Path of Revenge

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  Across the bridge or a scramble up the slope? He chose the bridge, then remembered the mechanism and blessed his choice. There was a pin as long as a man’s arm at either end, serving to tie the Tipper Bridge firmly to its supports. Removed, the bridge would sway either side of its one central pivot. These pins had been part of the bridge for centuries, the bridge itself one element of an elaborate defence the ancient Fossans had devised against their enemies. The Hegeoman had recently reinstituted the yearly task of taking the pins out and cleaning them. Just as well, the fisherman thought as he bent down to pull out the first pin.

  Sweat plastering his hair to his scalp and flicking into his eyes, Noetos dashed across the bridge in a few heartbeats, stopping to draw the second pin out of its sleeve. Tipper Bridge creaked, but made no other sound.

  His pursuers approached. He willed them onto the bridge, but the three of them stood in plain view on the far side, perhaps twenty paces from him, and made no move to hazard the narrow structure.

  ‘Don’t you want me?’ the fisherman asked them, hoping the sneer in his voice masked the fear underneath. ‘Isn’t that why you’ve come this far?’ Then a more frightening thought struck him. Could they hurl that blue fire across the rocky gully? Instantly he regretted his provocative words.

  ‘Want you? What would we want with a worn-out fisherman from a village scared of its own shadow?’ The smooth voice of the lead Recruiter floated across the space between them, echoing around the cliffs above the bridge.

  ‘I was wondering that myself,’ Noetos said conversationally. Why, indeed, were they still pursuing him? ‘Perhaps you have heard of my prowess with a net, and wish to learn my secrets? If so, you have not been civil enough in your asking. I will keep my fish-lore to myself.’ His eyes flicked over their shoulders, but still he could see no villagers coming to his aid. Delay, delay.

  ‘You wonder where your townsmen are, why they have not yet come to help you,’ the voice continued, and Noetos felt the stirrings of real fear at the words. ‘You sent your wife and son to your village leader in the belief that he would be sympathetic to your predicament, that he would raise the village to defend you against the Recruiters who threatened you. The problem with this course of action should become clear to you if you take a moment to reflect. Tell me, fisherman, would the Hegeoman of this puerile village give you or your family a moment’s thought if threatened with the loss of the hundred gold coins we offer for your son? Would he not be much more likely to hand your family over to the two Recruiters who followed them to his house?’

  ‘Betrayer!’ Noetos cried, consumed by fury, and leapt at his tormentors. The bridge gave way under his left foot.

  Yawing crazily, it threw him towards the gully twenty paces below. His right foot snagged in the sleeve that housed the pin. His ankle twisted painfully, but held. For a moment he hung out over the gully, and the dry, rocky watercourse below him spiralled as he swung; then the bridge tilted back and he dragged himself up to the path. Improbably, the stone carving still remained nestled in his belt.

  The leader of the Recruiters hissed his annoyance—his reaction telling the fisherman they wished him dead—and signalled his fellows to scramble across the gully as best they could. Noetos turned and ran.

  Despair rose to smother his fear. Undoubtedly the beast told the truth. He had lost everything in one dreadful afternoon except his own life, and that now appeared forfeit. He sprinted away from The Crater, down towards Red Rocks Lane and the sea, working feeling into his ankle as he ran.

  They were fifty paces behind him when he reached Red Rocks Lane, and he knew by the time he reached Beach Lane he had come to the end of his endurance. He was a strong man, he knew that, a strength born of twenty years on the boats, but that strength was concentrated in his upper body. His lungs still had air, but his calves felt like tree stumps.

  There was only one place he could make use of his advantages. To his right lay the boats of the village. At the far end of the row, the largest. The Arathé.

  Now for it. Using the last of his strength, he stumbled across the dry mid-tide sands. Curse the tide! He would have to drag the boat across the beach to the water. Impossible. Give up now.

  Still he tried. Stubborn! The Arathé was slim and lightweight but it was a large boat, easily holding a crew of three, and usually it took all of them to launch her. The nets alone weighed as much as any one of them could carry, but there were no nets in her today. Noetos grabbed her stern and pulled hard, but she did nothing but squirm around on the sand.

  One last refuge, then. Kicking off his sandals, the fisherman ran a hundred paces out into the surf, then threw himself into the water where the deep channel flowed. With relief he saw the tide was still going out, and the current surged along with him. Burdened as he was by the stone carving, he employed his powerful frame to swim out towards the reef, away from his pursuers.

  ‘We have most of what really matters,’ the head Recruiter remarked to his two companions as they watched their quarry swim away. ‘With patience, we will obtain it all. Bilitharn has the mother and the boy, and the father seems resourceful enough to mount some sort of rescue attempt.’

  ‘Perhaps we could exchange the woman for the stone?’ one of his companions suggested.

  ‘It will not be necessary. He will come to us, and we will deal with him when he does. We will leave now, cutting short the rest of our journey. I feel certain that when we arrive at the Great Keep with the golden-voiced boy and the huanu stone, we will be able to name our own reward.’

  ‘Could the father cause us any problems?’ the second Recruiter asked.

  The head Recruiter gazed out into the harbour, where a faint splashing and flat wake marked the progress of the surprising fisherman. ‘No,’ he said after a pause. ‘No man is dangerous when what he holds dear is in the hands of his enemies.’ He cupped his hand in an unmistakable gesture. ‘Such a man moves with caution, lest he harm that which he wishes to redeem. We have nothing to fear from him.’

  It took Noetos an hour to swim out to the reef. Once, more than twenty years ago now, he had swum there in half the time to win a wager, but he had been younger then and had not already run himself to a standstill. There were no fishermen on the harbour today, though the weather promised a good catch. Noetos wondered at that. Most of the fishermen he’d met at the celebration last night had told him they would be staying ashore to watch the candidates being tested, but he had expected one or two of the Cadere Row mob to be on the water, Testing or no Testing. But there were no boats, no one to give him a ride back to shore.

  He dragged himself out of the water and onto the rough rocks of the reef, the dark line that might as well have been another cliff to the Fossans, and lay there, completely exhausted.

  It was only then, stretched out on the rock above the booming surf, clothes drying in the late afternoon sun, that shock set in. For a long time he shook uncontrollably, his thoughts indistinguishable from nightmares. His daughter returned to him hideously changed, maimed and pallid as a ghost, to unfold a story of suffering and torture. The touch of her cold hand on his still remained, and he curled his hand into his chest as though nursing a burn. Anomer and Opuntia betrayed by the Hegeoman, the man to whom his wife believed they owed their good fortune—her lover, he admitted—and now in the hands of the Recruiters. Soon the reason why Arathé had sought out a certain fisher-family would be known to them. He imagined their questioning, could see his wife and son suffering torment at their cruel hands. Swords, knives, blue fire. But one vision more than all the others dominated his mind. A robed shape, limbs splayed, a knife in her back. He could not begin to encompass the sorrow welling up within him, and behind that treacherous sea of grief, making ready to spring on him, the dark storm-clouds of anger and guilt gathered.

  Spray from the breakers began to spatter his tunic. The tide had risen, the sun hovered close to the cliffs, and soon the rocks would be covered by swirling green water. Nothing short of the tide could hav
e washed the deadness from his limbs and the torpor from his mind. He raised himself to his elbows and looked back at the familiar view: the Cliffs of Memory to his left—how aptly named, he thought bitterly—and the embayment in which Fossa huddled, more like a spider in a knothole than ever, a blackness in front of him. He would not swim towards that hated place. Instead, he would break into a certain storage shed at Cana Bay and see what he could find.

  Diving from his rocky perch, Noetos the fisherman swam away from the reef and, under a sky darkening with gathering clouds, began the slow strokes towards Dog Head.

  Much later that evening a damp figure came walking cautiously down The Dog, the path that led from Cana Bay to Fossa. There was a more polite name for it—and another far less polite—but the Fossans had called it The Dog for generations, after the low promontory that could be seen from the path. For a time the darkness seemed on the brink of rain, but the clouds had lowered and now the cool air swirled with fog. Late in the season for fog, Noetos thought, wondering if the unusual weather would make his task easier or more difficult. He shrugged his shoulders, telling himself it didn’t matter. What could be more difficult than the already impossible?

  A moment later he fell into a crouch, then scurried towards the deeper shadows as the muffled sounds of human speech came from the lane ahead of him. Four villagers emerged from the grey blankness, wrapped up against the thick mist, silhouettes with smoky breath, voices fading in and out with the mysterious thickening and thinning fog always brought. They each carried a stick of some kind. Fishing pole? Not a night for the flatfish. No, they carried gaffs from their boats.

  Intent on his own hunt, the man in the deeper shadows realised that the villagers—Cadere Row men, by the sound of them—were also hunting. It had to be so. Their slow walk was now revealed as a search, heads swivelling to the left and right, sticks forward. Looking for someone.

  ‘Done flipped ‘is pate,’ one of them said. ‘Killed ‘is wife and boy.’

  ‘But why?’ Noetos recognised the whiny voice as that of Domoss, the boy who had fouled lines with the Arathé last year when a week of bad weather had confined them to harbour. ‘Why? Nobody in his right mind would take a knife to his kin.’

  ‘That’s just it. Not in his right mind, see?’

  ‘Go on!’ A third voice joined in. ‘If I was hitched to that squawker, I’d take a knife to her. How could a man stand it?’

  ‘You’d take som’thin’ to her, but it wouldn’t be your knife.’ The speaker barked a laugh, and the others joined in.

  ‘Maybe that’s why his head went funny,’ Domoss speculated. ‘Driven mad by his wife!’

  A darker voice cut across the chatter. ‘Enough talk! There’s a reward, remember? Maybe large enough to afford better company than you lot, I’m hoping.’ Noetos was almost sure the voice belonged to Arnessan. A bully and a coward. Typical Cadere Rower.

  ‘Bastard thinks ’e’s smarter than us, that’s for sure, living up on the cliff like a noble. I want the reward of seeing the big fool’s arrogant face when we catch ’im.’ Thin laughter drifted back from the group, as they gradually faded into the mist.

  Improbably, in view of all that had happened to Noetos that day, it was this last exchange that finally broke through his defences and touched off his carefully guarded anger. So much of this had been his fault, he was ready to admit. He should have fought harder against the wishes of his wife and daughter, should have found some way of preventing Arathé from putting herself forward, even though it had been he who had delighted in filling her head with stories of the world beyond the claustrophobic cliffs of Fossa. Should have married the girl he loved, not the girl he desired. But he was surely not to blame for the fact that he lived in Fisher House and not in Old Fossa.

  Come now, fisherman, he told himself mockingly, placing a stress on the last word, harness your anger with the intelligence you were once so famous for. Do this right, or run away and leave your loved ones in the hands of your enemies, as you have done before. He knew he lashed himself unfairly, but he needed the sting to action.

  A huge figure materialised from nowhere and stood, arms wide, in front of the frightened Cadere Row men. Domoss cried out, and they all took a step backwards.

  ‘Not the weather for fishing tonight, lads!’ a voice boomed at them. ‘What is it you’re trying to catch?’ The words were edged with something close to madness, the arms remained spread wide, and none of them missed the fishing spear in his hand.

  Perhaps three seconds passed before the fishermen realised who addressed them. ‘Noetos! We were looking for—’ one of them began, but a swift kick to the ankle silenced him.

  ‘We were going to check out the fishing on the other side of Dog Head,’ Domoss said, craftiness in his voice. ‘Mayn’t be any fog there.’

  ‘No fish either, not tonight, boys, take my word for it.’ The big man drew closer; the Cadere Row mob took a step back. ‘I’ve been for a swim over by Dog Head, and the fish are in their beds, where all good fishermen should be. But you would know that, lads, since it’s your favourite spot, being dogs yourselves.’

  No doubt about it, the man had gone mad. Nervous eyes imagined they could see blood running down the upraised pike, and all heard the insanity in his voice. No telling what an insane man could do, especially one with this man’s size and strength.

  ‘Tell me, friends, what are you really hunting? Could it be the Recruiters want me stopped before I hack the rest of Fossa to death?’ And he laughed then, a crazed giggle that sent tendrils of fear shooting down their spines, dissolving the little resolve they had for their task.

  The Cadere Row mob found themselves ‘escorting’ the Fisher of Fossa along Front Street and into Lamplight Lane towards Nadoce Square. They passed other villagers, foolhardy individuals and circumspect groups busy searching the misty streets for the murderer among them, and each time Domoss gave them a nervous greeting. He did not attempt to draw close to them, or to cry out, clearly aware of the pike in the fisherman’s hand.

  Truly it had not been difficult to intimidate the men of Cadere Row. If they had so chosen, the four men could have subdued him with their gaffs, but Noetos had counted on them not being prepared to risk a madman’s wrath.

  The whole village, it seemed, was out in the fog searching for him. Why? The Cadere Row mob knew nothing other than the story they had been told. But he’d heard their words of jealousy and hatred. He had never guessed the depth of feeling against him. How little he had fitted into the place he’d chosen to hide in all these years.

  Nadoce Square glowed fitfully under an eerie fog-shrouded light from the tall tapers normally raised for special occasions. With a little prompting Domoss explained that each group had been instructed to report to the Square once their area had been searched. That explains the lights. But having spread the story of his family’s deaths, the Recruiters would not be holding them in Nadoce Square for everyone to see; though there must be at least one of the hooded figures here, coordinating the search.

  Two of them, he decided, after straining his eyes to see through the flame-lit fog. Two Recruiters surrounded by twenty or so villagers reporting their findings, or lack of them, and receiving new instructions. The Hegeoman stood beside them, hands clasped nervously behind his back.

  Beside Noetos the Cadere Row boys knelt, their heads touching the cobbles. He’d promised a swift death for the first to make noise, a slow death for the rest. Clearly they believed him.

  He began measuring times and distances in his mind. Thirty paces—twenty seconds—to the nearest hooded figure. Would he be able to overpower the Recruiter before the villagers intervened? Would they intervene at all?

  The mist swirled. The Recruiter turned to face the shadows where Noetos hid.

  There was something unnerving in that hooded gaze: pale grey robes surrounding a black oval. A sudden blue light flared within the cowl, an echo of the magic the Recruiters had used against him.

  ‘Welcome, Fisher,
’ said the high-pitched voice, and the raw power within it nearly jerked him out into the Square. The robe took on a bluish tinge. Power shimmered within the cowl, growing more intense by the second, reaching out, compelling him. He fought it with increasing desperation.

  ‘I feel you there,’ the voice continued, a voice set with hooks. ‘I feel your anger.’ The villagers fell away from the terrifying figure, some making warding signs. At least one staggered as though burned by the fire. ‘I can sense your weakness, your guilt.’ The last word was clearly savoured, the speaker elongating it, drawing it out, casting it like a spell, like a net, looking for purchase within Noetos’s soul. It seemed to the frightened fisherman that a blue tentacle reached across the Square, searching, probing, coming for him. Down into the shadows it came, pulsing with baleful energy; and as it hovered over his head, he knew he should have fled this place, that there were more dreadful powers in this world than he imagined.

  The tentacle struck, crackled like a log too wet to burn, and vanished with a pop. From the Square came a cry of anguish, then silence.

  ‘Still has his little secret with him, then,’ the second Recruiter said. ‘Are you all right?’

  The mist came down more heavily. Noetos thought he could make out a robed figure sprawled on the cobbles, slowly getting to his feet. Beside him the Cadere Row men kept their heads down. The fisherman didn’t have to renew his threats, which was fortunate, as he doubted he had the strength left to carry them out.

  ‘Noetos tal Upanas, we have learned a great deal about you this afternoon,’ the second voice said calmly. ‘We enjoyed our discussions with our guests, though initially they were somewhat reluctant to share their knowledge with us.’