Mary Herbert - Dragon's Bluff

“I was thinking ‘far away.’ What sort of man engenders such devotion in his family that they would risk so much for his corpse?”

“One who doesn’t deserve it,” Lucy replied. She caught the startled look on his face and gave her shoulders a slight shrug. “Maybe you knew him. His name was Kethril Torkay.”

An odd, rather strangled sound forced itself past Lysandros’s tight lips. His face turned the strangest shade of red. “Are you all right?” Lucy asked in genuine concern.

“I’m sorry,” he managed to sputter. “Something just disagreed with my stomach. Excuse me, my lady.” Making wheezing noises, he reined his horse around and trotted off into the dust.

“I hope he’s not sick,” Challie said in her driest tone.

“I’m sure he’s fine. He probably just choked on the memory of my father,” Lucy replied. The corners of her mouth turned down, and her hands tightened on the reins.

Challie’s expression softened. “Surely your father wasn’t that bad to you.”

Lucy snorted. “He was a cheat, a con-man, a gambler, a womanizer, and a fake. He abandoned his wife and daughters, and he never bothered to write or visit or do anything to prove that he still cared about them. I’m glad he died a miserable death.” Her voice hardened with each word until she was spitting them out like nails. The sudden intensity of her feelings took her by surprise. She had tried for years to bury her anger and resentment toward her father, and she thought she had been moderately successful, yet all it had taken was the reaction of a stranger and the sympathy of an acquaintance to jiggle loose her poorly constructed defenses. She closed her mouth with a snap and stared down at the rump of the bay horse.

The dwarf looked around, startled by Lucy’s outburst. “Maybe he was, Lucy, but surely he must have had something positive about him to attract your mother. She seems to be a very nice person. Even if he did nothing else good, he fathered you and your sisters.”

Challie’s unlooked-for solicitude touched Lucy and surprised her. She shrugged, feeling slightly embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t explode like that. He wasn’t that awful. That was the problem. He had just enough good qualities that we all adored him. I just wish I could have seen him one more time.” She fell silent, and her thoughts flowed back into the few memories she had of her father.

Flotsam lay on the southwestern edge of the Blood Sea in the shelter of Blood Bay. It owed its name and much of its existence to the ancient kingdom of Istar whose Kingpriest awoke the wrath of the gods and brought cataclysm upon Krynn. His fabled city sank to the bottom of the Blood Sea where it was lost beneath the great Maelstrom. Bits and pieces, trash and relics washed ashore along miles of coastline, but due to the currents and the curves of the shoreline, much of the flotsam washed into Blood Bay. Drawn by the hope of valuables, the lure of magic artifacts, and ready availability of building materials, a diverse collection of people settled in the area and named their town with simple honesty. Flotsam had gone through many changes since its founding. It had been a pirate hideout, a dragonarmy base, and a flourishing port. Now, under the merciless rule of the Red Marauder, about two thousand of its surviving citizens eked out a rough existence as best they could.

Because of the town’s isolation, the population considered the arrival of a caravan from Sanction and Khur a big event. The Silver Fox’s men had spread the word that the wagons were due by noon, so when the wagons wound down out of the hills and into the valley of Flotsam, most of the residents came out to greet them.

At the dusty end of the caravan, the cook wagon crested the low ridge and started down the long slope. Lucy reined her horse to a halt and stared down on the valley below. The port lay in a cup-shaped vale surrounded by bare hills that ended in bluffs at the water’s edge. A small but deep harbor sat like a blue bowl on the eastern side of the valley, and on the east side of the bay sat the Rock, a thumb-shaped, rugged headland that projected out into the bay and rose more than thirty feet above the water. The Rock was a natural fortress and formed Flotsam’s strongest defense and shelter from the rough storms that plagued the Blood Sea.

In the midst of this valley, curving around the circular bay like an old dump, stood the most ramshackle, disreputable excuse for a town Lucy and Ulin had ever seen. For a moment they were struck dumb by what they observed.

“I’ve seen gully dwarf towns that look better than that,” Lucy finally remarked.

Challie shrugged. “It certainly fits its name.”

“Welcome to Flotsam, ladies!” Lysandros called. He waved cheerily as he cantered his horse past the wagons. “I’ll see you in town.” He and his men rode on past the caravan and down the road where they disappeared among the rowdy crowd waiting to greet the newcomers.

Lucy slapped the reins to urge the horse forward, and they followed the other wagons down the hills. They passed a few farms with fields newly plowed for spring planting. Some gentle slopes were rowed with grape vines and olive trees, and here and there a few cows and sheep grazed in small pastures beside the farmhouses. For the most part, the land around Flotsam sat empty and ill-tended. Ruins of burned-out cottages and the gray skeletons of wrecked barns were scattered across the valley, attesting to the numerous depredations of Malys. The closer the caravan drew to the town the more the years of damage became apparent. Crumbling cottages and outbuildings sat in ruins beside the road, some nearly lost in tumbled vines and overgrown weeds. A few huts and hovels looked inhabited, but they were ill kept and shoddy.

On the freight wagon, Ulin glanced back at Lucy and saw the expression on her face. It probably mirrored his own. His grandfather, Caramon, had been in Flotsam many years before when the Blue Lady’s dragonarmy made the town its headquarters, and he remembered some of his grandfather’s tales about the town. He looked to find some of the landmarks Caramon mentioned, yet nothing looked the way he thought it should. Where the city wall and its guard towers once stood, he saw only the rubble of its foundations and cut stones scattered across the fields. Where the busy wharves had been, there was only empty water and the bones of old pilings. Two wharves had been rebuilt to service the fishing fleet and the few merchants that sailed in, but the breakwater and its beacon had been destroyed and most of the warehouses were ashes. What was left of Flotsam after thirty years under Malys’s iron claw was perhaps half the original population and the seediest, most dilapidated collection of shops, tenements, taverns, and bawdy houses Ulin could imagine.

The people who hurried out of these buildings to welcome the caravan were hardly any better. The denizens of Flotsam were almost as varied as Sanction’s, including various humans, kender, and a scattering of half-elves, wild elves, dwarves, hobgoblins, ogres, and gully dwarves. The difference was that while Sanction’s people looked fed and prosperous under their circumstances, these people were ragged, thin, and harassed.

They seemed happy enough at the moment, though, as they cheered the caravan’s arrival. Children ran to the wagons and clung to the sides for a ride into town. Ulin found himself with five boys of varied ages hanging like sprites on the wagon and two more riding his oxen. They all grinned and waved to him.

Ulin returned their greeting and tried to look pleased. He combed his fingers through his wind-tangled hair, straightened his loose robes, and waved back to the people. It would be good, he thought, to claim the father’s body and get out of Flotsam as soon as possible. Maybe, if their luck held, they could return to Khuri-Khan with Garzan’s wagons within the next few days.