The queen turned and considered her chambers briefly before striding purposefully toward her office, leaving the door ajar. A heavy mahogany desk with an upholstered chair sat in the middle of the room, with a smaller desk and a cushioned stool to one side. A fireplace sat cold and empty on the far wall. Her desk was neatly laden with open affairs of state; she sat and began to write on a blank scroll while waiting for Palius to arrive.
“My queen?” asked a male voice from the adjoining room. Palius came slowly through the doorway to her office. He was an older man of nearly sixty with a slightly bent back, but he had managed to keep a full head of white hair. He kept a neatly trimmed full beard, also white. His face was haggard with dark rings under his eyes, and he was dressed in a simple robe he had clearly put on hastily. Palius was the queen’s most valued advisor; his sharp intellect and calm wisdom had aided her often in the past.
“I was uneasy all day,” she told him, “and did not know why. Garod has given me a vision while I slept. A Dahken has been born this night.” She watched as his face turned from surprise to deep thought as the full weight of her words sank in.
“My queen, I do not doubt your words. What matter is it? The Dahken cult died off nearly a millennium ago with The Cleansing. There is none left to teach this babe how to use whatever power he may have.”
The queen leaned her back against her plush chair, sighing. “I know we’ve long believed that, but I’ve always had my doubts. Something frightens me about the one I saw; this Dahken may be the most powerful ever. I watched as he summoned a wall of blood to destroy armies of both the Shining West and the Loszian Empire. Do I take it literally, or do I assume the armies represent the West and the Loszians entirely?”
“Why should we fear this one boy?” Palius asked his queen, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
“This boy may grow to a man, a man who brings the end of both the Shining West and the Loszian Empire,” she answered quickly. At this Palius quit his tired demeanor and stared at his queen. Referring to her notes for details that were already fading, Queen Erella related her dream.
“Perhaps,” suggested Palius, “it is not that he will bring about the end of both civilizations. I see many possible interpretations, but certainly we must find this child,” he paused, pinching the bridge of his nose, something Palius did commonly when a thought bothered him. “My queen, what do we do when we find him? Do we slay a babe for what he could be capable of? Do we commit a horrific sin for the greater good?”
“Any child may grow to lead revolution, seize power and commit atrocities. We cannot slaughter children for what they may do. Such an act is a crime for which we would pay with our souls.”
“Then,” Palius continued, “we find him, and we watch him.”
1.
“Boy, you are too sickly to serve aboard my ship,” the captain had said like every captain before him. A light breeze blew in from the bay across the docks where ships of all sizes loaded and unloaded passengers, crew and cargo. It smelled oddly of salt.
He was an interesting character, from the continent of Tigol across the Southern Sea, which in and of itself was not odd as many merchant captains hailed from that land. But most of them were smaller in stature than Westerners, standing no more than five and a half feet tall with wiry, athletic builds and stylized, pointed mustaches that sprung from either end of the upper lip. This man was a Shet, from the great desert in the center of that continent rather than the coastal trading cities.
Like most of his ethnicity, Captain Naran stood tall and wide, extremely well muscled in core and limb. The epicanthic folds of his eyes were far less developed than the other Tigoleans, causing them to appear more closed from the sun than his fellows, and from exposure to the sun, his skin appeared more dusky brown than a shade of yellow. He spoke Western well, though heavily accented, and it took Cor a few moments to decipher his words.
“Sir, I am well. I can work,” Cor answered him.
“You look as if you just crawled from the grave. At the least, my men would view a cabin boy of your pallor as bad luck, and I think you would not survive the first voyage.”
“I survived working with my father on the farm sir. I’ll be fine,” Cor replied.
“Why aren’t you on your farm now boy?” Naran asked.
Cor paused before answering; he had lied to every other ship captain and met with no success in finding one who would take him. It was time for honesty.
“I ran away sir. I stole a horse from the barn and rode to the city. It took a few days. I sold the horse when I got here.”
“Why run from home? Did your parents ill treat you?”
“No sir,” Cor answered, and he left it at that.
The captain pondered this for a moment before asking, “And why do you look as if you are walking dead?”
“I do not know sir. My parents said it happened a few days after I was born.”
“You are not ill?” he asked.
“I cough sometimes,” Cor answered truthfully and with a shrug. “Sometimes, I cough bad, but I’m used to it.”
“How old are you boy?”
“Thirteen this year sir.”
“Very well,” Captain Naran said, apparently satisfied. “You seem to be well mannered and able, which is all I can ask from a cabin boy. The wages were posted, and if you are in fact not too sick to live through our voyage south, I will keep you on. Report to the Crewmaster by dawn tomorrow. What is your name boy?”
“Cor Pelson.”
“Westerners,” Captain Naran sighed as he wrote the boy’s name upon a scroll full of names. “You name your children as if anyone cares whose son you are.”
And as such, Cor began his sailing career. With nowhere else to be, he reported aboard ship immediately and was assigned quarters, little more than a small closet, that immediately adjoined Captain Naran’s and the main deck. It had just enough room for him to curl up into a ball with a straw pillow and wool blanket, with two makeshift shelves for a few belongings. He learned to be careful not to hit his head on them when he stood.
Tigoleans dominated the crew, and most of these from the northern coasts, though there were also a few other Shet. Mixed in were a few Westerners, making about a third of the crew. They had the typical dark hair, a mix of browns and black, and white skin of their race, though heavily tanned. And what Captain Naran had said seemed at least partially true; some of the sailors eyed Cor with fear and distrust, though the more grizzled veterans carried on about their duties without pause. Cor supposed once you had seen one oddity, you grew numb to others.
Cor was a Westerner of course, with nearly jet black hair and gray eyes, not overly uncommon. Twelve years of age (and well on his way to thirteen) when he first joined Naran’s crew, he was about five and a half feet tall and apparently in good physical health except for one notable fact. His skin held the ashen pallor of the grave, solid pale gray across every inch of him without one hint of blemish or variation. Once he had been pink as any newborn, and at the tender age of three days began a horrific coughing fit flecked with blood. The village priest said he saw a great sickness in Cor and that the babe likely would not survive his first few weeks, much less his first winter. His color changed during that first attack; Cor unnerved nearly everyone who saw him.
Cor’s cough attacks came occasionally, but not once during his first voyage, which took nearly a month. In fact in his first week something completely unexpected, to Cor at least, attacked him instead - he could not keep anything at all on his stomach for the first three days. A farmer’s son, Cor had never set foot on a boat of any kind and seasickness was not something he knew about or anticipated. He spent the entire first day voiding his stomach of any and all contents and the following two days dry heaving every time he attempted to stand or move about. By the fourth day aboard ship, he could move about without collapsing and found he could actually begin eating again, though he was in no hurry to do so. The Crewmaster gave him leave of his duties for those first few
days, not out of any kind of sympathy but because seasickness was largely unavoidable.
Cor’s duties seemed light compared to the others aboard ship; he largely attended to the captain’s needs and kept the officer’s cabins clean. He took his meals with the captain, and at night all of the officers supped together, an event in which he learned to enjoy greatly. The crewmen on the other hand had a hard job it seemed, constantly scrubbing the deck, scraping the hull or attending sails or any number of odd looking rope contraptions. Cor Pelson was a farmer’s son, and he’d never seen a sailing vessel, much less how one worked. Watching it up close dispelled any romanticism he may have had.
While at the docks, Cor noticed a huge difference between the fat ships of the West and these slimmer Tigolean vessels. Western ships were wide and heavy oaken things that sat low in the water and required massive, magnificent sails to push them around. The shipwrights of the southern continent built long narrow ships that scarcely seemed to touch the water with one large fan shaped sail dead center that could be rotated to better catch the wind. Similar but much smaller sails could also be found at bow and stern. They opened like an exotic paper fan, and when they caught the wind the ship would spring forth like a crossbow bolt. While Tigolean ships could not carry the quantity of cargo of their Western counterparts, they more than made up for it in speed and the timeliness of their deliveries. This also made them the ship of choice for smugglers, refugees and criminals.
Over the two month stint across the Narrow Sea to a port in northeast Tigol, it became extremely clear that Captain Naran was none of these things. He loved life and the feel of the wind in his air, the misty spray of the sea upon his face and the sun on his body. He’d left the Shetlands when he was younger than Cor and found the sea, and he discovered nothing in the world to be more dangerous and free. As master of his own vessel, he commanded his own fate and forced the treacherous waters of the Narrow Sea to take him where he willed. These things Cor learned merely by watching and listening to the large Shet; Captain Naran talked to him often about his life, offering stories and wisdom without any real expectation of an answer.
Cor simply listened.
* * *
“Boy, tomorrow we will port in Hichima. I assume you have never seen a city beyond Aquis?” Captain Naran asked. They stood upon the deck late in the evening, the night well lit by the moon and stars. Despite being late summer, the ocean breezes always kept the air cool.
“No sir.”
“Tigol is different from your West boy.” The Shet rarely used Cor’s name, though he had grown rather fond of him. “Tigol has few kingdoms; every city is its own state and has its own laws. However, there are few of those, and a foreign lad such as you could easily disappear against your will. Does that frighten you?”
“No,” Cor said, and the captain fixed him with a long hard look before laughing uproariously and giving the boy a hard slap to his back.
“You are a bad liar boy, but I approve of the brave face! I enjoy you among my crew and expect you to be with me for some time. I need you to stay with me or aboard ship while we’re here. I know you want to see the city, but for now it is not safe. The cities we visit will come to know you are under my protection.”
They slipped into a bay in the early morning hours, the sun just breaking the horizon appearing to emerge from the sea itself. As they left the open waters for the bay and approached the city itself, the water changed from a blue so deep as to be nearly black to a brackish brown. From the smell and color, it was plainly obvious that the city’s inhabitants dispose of their waste directly into the bay that seagoing vessels passed through to gain access to Hichima. Captain Naran swore with disgust.
Cor could see little of the city itself beyond the docks and the warehouses immediately adjoining them. Two distinctly different docking areas existed, the closest of which was made of quarried stone, and Tigolean ships were lined up bow to stern so close as to nearly touch. The second set of docks had been clearly added much later; off to one side, they were made of wood and extended well into the bay. The graceless, fat boats of Western designed moored here.
Cor had visited only two cities in his short life. Martherus, the second largest city in Aquis and the West, was one of course; his father sold his annual harvest there. The other was the small port city at which he joined Naran’s crew, and he didn’t even know its name. But both these cities had a castle with towers and a fortress that could be seen in the distance. Hichima seemed to have no such things.
As they slid closer to the great stone dock, the captain ordered all three sails closed, and the men simply folded them into a large upright mast and bound them closed with heavy leather straps. A dozen of the men then went below decks to man oars, slowing the vessel substantially, but allowing the captain to pilot the ship with extreme precision. The ship pulled parallel to a perfectly sized empty point in the dock, and the oarsmen reversed the direction of their rowing to bring it to a gentle stop. Men on the dock threw four great ropes to the men upon deck who secured them to the ship. Cor’s eyes followed the ropes and found each of them affixed to spoked steel wheels set into the stone dock so that only half of them could be seen. A Tigolean on the dock pulled a level also set into the dock, and the wheels began to slowly turn. They reeled in Naran’s ship like the daily catch. The dockworker pulled the level back into its original position when the ship was less than two feet from the dock, and the wheels stopped.
“Boy, I must meet the Dockmaster and attend to business. Do your duties and stay aboard ship until I return,” Captain Naran said and crossed a newly affixed gangplank.
The entire area was awash in short statured, thin Tigoleans moving cargo from ship to warehouse and the reverse or conducting all sorts of business. Cor saw no other Shet, making Naran the center of much attention, though there were a number of Westerners in the vicinity as well. He turned from the dock to do as he was told.
2.
“Kosaki! My good friend!” Naran beamed.
Captain Kosaki was a true Tigolean of the northern coast. Though taller than most of his race at six feet, he still only came up to Naran’s chin. He had shiny, jet black hair that he kept in a long ponytail down his back and a tightly trimmed goatee and mustache. The epicanthic folds of his eyes made it appear as if he could barely open them, but Cor knew he saw everything around him. Even in his warmth at Naran, whom he had known long, he seemed to have a wary bearing, and his muscles seemed tensed to have him leap into action with no notice at all. Kosaki’s ship was a Tigolean runner like Naran’s, though more narrow and longer. It had arrived under the cover of darkness and moored in a newly available position directly in front of Naran’s bow.
The men conversed at length in a bizarre language, seemingly a mix of Western, Shet and some other tongue, likely Kosaki’s own. Cor attempted to follow it with the small vocabulary he’d learned over the last two months, but found it nearly impossible. After several minutes the two captains seemed to reach an agreement that pleased them both. They embraced and Captain Kosaki nimbly climbed over the bow and leapt the short distance to his own ship. Naran shouted for his officers.
“Today is fortuitous!” he nearly shouted when they had all formed around him. Naran rarely kept his voice down, and the more excited he was, the louder he became. “My friend Kosaki sails for Katan’Nosh tomorrow. He is here unloading payment for a Loszian lord who will be awaiting him there. It just happens that our next run takes us to the same city! We sail together for safety from pirates.”
Loszian Empire? We’re sailing to the Loszian Empire? Cor nearly froze to the bone with the thought if it. For two and a half years, he had sailed the coastlines of Tigol with Captain Naran and even back across the Narrow Sea to the West, but never had they business with the dark empire. And now back again in Hichima, Naran sailed directly for Losz. Now fifteen, Cor had worked hard to forget the events that led him to his captain, the events that included his one and only encounter with a Loszian.
&nbs
p; The sea made men of boys, Cor learned, and he was no different. He had grown substantially, now closer to six feet than five and learning the harsh, salty mistress had made his muscles hard and wiry. He was as strong as a man and could perform any task aboard the vessel, and Cor often did so with pride. His skin had never browned like the others, always a steady ashen gray. He was also a fair swordsman.
* * *
Cor had been on his third voyage with the Shet captain, a minor affair to be sure, when he had his first brush with combat. A Tigolean alchemist hired Naran to sail to a particular lagoon on a particular part of coastline, and from the jungle there, they would harvest as many of a certain kind of flower as they could find. Captain Naran chaffed at first, the thought of his crew of three dozen hardened sailors picking flowers, but the money made the task make sense. There was no difficulty in finding the place; it took only a week or so to reach it.
They had nearly finished the task when a fat Western galleon sailed to the mouth of the lagoon, blocking their exit. At first Naran thought that the alchemist had hired another vessel and crew to do the job or bring back more than Naran’s ship could carry. Too heavy to enter the shallow lagoon, the galleon merely waited at its mouth, slowly circling and watching. Naran thought to wait it out, but three days later, the other vessel still waited. Naran knew he faced privateers.
He decided to make his run at first light, hoping to catch the pirates by surprise. He knew his ship was far faster and nimble than his opponents; if he could only manage to get past, they would never catch him. He bellowed orders to the crew to man oars and sail and to the quartermaster to arm every man aboard. Naran told him to stay back. When the heavy, dull iron sword was placed in his hand, Cor had never been more scared in his life.
Blood and Steel Page 2