by Alex Aguilar
VIII
A Band of Rogues
The Draeric Sea had always been a treacherous region of the world for as far back as anyone could remember. It stretched along the southern coast of Gravenstone, separating the land from the kingdom of Ahari, and its currents were hardly safe to travel through, yet it was essential for merchants and fishermen. It was also notorious, however, for the many isles and ships that homed the most vicious and ruthless pirates one could ever possibly have the misfortune to meet.
It didn’t end there, however… What made the Draeric Sea deadly were the sea nymphs…
The further west one traveled by ship, the darker the seawater would turn, until it became nothing but a black pit of thick slime and gunk that stretched for miles. This was how you could tell where in the world you were, they’d say.
If the water was still blue, you were south of Vallenghard.
If it was black, you were most likely south of the Woodlands or Halghard.
Beware the black seawater, they’d say, for it only means certain death for all those who fall overboard.
Much like the tree nymphs, those of the sea were said to be vicious hungry creatures, and they had blue scales all over their bodies and weblike fingers and toes that allowed them the ability to outswim even the fastest of humans. It didn’t matter how strong or agile you were; once you fell into black seawater, the sea nymphs would seize you and drag you to the bottom of the sea, where if the drowning didn’t kill you the bone-crushing pressure most definitely would.
It was hard to see the color of the water on this particular night; everything for miles around was as dark as the abyss. One lone ship was sailing west across a patch of dark water just south of the shores of Halghard. It was an old but rather large fishing vessel and it was sailing slower than usual due to the abundance of lives aboard. Nearly a hundred men were manning the ship above, most of them with fewer layers of armor than usual.
Two figures sat at the back end of the ship; one of them was preparing a bucket of warm water mixed with callis root, a plant that healers used to ease the pain of a cut, a wound, and even childbirth. The other figure, blue-skinned and sharp-eared, sat on a stool shivering and holding his left hand on his right as if holding a delicate rose.
“Damn rat!” grunted Jyor, the mercenary elf. “I’ll kill ‘im… Believe me, I will…”
“If ye were holding ‘im by the neck, he couldn’t have kicked ye,” Hauzer replied as he dipped a cloth into the bucket.
“Well I’m killin’ somebody.” The elf examined his hand every two seconds, as if hoping his fingers would return to their normal upright state. His pinky and his ring finger were bent to a nearly horizontal position and a piece of bone was sticking out just above a dirty copper ring with ancient elven writing.
“It was the wench,” Jyor grunted. “I know it. I’m gonna slit her throat first chance I get.”
“She’s a strong one. Might be useful. I doubt Baronkroft will let ye.”
“Baronkroft’s been sittin’ on his arse in that room of his since we got on this ship! Toyin’ with those spells of his, he’s gonna go mad, mark my words. Fuckin’ mad!”
“Aye, maybe… And madmen have a habit of killin’ for no reason. Keep shouting ‘n’ ye’ll be next,” Hauzer took the dripping cloth from the bucket and moved it closer to Jyor’s mangled fingers.
“Leave that!” the elf hissed angrily at his comrade. “I’ll be fine, just snap ‘em back into place.”
“There’s no saving ‘em, Jyor… Ye know that. Just thank the gods it ain’t yer fighting hand,” he forced the cloth against the bent fingers, and Jyor began cursing and shivering, nearly falling off his stool as he winced from the pain. His jaw was trembling, and he was having quite a bit of trouble hiding it.
Then Hauzer rose to his feet and pulled out a thick dagger.
“N-Now wait,” Jyor stammered.
“It has to be done, lad. We best get on with it now.”
“I said wait! Get that bloody thing away!”
“We either do this now… Or we wait ‘til they rot off ye…”
Jyor panted heavily. Hauzer’s eyes showed hesitation and perhaps even a bit of concern. Having lost two toes and part of his left ear to frostbite, he knew that even with callis root the pain would manage to seep through. “If we don’t cut ‘em off now, the death will spread. Ye either lose two fingers now or yer whole hand later, lad. What’s it gonna be?”
“F-Fuck,” the elf shivered again, and after a moment of consideration he gave his comrade a nod. “Get on with it.”
Hauzer placed the stool where he once sat in front of Jyor, and the elf placed his injured hand on it like a piece of meat ready to be butchered.
“Here,” Hauzer tossed the elf an old smelly rag. “Bite down on that. Hard.”
Jyor sunk his teeth into the rag and took anxious breaths through his nose, groaning and shaking and cursing.
“As soon as it’s done, I’m gonna dip yer hand into the bucket,” said Hauzer with his dagger at hand. He slid the elf’s sleeve up all the way to the elbow and gave him a last look, as if asking for approval. And the elf gave him one last head nod and took a deep breath.
Hauzer swung down with all of his brute strength and the knife sunk into the wood, slicing through Jyor’s fingers like butter. Had the rag not been holding the elf back, the scream would have echoed for miles. Blood began to seep everywhere, off the edge of the stool and onto the wooden floors of the ship’s deck. A puddle formed and the blood began to ooze through the cracks of the wood, dripping down to the cargo space underneath the ship.
The cargo space held some thirty souls in chains, most of them pale and weak and shivering from the cold. Magdalena, princess and future queen of Vallenghard, sat among the prisoners in chains of her own, next to Thomlin, a peasant boy she hardly knew yet wouldn’t dare leave his side unless they dragged him away to serve the soldiers their meals. The rocking of the ship was churning her stomach, or perhaps it was due to the scraps she had been fed just hours prior, or rather the green mold on them.
Suddenly, she felt a droplet on her head, cold and wet…
And when she glanced up, the blood dripped on her cheek and made her wince.
And the prisoners recoiled with both disgust and horror.
Thomlin was next to her, fast asleep, leaning against her arm as he’d done on the cagewagon just days prior, and she was careful not to wake him as she slid him and herself to the left to avoid the bloodstains. It may have been her imagination, but she could swear she saw the boy smile. She figured he was lost in his dreams, off somewhere hundreds of miles away in the comfort of his home, munching on a piece of pie, happy as a boy his age should be. The last thing she wanted was for him to wake up to this, a room beneath the deck of the ship so filthy and vile that it felt improper to even store cargo there, let alone people.
She fought back the vomit as the dripping blood formed a puddle near her thigh. Others, however, did not have the strength and willpower that she had. The sea was already making them sick, and the sight of the blood only worsened it. They began fighting for the waste buckets, which their captors would only empty out if they were sober enough to remember.
At that moment, a latch opened from above and Hauzer climbed down the ladder. He held no weapons in his hands this time, only keys. “Any of ye know anything ‘bout tendin’ a wound?” he asked, his face dripping with sweat and his red beard as dusty and tangled as it always was. “There’s a plate of fish ‘n’ some ale in it for ye…”
There was a clinking sound among the captives and a weak trembling hand rose up into the air. It was the old man with the widow’s peak that had been unkind towards Thomlin earlier that night, only now he appeared much weaker and closer to death. Hauzer approached him with the key ready, and nearly every pair of eyes in the room glanced at that key as if it was treasure… The one key that would free them, right in front of their eyes, so close and yet so distant…
“Yer na
me?” Hauzer asked as he grabbed the old man’s bruised wrist.
“Swanworth,” the old man said with a cough. “Sebastien Swanworth. I’m a healer.”
Hauzer sunk the key into the man’s cuffs and gave it a turn. Then he paused, taking a moment to look the old man in the eyes. “If yer lying to me, we’ll have to throw ye overboard… And we both know what’s out there…”
The old man looked dreadful. As nasty as he might have been, Magdalena hoped that Hauzer would actually give him the promised meal, if only to prevent him coming back a corpse.
“My name is Swanworth,” the old man repeated. “And I’m a healer…”
Young Thomlin was startled awake suddenly, and the first thing he did was look to his left, making certain that Magdalena was still there. The princess gripped the boy’s hand. They sat up against the wall of the ship, staring at the red-bearded soldier and the old man, the only two people standing among a herd of shivering captives.
“All right,” Hauzer said as he removed the cuffs and pushed the old man towards the ladder.
“Wait!” Magdalena spoke suddenly, rising to her feet. “You… Hauzer…”
The massive soldier turned around, towering over Magdalena’s thin frail figure. His eyes were not angry, but perhaps startled to hear her speak to him for the first time, as if he had never spoken to a person of nobility before. He said nothing, only grunted and stared, wide-eyed and slightly menacing.
“Please,” Magdalena said, wiping the dirt and blood from her face so as to appear more decent. “These people need water. They will die soon without it.”
“We gave ‘em water.”
“Good water,” the princess said. “Not sea water.”
“Times are hard,” Hauzer turned and headed for the steps.
“I said wait!” she followed after him. Hauzer then turned and stepped forward, so harshly that the princess took back her steps with a mild shiver. And then Thomlin ran towards her and latched onto her dress. It wasn’t much protection, but the princess took any comfort she could get.
Refusing to yield to the man, she swallowed back the fear.
“Give them water,” she said. “Please.”
“Listen girl,” Hauzer said with a sigh. “I may have orders from Baronkroft not to harm ye… But don’t ye get any funny ideas… Ye belong to him now, is that clear? Ye get water when he says ye get water. Ye get food when he says ye get food. Ye ain’t in yer palace no more, girl. There be horrors out here, and yer lucky to have us ‘round to take care of ‘em for ye. Don’t like it? Well… ye can go to Baronkroft yerself ‘n’ ask him for water…”
He turned and walked away again, a mild look of arrogance on his face, as if he’d won the argument, until he was thrown aback by the princess’s persistence.
“Then take me to him,” she said.
Hauzer came to a halt. He tilted his head just enough to catch a glimpse of her from the corner of his eye. Frail, weak, smart-mouthed, he pondered. Baronkroft will kill ye without thinkin’ twice.
“Ye don’t want that, girl.”
“Why not?” she challenged him. “He’s only a person, just like you and me… How bad can he be?”
He chuckled under his breath. “Bad.”
With that, he climbed the ladder and slammed the latch door behind him. Magdalena and the boy shared a brief glance. His eyes were more concerned than hers were; instead hers were filled with intrigue.
“You ever heard of the name Baronkroft?” she asked him.
“A bit, yes…”
“Excellent,” she said, walking back towards their little corner of cargo space among the prisoners. “Tell me everything you know…”
* * *
When dawn came, the unnerving sounds of the Woodlands began to subside. And the rich greenery all around became more vibrant with every bit of light that crept in from the east. What appeared like a grisly and disquieting nightmare of a place soon became a lurid oasis of plant and wild life, invigorating to the eye.
Robyn Huxley had been walking for hours, but her legs would not give in. By the time she arrived at her brother’s camp the previous night it had been empty, abandoned, white smoke oozing from a fireless pit, and no bodies to be found anywhere.
The nymphs never left a body behind, that much was true.
But there were no satchels, supplies, or weapons left behind either, only two empty tents, or rather what remained of them. Her brother and the rest of the company must have escaped in time. They must have.
Robyn had no other option but to keep walking, with hopes of finding him if she only followed the horses’ tracks while they were still fresh. After two days of depthless sleep, it was the only thing keeping her awake, that shred of hope. That and the one-eyed crow that decided suddenly to accompany her. And she was thankful that he did, only she was too stubborn to show it.
At first, she could not wrap her mind around it. She figured the gash in her head must have left her simple. But dwelling on it was not nearly as amusing, and slowly she began to accept the wild notion that Nyx was real, that his voice was real, and that he’d kept it from the Huxleys as a way to protect himself from the chaos that would ensue should the people of Val Havyn discover his secret.
For a head so small, Nyx had an impeccable memory.
He remembered the time she sprained her wrist but insisted on training anyway, and then her arrow flew into Missus Aelyn’s cottage by mistake. He remembered the time she got lost in the Blue Hills after dark and her mother Adelina had to call for a search party. He even remembered the time she slipped and fell into Lotus Creek as a child and nearly died had it not been for her brother John; some things had happened when she was so young even she had forgotten all about them.
Why is it always the embarrassing moments that everyone remembers?
Nyx certainly did, and he appeared to be enjoying himself by reminding her. She didn’t mind it, however. She welcomed it. Felt overjoyed by it, even. And she realized she hadn’t smiled so much since she left the farm.
Nyx wasn’t only clever, he was exceptionally intelligent.
Perhaps among the most intelligent minds Robyn had ever met.
And there was something the crow appeared to be hiding and wouldn’t let go of, no matter how much she picked at his mind. And the girl certainly picked at it quite a bit.
“So you were… human? As in actually human, like me?” she asked.
“Over 250 years ago, that was,” Nyx said, resting on Robyn’s shoulder as they walked along that quiet muddy path. “And I certainly don’t wish to dig up past memories of that life, pardon my candor.”
Robyn said nothing more to that, for a brief moment of course.
They headed west along the path, away from Vallenghard and towards Halghard. When they had come across the split in the path just hours earlier, the horse hooves split with it, and so they ultimately decided to take the wider path to the right. The darkness may have had something to do with their hasty decision; all that she wanted in that moment was to be as far from the willow trees as possible.
By then, the sun had risen but the breeze in the air didn’t seem to be warming up just yet. Robyn blamed that breeze for the goosebumps on her skin, but she knew better. She couldn’t deny the fear. She’d never been in a real fight in her life, none that involved steel weapons at least. And Nyx only kept reminding her of just how unprepared she was, he was even starting to sound like Mister Beckwit.
To attack from afar is one thing, Old Man Beckwit would say. Up close, however, it’ll become a matter of speed and not precision.
If only she had spent more time learning to use a blade instead of a bow…
Regardless, she was thankful for the crow’s company; she needed that reminder.
Like mum would say, better to be frightened and careful than to be smug and careless.
The silence alone had been enough to trouble her; at least now she could speak to someone. Curiosity got the best of her and she allowed a brief silence b
efore finally asking the crow, “Will you at least tell me how was it that you… became what you are?”
“That’s a rather bold question to ask someone you just met, Lady Robyn,” he replied.
“I’m quite sure I’ve known you for as long as I‘ve been alive.”
“I suppose that’s true…”
“I knew crows couldn’t live this long.”
“Well… if you must know, it was a witch’s doing,” he confessed.
Robyn raised a brow with slight confusion. “You had a quarrel with a witch and she cursed you to live as a crow for all eternity?”
“Something like that. Sure.”
Robyn felt something like pity for him. She had many questions, and they were starting to unnerve him, she could tell. If she was to get answers, she would have to be smart and ease her way in. “How’d you meet Mister Beckwit?” she decided to ask.
“I was attacked by a wolf one night, many decades ago,” Nyx said. “I hardly escaped with my life. To be honest, I thought he’d killed me somehow. But luck has never been on my side, I’m afraid. I woke up soon enough in an old dusty cottage with no idea whatsoever as to how I got there. It was Old Man Beckwit that found and rescued me in the Blue Hills. He was Young Man Beckwit at the time, quite young. He brought me to his home and fixed my arm, showed me kindness when nobody else would.”
“You mean wing…?”
“Pardon me?”
“You said he fixed your arm. You mean wing?”
“Oh… Right.”
“Do you talk to him? To Mister Beckwit?” she cleared her throat nervously, hoping she wasn’t prying too far.
“Normally, he’s the talker,” Nyx said with a lighthearted tone and a chuckle. “He hardly ever allows me the courtesy of an opinion.”
Robyn smiled, feeling a warmth in her chest that she hadn’t felt since she left home.
“I remember the first time he heard me talk. I nearly frightened him to death,” Nyx continued, at first cheerful and then with a more somber tone. “Ultimately, however, we decided discretion was the best approach. It was for my own good, this vow of silence.”