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.”
19
It is in the nature of things that we often get to choose our friends, but rarely get to choose our enemies.
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…”
“A Son of the Oak,” Endo said. It was a compliment, a reminder of the spooky way that the world was changing, with a new generation growing up stronger and smarter than their elders, better in so many ways.
“Aye,” Streben jested, “he may only be nine, but he fights like a ten-yearold.”
Several men laughed nearby, but somehow the jest angered Stalker. He didn’t like someone making sport of another for being good at what he did. That was a pastime for losers.
Streben was his sister’s son, and at seventeen he was a tall boy, lanky and strong. He fancied himself a fighter. But he had a cruel streak and a cowardly one.
Oh, he had enough bravado to kill a man, but he’d only done it once, and he’d done it from behind. He had a penchant for picking fights at port. One night, after such a skirmish, he’d ambushed a man in the night, and then bragged about it when they were far out to sea, beyond the reach of any lawmen.
The boy rolled to the side to avoid Borenson’s next few blows, keeping the masthead between them, and Streben laughed. “Boy knows ’ow to run!”
But Stalker realized what the boy was doing. He was playing out the fight in his mind, making it real. If Borenson had been a real attacker, he’d know that he was bleeding to death, and he’d press the fight even as Borenson was doing now. At the same time, his quickened heartbeat would pump the blood from his armpit ever faster. By now he’d be down a mugful of his life’s blood, and his head would be reeling from the loss. A few more seconds, and the boy would be able to take him with ease.
Borenson feinted left and attacked right, his long knife going slightly wild, as if he were losing focus. He was into the game, too.
