Warrior Baptism Chapter 1

by Jonathan Techlin

  “They have us, sister!” Theel shouted. “We must fight!”

  He snatched up the torch just as the other man threw the anchor. It missed both Theel and Yenia, but landed in their boat. Now the vessels were locked together, the soldiers reeling them in like fish on the end of a line. Both boats began to drift, no one rowing, but everyone carried by the swift currents of the river.

  “We fight!” Theel shouted again as the canoe moved alongside.

  Some soldiers drew their swords, others raised bows and aimed them. Theel stood up, raising his paddle above his head, then nearly fell in the unsteady boat. He swung the blade of the paddle as if it was a blade of steel, smashing the first soldier in the face. Both boats rocked uncontrollably, and an arrow zipped past his ear. Another man stabbed at him with a knife but missed, and Theel fell on top of him, into the boat of the Kile men. All balance was lost and the canoe overturned, sending everyone into the water.

  Theel was thrust upside down into a freezing blackness, with arms and legs flailing and bubbles rushing past his head. He could see the rippling torchlight and canoe bottoms beneath his feet, tried to orient himself, but felt someone clawing at his face. He responded by taking a mouthful of fingers and biting down hard.

  The hand jerked away, and Theel was free of harassment, kicking as hard as he could to right himself and swim back to the surface. He could still see the boats, knew they were moving rapidly down the river, but he kept pace, swept along in the strong currents. With much effort, he was able to grasp the side of the overturned canoe and pull himself up inside it for a breath of air. The boats were all in a cluster, as if locked together. If Yenia was still up there, she was alone, surrounded, fighting for her life.

  Theel took one more breath, then splashed back down, holding onto the canoe, maneuvering himself under Guarn’s boat. He pulled himself up by the stern and there was Yenia, swinging her oar at four very determined soldiers who’d pulled their canoe along the other side. The one closest to Theel raised a crossbow, aiming directly at Yenia.

  Theel acted without thinking. Nothing kindled a rage in his belly like someone threatening his baby sister.

  He pulled himself up, grabbed the man with the crossbow, and drew his father’s knife. In one quick motion, Theel’s knife sliced the man’s throat open. The crossbow loosed its bolt at the same time but the shot was errant, striking another soldier in the back. Both the crossbow and its owner fell overboard, and Theel took his place in the canoe.

  Another man raised his sword against Yenia, but Theel swiped at him from behind, cutting his wrist and disarming him. Yenia broke her oar over the head of one soldier while Theel stabbed at the other. The third canoe came up alongside, with more Kile men reaching out with torches and swiping with knives and swords.

  The boats were all tangled together with anchor ropes, spinning in lazy circles down the swift-moving river. There was no one in control, just a group of men cursing and flailing, punching and stabbing, slipping on wood made wet with water and blood, falling on each other, falling into the river, some trying to kill, others merely trying to survive.

  Theel had one soldier pinned beneath him in the bottom of a canoe, then another jumped on top of him, trying to choke him from behind. That was when he saw the light, another beacon floating by in the darkness. This one was very large, a bright-yellow glow cast by hundreds of candles. The boats were floating past Candle Rock. They were doing it with alarming speed, and there was no way to stop it.

  He tried to see where they were going, catching a glimpse of a crudely made sign passing by over their heads, with two words painted on its surface: Danger. Waterfall.

  They were going down the wrong cave.

  Theel had little time to contemplate this terrible realization. The soldier behind pulled hard on this neck, so hard it felt as if he’d soon rip Theel’s head off. The other soldier fought to steal his knife and they wrestled over it as Theel felt his life being choked away. His vision faded to nothing, then quickly filled with twinkling stars as his ears roared with the deafening sound of rushing water.

  Then the world fell out from under him and he briefly tumbled through a wall of mist to crash hard upon the canoe again. Now he was facing up, but the soldier still held him from behind. Theel tried to stab at the man as the canoe rocked and tossed, filling with water. He was pelted in the face with a cold spray, then thrown into the air again. The soldier tenaciously held onto his neck and they both fell into the water. Theel kicked his legs and stretched out his hand, desperately reaching into the darkness, and managed to get a grip on the side of the canoe. He tried to climb in, but the man held onto him, dragging him down.

  Unable to do much else, he clung to the canoe with one hand, swirling and spinning and splashing, trying to breathe despite being smashed in the face repeatedly by walls of water. It was like trying to stay on the back of an angry bull while bearing the weight of another person. He knew he’d have a better chance of holding on if he’d drop his father’s knife and use both hands, but he didn’t want to lose it. So he found himself foolishly trying to sheath it on his belt with one hand, cutting his pants and repeatedly nicking his thigh.

  Drop it! his brain screamed. But he just couldn’t do it.

  Where was his sister? Was she alive?

  “Yen—” he began, but his mouth filled with water.

  Other shouts answered him, several voices calling out for help, but none were recognizable.

  “Yenia!”

  His canoe crashed into something solid, almost tearing it from his grip. Then the violent currents slammed him against the side. There was a moment of stability, and both he and the soldier tried to climb in at the same time. Another wave hit and threw both of them into the misty air. Luckily, they crashed against the bottom of the boat. For a moment, Theel thought he’d be safe. But amazingly, the soldier still wanted to fight, jumping on him with fingers clawing at his face. Theel stabbed at him and they fought over his father’s blade, wrestling and kicking and cursing. The canoe hit another rock, then another, swaying violently, splashing up and down as they fought with the knife between them. The canoe took flight and he was spinning in the air, a human maelstrom of spray. His wet hands slipped off the knife and he lost all sense of where he was. Then he fell back into the boat, landed on the soldier, and onto his own blade. The steel sank deep into his chest, just under his collarbone.

  He gasped, sucked in water, coughed, then sucked in more water. He tried to pull the blade out, but only fell out of the canoe, feeling nothing but freezing cold and the inability to breathe. Then he exploded forth from the water, flying out into freezing air with his body trailing spray, curled into a fetal position, hands gripping the handle of his father’s knife lodged in his chest. His mouth gaped in a silent, horrified scream, all of its sound swallowed by the deafening roar of a waterfall. The feeling of forward movement died and was replaced by the sensation of falling, spiraling madly through a tornado of biting wind and water, down into bottomless blackness.

  A Watery Tomb

  Yenia awoke in the darkness of the Trader’s Cave. She could still hear the roar of the waterfall and feel the spray of the mist on her face, so she knew the current hadn’t carried her far from where she fell. She lay in the bottom of a boat that wasn’t rocking, which meant she’d run aground. The cave was darkened by many shadows, but above, a faint glow of green and blue was provided by stalactites covered in luminous fungus. The glowing fungus told Yenia one thing. There was a good chance there was strong Earth Sorcery and Water Witching among the Craft Weaves that filled the cave.

  Yenia could not see the invisible Craft weaves that blanketed Thershon, but she knew they existed, and her father taught her to see the clues of their existence. This was important because the strengths of each element of Craft foretold of danger, or of protection. Strong Water Witching and Earth Sorcery in a church building might mean sanctuary. But those same elements of magic at the base of a waterfall on an underground river certainly
spoke of danger.

  Yenia pulled herself into a seated position and, after looking around for a moment, realized the peanut-shaped vessel was Uncle Guarn’s boat. She could barely make out a dark stain in the bottom beneath her feet, but presumed it was blood belonging to a Kile man she was fighting with as they went over the waterfall. Miraculously, the last wooden crate that contained the siblings’ belongings still sat in the bottom of the boat, a little wet, but intact. But where was Theel?

  Guarn’s boat was stuck on the muddy shore of the river, driven there by the strong currents pushing out from the base of the waterfall. Yenia was grateful the boat was aground; that it hadn’t continued down the river with her in it. But the currents still pulled at the boat, and Yenia couldn’t afford it floating away while she sought out her brother. The mooring rope was about twenty feet long, plenty of length, so she tied it around her waist. She needed to moor the craft to something. Might as well be herself, she thought.

  This done, she climbed over the side of the boat and fell into the slimy mud. It was very deep, and almost impossible to move in. She was forced to crawl through it, towing the boat behind her. She was soon covered in the sticky muck.

  The mud was full of things she couldn’t see but could feel beneath the surface, sharp things that poked and scraped the skin of her arms and hands. There were pieces of glass, rotten wood, bent nails, a barrel hoop, a boot, a few scraps of leather, and many pieces of shredded clothing.

  There were also human remains, and lots of them. Several skeletons’ worth of bones lay scattered, half-buried in the mud. Yenia realized she was crawling through a graveyard, the remains of countless smugglers’ boats that went down the wrong cave and found themselves at the bottom of the waterfall. Some might have survived their falls as she did, but many didn’t, dying suddenly and unexpectedly in the roaring, wet darkness.

  This brought to Yenia’s mind something her father warned her about, the terrible things that can happen on ground befouled by great tragedy, especially in places where the concentration of Craft magic was greatest. And the Craft was strong in this cave.

  Water Witching and Earth Sorcery meant danger.

  A man screamed in agony, a bloodcurdling death cry. It wasn’t far away, and he wasn’t alone. There were shouts of warning, curses, and more cries of pain. Then Yenia heard a blade ring free of its scabbard. More screams, and the splattering of flesh. There was a fight going on nearby.

  Yenia needed to hurry. She must reach Theel as soon as possible. She knew he was back somewhere in the direction of the waterfall, so she crawled in this direction. She could see the black silhouettes of a cluster of stalagmites framed by a flickering, white light. Someone had lit a torch, or a lantern, but the light wasn’t yellow, as expected. Strong concentrations of Craft caused fire to burn a ghostly white, and so the cavern walls flickered with pale light, filling the air with a different kind of heat that didn’t warm the skin. Instead it caused the flesh to tingle, the sensation of Craft weaves passing through the body. The air of this place was absolutely choked with magic.

  Soon after, Yenia’s nose detected the smell of the sea, of wetness and rot, as if she was crawling through a mountain of dead fish. It was a powerful odor, thick and hot, making it difficult for her to breathe. The smell didn’t belong in this cave where there was no sun and so little aquatic life. Since it didn’t belong in the natural world, it must have been birthed by the Craft.

  Once again, Yenia thought of her father’s warnings, of how dark and terrible events could turn the ground sour. The Craft that filled the air of such places could become poisoned, and the magic would behave erratically. Unnatural phenomena might result. Sometimes, dead things refused to stay dead.

  Yenia reached the small cluster of stalagmites and pulled herself up out of the mud. Peering between the rocks, she was able to see the source of the battle sounds. She also saw the reason for the awful stink that permeated the air.

  The waterfall roared not so far away, the spray filling the cavern, making everything wet. A large jumble of rocks lined this side of the river and was covered in the glowing fungus, but also the wreckage of several canoes, broken paddles, and dead soldiers. Some of the Kile men still lived. Two of them remained on their feet, while two others lay on the ground beside the water, clearly hurt. None of them would be bothering Yenia, or wondering where she was. They had other concerns. They were in a fight for their lives.

  The Kile men were surrounded by hideous, deformed creatures that Yenia knew were men once, before the tainted Craft perverted their flesh and commanded them to rise against the living. They still walked on their hind legs like humans, but had large, round eyes, like fish, and bluish-green skin covered with scales. They had puffy, bloated cheeks and oversized, puckered lips. Instead of hands and feet they had large, pointy flippers. Each of them appeared to be in various stages of transformation from human to sea creature. Some of them even had tails growing from their backs.

  They were just as Yenia’s father had described them. The creatures were called many things throughout the Seven Kingdoms: sewer fiends, sea wights, or drowned men, but Yenia’s father used the term graygoyles, named for their resemblance to the hideous statues built on castles, cathedrals, and other large buildings of the great northern cities.

  The knight taught his children about the myriad of horrors that could be birthed from tainted Craft. Those who died on cursed ground and failed to remain dead often took on characteristics of the method of their demise or the environment in which they breathed their last. These trapped and cursed souls came back as wind wraiths, sand wraiths, blood wraiths, fire wraiths. They were all manner of bedeviled soul, trapped between life and death, called by many names, appearing in many forms, but always cursed, deformed, resentful of their fate, and hateful of the living. In this case, it was men who died screaming at the bottom of a waterfall whose spirits were refused death and began the slow transformation into something terrible.

  Water wraiths.

  Graygoyles were newborn water wraiths who didn’t know they were dead yet. They were only younglings, far from the monsters they could one day become. Tales were told of fully matured water wraiths that were invisible spirits capable of commanding water and turning it against men. When in the presence of a true water wraith, a puddle at your feet was more dangerous than a sword aimed at your heart. The creature could command the fluids within your body, the saliva on your tongue, or the water in your brain. Only the greatest warriors, Knights of the King’s Cross, often accompanied by priests and wizards devout in their faith, dared face a fully mature water wraith that was self-aware and in complete command of its innate powers of Water Witching.

  These poor souls at the bottom of the waterfall were only recently deceased, which was why they still retained some characteristics of their natural forms, if not their free will. If they weren’t already slaves of a true water wraith, one of them would mature and go on to command the others. Until then, their only weapons were their claws and teeth, but this would be sufficient against the living, in areas of exposed skin where flesh could be pierced or ripped.

  Numbers were also their ally, as each of the Kile soldiers had two or three of the creatures attacking them. The men fought valiantly, and proved to Yenia’s eyes the graygoyles could be killed. Their scaly gray hide was tough to cut, but sharpened blades in the hands of determined soldiers eventually found soft spots. Greenish sea water burst from the wounds instead of blood, but the creatures died, just the same. Unfortunately, each dying graygoyle was replaced by two more. They emerged from the waterfall, sprang out of the river, or crawled up out of the mud as if they were hibernating beneath the men’s feet.

  The numbers were too great. One soldier hacked the arm off a graygoyle, only to have another jump on his back. Another soldier had one graygoyle clinging to his legs, with two more attacking him from the front and back. The monsters used their pointed flippers as weapons, stabbing and slashing and opening jagged wounds. Though the
y might kill this way, it wasn’t the creatures’ first desire. As victims of drowning, the terror and pain of their final moments still tormented them. They were desperate to relieve that lingering agony, and the only way was to get air into their lungs. But they were half-sea creatures, had grown gills, and now choked on fresh air. The only air that satisfied their needs was the breath of the living. They didn’t want to kill the Kile men. They wanted what their bodies contained. They wanted what was inside their lungs.

  The Kile men were wounded just enough that they could no longer fight back. As the soldiers fell, one by one, their armor was pried off and their clothing shredded by pointy flippers. The same flippers jammed into their chests, separated ribs, and opened holes to the lungs within. Screams of agony and terror filled the cavern, mixing with the roar of the waterfall. But those cries were choked into silence as the lips of the graygoyles covered the soldiers’ noses and mouths, and the holes in their chests.

  The sights and sounds of this frightened Yenia. She wanted to go back to the boat, push it out into the water and float away, never to look back. It wasn’t the thought of battle that frightened her. Yenia’s father taught her to fight better than most men. But he also taught her to avoid battle in unfavorable conditions, if possible. Yenia’s quickness was her best asset. Trying to fight these creatures in waist-deep mud where she would be unable to move would be extremely dangerous.

  Father would have called it unwise. Theel would have called it stupid.

  Yenia wanted to flee, but she wanted to do her duty more. She wasn’t going anywhere. Looking between the stalagmites, Yenia saw groups of the creatures fighting with each other over the fallen humans like dogs over a fresh kill. She knew her brother was nearby. But where?

  The lantern was kicked over, and the oil spilled into the water. It burned a short trail of white for a few moments before dying, but it was just long enough for Yenia to see the body of another man half-submerged in the mud between where she stood and where the graygoyles were feasting. The man wasn’t moving, didn’t appear to be conscious, but was badly wounded, with the handle of a knife protruding from his chest. Yenia couldn’t see his face, but noticed the man wasn’t clad in armor. He wore the plain clothing of peasant oarsman. That clothing looked familiar.