Paul Thompson - The Wizard_s Fate

Tol, loath to fall asleep and leave himself open to Mandes’s manipulations, kept himself awake by regaling Early about his past, relating his adventures in the Great Green as a youth, how he had defeated the Dom-shu chief in single combat and thus earned his two “wives,” Miya and Kiya. He’d just begun to speak of XimXim and the Tarsis war when the kender interrupted him with a piping snore.

Tol sighed. He drained the last of the broth from his cup and hunkered down, facing the fire. His eyelids slowly closed.

Instead of the dreaded sound of Mandes’s voice, instead of the bitter, icy wind, Tol dreamt of warmth. He was on the Bay of Ergoth, the Blood Fleet under his command. The thumping of oars, the salt breeze, the hot sun were balm to his soul. He leaned against the mast of the quinquireme Thunderer and let the wonderful heat penetrate his bones.

“Ship to starboard, two points off the beam! A merchantman!”

Tol shifted his gaze. Though he’d given no order, the helm was put over, and the galley churned toward the tubby merchant ship. Sailors spilled out on deck, distributing cutlasses and pikes. A springald catapult on the poop was winched around and quickly cleared for action.

“Stand down!” Tol said. “We’re not attacking.”

No one paid him the slightest heed. Indeed, the pirates rushed past him as if he wasn’t even there. He tried to grab the nearest fellow and found he couldn’t. His reaching hands passed through the pirate’s sun-browned arms without hindrance.

The merchant ship piled on more sail and turned, trying to run from the powerful galley. The pirates unfurled a sail of their own, adding the wind’s power to their oars. Inexorably, Thunderer overhauled the clumsy trader. Soon Tol could see men stirring on its deck. Bronze glinted in the ship’s waist. They were preparing to resist.

The galley could have rammed the fleeing ship easily, but that would’ve destroyed the pirates’ plunder. They had to board her. Pulling parallel to the merchant, separated by only the length of the portside oars, the pirates trained the catapult on their prey and let fly.

Instead of a wooden javelin or stone ball, they flung a bronze-tipped arrow tied to. a long line. It buried itself deeply in the merchant’s hull. The galley’s portside oars were run in, and a dozen pirates hauled away on the line, drawing the two ships together.

A horn blared. Pirates swarmed over the galley’s side and onto the merchant ship’s deck. Iron clashed, blood flowed, and men toppled into the sea. Tol dashed back and forth, shouting for the pirates to cease, but he was a phantom to them, unseen and unheard.

— and then he was on the deck of the merchant ship. The ship’s waist was a busy battlefield, with sailors from both ships locked in fierce combat. On the sterncastle, men in Ergothian armor fended off twice their number in pirates. In the midst of the frantic throng, Tol spotted a familiar face.

“Darpo!”

Tol tried to go to his comrade, but his feet were sluggish, as though mired in mud. He could barely make any headway.

Bowstrings twanged. Pirates had gained the rigging of the merchant ship. Holding on with their legs, they drew and loosed arrows into the defenders. Tol watched in horror as one archer took deliberate aim at Darpo, unaccountably the only Ergothian warrior who wasn’t sporting a helmet.

“Darpo! Look out!”

With awful clarity, Tol saw the archer release. The arrow hummed forward, twisting through the air as the fletching caught the wind.

Darpo cut down a bare-chested pirate and stood back to draw a breath. At that instant he must have heard the arrow’s thrum, because he turned toward it-

— and received the broadhead in one eye.

Tol bolted upright, shouting hoarsely. Early sat, legs folded, staring across the small fire at him.

Uncharacteristically, Tol began to curse. Disheveled, the sweat rapidly cooling on him in the frigid night air, he clenched his hands into fists and cursed.

“What did you see this time?” Early asked. His voice was strange, low and deep.

“Darpo-my old friend Darpo, commanding the imperial fleet. I was on a pirate ship that attacked him.” Tol swallowed hard. “He was shot by an arrow-”

He shivered, then was struck by several thoughts. It was winter now, yet in his vision the weather had been warm. That could not be. Besides, Darpo was in command of Thunderer, not plying the seas on a merchant vessel being attacked by Thunderer.

“It must’ve been only a bad dream,” he said, forcing himself to breathe deeply, forcing himself to believe his own words. “Only a dream!”

“I fear not. What you saw was truth, disguised as memory and dream. Something grave may have befallen Darpo.”

The kender sounded so unlike his usual breezy self Tol said sharply, “How do you know all this, little one?”

“Sometimes I see far.”

Early’s face had taken on a completely different cast, more serious, more powerful-and was his skin darker than before?

Tol shook off the strange impression. Lack of sleep and raw nerves were affecting his judgment. Wasn’t that just what Mandes wanted?

He had intended to avoid all towns, but his peace of mind demanded otherwise.

“We’ll stop in Juramona tomorrow,” he told Early. “I want to warn Egrin myself of the danger he faces.”

It could be only a matter of time before Mandes turned his malign attentions to the marshal.

The high plain had turned from summer green to harvest gold and thence to winter brown. Beneath a leaden sky, an ocean of grass spread out before them, dry and stiff. Here and there, copses of trees lifted bare limbs sharp as talons to the sky.

As they rode briskly toward Tol’s old home, they spoke little. The wind of their passage was bitter on their faces. Gloved, caped, and hooded with furs, eyes squinted against the icy breeze, they cantered across the silent plain.

Late afternoon had come on the short winter day when they finally beheld Juramona. Tol hadn’t been back since leaving for Daltigoth with Enkian Tumult when he was but eighteen years old. The provincial town had grown steadily in his absence. The old wooden wall now sported stone towers, and the spans of timbered bulwark in between were slowly acquiring a thick skin of cut stone blocks. The marshal’s High House, on its mound overlooking the town, had been whitewashed. It stood out starkly against the slate roofs and unpainted houses below it.

Footmen were closing the western gate for the night when Tol hailed them. Shading their eyes against the rays of the setting sun, the soldiers delayed until Tol and the kender rode through the gate.

Riding down the dusty lane, Tol was assailed by a deluge of odors, some sweet, some foul, but all with meaning from the past. Frying meat and local beer, livestock and garbage mingled with vigorous, unwashed humanity. Tol drifted in a nostalgic haze. Only when he saw Early had halted ahead and was waiting for him to catch up did he snap out of it. This wasn’t the time to reminisce.

Guards challenged them at the foot of the ramp leading up to High House. They were young, local boys, cold and bored with guard duty, but they crossed poleaxes in front of Tol’s horse and recited the required challenge: Who was he? What business did he have in the High House?

Tol pushed back his fur hood. “I am Lord Tolandruth of Juramona. This is my companion, Early Stumpwater.”

The young soldiers gaped. If the emperor himself had appeared before them, they couldn’t have been more surprised.

“My lord!” stammered one, a stoutish fellow. “We didn’t know you!”

“I have business with Marshal Egrin.”

The soldiers hastily backed away, and Tol spurred Tetchy forward. Early followed close behind. They galloped up the spiral ramp, drawing curious stares.