Carson turned and grinned. "I mark it close to two hundred feet."
Garrick scowled at him. "Maybe a hundred."
"Let's step it off?"
Both men started forward and counted their steps. Alto shook his head as they retrieved the deer and turned instead to help Mordrim and Patrina clear away the grass and dig a bowl in the ground with stones found near the river's edge. Namitus was resting with his back against a tree and chewing gently on a fruit Kar offered the rogue.
"Ha!" Carson cried as the two dragged the gutted deer back to the camp. "Two twenty-five!"
"I counted one sixty," Garrick argued.
"Look at your legs!" the woodsman protested. "Already as long as spears and you were stretching your stride!"
"Don't worry, lad," Mordrim offered the slighted tracker. "We all know Garrick can't count that high."
After the laughter died, they set to finishing up camp. Carson gathered fuel for the fire he felt certain wouldn't burn. Kar lit it with his magic and they roasted the deer on sticks carved from the branches of the tree around them.
"It's a pity there's so much wrong with the world," Karthor observed while he waited for the venison to roast. "I could get used to times like this."
Alto grunted and said, "Enjoy it while you can. The days ahead are dark. There'll be war soon enough, if not already."
"Cooler heads might yet prevail," Kar counseled. "The Order has been shown they have a weakness. If we can strike such a blow, perhaps the king of Shazamir will not be so quick to risk a fight with us?"
Patrina snorted. "They have swords and spears enough to surround every kelgryn city a dozen times over! They have so many people, they don't care about the lives of the army. They'll always have more."
"Shazamir is not the Order of the Dragon," Karthor said. "To avoid a war, we show them reason."
"Reason?" Alto scoffed. "We've seen little of that since we arrived!"
"The dwarves," Namitus suggested.
Mordrim led the others in turning their heads to look at the rogue. The dwarf stroked his beard and shook his head. "Bah, they take enough of a gamble in moving into the Havara Mountains."
"No, he means the Foreign District," Alto said.
Namitus nodded and offer a ghost of a smile.
"There's not enough of them to do a damned thing," Mordrim continued. "And don't be forgetting elves and splisskin got no love of dwarves or each other!"
"Think wider," Alto said. "The Shazamir have made few friends. They hold their nation by force and fear. And because no other nearby nation wants the trouble of fighting for a desert land. If there are threats to their sovereignty here, they dare not send their army away."
Mordrim tugged on his beard as he considered Alto's words. "Who then?"
Alto shrugged. "That's the question, isn't it?"
Kar licked the juices from the dates he'd eaten off his fingers before he raised his hand with a flourish. "Ah, but not knowing is even better. Think about it, is it better the enemy you know or the enemy you don't?"
"What are you on about now?" Garrick grunted. "If you don't know something, then you don't know it!"
"Not true." Kar grinned. "Alto knows the Order of the Dragon will do anything it can to make his life miserable and short, but he has no idea how they'll try to do it or where their threats will come from."
Alto sneered. "Be nice if I did."
"Exactly! You've made my point."
"I have?"
"Imagine you knew they wanted Caitlyn before all this happened. You'd have kept her close and safe."
"I did," Alto said.
"Yes, but when you stopped considering them a threat to her, you let her go."
Alto raised his head as he understood the wizard's point. "So if the rulers of Shazamir think that they'll be attacked if they weaken their defenses, they won't weaken them."
"Well done!" Kar congratulated him. He reached out to test the roasting venison but had his hand smacked back by Patrina.
Alto was nodding as he considered the wizard's and rogue's words. "So now we just have to figure out how we're going to convince Shazamir we're more trouble than we're worth."
Chapter 3
Carson shielded his eyes from the morning sun with his hand as he peered off the bow of the ship. "Looks busy," he observed.
Namitus walked up next to him and stared at the docks of Mira that were still some distance downstream from them. "Guards. Lots of them."
Alto turned to stare at the city. All he saw was the walls and shapes of buildings along the waterfront. He scowled at the better vision his companions had. He'd always been told he could see better than anyone in his family, but the woodsman had spent years alone on a tropical island filled with hungry predators. Survival had sharpened his eyes.
Namitus was a different matter entirely. His boyish features and amazing abilities were a gift of the elven blood that filled his veins. His grandmother had been an elf, he claimed, though he'd never met her nor did he know more than her heritage.
Alto turned to Kar. "Wizard, can you make us disappear?"
Kar chuckled. "Aye, but you'd not like it. Then again, you wouldn't know what happened, so liking it is neither here nor there."
Alto's puzzled expression caused Kar to sigh and explain, "I could dissolve your very bones or burn you to ashes. I could pull your limbs from your body and dash what remained against the rocks. Or strip the flesh from your body by calling a sandstorm that left your desiccated remains buried under leagues of sand."
"That's not helping us," Patrina said with a frown.
"Why haven't you done that to our foes?" Alto asked.
Kar's brow furrowed as he stared back at Alto. "It's not a simple thing! The conditions must be right. If I summoned up the desert winds to slice our foes, what keeps them from tearing into us? Magic is impartial; like a blade with two edges, it will cut both ways. Save that magic has more edges than you can imagine."
"You've made dragons and giant ravens appear, but you can't hide us?" Alto ignored the wizard's rambling and remained focused on the problem at hand.
"Too complex," Kar said. "There are seven of us, each moving and behaving independently. To expect me to be able to prognosticate when each of you might move and what you do and be able to craft magic around it is like gathering ten women in a room and asking them to agree on a favorite color!"
"Hey!" Patrina snapped while Garrick and Mordrim snickered.
Kar went on, ignoring the kelgryn princess as he gathered steam. "And they're expecting us! So they'll be looking for a group of us. No doubt they know what we look like as well. To ask such a thing is impossible! Unless—"
"They're looking for us," Alto interrupted the wizard. Kar's mouth remained open and his hand was half raised. Alto stared at the river and the docks that were slowly taking shape ahead of them. "Can you give us to them? Like the dragon or the raven, make them think they see us."
Kar clamped his mouth shut with a scowl. "Blast you, boy, I was getting around to that. It's still complex. I'd need to blend magic with reality."
"What's that mean?"
"The boat—I'll need the boat. I can make them think they see us upon it. It will be no good once we dock, though; they'll know in an instant."
"Don't dock," Alto reasoned. "Send the raft downstream. They know we sailed south; perhaps they might think our goal is to take the raft to see where our ship awaits."
Kar nodded his head slowly as he examined the ploy for holes. "As I said, I was coming around to explaining just such a thing."
Alto smirked. "We'll slip off the boat when you tell us to and swim ashore."
"Swimming again," Karthor muttered.
Alto glanced at the armored priest and then down at himself. His plate was dented and dirty in spite of the excellent craftsmanship that Mordrim had put into it. He moved his hands to unbuckle it and tossed the breastplate aside, and then removed piece after piece of the armor and left it lying on the deck.
"We must move quickly and quietly," he explained while strapping his shield across his back. "There will be other armor we can wear."
"This is the only clothing I've got!" Patrina hissed as she gestured with her hands at the skimpy suit of armor she wore. As unlikely as it seemed for anything beyond entertaining hedonistic lords in a mock gladiatorial event, the magic of the armor drew strikes to the armor instead of the flesh on display. The magic did more than attract blows and allow her to see in the dark; it strengthened the steel to keep the strikes from breaking through. Leather and cloth arranged beneath it offered padding for comfort and a small degree of silence.
"And you've shown it doesn't weigh you down when you swim," Alto reminded her.
"Oh, so I can keep it?"
Alto chuckled. "If you didn't, I'd have more than just the city of Shazamir to fight off!"
Garrick and a blushing Carson nodded from their posts on the raft. Karthor was busy stripping his armor off. Mordrim stood firm on the ground and glared at them. "A dwarf without armor?" he growled.
"That or stay with the raft," Kar said. "Make my spell easier—one less person to create. You could taunt them, and spare me the trouble of crafting auditory complexities into the spell."
Mordrim blinked his eyes and then shook his head. He sighed and reached for his armor. "If it makes Kar's task more difficult, I'll do it."
A laugh burst from Patrina's mouth, earning a smile from the dwarf.
Alto watched as the city grew closer. "Move more to the middle of the river. Without us to guide it, we'll need to be sure it doesn't get fouled on the sides."
"Poles aren't long enough for the middle," Carson pointed out.
"Maybe not your pole," Garrick taunted.
Kar stared ahead and began to reach into his pockets and pull out the components he'd need to craft the spell. He arranged them on a railing within easy reach and muttered to himself, either practicing what he'd need to incant or speaking poorly of Alto's parents similarity to farm animals.
Patrina looked at all of them and grinned. "Since the troll gave me this armor, I never thought I'd be one wearing the most," she remarked.
Alto chuckled with her. "I'd wager we're still wearing more than you," he said as he plucked at the doublet he wore beneath his plate. It was stained with dirt and blood, some of it his, and had blackened spots from their fight with the dragon Myskrakoth.
"You're going to wear that?" Patrina asked. "It'll slow you down and leave a dripping trail."
Alto's grin faded as he clamped his teeth together. He glanced up and saw Garrick tossing his shirt aside and reaching for his pants. "No!" Alto said. He glanced at Patrina and her eyes were about to fall out of her face as she saw the grinning barbarian. "You don't want that, um, exposed."
Garrick shrugged and winked at Patrina. "We'd be fighting the women off, too!"
Mordrim muttered something in his own tongue and turned away from the barbarian. The other men, save for Kar, stripped off their shirts and boots. Mordrim added his doublet to the decking and turned when he heard Garrick say, "Mord, Alto said take your shirt off."
Mordrim glowered at his northern friend. Patrina turned away, her cheeks reddening at the furious dwarf's discomfort. The hair on the dwarf’s chest and back was thick enough in places to be mistaken for a shirt.
Alto ignored the antics of his friends and glanced at the wizard. Kar nodded and said, "It's time."
"Time to swim? That's a long ways!" Alto said. "We'd have to swim to shore and go through the gate."
"Hold onto the raft," Namitus said. "We ride it downriver until we can swim under water to shore."
"In the middle of the day," Alto scoffed.
"This was your plan," the rogue reminded him.
Alto sighed. It was a fool's plan at best. He'd insisted on it and they'd followed him because he asked them to. They'd pledged their lives and, most likely, they'd pay with their lives.
"Alto," Patrina whispered to him. "We can't turn back now."
Alto nodded. If they suddenly put oars in the water and retreated upstream, they'd have dozens of guards chasing them, both on shore and on the river. "All right, over the side then. All of us."
Garrick and Carson slipped over the edge first and clung to the timbers that made up the flat raft. Patrina went next, followed by Namitus, Karthor, and Alto. Kar remained on the raft and chanted his spell. He droned on for several minutes and then finally took a deep breath and let it out in a loud sigh. He nodded as he looked around and at the illusion he'd crafted and then he moved to the aft of the barge and lowered himself into the cool mountain waters that fed the Khalalid River.
They floated in silence as the current took them closer to the city. The water washed the sweat away and broke the heat of the desert sun. Alto reached up to rub the bristly stubble on his head where the dragon's flames had scorched his hair away. Thork, the troll shaman that had taken to Alto, had given them foul-tasting potions that spared them a fiery death from Myskrakoth's flames, but it hadn't spared his hair nor the sunburn the desert sun had given him. He ducked his head under the surface and rose out of it, enjoying for a few seconds how it soothed his head.
As time passed, a chill began to set in Alto's feet and climb up his legs. He kicked them, rising a few inches in the water in his hopes of getting the blood flowing to them and warming them. Karthor glanced at him and offered a grim smile. "Too much time in this water and we'll catch our deaths of cold."
Alto tried to peer over the raft to see how far they had to go. He ducked his head back behind the raft. "A few more minutes, I think."
"Why is there nothing on the raft?" Namitus looked up and asked.
Kar saw them all looking at him. He rolled his eyes. "You know there's nothing there," he snapped at them. "The illusion won't work on you; your disbelief is too strong."
"We knew the crow and dragon weren't real," Alto said with narrowed eyes.
"That was a different sort of magic. A phantasm that simple can be made strong enough to fool the senses. This is a simple glamour, something that plays upon the tricks of the mind to show them what they expect to see."
"What's that, exactly?" Alto asked.
"The eight of us atop a raft laden with so much dragon gold it's heaped on the deck!"
Alto groaned but it brought a dark chuckle from Mordrim. "Those fools will fall for it," he said.
Namitus grunted in approval. "The people of Shazamir are convinced everyone has buried treasure hidden away from them. The common people think the merchants and nobles hoard it while the merchants think the nobles have it all."
"What do the nobles think?" Carson asked.
"That the other nobles have more than they do," Namitus reasoned.
"I'm starting to miss Bucky," the woodsman lamented.
"I can see how a thirty-foot ape given to fits of rage would be better," Patrina said.
Carson found something interesting to stare at on the log of the raft in front of him, rather than look in Patrina's direction. Alto checked the distance to the docks again and nodded. "All right, we're almost there."
"I can hear them," Namitus said.
Alto and the others picked their heads up or strained their ears. Sure enough, they heard the cries as more and more people saw the imaginary treasure on the raft and the men around it. "Time to go," Alto reasoned.
"I, um, I don't swim so well," Mordrim said. He turned and saw Garrick glaring at him and shrugged in the water. "I'm a dwarf. We don't dive for our ore, we dig for it!"
Alto managed to move around Karthor and up to Mordrim. "Take a deep breath and grab my shoulders," he told the dwarf. "Just kick your feet and try to keep us under the surface."
Mordrim closed his eyes and scowled. He nodded and turned to Alto and grabbed the warrior's large shoulders so he could slip behind him. He settled with his hands on the thick cords of muscle beside his neck and grunted that he was ready.
"Anybody else have trouble swimming?"
Nobody sp
oke up, so Alto took a deep breath and let go of the raft. Their weapons and pouches weighed them down and pulled them under the surface as soon as he stopped kicking his feet. Alto blinked his eyes underwater and fought the urge to squeeze them shut. The sunlight streamed through the water but a quick glance below showed the bottom of the river lost in gloomy darkness. A few fish darted about but none showed interest in getting close to them. Mordrim's hands squeezed on his shoulders, signaling the dwarf's discomfort.
Alto kicked forward and used his arms to pull them through the water. After a moment, he felt Mordrim shifting on his back and then the dwarf's load became easier to bear as he started kicking. Alto approached a darkness in the water and he risked a glance up. Closer to the surface, he could see in the darkness timbers that supported the docks. With his lungs aching, he kicked out even harder towards them and allowed himself to angle up.
Mordrim bumped into his back and fought Alto's attempt to rise. Alto bit down and prevented his breath from escaping into the water. He ignored the panic and reached over his shoulder to tap Mordrim. Instead of the dwarf's body, his hand became snared in the dwarf's hair. He tugged on it, not knowing if it was the hair on his head or his beard. Mordrim stopped kicking immediately. Alto drove his legs together and rose up under the closest dock.
The moment Alto's head burst from the water, he gasped and struggled to breathe. Colors danced in his vision and no matter how hard he tried to control his breathing, he found he couldn't. He kicked and swung his arms, treading water with the heavy dwarf on his back. Other noises filtered through his panic, inducing a greater fear in him that they'd been discovered after all.
When he looked around, he saw they were under a dock and near a thick timber that shielded them from accidental discovery. The noises were the guards and sailors of Shazamir who were hurrying into their own boats to take off after the raft that floated downstream.
Alto heard Mordrim chuckle and turned to see dozens of arrows stuck into the side of the raft. A few small fires burned on the simple deck, proof that magic had been used to try to stop them. A splash behind him turned Alto back around, towards the city, and he saw Patrina breathing deep and blinking the water out of her eyes. Garrick, Namitus, Karthor, and Carson emerged in the shadows of the dock within a few heartbeats of each other. Kar arrived a moment later and, unlike the others, he seemed unfazed by the long underwater swim.
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