by S. K Munt
That should have probably put the fear of God into me for real, (Pirate legends were terrifying enough but Viking ones were horrific!) but as I stared at it, I recalled the conversation that I’d had with Bastien a few days beforehand, about the kind of figurehead that I was aspiring to be: not a mermaid, but a dragon.
I didn’t know if this dragon was pointing in the right direction anymore than I was, but it was pointing northeast, and I’d been intending to keep going northwest. Was this a sign from Satan, at last? Did she want me to help these people, and then lead them northeast- the same way that dragon was pointing?
The voice was barely more than a sigh in my head, but the feel of it was sigh-like as well, almost as though she’d been holding her breath for a very long time, waiting for this moment. The displaced Captain, alerted by the cries of his men, twisted around then, causing his leather cape to swirl in the snowy winds around him, and like so much of everything else in the north, he froze when he saw me.
Froze, and locked eyes with me, and just like that I knew that he needed me and that I needed him. Irregardless of who he was or what he thought-I hadn’t fallen into this bay, I had been pushed into it, but my mother and the fates that she claimed to speak for, because Satan needed both of us, and desperately.
Bingo… was all my mother said to me.
Needless to say, that was all I needed to hear before I started walking again.
20.
The Wildlands
Larkin
The beautiful man drew a vicious-looking sword from his side when he saw me, but although he held it up in warning, he also held up his other hand, signalling to his men to stop rushing me even before they’d really started. I was glad he’d done that because it was clear that he intended to hear me out before he allowed me to be chopped up into little pieces, but the sight of the curved blade of his scimitar and the look of the wild, half-frosted men ambling up behind him brandishing weapons that looked as lethal as his made me quiver in my boots. I’d studied many forms of combat, but I barely recognised any of the weapons that this lot were carrying!
It was obvious that Satan wanted some sort of alliance formed here, and if I could help him out of the ice, an alliance most certainly be plausible… but who in heck was I aligning myself with?
‘Who are you, and why are you following me?’ the man demanded, ducking his head and squinting at me through the snow. Now that he was too far away to be seen clearly through the slanting snowflakes, he looked less like a God and more like a predatory beast. ‘Speak quickly, child, for I-’
‘Do not tell me what to do or how quickly to do it, sir!’ I made myself call back, digging my torch into the ice a little, not as a punctuation mark, but to test how thick it was. I kept my other hand under my cloak and rubbed my fingertips together out of sight, trying to see how much heat I could generate internally, before I made what I could do obvious by manipulating the existing flame. ‘And do not call me child, for as far as I know, I have never been one, and will not be treated thus!’
The man snorted, glancing at the man beside him before casting a scathing look back at me. ‘Well, well, well…’ his posture relaxed as his blade dropped, and I knew that he’d already decided that I wasn’t a person of any consequence at all. ‘We have a live one, comrades! Be careful how you speak to her, or she might send a sweet little snowball our way!’
A few of the men snickered but it was all I could do not to smile. ‘That’s sound advice, Captain, but it’s advice that you too, should heed, for this weather has robbed me of my sense of humour and even if it had not, you are not as funny as you believe yourself to b-be.’
‘That so?’ he asked, and when I nodded, he shook his head, chuckling with his men again before addressing me once more. ‘All right then, oh terrifying and un-amused one, please tell me: who the fuck are you, and why the fuck are you spying on us?’ His voice hardened on those words, but he bowed slightly and mockingly before looking up and saying: ‘Answer at your leisure, of course. I won’t make the mistake of ordering you around again, lest I invoke your dreadful temper!’
I pulled up taller, refusing to be intimidated by the fact that even the sound of him cussing at me was beautiful thanks to that accent of his. ‘You’re acting very arrogantly f-for a man that was practically having a nervous breakdown in the snow back there a few minutes ago!’ I called, indicating to the mist behind me, and I did not miss the way he flushed. ‘I came over here to offer my assistance but-’
‘Offer your assistance?’ the man asked, standing taller again. ‘Are you out of your m-m-mind?’ He was clearly mocking my stutter and I scowled at him for it. ‘What kind of assistance could such a wisp of a being offer me?’
‘That depends on what she promised you, I suppose.’ I kept my fingers sliding against one another, trying desperately to summon my power, but my hands were so cold I couldn’t even feel the movement against my own skin. ‘So tell m-me, Captain, what did she lure you north with promises of? Treasure? Freedom?’ Because if it’s raping and pillaging you desire to do on this land, then I will set fire to your boat and anyone who tries to stop me!
‘Larkin!’ someone with a raspy voice grabbed me before the pirate could respond, and began to drag me back into the mist with a pockmarked, wrinkled old hand that frightened the crap out of me initially- until I realised it was just Sam incognito again. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘What I have to do!’ I wrenched one arm out of Sam’s hand and gestured to the Pirate Captain with the other. ‘Satan wants me to help them Sam, I know it!’
‘Devil take you! I know Satan’s a horrible m-mother, but even she wouldn’t stoop to hurling you in a Kingslater vessel’s path for no reason, Larkin! So for the love of God-’ but he cut himself off and finished: ‘I mean for the love of common sense, set fire to his ship and him and then run, okay? Because that’s the only way we’re going to get away from this guy alive- by sprinting!’
But my blood had turned to ice halfway through his explanation and now I couldn’t feel a drop of warmth in my body- only dread. ‘That’s K-Kingslater’s ship?’ I looked over at the Pirate Captain, who was motioning to his own men to spread out a bit without taking his eyes off me- preparing them for an attack while craning his head, trying to hear what Sam and I were saying though that was surely impossible. ‘How on earth can that b-be Paris Kingslater? He was in his fifties when he attacked Arcadia twenty years ago!’
‘I don’t know if Paris Kingslater himself is here, but see the figurehead on his ship? Your beloved dragon? That’s a tribute to the Kingslater family’s Norse ancestry- he puts one on all of his ships so people know when they’ve encountered part of his fleet! Rumour has it that he has over seven in his Armada now, and from what I can recall, the lower ranked the boat- the more brutal the captain will be in his desire to make a formidable name for himself!’
I shot another nervous look back at the pirate, feeling smaller and less assured now. While the other pirate bands concentrated on sacking smaller, less powerful coastlines in the quest for money food and hostages, Captain Kingslater was one of the ones that rebelled against the Barachiel’s claim on the earth- so much so that he was the only pirate that had ever had the nerve to attack an Arcadian fleet in its own harbour while attempting to stage an invasion. The attack had not been a success because the pirates had not managed to penetrate Eden or its electric perimeter fence, but they had sunk two of our ships in the battle, and rumour had it that Kingslater had been trying to build up his fleet since so that when he came back for round two, he’d be guaranteed a victory.
Though Arcadia did not have an army per se, and though Kohén had told me that his father was more concerned about locusts than pirates, I knew there was at least one Arcadian ship, The Ragamuffin, that was constantly scouting the seas in the hopes of tracking Kingslater to whatever harbour he called home so that we could get in a pre-emptive strike- in God’s name, of course- for the sake of safeguarding Arcadia’s perfect shores
against attacks from the godless. No one in Arcadia spent much time worrying about pirates because we’d bested the worst already, and because the most persistent, pesky bands tended to attack Janiel, but that didn’t change the fact that we’d spent years trying to track down an enemy that had avoided detection-one that had obviously grown.
One that had spread its reach to a land of ice and snow...
Oh God… is this where Kingslater’s secret camp is? Has Satan sent us into territory that has already been claimed, or did I take a wrong turn and damn us for her? I began to look around again then, snapping out of my thoughts and tearing my eyes off the pirate’s when I realised that his people were converging on us from his side, as mine were stumbling out of the mist on my own. We were in a huge clearing but now only about ten metres of ice were separating the refugees from the pirates, so that was too close for me.
No, that’s not it, Sam assured me. I can’t get a lot from his mind from this distance and because he seems to be thinking about a million different things right now- and not all of them in English- but this land is foreign to him-
‘Hey! There’s even more of them!’ (Pirate).
‘Oh good grief! What sort of knot has this bitch tied us up in now?’ (Lady Lucida).
‘Guards up, now! We protect the ship til it’s last!’ (Sexy Captain).
‘Get back, all of you!’ (Bastien).
‘That’s a Kingslater ship!’ (Papyrus).
‘No SHIT!’ (Martya.)
‘I want to leave… NOW!’ (Damion’s wife, whose name I still had not learned.)
SEXY CAPTAIN? That was Sam, and he paired the question with an incredulous look. You’ve nicknamed that barbarian sexy captain?! You seriously have the worst taste in men for someone that’s apparently off men for-
Get out of my head and into his and help me! What does he want? What does he need? What do I need to fear most from him?
I don’t-
‘Are we going to finish this little tete-a-tete kid?’ the pirate drawled, shouting to be heard over the winds again. ‘Or are we going to attack one another already?’
I whirled on the pirate captain and took a step towards him. ‘No one’s attacking anybody! We weren’t sent here to die, Captain, but to unite, I am sure of it!’ I turned to my own people, including them in my gaze before dragging my eyes across the Kingslater pirates. ‘She has orchestrated our lives to get us to where we are so that we might shake hands, not spill blood! Can’t you see that?’
The Captain turned his face slightly in profile, suspicion filling his features. ‘She?’ The guy next to him nudged him and then asked something I couldn’t hear, but the Captain held up his hand, looking irritated and vexed- and not tearing his eyes off me as he side-stepped closer. ‘I’m sure I don’t know which she are you referring to?’
‘Like Hell you don’t,’ I said clearly, and though it was hard to make out his features from that distance, I saw him stiffen as though I’d run Kohén’s power through him.
‘You’re one of Hel’s damned followers?!’ He drew his scimitar higher as he began to stride across the snow towards me, his features twisting with disgust. ‘Well, praise God! I have one last chance to atone for my sins- by beheading one of HER minions!’
I heard a lot of gasps as my own people drew back and the Captain’s men followed, him, demanding to know what was going on, but I couldn’t move or think through my paralysing fear, because I honestly hadn’t expected one of Satan’s recruits to turn on me so. Martya was pulling on my cloak, trying to drag me away from danger while Sam tried to forcefully push me back from the front, but a vicious snarl suddenly tore through the whistling winds and the next thing I knew, a wolf was flying through the air, and towards the pirate! It swooped out of my peripheral vision, gliding like a ghost in the daylight and sank its fangs into the Captain’s wrist before taking him down, causing the large man to twist, cry out and drop his sword, all in one second. Martya screamed and fell back as ‘old Sam’ jumped and whirled around to see what was afoot behind him, but all I could do was cup my mouth with my hands and gape as the hunter once again, became the hunted.
Oh lord! My eyes were wide and stinging as I watched the pirate and the animal falling through the snow and to the ice. It’s that same wolf from the mountains, and the Wastelands… it’s really FOLLOWING me!
My people were frozen in shock, but the sight of their leader being attacked by the feral pup gave his men the push they’d needed to cross that invisible line in the snow, and so they began to charge forward to help him, closing the gap between all of us further. However, by the time most of them had taken even two steps, the captain had already flung the yelping animal free and was going for his scimitar again while getting up on one knee.
‘Inoborna!’ the captain bellowed, swinging his scimitar through the sir as he got onto both feet. The dog reared back as though nervous, but its ears were flat against its head too, so I knew that it wasn’t going to run off with its tail between its legs like it ought to. ‘I’ll glean no more glory from slaying you than I will the mutt you’re protecting, but if you insist-’
‘Stop it, both of you!’ I cried out, knowing that I didn’t want to see either feral creature fall at the other’s whim, even if this ‘mutt’ was tempted to tear a bite out of the captain herself. The wolf froze and looked at me, ears pricking up at the sound of my voice as I raced forward, and the captain shot me a look as well (the same one that Windsor had sent my way in the past only more loaded) but although I’d bought them both a few seconds, the man that had whispered to the Captain earlier ducked under his master’s arm then and began drawing back a crossbow, training it on the animal.
‘I’ve got it, Captain!’ the man yelled, and fear made my blood boil as I slammed to a halt- I was fairly certain that the wolf pup had just saved me, as the captain had said- I didn’t want to get it killed because I’d distracted it! ‘Stay back while I-’
‘No!’ The fire was tearing out of my torch and streaking across the snow between the pirate and myself before I’d realised that I’d willed it, and then it exploded against the man’s cape before I’d realised that it was strong enough to do that also. The rush of power that I felt as it had surged through me almost took my breath away, but I pointed towards the ship with my free hand and hacked out: ‘Stop it! Stop it now or I’ll-’ but it was too late to stop myself, and before I realised what was happening again, a second fireball was hurtling over the heads of the sailors and towards the boat, causing some of the men to screech and duck like women.
‘Witch!’
‘Demon!’
‘Protect The Iana!’
‘Cover The Captain!’
‘Blot!’
‘Get her-’ but that final command was lost under the whump of my second fireball finding its target- a massive mound of snow near the ship’s starboard side. It was much larger than the first, so when it crashed into the ice it did so with so much force that I felt the ground beneath me tremble, even though I was at least thirty metres away.
People started crying out in horror, (even mine, who probably thought I was going to melt the ground out from beneath us all) but I still saw the ship shudder and heard the ice groan as a crater was punched into it and shock made my entire body tingle- tingle with a prickly heat that was rapidly dissolving the thaw in my frozen muscles and icy blood, because I realised straight away that the fire had not come from my torch, but from my hand.
‘That’s it!’ I heard Sam hiss from behind me. ‘More like that!’
‘Keep going until his ship is ablaze, Lark!’ Papyrus hollered. ‘Show him your worth!’
But I couldn’t- I didn’t want my worth to be weighed in destruction, and I didn’t want to fight with this man. So as the ice hissed and dissolved and people scattered and wailed, I peered through the snow and to the ship, trying to figure out what had happened to it while everyone else was too absorbed by the chaos I’d caused to pay me much mind. It looked as though he’d ended up box
ed in, not only by the hardening surface of the water, but by all of the smaller bergs that had accumulated around the hull. I didn’t know how it had ended up on its side like that, but I assumed that it had something to do with the shape of the bay. Had he run aground on something? What good could I do if all of those fires that they’d constructed on it around the ice hadn’t helped?
Shaking violently with the cold now that a wind had picked up again, I stared down at my scarlet palm and wondered: ‘I can’t do anything to help if it’s damaged, but if one fireball could make the ship shake and the ground tremble… then how many would I need to make the ice holding it hostage, break apart?’
‘It will be exhausting…’ whispered that voice again, and my teeth began to clack together. ‘But oh so rewarding, child of mine, I promise! For both of us! I know you don’t want to be associated with pirates but you can’t believe everything you hear, can you? Besides... isn’t this one utterly divine?’
My face flushed hotly, indignation overwhelming my relief over the fact that Satan was communicating with me again. I don’t want another man in my life and you know it, divine or not! In fact, it’s the divine ones that give me so much trouble, and he’s got a mouth on him to boot!
‘But you need strong alliances, so why not accept one with a brilliant view too?’
I couldn’t control the shaking, not at all, and I was tempted to set fire to the sky just to feel its warmth reign down on me. If you like him so much, why did you let him flounder like this in the first place? He’s furious with you, and I’m copping the heat for it!