by Eric Asher
Thanks for reading!
Eric
Please enjoy the following excerpt from
Skyforged
The Steamborn Series, Book #5
By Eric R. Asher
Samuel scratched at a knot in the wooden bar top. Once, it had been stained nearly as dark as the shadows in the corners of that place, but time and customers had worn the color thin. When the Spider Knight turned away from the bar, it wasn’t a worn counter that filled his vision. It was a sparkling cove, flanked by the ruined buildings of a forgotten history and the pirate city that had been built on its corpse.
Drakkar’s explosive laugh brought Samuel’s attention back to the Cave Guardian and the old tinker. Targrove wore a welcoming smile as he sipped at his drink. The barkeep clearly knew who the old tinker was because Targrove didn’t whisper quietly. If Samuel or Drakkar asked a question, no matter how sensitive it might be, Targrove’s answer would confidently boom through the cramped bar.
“No, no, it’s true!” Targrove shook his head. “You have to understand. I’d only heard about Cave through tall tales told in Belldorn. And … hell, are you even old enough to remember the old ceremonies?” He waved the thought off with a flourish of his hand. “But Charles had me convinced entry to Cave required a tithing. So yes, I showed up with a Stone Dog in a crate as a gift for the king.”
“There has never been a King of Cave,” Drakkar said with a chuckle.
“Well, I found that out rather quickly. Not before they locked me in shackles for an assassination attempt, mind you. Damned fool, Atlier was.”
“Was that the old prison that became The Rock Inn?” Drakkar asked.
Targrove nodded and threw back the rest of his drink. “Aye. A right eyesore that was. And the smell. That sour blend of sick and meat gone bad. Cave’s come a long way since they chased out the worst of the pirates.”
“They got rid of you, didn’t they?” The barkeep wiped down tap handles and grinned at Targrove.
“That they did. That they did.” Targrove held up a hand to stop the barkeep when he offered to refill his glass. “Three days I spent in that hole. Long enough I think Charles almost felt bad about it.”
“Do you remember much about the beginning of the war?” Samuel asked. “We’ve found some of Charles’s journals, but that shows what he was doing, not really why he was doing it.”
“Not always a reason why for a tinker, Samuel. Sometimes we do a thing to see if we can. Other times we do it out of desperation, though I suppose that would be a reason in itself. You read enough of those journals and you’ll start to see how Charles thought. See why he did what he did.” Targrove glanced at Drakkar. “You weren’t wrong about him. Not entirely. But I think when Cave feared Atlier, they overlooked his history.”
“How so?” Drakkar asked.
“You look at those journals and see nothing but engines of war. But every time Charles designed something to kill, he did it with the hope the wars would end. A village would be spared. A child might live who would have been destined to die in battle. I always thought he was a fool for that. Kill to prevent killing? Nonsense. But I think you need to understand that about him—about who he was—to fully appreciate those journals.”
“I understand,” Drakkar said. “It fits perfectly with the man I knew.”
Targrove nodded.
Samuel didn’t say anything. The man he remembered was different than the man Targrove and Drakkar knew. Samuel had known Charles during a long peace. A time where open war had been relegated to history books and short bouts of conflict in the Deadlands. He remembered the tinker who amazed kids at Festival and took Jacob under his wing. A kind man who skirted violence at every turn, until he didn’t. Until the choice had been taken from him. And maybe that’s what the Deadlands War had been to him. The taking away of any other option.
“Now, is you want to know more of the good he did, you should visit Fire Island,” Targrove said. “The distillery he helped build is one of the best in all the cities.”
“Drink is not what we seek,” Drakkar said.
The barkeep scoffed at that. “Then you’re in the wrong place.”
Targrove nodded. “No fresh water on Fire Island, you know? At least, not more than a few small lakes, and that’s not nearly enough for a city.”
“A city?” Samuel asked, frowning. “Fire Island has been abandoned for decades. The last great eruption killed everything living there.”
“It’s a good story to keep people away,” Targrove said. He drummed his fingernails on the bar and waited until the barkeep had vanished around the corner. “More there than you know. Charles built a plant to convert salt water to fresh. There’s long been a society of tinkers there. If anyone has records from the early days of the war, it will be them.”
Drakkar turned to Samuel. “I am afraid we will be journeying on the seas once more.”
Samuel groaned and looked up at the smooth wood of the ceiling. “Fantastic.”
“It’s a fascinating place,” Targrove said. “Parts of it remind me of the Highlands in Ancora, but it’s not so polished as that.”
“Many of Cave’s founding residents immigrated from the island,” Drakkar said. “But the settlements there are rarely spoken of. I did not realize such a large number had remained behind.”
“I’ve never even heard of it,” Samuel said.
Targrove shrugged. “Why would you? History buried it, much like the small villages lost to the Deadlands War. Once-great cities can fall to ruin and memory, given enough time. It is not so strange.”
Samuel thought of the skeleton and the soaring towers that must have once held so many people. The city had been reclaimed by the desert and left to decay over the decades and centuries. But even that cursed place had once been home to countless souls. It was a hard thing to imagine, having only seen it after it had fallen.
“I will need to restock our supplies,” Drakkar said. “Our speeder does not hold much, and the journey will take more time than our current stockpile will last.”
“Get food for three,” Targrove said. “It’s been some time since I visited the island. I think I’ll travel with you.”
Samuel blinked at the old tinker. Having a guide along in a new city could save them days of researching trying to find the right tinkers. Maybe their luck was turning around. And then he remembered the impending boat ride and groaned.
* * *
Targrove finished ratcheting an outrigger onto the side of their boat. It rose in a low, graceful arc only to end with a lengthy pontoon in the water.
“That should help keep us stable. I suspect Samuel won’t mind a smoother journey.”
“That obvious?” Samuel asked.
“Boy, you turned green at the mere mention of sailing.”
Drakkar laughed and patted Samuel on the back before sliding a wicker basket into the hold.
Targrove wrestled the cover off the main boiler set near the rear of the speeder. “Now, let me make sure this old boat is seaworthy and we can be on our way.”
“It got us here,” Samuel said.
“Aye, that it did. But I didn’t live to be older than dirt by sailing across the Southern Sea on a ship deemed seaworthy by a Spider Knight, of all things.”
Samuel blinked at that.
“I don’t mean that as an insult, just that I have sixty years of experience elbow-deep in boilers.”
Samuel waved the thought off. “None taken.” He went back to helping Drakkar load the last couple of crates. It was likely more food than they’d need, but Drakkar wanted to be sure they’d be supplied even if Fire Island turned out to be a wasteland. The thought hadn’t crossed Samuel’s mind, and it was a stark reminder he wasn’t fully cut out for the wilds away from city life.
Another hour passed, and Targrove was satisfied with some small changes he’d made to the boilers. The largest had been reinforcement at the seams.
“And you believe we can push the engine harder with that?�
�� Drakkar asked.
Targrove nodded. “As hard as you like. That boiler won’t breach with the furnace as high as it will go.” He glanced at Samuel. “Might not be the smoothest ride, though. You best drink that down before we raise anchor.”
Samuel looked down at the purple concoction Targrove swore would stave off any kind of motion sickness. It smelled like the Lowlands after the Fall. A mixture of rot and decay and wood. He grimaced and slammed the drink before gagging.
“Tastes just like it smells,” Targrove said to Drakkar as Samuel fought to keep the drink down.
“That is … unfortunate.”
“Indeed.”
Once Samuel was sure he wasn’t going to vomit all over the deck, he turned back from the waters of Pirate’s Cove and took a deep breath. “You better be right. That was disgusting.”
Targrove grinned at the Spider Knight, crinkling the deeply tanned wrinkles on his face. “Weigh anchor! We make for Fire Island!”
Samuel threw the lever to pull the anchor in as Drakkar untied the boat from the dock. The furnace sputtered as Targrove adjusted the flames, and in short order, they’d wheeled away from the city, headed south through Pirate’s Cove.
Samuel wasn’t sure how well Targrove’s adjustments would perform once they reached the open sea. In the small waves of Pirate’s Cove, the pontoon minimized the swaying and that awful feeling they were one bad wave from capsizing.
He spent the time on the smoother waters reading through the latest journal they’d acquired from Targrove. The experiments detailed in that book, the accidental creation of berserkers, were hard to read. He understood Charles had never set out to cause that kind of deranged behavior, but he would never have thought the leaders in the Deadlands War would have pushed him to make it worse.
They came to lean on the berserkers like a tool instead of the sick soldiers they actually were: warriors without conscience, pointed at the enemy and left to do as they would. Samuel shivered at the description Charles wrote of the fate of a village not far from Midstream.
The opposition might have had soldiers stationed there, but Samuel had little doubt innocents had been killed in those raids—raids that sounded more like the warlords of the Deadlands than the organized forces he thought of in Bollwerk and Belldorn.
He looked out at the Southern Sea when they approached it sometime later, closing the journal and wondering if their friends were faring better than they were.
Skyforged
The Steamborn Series, Book #5
By Eric R. Asher
Books by Eric R. Asher
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The Steamborn Series:
Steamborn
Steamforged
Steamsworn
Skyborn
Skyforged
Skysworn
Stormborn
Stormforged
Stormsworn
The Vesik Series:
(Recommended for Ages 17+)
Days Gone Bad
Wolves and the River of Stone
Winter’s Demon
This Broken World
Destroyer Rising
Rattle the Bones
Witch Queen’s War
Forgotten Ghosts
The Book of the Ghost
The Book of the Claw
The Book of the Sea
The Book of the Staff
The Book of the Rune
The Book of the Sails
The Book of the Wing
The Book of the Blade
The Book of the Fang
The Book of the Reaper
Dreams of the Forgotten Dead
The Vesik Series Box Sets
Box Set One (Books 1-3)
Box Set Two (Books 4-6)
Box Set Three (Books 7-8)
Box Set Four: The Books of the Dead Part 1 (Books 9-14)
Box Set Five: The Books of the Dead Part 2 (Books 15-18)
Vesik: The Dufris Years (Books 1-8)
Mason Dixon – Monster Hunter:
Episode One
Episode Two
Episode Three
Episode Four
Season 1 Box Set
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About the Author
Eric is a former bookseller, cellist, and comic seller currently living in Saint Louis, Missouri. A lifelong enthusiast of books, music, toys, and games, he discovered a love for the written word after being dragged to the library by his parents at a young age. When he is not writing, you can usually find him reading, gaming, or buried beneath a small avalanche of Transformers. For more about Eric, see: www.ericrasher.com
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