by Heath Pfaff
I heard Telistera's sharp intake of breath, but I had never heard of "the creep" before. I was about to ask what "the creep" was, but Telistera shot me a sharp look that said I had better keep my mouth closed. I was hesitant to move our people aboard a ship with a contagious disease. The situation, however, was dire. We needed a ship, and one had just so happened to fall in our path. I would be a fool to turn down such an amazing turn of events. Or, perhaps, I would be a fool to blindly accept such uncommon luck. Either way, my goal was laid out before me, and I could not pass up an opportunity that would take me nearer my destination.
Telistera moved to the rope ladder, her weapon latched onto a clip on her back so she could scale the rope without it getting in the way. I followed her up, and Malice came behind me, shortly followed by the others. I watched the Knights as they climbed. I could see the tension, the fear of the unknown, in the eyes of all of them, except for Ethaniel. He seemed calm. In fact, he seemed more relaxed than I had seen him in a long time. His gray eyes, normally so dark and hostile, seemed almost at peace. It was that, above all else, that put me most on edge. I wasn't sure how a ship had just happened to come across us in the deeps of the great sea, but the situation felt wrong to me. Ethaniel's calm acceptance, when he was generally the first to speak out against any activity he considered suspicious, raised my hackles.
As we came up on deck, the crew of the ship gave us a wide birth. They didn't even really seem to notice us, other than that they stayed as far away from us as possible as they went about their jobs. The woman, who I took to be the captain of the ship, kept her distance as well, though I felt as though her eyes were upon me. I couldn't see them beneath her hood, and the bottom part of her face was covered by linen wrappings, but my skin prickled as though sharp points of ice were striking my bare flesh.
"I trust you will make yourselves comfortable up here on deck for the duration of your stay. I'd offer your greater hospitality, but with our condition I imagine you would be safest up here." The hooded woman said.
"We can't thank you enough for helping us out of our situation. It is unlikely we would have survived if you hadn't found us." I replied, offering a deep bow, but not quite taking my eyes from the ship's captain, or at least the ship's representative.
"The sea is a place of misfortune. If those cast to its foul temper do not help each other out, we stand no chance at all in surviving its fury." She replied. Her voice was calm and her words surprisingly eloquent. I was again struck by a sense of unreality, as though what was happening should not be.
"I am Noble, and these are my friends, Malice, Ethaniel, Telistera, Snow, Tower, and Silver." I offered an introduction, since our host had not yet offered one of her own. "We are bound for the mainland, returning our friend to her home."
"Oh, returning a friend. . ." I thought I heard a catch in her voice, as though she was mocking me, but it passed in a moment. "I am Shay 'Fiiel." The woman introduced herself. She did not offer the names of any of her crew.
"You are far out to sea, Shay 'Fiiel." Telistera spoke up. I winced a bit at the silver-eyed woman's bluntness. My curiosity, however, kept me from speaking up.
"Yes, the bounty of the sea is much richer this far out. There is risk involved in making money this way, but when you are afflicted with a disease that shortens your life by so much, the risk is acceptable for the pay off." Shay 'Fiiel answered smoothly. If she was insulted, she let no sign of it show through in her voice.
I looked to Telistera, to see if she was satisfied with the answer. I couldn't read the expression on her face, but she did not speak again. An awkward silence hung in the air.
"If there is nothing more, I will see to preparations to bring the ship back in to shore. . ." The female ship captain said. We raised no protest. I wondered if the others felt as uneasy as I did. The situation was too conveniently solved. The strange crew went about their duties, making a wide arch around us. I watched them flit about the deck, their sinewy movements familiar in some way that I couldn't place. They were strong and agile. Were these the bodies of men and women in the throes of a terrible disease? I needed to know more about the creep.
I sat down on the deck, in a quiet, out of the way, place. The others followed me.
"Telistera, tell me about the creep." I asked the silver-eyed woman, in a quiet tone so that none would overhear.
"In a moment, don't you think it is strange that our appearance did not raise any unusual notice from any of the crew?" Telistera's whisper cut through the air. It hadn't struck me until she said it, but she was right. The ship was crewed by members of Telistera's people, and it was likely they had never seen a Knight of Ethan before. We should have been a curiosity to them, yet no one paid us any mind. At the very least Telistera, a legendary warrior of her people, should have attracted some notice. There was nothing. A chill passed through me. I still wanted an answer to my question, though.
"That is strange, and might be a matter worth bringing up before Shay 'Fiiel, but please, explain to me what the creep is." I bade my silver-eyed companion. She looked uneasy, but she explained.
"Before the creep, our people knew nothing of disease. In fact, until I learned of your people, I did not understand that there are many different types of disease in the world. We lived for generations without ever growing sick. We had stomach ailments, caused by eating bad food, and we had injuries, and the problems associated with treating them, but we did not have diseases that could be spread from one person to another. The creep changed that. It started in a coastal village. A young fisherman went out to sea, and when he came back he had a strange green discoloration on the side of his leg."
"Of course, everyone in the village was curious. No one had seen anything like it before, so everyone came to see what strange thing had befallen one of their own. Within a week, most of their village had already been infected. They all showed signs of the green spot. Things boded ill for the first man to be infected. The strange spot had spread all over his leg, and he was beginning to feel terrible pain in that limb. He visited the village elder, the pillar of wisdom for his people. When the elder could not help him, he left his village and searched for help elsewhere.
"This spread the disease even further, and infected more villages. Within a month, what had begun as a small spot on one man's leg, had spread to hundreds of people, spreading across their flesh and leaving them in terrible pain. The man who'd first contracted the disease fared the worst. As the green spots spread across his flesh, pain exploded beneath his skin. They were already referring to this strange new plague as the creep, because of the way it crept from one person to the next, and then across their skin like some foul horde of insects. People were wary of it, but it had not yet earned its place of horror. My people had been growing increasingly distrustful of those infected with the creep, but they were still allowed to live relatively normal lives. We required that they bandage their sores, and try their best not to come into contact with others who had not been infected.
"The young man who had first gotten the disease took a turn for the worse. The flesh on his leg ruptured into a mess of black puss and disease. The bone had been eaten away entirely in places. The limb was so foul, that when they went to cut it away, the knife met little to no resistance as the surgeon performed his grim task. All those who were sick with the creep began to suffer the same symptoms. My people made a difficult choice. We declared those infected with the creep as pariah, and cast them out of our society. We feared that a further spread of the disease might destroy us all. It was a difficult decision to make. It worked to stem the spread, but we never managed to completely eliminate the sickness. Until this ship, however, I had never encountered anyone suffering from the disease." Telistera finished her retelling of events. I'd encountered many different sicknesses throughout my life, but none as bad as the one that my foreign companion had just described. Her retelling left my stomach sour.
I wasn't sure which part of her story was most disturbing to me. The
disease was horrific. We had no sickness so terrible in our lands, but I was also startled by the calm way in which Telistera accepted that her people had banished those with the disease. I understood why it was done. What bothered me the most, I realized after she'd finished telling her tale, was that I might have done the same thing in that position. For the sake of the people as a whole, some must be cast out so others could live. Telistera's society was different from our own, but it seemed that it suffered from the same failings. A small portion would be sacrificed to better the whole. How was that any different than what Lucidil had once done to Kay? He had given my daughter to the Hungering so that they would leave the lands of men in peace, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
I hated Lucidil for that. Had it been the right choice? I grit my teeth and pushed that thought aside. It was easier not to look at such an ugly question.
One of the crew of the ship approached the center mast, took hold, and ascended the wood beam with smooth grace, climbing as though unhindered by a fear of falling, or the strain of their own body weight. My eyes were transfixed by the sight, and I noted that the others were also watching with some curiosity. Our mast had a ladder, and our crew had never ascended so quickly.
"From what you know of the creep, do these look like men infected by a disease that is eating away at their bodies?" I asked Telistera. I was unaware of what the progression of such a disease did to one's body, but I couldn't bring myself to believe that it filled men with such vigor.
She shook her head in negative to my reply. I looked to the others, and they also shook their heads, no. None of the crew moved as though they were debilitated in any way. In fact, most of them were unusually agile and precise in their motions. I felt that we were being deceived, worse, I felt that there was something dangerous being hidden from me. It felt as though there was a knife at my throat, and the only thing stopping it from cutting me, was that I didn't know that it was there. However, leave a knife at your throat long enough, whether you see it or not, and it will cut you.
"Ethaniel," I spoke to the four-eyed Knight. His attention, which had seemed to be focused elsewhere, shifted back to me. "I need you to keep track of our direction of movement. You're the only one of us that knows how to track our progress. I need to know if we start going off course."
Ethaniel replied by bowing his head slightly. He said nothing, but his eyes, all four of them, became distant again. A wave of worry swept through me, but I swallowed it down and forced myself to stay sharp. I had to trust that Ethaniel would do what was in our best interest.
"As long as we're on course, it would be foolish to do anything that might get us cast back out to sea. Right now we have access to a ship, but everyone needs to remain alert to the possibility that the situation could become hostile at any minute. I want us all to remain close together, and constantly vigilant. I don't believe that Shay 'Fiiel is telling us the truth, and even if she is, that is no reason not to keep an eye open. We'll avoid the crew unless absolutely necessary, so if there is disease aboard this ship, it will not spread to us." I gave the others my orders, fully aware of the risk I was taking. We could have returned to our life raft, but that was another type of risk, and one that I felt stood a greater chance of failing, than the one we were already facing. The ship was an unknown quantity. The small raft on the open waters was just a matter of waiting for death to find us. We might survive in the raft if it was too small to draw notice, but otherwise we would be dead for sure. I wondered, and not for the first time, what had become of the others. Obviously they were not aboard the ship that had saved us. Had they all been lost to the storm? I thought of Liet, Captain, and the new lives born to the black cloaks. They had not deserved such a fate. I could do nothing but hope that they would find land safely, and hope was such a fragile thing.
"We could take the ship by force." Silver suggested, freeing me from my cycle of worries, and echoing a thought I'd had earlier myself. It was always an option, but as long as the ship was going in the right direction, we would not need to take such a drastic action. I was about to open my mouth and state just that, but Ethaniel spoke up before me.
"They have turned us about in the right direction. It would be foolish to fight them when they are just trying to aid us. None of us can be certain of their motives. Caution is our best option." The old Knight said, offering advice that, for a change, seemed sound. For some reason that only made me more wary of him. Ethaniel had been only too eager to put down the black cloaks, but in the case of the strange crew and their captain, he was taking a radically different stance.
"You don't usually suggest caution." I said, deciding it was time to voice at least some of my concerns. "Would you care to explain why you've had a change of heart?"
The gray smoking eyes above his Knight's eyes seemed to grow dark with rage for a moment as they looked at me. However, when he spoke, his voice was relatively calm.
"The situation has changed, King Noble. This ship is not our own, and these people were kind enough to pull us from the very hands of the sea. Unlike the Brigade, there is no reason to suspect them of having ulterior motives." His reply was delivered too calmly.
"No reason to suspect them? You mean to tell me that you don't find it strange that they just happened to find our tiny boat amidst this entire expanse of sea? It isn't suspect that they are sailing in waters normally avoided by Telistera's people, and you don't find it the least bit strange that, despite allegedly having a terrible sickness, the crew moves as though they are all well trained acrobats at the prime of their health?" As I spoke, I had to constantly struggle to control the volume of my voice. Anger gnawed away inside of me.
"Luck is with us for a change, and as for their disease, do we really know enough about it to make any judgments as to what state the crew should be in? Perhaps those suffering the worse are below deck, and those managing the ship are only recently afflicted." Ethaniel answered, again his reply seemed too smooth, too easy.
"You knew they were coming." I said the words as the thought occurred to me, and immediately wished I could take them back. I wasn't afraid of Ethaniel, but my suspicions would have served me better if kept to myself. Ethaniel's eyes, all four, shot open wide, though he hid the surprise almost as quickly as it appeared. Had he seen the ship approaching with his eyes, or was there something more than that? I didn't know for sure, but I felt certain that he'd at least known it was coming. Of all of us, he'd been the only who'd not seemed surprised. In fact, he had been calm through our entire ordeal.
All eyes fell upon the old Knight. "I may have seen the ship, with my far vision, but I didn't know for certain it would meet up with us. My vision doesn't work like that, when it works. I can see things far away, but I can't tell how far they are, or exactly in which direction." This explanation did not seem as readily prepared as the last. We'd caught him in something, though I wasn't sure exactly what it was. I remembered a time when he had used his eyes to guide the armies of Lucidil. It seemed that recently his vision had been far less cooperative. At least, he claimed it was.
"If you knew there was a ship, why didn't you tell us so that we knew to watch for it?" It was Malice who asked. There was an edge to her voice that I had not heard there in years. My eyes snapped to her. Her expression was firm and angry. I knew that expression well. Laouna had never used it.
"If we had not crossed paths with the ship, you would have cursed me for giving you false hope. I couldn't be certain we would even come within sight of the ship, so I did not intend to tell you about it. What does it matter? They found us, and now we can finish our mission." Ethaniel's ire was rising. I could hear the anger coming into his words, as his control over the voice slipped.
"You withheld information vital to our survival, and you expect us not to be angry with you?" This time it was Silver, she looked on the verge of rising.
"I did what I deemed necessary." Ethaniel growled his reply, and he looked like he might rise and draw sword.
"Enou
gh." I said, deciding to head off any conflict that might erupt if that line of dialogue was allowed to continue. "For now we will have to bide our time and see what happens. We are headed in the right direction, that's what matters. We will have to settle these other problems at a better time." Even as I spoke those words, I realized just how foolish they were. If Ethaniel was somehow involved with the people on the ship - though I didn't know how that could be - and if they were a threat to us, he would not tell us if we were traveling in the wrong direction. Our problem was more immediate than it initially seemed. However, a fight between the Knights of Ethan and Ethaniel would win us nothing but a further loss of lives. I would need time to think.
"We'll take shifts sleeping. After all the rowing we've done, we're all in need of a break. Once we're well rested, we'll decide what to do next. I'll take first watch." I announced.
"I'll stay up with you." Snow volunteered before any of the others did.
"Alright," I answered. "The rest of you bed down, I'll wake you in six hours."
The other Knights, and Telistera, lay down on the deck and curled up under their cloaks. Malice lay at my side, a warm presence next to me as I sat and watched the movement of the crew aboard ship. . . . so familiar, yet so unusual. Snow watched from the other side of our sleeping companions, looking out in the opposite direction. I didn't say anything, but I found it difficult to relax with her at my back. I knew that was foolish, and that in our situation, I had no reason not to trust the other Knight, but I couldn't shake that feeling of betrayal that she stirred within me. I sat with my eyes outward, and forced myself not to check back over my shoulder. I needed to think. There were many issues that needed to be addressed, and I felt that time was growing short.