followed, will the power that connects our worlds reseal and restore the bark, allowing for future use. With the portal damaged beyond repair on your end, it quickly consumed the power within the Royal on ours. That must have been how the ancient tree on our end dried up and died so quickly!"
Leon nodded. It made sense in weird kind of way. But then his memory with Shay came to mind.
"Ferschall, when I was pushed through the portal as a child, the last thing I saw was the Fae queen preparing to cut my mother down. How could that tree not have died if she struck my mother down? The queen isn't Bladed."
Ferschall sighed. "It is all guesswork now, but perhaps there was someone there with the queen, yes? Someone who knew how to seal a Royal?" He looked on Leon in compassion and spoke softly, "Or perhaps your mother was spared for a time?"
"You think there's a chance she's still alive?"
"No…I'm sorry, Leon, but the queen would not be who she is if she passed on such an opportunity. I think perhaps the more likely answer is that we have a traitor within the Bladed Society itself."
Leon's emotions were starting to fray at the ends just discussing the subject, so he changed the topic.
"So, what do you think Ben is going to do now? He only has two trees left on our end."
"I think Ben has figured out his mistake. While researching the script on your medallion, I learned that two of the Elders of the Bladed Society living in Hollinger had disappeared yesterday. After last night, I am concerned Ben may have those men."
Leon agreed, it sounded just like something Ben and his men would do. He just couldn't sort out why. Why was Ben so stinking secretive? Why wouldn't the man just ask for help?
Ferschall went back to reading some old scrolls and Leon was left alone with his thoughts for a while.
The Brindle was a big river, both wide and long. Though its depths were murky and slower moving within Hollinger, it had a north fork just west of town that carried more than two thirds of its reserves around the northern perimeter of the city, providing a natural fortification of sorts for the hodgepodge of ruins within slaver’s port.
Along their journey, Leon noticed the Dolphin’s progress slowed considerably once the barges pushed past the fork. The current continued to strengthen the further up-river they traveled. According to Sved, the waters grew deeper when they narrowed.
The night before they arrived at their destination the Otterkin men all bailed off the boats. Squads of little men spent the evening hours adding their webbed feet to the effort of moving upriver, helping to accelerate the slow trudge of the dolphins. Their efforts provided considerable influence and helped to push things along far faster than otherwise.
The Brindle grew a tad shallower and a lot wider by the time morning broke. Water was still moving but without the surging currents from the night before.
Three days after their battle in Hollinger, the barges crossed an arbitrary border into the Otterkin Kingdom.
# # #
As dawn broke on the Otterkin Kingdom, Leon’s first impression of Sved’s homeland was that if giant Cyprus-type trees and miles of bearded moss were major commodities, he could totally see how the little man’s family had become filthy rich! Otherwise, he was at a complete loss.
Everywhere he looked, he saw clustered hamlets of dry land between towering rows of brown bark, surrounded by knobby stumps, poking up from crystal clear water. It was like looking into a Cajun swamp above the water and a deep mountain stream below. In fact, Leon and his companions quickly discovered they could peer over the sides and see clear down to the bottom.
Countless colored rocks along the bottom’s surface sparkled back up at them in the glistening light of the rising sun. Occasionally, young Dolphins could be seen dancing through the barge's shadow in the waters beneath them.
When he noted the seeming incongruity of habitats he observed, Sved explained that the clarity was because the waters were always flowing. The colored rocks were the remnants of some ancient glacier, carried down from the Anderle mountains that stood peaking above even the tallest of trees, while the warmth of the spring waters provided a year-round atmosphere that allowed southern trees to thrive in the northern climate, even over harsh winters.
When they officially crossed over into Otterkin waters, Madam Hazzel gave a formal speech to everyone in their party. “I hereby welcome all travelers under Haberkorn hospitality to the Otterkin Kingdom. You will be our honored guests while you remain!”
The sentiment was appreciated, but Leon thought the announcement was more for the faces he saw peeking between the wooded islands than for her guests on the barges. In any event, it took another half day’s journey to the northwest before Sved informed them they were actually on "Haberkorn lands."
He was clearly proud to brag about his clan. “Our clan’s home encompasses a tenth of the whole of the Otterkin Kingdom. It includes the northern boundaries of the realm.”
“So, who’s actually in charge of the kingdom?” Leon couldn’t help but wonder if there was some otter king who might take issue with the Haberkorn’s violent escape from the Northern Fanged Kingdom.
“No one…and everyone, yes? There are fifteen clans total within the kingdom, each with equal representation and voice on the council of elders. Madame Hazzel is our council’s representative.”
Just then the barges slipped past another set of islands to reveal a monstrous fortress Leon had not been expecting. It too was positioned on an Island. But where Leon had been anticipating some type of cozy hobbit hole-looking abode, he was blown away when he observed an actual full-sized castle!
“Welcome to Haberkorn Hall, Leon! What do you think?”
“I think I’ve been underestimating you at every turn since the day we met Sved! You never cease to amaze buddy!”
“Ha! Otters rule Leon, and don’t you forget it!”
As the barges were being unloaded and the Leon and his companions were stepping off onto dry land, a large group of serious-looking red-headed men came streaming out of the castle gates, they were all armed to the teeth. Madame Hazzel went to intercept them and two of the little men grabbed her without warning, binding her wrists and tying them to a wooden stave above her shoulders.
Sved shouted and his men all moved to intercede for their matriarch. Yet still more guards came pouring out of the castle. Leon looked around and saw wicked-looking blow darts emerging from the water surrounding the barges.
"Sved, don't do anything rash!" Madam Hazzel cautioned her son as if speaking to a child learning a school lesson. "We will get this all sorted out soon enough!"
Soon, Leon and the rest of his companions were trussed up just like Madame Hazzel and frog-marched through the castle gate. Leon had to send a message through the Blade just to keep Grumpy and Merle from c
ompletely losing it when the little men attempted to herd them all to a holding cell apart from the rest of the group. He had seen the damage that a dozen poison darts could deliver, and he couldn't risk allowing his animal companions to forfeit their lives to fight a losing battle against the tiny aggressors.
"Sved, any idea what's going on?" Leon asked.
"Not yet, no."
Inside the inner courtyard, over a dozen immaculately decorated tables were set up. Sitting at the head of each table was a very severe-looking little person.
Sved spoke up to all of them when he saw the layout. "You all try not to say a word, yes? Leave this to us."
A solemn white-bearded old man got up from his place at the head of one of two middle tables and rang a bell three times to quiet the crowds once everyone was seated once again. Then he pronounced in a sad, gravelly voice, "Two days ago, we received a writ from the Fang Kingdom's capital by way of Nesting Doves. The message has been confirmed twice over, yes?
"The Haberkorn clan attacked Fang guards who were peacefully attempting to apprehend known fugitives of the Vindarri and Ageless Tribes. Unless those fugitives are returned immediately to Hollinger, the Fang Kingdom will levee a tariff on all merchant trade coming from the Otterkin Kingdom, yes? Haberkorn Market Holdings are already forfeit and will be liquidated to recompense the aggrieved. What say you Madam Hazzel?"
Madame Hazzel stood up to her full height and glared back at the little old man penitently sagging in anguish before her, "I say you're still diving after shiny rocks in waters too fast and too deep for your flaccid flippers Hagglesneed Boarbuttons, you pompous twit! I'll wager this whole mix up has your slippery little paws written all over it, yes? Now, someone untie me, or has the council sunk so low as to pronounce judgment before hearing reason!"
Her outburst kicked off a tirade of angry little voices all speaking at the same time but, eventually, her bindings were cut, and questions were directed her way.
A Choice of Blades: The Blade Remnant, Book One Page 37