Craig Saunders: Tides of Rythe

Foaming white spume flecked the air. The cliffs were white and grey where the gulls nested. They flew out to sea flapping madly against the harsh wind until they were caught in its snare and snatched high into the air, only to plummet into the surf below and struggle up with fish. The long grass — no tree was brave enough to grow here — was blown flat against the rocky earth from which it sprouted. Rocks gave in to the elements and crashed below, splashes obscured by the smashing waves and endless wind.

The ocean vented its frustration at the land. Eventually, the sea would win.

Elsewhere, high summer was beginning to make itself felt. The lush fields in the more southerly Sturman lands would be parched and cracked under the baking sun. Here, in the distant north, summer was only a thought and a wish.

Bitter cold taunted bones and the sharp, wet wind stung flesh. There was nothing here for men. Just solace. Perhaps repentance. Few would choose to make such a place their home.

As each season passed the north slumbered as it always had. Thaxamalan waited in his mountain home, his baleful eyes shut and crusted with ice, while heldin frozen sleep for eternity as Carious and Dow shunned him with their warmth.

Here, there was nothing. No smells, sounds, feelings but those made by the sea and wind.

Shorn, mercenary to some, friend only to his companions on a strange journey across the lands, stood staring out across his home, the home of his heart and the home of youth, and watched, as he watched each day, waiting for the Seafarers to answer his call. A month’s ride to this place was distant for him. He knew it to be much greater for the Feewar, those who roamed the sea.

He scanned the horizon each day for as long as he could bear, waiting for the Feewar ship. While he waited for the vessel, he prepared. Hardening his heart for the meeting he knew would come soon. He was waiting for the Feewar, but he had also come to ready his soul. The barren outcropping seemed a fitting place. His sword, honed to undying sharpness, was clutched in his white-knuckled fist, his hand frozen onto it.

The suns’ rays had tanned him, even though their heat was only blown away. He was leaner by far — there was little sustenance to be had from the land. Each day he came to the top of the cliffs at first light. Each night he left, climbing down to his camp and the waiting Harlot, his surly mare. Before he ate and slept he trained. He had made himself a pair of soft hide trousers and a bracer of thicker leather for his right arm. His shirt was still in tatters, providing little protection against the steel brace that supported his crippled left hand. Some days he would take the brace off his leg. It grew stronger ever day. His left hand, though, would still not clench with full strength. The scar on his forearm had turned red and healed in thick hard flesh, curving in toward the bone. The muscles there would never heal, he knew, because they were absent. Instead, he trained his leg back to health and practised using his arm as a balance for the sword, using the flaring metal of his arm brace as a second weapon, his left forearm blocking and slashing in time with his sword. It was just another blade, and he was a master with all blades. He invented movements where there were none. His left hand may have been gravely injured, but the brace granted him support and flexibility where the hand faltered. To an outsider it looked as though a master practised. To Shorn it felt clumsy and slow.

He knew he was faster, improving in this odd new style. It would not be enough when Wen came for him.

Wen, the weapons’ master, Shorn’s old tutor and the man who had given the mercenary his battered look, with a scar that still stood proud across the middle of his face, splitting his nose once and leaving behind a shattered remnant, would come.

Wen would look into Shorn’s eyes, take the measure of his student’s soul, and see the death his weapon had wrought. He would try to put him down. Shorn would strive to live, as he always had. Life, and his sword, was all he had to call his own.

But when the battle came, Shorn would understand Wen. The time he had spent alone on this cliff had given him new insight. Drun, his companion on this long journey, was right in some sense. The old priest had told him once, on the trail that had led him to this place, ‘only people are truly worth fighting for’. Shorn had broken that creed. All his life, he had fought for money (pride, too, he admitted, if only to himself).

But there was no avoiding destiny. Drun Sard was right about that, too. Meeting Wen was inevitable, as was the fight that would follow. Shorn had no doubt Wen would find him here. He, too, would have heard Shorn’s call to the Seafarers. That Wen would come was certain. The Seafarers…well, that was down to fate.

Time alone had granted Shorn patience, and insight that was surprisingly common in a man of war.

Today, Rythe’s twin suns high above him, he would meet Wen again. Then he would find out if all the honing had been for nothing.

Spinning on his heel, he blocked high with his flared brace, an imaginary adversary slashing down toward his head. His sword whistled through the wind, decapitating another enemy that wasn’t there. He reversed his grip on his sword, and thrust the tip into the midriff of his first attacker. The sword sang.

Destiny on Rythe pulled men into it as surely as the immense gravity of the twin suns. Carious and Dow, as the glowing sentinels were named, watched all. They waited, patient but never silent. Some creatures, such as Shorn, burned brightly while they lived. Some artefacts, too.

The sword he wielded like an extension of his will shone with its own light. The sword had a name, too. Once, long, long ago, Carious birth a second sun, a second star, and an ancient enemy was defeated.

Many fates exist. Sometimes they come together and seem like one. Faerblane, the sword that had chosen him, would meet its twin today. Perhaps they would move on.

The sword rested against the hard earth. Shorn took a deep calming breath.

From behind him a voice eroded like the cliffs said, “I knew I would find you here.”

Man and sword turned to meet their fate.

The suns were long set, but still the thick heat of high summer burnt the tongue and made bones heavy. Within the city of Lianthre, people took solace in the evening’s mild respite from the days heat, thankful for their cold baths, grateful, even, those whose weekly wages did not run to fuel for their fires. Even the many taverns of the city served cold meats, raw fish from the western coast, or plain breads and cheese, sometimes garnished with pickles. No oven burned.

None stirred from their homes but the hardiest of drinkers, determined to struggle through the oppressive heat to their cups. They could be found late at night in any city, the accomplished drinkers, fighting the weather from summer through spring. Of course, the best drinkers stayed where they were, no matter the season.

Nothing could deter a seasoned drunk from travelling to sup his ale, but they were the only people walking the dark streets. They were safe from cutthroats and footpads, but even the safest of cities pose their own dangers. Danger was not something a man could avoid, whether he lived in the company of people, or alone in the wilds but for the woodland creatures. Under the bright glare of the sun danger often lurks. During the night, even one such as this, danger looms.

Thieves did not prowl the streets. Something worse roams the alleyways of the greatest city in all of Rythe, the capital of the world as much as it was the capital of the continent of Lianthre. Thieves existed, but those that made it past their childhood years did so through an enhanced sense of self-preservation. At night, the city belonged to the Protectorate, the enforcers of the Hierarchy. While the Hierarchy remain aloof, above the petty lives of their human charges, their will was carried out by the Protectorate — a guard of sorts (should the guard practise torture and murder as a deterrent rather than a punishment), an occupying army, a legion of judges and executioners. Their features are as alien as the stars themselves, for no aspect of their countenance could be considered human. Though their actions do not mark them peculiar to humanity, it is the excess, the unstinting attention to pain in all its guises that is remarkable.