David Farland - Sons of the Oak

The children quickly began to explore the ship. The decks had been scrubbed clean by salt and sun and water and wind. Everything looked immaculate. They walked the main deck and could see down through a metal grate to the oarsmen’s galley, where crewmen had begun taking seats on stark wooden benches.

Along the way, they passed small wooden catapults with iron baskets. Piles of iron shot were laid out neatly nearby.

At the prow, the children climbed out onto the serpent’s long neck, painted golden white on the bottom going to sea green on the sides and black on the back. The long crocodilian jaws were full of oversized teeth, and the serpent’s eyes shone like silver shields.

Fallion’s heart hammered at the sight, and he climbed out on the neck, his legs straddling both sides, as he peered down into the water. On the hull of the ship, sea stars in orange and purple crawled among anemones like bright flowers of green and gold. Minnows darted in the shadow of the boat, and some leapt to the surface as a sea bass drove up from the depths.

Fallion was in for a grand adventure.

He could smell smoke faintly, and realized that the fog had begun to lift. Then he remembered that Myrrima had been down in the coracle, and most likely, she’d cast a spell while out of sight to lift the fog.

An animal shrieked behind him, and Fallion turned to see a sea ape-a silver-haired gorilla standing eight feet tall, with a spiked club in one hand, yowling at them. It had yellow fangs and a deep red mouth. Its fur was long and wispy, like the fur of a yak. It raised the club as if warning the children to get down from “my spot.”

Fallion quickly began to back off his perch, but some sailor shouted, “Yeep. Yeep!” and the ape leapt up and raced over the forecastle on its knuckles.

“Did you see that!” Jaz cried from the head of the serpent. “A real sea ape!” His face split into a grin so wide that it looked as if he could swallow a plate.

“Yeah,” Fallion said in awe. Sea apes were great swimmers and powerful warriors. Sailors from beyond Inkarra sometimes kept them, not as pets, not even as slaves. Instead, the sea apes sometimes became attached to a person, developed a deep reverence for him, something that was said to go beyond love or even worshipfulness.

I shouldn’t be smiling at the thought of seeing a sea ape, Fallion thought. Mother is dead.

For a few minutes, he’d managed to forget. But now the memory of the loss hung over him like a pall, and his spirits fell.

Fallion noticed that the ship had begun to move, and he could see the oars splashing the water, raising whitecaps.

None too soon. The fog began to lift rapidly. For long minutes the children just sat on the bow, as if leading the way, while the ship set off for the far side of the world.

Fallion watched for a long hour as they made their way out to sea. The fog lifted altogether, and he could see columns of flame rising from the white towers at the Courts of Tide, a plume of gray smoke like a rising thunderhead.

Behind them, from the harbor, came a smaller ship with black sails, almost as if it were giving chase.

Fallion didn’t know if it was really trying to intercept them, but he imagined the ship to be full of enemy troops from Beldinook, powerful Runelords hunting him, led by Asgaroth himself.

Fallion suddenly felt trapped. For the next few months, his whole world would be bounded by the rails of the vessel, and somehow he suspected that he was not alone. Asgaroth had been hunting him since birth.

Would the locus just leave? He could be anywhere. He could be here now, on this ship, inside one of these men. Or he could be on the ship that followed.

He won’t leave me alone, Fallion realized.

As if to prove his fears, Captain Stalker took the helm and eyed the black ship suspiciously.

He ordered the sails unfurled, and once they were full of wind he watched for a long time as the black ship began to lose ground. He told the helmsmen, “We can outrun them. Keep this course through the night until second bell, then set course due east.”

That afternoon, Borenson held his long knife at the ready, his right leg forward, his left foot half a pace back, toe pointed out, while his shoulders hunched low and his buckler formed a moving target, protecting his side. It was the classic fencing stance, and like most practiced fencers, Borenson’s thighs and calves were overlarge, evidence of his long hours of practice.

But so were Fallion’s. The calluses inside his thumb and on his palms fit perfectly against the haft of his blade. Indeed his hand fit the blade so well that it seemed an extension of his body. Only the buckler was unfamiliar. It was an Inkarran device, called a viper, much used on the far side of the world. It was shaped like a teardrop, thick in the middle while the bottom portion tapered into a sharp blade for stabbing. The sides were sharpened so that they could be used as a slashing weapon. The viper was equally handy as defensive armament and as an assault weapon.

Fallion danced back and forth, sometimes feinting an attack in the Deyazz style of fighting with scimitars. It was a form that Fallion liked. It tempted opponents, causing them to strike at imagined openings. But a good fighter in the Deyazz style was always careful to keep his body moving in unexpected directions, so that the opening disappeared even as the opponent committed to his attack.

Borenson smiled. He liked the game.

Borenson lunged, blurring in his speed, aiming his long knife straight at Fallion’s eye. Though the knife was blunted, a puncture wound to the eye would still be fatal.

Fallion dodged left, swinging his head mere inches. Fallion was trained to block such a blow with his buckler, bring it up so that the edge clipped the ganglia on the opponent’s wrist, numbing his hand and most probably disarming him.

But Fallion dove under the attack, striking Borenson with the blade of his viper, a blow up into the armpit. At the last instant, he pulled his punch, lest he puncture the armpit for real, and the crowd of sailors that looked on, hanging from the rigging and leaning against the railings, shouted “Two!” cheering, even as Fallion leapt back to avoid reprisals.

Two points. Not an instant kill, but a slow one, one that would weaken an enemy, wear him down. The blow would have severed Borenson’s artery, causing him to bleed to death in a matter of minutes.

Borenson pushed the attack, lunging while Fallion was off-balance. The boy leapt to the side, putting a mast between him and his opponent. Borenson rushed in, but Fallion leapt to his right again, keeping the larger man at bay.

The sailors cheered as if it were a dogfight.

Captain Stalker peered down from the forecastle and watched with dull interest.

“Pretty good, eh?” Endo asked. “For a kid?”

“Good,” Stalker replied. Stalker had an eye for fighters. In his youth, his master had supplied gladiators for the arenas at Zalindar-old warriors from Internook, captured slaves from Innesvale-and so he was no stranger to blood sport.

But Fallion astonished him. In retrospect, he should have known that the boy would be well trained. But many a clod could be trained. No, Fallion had a gift for fighting, Stalker decided.

Even that should not have surprised him. He was bred for it, over hundreds of generations, sired from Mystarria’s greatest warriors.

The combination of breeding and training very nearly awed Stalker.

And right now, he was trying to decide if Fallion was merely exceptional for a child, or if he might someday grow to be the best he’d ever seen. “The boy is young yet, but give him six years…”