by Kari Cordis
“Ari!” an insistent voice said. It was Rodge, up on one elbow, indignant and reproachful. “Get me some water,” he croaked pathetically. Convinced he’d be deathly seasick any time, he’d had nothing to drink and only a few bites of dinner last night.
Ari swiveled around to the water bucket, kept near the firepit; out of habit, they had all bedded down around the fire last night. He dipped up a scoop of water and obligingly dumped it over Rodge.
“AAAHH!”
Ari scurried out of reach, trying to look innocent in case people awoke. Sure enough, Melkin opened his eyes and cast a sour look their way. He rose, rolled his blankets and went to the packs all in one smooth, very practiced motion.
“Stop that squalling,” Cerise snapped, waking up as precisely and unpleasantly as she did everything else. Her long fingers immediately began to smooth light wisps of hair into place even before she rose from her blankets.
Thunking from the wheelhouse at the bow led to its expulsion of two blinking, squinting, unsteady Merranics. Judging from their pleasure last night in the now-empty skin in Banion’s hand, they hadn’t been drinking water. Sometime after moonset last night, Effenrike had dropped anchor, and now he stumbled past them all to lift it.
“Anchors aweigh!” he bellowed in a croak.
Cerise cringed as he passed, surveying his swaying person with distaste. “He’s like something out of a really bad theater production,” she muttered to no one in particular. Loren, thick-lidded, grinned sleepily nearby.
Ari, thinking how much like a dysfunctional family they’d become, cast a regretful look at Selah’s tranquil figure. The bank on the Empire side there was really close, he realized in surprise. In fact, in the clearing mist he could see the other side was close, too. No wonder Effenrike had anchored them. Eyes traveling over the confines of their new little world, he noticed something else. Dra Kai, ever alert, was now standing almost rigidly so, staring back upstream, and Ari, for no reason whatsoever, felt a shiver of alarm. There was just something about that taut awareness…
Just then, Effenrike yelled from the stern, any muzziness completely gone, “HO! Brigands!”
What? While the four youngest members of the party tried to translate this into something that fit into their experience, the other four were instant action. Melkin, at the packs, tossed Banion his blade, his own sword somehow already in hand, unsheathed and gleaming in the pearly light. Cerise, looking stunned, barely caught the bow and quiver he threw at her. From the corner of his eye, as adrenaline began to pump through him, Ari saw Kai racing to the stern, fleet as a gazelle and with both hands full of steel.
Effenrike was furiously reeling in the anchor, huge bulk for once moving with impressive speed. Beyond him, Ari finally caught sight of what was causing all the excitement—the water was full of bobbing objects, dozens of them. With a little closer examination, they turned out to be heads, eyes fixed on the raft, many with knives clenched between their teeth. They were everywhere, coming up along both sides of the raft as well, with an obvious and disturbing intent.
Almost panicked, Ari dashed to his pack, fumbling desperately for his sword, twelve fingers on every hand. “Loren!” he cried. “Your sword! Get your sword!”
“Shoot!” Banion bellowed at Cerise. “Knock a few of ‘em off before they reach the boat!”
“They’re MEN!” she shouted back at him, sounding as out of control as Ari had ever heard her. “I can’t—”
“They’re brigands, bandits—flaming bones, girl, they’re breaking your precious Law!” Banion bellowed roguishly, face lit with pleasure at this calamity.
“I can’t…” she repeated, shakily nocking an arrow and drawing the bow. She loosed, a beautiful shot—right into an eye.
She gasped, appalled. The outlaw screamed, grabbed at the arrow, and sank.
“Ughh,” she said weakly. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Flames,” Rodge swore, in the same liquidy voice. “We’re going to die.” Panic settled over his face in a visible veil, and he jumped frantically to his feet. “We’re going to die!” he yelled, with more feeling, and ran to the side of the boat. Dropping to his knees, he plunged his arms into the water, paddling madly.
Ari and Loren had their swords in hand by now and were standing breathlessly with their backs to each other. It seemed to them that they were boarded suddenly, everywhere at once. Every direction they looked, there was instant action. Banion, with another roar, began swinging. A bandit, dripping wet and leering, was suddenly right in front of Ari, who swung at him instinctively. The stroke was parried with rather embarrassing ease, then the man stepped in close, moving so fast that Ari barely got his blade moving in time to deflect the stroke. Suddenly, Selah slipped up behind and clanged him over the head with a frying pan, and he sank, senseless, to the decking. She calmly pushed him to the edge and over the side.
Ari and Loren had fought in tournaments several times, and watched every one that came through Harthunter’s with avid interest, but this was no organized competition with wooden blades and safety rules and winners decided by points. It was the dirtiest, messiest, rough and tumble, bashing, yelling mess Ari could have imagined. Amazed, he watched Banion’s galumphing, half-somnolent self morph into a roaring berserker of destruction. Everything his blade touched came off the body it had been attached to…which made for an unsettling collection of body parts and a lot of blood. That was to their left. The other side was held by Melkin. Master Melkin of Applied Natural Sciences. Who, incidentally, was more than comfortable and most deadly with a sword.
Ari, hyperalert on adrenaline, caught movement beyond the horses, who were neighing and circling their pen unhappily. A second later, it flashed again, and he moved to better see what was happening at the stern.
It was Kai, handling the whole back half of the barge. Oh, Effenrike was back there, but the difference in what they were doing was so profound, he might as well not have been. He fought in the same style as Banion, only not as well; before the Merranics had even completed one full sword stroke, Kai had dispatched three men. Fast as snakestrike, he was a breath-taking paragon of motion, swift, graceful, and morbidly beautiful to watch. Ari remembered hearing that the Dra expression for swordplay was “dancing death,” and that’s exactly how it looked. Both blades were drawn, simultaneously busy, and gruesomely effective. Ari saw several bandits take one look and turn and jump back into the water.
As suddenly as it started, it was over. Ari and Loren, panting as if they’d run a marathon, stared around the barge. It had been transformed into a rather nauseating scene of carnage, gore everywhere.
“I didn’t think it would be so…messy,” Loren admitted a little unsteadily.
Banion came over, eyes bright above the bristle and huge body spattered with blood and bits of bandit. He looked at their swords and clucked sympathetically.
“Not blooded yet, heh? No worries. There’ll be other chances.” He patted them encouragingly and went to help Melkin clear off his side of the barge.
Cerise was sobbing behind them, and Ari turned numbly to make sure she was unhurt. Rodge was still digging madly at the water, eyes wide and staring, and Ari began to laugh. “Rodge,” he gasped breathlessly, “It’s over. Everyone’s safe…” Rodge spun around like someone had pinched him, wild-eyed and hair still uncombed from his bedroll. Ari couldn’t help it. He laughed and laughed.
Cold water soaking his feet—he hadn’t had a chance to put his boots on—brought him back to sanity. He jumped. Selah was dousing the barge down with water from the cooking pot. She grinned at him with a hint of mischief and he grinned back, surprised. She was as matter-of-fact about removing body parts as she was peeling potatoes. He went to help her, feeling a rush of warmth for her, for his little family. They were alive. They’d survived.
He needed more sword practice.
It was a distinct pleasure to have the day settle into blandness. The birds sang, the sun was warm, there was breakfast, lunch and
dinner. It felt remarkable, amazing, to enjoy such ordinary things. Ari and Loren listened avidly as the ambush was rehashed, over and over. Attacked at dawn, locked down at anchor, at a narrowing of the River, overwhelmed by numbers, probably forty, maybe fifty of them. Surprise on both sides; only nine of us but three good fighting men and a Dra, up earlier than they expected…Probably no connection to anything. Despite the fact that the intruder in their dorm room was center stage in all the boys’ thoughts.
Melkin’s, too, apparently, because he came to the conclusion only reluctantly, with his eyes sliding to the boys. But there’d been absolutely nothing suspicious found on any of them, and Effenrike claimed it was a bad year for banditry (he said good year, but they knew what he meant).
Banion practiced with them most of the day, steelsong filling the otherwise perfectly peaceful drift along the river. “It’s gotta be second nature,” he mentored them seriously. “Bladework is more than technique—you gotta know the steel, the way it moves, every possible strategy it might employ. You’re not gonna have a chance to sit down and get to know every enemy you run up against, so by flames you better get to know steel.”
Cerise, still pale under the light tan she’d acquired after a couple weeks out of doors, soon went from shocked and silent to vocal and outraged.
“This is the EMPIRE!” she shouted furiously when Rodge tried to calm her. He rolled his eyes—he was bouncing back more quickly from these little life-threatening dramas, Ari thought.
“Aye,” Effenrike agreed. “Usually as dull as tea in the North…er. Sea, Sand and Sky all afflicted with it,” he corrected hastily. Ari, with infallible instinct, thought this was a bad time to bring oneself to Cerise’s attention. She whirled on the bargeman, hands on her hips.
“Afflicted by WHAT?” she demanded icily.
“Lack of a good fight!” He and Banion shared wolfish grins.
“Idiots,” she hissed.
“Now, now,” Banion said soothingly. “Not everyone can get their thrills out of a clinking purse.”
“How is it you all have even survived as a Realm if you’re always running around getting killed off in swordfights!?” she spat maliciously.
“Skill with said sword,” Banion winked, adding subtly, “Being able to kill more than one enemy before becoming completely incapacitated helps tremendously…”
She sucked in her breath, flushed, and stalked off.
“We’re not getting killed,” Effenrike objected belatedly. He sighed, lamenting, “Wish there were some battles to fight.”
“How long since you’ve seen Enemy?” Melkin asked quietly. He hadn’t been noticeably affected by the morning’s events. Ari’d been half-expecting a rabid rave on the imminent rise of the south.
“Almost a generation. My father still talks of the sea devils…being boarded and overwhelmed by beachloads of them. He was a Master Starsman, you know.” Effenrike plucked disconsolately at his fur vest.
Banion and Melkin exchanged a look. “It’s said even the Rach aren’t hit every day now,” the big Merranic said.
“I’ve heard it,” Melkin growled.
Ari furrowed his red brows. He had no idea there was Enemy still being fought at all, let alone every day.
Ari took the middle watch that night, at his insistence. It made him feel better about being so useless during the ambush. The moon was straight overhead as he came on. To the north, the High Wilds of Addah slid silently by, their emerald turned to silver in the moonlight, vast and immutable. It was peaceful, thinking of that night under the stars at the Shepherd’s Hall, though it was the Shepherd that had said, disturbingly, that war was inevitable. As if it was beyond the petty objections of man. Or the gods, Ari thought disparagingly. But then, Il couldn’t stop it either, could he? Despite the power the Shepherd implied he had? Ari wished more than ever that he could have had just a few hours with that old man.
The next few days passed with blessed sameness. The forest of the Imperial bank gradually thinned until the great, golden fields of grain that fed the Realms dominated the view south. Ari spent a lot of time daydreaming in that direction, thinking about his future. Families could be seen out working the fields as the barge drifted by, sometimes with the great Northern draft horses pulling carts or tillers, or dogs trotting around herding small children while their mothers worked.
He could run a farm, he considered; he knew plenty about it from overseeing with Loren and Lord Herron at Harthunters. The idea got more interesting when he put it mentally on the slopes of the steep wild land at his back. He’d have to scratch a living out, sweat and slave and make it all himself. Marry. Raise a happy flock of kids to help with the chores…
“A hard life,” Selah observed, coming to sit next to him one day.
Whatever had come loose in his chest that first conversation rattled around a bit whenever she was near. He blushed furiously.
“Uh,” he said intelligently. “Yeah.” His mind groped wildly for a cohesive thought. “I like working in the country, though.”
“Mm,” she agreed comfortably. Why didn’t she talk about herself like most girls? Ari thought, desperately shy.
“I always feel closer to Il working the land,” she added.
He froze. Il?
“You’re Illian?” He tried to sound casual.
“Mm,” she said again. “Hard to be in Addah for too long and not be.” He stole a look at her face—serene, dark eyes wry.
Cerise called her—Ari swore sometimes it was just so she had something she could control—and she rose in her liquid way.
“I need to stir the soup anyway,” she said quietly, as if reading his irritation.
“It smells delicious,” he said, completely unaware there was food product in the vicinity.
Despite his keen interest in the intricacies of Illianism, the comfortable routine on the raft seemed bent on preventing him from ever having more than a few words with the one person who might have been able to shed some light on the matter. The pattern became so predictable that he started glowering whenever Rodge or Loren or Cerise interrupted them with their inanities—like they had anything interesting to say to her. His blood pressure was reaching critical one day when the barge rounded a turn in the river and came up on a mass of traffic. Effenrike slowed them down, and Ari, recently interrupted once again and thoroughly disgusted, followed Selah up to the bow with everyone else.
“Customs,” Effenrike explained, but it was almost another hour before they could experience that unique Northern delight. The Triple Mountains of the North waved grandly overhead in the desultory breeze when Effenrike finally pulled abreast of the Customs House. A heavy chain lay across most of the Kendrick here, with a sliding beam at water level to control the flow of traffic. Though the Merranic flag flew, too, they couldn’t see any of her men on the ground—and from the sampling they’d had so far, they didn’t seem like they’d be an easy sort of thing to hide.
Effenrike wordlessly handed over a thin sheaf of papers to the Customs official that stepped on board. The boys looked at him interestedly, trying to keep straight faces. He apparently fancied himself a Queensguard; his uniform looked like he’d just stepped off the parade ground, brass buckle shiny, boots gleaming with polish. He had elaborate mustachios and the draping ribbon of a lieutenant depending from one epaulet.
“We would like to make a report of banditry,” Cerise announced in her best Imperious voice.
“Noted,” the lieutenant said in clipped tones, poring over the bargeman’s papers and not even bothering to look up.
“Noted?” Cerise said in frigid disbelief. “NOTED?! We were attacked, unprovoked, by dozens of filthy criminals, barely escaping with our lives! As protectors of the Empire’s wealth and order and as defenders of her citizens, I expect you to do more than NOTE this!”
Bored, he glanced up at her. “And do you know where this happened?”
“Upstream!” She flung a regal arm over her shoulder, making Loren jerk out of the
way to avoid being smacked.
He gave her a look as if to say, “Exactly.”
“And do you know where they are now?”
“Of course not!” she snapped.
He went back to his papers. “Then, it shall be noted.” He finished his perusal of the paperwork, made an efficient row of figures in his book, and glanced up at them all.
“Why are you wearing swords,” he stated, in the tone of one observing an infraction.
“I just told you,” Cerise said angrily, “we’ve been attacked! If you are not going to do your job to keep the Empire safe, then—”
“You need to moderate both your tone and your emotions, milady,” he said, firmness creeping into the boredom.
“We tell her that all the time,” Rodge offered.
“Wearing arms is an indication of suspicious activity in the Empire,” the official began, as if reading down a sheet of regulations.
“Which we’re getting ready to leave,” Banion rumbled rebelliously.
The lieutenant looked at him tightly, then took another, closer, look at their party. “What was your business in the Empire and what are your plans in Merrani?” He was scrutinizing them in earnest now. Effenrike groaned softly and not very discreetly. They’d already been there longer than anyone else and he was fidgety with the delay. He may also not have been thrilled with the direction the conversation was heading.
“QUEEN’S BUSINESS!” Cerise almost shrieked, “and believe me, she’ll hear of this!”
If this was expected to bring a nervous subject to quaking knees, it failed. He ignored her, and rested his eyes on the Dra. “And your business?” he drawled insultingly.
Kai, who’d been watching the activity on the Northern shore, turned his deadly gaze slowly on the official. The temperature plunged.