The Silent Isle

by Nicholas Anderson

  Rawl, Paul, Josie, and Mirela were crossing the courtyard when Dane left the room. They walked into the infirmary together to find Owen standing over Elias’s bed. Owen was saying something but no one caught what it was because their attention was fixed on Elias. The priest was sitting up in bed and his eyes were open. He smiled at them as they entered. They rushed to his bedside and all began asking him questions at once.

  “Give him some space,” Leech said.

  “When did you wake up?” Paul asked.

  “I woke up to the sound of screams,” Elias said. “It worried me, hearing those screams and seeing the room deserted, but somehow I wasn’t afraid, not really.”

  “How did you wake up?” Rawl asked.

  “The screams, of course,” Paul said.

  Elias shook his head. “I heard screaming in my slumber, but that is not what roused me. I woke when She left.”

  “When who left?” Josie asked.

  Elias smiled weakly. “I think that is a story better left for another time. Perhaps when I am stronger. Perhaps when I understand it better myself.”

  Leech ordered some food and water brought for Elias. Then he set his attention on the myriad wounds his friends bore. He started with Will’s leg, which was the most serious. He removed the bandages he had slapped on as he had knelt above Will on the wall while the battle raged about them. Mirela, Josie, and Molly volunteered to help him. Molly washed the wound while the younger women followed Leech’s instructions to lay out materials for sutures.

  Dane led the men who did not need Leech’s immediate attention outside to begin the miserable work of dealing with those past helping. They spotted two figures laying in a lovers’ pose at the base of the wall. One was a shriken, the other was Pratt. The handle of Pratt’s knife protruded from the ribs of the creature.

  “He must have stabbed it as they fell,” Rawl said. “You think about that, he used his last split second to kill his enemy instead of breaking his fall.”

  Rawl and Paul pulled the shriken off of Pratt. One of Pratt’s arms was twisted underneath him at an angle that made Rawl’s head spin. His brother took Pratt’s ankles and he, when he had pushed down the nausea, took Pratt’s shoulders. As they began to lift, Pratt groaned.

  “He’s alive,” Rawl said, forgetting himself in his surprise and joy and setting Pratt down too roughly on his broken arm.

  Pratt shouted. His eyes were open now. “You trying to kill me?”

  “Sorry,” Rawl said. “You just surprised us.”

  “Are you comfortable there?” Dane asked.

  Pratt nodded towards his arm, which was still twisted under his body. “What does it look like?”

  “Rawl go tell Leech he’s here,” Dane said. He turned back to Pratt. “If we move you, it might make it worse. Better that you sit tight and wait for Leech.”

  “Great,” Pratt said. “In the meantime, you guys wouldn’t have a swig of something strong, would you?”

  Bailus pulled a flask from inside his jerkin, uncapped it, and pressed it into Pratt’s good hand. “Keep it,” he said.

  They covered Pratt with a cloak, as the sun had passed now behind the hills. Then they retrieved the bodies of their fallen friends with litters and laid them in the center of the courtyard.

  Ira Scott, who’d thought the shock-sight of his mohawk better defense than any helmet, was dead. Lars Naylor and Flint Childers, two men who had circled the island with Kit Forsythe, were dead.

  When Leech finished stitching Will’s leg, he set Pratt’s arm, splinted it and placed it in a sling. Then, postponing more proper treatment of lesser wounds, they bore their friends to the meadow. Everyone had at least minor wounds, but all of them who could helped to dig the graves. It is very tiring work digging graves for your friends, but they worked at it, taking turns, until all the graves were dug. Dioji lay beside Tipper the whole time and growled when Rawl and Paul lifted his litter and lowered it into the earth. As soon as the grave was filled in, Dioji came and lay on the fresh-turned earth and whined. Elias gave the eulogies. Dane felt relieved to be able to stay silent. Elias spoke about their sacrifice to hold the darkness at bay and how they had gone now where the darkness would never touch them. As their little group filed back to the fort, Rawl knelt and tried to pull Dioji away from the grave.

  “Come on, boy,” he said. “We can come back tomorrow.”

  Josie stood behind him, looking on. “Let him be,” she said after several attempts from Rawl to pull the dog away.

  “I guess you’re right. He’ll come home when he’s ready.”

  “I think he thinks he is home,” Josie said.

  Rawl took her hand as they walked back to the settlement. “By the way,” he said, “Thanks for this morning.”

  “You already thanked me for saving your life.”

  “Not my life. Crane’s life. I don’t know what I was thinking. But I think you saved me in more ways than one today.”

  She kissed him lightly on the cheek as they passed through the gate.

  Later that night, Rawl and Josie stood on the wall overlooking the meadow. They watched Dioji’s prostrate form until the mist rolled in and it was too dark to see. In the morning, the dog was gone.

  After burying their comrades, Dane and his people faced an almost equally disagreeable task: disposing of the shriken corpses. The bodies, though taller than men’s, were surprisingly light and the men dragged them by their ankles and piled them on the edge of the meadow opposite the graves. Dane suppressed a shudder each time he grasped the scaly, stalk-like legs. They decided to burn the bodies but would have to wait till morning to gather wood and build the bonfire. Dane ordered his men, many of whom were walking wounded, back to the infirmary.

  Paul’s two front teeth had been knocked out. Bailus had lost a pinkie. Dane wondered how he had not noticed these things earlier.

  “Did you manage to save the teeth?” Leech asked as he inspected Paul’s mouth.

  “Um, no, sir,” Paul said, looking rather embarrassed. “I think I may have swallowed them.”

  “I can go out and pull you a few of Rundal’s,” Rawl said.

  “Rawl!” Josie said.

  “I’m in over my head here,” Leech said. “But I’m sure we can fix you up back on the mainland.”

  “Speaking of the mainland,” Pratt said, indicating his arm. “Wouldn’t you say this is a ticket home?”

  “Find me a ship and a captain,” Dane said, “And I’ll write you that ticket.”

  “Maybe I’ll just try swimming,” Pratt said.

  Dane left the infirmary and went to his room, but not before stopping by the kitchen for a bottle of whisky. In his room, he struggled out of his buff coat and poured the alcohol over the cuts on his arm. He gritted his teeth against the burning. The flail that had struck his arm had held tiny, barbed blades which had pocked his forearm with jagged punctures. He threw back the blanket from his bed and pulled up the sheet. Holding the hem in his teeth, he made little tears in it. Then, pinning the edge of the sheet to the floor with his knee, he ripped off strips from the incisions he had made. It was wrapping the bandage that gave him trouble. He couldn’t find a way to hold the end of the cloth against his bad arm so he could make a tight wrap. He tried several times and only got increasingly frustrated until a pair of hands gently took the bandage from him.

  “It wouldn’t kill you to ask for help once in your life, you know,” she said. “It might even do you some good.”

  “There was a long line,” he said as Mirela began to wrap his arm. He marveled he had not heard her come in.

  “What’s your plan for tomorrow? More of the same?”

  “Do I have a choice?” he said.

  “Choice,” she said, absently. “Funny you should mention it. I don’t think these creatures have a choice to attack us or not. We’re free to choose. Free in a way they’ll never understand. I think something deep inside them that they can’t overwrite drives them on.”

  “So let
them come,” Dane said. “We kill more of them than they kill of us. And every time we fight we kill more of them than the time before.”

  “Dane,” she said. “This is not a war you can win. They will build a ramp right over the walls with their own corpses if they have to. They will smother us with their dead.”

  “So, what do you want me to do? Surrender?”

  “No, I want you to find a different way to fight.”

  “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “It was given to you to lead these people; you must find your own way.”

  “You seem to know a lot about them, and Paul thinks they’re afraid of you. I want to know what you know.”

  “It’s not what I know that matters,” she said. “It’s Who I know.”

  “Then let’s talk about it.”

  “It would be better shared with all the others at once, I think.”

  He laughed. “Were you born this way or do you do it just to tease me?”

  “I could never tease you,” she said. “You take everything too seriously.” A smile flashed across her face.

  He caught her chin and tipped it up. “Smile again,” he said.

  She stepped closer to him as she did. “What is it about me that vexes you?”

  “Vexes?” he laughed. “No. Awes. Just you. The utter mystery of you. Would you talk for me?”

  “What would I talk of?”

  “Anything; so long as it’s you. Your hopes, dreams. Your favorite color. All I ask is to listen.”

  “Then first tell me something about yourself.”

  “Anything.”

  She put her hand to his which still held her chin. “Why doesn’t your father trust you?”

  “You ask a lot.”

  “Perhaps another time, then.”

  “No, there is no other time. If you want to know, then I’ll tell you.” He released her chin and dropped his eyes and sat down on the bed.

  “It happened three years ago. My father was building a border fortress near Loshōn, on some land he had wrested from House Felcrist. Felcrist is bigger and wealthier than our house and I think my father wanted to flaunt his victory. He put everything he had in terms of wealth and technology into that fortress. It was beautiful in its own way. It stood on a low hill and its base was ringed in a wall of stones and mortar higher than a man’s head. Logs formed the upper wall, like the walls here, but broader and anchored into the mortar and stones. The walls were guarded by towers and each tower held a ballista. Bailus, his best commander, and his best troops were housed there. Everyone was talking about it. That’s what my father wanted. But it made two things inevitable. One was that, Avery, my little brother, wouldn’t stop talking about it. He wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t sleep. He said he’d never be happy until he saw it. On my father’s orders I was away to the east, dealing with the nomadic raiders who come off the plains when the grass is poor. I told Avery I’d take him to Loshōn as soon as I returned. I guess that wasn’t soon enough.

  The second thing that was inevitable was Lord Felcrist’s attack. I just didn’t think both things would happen at once. I don’t know what angered House Felcrist more, my father’s victory or his boasting about it, but they must have been making their plans even as my little brother was making his.

  Avery left home one night and made his way to the fortress. I guess he walked, but it was sixty miles. Bailus had a mind to send him straight home, but before he could do that, the fortress was besieged. In addition to the garrison, there were many workers, men and women, even children, who had come to put the finishing touches on the buildings. While Felcrist’s men battered down the front gate, Bailus ordered the civilians out the rear postern. My brother was with them. In a fair fight, they would have made it. But Torin, Lord Felcrist’s younger son, rode his cavalry right over them.”

  “And your father blames you for not being there?”

  “No, not even he would do that. He blames me for what I did afterwards. I challenged Torin to single combat. He had no choice but to accept; people knew what he’d done. We fought outside the ruined gates at Loshōn. Bailus’s men had held the fortress and Lord Felcrist had pulled his men back when he learned what had happened. I think he was embarrassed.

  The fight was short. I broke several of Torin’s fingers and disarmed him. I was all set on killing him; I’d thought about it, dreamed about it. But something happened. He was laying there before me and, as I raised my axe, he started to plead. It started with his eyes and spread over his whole face and then his lips moved and finally they made a sound. ‘Please.’ I hesitated. I still would have done it, but then he looked at his father and turned the same look he’d used on me on him. His father shifted in his chair. Then he shook his head and turned away. Torin just lay there looking at his father’s profile for a long moment. Then he got to his knees and lowered his head for my axe.

  I don’t know what happened, but everything was suddenly so clear. How my father’s boasting had incited Avery’s wanderlust and Felcrist’s lust for revenge. How Lord Felcrist had ordered the attack and Torin, his underachieving younger son, had been overzealous in carrying it out. And I wondered what my grandfather had done to my father and what Felcrist’s father had done to him to make them the men they were. It didn’t excuse what they’d done, but it changed the way I looked at it. I suddenly wanted to kill all of them or none of them. But I was tired of walking in the blood-filled ruts our forefathers have carved for us. I walked through the crowd and everyone got out of my way like I was a god or a leper and I got on my horse and I never returned to Loshōn again.”

  “What became of Torin?”

  “He laid low for a few months. The next spring, he rode out against some rebels on their southern borders. He was shot through the eye before the battle was even joined. I guess if I’d known he was going to do that I could have saved myself a lot of trouble with my father.”

  “What a world we live in,” she said. “Where men repent more heartily of the good they do than the bad. And what became of you?”

  “I rode to Avery’s grave, which sits in the hills above our house. I could lie in the hills there in such a way that I could see his grave and little else and no one could see me. I stayed there for days. Leech was the only one to find me. Maybe he was the only one looking. He rode up and stood studying me from the saddle. Then he tossed me a sack and said, ‘There are quicker ways to kill yourself than starvation, you know.’ Then he rode off, without ever having dismounted. I knew then he was the best friend a man could have. It took me another day to be able to open the sack. It was full of food. It took me another day before I could bring myself to eat any of it.”

  As Dane had been talking, Mirela had drawn closer to him. He wondered what would happen if he would go on talking for another five minutes. But he could not. He had said all there was to say.

  She placed her hand on his cheek and he marveled that the touch of one who had suffered so much could be so warm and gentle. “I trust you, Dane Hallander. I trust you with all of me.”

  “What reason do you have to trust me?”

  “For the same reason your father does not.”

  A knock sounded at the door. Reluctantly, Dane slid off the bed and past Mirela to open it. Paul Johnson stood there.

  “Sir,” he said, “There’s something out here you need to see.”

  XXV

  Black Sails

  “What were you doing out here in the first place?” Dane asked as he and Paul trotted down the path to the beach.

  “Can’t you feel it, sir?”

  “Feel what?”

  “The quiet.”

  “It’s always quiet here.”

  “But it’s more than quiet. It’s calm. Real calm. Bailus asked me to walk down to the beach with him to see if there were extra nets laid up in a lean-to or anything nearby. But I think what we really wanted was just to walk in the woods at night. Like a couple of boys back home. Tonight just feels different. I don’t think there’s
a single one of them for miles. I think they’ve fallen clear back to the other side of the island.”

  “You think we’ve beaten them?”

  “I’m not that big a fool, sir. But I do think we’ve won ourselves a breather.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what’s out here?”

  “I saw it with my own two eyes, sir. And I’m still not sure I believe it. I think I’d rather just wait till you can see it for yourself. If it’s still there.”

  Dane and Paul came out of the woods. The gravel of the beach crunched beneath their feet. Bailus stood in the center of the beach. He turned and nodded to them, but they were looking at what Bailus had been looking at. There, in the middle of the harbor, a ship lay at anchor.

  Dane cupped his hands to his mouth. “Ahoy, there.”

  “I’ve been watching that deck since we first laid eyes on her, and nothing’s stirred,” Bailus said.

  No light shone on the deck. The ship was discernible mostly as a dark hulk that loomed against the star-studded sky.

  Dane turned to Paul. “Can you swim?”

  “Like a fish.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  The two men stripped and waded into the water. When the water reached his waist, Dane dove in and started swimming in long, sure strokes. The prow of the ship was pointed at the beach. Dane drove around it to the port side. This side was bare and the sides were higher than the ship’s of Dane’s people. He swam around the stern to starboard. A cargo net hung down from the top of the gunwale into the water. He called to Paul, then started up the net. As he climbed, it occurred to him the owners of the ship could be waiting in ambush on the deck. This fear did not outweigh his curiosity and, more than that, he felt the peace Paul had spoken of. He imagined the ship’s crew descending the net into rowboats and departing for who knows where.

  He pulled himself onto the deck and looked around. The deck was open save for a small cabin in the back. He checked this and the hold below. Both were so empty they made him think of new-wrought vessels launched from the shipyards. Paul joined him on the deck. Paul loosened a rope secured to the deck and unfurled the sail from the yard. It ruffled and billowed in the light breeze. Dane, standing in the prow, hailed Bailus on the beach to let him know all was well. Paul was saying something but Dane could not hear him as he shouted answers to Bailus’s questions.