by Michael Mood
At first Halimaldie took it for a slimy black sea creature of some sort, but as it unfolded itself he knew it was something else. Eight appendages – it was hard to tell what were arms and what were legs – stretched out long and thin in the small cargo hold, and then a head on a stalk of a neck folded up silently. Eyes that were somewhere between human and animal peered at him.
For a moment it appeared the thing was stunned, or at least blinded, perhaps adjusting to the brightness of the torch. It was this pause that Halimaldie would later credit with saving his life. In this brief moment of time a few things happened: Halimaldie reached for his twin daggers, the creature did something akin to cracking its knuckles, and Telin Lightbearer arrived.
Well, arrived wasn't exactly the right word. One minute he wasn't there and the next minute he was.
The unnatural is hitting me in waves today, Halimaldie thought.
Telin had a small shield and a short sword. The smaller weapons looked odd in his hands, but Halimaldie realized that anything larger would be useless down here. A long sword would just as likely stick into a wooden beam than your enemy. These Kingsguardians know their shit, that's for sure. Even if they do jam their noses into everyone's affairs . . .
Telin surged forward, a gust of air whipping up around him. He dodged one thin black appendage that streaked through the air and blocked another with his shield. The arm went straight through the wood and became stuck there. Telin allowed his shield to be ripped away, maneuvering in even closer as he shed it. His sword became light in his hands, whipping so fast that Halimaldie couldn't even see the blade. Two long, thin arms fell to the ground and something that looked like tar poured from the severed ends.
The creature shrieked. It was deafening in the small hold, but it was cut off quickly as Telin's sword – basically just a flashing beam of light now – streaked from top to bottom, cleaving the creature in half and then becoming imbedded in the floor of the cargo hold.
In that time, Halimaldie had been able to draw only one of his daggers, and he didn't even have a very sure grip on it. “Holy hell,” he said.
“Unholy, more like,” Telin said.
“The fuck was that thing?”
“Foglin.” The Kingsguardian wrenched his sword from the floor, wiped the coffee from it, and sheathed it in his belt. “We burn this ship. Tell your men that pirates have taken the most important cargo from under us. You understand cover stories, I assume.”
“F-Foglin? I'd never known . . . I'd never seen . . .”
“Think the Vaporgaard just mess around down south, do ya?” Telin grabbed the torch off the wall. “Get everyone off this ship. Now. This has become a matter of kingdom security and is well beyond a simple luxury goods delivery.”
“My gems,” Halimaldie said.
“If you would like to open these other crates, be my guest.” Telin gestured to the three remaining boxes.
Halimaldie shuddered. He breathed deeply as he slipped his silver dagger back into its sheath. He looked at the creature on the ground. “You knew the whole time,” he said.
“Knew? No. Suspected? Yes. We Kingsguard don't mess around either, do ya see. Hard to get one of us involved in a merchant operation - even one so big as this - less we ken something. There've been attacks that don't make sense. Come from nowhere. Many people slaughtered.” The Kingsguardian lit one of the crates on fire.
“I never heard of any attacks,” Halimaldie said.
“Not everything sees the light of day." As Telin lit the body of the creature on fire it crackled and withered in the heat. The smoke it gave off smelled terrible. “Not everything can see the light of day, if ya catch. Leave, Halimaldie. You are swept up in this now, like a feather in a storm. Expose this and likely your business will go down with it. No one likes to know that the merchants of Haroma are aiding Foglins.”
“But I haven't been! Is that a-”
“Yes,” Telin said sharply. “It's a threat.” The room was starting to fill with smoke. “Someone, perhaps myself, will be to your mansion to speak with you regarding all you have seen tonight. There are ways in which we can benefit each other, Halimaldie.” Telin gestured to the door.
“How do I explain the burning of this ship?”
“You will find a way. If all else fails, deny that the ship is burning at all.” Telin smirked. “The greater the lie, the more readily will people devour it.”
“Don't burn yourself to a crisp down here,” Halimaldie said.
The look that Telin gave Halimaldie seemed meant to inform him that Kingsguardians couldn't die by mere fire.
One of the crates shuddered and Halimaldie turned and ran for his life.
-3-
When Halimaldie was younger, he had never quite envisioned he would be in the situation he was in right now. As an overweight man of forty-odd years, he was panting through the hold of a burning cargo ship having just been attacked by a Foglin. A Foglin!
“Some sort of incendiary trap,” Halimaldie said as he came up on deck, coughing and wheezing. “The gems are lost. We need to get off this ship immediately.”
The sell-swords ran down the gangway and – as the great vessel burned - that was the last of the ship's problems.
But only the beginning of Halimaldie's.
Chapter 6 – An Ape in Chains
-1-
It had all gone so badly last week. The more Wren thought about how she had handled things, the worse she felt. Her plan had been idiotic at best. If she would have just stayed home. If she wouldn't have gone to get that stupid horse blanket. If she hadn't come in the back door. The ifs piled on top of one another in her head. And to top it all off she couldn't release the shame that burned inside of her.
A few days ago she had trapped a mouse under a wooden pail, then carefully reached under and snagged it. Holding it in her hands, she stretched its neck until it was just about to pop. But something stopped her. She had dropped it and let it go. Her pain, her shame, remained lodged in her heart.
And her pain reminded her how disgusting she felt.
Wren remembered laying on the bed, too disturbed to move at all. She might have slept naked that night. She couldn’t remember clearly. Maybe she'd had the strength to pull the blanket back over herself. That was how she liked to think about it.
At least it hadn't happened since.
It was time for planting at the Hartfield farm. Spring was the right time to be sowing seeds. Her father had been out in the fields from the first hint of sunlight to the last for the past week, working with horse and plow. Farmhands were around to help, too. Mostly they made nice with Wren. They called her 'little lady' and all sorts of other things that made her skin crawl. Her father was always joking with the farmhands out in the fields.
So he hasn't had time for me.
It was a wet day out. It was always wet around this time of year. Wren's boots squelched in the mud, getting sucked in and almost coming off, just as they had a week ago.
Shhhhluck.
Shhhhluck.
“Dammit,” she swore under her breath.
She had many jobs, but right now it was bringing water for everyone out in the fields. The heavy buckets sloshed in her strong grip, one in each hand. She had spit in the bucket she was planning to have her father dip from.
She could see the men just off in the distance now. Mud made things tough going for them, but planting time was planting time and the weather didn't wait for anyone. It wasn't raining right now, but it had been drizzling earlier.
She would deliver these buckets and then go see what she could do about dinner. Stew wasn't hard to make: slop a bunch of different ingredients into a pot and hope for the best. Stew was all she could do on her own for a crew this large. Maybe cornbread, if she really worked at it.
Other farmers had mothers, wives, and sisters to do this kind of thing, but Wren was all alone here. Last year some women had shown up to help with things, but not this time. Wren wondered why, but wasn't really too concer
ned. She would do what needed to be done and then get out of the way by scampering back into the kitchen.
She reached where the men were plowing and planting. There were ten altogether, including her father. There had been more on other days, but her father had known they would finish the planting today, so yesterday he had sent the other men on to do work elsewhere.
Wren set the buckets down and the men came over.
“Thanks, princess,” said a tall man Wren had never seen before.
“She is, isn't she?” said her father. Wren's eyes went dull at the compliment. “Hard worker, too.”
“Can tell,” said another man she didn't recognize. One of his eyes was totally white.
Don't look at me with one eye. Don't look at me at all.
In fact, there was only one man that Wren recognized. His name was Jon Hatfeld. He was maybe forty years old and his face was weathered. Deep cracks and crevices ran in his skin giving him the illusion that he was always smiling. She didn't feel any enmity towards him. Good for Jon Hatfeld, she thought. He can have the trust of Wren Hartfield, for what it's worth.
She actually found that she had some good memories of Jon. As far back as she could remember he had been coming here in the spring. He had a deep voice and didn't say annoying things. He had lost his wife, too, just like Wren's father had. Seasonal help came and went, but Jon Hatfeld was almost always there.
The men took turns drinking from the dipper and soon they had sucked down all the water Wren had brought.
He drank the spit-water! Wren felt excited that at least one of her plans had worked. She felt . . . she felt . . .
A wave of nausea and dizziness swept over her and she fell to her knees. The world spun and twisted around her. Suddenly every smell was magnified. The stench of the earth, the men, the air itself. She dry-heaved a few times, her sides aching from the effort, tears forming in her eyes. Jon Hatfeld and her father rushed over to her.
“You alright?” her father asked, hauling her up by her armpits.
She resisted the urge to shove him away because she didn't want to cause a scene in front of the men. “I think so,” she managed to mutter.
“Been workin' her too hard,” Jon said. “Wren needs a break.”
That was another thing she liked about Jon. He used her name.
“Tell ya what. We're almost done here,” her father said, looking around and pushing his hat back from his forehead. There was a streak of mud where it had been sitting. “Another hour more and we might finish this. Hat, take her back to the farm and make sure she's alright.”
Wren started to protest, then her stomach contorted and she vomited.
-2-
“There's a carnival near the outskirts of Marshanti,” Jon said. He was slowly stirring the pot that bubbled over the fire. Tasty smells wafted out of it. Soon the men would be in from the field and they would be hungry. Jon had helped Wren make the bean stew, doing all that she had asked of him.
The bout of nausea had passed once they had gotten near the house and Wren had been able to drink some water. Planting time was hard on her. Hard on everyone.
“A carnival?” she asked.
“Yeah. If your father and the men finish the planting, well . . . maybe we could go. You, me, and your dad. Love to take a little vacation 'fore I have to head back to my place in the south.”
“Who would look after the animals?”
“We'd find someone, Wren. It's obvious you and your father both need to get away from here. It's the look in your eyes, you know? Farmers know.”
Wren almost confessed everything right then and there to the man in the field-filthy clothes, but something stopped her tongue. She had never been near Marshanti. I've never been near anywhere. Especially not the largest city in Shailand! And a carnival . . . don't they have animals that do tricks? She'd heard stories of giant things called Graybeasts. If she could get her hands on one of them . . .
“Think you can convince my dad?”
“Hell,” Jon said. “That'll be easy. Cole used to love them things – carnivals, I mean - back in the day. That was twenty years ago, maybe. Way before you were born, Wren.”
Her father rarely spoke of his past. And the time period around her mother's death was very off-limits. Wren didn't remember her mother, so naturally she had been curious. She had started asking questions when she was six years old, but her father had dismissed them very quickly and had let her know with a whupping that that time in his life was not to be talked about.
“If he loved it back then, I'm not so sure he still will,” Wren said.
“Sure he will,” Jon said. “I know your father's hard on you Wren, but he loves you in his way. There's a lot you don't know about him.” Jon started ladling soup into individual wooden bowls and setting them on the table. “For example,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “did you know that Cole used to be a champion rider?”
Wren was shocked. “I didn't.” But it doesn't change how I feel about him . . . does it? “We only have plow horses now . . . I've never seen him up on one.”
“It's true,” Jon said. “When your mother died, he gave up so much of what he had been. I always tried to cheer him through it, you know? But another thing about Cole was that he was always so stubborn, ya know. And he always . . . liked the drink.”
Wren hadn't known how deeply Jon Hatfeld's relationship with her father had gone. Jon was always around during harvest, but . . . they were friends.
The house smelled of soup and cornbread when the other men came tromping in from the fields.
“Take your boots off before you come in here,” Wren said, immediately falling into the appropriate role. It was a fine thing to hide behind.
“Yes ma'am,” they each replied.
The respect felt good.
But her heart still ached because she hadn't been able to kill that mouse.
-3-
That night, as Jon had predicted, Wren found herself sitting in a wagon drawn by two large brown horses. Her father drove the horses with Jon next to him. Wren sat in the back. It was a rough ride, but the wagon had served them faithfully for many years despite the fact that its wood was marred and broken in places. They had also had to replace the axle a few times.
Marshanti was at least a good day and a half ride from their farm. Plenty of time for something to go horribly wrong. Wren had seen her father grab a jug of something and stash it under a blanket up next to him. She couldn't be completely sure it was booze, but she had learned to be realistic the hard way. To not get her hopes up.
Wren was only along for two reasons. One was because Jon Hatfeld was going. The nervousness she felt around her father was balanced out by Jon's calming presence. Besides, she doubted her father would try anything with Jon around. At least, that was how it was supposed to work, wasn't it? All sorts of disgusting images flashed through her head but she quickly banished them. If she continued down that path her chest would tighten up and panic would set in. She couldn’t afford that.
The other reason she had come along was to see the animals at the carnival. She was interested from a more innocent perspective, of course, but this could also lead her to the release she would need: hurting a Graybeast. She smiled at the grim prospect of her quest. This wasn't what heroes in stories did – go on journeys to hurt animals – but that's what she felt like. A hero, surviving against all odds to accomplish her goal.
The wagon wheels sloshed through puddles as they rolled along on the vague road that would lead them to Marshanti, and Wren's destiny.
-4-
Sleep was non-existent for Wren that night.
The trio had found a good spot and built a fire. Jon and her father were sitting on blankets talking and laughing while Wren pouted on the other side of the blaze in her shoddy sleeping bag. Was her father really two different people? Looking at him like this, under the stars beside a fire, joking with Jon Hatfeld, he almost looked human. How could he have done the things he had? Was it the same man?
Had it been a dream?
No, it hadn't been a dream. She had ached down below for three days afterward, and she had had to clean away blood that morning. She began to tear up, praying that the orange light of the fire and the black of the night would mask her crying.
Maybe if I just jumped into the fire right now . . .
No. No. Have to keep going. Have to get to the carnival. I'll find a sword and jump up and plunge it into the side of a Graybeast. Then I'll ride the sword back down to the ground as it tears the beast open, warmth spilling out.
It was really quite poetic, actually.
But she couldn't sleep.
She was suspicious, and suspicion was not a friend to sleep.
So she stayed up and was still up when the sun rose.
-5-
They would arrive by midday and Wren had already noticed an increase in traffic. Jon and her father would nod at other farmers as they passed and Wren wondered if they knew them or if they were just being polite. She had heard somewhere that all farmers knew each other. Can't be true, can it?
Wren was wearing a large sunhat, green gingham shirt, and a pair of her heavier trousers. It was warm dress for this day, but she had specifically worn these things because they wouldn't reveal any part of her. Her long brown hair was the only thing spilling out from under her hat. She had even wrapped her chest with rags to keep it from spilling out as well. The binding was slipping though and she found herself sweating with nerves as she tried to casually adjust it. But that was just drawing more attention to herself. So she took to biting her nails instead.