Douglas Niles - The Messenger

Spirits were high. The day after they battled the big seal, they came upon a small group of Arktos, survivors from the Goosepond Clan. These told a tale much similar to the Bayguards-the ogres in their great rowing ship had set upon them from the sea, killing many, carrying others away as prisoners. The fifteen Goosepond women and children were nearly starved and gratefully accepted the comfort and company of Moreen’s clan. After partaking of a fine feast, they joined in the northward trek.

“We’re lucky, in a way, that the ogres left us so little,” Dinekki said with a wry chuckle as she joined Moreen on a rocky headland and gazed ahead at the approaching stretch of shoreline. “Otherwise, how would we carry it all?”

Though she hobbled awkwardly, her posture bent, her weight supported by her staff, the old shaman never showed signs of slowness or age. The coast was rugged and precipitous, and again and again they had to curve inland to avoid the steep-walled ravines that regularly plunged to the sea.

Moreen looked back at the file of her people, carrying their waterskins and few weapons. They carried dried meat suspended on sticks, while some of the stronger females carried bulky bundles of furs, in addition to the few spears and harpoons they had saved.

They started along a pathway that followed the edge of a high bluff. Moreen’s eyes drifted toward the horizon, where the setting sun lingered. All too soon, she knew, that warm orb would vanish for the long, dark winter, and within days of that disappearance they would face the brutal, lethal onslaught of the Sturmfrost.

She couldn’t help but wonder: Would the Arktos ever see another spring?

Bruni came up to join them, the big woman actually dwarfed by the great pack on her shoulders. Still, she climbed the hill with an easy, rolling gait and pointed inland as soon as she joined her two tribemates. “Look there,” she said, with an urgency that broke through Moreen’s reverie.

“What?”

“Men … six of them, just coming onto the next summit.”

Moreen saw them now, little spots of movement with pale, heavily bearded faces and fur cloaks that blended smoothly into the brown terrain. “Highlanders!” she guessed, as one of the men raised a hand in a slow, ceremonial wave. “They want to parley.”

The man who had gestured broke away from his companions and hastened down the slope of the hill with one of his fellows advancing a few steps behind. The other four remained standing, watching from the summit.

“Come with me,” Moreen said, starting down from their own elevation at a pace she calculated would meet the Highlander at the shallow stream below. Bruni descended too, as her escort. As the strangers drew closer, Moreen saw that the first man was wearing a large wolfskin cloak. The head of the creature, with jaws split to bare white teeth, rested as a cap on his skull. Eyes of golden nuggets gleamed from the animal’s sockets, while the man’s face was masked by a beard of rusty red. His hair, in two long braids of the same color, dangled from beneath the wolfjaw cap all the way down his muscular chest.

The Highlander halted on the bank of the opposite stream, and Moreen came to a stop just across the quiet, shallow waterway. The second man, who bore a heavy spear and a shield, stood a few paces behind his leader, while Bruni quietly took the same position behind the chieftain’s daughter.

“Greetings. I am called Lars Redbeard of Guilderglow.” The Highlander’s accent was thick but intelligible, his tone friendly but neutral. “I bring you salutations from Strongwind Whalebone, King of Icereach.”

Moreen snorted contemptuously at the thought of anyone arrogant enough to consider himself king of all the known world. “I am Moreen Seal-Slayer of the Arktos. What does Strongwind Whalebone have to say to me?”

Lars bowed stiffly. “Strongwind Whalebone has heard of the sufferings faced by your tribe. He knows of the ogre cruelty, and he wants you to come to him in Guilderglow. He commands an audience.”

“Commands?” Moreen’s temper flared. “Who is he, to give me commands? Tell your ‘king’-” she spat the world with clear mockery “-that I take orders from no one, not ogre nor Highlander.”

“No!” Lars Redbeard looked dismayed, and shook his head. “You don’t understand. He wants to talk-”

“He can talk all he wants to!” she replied, infuriated, “but he should not dare to presume I will listen! We are proud Arktos and Goosepond people. Now, get out of our way-and let us continue on our path!”

“I cannot tell him this!” the emissary protested.

“Tell him to come here, and I will tell him myself!” snapped Moreen. Trembling in rage, she turned her back and left the Highlander gaping in disbelief.

A vague grayness seeping through his swollen eyelids suggested that the hour was past dawn. Kerrick felt the gentle rocking of the deck, but for a blessed moment couldn’t recall how he had come to be aboard his boat. Even without opening his eyes, he knew this was Cutter beneath him-perhaps it was the smell of the fresh varnish or some subconscious awareness that he was, at least for the time being, safe.

He tried to open his eyes and failed, the effort sending jolts of pain stabbing through his forehead. When he lifted his arm he groaned aloud at the agony, a broken rib jabbing him in the side, and with that sensation his memory, his anguish, came flooding back.

Finally one eyelid cracked open. It was daylight, and he lay on deck, though a heavy overcast thankfully muted the full painful glare of the sun. Without moving, he became aware of a gentle shift in orientation, as the boat spun gradually in the arms of an inexorable current.

“The anchor?” He croaked the words aloud, realizing he was adrift. The resulting sense of alarm was enough for him to push himself upward to a sitting position. Each movement provoked overpowering sensations of pain, but at last he could rest his head against the bulkhead and look across the deck, out over the waters of the Than-Thalas River.

He quickly realized that it wasn’t the sky that was overcast, for the gray haze extended down to the water. Instead, something else was obscuring his vision. It was not a cloud, or even a thick fog-rather it was like a heavy layer of gauze draped across the world. Wincing, he rubbed his eyes, breaking dried blood free, finally opening both and blinking.

Everything was masked by a bizarre gray haze.

Magic! He remembered then: the king’s wizards, chanting powerful words, weaving spells with their supple fingers, wrapping a cloak of sorcery around the sailboat as she stood at anchor in Silvanost Harbor. Kerrick had lain on the deck, gasping. Somewhere in the distance Waykand Isletter was laughing, taunting, jeering at the young sailor while the enchanters worked their arts.

Just before that he had been heaved into the waters of the harbor by guards of House Protector, a group of rough-handed fellows who had hauled him down from the palace. They chose to douse him close to the fishing sheds, in water that was foully polluted. Somehow he had bobbed up amidst fish guts and scales and slime, his broken rib hurting with each flailing movement. Kerrick had no memories of climbing aboard his boat, nor did he recall who had cut the anchor. A glance toward the bow showed him that the iron weight had been hoisted aboard. Perhaps he had done so himself in a daze.

Peering toward the riverbank, he could barely make out a horizon of lofty towers, crystalline bridges, and verdant, rolling hills crowned with marbled mansions. He knew there were brilliant flowered gardens cascading down those hillsides, though the magical cloak around his boat seemed to sap the view of every hint of vibrant color. Somehow Cutter had drifted out of the harbor, and the current was carrying him away from the island of Silvanost, a disabled passenger on the river’s eternal course toward the sea.