The Silent Isle

by Nicholas Anderson

  “We can’t get back now,” Paul said.

  Rawl did not know why, but it never occurred to him to challenge this idea. His only thought was to wait until dawn and hope the dark things retreated with the night. But what would become of Elias in that time he did not want to guess.

  “Paul,” Rawl said. “Swing close to the left shore and I’ll jump out. I’ll distract them while you drive for the beach and get Elias back to the fort.”

  “That won’t work,” Paul said.

  “Sure it will,” Rawl said. “If they get too close I’ll take to the water again. They seem to be afraid of it.”

  “No, I mean I don’t think they’ll follow you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s him they want,” Paul said, nodding towards Elias. “They’ve come for him.”

  Josie nodded.

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  At that moment, drifting to them from over the water behind them, came the most welcome sound in the world. To Rawl and Paul and Josie, who had lived their lives by the sea, it was unmistakable. It was the sound of oars splashing in the water and creaking in their locks. And with it came the sound of men’s voices. They turned their eyes from the shore and the creatures that waited there, and for a moment all their worries were forgotten and they almost laughed for joy. A ship was coming towards them through the mouth of the harbor. Dane’s ship.

  They hailed it loudly but there was no need; the men on board had already spotted them. Within minutes they were hauled on deck by eager hands. They lifted Elias up first in a cradle of ropes with the three supporting him from below. Everyone was as happy to see them as they were surprised. Even Bax seemed in a good mood. Dane told Forsythe to continue for the dock.

  “But, sir,” Rawl said. “We can’t dock here. The beach is crawling with…”

  But at that moment he looked again on the beach and could not believe what he saw. He rubbed his eyes and strained them to scour the shadowed beach. It was deserted.

  It occurred to Rawl, and probably the others, that the things could be hiding in the woods between here and the fort. But he felt they had no choice but to risk it.

  They docked the ship. They made a stretcher from oars and cloaks and carried Elias through the woods. They made it to the fort unmolested.

  The men on the walls were as excited (and perhaps nearly as surprised) to greet the returning party as Dane’s party had been to encounter the group in the rowboat. There was laughter and slaps on the back and shaking of hands. People (and dogs) came out of the barracks and various buildings to greet them. Dane, carrying the stretcher with Bax, did not see Mirela among them. He increased his pace to the infirmary.

  Mirela was sitting up in bed when he arrived. She looked pale and worn, but he was so grateful to see her alive and looking better than she had when he left. She smiled at him, and it seemed an exertion, as he came in.

  They laid Elias in the bed across from hers, which was the other bed closest to the hearth. Bax slipped out, but not without Dane noticing. Dane and Forsythe got Elias into dry clothes while Rawl, Paul, and Josie told Mirela about their adventure.

  “He’ll be alright, won’t he?” Rawl asked when they were finished.

  Mirela rose and crossed to Elias’s bedside. She set her hand on his brow and combed back his hair. “He is strong, Rawl,” she said. “And he did what he did thinking of all of us and not himself. He may yet pull out of this.”

  “But you can help him, can’t you?” Paul asked. “Like you helped Owen and the others.”

  Mirela frowned. “With Owen, and even with Markis and Franklin, the darkness they carried was something given them by another. It never had their permission to inhabit them, so I, or anyone, could command it to leave. But Elias has chosen this for himself. And he himself will have to choose otherwise if he is to recover. We cannot make that choice for him.”

  “So we can do nothing,” Rawl said.

  Mirela looked at him. “We can keep our hope, Rawl,” she said. “And I would not call that nothing.”

  As they talked, Dane felt Josie’s attention shift to him. He had not had a chance to tell her of his journey to Tira since pulling her out of the sea. He knew he owed her the telling of it like he had never owed anyone in his life, but he was dreading that conversation more than any other he had ever had. He saw no point in delaying. He caught her eye and nodded toward the door. Bailus might kill him for not divulging his counsels to him first, but Josie had waited long enough. Then again, Josie might kill him for what he was going to tell her.

  “What did they tell you?” she asked him as soon as they were alone.

  “They didn’t attack the colony,” Dane said. “I can promise you that.”

  “You knew as much before you left,” she said.

  He sighed. He might as well get it over with. She was too shrewd to put up with circling the point.

  “We’re leaving in the morning,” he said.

  She looked at him. “For where?”

  “For home. There’s nothing more we can do here.”

  “Nothing more we can do? We haven’t done anything yet.”

  “The Tirans thought I’d be better off leaving you all and sailing straight home from their island.”

  “What did they tell you that got you so scared?”

  “It’s more what they didn’t tell me,” Dane said.

  “So they were no help. They were worse than no help.”

  “They wanted to help. My father always thought the Tirans never talked about this place because they wanted to hide it from us, to protect it. Now I realize they never talked about it because they wanted to protect us.”

  “But they told you nothing about what happened here?”

  “They couldn’t. For the Tirans, to speak of a thing is to call it into being. They would sooner sail here themselves than speak of the darkness of this place in their own homes.”

  “So that’s it? You’re content to just walk away with no answers? Without having learned a thing?”

  “Haven’t we learned enough?” he said. “We know we’re facing an enemy that can turn our own friends into deathwalking killers. Do you want to be here when they do the same with the bodies of your nieces?”

  She slapped him across the face and turned so that her whole body faced him. “My nieces are still alive, and I will not leave this island until I have found them or proven otherwise.”

  “I will not leave anyone here,” Dane said. “I’ll have Bailus tie you up and sit on you the whole way from here to the mainland if that’s what it takes.”

  “I will hate you for the rest of my life,” she said.

  “I know, Josie. I know. Because I’ll hate myself just as long. I failed you. I failed you, and I’m sorry. I failed your sister, and I failed your nieces. I failed everyone. But I would rather admit that now when half my men are still alive. And even if you’re going to hate me for the rest of your life, I’d still rather you have a long one.” He paused. She had crossed her arms and turned her body slightly away from him and would not look at him. “I’m sorry about your sister. I never meant to hurt her. I’m sorry about everything.”

  He said no more. He just stood there feeling hollow. She did not say anything, but by her sighs he thought that she was thinking. Perhaps she was thinking on his words and how to respond. Perhaps she would have even accepted his apology. But he never got the chance to know because at that moment their silence was interrupted by the scream of the watchman.

  Dane turned. The crier was Dirk Ridder. He was standing on the south wall above the gate, but he had turned to face the courtyard and was shouting with his hands cupped to his mouth. At first Dane did not understand his meaning, not because his words were hard to understand or because there were competing noises, but because Dane had no context to place them in.

  “Fire,” Dirk shouted again, and the compound sprang to life.

  And in that instant, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, Da
ne understood everything all too well.

  XX

  A Pyre for Hope

  Dane wasted no time. He ordered everyone to assemble at the south gate except the sentries and those in the infirmary. He left Bailus, still not quite himself, in charge of the compound. Rawl and Paul nearly ripped the door to the armory off its hinges in getting it open. They tossed out shovels and pails in heaps and the men scooped them up and ran for the gate. No sooner were the men gathered (and Josie and Molly with them) than the gate was open and they were running toward the beach.

  Dane had not even taken the time to scale the wall and see what had alerted Dirk to the fire. He knew it must have been large for the glow of it to be visible at such a distance. Even so, it was worse than he thought. As they came out of the tree line and onto the beach, the heat smote their faces and Dane’s worst fears were realized.

  The ships, all of them, the three left by the colonists and the Bloodwake, were blazing brightly.

  Even the youngest of them knew it was hopeless from the beginning. A few of the men dropped their shovels and pails and collapsed on the beach with a moan. Dane, even though he had known it was the ships the moment he had understood Dirk’s call of ‘fire’, was too stunned and wearied by the sight to give any orders.

  The ships sat two on each side of the dock, the Bloodwake on the rear, west side. Its mast, yard, and furled sail were burning; the gold-red flames licking around their slender forms. It seemed to Dane like the garish spectacle of some pagan rite. Flames also danced along the edges of the gunwale, making an oblong wall of flame that seemed like a fire circle in some dark ritual. As of yet, the deck was mostly free of flame.

  “The ballista,” Rawl shouted. He broke away from the group and ran for the ships.

  Dane shouted and started after him. Rawl had just reached the dock when Dane tripped over something halfway down the beach. There was something warm and slick on the gravel where he fell but he took no time to think on it. A dark figure, headed for the dock, passed him at a run as he got to his feet.

  Looking to the Bloodwake, Dane saw Rawl spring over the gunwale and onto the deck. The dark figure was only a few paces in front of Dane but holding his own. The two runners reached the dock. As of yet, the flames had not spread to the dock; it was an aisle between the inferno. Halfway down the dock, the man running in front of Dane turned to block his way. It was Bax. At that moment, the yard and sail fell with a cracking whoosh, catching Rawl on the shoulders and pinning him to the deck. Dane came forward. “Get out of my way,” he said.

  Bax, shorter and stouter, used his momentum against him, catching him by his clothes and spinning him forward and off the side of the deck. Dane landed in nearly chest deep water between his ship and the one before it. As he hauled himself back onto the dock, Bax leapt over the burning gunwale and onto the Bloodwake. By the time Dane had his feet on the dock, Bax had shifted the burning yard off of Rawl and was dragging him towards the opposite side of the ship. Putting his arms around Rawl from behind, Bax toppled backwards into the water.

  Dane jumped into the water in the place Bax had just shoved him off and half-swam, half-waded between the two ships. Rawl was conscious but Bax still held him by his clothes. They were walking towards the shore.

  “How many times tonight are you going to make me rescue you?” Bax was saying.

  Rawl looked back over his shoulder to watch the wooden frame of the ballista go up in flames with the rest of the deck.

  Back on the beach, Bax and Rawl were greeted with shouts and laughter. From the reception, you’d think the two men had just saved the entire fleet. Instead, Rawl had only narrowly avoided having his fool ass reduced to ash. Dane sensed a note of hysteria in the carryings-on. He had to give the order to return to the fort several times. It seemed some of the men wanted to stay and watch the ships burn down to nothing.

  Back at the compound, Dane took Bax and Rawl to the infirmary immediately. Bax’s hands were badly burned. Mirela cleaned and put ointment on them. Dane had the strangest feelings watching Bax sit there, quietly, patiently, almost bashfully, as Mirela gently worked on his hands.

  “Do you want me to bandage them now?” she asked.

  “Yes, please,” Bax said with a grin. “I’m sick of looking at them.”

  Bailus, a man Dane greatly admired, couldn’t sit this still or talk this civilly to Leech when the man was treating his wounds. And how to explain his actions on the beach? Cutting off Dane’s efforts to save Rawl and launching his own. Bax was always doing things to show him up, but never when it came at the cost of pain to himself. Who was this man who sat before him? Why had he chosen now to be genuinely charming and to the one person on earth he was least compelled to be charming to? Why had Bax waited till they were stuck in hell to become an angel?

  Rawl stood close by, watching Mirela work.

  “And look at you, not a scratch on you,” Tipper said, coming up beside Rawl.

  Rawl had been lucky – plain dumb luck. The part of the yard that had pinned him down had not been burning long and Rawl’s heavy vest of boiled leather had protected him from the worst of it.

  “You are one lucky little punk,” Tipper said.

  Paul slapped his brother on the back of the head. “And one stupid son-of-a-.”

  Rawl clapped him on the mouth before he could finish. “Don’t talk about your mother that way,” he laughed.

  Bax lifted one bandaged hand and gave it a quizzical grin. “This reminds me of the last time I tore my hands up.”

  Oh, please don’t, Dane thought.

  “You remember that, Dane? That day we snuck into the officers’ brothel in Felcrist country?”

  Dane gave no indication he had even heard Bax.

  “Ah, he remembers,” Bax laughed. “Anyway, I knew it was a bad idea from the start, but I couldn’t hold Dane back. Rumor had it there was this redhead from Parcia working there, and you know what they say about Parcian redheads.”

  “I don’t,” Paul said. “Maybe you should tell me.”

  “That’s enough, Bax,” Dane said, but so quietly that hardly anyone heard him.

  “So he had his mind set on wooing this woman. We didn’t have any Felcrist uniforms to dress in, so we just put on all the blue and silver we owned, those are Felcrist colors, you know. We wanted to take the best horses, but have you taken a serious look at the Hallander stables? The nags we rode up to the place on were no better than cart horses. We looked ridiculous, I’m sure.”

  “But they let you in?” Paul asked.

  “Oh, sure. We just acted like we knew what we were doing. Dane’s always been good at that.”

  “So what happened?” Tipper said.

  “What I knew would happen all along. Dane went upstairs with his redhead and, not five minutes later, Torin Felcrist and a whole squad of his junior officer buddies rode up.”

  “You think somebody recognized you and tipped them off?” Paul asked.

  “I think it was just bad timing,” Bax said. “But at any rate, Torin and his friends would have been sure to recognize us. I was still downstairs, at the bar. So I start working my way to the door, trying to keep my back to Torin and Co., who have just come in. I make it about halfway across the room when I see, in the big window in front of me, Dane drop out of a second-story window with his pants around his ankles and run for the hitching post. I picked up a chair and hurled it through the window and then jumped through myself. Except I wasn’t thinking about the glass shards stuck in the frame. I put my hands out as I sailed through the window and cut them all to ribbons. My hands were bleeding so bad I had to hold the reins in the crooks of my elbows as we rode away.” He laughed. “But that’s not the best part. I get to the hitching post and Dane’s just standing there, not actually standing but walking among the horses. And Torin and his friends are out the door and after us. Dane doesn’t even seem to notice them. He just unties two of the horses from the post and hands me the reins of one. I say, ‘Dane these aren’t our ho
rses.’ I’m like, come on, you spent all this time looking at them and you still don’t get it right? But he doesn’t even say anything; he just nods towards Torin and his friends, who are almost on us by now. And that was that. We got into the saddle and off we rode. Me with my bleeding hands and Dane with his belt buckle loose and flapping against his horse’s flank. Except it wasn’t his horse. It was Torin Felcrist’s charger.”

  The younger men laughed. Rawl turned towards Dane and the smile fell from his face.

  “Sir, are you alright?”

  Dane did not know what he meant. Then he looked at his hands. They were streaked with dried blood. He looked himself over. His shirt had a large, odd-edged dark brown stain across the front of it. “I’m fine,” he said, but with his voice rising as though asking a question. “I’m not hurt.”

  “Then whose blood is that?” Paul asked.

  All at once Dane remembered tripping over the object on the beach. The warm slick his hands had slid in. “You three,” he said to Tipper, Rawl, and Paul, “Get some torches and a stretcher and follow me.”

  He led them to the beach. The thing was right where he had left it. In the light of Rawl’s torch he saw it clearly enough. It was a man’s body. Dane would have said the body was laying facedown, except that it had no head. Blood, shining in the torchlight, had pooled around the stump of a neck. The men laid the stretcher by its side and rolled the body onto it. Tipper and Paul moved to lift the stretcher.

  “Wait,” said Rawl. He unbuttoned the bloodstained shirt and parted it over the chest. The chest was dark with blood but Rawl washed it with drops from his canteen. “No birthmark,” he said. “It’s not Fletch.” He stood up and backed away from the body and Tipper and his brother bore it back to the fort.

  News of the unexplained blood on Dane’s clothes and his trip back to the beach had spread so that a crowd greeted them at the gate. Dane, leading the litter-bearers, pushed through the onlookers to the infirmary. The crowd, and even the gaze of the sentries on the walls, followed them, and for moment no one thought to close the gate nor noticed the shadowy figure that stole through it behind them and into the compound.