While Shaella studied something that was further across the bridge, Gerard studied the diverse types of fashion he saw people wearing. Here was a pair of men in red robes, and over there, was a peasant in rags. A lady, in a fine yellow dress on horseback, being led by a fully armored knight, had the crowds parting before them, as if they had the plague. A man in baggy silk pants the color of emeralds hurried past, a long, shining cape wavering after him. The variances were endless. But almost everywhere he looked, there was at least one uniformed man sporting a red wolf’s-head patch.
After finally leaving the crowds of Castlemont behind them, they came to yet another river bridge. This one was called Low Crossing. It spanned a small river that came out of the Wilder Mountains, just before it joined the main flow of the Leif Greyn. The town there, also called Low Crossing, was full of warehouses, and seedy looking men who wore the garb of river men.
They didn’t cross this bridge. While Shaella secured them a room for the night, Cole and Flick spoke with some workmen near a dock, where several barges full of wooden crates were moored. Gerard saw Cole pass a pouch to one of them, but didn’t concern himself with the matter. Shaella was returning, and he could tell by the look on her face, that she was going to spend this night with him. They didn’t make love, but instead, stayed up late kissing, laughing, and talking of the sights and wonders that had amazed Gerard. Eventually, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
When they had left there this morning, they did so by boat. The horses had been left behind. This fact concerned Gerard as much as getting onto the boat did. He had never been on a boat before. Shaella explained that their destination was deep in the southern marshes, and horses couldn’t travel there without sinking.
“We’re leaving the world of men behind,” she said, leaving him to wonder what other sort of worlds there might be.
It didn’t occur to him that there would be terrible dangers on this portion of the journey, at least not until he was brought out of his pleasant recollection by the sound of steel being drawn directly behind him on the river boat deck.
The huge Seawardsman, Greyber, swung his big sword in a wide sweeping arc slicing the abdomen of one of the deckhands open, and gashing into the thigh of another. Terror jolted through Gerard’s blood like ice. What was happening? Why? His eyes searched for Shaella, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. Not on the fore deck. Not down either side of the railed walkway that ran past the sides of the box-like pilothouse, sitting in the middle of the boat’s flat-topped deck. He didn’t see her inside the pilot-house either. He did see the boat captain’s head suddenly twist to an impossible angle, before he slumped out of view. Where was she? What was happening?
There! He saw her! A brief glimpse when the pilot-house door had swung open as Cole left it. She was on the rear deck. He started to go there, with this heart hammering in his chest, but his way was suddenly blocked.
From around the walkway, to the right, men were approaching. Greyber stepped in front of Gerard protectively, and took up a readied stance. Gerard was forced back into the triangular area formed by the side rails coming together in a point, and Greyber’s rippling tattoo covered back. From where he was, he could see Flick standing on top of the pilothouse. The black-robed mage was chanting and pointing a finger down at something on the rear deck. Gerard thought he saw tiny streaks of crimson light shooting forth from Flick’s fingers, but he wasn’t sure. The man’s back was to him, and the sun was bright. It could have been glinting reflections, but he was fairly certain that it had been some sort of magic.
One of the men in front of Greyber lashed out with a long dagger, forcing the big man to jump back. Gerard was pinned into the bow rails, and had to lean out over the water to see around his protector. Another man had appeared, making it three. This one held a crossbow, trained in their direction, but he was behind the others, so he couldn’t fire it yet. He was jostling to get past his mate at the corner of the pilot-house so that he might get a clear shot at Greyber.
What happened next was more instinct than decision. Had he thought about it, he might’ve curled up into a fetal ball. Instead, Gerard dropped down to his hands and knees, and crawled forward between Greyber’s legs. He felt them tense as the big man swung his sword. Gerard didn’t rise up immediately, for fear of the blade. When he was sure he was clear, he rolled to the right, and screamed into his mind for the crossbowman to fire into his fellow’s back.
Instantly, the rush of the ring’s magic filled his body. His senses grew sharper, and the fear was forced completely out of him. He rolled to his feet in front of the two men, just as the crossbow bolt flew. The face before him contorted in shock and pain, as the steel-tipped bolt tore into him from behind. He started to fall to the ground, and Gerard wasted no time making his move. He reared back, and swung his fist as hard as he could into the face of the bewildered man, who had just shot his friend. The man stumbled backwards, down the walkway, and fell in a tangle of limbs. Before he could recover, Gerard began to savagely kick him. Within moments, the man was a bloody, unconscious heap.
Leaping over the man’s limp body, Gerard charged to the rear of the boat. Shaella’s sword was glowing pale yellow, where it wasn’t streaked with blood. At her feet, Trent and three of the deckhands, lay dead or dying, and before her, a huge burly man seethed with anger, while clutching a severe gash in his side. A few hundred yards behind them, shouts erupted from the deck of a flat barge that was heavily loaded with crates.
“Go!” Shaella commanded.
Gerard looked up at where Flick was standing over them on the top of the pilot-house. The bald man’s image shimmered and sizzled into a misty, blue color. Then, to Gerard’s open mouthed amazement, Flick disappeared altogether. Cole stepped out of the pilot-house then. He glanced approvingly at Gerard, and then strode towards the back of the boat, fading into nothingness as he went.
“Look!” Shaella ordered the man before her. She pointed her blade tip towards the barge behind them. She looked fierce and beautiful. Her face was mottled red with rage and exertion, causing the tear-like scar on her cheek to stand out in its paleness. She’s a force to be reckoned with, Gerard thought proudly. She’s a natural born leader, with a wicked magical blade glowing in her hand, and I’m her lover. It was all he could do to pull his eyes away from her, to look at what she was pointing out to her wounded captive.
On the barge, Flick and Cole were stalking across the tops of the crates, blasting anything that moved with hot, crimson bolts of magical energy.
“Do as I say or you’ll die,” Shaella told the terrified man.
With a grim nod, he conceded defeat.
“As you wish,” he said, as he limped into the pilot-house.
Shaella flashed Gerard a triumphant grin as she followed the man. She was enjoying herself, he saw, and he found that he was too.
Of the men that had been on the boat with them, only her prisoner was moving about. He began doing something in the pilot-house that caused the boat to slow in the river’s current, so that the barge was suddenly coming upon them most swiftly. Beyond the barge, Gerard saw a huge, billowing plume of black smoke rising up into the air. He started to ask what it was, but the barge was coming at them so fast now that his train of thought was forced into preparing himself for the coming impact.
Just before the collision would’ve taken place, a handful frightened men, under Flick’s watchful eye, came down off of the crates, and bodily guided the river boat around the barge. Once they were beside the barge, Gerard saw the source of the dark smoke. A push-boat, or the flaming hulk of one, was drifting behind them in the current. A few men, and a lot of debris, were in the water around it. Some of them were cursing and splashing. Another was screaming horribly, and a few others were floating lifelessly in the flow. A rather large splash sounded, and the man who had been screaming, disappeared under the water. A large, rippling wake could be seen trailing towards the marshy side of the river channel. The others in the water suddenly grew very still.
It became obvious to Gerard what they were doing. They had pirated the barge. They were going to push it with the boat they were in. Gerard learned that the man Shaella had spared was a Water-Mage. Berda had told of them in one of her tales.
Water-Magi came from Highwander, and used some sort of elemental magic, Gerard remembered. They could make a boat move up or down a river, or in the case of Berda’s tale, across a stormy sea. Shaella confirmed this when Gerard asked her about it. She explained that the magi could only work their power on ships and boats fitted with transoms lined with Wardstone. It was the stone that held the power, she explained. The ability to command the stuff was a specialized skill though. One could only legitimately learn the art at the Port of Weir, in the Kingdom of Highwander. Willa the Witch Queen’s Castle, Shaella told him, was built on the only place where
