by Travis Smith
“Thank you for saving me, John,” he said unappreciatively. “Please let me rest now.”
“This island gave me a new life,” John claimed softly into the silence. “It took a while, but it happened. Perhaps ye’ll find yerself a new life as well, king-to-be.”
2
When the low flames of the fire died out and the soft crackling hushed, the only light was the slender moon overhead and the dim glow of the embers. Gentle waves crashed in the distance against the cliffs that had become Slougher’s tomb instead of John Tompkins’.
An indistinct clicking noise began rising from deep in the jungle, pulling The Stranger from his deep, fever-induced sleep. The clicking rose in pitch and volume to become a low, distant growl so hollow that it may very well have been coming from the earth ’stead of some gargantuan beast. The Stranger listened to the heart-stopping sound until his throat constricted and his breathing stopped. Chills ran down his spine, causing him to shiver painfully in his tourniquet. The sleeping man beside him stirred.
“What is that sound?” The Stranger asked with hushed urgency.
John groaned groggily and rolled over to his stomach, propping his head up on his hands. “I don’t know,” he said breathlessly. The Stranger thought he looked decidedly at-ease. “Punishers.”
The Stranger grunted acknowledgment. That was precisely the guess he did not want to hear.
“According to legend they leave ye be s’long as ye don’t stray into darkness.”
The Stranger thought of his time in the Daskan Desert and reflected that he should never again be so foolish as to base his beliefs on the content of legends. “I wouldn’t be so certain,” he claimed before rolling back over and drifting in and out of unsound sleep until sunrise.
3
When the hot sun rose above the horizon and dissipated the cool night air, The Stranger awoke with beads of sweat streaming down his face and arms. His light garb and heavy bandages were plastered to his slick, hot skin, and his mouth was painfully dry and stiff.
He tried to sit up, but his chest screamed in protest, and his head swam dangerously until he lay back down. Glancing around, he noted that his protector soul had ventured off already. Probably for the better. The Stranger regretted his sharpness with the kind man on the previous night, but the fool didn’t seem to understand his situation. He longed to get up and steal away during this prime opportunity and begin his quest to find his lost wife and son, but he could scarcely sit upright without feeling faint. It seemed he would be at the mercy of this island for yet a while longer.
At last John Tompkins came meandering out of the woods. He had moved The Stranger into a small sandy clearing somewhere in the jungle. The sun beamed down on them unobstructed by a dense canopy, and waves crashed upon the shore not far in the distance, so The Stranger thought they hadn’t moved too deep into the jungle. He counted that a small blessing after hearing the conversations of what must roam these thickets in the night.
“Water,” The Stranger gasped at John, who had reappeared with a full load of goods.
John dropped his belongings merrily and greeted The Stranger. “G’morn’, yer up! Feelin’ any better?”
The Stranger swallowed dryly and repeated, “Water, please.”
John walked over with a large canteen and lowered it into the sick man’s grasp. “Have care, now. Ye’ll make yerself sick!” The Stranger seized the container and all but inhaled its contents greedily. “I’s up before the gulls this morn’ ’n’ thought I’d head over to my old shack ’n’ grab a few victuals fer us. Don’t think it wise to move ye any time soon.”
“Yes,” The Stranger agreed woefully. Then he added, “John, I’m sorry for my previous harshness.”
John grunted acknowledgment and looked toward the sky, as would a man who’s uncomfortable sharing sincerity with another. “It’s only natural. Ye been through a great trauma. What with yer fam’ly ’n’ bein’ shot ’n’ all,” he said gruffly.
The Stranger watched as John removed the clean, shiny sword from his waistband and placed it beside his makeshift bed in the sand, where he had slept with it the previous night. He seemed prepared to say more, but he just looked back to the sky and observed it in momentary silence.
“Gonna be a storm comin’,” he mused at last.
The Stranger looked to the sky but remained unconvinced. It was a scorching, cloudless day with bright blue skies. “Perhaps the chill will soothe my aches,” he rasped conversationally, despite his doubts in John’s meteorological knowledge.
“No, no,” John intoned, finally reestablishing eye-contact with The Stranger. “If ye’ve got a fever, y’ need to sweat it out.”
“Is that why you’ve left me out here in the sun to roast?” The Stranger asked after taking another healthy swig of water.
John smiled in spite of The Stranger’s grousing and nodded his head.
But The Stranger’s temper and impatience were rising yet again. He was stuck here in physical and mental anguish while his wife and son were being whisked away across the Great Sea to unimaginable tortures, and all this man could do was grin and humor him. “And I suppose your healing abilities are as formidable as your capacity to predict the weather!”
John looked taken aback, not by The Stranger’s outburst, it seemed, but by his denial of the imminent storm. He looked back to the sky for a moment and glanced at The Stranger, who was staring moodily at the sand. “Ye don’t feel it comin’? The calm before the storm?”
“I’ve been through storms,” The Stranger snapped as brusquely as he could manage. His chest was now a low, persistent ache that gnawed at his mind incessantly, and his entire body was subject to minute convulsions and chills of a feverish variety. “And I’ve felt their calms.” He looked up at John’s oblivious face before rolling over to moodily face in the other direction. “Today, I feel nothing.”
John attempted to pull half of his mouth up in a sympathetic smile, but The Stranger rolled over and refused to look at him any longer, so he dropped his gaze and stared at his tattered old boots that he’d just kicked off in the sand. His compulsion to persist with conversation did not falter. “’Tis not a violent storm, mind. Mos’ likely one ’at does more cleansin’ than destroyin’.”
“Right. Allowing me to start fresh in my new life,” The Stranger muttered sardonically.
“I’ll allow ye to start fresh in yer afterlife,” a third voice chimed in from the woods where John had recently emerged.
John twirled and reached instinctively for his freshly cleaned sword, but all he got was a handful of sand. The sword was gone.
4
The three remaining men from Slougher’s party emerged from the forest, grinning victoriously. One of the rag-tag pirates was holding his own blade up in a defensive position while waving John’s stolen sword tauntingly. John sat dumbly in the sand with his mouth agape, and The Stranger rolled onto his back and attempted to prop himself up on his elbows.
“How ’bout ye jus’ give us the babbie, ’n’ we’ll be on our way,” the leading pirate growled.
“Now just ye wait,” John started, but the scrawny, snaggletoothed pirate holding two swords stepped forward and slapped him across the cheek with the broad side of his blade.
“Shut yer gob, ye ol’ urchin. ’Tweren’t nobody talkin’ at ye!” he demanded.
The pirate who seemed to be in charge watched this exchange passively before looking back to The Stranger and continuing. “If ye jus’ take us to the boy, we won’ gut ye where ye lie, which we could manage righ’ easily in yer current blight’d state.”
The Stranger wracked his fevered brain. He’d managed to trick their captain into falling over the cliffs to his death, and Slougher was thrice as crafty as any one of his crew, but how would he manage all three at once? Especially when his aching body forbade his getting up and even walking across their campsite. Attempts to reason or merely tell the truth would fail with these men. And the hopes that John would succeed in bli
ndsiding and strong-arming the men were slim to none. He was outnumbered three to one, as The Stranger himself would be able to offer no physical assistance. He glanced at John, who was propped up on his arms, looking at the sand, defeated, as droplets of blood flowed from the thin cut on his cheek.
“We promise t’ take extra special care of ’im,” the pirate sneered.
“Your captain is dead,” The Stranger finally said in little more than a whisper. Hoping that this and only this could lead the man to call off their crusade.
He thought he saw a momentary flicker of shocked despair in the eyes of the third pirate, who had yet to submit anything to the exchange, but the leader’s ugly grin never faltered, in fact it may have widened slightly. “More bounty fer us,” he said contentedly.
The Stranger considered appealing to his royal heritage and offering the pirates something to keep them at bay and buy a little more time, but something told him they knew more about the current state of the kingdom than he himself. He closed his eyes and swallowed painfully, steeling himself for whatever may come of his only remaining option. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said slowly and deliberately. “I’ve been mortally wounded by the men who took my son. The very same men who hired you, I think.”
For the first time, the pirate’s grin drooped and faded, turning into the stony blank face of a man who’s eaten bad shellfish and is determined not to get sick.
“I can scarcely move to show you anything about this island anyhow.”
The pirate’s grip tightened on the handle of his brand, and he visibly clenched his teeth. “Then we ought to stay yer sufferin’ right here ’n’ torture yer healer here ’til he tells us somethin’ ’sides this spurious claptrap.”
At this John perked back up and risked another input. “He speaks the truth. His son is gone, ’n’ I’m nursin’ the poor man back t’ health so’s he c’n set out t’ find ’im!”
The Stranger had not previously considered John’s intentions to assist or even to acknowledge his inevitable quest, and to hear the man say it—despite the pleading desperation behind his tones—brought an ill-timed warmness and shame for how snappy he’d been with his protector.
The pirate who had struck John before started forward again, raising his blade, but the leading pirate snapped first. The Stranger watched helplessly as he whipped around and brought the handle of his blade down upon John’s skull hard enough to drive him face first into the hot sand. “Ye’ll ’ave yer chance to blather all ye fancy soon ’s we’ve finished with yer friend here!” he screamed, dementedly furious. He put a heavy boot on the back of John’s head and pushed his face farther into the sand before turning back and closing in on The Stranger. “Last chance, chum,” he growled, bringing his mangy red face just in front of The Stranger’s. His chest heaved as he angrily puffed reeking breath into The Stranger’s working mouth.
“I—please,” he stammered.
The pirate touched the tip of his blade under The Stranger’s chin and stood back upright. “Ye clearly are of no use t’ me.”
The Stranger felt the man’s hand twitch and push the sword into his soft, slick skin at the same time that he closed his eyes and heard the wet click of blade entering flesh. But his thoughts did not cease there.
He opened his eyes and looked up at the pirate who held the tip of the sword in his neck. The man stood stock still, staring in wide-eyed, open-mouthed surprise into the forest behind The Stranger. A knife protruded shank-deep from his chest.
5
The pirate’s lifeless body went limp at last, and he dropped his sword from The Stranger’s neck and collapsed painfully on top of him. His two companions spun and fled back into the shady jungle without a second glance back.
The Stranger rolled the corpse off of himself and looked at John, who was still on his side with his face in the sand, breathing heavily and staring in the direction from whence the knife had been thrown.
Standing at the edge of the tree line were a strong looking woman and stout man with a full dark beard speckled with gray hairs. The couple looked old enough to be parents of a child on the verge of becoming an adult. With John and The Stranger looking on in stunned silence, the woman walked forward and plucked her knife effortlessly from the dead pirate’s chest. The burly man, after stowing a curved sword of his own, picked up the sword that had moments before been under The Stranger’s skin, which was now dripping blood steadily.
The man tossed the sword down beside John. “Fer the one they nicked,” he grumbled.
The woman wiped the blood off her knife and said, “Well, should we pursue the others, Robert?”
“Nah,” he grunted, plopping himself down heavily in the sand, “think we got enough to manage righ’ ’ere.”
The Stranger looked at Robert with a naive twinge of despair upon hearing his name. “You share my father’s name,” he whispered.
Robert, having seen last night’s carnage upon the seas, could only speculate as to the source of The Stranger’s visible sorrow. He gently offered, “’Tis an hon’rable name, sir.”
The Stranger closed his eyes and swallowed hard, fighting against the lump that was rising in his throat. John Tompkins, on the other hand, was sitting up and rubbing the dark bruise at the peak of his forehead. He grinned despite his injuries and offered, like a child who can no longer contain his petty excitement, “His father was an honorable man, too. Do ye know who he is?”
“’Fraid not,” Robert said cautiously.
“He was to be the king,” John said ecstatically, “before The Baron seized control.”
Robert and his female companion both looked at The Stranger in awe, but The Stranger’s frustration with John was mounting yet again. He squeezed his eyes shut in irritation and said bluntly, “It is no matter. Those days are long behind us.”
Robert, however, stood and offered a bow, helping push The Stranger’s annoyance to a crescendo. “Forgive me, sir,” he started.
“I’ve told John, and I’ll tell you,” The Stranger interrupted as forcefully as he could, “I’d not be addressed as anything but an equal. The men who would become king are dead, and the thrice-removed heir to the throne has been snatched from my dying grasp and carried off to a life filled with woe at the very best! If I live through this night, it will be as the man who will save my son from the dismal fate that’s befallen him, not as the son of the king, and certainly not as the king-to-be!” With that, he closed his eyes and helplessly struggled to roll over and face the other direction.
The two guests looked uncomfortably at John, who was already accustomed and immune to The Stranger’s prickliness. He merely wiped the blood from his cheek, rose, extended his hand, and said, “I’m John Tompkins. Still John in my new life.”
The Stranger thought darkly that John certainly seemed to be making the most of his new life.
The woman shook John’s hand and joined his joviality. “I’m Maria Vilsen,” she said, “and this is Robert Forlo.”
“Well we’re lucky ye both decided to vacation on this rock!”
The Stranger rolled back to face the group, torn maddeningly between these vexing conversations and his noble upbringing. “Thank you,” he said softly. “Thank you both for saving us.” The couple smiled at him, and he did not turn away again.
“We actually didn’t come here for pleasure,” Maria said, settling down in the sand. “We left Fordar together when things were at their worst, and we happened upon your ship last night, as it floated ablaze onto the shore of this island.”
John and The Stranger stared at the couple in silence, neither knowing what else to say.
“Perhaps we’ll share more stories later,” Maria continued, “but luckily for you two, my father was a healer before he passed, and I’m pretty handy with my herbs.”
Robert was nodding in agreement.
6
Maria disappeared into the jungle for a few moments. “I won’t go far,” she assured Robert, kissing him on the forehead
as he struggled to stand up and accompany her, “it’s only a fever.”
The three men sat in forced silence in her absence, and only John appeared to be completely at ease and content. He dabbed at his water and swabbed the drying cut on his cheek while humming to himself, but he didn’t attempt to strike up any more conversations.
When Maria returned with her pouch filled with a variety of leaves, she produced a small porringer, filled it with fresh water, and placed it atop a makeshift stand. “Could you get a small fire going underneath that, dear?” she asked Robert, who swiftly obliged. Rummaging through her various herbs, she asked John, “I don’t suppose your injuries are too severe? Would you object if I tend to your friend first?”
“Not at all,” John replied cheerfully. “He was nigh bleedin’ into his lung. I bandaged him up, but he don’t seem t’ be doin’ too well.”
“I have some herbs that will help heal his wounds,” Maria said, pulling a single leaf from her pouch and placing it in the small bowl of water above the fire, “but I believe he has an infection. It’s best to handle that before it gets any worse.” She glanced over and smiled at The Stranger, who was watching passively. “You should go right to sleep and feel much better the next time you awake.”
The Stranger attempted a wan smile. “I thank you, Maria,” he said softly.
“While this heats up, why don’t you tell us your story,” she suggested, easing herself down beside Robert. “We could only make out very little from our vantage point.”
The Stranger waved a hand dismissively and rolled over onto his back to close his eyes. “Maybe another time,” he said unconvincingly. He was under enough strain and distress. The last thing he wanted to do was relive the horrific events of last night. “Suffice it to say that I need to begin my search for my family, so a rapid recovery would be greatly appreciated.”
“Well, I can’t say for certain how soon you’ll be back on your feet, but I’m fairly confident you’ll be right as rain after my care.”
Robert grunted in agreement. In another life The Stranger may have found Robert Forlo to be distant and difficult to engage, but given his current state of affairs, he appreciated having at least one companion who was comfortable with a little silence.