The Water Road

by JD Byrne

  Either that or Rurek had become more determined to avoid them. As they picked their way through particularly dense underbrush on a trail, Strefer asked him, “Explain to me why we can’t at least stay on the main roads anymore?”

  “It’s better off if we don’t,” he said, pushing back thick ropes of intertwined plants with his pikti.

  “The guys at the ferry?” she asked, knowing the answer.

  “Not them particularly,” he said, slashing at a low-hanging vine, “but others like them. I wish we could have taken the time to question them, see where they came from. Without that, it’s hard to tell why any particular person could be looking for us.”

  “Or where they might come looking for us,” Strefer said.

  “Exactly,” he said. After they made it a few more hundred feet up the trail, Rurek said, “Besides, you’re not missing much.”

  “Oh, really?” Strefer asked.

  “Most of the roads just run between the Confederation cities. Even those haven’t been around very long. There are no roads to Oberton, so we’d have to get off them eventually.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, dodging a branch that had bent back as Rurek passed and then swished back towards her face.

  The next day, the narrow trails were flooded with rain, making them slick with mud and debris. They pushed on, but Strefer was increasingly concerned. “Are you certain that we’re going in the right direction?”

  “What do you mean?” Rurek said. He stopped and turned to look at her, a wounded expression on his face. “You think I would get us lost?”

  She shook her head. “Of course not. Not on purpose, anyway. But I haven’t seen you look at a map or anything like it since we left Innisport. It’s not like there are signs along these trails. They all look the same to me.”

  Rain dripped off Rurek’s nose as he composed his response. “Look, Strefer. The road we were on, the main road? It runs between Durlandala and Kerkondala, my home. Before I left to become a Sentinel I ran in these woods all the time. I hunted here, chased animals here,” he said, pausing. “Chased girls, too,” he said, flashing a grin. “I know this land.”

  “Sorry,” Strefer said, gesturing for him to start up again. “I didn’t know you had been to Oberton before.”

  “Oh, I haven’t,” he said over his shoulder. “But I’m pretty sure I can get us there.”

  ~~~~~

  They stopped that night near a bubbling spring that appeared out of nowhere. It was late, they were both tired, and Rurek declared it as good a place as any other. Aside from the spring, it looked just like any other wide spot on the trail they followed that day. Strefer saw nothing to distinguish it from the acres of green forest all around them.

  After some overly demonstrative consideration, Rurek left Strefer by the spring to find something for them to eat, building a small campfire before he left. He left Strefer his pikti in case something unexpected happened, having appropriated her knife to deal with dinner. Strefer wasn’t sure it was a fair trade, but Rurek convinced her that, for all that it was, one of the things a pikti was not was a hunting weapon.

  She sat by the spring and, for a long time, rolled the pikti around in the palm of her hands. This was the first time she had really examined the weapon of a Sentinel in detail. It was taller than she was, nearly as tall as Rurek. It was made of wood but it was impossibly smooth except for the ornately carved spot around the leather grip in the center. It was covered in some kind of black lacquer, blacker than anything else Strefer had ever seen, even the clear night sky. It was polished to such a degree that, even after weeks of abuse on their journey, she could see her reflection in it.

  She thought about the scene in Alban’s office back in Tolenor. The pikti in his office was not this pure, this clean. One end was caked in shades of red, his blood and brain staining the wood. Rurek’s pikti seemed so light in her hand, she wondered how Antrey managed to do so much damage with one. Obviously, given her heritage, she was larger and stronger than Strefer. And, most likely, she was fueled by an exploding rage that Strefer could still not quite measure. She was beginning to understand it, however.

  Strefer stood up by the fire and gripped the pikti in the middle, the soft leather giving just a bit under her fingers. She tried to twirl it about, like she had seen Sentinels do, but merely wound up flinging the staff to the ground. Only dumb luck kept her from being smacked in the face as it spun out of her hands. It sprawled onto the ground, one end just barely resting in the fire. Strefer quickly bent down and grabbed the other end with both hands. She held it like a club and swung it a few times towards the fire, trying to get a sense of how Antrey might have done it. It was no use. It still felt so slight in her hands that Strefer had a hard time seeing how Antrey had imploded the skull of a healthy full-grown man. She wondered, too, about how it had done so much damage to one of their attackers back in Innisport.

  She turned and swung again, hard, at a clump of limbs hanging down from a tree. It was too hard, and the smooth staff slipped out of her hands again, flying away from her until it came to a stop, cracking loudly against the side of a rock. If she didn’t know better, Strefer would have thought someone had been shot.

  As did Rurek, apparently. “Strefer!” she heard him yell out behind her, his voice ragged from exhaustion. “Strefer!” He burst out into the clearing, a fairly large and very dead rodent of some kind hanging by the tail in his left hand. In his right was her knife, covered in blood. “Are you all right?” He dropped the dead animal and rushed towards her, head on a swivel as his eyes scanned the forest for others.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she said, embarrassed at the attention caused by her own clumsiness.

  “What was that noise then?” he asked, catching his breath. “I thought…”

  She cut him off, pointing towards the pikti on the ground.

  “Ah,” he said, walking over to where it lay. He stopped to wash the blood off the knife in the spring, then slipped it into his belt. He picked up the pikti and examined it for damage as he walked back to where she stood.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It slipped out of my hands. Did I break it?”

  Rurek laughed. “Break it? Strefer, if you tried your hardest and marshaled all your strength, you couldn’t chip it, much less break it. Nor could I, for that matter. See for yourself.” He handed it back to her.

  She quickly looked over the pikti. It was as smooth and solid as it had been before. The only evidence of misadventure were a few specks of dirt that had clung to the leather grip. She brushed it off and handed it back to him.

  “Don’t feel bad,” he said. As if to emphasize the point, he tossed the staff down beside the fire. “Hungry?” he asked, picking up the dead animal and displaying it with mock pride.

  “I was, until I saw what dinner was going to be,” she said.

  “Now, now,” he said, walking over to the fire. “Do you think those hunks in the stew at the Broken Pikti look any better at this point in the process?”

  “Good point,” she said. “Gods, what I wouldn’t give for a couple of bowls of that foul stuff right about now.”

  He nodded while kneeling down and cleaning his catch. “I’m sorry about that. I thought it would be easier to live off the land. It always looked easier, anyway.”

  “Wait a second, I thought you grew up in these woods?” Strefer asked.

  “I did,” he said, as if it was a point of honor. “But I always went home at the end of the day. Or back to some kind of camp with my family or friends. I was never really out in the wilderness, left to fend for myself.”

  Strefer snorted. “You were spending all your time memorizing these trails, weren’t you?”

  “I suppose so,” he said, chuckling. He finished cleaning the animal, fashioned a crude spit out of some branches and limbs, and began to roast it over the fire.

  Strefer sat down across from him and picked the pikti up again and began to roll it around in her hand.

  “You’r
e really fascinated by that thing, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Can you blame me?” she said, then returned to her study. “Can you blame anybody, really? It has no kind of blade. It can neither slash nor cut nor pierce, like a sword or a spear. It’s not a throwing weapon, so you have a disadvantage at range. A bow can kill from far away and almost silently. And a gun, well, it’s not as quiet but it’s equally effective. So how come the Sentinels, who engage in some of the most dangerous work in Altreria, from intelligence gathering to policing the streets of Tolenor, still carry them around?”

  After ensuring that the skinned beast was properly perched over the fire, Rurek sat down and took the pikti from her. “Well, for one thing, there’s the history. Before there were ever Sentinels, the pikti was used by the Telebrian Royal Guards. They were less obviously deadly than swords or pikes. More elegant, but still effective weapons. When the King appears at ceremonial events today, he’s still flanked by a pair of guards with piktis.”

  “But don’t the actual royal guards these days carry swords and muskets?” asked Strefer. “In case they, you know, have to actually kill or subdue someone?”

  “Fair enough,” Rurek conceded. “I was just pointing out that there is a pedigree here.”

  “But there’s more to it than that, right?”

  “Sure,” he said. “This is actually a very functional and effective weapon. No moving parts and no ammunition, so it will never jam. It will never become waterlogged. It doesn’t even need to be sharpened or cleaned on a regular basis, although cleaning it is part of the Sentinel training. The only thing that wears out or goes bad is this,” he said, touching the leather grip. “You have to replace those once in a while. So while this pikti may have limited range or power, it is always able to operate at its limits.”

  “All right, I’ll give you that point,” Strefer said. “Then how does it get that way? And how can it do so much damage if it’s so light?”

  Rurek gripped the pikti on either side of the leather and took a deep breath. “There is a tree—it’s more of a bush than a tree, actually—that grows only in one marsh, in the far north of Telebria near the source of the River Adon. It has a hollow core that runs up the length of the trunk. When the tree dies, the pulp around that core collapses in on the core, leaving a solid, if mushy, center of the trunk.” He looked like he had told this story, or been told it, many times before.

  “Centuries ago, an acolyte of some sort from Beckton was wandering in that marsh, as penance or some other kind of spiritual task, when he discovered this tree. He took several examples of the dead tree back to Beckton and began experimenting with them. He discovered that when the soft core of the trunk was removed, treated with a mixture made from the tree’s roots and a select group of local herbs, then subjected to repeated cycles of heating and cooling, it became increasingly solid and strong. The result was a long staff, black as night and smooth as glass. Light, and yet stronger than steel.” At that, he twirled the pikti like a little girl with a baton and smiled.

  “That’s amazing,” Strefer said. “But why weren’t piktis used all over Altreria, then?”

  “For one thing, back in Beckton all those years ago, nobody really knew how all this happened,” he said, holding the pikti out so that the reflection of the flames dances across its surface. “They thought it was some kind of magic or a gift from the gods. Regardless, they weren’t about to share their good fortune. Of course, we know better now. It’s not magic, just chemistry. Piktis made today are just as good and strong as those made back when seeking the blessing of the gods was part of the recipe. The other thing is that the tree will only grow in that one particular marsh. It’s been planted elsewhere, but it doesn’t work. It just dies.”

  He paused then, as if the story he was telling meant more to him now than it had in the past. Strefer looked at his face as he watched the light from the fire glide up and down the pikti. This was a part of his own history, his own mythology, he was sharing with her. A part of his life to which he would never be able to go back to, thanks to her.

  “Besides, these aren’t particularly effective weapons unless you’ve been properly trained to use them,” Rurek said, melancholy gone. “Sentinels spend weeks at the academy in Tolenor just learning how to use one.” He jumped to his feet and started to wield the staff in some sort of standard training routine. “Most people want to swing it like a club. I bet that’s what you did, right?”

  She nodded sheepishly.

  “That doesn’t work, usually. There’s not enough weight. You need to be able to move it and deliver blows with speed and precision. Technique is more important than brute force.”

  “All due respect,” she said, “I’ve seen what unskilled brute force and a pikti can do to a person’s skull.” She stood up and went to check on the roasting animal.

  “All due respect to you, Strefer,” he shot back, “you don’t know how that halfbreed wielded that weapon, do you?”

  “Antrey,” Stefer said, aggravated for an instant. “Her name is Antrey. There’s no need to be vulgar.”

  Rurek shrugged it off. “Well, this Antrey could very well have gotten lucky. Hit a spot on the skull that was particularly fragile and went from there. Or maybe with Neldathi strength you don’t have to worry about the technique so much.”

  Strefer let the matter drop. It wasn’t important, anyway. Besides, dinner was ready.

  Chapter 22

  At the southern edge of the territory roamed by the Dost was a narrow slip of sea called the Bay of Raybury. On the other side of the bay was Port Levin, one of the Islander trade cities that dotted the Neldathi coast. It was there at the bay that Antrey and her entourage would try and find a ship. The land route into Port Levin would take them through Chellein territory, and although that clan should be well south of the area by this time of year, there was no way to be certain of its location. Confrontation was to be avoided at all costs right now. They had to find an alternate route. Getting there by land was out of the question.

  Once Ushan had agreed to support Antrey’s plan, she knew that the Islanders would play a key role in fulfilling it. They were Altrerians, but they were not part of the Triumvirate. Concentrated in the Slaisal Islands that lay off the northeast coast, well north of the Neldathi territories, they never had anything to fear during the Rising. The Neldathi, after all, were not sailors and had no real means to reach the Slaisals, even if they had some reason for wanting to do so. Once the Rising was put down, the Islanders took advantage of the Triumvirate embargo on trade with the Neldathi to open up a series of ports and shipping routes that linked the Neldathi coast with the islands.

  As a result, the Islanders provided things that made them essential to Antrey. First, their trade routes and port cities made it much easier to travel great distances quickly. It would certainly be easier than trying to hike from one clan to another. Second, the Islanders were, like Antrey, outsiders to the Neldathi themselves. They had a long tradition of not getting involved with the disputes between the clans. They were only traders and sailors. That neutrality should bolster Antrey’s credibility with the clans along the coast, at least.

  Going the coastal route had been Kajtan’s contribution to the plan. He convinced Antrey to bypass those clans nearest the Dost and focus on the coastal clans first. Neither the Haglein nor the Chellein would likely be interested in unification with the Dost that involved setting aside old grudges and healing old wounds. Too much blood had been spilled over the years for that to work, at least at first, and the other two clans may regard the whole thing as a trick by the smaller clan to gain an advantage over them. But once other clans were involved and those fears could be alleviated, things might be different.

  To Antrey’s pleasant surprise, the solution to the problem of how to get to the Islander cities came from Hirrek, of all people. All he had said since Antrey and her mission had been blessed by Ushan suggested that he thought the entire enterprise was folly. Most of his hunters and t
he warriors of the clan felt the same, she knew. But Hirrek was nothing if not loyal to his mother, and would not undermine the decisions she made. So while Antrey had no fear of sabotage from him, she was pleasantly surprised when he proved eager to solve problems along the way, or to prove so adept at doing so.

  Her small party camped for several days on the north shore of the bay, watching the ships come and go from the port. It was easy enough to see the ships themselves, but Antrey wished she had taken Alban’s telescope so she could see them in more detail. Hirrek’s plan was to build a large signal fire on the beach in hopes of attracting the attention of a passing Islander captain. They had no money to buy passage—Neldathi did not use currency as the Altrerians understood it—but Ushan had sent a small stash of pelts and fine woodcrafts that could be used in trade. The Islanders, unlike their cousins in the Triumvirate, dealt with the Neldathi regularly and would be willing to barter. If some enterprising and curious captain sailed across the bay to them, he could gain a pleasant reward.

  Goshen concluded that the best time to light the fire was at dusk. Ships did not leave the harbor at night, they had observed, although often one or two would head out just as the sun began to set. The last arrivals for the day also appeared about the same time, although none of them thought a ship coming into port would explore what was happening on the other side of the bay.

  The first night produced nothing, aside from a blazing fire and the warmth and light it provided. On the second night, however, Antrey watched as two ships slipped out of port together, just after sunset. From her vantage point, they appeared to be sailing in formation, but she thought that was most likely not the case. Indeed, after a few moments of maneuvering, the ships diverged. One turned towards the open sea and slipped slowly over the horizon. The other, however, stayed in sight, almost as if it had stopped while trying to decide what to do next.