by B J Hanlon
Edin wrapped his arms around Arianne. “We have to jump.” Edin glanced down the cliff, his heart raced.
Arianne didn’t respond, she was out of breath and exhausted. It didn’t matter, Arianne nodded and squeezed his hand. Edin looked at her and quickly kissed her. He smiled and she returned it. They took a few steps and leapt off the cliff.
Their screams echoed around them as they plunged toward the softer rapids, he only had seconds. What could they do?
Then the roar of wind came back and like a cushion, a soft current of air slowed them. They were still dropping, but the speed was that of a feather. Arianne’s eyes were closed and her lips pursed. Sweat coursed down her face.
Edin felt the water approaching, he could control it. He saw the water lashing at and dancing around the large tree. He could control it.
In his mind, a large circle appeared below them. He felt the strain and strength of the river but didn’t let go.
The river was stronger than he expected. Like he was trying to hold up a house. Then he felt his feet sink into the sticky mud and heard Arianne gasp. “Are you…” she was still gripping his free hand as sweat poured down his face.
Water was rushing around them, he took a breath and opened his eyes. A moment later, he heard a crack and watched as a twig, with its leaves still on, flowed around them like a sailboat caught in a typhoon.
As this registered in his head, a pink and silver fish flew out of the river, sparkling in the sun for just a moment before it slammed into his cheek.
Edin was briefly stunned, his concentration dropped and he was hit with the wall of water. A moment later, it felt like he was run over by a stampede of cattle. He squeezed her hand as the river pommeled them.
Edin flipped under the wave, even as he tried to focus, to regain control of the river.
But it was too powerful. He was losing his air. He could barely see anything, shapes moved in a blur.
Panic came to him and he felt Arianne’s fingers slipping. He tried holding, squeezing…
But it was no use. His arm hit something and he lost her.
His breath was almost gone. Edin twisted in the current. Something hit him again, he had the brief feeling of pain. But through that, through all of the sudsy white current, he caught the glimpse of the sun. He flipped again and tried to twist around, spinning almost like a corkscrew. His feet touched the mucky river bed for an instant. Edin kicked off and sprang for the light.
Make for it, Edin thought. He reached up and swam.
He burst through the surface, gasping for air and coughing simultaneously. His body twisted in the torrent as it tried to pull him under.
Edin swung his arms fighting it, where was Arianne? More panic enveloped him. He was being battered but still trying to find her. A loud thunderous crack came from upstream. Edin didn’t care. Where was she? Edin closed his eyes and felt as if time was slowing.
With his head above it, he could think, concentrate. Edin closed his eyes called on his strength, all of his willpower, he demanded the river cease all movement. He controlled the water, it didn’t control him.
It slowed to a trickle and then stopped.
Edin slowly began to sink. “Arianne,” he called out through gritting teeth. He felt a thumping in his mind, like the pulse of the river pushing at him, wanting to continue the same course it had used for thousands of years.
“Arianne?” He could barely hold it anymore. It was overwhelming. Edin began to see black crowding beyond his closed eyelids.
He kept the pulsing river at bay. Edin could barely hear over the pounding in his head. Then he did.
“Edin!” She shrieked from somewhere behind him. Arianne was alive.
It was the last thing he remembered before the darkness took him.
Edin coughed and a deluge of salty sea water erupted out of his lungs. His throat triggered another gag and he spewed more out of his stomach.
His head swam and his eyes burned. He squeezed his hand and felt wet sand crush between his fingers. Edin rolled to his back and blinked. His sight was blurry and his eyes stung. Tears tried forming, needing to wash away whatever was in his eyes. Edin groaned and rubbed them for a moment before his tired arms collapsed to the sand with a splat.
It was daytime and he was on a beach. Waves lapped near him and the sun bore through his eyelids from high above.
His body throbbed but felt uninjured.
Edin took a breath before he got his first thought of Arianne. Her laying in his arms supposedly to share body heat. It wasn’t true. She cared for him, how much she cared though was the question. Somehow, he’d get her to tell him.
Where was she?
“Arianne?” Edin croaked. He waited for her response. Nothing came. “Arianne?” His mouth tasted like he devoured an entire mound of preserving salt. He needed real water.
Edin realized he wasn’t wearing his pack.
His hand reached up for his necklace, for the crillio fang. He needed to feel it, the comfort of the memories it brought.
It was gone. His looked up and stared directly into the sun, blinding him.
Then he remembered the kiss… the jump and the rapids.
“Arianne?” Edin glanced around, his heart leaping and his stomach doing flips. He was on a beach, with trees a few yards behind him. In front of him was a blue ocean, a lighter blue than he’d imagined. And further too, ending at the horizon. It looked like a blue dish with only small white lines crossing its vast expanse like rungs on a ladder.
Where was he? Where was she? Edin thought. He stood, there’d been a beach on Halecon Lake he’d been to, though it was rocky and smelled of fish. This was nicer.
Then he noticed far down the beach… barely on the beach actually, was what at first looked like a large boulder. Edin rubbed his eyes.
Boulders weren’t wood. A ship?
“Pirates,” he whispered. Could that be their ship?
Edin stood and dropped his hand to the hilt of his sword. It was gone. He looked around for something, anything. His pack, the fang… the weapon. It was all gone. Then he felt a lump attached to his belt. He found the coin purse Arianne had given him. “How in the…” Edin clutched it and grimaced.
Someplace in that deep sea was everything but himself. Was Arianne there too? The thought sent chills down his spine. Did he lose everything by forcing her to leap from that cliff?
Edin stared at the ship and clenched his jaw. If that was the pirate ship… it was their doing not his and Edin wanted thank them...
He clenched and unclenched his fists as he trekked across the sand.
Edin didn’t look around, he kept his eyes on the ship as it grew larger on the edge of the beach. Almost an hour later he made it there. He didn’t even feel his legs burning. Over half of the hull was buried in sand. The stern and the rudder rested in the surf.
He approached it out in the open, not caring if someone saw. Toward the keel, he saw a large crack, thin and long like a knife had been thrust into the ship by some sea monster. It smelled salty and damp. Edin crept up to the hole and peered in.
In a small circle of light, he saw an arm, thick and meaty but it didn’t move. There were tendrils of seaweed covering it like a green bandage. He couldn’t see anything else and didn’t want to go inside it unless he had to.
The one thing he knew instantly was it was a man’s arm… and whoever it was connected to was dead.
Edin briefly wondered how they ran aground but quelled the question. How many were around and more importantly, was Arianne here?
He listened for sound but heard nothing. He began walking the perimeter. On the port side he found a rope with knots every two feet and footsteps in the sand that seemed to head off into the jungle. Edin looked that way and saw a small trail had been cut. His first instinct was to go after them… but he needed supplies.
Edin tested the rope. It held. It was a way up and down for the blotards.
He ignored his burning hands and pulled himself up. H
e gripped the railing and threw himself over. He wanted to sneak, but he was too tired and landed on the deck hard and with his shoulder. A deep thud sounded. It was a large ship. Three masts ran along the spine with crates and barrels lashed to them. No one was on deck and there was only a raised platform at the stern with the ship’s wheel. Beneath that was the door to below decks.
The first sign of life came from beneath his feet. He heard voices then shuffling and finally running. It clearly wasn’t a full crew, a half dozen at most… and if it was the pirates, he’d make them pay.
Edin stepped back, moving slowly toward the bow. He heard the waves lapping against the wood.
The door beneath the ship’s wheel slammed open and he spotted the first out. Bandana.
“Who’s there?” He growled.
The man saw him.
“You!” he shouted and drew his cutlass. Edin saw at least three more people emerge from the darkness. He grinned as they all drew their weapons. “You gonna die without your mage wench to protect you?” He chuckled. “Get ‘em!” The wood pattered and groaned as they began crossing the deck toward him.
Their intentions were clear from the moment they found Edin and Arianne that morning. No quarter. He only needed one alive to question. Edin focused on the swells of the ocean. He felt their ebb and flow.
Edin waited as a wave closed in. The men were getting closer, twenty feet then ten. The footsteps were pounding the deck with his heart.
His heart raced as he drew in and increased the size of the wave. It was strong, but not like the river. The power of the wave was spread out, not funneled or pressing like pressure to a single spot.
Edin smiled and felt the wave rising. Bandana saw it and skidded to a stop. His wide eyes and toothless mouth agape.
“What the–?”
The water crashed down on the ship slapping everyone and everything but Edin.
Edin stayed mostly dry. His legs were wet to the knee and he looked down to see the pants frayed.
To the left, a pirate was spitting up water, his blade a foot from his hand. Edin moved quickly, scooping up the pirate’s blade. It was an awkward hunk of metal, too heavy at the tip and not at all balanced but Edin swung it in a loop before sticking it a hairs length from the pirate’s neck.
He stared down wanting to take his throat out.
“She wasn’t the only magus. Drop your weapons,” Edin said as commanding as if he were the captain. “Or I will kill you all.”
Bandana was yards away looking like a soaked pile of rags after a good scrub on the washboard. There was a dark look on his face. Something that oozed evil. It was the same look that Justicar Merik held. That Diophin had.
“You think you can kill us… abomination,” Bandana challenged. He reached in a pouch and pulled out a small black stone. Edin was already feeling drained and tired… he had only one option. In an instant, a single ethereal throwing knife appeared in his hand. He whipped it at Bandana.
The pirate’s eyes widened as the blade caught him in the throat taking his head off with a sucking sound.
The two men who weren’t at the tip of his blade must’ve taken that as the signal to attack. They leapt toward Edin with their blades.
He dodged left, leaping over the one he’d taken the sword from. A young lad who made no movement. The two pirates slipped on the wet deck and barely kept their balance by grabbing each other.
When they righted themselves, they attacked again. One high, the other low and then they’d switch. They weren’t great with a sword but they were coordinated. Despite the unwieldy blade, he was able to parry their wild thrusts and slashes. They were worse than bandits but something in how they fought, kept Edin on his back foot. Every one of Edin’s ripostes seemed to be countered well by them.
The blades hummed and a constant ring in his ear. He felt something behind his back heel and realized he was at the side of the ship.
Edin parried a downward strike into the rail. A crunching sound as the blade became wedged. Edin dove and rolled, appearing next to the person he’d first disarmed.
Edin turned to strike him but the man just threw up his arms. It wasn’t a man, it was a boy, a dirty boy who was just staring. He made no movement except the flinch.
“Get him, Ginni,” a man shouted.
“He has my blade,” the boy yelled. One yanked his blade from the rail and they began approaching, their feet stomping the deck like a drum.
Edin tried to think of a plan, something to beat them. Surprise worked on most people, but they knew he was a magus and Edin felt that if he used his talent at all, he would collapse. Edin heard the crashing of a wave, he couldn’t control a big one again, but something with force? It took a moment for him to sense the one he wanted. It was far but moving quickly.
Stepping back, he dodged a pair of opposite strikes, he blocked the reverse slashes as the men worked in tandem.
He blocked an angled strike down only to have the other man’s blade crash into the flat edge of his sword.
His cutlass snapped a few inches above the hilt.
A snarl came from one of the men, he pulled back for the killing blow, his blade high above his head.
The wave was here. Edin pulled it into the ship with as much force as he could muster. Darkness flashed before his eyes. He tried, strained to stay conscious.
The ship rocked and the men stumbled. Edin was waiting for it, but his body was weak. He recovered quicker and ran at the snarling man, Edin dropped down and slashed the man across the thigh with the broken sword. A spray of blood blew from his leg like what he’d read a whale did in the distant oceans. Well what used to be distant.
The pirate collapsed, his weapon clanging to the ground.
Edin dropped the small blade to his off hand and picked up the other. The last attacker was huffing for breath as he tried to resume his advance, but alone, he was just wild.
Edin dodged a few strikes. Then as Dephina had taught him, he parried with the half weapon, catching it on the hilt and cut across the man’s chest in a downward slash.
The man stumbled backward before hitting the railing and tilting over.
Edin was breathing heavy as he turned toward the boy.
The kid stood and pulled down his tunic. Despite the dirt on his face and the smell of ale, he was easily a few years younger than Edin.
“Don’t kill me sirs, please.” The way the kid spoke, his drawl, made Edin take a second to figure out what he said. “I never gots no problem with no magi.”
“You’ve gots… you have a problem with me.” Edin said.
The kid shook his head vigorously.
“Tell me, the woman… what happened?”
The kid looked over at the body of Bandana. The head was a few feet away, staring with wide eyes at them.
The kid’s mouth quivered. “How you do that?”
“The girl. Where is she?” Edin said louder, he was tired, thirsty, and now feeling the anger boil.
“She’s gone with the captain.”
“Where?” he growled, barely having the strength for even that. “Where did they go?”
He wiped his mouth with a wet sleeve. “The jungle.”
“Show me...”
The kid moved to a railing and pointed toward the forest and the man-sized cut in the trees and the branches that littered the sand. “Through there.”
Edin grunted. “Where are we?”
“My unc— Captain Gostal said a day north of Alestow.”
Unc? Alestow? Could they be that far south? Edin thought for a moment. “I need supplies…”
“You’ll let me live?”
Taking a boy’s life was something an abomination would do. I am not an abomination. He thought. But that didn’t mean the kid needed to know that. “We’ll see.”
A look of relief washed over him as quick as the wave. “We got supplies. This way.”
Edin took the scabbard from the corpse and followed the kid. “What’s your name?”
&nb
sp; “Ginnis, sir.” He said leading Edin down a thin stair to a cabin fraught with hammocks, barrels and tables.
“Where are you from?”
“Oliet,” he said opening a door to the store room. Crates of dried meat, fresh fruit, and vegetables. An entire barrel of flour and another of ale. He took a mug and drank.
“Your crew does well for itself,” Edin said.
“We stocked up and the captain is smart. Me pops said he could’ve been an esquire or a politician instead of a criminal…”
“Not sure there’s much difference…”
“Huh?”
Edin shook his head.
“Captain Gostal is my uncle… me pops, gods bless him, died a few seasons back.”
“I’m sorry,” Edin said, though was unsure why. He absently stuffed as much food as he could in a burlap sack. He poured another mug of ale for himself and looked at the kid. If he was the captain’s uncle, he could help in getting her back, maybe use him to bargain. Having Ginnis on his side would make the whole job easier.
Edin grabbed a second mug and offered it to Ginnis.
“Me uncle doesn’t lets me drinks none,” Ginnis said.
“You smell of ale,” Edin said and added, “and I ain’t your uncle,” trying to sound a bit more like the boy.
The cadence of the kid’s voice was a bit fitful yet somehow calming. “Wells then I’ll have me some.”
Edin drank but watched the kid out of the side of his mug. He took it down a little quick. Edin had to go after Arianne, but he was still exhausted from the fight... He collapsed onto a chair and closed his eyes.
“You know we didn’t want any trouble,” Edin said. “If Bandana up there and his two friends didn’t attack, you wouldn’t be in this position.”
Ginnis scrunched his face, “he said yous attacked him. You is magus after all.”
Edin shook his head, “He attacked us… just didn’t know we were mages.”
“That ain’t what he said, I was in the room.”
“He lied.”
Ginnis shrugged, “wouldn’t be the first time, wouldn’t matters to me uncle though. I think he’s a bad man.”