The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

“I’m sorry, Hen. I need to see Cap. I have to find out where Packer went.”

  Henrietta was silent a moment, chewing her lower lip. “Cap’s gone. He went to the Nearing Plains to buy more ale. He won’t be back for several days.”

  “But he told you what happened,” Panna said flatly, undeterred. “You must tell me where Packer went.”

  She shook her head. “Cap made me promise…”

  “I know he was going to sea. I know he was going aboard that ship. But I need to know where it is.”

  “Lordy, Panna—I don’t know where any ship is!”

  But she knew more than she was supposed to tell. Henrietta Hillis was a tireless worker and a font of wisdom in child-rearing and family matters, but she did not deal well with inner conflict. And at the moment, she felt a great deal of it.

  “You must tell me what you know. Come down and open the door.”

  Henrietta hesitated.

  Panna fought back a strong welling up of despair. “Please, Hen,” she begged. “Please…”

  Hen’s maternal instincts won out. “You hold on, child.” She looked up and down the street. “I’ll be right down.”

  Talon stepped back and sat on the packing crate a few feet in front of him, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, her knife still in her hand. Packer now noticed a number of large crates behind her, a wall of cargo. They were in the ship’s hold.

  He could see Talon’s eyes now, but this was no improvement. The black, empty sockets had been unnerving, but the sharp focus of her dark eyes, crisp, crackling with purpose, were worse. He was struck by the effect of her wild hair on her hard features. It made her look both fierce and feline.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Then he said hoarsely, “I just want to help.”

  She stood, her eyes flashing with anger, and he saw a deep, burning fire, a consuming hatred out of all proportion to the crimes of one stowaway. Packer felt sweat forming on his hands, his forehead, under his arms. Dog’s bluster was a child’s tantrum in comparison to this. He had never encountered such a seething cauldron within human flesh.

  This vision of her lasted only a moment, and then her hard features returned, as though she had pulled a hood down over her emotions. Her tone was now easy, even friendly. “I want to know who sent you,” she purred. “I want to know the reason you were sent.” She approached him, knife held away from her, out to the side, as though it might cause harm of its own volition. She brought the knife in a quick, slashing motion to his throat. He felt the cold point against his skin, just below his left ear. He closed his eyes. She gently traced the point of the blade down under his chin, barely grazing the skin…brought it across his throat and up by his right ear. Then she put her left hand behind his head, grasping his hair with a grip like iron. Her voice was smooth as oil. “You do not yet fear me as you should.”

  She pulled his head backward sharply; his neck popped and a hot pain flashed down his spine. He cried out. She put the point of the blade into his shoulder, and the pain, the musket ball, shot through him again. She whispered in his ear as he struggled against his chains, trying to escape the agony she caused him. “I will take you apart with such precision that you will beg me to let you die. But I will not let you die. I will be vigilant, and keep you alive, awake, and alert.”

  She put the knife to his throat again, pressed on the blade until he felt the razor edge slice through the skin below his left ear. “You did not come here to help. Do not lie to me again. Who sent you?”

  Now she saw what she wanted to see. Now she saw fear. He swallowed a dry, sharp lump in his throat, felt himself trembling. “No one sent me. I serve no one.” That didn’t sound right. “No one but God.”

  She stepped back, laughing out loud, a ringing cry. “Ha! You serve God!” She laughed at him again. “You climb into a barrel and sneak into a pirate’s lair! These are the orders of your God? He sent you here, to be in the darkness with me, bound, in pain, in your own stink?” She put the knifepoint into his belly, just above the navel. “What kind of God would send you here, for this?” And she pushed.

  He swallowed hard, forcing himself not to look down at her knife. His hands, knees, all his extremities trembled violently. He couldn’t tell how badly he’d been cut. He just knew how badly it hurt. But even so, he didn’t regret saying it. “God’s ways,” he managed, in a tone that came out with more confidence than he would have believed possible, “are not man’s ways.”

  She pulled the knife away. There was no blood on the tip of it. She snorted, half smiling. “Ah. You are a true believer, then.”

  He nodded, confessing it with fear.

  “You have the words of a missionary.” Now she placed the knife tip at the center of his chest, just below his breastbone. “But do you have the heart of a missionary? Shall we take a look?” She jabbed the knife delicately into him; this time he felt the point break through, felt the razor slice him, felt the ragged sharpness cleaving his flesh, the pain flashing like lightning through his body. He whimpered, trying not to breathe, because with every breath he felt the blade cut deeper, felt the knife’s edge saw his flesh. But his breaths came anyway, in short bursts. He felt the warm blood flowing down from the pain, covering his belly, soaking his shirt. Sweat poured from him everywhere else.

  She continued speaking as though nothing had happened, as though she were having a simple conversation. “I have killed missionaries. But I have always found their hearts to be like all men’s hearts.” She saw his reaction. “If I cut yours out, will I find God inside it?” She smiled serenely as she watched him writhe.

  She pulled the knife out and held it up to show him his own blood, which covered an inch or so of the knife’s tip. “You have the words of a missionary.” She nodded, as though certain of herself now. She wiped the blood from the knife onto his forehead, tracing as she did the pattern of a cross. “But you carry a sword, and not a crucifix. This tells me that you trust your sword and not your God. Why is this? Is this because you know He cannot protect you?”

  She saw the fear in him turn to anger. She smiled. “The Son of God, you call him. This is your God?”

  He nodded, eyes ablaze with anger, pain, and fear.

  She continued. “He died in shame, and in pain. Naked, no doubt, for all to see. And your holy book says the power of God brought him back from the dead. But you see, I brought you back from the dead. So who has the power of life and death?” She put her face in his and looked him in the eye.

  He wrenched his face away. She laughed out loud again, this time a cold, hollow laugh that grated to his bones. He closed his eyes, trying to get away from her words. In the darkness, with his eyes clamped shut, it came back to him. He didn’t want to remember it now, but he did, he remembered rising up toward the rudder, the blue water shimmering behind it. He remembered he had stopped swimming. He remembered giving up. He remembered taking in the ocean, swallowing it all, and knowing, without a doubt, that he was dying. He remembered the darkness turning to light. He remembered rising up into that light, and into that joy.

  His heart beat faster, and he felt sicker. Tears stung his eyes. He had died! What in God’s name had she done?

  “I brought you back,” she answered, and he opened his eyes, saw her certainty. Now he believed her, and it terrified him. “You gave up on your weak God and you trusted in your sword.” Packer grimaced, his pain no longer physical. How did she know these things? “So He gave up on you. He abandoned you. To me.”

  Packer struggled wildly against his chains, panicked, crying out, but he could only writhe helplessly. She laughed again. He could deal with pain, but not with this. Not with the abandonment of God. He felt everything within him crumbling; he was unable to hide from her words. What had happened to him? He couldn’t find any peace here, could not find his way back to God. What had she done? Who was she? Who was he?

  She continued smiling, an evil leer. He was in her grasp, t
he fly in the spider’s web. She was the predator and he was prey, behaving like all prey everywhere. She leaned in close again, this time putting the knife under his chin. He shook uncontrollably.

  Her teeth were bared. She reached behind him, found the deepest cuts on his back, and dug her fingernails into them, creating a stabbing pain that felt like multiple knife blades, like swords thrust through his back, through to his chest. It was as though she touched all his wounds at once, to manipulate him like a puppet on strings that connected directly to his most vital points of raw pain, both physical and spiritual.

  He arched his back, struggled to shake free of her claws, trying to avoid her, but he could not. The more he struggled, the more it hurt. She surrounded him, infiltrated him, in his body and his soul. Pain was everywhere. She was everywhere. His chains rattled and the manacles bit into his wrists, but they held him fast. He was a mouse pinned by a cat.

  She spoke slowly now, her face inches from his. She eased his pain just slightly, so that he could focus on her words. “Now you understand. I can kill you. I can resurrect you. I can hurt you…” She did, and he winced against it, tears running down his cheeks. “…Or I can heal you.” She eased his pain, and he took several gasping breaths. “Do you understand who I am now? Do you?”

  He found himself nodding, pleading, helpless. Tears flowed in rivers down cheeks. Sobs began to come up from deep in him.

  “Tell me you understand.”

  “I understand. Please, yes, I understand.”

  He was losing control, abandoning everything, everything he knew, everything he had trusted, in order to comply with her.

  “There. That wasn’t so hard. Now tell me. Why are you here?”

  He hated her. But he feared her more than he hated her. He had to tell her. He had to pour it out. That was the only way to stop her, to keep her away. And yet it wouldn’t keep her away, it would only invite her in more deeply, only open the door to everything that was within him, everything and everyone who mattered to him. He knew this, but he spoke anyway, the words coming however they would, and though they were his, he did not recognize them and could not stop them. It was as though she had pried the lid off his soul, had taken away his protection, had gotten inside the doors of his own will, and no secrets would be withheld. He was weak.

  “I came to find the Firefish. I know where they feed. I know where to look. My father knew about the feeding waters. He was a fisherman.” Sentences came out in a rush, each one true, but barely connected to one another, as though he couldn’t disclose things fast enough. “I tried to sign up with you, on the Trophy Chase. I wanted to learn how it’s done. But you wouldn’t have me because I was from the fishing villages, so I stowed away.” The sobs now interfered with his speech, unwanted, unavoidable. She hated Firefish. He had heard her say so as she walked alongside the cart. But he could do nothing about that. He hated her, and feared her, and he was powerless against her.

  “But you are a swordsman. How does the son of a fisherman become a swordsman?” She seemed patient, and suddenly he was thankful to her, appreciative, lapping up her lack of anger as though it were kindness.

  Talon let him talk. She had done this many times, had seen this many times before, and knew she would soon know everything he knew. The boy had broken easily. She was even a little disappointed. She had hoped for more sport.

  “I’m not a swordsman or a fisherman,” he continued, confessing the uncertainty at the root of his soul. “Or a priest or a missionary. I don’t know what I am. I’m nothing. I’m a dreamer.” He could hardly speak for the sobs, but he spoke anyway. “Dog was right. I’m a dreamer. I should have stayed with Panna, should have married her, should have learned to fish. But I’m nothing. I’m a peasant who studied swordplay at the Academy and I thought I could do something I can’t. But I can’t. That’s it, that’s all.”

  She pulled away, and stepped back to look at him, as he sobbed like a baby. “Who are you?” she asked bluntly. “What is your name?”

  He was surprised by this abrupt shift in her demeanor. “My name is Packer Throme,” he told her quickly.

  “Packer Throme.” She said it as though memorizing it. “You have lied to me, Packer Throme.”

  “No!” Her words terrified him. How could she say this? He was speaking only the truth, with nothing covered, nothing hidden. Could she not see that?

  But she was baffled. How could he be lying to her? He was broken. And yet he was lying; he must be. “Fishermen of your realm do not attend the Academy of Mann, any more than do pirates. Either you are not a fisherman’s son, or you did not attend the Academy.”

  Thank God, he thought, she just didn’t understand. “You’re right. I wasn’t enrolled. My father saved the life of a nobleman’s son. Fished him out of the ocean. He’d been adrift. The king secretly arranged for my education in gratitude. Whatever I chose. I chose seminary, but was expelled. Then I chose swordsmanship. But I couldn’t enroll in the Academy. Just as you say. So I was tutored.”

  Talon waited. “By whom?” she finally asked. Packer did not hear the tremor in her voice.

  “Senslar Zendoda. The Swordmaster of Mann.”

  A shudder went through her. “The Traitor!” she hissed.

  Packer recognized now, far too late, what this meant to her. Senslar Zendoda was Drammune by birth. Of course Talon would see him as a traitor to her people. Not that he could have withheld it, even if he had foreseen her reaction. But he felt all hope drain from him. She would kill him now. And then he realized he would welcome that; he should be dead anyway. By all rights, he should not be alive. God wanted him dead. It was Talon who wanted him alive, so she could read him like a book.

  But now he was afraid she wouldn’t kill him. She would keep him alive and in this hell. His heart felt like it died within him.

  She stared at him. “Schooled by Senslar Zendoda.” She said it softly, as though letting the words out to take a look at them. Then she said it again, with a venom that made it sound like a curse. “Schooled by Senslar Zendoda.” She leaned in toward Packer, now taking his neck in her bare hand and squeezing. Her fingernails, already stained with his blood, bit into his skin. Packer heard a gurgling sound from his own throat, much like he had heard from Dog’s. He let it happen.

  His hatred for her was gone. She could torture him, kill him, resurrect him, kill him again. It didn’t matter. He felt relief, relaxing into the inevitable pain, the inevitable living death. And now that he was free of fear, he could see her as she was, controlled by hate, by a deep, passionate hatred completely unveiled. He found he could even feel sorry for her. He wouldn’t fight her any longer. She would do as she pleased. Whatever God would let her do, that is precisely what she would do. Yes, that was true. God had let her bring him back. God had let her torture him. He might let anything at all happen. Anything at all. So be it. So be it.

  She clipped the words, spitting each one out in her hard accent the way tin snips cut bits of wire. “I have a duty to this ship, and you have violated that. I have a duty to my Captain, and you have violated that. I have a duty to my native land, and you have violated even that.”

  She stepped back, and he drew a gasping breath as she released her grip on his throat. She pulled her sword from her belt and placed the point of it to his throat, pushing his head back against the boards behind him. He recognized the angle of her blade. With one thrust it would penetrate through to the base of his skull, and he would die instantly, collapsing without so much as a twitch. It was the exact manner in which he had threatened Dog. He smiled. This was right. He deserved it. He knew that she would not hesitate as he had. He found himself hoping she would do it soon, and do it quickly.

  A loud, urgent knocking filled the room, knuckles rapping on wood. The noise startled Packer. Talon bared her teeth angrily, but did not move the tip of her sword.

  CHAPTER 6

  Banished

  “You’re not really thinking of following him, are you, child?” Hen Hillis a
sked, alarmed. She and Panna were seated at a table just inside the inn door, the same table where Packer had sat after thrashing Dog so easily the previous night. The innkeeper’s wife feared she had told this girl too much. “That’s not why you’re asking, is it?”

  “Of course not,” Panna lied. She was accustomed to telling the truth, had rarely felt any need to do otherwise, and so she was surprised at how easily and with what force she spoke falsely.

  “All right, then.” Hen spoke in an urgent whisper, leaning in close. “He left in a barrel.” She waited for that to sink in. Panna’s eyes widened slightly. “Cap put him in it so’s no one could tell. I have no idea why Cap would do such a thing, even though I’m sure Packer asked him politely.” In fact, she feared Packer had threatened him with a sword. “And then the pirate’s cart took him away.”

  Panna nodded, her alarm tempered by the simple fact that this was good, helpful information. “Took him where?”

  “Toward the docks, I guess. That’s all I know, child.”

  Panna fought a tremble. “Tell me about the woman. What did she look like?”

  “I don’t know. All Cap told me is that she was a woman, and she brandished a sword about.”

  “Did she have dark hair?” Panna’s dream was still real to her, burned into her memory as if she had been there. Her heart beat wildly.

  “I don’t know. I did watch out the window at them as they left, but it was dark and I thought all three of them to be men until Cap told me otherwise. I just don’t know.” Hen’s eyes searched Panna’s. “Child. You won’t go off after them, will you? They’ll be at sea by now, far out at sea. So it’s much better to stay behind, and be the support here that Packer needs.”

  “Of course you’re right.” Panna smiled gently. “I…just needed to know.”

  Now that Panna seemed to take the news well, Henrietta felt much better. She was glad she had found someone who needed to hear this secret as badly as Panna did, so she could stop keeping it to herself. Hen’s inner conflict was resolved, her burden lifted. “That’s a good girl, then. You need some rest. You’ll go home and sleep, won’t you?” She patted Panna’s hand.