War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy

by D. S. Halyard

  Coril Jemms whispered in his ear. “Don’t leave the pier, Levin. Once you step on the island, you belong to the King of the Damned.”

  The gangway was lowered but not secured to the pier, its lower end allowed to scrape and shift on the wood as the Sally’s High Touch moved with the waves. “Captain, I want to apologize.” Levin said, shaking Berrol’s hand. “You were right and I had no business putting your crew at risk.”

  “Apology ain’t gonna save you, boy.” Meade growled, but Levin turned to face him as well.

  “I’m sorry, Mate, for the trouble I’ve given you.” Then, turning to the rest of the assembled sailors, he added, “You’ve all been more than fine, gentlemen. It’s been a privilege sailing with you.” Elo turned his head and wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and Coril wept openly.

  “Godspeed, Levin.” Said Eldrian Cane. “I hope your end comes easy.”

  With that, Levin turned and walked down the gangplank, taking care not to stumble as the Touch shifted and bobbed about. “Remember to stay on the pier!” Coril shouted through his tears.

  The gangplank was raised, and Levin heard Meade’s strong voice. “All right, boys. That’s done. Now let’s get this boat moving. She won’t sail herself.”

  The Sally’s High Touch fell away from the pier with the wind, then turning before it, began to beat her way back into open water. Levin heard a loud clatter on the pier beside him. There, still in its scabbard, was the longsword he’d worn but never used when the raiders out of Hyndrant had pursued them in the Sea of Rhum. He looked at the departing ship and he could not see for certain who had thrown it, but he thought he saw Parry Meade ducking out of sight behind the aft mooring lines.

  He belted on the sword, ran his hand through his hair, and watched the ship turn to port and disappear behind the trees on the east side of the island. He rummaged through his bundle. He found his dice, a spare shirt, and the gold he’d carried when he’d first joined the crew of the Sally’s High Touch. Not a penny was missing from what he’d originally carried, and he found another small gold coin as well, his pay for the last week’s work, he supposed.

  Although plainly Captain Berrol did not expect him to ever leave Damrek Island, the man was no thief.

  From a treetop perch a mile from the shore hungry eyes watched the Sally’s High Touch depart, and eager feet beat an urgent tattoo in a rush to see what gifts had come from the sea.

  Jemms had told Levin not to leave the pier, but he could scarcely see how he was to avoid going ashore, not if he wanted to eat. He began to explore his new home, this broken and desolate pier on this lonely shore. Wary of the many holes in the pier and careful to test each new section of wood before he stood on it, Levin began painstakingly making his way down the pier. He had not gone thirty paces before he became aware of furtive shapes on the shore.

  He looked closely. In the sunlight the shapes of half a dozen men and women were plainly visible, but they seem oddly colorless, their shapes blending in with the barnacles and stone as they scrambled over rocks and scree toward the beginning of the pier. As he walked toward them the sea breeze died down and a faint drift of wind from the island itself came to him. It was rank, and smelled faintly of rotted meat, and death. He stopped walking.

  The figures did not stop approaching, but rather they increased their pace, scrambling in a mad rush toward him, pushing each other out of the way in an effort to be the first to reach him. What had at first seemed to be a lack of color resolved itself into dirt and filth as he saw them up close. They were human, he supposed, but there was little left of humanity in them. He saw broken fragments of dirty brown teeth in horrible, knowing smiles. He saw fingernails like filthy claws on hands that were poised to grip and tear. He saw skin that was ripped and stained, and their emaciated bodies were grotesquely nude, but worst of all, the eyes. Black and glistening feral eyes stared at him hungrily from gaunt and terrible faces. Eyes like the eyes of starving rats. These, then, were the damned, and he knew there would be no reasoning with them.

  Levin drew his sword and looked around desperately for a place where he could force them to come at him one at a time. There! A section of the pier so rotted and fallen that only a single narrow beam no more than two hands width allowed passage. Already the damned were beginning to cross it, and Levin leaped to stand at its near end, sword at the ready.

  Always choose your battlefield. Hambar D’root’s words echoed in his mind as he faced them. Picking the terrain is half the battle, his father had said, and with fifty spearmen and the right terrain you could stand off a thousand armored knights. Well, Levin didn’t have fifty spearmen, but he had his sword and good terrain. He would take them one at a time.

  The first of the damned to attempt the passage was a ragged and horrible woman with black and gray straw for hair and hands like blackened talons, slick with the blood of those she had clawed out of the way to feed on Levin first. He swung his sword two-handed, the blade hacking into her midriff and sending her screaming wordlessly into the sea on his right. Levin barely had time to recover his swing before putting his sword tip into the throat of the man behind her, a bald and hideously decayed giant with only one arm. This one fell forward onto the narrow causeway, tripping up the thin ghoul behind and causing them both to tumble into the gaping hole in the pier, to land in the deep water between the pilings.

  The fourth one, a blocky figure so covered in scars and hair that Levin never knew if it had been man or woman, came on more warily, crouching and hissing as it approached. When it was just out of range of Levin’s sword it stopped, then suddenly sprang forward, seeking not to grab him, but to reach his side of the gap. Levin kicked it into the hole behind the other two before it could get a firm grip on the spray-slick pier.

  The remaining two did not attempt the passage at all, but tried vainly to lure him across. The first one had been a woman, although her gaunt and emaciated form was barely discernible as such. “Come and fuck me.” She hissed, spreading herself grotesquely and running her hands over her ruined and deflated breasts. “Come and fuck me, sailor.” She repeated.

  The other of the two, a man, by his broad shoulders and obscenely exposed genitals, waved his arms to Levin and hissed. “Come and fuck her. Come join us. Come and meet the King.”

  “Get back.” Levin warned. “Get out of here.” His horror was compounded by the fact that some of those he had cast into the hole in the pier were not dead, but were attempting vainly to pull themselves up the barnacle and mussel coated pilings, cutting themselves to ribbons in the process, howling madly all the while.

  “I’ll come and fuck you. Fuck you to death.” Said the woman-thing, and she began to cross the narrow bridge toward Levin, smiling and stroking herself obscenely all the while. Levin’s blade took her in the side of the neck, and she pitched into the sea with a gurgling scream.

  The last of them looked at Levin and growled like an animal. “I will get the king.” He muttered. “I will get the king and you will die.” He turned and ran into the forest, loping like some strange and two-legged beast.

  Levin watched him go, then turned and vomited over the side of the pier in disgust and horror.

  Apparently not all of the ghouls of the Island of the Damned were prepared to wait for the arrival of their king. Before the sun sank behind the western horizon they tried him three times. The first group were four, and they came at him much as had the first, daring the narrow walkway with clawed hands and teeth. Levin nearly lost his sword when it stuck in the skull of the third one of that group, and he narrowly avoided being bitten. The second group were three, and they came at him singly, but armed with clubs made from broken tree limbs. He found that his wrists, made strong by a month hauling ropes and climbing the rigging, were equal to the task of fencing, and he took them in classic swordsman style. The last group to try him were the most dangerous, for they numbered at least ten, and rather than attempt the narrow passage he guarded, they climbed the pilings and crawled among the pier�
��s support beams, coming at him from many sides at once. He danced about the pier, needing all of the balance he had learned in the ship’s rigging to keep his feet, and he killed them with the point of his sword, taking them in eye, throat and neck.

  Night fell and brought a cold northern wind, which crossed the dark island and surrounded Levin in the cold and fetid stench of the dead. He waited for them to come in the night, not daring to even rest his eyes, and they did not disappoint. Fortunately, they did not appear to be able to see any better than he could by moonlight and starlight, and he took them one at a time as they came at him, blind in the dark.

  He put on his extra shirt for some warmth, but he had no way to make a fire, and the damned seemed to come whenever he so much as sat. He spent a long and horrible night, trapped by the ghouls on the cold pier. Before the sun rose the wind had picked up considerably, and a bitter cold sea-spray added to his difficulties. By sword, boot and fist he sent a score of them into the water during the night. The pier became slick with their blood, and his footing treacherous.

  In the first light of dawn his hopes fell as catastrophe upon catastrophe was revealed to him. He sank to his knees in despair. Along the shoreline stood at least one hundred of the damned, and they called out to him, urging him to come and join them. He saw that there was no longer any hope to swim or float away from the island, for the small ocean of blood he had spilled on and around the pier had brought every shark for miles, and among them he saw writhing forms like eels, the hungry searching tentacles of small kraken. The final straw lay far out to sea on the eastern horizon. A red square sail, coming full bellied in the morning wind, atop a Thimenian raider, possibly the same one they’d seen from the Touch days ago. He shook his weary head and laughed bitterly.

  He stood at last, enraged.

  “Come on then, damn you!” He shouted redundantly to those who were damned already. “Come and get your belly full of cold Mortentian steel!” He taunted. As if in answer, the damned moved forward in unison as a dim form manifested itself behind them. Their king had come at last.

  Apparently the king of the damned was somewhat more of a tactician than the damned acting alone. Levin saw that his followers were each of them armed, some with long spears with fire-sharpened points and some with clubs or stone axes, crudely crafted. At least one hundred of them now approached the pier at their king’s command.

  As for the king himself, he looked nothing like his followers. He was tall and well-knit, with broad shoulders and a handsome, bearded face. There was something about his face that put Levin in mind of ancient Aulig coins he had once seen in Ioli market. Although his clothes were rotten rags, at least he had clothes, and among the damned he looked regal and important. It was plain that they moved to his will.

  The ghoulish figures stepped to the side as their king approached, leaving a broad pathway by which he approached the pier. He took small, almost delicate steps as he approached Levin.

  Levin, exhausted and filthy with the blood of those he had slain, leaned on his sword and awaited the approach of the king. He came to within a yard of the foot of the pier, but he pulled up short, as if reluctant to leave the soil and step onto its surface. All the while the square sail grew larger in Levin’s peripheral vision.

  “I hail thee, warrior.” The voice coming from the king was deep and resonant, for all the world like a king in his court. “Thou hast fought well.”

  He paused to push out his chest and raise his chin. “I am the King of Damrek Island, and all of these are my good people.” He waved his large and heavily muscled arm at the assembled ghouls behind him. “We welcome thee to Damrek Island.”

  “You needn’t, you know.” Levin replied, grounding the point of his sword in the wood of the pier and leaning on it. “I’m not staying.”

  “Of course thou art.” Smiled the king. “Thou cannot swim away from here. There is nothing to eat on the pier. Through thy valor thou hast earned the right to sit by my right hand in yon castle.” He pointed vaguely inland, but there was no castle visible in the hazy morning light, nor did Levin believe one existed, except perhaps in the mind of the mad king. “Thy ship hast sentenced thee to exile here. That is the way of it. Eventually all must leave the pier and come upon the land where I am king. If thou comest now, of thine own will, thy place at my board is assured. If I must come and fetch thee, the punishment shall be severe.”

  Levin spat. “Come and fetch me.”

  But the king did not go himself. Rather he gestured with an open hand toward the pier, and his minions came, shrieking and howling in their lust for blood and death.

  Levin braced himself for the charge.

  “Hallo the pier!” A loud voice called across the water. Levin took a moment to glance over at the Thimenian longboat, now barely seventy yards away.

  “Busy right now!” Levin shouted, parrying a poorly aimed spear and knocking its owner into the water.

  “Aye, well, I can see that. I am Jarlben, son of Jarlben, of the Wolf Clan Thimenians and I broke the neck of a bull when I was but fifteen summers old.”

  Levin took a scratch to the leg from a stone-tipped spear before shearing through the haft and cutting through the jawbone of another of the ghouls.

  “Jolly good for you, Jarlben.” Levin grunted, ducking the swing of an unwieldy club.

  “Well, it is customary to tell me your name and deeds, warrior.” The Thimenian seemed put off by Levin’s brusque manner.

  “Like I said, Jarlben.” Levin panted. “I’m a bit busy right now.” One of the ghouls had hurled a crooked spear at Levin, and the thing rolled under his heel, causing him to fall onto his back. Four of the damned threw down their weapons and clawed at each other in an attempt to get to him first, but their greed and his time in the rigging saved him, for he was on his feet in an instant, and the two leading ghouls managed only to pull themselves into the sea in their haste. He dispatched the other two as they raised ineffectual claws against his sword.

  There was a momentary lull in the fighting whilst the king of the damned sought to reorganize his assault.

  “Well, you don’t seem busy now.” Jarlben observed.

  “Right.” Levin replied, wiping his blade on his pants. “Levin D’root, at your service.” He took a moment to look at the longboat, now only a few yards from the pier. It was a large ship, open to the sky, fully forty paces long with a shallow draft and oars along almost its entire length. Manning the oars were some eighty or ninety tall, broad Thimenians in chain hauberks and elaborately decorated helmets. The ship verily bristled with spears and swords.

  “So, we come to see the King of the Damned at his sport, Levin. It’s a wonderful funny custom you Mortentians have, feeding the damned this way.” He shook his head in disbelief. “You fight well, for a Mortentian. What was your crime?”

  “I burned a ship.”

  “Well, we’ll give you some room, then Levin. We don’t want our ship burned up.” Several of the Thimenians, those who spoke Mortentian, Levin supposed, laughed and began translating the conversation into the harsh and stark language of the reavers. Levin watched the King of the Damned assembling his underlings for the next assault on his position. Some of them came out of the forest bearing long poles.

  One of Jarlben’s associates spoke to Jarlben in Thimenian, and he translated for Levin. “Mohtar here says that if you step back and fight all of the damned at once, it would make for a better song.”

  “A short song, I think.” Levin replied. “Tell Mohtar that I like it where I am, but he is welcome to join me if he wants to be in a song.” Jarlben laughed appreciatively and passed on the message in Thimenian.

  “So, were you careless with a lamp or fell asleep with a bucket of burning pitch in your hands? How came you to burn a ship? And it seems the kind of thing they hang you for, not this.”

  “I wasn’t careless.” Levin replied. “I burned the ship on purpose.” Keeping a wary eye on the army of the damned, Levin turned to face the Thimenia
n chieftain. Jarlben was a gigantic and bearded man, standing in the bow of the ship and leaning comfortably on the haft of an iron axe engraved in elaborate runes and symbols. He nodded sagely.

  “I understand now, Levin.” He said a single word in Thimenian to those around him, and several of them nodded. “You have the fire fever. Ottar of Dimholt had such a thing, and he was always playing with fire. He burned the cottage of Angrim’s woman, and they had to take his head.”

  Levin laughed. “No, I’m no arsonist, Jarlben. The ship belonged to the man who killed my father.”

  Jarlben translated this to his men, and several of them pounded on their chests in appreciation. “Ah, now you speak like a Thimenian, Levin! Maybe you have some of the blood of Valtheim in your veins. Yes, it is like the Mortentians to sentence a man to die for taking lawful vengeance. We will watch your fight. Perhaps you may do something worth boasting of.” With that, the Thimenian sat down on the first rower’s bench and said no more.

  Levin turned to see what deviltry the King of the Damned had come up with. It appeared that he had selected thirty or so of his strongest followers, strong men whose bodies were more or less intact, and equipped them with the longest poles he could find. They now streamed onto the foot of the great pier in a long and sinuous line. Levin guessed their purpose at once, and he scabbarded his sword and picked up the crooked spear he had earlier stepped on. No longer attempting to cross the bridge one at a time, the King of the Damned had decided to use the long poles to force Levin back from his position so that several of the ghouls could come at him at once. Although Levin was no expert with a quarterstaff, he saw that he had better become one, for he would need to deflect the poles and defend himself with this makeshift staff. His spear had a fire sharpened tip, but it was not much in the way of a weapon. If they gained his side of the gap in the pier, however, it would be up to his sword skill to save him.