The ship the people now awaited was the first of the afternoon and the third of the day. More than a dozen passengers were waiting, and true to Frontier tradition, most of them were farmers or merchants. The exceptions were a group of women who looked like part of the “gay trade,” a priest, and several men with swords and spears who were apparently roving warriors.
Particularly conspicuous in this group was a tall young man leaning back against one wall. He seemed to be carefully contemplating something, and his alarmingly good looks as he held that pensive pose caught the eyes of the rest of the passengers. And yet, the women there, who were well-skilled at getting close to men, didn’t do anything. Not only could they not approach him, but they couldn’t even speak to him. The scent of danger that radiated along with his beauty seemed to set off some instinctive sense humans had about matters of life and death. As if intentionally disregarding him, a farming couple with a child threw themselves into small talk with a traveling merchant, the warriors had a few drinks together, and the hut in general was filled with a fair bit of hubbub.
Suddenly catching sight of a dark shape, the ticket vendor at the dock across from the shack shouted, “Here she comes!”
Inside the shack, where the air had been so cold it’d seemed more like winter than just before summer, the mood lightened instantly.
“Right on schedule.”
“Looks like I’ll make it in time.”
“Where you headed?”
“The village of Lugosi—got some medicine to sell there, you know.”
A small blob of color wove through all of the chattering passengers. It was a young child, the son of the farming couple. Five or six years of age, his somewhat plump form quickly cut across the hut, discarded the candy wrapper he had in his hand in a trash barrel by the door, and then dashed right back again.
But just then, a powerful voice as loud as thunder roared, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” and the little boy sprawled across the floor.
Simultaneously, the eyes of the startled folks turned and focused on the three brutes who had risen angrily from the bench by the door. Everyone knew that this couldn’t be good. Armed with swords and spears, the men looked to be warriors. Though that trade generally consisted of wandering the Frontier and lending their skills to the war on monstrous creatures for a price, it attracted more than its share of uncouth characters. Well aware that the slightest problem might be a chance for them to cash in on their expertise, such people had no qualms about stirring up trouble themselves or threatening and blackmailing others when low on funds.
“Little bastard! You kicked my damn sword!” shouted a glowering individual who was by far the hairiest of the trio. Because he also happened to have a wool coat on, he actually looked more like a demonic beast than someone who might dispose of such creatures.
The other two warriors were quick to add their indignation.
“He’s got no manners at all!”
“Where the hell are his parents at?!”
One was a bald man clad in battered armor. The other wore slacks and a flimsy shirt that left his overdeveloped musculature quite evident. A single glance was enough to confirm them both as the worst kind of thugs that could ever be found.
“Darn it, Calvin!” the boy’s mother cried out in a tight voice as she ran to him, while the boy’s father walked over to the men.
“Please accept our apologies,” the farmer said. “He is just a child, after all.”
“I ain’t accepting shit!” the furry warrior growled as he slapped the hilt of his sword with one hand. “This here’s the tool of my trade. You know, even the least little nick to it might cost me my life someday. Then what would you have to say? You trying to tell me my life don’t mean a damn thing to you or something?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the boy’s father replied, already deathly pale.
The rest of the crowd glared at the warrior reproachfully, but when his cohorts looked around, the others all turned their eyes to the floor.
“Here—I hope this will set things right again.” Pulling a cloth pouch from his pocket, the boy’s father forced a few coins into the man’s hand.
Glancing at the money, the man bellowed, “You gotta be kidding me!” and swung his hairy arm through the air. The coins clattered noisily across the stone floor, and the air seemed to freeze solid. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s someone who thinks that money solves everything. I’m gonna teach you and your brat some manners!”
The warrior’s hairy paw caught the father by the front of his shirt. The father tried to say something, but couldn’t.
Suddenly, there was a swift movement through the otherwise frozen world. The boy had just tugged at the waist of a handsome young man who was leaning back against the wall. “Mister—help me!” the child sobbed, perhaps sensing with youthful intuition that this young man would be up to the task.
But the young man didn’t move. He didn’t so much as look at the boy.
On the other hand, the three warriors did react.
“You gonna do something about this?” asked the man wearing the armor plate. His tone was a good deal more threatening than that of his hairy companion. He was probably the leader of the trio. “Make no mistake; we ain’t having a beauty contest here. You’d do well to keep your trap shut.”
“Good advice,” was all the young man said. He didn’t look at the trio. But it wasn’t because he was afraid to meet their eyes—and everyone there could tell as much. “This doesn’t concern me. Neither this child’s request nor your threats have any bearing on me. However—” the youth said, slowly turning his gorgeous and pale visage toward the other men, “never address me again.”
His words were soft. They didn’t carry the tone of a command. He was merely conveying his wishes.
The men grew stiff. The hairy one’s cheek started to twitch, and the man in armor swallowed hard.
While it wasn’t clear whether or not he’d seen the results of his glare and his brief remarks, the young man turned back the way he’d been facing.
Suddenly, the bald warrior raised his right hand—in it, he held a long spear. Throwing it at this range, he couldn’t miss. If anyone had noticed it, it was hurled with such speed there was nothing they could do about it.
But then the spear stopped in midair. With a firm crack like a rawhide whip had wrapped around it, the weapon was caught right near the middle of the shaft by a pale hand that shot out from the left side.
The bald man’s eyes bulged in their sockets.
The hand was that of a woman. Easily adjusting her grip on the weapon she’d seized with unbelievable skill, then rising with determination, the woman had a large frame that ran a tad to the heavy side. She had to be around twenty years old. With an average face that wouldn’t have made her stand out in a crowd, she’d actually stood right next to the merchant group without any of those talkative fellows ever noticing her, and the three toughs were frankly surprised to find she’d been sitting there. However, as she held the lengthy spear in one hand and glared at the three of them, her eyes and her expression were infused with a solemn air that made it clear she wouldn’t let this outrageous action stand. Needless to say, this determination came with the kind of skill it took to pluck a whizzing spear out of the air.
“Stop it. This is no way for a grown man to behave. Why don’t you think for a moment about where we are? Just what would you do if this spear had hit someone else, huh?!” the woman said, both her words and bearing unbelievably brisk and spirited as they overwhelmed the trio of warriors.
Finally, the hairy one snorted, “You bitch . . .” His eyes had a dangerous look in them.
Now free of the hairy fist, the boy’s father hastened back to his wife and child.
“Oh, so now you’re gonna pick on a girl, are you?” the woman said in a gentle tone as she coolly returned the glares the vicious eyes had trained on her.
The hairy warrior’s left hand buzzed into a
ction—he’d just undone the latch on his long sword. Now there was nothing left to do but draw.
“Please, stop it already,” someone said. It was a priest in an old brick-red cassock. But in this case “priest” didn’t mean the leader of the sort of strange new religions popping up like mad in the Capital and its surrounding areas. The kind of holy men that traveled the harsh Frontier were apostles of primitive faiths that held the very foundations of humanity’s vital energies. Due to the fact that he was bound to have some incredible skills or spells at his disposal, this was the man of whom the trio of thugs had been wariest. On closer inspection, the old priest’s graying hair was thinning, and his eyes and skin both lacked vitality. Thinking that the holy man would soon back down if threatened, the warriors had gone into action, but when the priest stood up, he actually proved a disturbing sight.
“What the hell do you want?! Keep out of this!” the bald warrior shouted back at the holy man.
“Stop it. If you’re set on continuing this, you should have no problem doing so once we’ve all reached our destination. If blood’s to be spilled, spilling it now with this journey ahead will only lead to remorse. You should at least hold off until we get to where we want to go,” the old priest added.
His words found some support.
“That’s right. You don’t choose a place like this to go stirring up trouble.”
“Men your size should try acting their age. Buffoons!”
The trio glared at the bar girls, and the women turned away disdainfully.
Things had gone so far that the warriors couldn’t just drop the matter, and yet they couldn’t very well cut down everyone who stood against them, either. The thugs exchanged bloodshot glances.
The reprieve everyone had been waiting for came in the form of the ticket seller’s voice as he cried out, “Okay, get in line. Line it up now. The ship’s here.”
—
“Say, mister—you were pretty great,” said a bar girl who approached from the forward seats, her words causing the young man to look up ever so slightly.
They were toward the back of the ship. Under the black vinyl canopy there were ten rows of benches on either side, with each seating four passengers. Beyond the little window of semi-translucent plastic, the dull gray sea was baring its foamy teeth. It was fairly rough.
Less than ten minutes had passed since the ferry had left the dock. Its speed was twelve knots, or almost fifteen miles per hour. Originally procured from the Capital, the ship’s gasoline-powered engine was huge but rather antiquated.
“Those three talked tough, but one look from you had them shaking in their boots. Not bad for someone as young as you. You must’ve come through a few tight jams with that sword of yours,” the woman said, turning her feverish gaze to the lavishly decorated blade cradled in his powerful arms. “Still, you’d do well to watch yourself. I’m sure they haven’t forgotten about you. And I don’t suppose you’ll be safe even in here. But I sure wouldn’t step outside if I were you,” the woman said, her tone growing heated. “So, what’s your name anyhow? If we’re headed the same way once we reach shore, I was thinking maybe . . .”
The bar girl’s hand gently brushed against that of the young man.
“There is one thing you can do for me.”
This sudden remark from him caught the woman off-guard. “Um, sure,” she stammered, nodding reflexively.
“You told me I shouldn’t go outside, but there’s someone on the stern that interests me—the man who jumped on just as the ferry was pulling away. Would you be so kind as to see what sort of fellow he is?”
Squinting at him, the woman asked, “Is someone after you?”
A glimmer of gold disappeared into the cleavage of her blouse.
“Will that suffice? I’d appreciate it.”
Fishing the coin out with great haste and staring at it in amazement, the bar girl then gave a nod of obvious delight and headed off to the stern of the ship.
At just that moment, cries of fright rang out from the front of the seating section. It sounded like the boy and his parents. The cries of the child resounded particularly loudly, and the father’s shout of “What are you doing?” soon became a shriek of pain.
The heavy footsteps that closed on the young man were those of two of the warriors.
“Care to come with us for a little bit?” the hairy thug said, tossing his jaw toward the ferry’s stern.
Looking up at the man in armor right beside him, the young man asked, “Where’s the third guy?”
“Sheesh. That’s the least of your concerns, bub,” the man in the armor spat.
The child seemed utterly terrified as he stared up at his pair of captors with a vacant gaze.
“If you’re worried about this brat, you’ll give us some of your time. Step outside and just see for yourself.”
—
II
—
As she sensed someone drawing closer, the woman spun around reflexively. Even after she saw that it was the bald warrior, no fear or surprise crept into her expression. “What do you want?” she asked. Her tone was the epitome of calm.
“You caused me a hell of a lot of embarrassment,” the bald man growled, the head of his spear gleaming just before his face. It was the only light on this gloomy day. Aside from the lead-gray sky and sea and the white wake of the ferry, there was only a mass of black cloud that seemed to follow the ship at the mercy of the wind.
“That’s funny,” the woman said, a smile surfacing on her lips. “The end of your spear is shining. As bad as the weather is, I guess there’s a ray of light out there somewhere. The sun is shining. You know, where I come from, the winter’s long and summer’s over before you know it,” the woman continued somewhat nostalgically, and the second she finished, a flash of white light shot at her chest.
As the woman sprang to the right with a speed that was staggering given her general build, the head of the spear twirled around after her, leaving a glittering trail. But the spearhead met only thin air.
The bald warrior’s eyes were wide with surprise, but it was still remarkable that he only halted for a heartbeat before stabbing straight ahead again with his spear.
There was a brisk slap.
“What the hell?!” the man gasped, this time driven to comment by his astonishment.
The head of his spear had stopped an inch shy of the woman’s ample bosom, caught in her hands. It was sandwiched between her joined palms.
“Ouf!” the man grunted as his muscles bulged. Shoulders and chest, arms and legs—they all seemed swollen to nearly twice their normal size. But the tip of the spear didn’t budge. It wouldn’t tremble in the slightest, as if it were lodged into one of the iron trees of Lamarck.
“You like that?” the woman said, her smile looking a bit pained. “Not the greatest trick in the world, but it’d be more than enough to snap the head off this. Isn’t this one of the precious tools of your trade?”
The bald man didn’t answer. His face swelled in a heartbeat, and vermilion flooded into his cheeks. It was almost as if all of the blood in his body had rushed into his head. The man then let out a long grunt.
A shaken look on her face, the woman started to rise steadily.
Incredibly enough, the man lifted his seven-foot-long spear high over his head with a grown woman still clinging to the end of it.
“Don’t let go if you don’t want to,” the bald warrior told her. “Go ahead and break the end off. I’m just gonna dunk you in the water anyway. The cold’ll be enough to stop your heart for sure. Feel like letting go? You do that and I’ll impale you in midair!”
And then, after a cruel reprieve of a few seconds, the man prepared to spin his spear around.
At that very moment, the woman he held up in the air sprang higher. The spear was still for a moment as the warrior tried to compensate for the sudden loss of the woman’s weight, and in that brief moment her pale hand chopped at the weapon’s shaft. Watching out of the corner of
her eye as the spear tip flipped end-over-end to knife gently into the water, the woman landed spectacularly on the cramped deck. Exhaling lightly, she stuck both hands out in front of her body. Her left leg was bent somewhat to support her weight, while her right foot was one step forward and balanced on its toes, like a cat. Given this woman’s skill, she could probably do whatever she wanted to with that right leg now that it didn’t have to hold her up.
“Not too shabby,” the bald man said as he delivered a loud slap to his own face. “You surprise me. But if I can’t spear you, how ’bout I just use the pole?”
Something whipped through the air. It sounded like a whistle.
To evade that thrust of ungodly speed, the woman twisted her body and leapt back.
“Take that! And that! And that!” the man shouted with thrust after thrust, never letting the woman get very far away.
After a second leap and a third, the woman reached the stern. A horse snorted. Not all of the travelers had been on foot. Though she tried to circle around them, she couldn’t—the rounded end of the weapon had a force far beyond the earlier strikes when it stopped about a foot and a half shy of the woman’s face. Almost as if pierced by the tenacity and bloodlust pouring from her opponent, the woman’s face was soon covered with beads of sweat.
“Looks like we both mean business,” the bald warrior said, revealing his yellowed teeth. Just then, his eyes slipped a bit off of her and focused on something else—a gorgeous figure who had just appeared next to the woman from the rear door to the ship’s cabin. “What the hell do you want?!” the man growled in a low voice.
The slight alterations to his tone and the glint in his eyes made the woman turn to look, too.
“You’re—” she mumbled.
“You gonna try and stop me?” the bald man asked, having somewhat rekindled his murderous intent.
There was no reply. But in lieu of one, a strangely indescribable miasma spread around them like thick honey, making the man back away instinctively. Dripping with the same cold sweat as the woman, the thug found his eyes filled by the sight of the young man, and his graceful good looks seemed to drive the warrior’s thoughts toward a philosophical abyss.
Mysterious Journey to the North Sea, Part 1 Page 6