Storm Raven

by K Hanson

  Finally, the carriage landed with a shudder at the bottom of the shaft. The air that wafted toward her stank of a hot blend of sweat, shit, and sulfur. After they had left the car, one of her guards yanked on a chain on the outside of the shaft. This apparently sent a signal to the operator at the top, since the elevator began to rise again.

  The guards dragged her down a dim corridor, with solid iron doors lining the side. The sounds of people moaning and crying came from the other side of some of the doors. At the end of the hallway, the guards opened one of the doors, revealing a tiny dark cell. She saw no bedroll or bucket. The guards shoved Brynja into the space and slammed the door shut behind her, leaving her in the pitch black.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Nereyda turned around to look at the marine. He held a sword, pointing it at her. She didn’t bother raising her own weapon. “So you finally woke up after I hauled your ass to shore I see.”

  Erhan stepped back in surprise.

  “What? Did you expect someone else?” she asked with a smile.

  “Yes, actually. Why would you do that?”

  She shrugged and shook her head. “I’m still trying to figure that out myself. Right now, I think that it was probably because I’m an idiot who doesn’t know how to take advantage of a perfectly good opportunity for revenge.”

  He shook his head and looked at her with a mixture of terror and rage. “Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter. I just saw what you did here. You’re some sort of witch. You burned that person, then threw them into the water with your magic.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Magic isn’t real. Witches are just stories parents tell their kids to scare them into being good.”

  “I know what I saw.” He stepped forward and pointed his blade at her chest. “That person was on fire all over, then you dissolved him in the pond.”

  “That thing was not a person. It chased me and attacked me. And it was already on fire before I found it. I have no idea how I sent it into the pond. It just sort of happened.”

  “I don’t believe you. I saw you murder an innocent person. I can’t let you live after that.”

  Nereyda looked at Erhan and asked, “What is it exactly that you have against me? I got us through that canyon without crashing the ship, and I just dragged your ass to shore to prevent you from drowning, and you’re still out to kill me. Why?”

  Erhan stared in her eyes. “Because you’ve killed people. You’ve left a ship full of my comrades to drown after sinking their ship.”

  “I didn’t do that, but maybe I should have left you in the ocean to die.”

  “Perhaps you should have.”

  “Did a pirate kick your dog or something? Why the vendetta?”

  “No, a pirate didn’t kick my dog. I’ve seen what your kind do. On my first assignment, we went to a village that had been attacked by pirates, but we were too late to help. By the time we arrived, all we found were orphans crying over their dead parents. Marauders had come and demanded everything that the village had. When the people refused, all of the adults were massacred, with the children left alone in a mockery of mercy.”

  Nereyda looked away. “I’m sorry.”

  “Can you really be sorry if you do the same thing?”

  She whirled back to look at him. “My crew has never done something like that. We only go after people who can defend themselves and who can afford to spare something. Most of the time, ships will pay us a little bit, then we’ll let them go. Even when we attack a ship, we just fight until they surrender, take our share, then leave.”

  “But you have killed people. Those people have families. They have children, like the children I’ve seen suffer at the hands of pirates.”

  “I seem to recall that the Imperial Navy did similar things to the border islands in the war. Whole villages were bombarded, burned, and pillaged to damage the Stalstan economy. Or is that okay because the emperor told you to do it?”

  Erhan stood rigid and glared at her. “You will not question the authority of the Empire.”

  “Why not?” scoffed Nereyda. “Why should I respect an empire that invades other nations on a whim, kills their people, and throws others into shackles in the mines or worse? And what authority? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere.” She gestured around at the forest. “There is no Empire here, just us. Everyone is going to think we’re dead. Nobody is coming for us.”

  “Still, you are my prisoner, serving a sentence. You will show the respect that my office demands.”

  “No, thanks. Whatever you think of me,” said Nereyda, “We’re stuck on this island together. Nobody is coming to help us. We can either figure out what to do, or we can both just die. If you want to arrest me and haul me off to some dungeon when we get back to the mainland, fine, go ahead. But don’t be a stubborn jackass who feels the need to hold me back right now, because that will just get us both killed.”

  Erhan’s eyes narrowed as he hesitated, thinking about what Nereyda had said. “Fine, we’ll work together, but just until we get off this island. What did you have in mind for how to leave?”

  “Didn’t you get any sort of survival lessons in the marines?” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever, I’ll figure everything out, I suppose. First, we need to set up some signal fires on the beach. If we see a ship nearby, we can light them so they can find us. However, we have no way of knowing the next time a ship will come close enough to this place. While we wait and hope for help to come, we need to build some sort of raft that we can use to leave.”

  “How can we build something that can survive in open water?”

  “It only needs to last until we get into Imperial waters. Once that happens, we should be able to find some merchant, fisherman, or another ship to help us get back to port.”

  ---

  Despite their disdain for each other, Nereyda and Erhan somehow managed to avoid killing each other as they worked toward getting off of the island. Each day, they made progress toward gathering whatever materials they could find, building signal fires, and assembling their makeshift raft. Unfortunately, with the time that these efforts took, their food supplies dwindled. As Nereyda lashed logs together for their raft, Erhan had left to check a series of traps that he had set near their camp.

  When he returned, he threw the rabbit he had trapped at Nereyda’s feet. “Alright, time to do your job.”

  “And what exactly is that job?” she asked as she kept working on the raft.

  “Cook that for us.”

  Nereyda cocked her head. “Why should I?”

  “Because I caught it. I did that part of the work, now it’s your turn.”

  “I cooked yesterday after I went fishing and caught our supper. So, why can’t you do it?”

  “Because I’m telling you to do it.”

  “You do know I’m a pirate, right? And a captain. I’m not exactly big on following rules and orders. I ignore rules and give orders.”

  “You are not a captain here.”

  “No, but I seem to know what I’m doing more than you do.”

  “Just cook the rabbit, woman.”

  “Oh, now it comes out. You can’t be bothered to cook a meal because I’m the woman and I should do it.”

  Erhan looked down and did not have a ready comeback.

  “On my ship, the cook was a man,” said Nereyda. “And he was excellent. Did you have a woman cook your meals when you were on your own ship?”

  “Err…no,” Erhan admitted.

  “Oh, so your cook was also a man?”

  “I guess.”

  “So why do I have to do it because I’m a woman?”

  “That’s not the reason.”

  “Then tell me why I need to do it.”

  “You’ll laugh.”

  “Oh, I don’t need reasons to laugh at you. I already do that.”

  “Fine,” he sighed. “I don’t know how to cook this.”

  Nereyda let out a chuckl
e. “In all of that training you did with the marines, they never taught you how to cook? So you can trap animals, but you can’t prepare what you catch?”

  “I learned how to trap growing up, but never had to cook it. The people that get survival training are the wilderness troops and the scouts. Soldiers that are expected to be out of supply for long periods of time. Marines are generally on a ship or within range of being supplied readily.”

  “Seems like a bit of an oversight, considering our situation can’t be that uncommon in the navy.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Well, then, sit down here.” Nereyda patted the ground next to her. “I’ll teach you a thing or two.”

  She waited for him to sit down, then grabbed her dagger from her sheath.

  “First, you need to skin it.” Nereyda demonstrated how to use the dagger to cut into the skin of the rabbit and pull it from the carcass. She then showed him how to gut it and find the edible parts of the animal. Sticking them on a stick for roasting, she directed Erhan to hold and rotate them above their fire.

  After they had cooked it, they enjoyed a passable meal of rabbit.

  “See, it’s not so hard. Tomorrow, I’ll catch something, and you’ll cook it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Brynja sat in the darkness in the deep cell where she had been tossed. She had lost track of how long she had been there. She was only supposed to be locked in there for a week, but as far as she knew, it could have been two days or a month by now. The only method she could use to keep track of time was when the guards slid a plate of slop in through the hatch in the door. Without any light or another form of timekeeping, she had no idea if the meals were coming regularly or not. Even if they came at the same interval, she could not tell what that interval was.

  She didn’t even know what she ate. It consisted of some sort of goo that she slurped from her plate without being given any utensils. It tasted awful but was her only form of sustenance. They had given her a bucket to make waste into, but they never emptied it, so she was stuck with the stench of her own urine and feces overflowing from the pail. In the darkness, she had once stumbled and knocked the bucket over, leaving her cell floor covered in muck.

  Brynja only had her mind to keep her company in her cell. She kept thinking about her crew and what she could do to help them. As supervisor, she could try to protect them from some punishment. But if the administration did what they did earlier and just kept pushing her team harder and harder, eventually, they would all break. And if the forced Brynja to punish them, it would break her, as well. Even more than she had already been broken.

  When she slept, nightmares haunted her. She saw the faces of all of her crew. The broken faces they had worn after failing to hit the new quota. Their agony as she had whipped them afterward. She especially saw Kyla’s face, refusing her help after she had been whipped the first time.

  Brynja didn’t know how long she could make it in the deep cell. Not much longer, that’s for sure. She had no idea how long she had been there or how close she was to the one week mark. She withered away with each day that passed.

  Whether from the food, the stress, or the unsanitary conditions of the cell, her insides roiled inside of her, as if her guts themselves wanted to escape from her body. Her bowels were liquid, and she frequently could not keep her meals down, paltry as they were.

  She could feel her muscles atrophying from lack of use and proper nutrition. She spent every waking moment shivering on her bedroll, her damp skin letting the chill creep into her bones. She huddled up, her teeth chattering until she could finally pass out again for an unknown amount of time.

  Whenever she pleaded with the guards who brought her food, they just ignored her. Maybe they intended for her to die here. Maybe they wanted her to cry out so that they could punish her crew. Whatever their purpose, she wished they’d just get along with killing her. She was half tempted to try to fight one of the guards just so he’d put her out of her misery.

  Brynja also thought of Nereyda and her promise to come get them. It seemed an empty promise now. Reyda was on the sea, enjoying at least some level of freedom. Meanwhile, she had abandoned her crew to a life of misery and punishment in the depths of these hellish mines. Nereyda would never come for them. Definitely not in time to save them from dying, either physically or spiritually.

  Even if Nereyda did come for them, she wouldn’t have the blistered hands and bent back of swinging a pickaxe all day. She wouldn’t know the feeling of sleeping in her own waste. And she wouldn’t know what it felt like to whip her own broken crew members. She would have no idea about what any of them had experienced during their hellish time in the mines.

  Nereyda was no longer her captain or her sister. As first mate, Brynja would now become the captain her people needed and deserved. She would find a way to lure the administration into thinking she was cooperating, then she would get the crew out. She didn’t know how yet, but she would find a way. They would get out and find a new ship to get back to the life they loved. And to hell with Nereyda’s broken promises.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Finally free of Erhan for the time being while he hunted down some food for the evening, Nereyda sat on the hilltop and took in the fresh air that blew up from the woods below. Since her fight with that hellish fiery creature by the pond, she had not felt that wind surge through her again. The storm in her belly had remained quiet. She did, however, notice more about the atmosphere around her.

  Nereyda felt like the air whispered to her. The breeze murmured something into her ear. Without the distraction of Erhan, she focused on the sound the wind made as it blew past her. As she listened, the sound seemed to stir something inside her. It was not the storm she had felt when fighting the demon, but somehow, she knew that it was related. In the air, she felt a dampness, along with an energy that tingled through her nerves. She wasn’t sure what it meant yet. She had a lot to figure out after whatever had happened.

  She most wanted to figure out how to call that wind again. It had taken the wind out of her lungs when she had done it against the demon, but it would certainly be an effective weapon if used at the right time. Sitting on a boulder, Nereyda held out her hand and tried to think of sending wind through it. She felt nothing.

  She jumped down from the boulder and stood on the hill in a fighting stance. Lifting her hand again, she concentrated on creating a windy blast. She screwed up her face and strained, trying to dig deep to find whatever it was that had come out of her the other day.

  Still, nothing happened.

  Repeatedly, she threw her hand out in a quick motion, thinking of throwing the air.

  Again and again, she failed to produce the effect she wanted.

  Nereyda tried thinking of that stormy feeling in her gut that she had felt before the wind had surged through her earlier. If she could recreate that feeling, maybe she could make her magic happen. She thought of the biggest storms and most powerful hurricanes she had experienced, trying to imagine that power inside her.

  Yet, for all of her effort and concentration, she still couldn’t even so much as blow a blade of grass.

  In frustration, Nereyda plopped back down on the boulder and crossed her arms. What use is it to have magic if I can’t actually use it whenever I want to?

  That night, Nereyda awoke to the sound of thunder rolling over the island. Following the roar, rain poured onto the canvas that covered her and Erhan’s tent. Unable to sleep anymore, she sat up and listened to the storm around her. She felt a similar feeling as when she sat on the hilltop the day before, with her nerves tingling all over her body. As she recalled that sensation, along with the dampness she had felt, she realized that she had somehow felt the storm approaching hours before it had hit.

  It seemed that she could now predict the weather. She just needed to learn how to interpret whatever the air tried to tell her. That would sure be a handy trick whenever she got the Storm Raven back. With her body tingling with ener
gy, Nereyda thought she’d try to summon her wind power again.

  She looked at the flap of canvas on Erhan’s end of the tent. If she succeeded in throwing another wind blast, he would get soaked in the torrential downpour. As before, she first tried to hold her hand out, thinking about sending wind through it. Next, she tried throwing her arm in a quick motion. Finally, she again tried to summon the storm in her gut.

  Nereyda’s efforts were in vain. She still could not produce wind at will.

  ---

  In the morning, Nereyda walked with Erhan down to the beach where they had assembled their raft. It was finally time to shove off. When they reached their makeshift craft, Nereyda turned to Erhan. “I’ll just give her another look to make sure she’s ready. Want to look over our supplies one last time?”

  “I can do that.”

  She walked around the makeshift boat, double checking the sail, lines, and knots to see that nothing had been damaged by the weather or by critters gnawing on parts of the vessel. As she bent to inspect the rudder, a sharp pain hit the back of her head, and her world fell black.

  Nereyda opened her eyes and found herself face down in the sand, her face pressed into the rough white grains of the beach. The back of her head pulsed with pain. Something had hit her in the head.

  As she tried to move her hands to push herself up, she felt her wrists restrained by a rope. She also realized that she was missing her sword belt.

  What the hell?

  She rocked her torso back and forth several times to get momentum, then managed to flip over onto her back. The midday sun shone down into her eyes, blinding her, so she had to squint to see. Feeling the grit of sand in her mouth, she turned her head to the side to spit it out.

  As she got her bearings, she remembered that she and Erhan had been working on getting their raft ready to sail. She had bent down to pick something up when she had blacked out.

  Except, she hadn’t just blacked out.