Chapter 24
A Dread Tide Rising by Walt Shuler
Happy Monday (if that can really be said). The last chapter was quite the gut punch. Will this one be the same?
Previously: Kye awakened to the powers slumbering within her, but Mattie was lost in the battle.
Currently: The Talon reckon with the new arrival while nursing their wounds.
A Dread Tide Rising is a serialized, pulp-flavored, epic fantasy novel that follows the Talon, a group of mercenaries, thieves, and smugglers, as they come face-to-face with an ancient enemy intent on the destruction of the Rakkian Empire.
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Chapter 24
The rigging creaked.
The reaver ship bore down on Sparrowhawk, and all the Talon could do was watch. Slaves manned the double bank of oars, and warriors stood ready on deck. Kye fought down a rising sense of panic. What would happen? Would the strange power that had manifested before come to her again? She tried to sense it within her body, but if it was there, the power was now slumbering. She wiped a tear from her cheek and picked up her bow.
“Here we go again,” Wynne muttered.
The remaining members of the Talon stood ready and resolute, bows drawn and arrows nocked.
“Hold until they’re closer,” Gorm said.
“They get too much closer, we’ll be able to reach out and touch ‘em,” Hax groused. Gorm did not bother to reply, just tightened his grip on the bow.
The slaver ship bulked large now, towering over the lower-lying Sparrowhawk. Kye caught glimpses of the slaves through the oar ports.
“Hold!” Gorm said again. Kye’s arm was beginning to shake. She could only hold it for a few more moments. The Estari ship neared with alarming speed.
“Get ready!” Gorm ordered.
“Shouldn’t they be making more noise?” Kye asked, the trembling in her arm even stronger. “I mean like Holua’s soldiers.”
“Maybe they’re trying to unnerve us,” Pax theorized, but Kye could see she did not believe her own suggestion.
Gorm drew breath to order the Talon to loose, but Wynne cut him off.
“Look!” she cried. “Someone’s waving!” She pointed toward the enemy ship.
Kye tried to look, but the sun was in her eyes. She could make out a figure waving its arms, but nothing beyond that.
“It doesn’t matter,” Gorm said. “Probably some trick to gain the advantage over us. Get ready to loose your arrows.”
As one, the Talon took aim. Kye found herself unable to look at any of the men she might kill. Slavers they might be, but visions of three burning ships haunted her mind, sinking in the cold waters as she watched. She closed her eyes and prayed to Mali that she hit someone.
“…stand down! Gorm! Wynne! Stand down!” a voice came to them, carried across the gulf between ships. Kye’s eyes flew open.
“What’s happening?”
Gorm and Wynne stared hard at the ship, confusion on both their faces. “Who’s there?” Gorm demanded in his booming voice.
“Thistlegorm, who in Azair’s hells do you think it is?” came the reply. There was something familiar about the voice, Kye thought, but she could not place it.
“It can’t be,” Gorm said in disbelief. “Mac?”
“In the flesh!” the voice came again. The reaver ship was close enough now that the speaker was clearly outlined, although the sun’s glare hid his features.
Kye felt her heart skip a beat. How could it be Mac? It had to be some cruel trick.
“Gotta be a lie,” Hax growled, echoing Kye’s thoughts.
“You make a lot of noise for a man who’s supposed to be dead,” Gorm rejoined. As the ship glided close, two men swung out over the water, landing on Sparrowhawk’s deck.
“Holua tried to kill me, but it didn’t take,” the shorter of the pair said with a laugh. Mac stood there with his arms open and a smile on his face.
Kye’s face split into an answering grin as Wynne rushed past her and grabbed the startled Mac in a hug.
“We thought he’d killed you!” she said.
“Now, now,” Mac said, patting her head while trying to disentangle himself from the embrace. He looked imploringly toward Gorm, but the big man only cocked an eyebrow, an impish smile on his lips. There would be no help from that quarter. Mac settled for enduring the hug; Wynne eventually released him and stepped back, wiping a tear from her eye.
“How are you here?” Hax asked.
“Sharp as ever, I see,” Mac replied. “You saw me jump off yon boat yourself, didn’t you?”
“No, I mean you were dead. Holua said he’d killed you with a crossbow and dumped your body out beyond the harbor walls. You’re supposed to be fish food.”
Pax said nothing, but her expression said she agreed with Hax.
Mac laughed. “It’s good to see you, too, Hax. I promise there’s an explanation for everything.” He looked around then, taking in the state of Sparrowhawk’s deck, littered with arrows. “But I don’t think I’m the only one with some explaining to do. What have you done to my ship?”
Gorm shrugged. “It’s not a long story. But first, do we need to do anything about your friends there? Estari reavers aren’t high on my list of preferred guests.”
“Oh, damn, I almost forgot.” Mac turned to the other man who had been standing silently by during the reunion. He was tall and shirtless, and his skin was an unmistakable blue.
“This is my friend, Da’alo,” Mac introduced the newcomer with a flourish. “Da’alo, this is the Talon.”
Da’alo nodded his greetings to the group as a whole.
“When the Estari fished me out of the water, Da’alo nursed me back to health,” Mac explained. “Then we, well, sorta took over their ship.”
“You took over an Estari slaver ship?” Pax asked, incredulous.
“Uh, in a manner of speaking. Might have been more than one.”
“What?” Pax’s eyes were wide. “You know the Estari don’t take kindly to that sort of thing, right? They’ll hunt you down to the ends of the empire.”
Da’alo’s grin was wide, but there was no mirth in it. “That’s just what I’m counting on, little sister.”
Pax raised her hands, palm out. “Long as you’ve got a plan. Sounds like you know your own mind.”
Da’alo and Mac laughed, and then the leader of the Talon turned and embraced the other man. “Thank you again, Da’alo, for my life and everything else.”
“No, little fish, it is I who must thank you. Not only are we free, but we have the means to exact our vengeance.” He gave a small bow, and then he was gone, swinging back to his ship.
The Talon watched the reaver ship sail away, Gorm standing at Mac’s shoulder. “It sounds like you had yourself some fun.”
“Fun? I wouldn’t put it that way. I did manage to keep my guts inside my body and avoid becoming a slave for the rest of my life, though, so I’ll take it as a win.”
“Made some new friends, too.”
“That I did.” Mac looked around the ship, taking in Kye’s wan expression and the arrow-strewn deck. “Now I think it’s time we had a little palaver. What’s been going on?”
“Come on, then,” Gorm said and led Mac into the galley. “Hax, you and the rest see what you can do about this mess.” He gestured at the arrow-strewn deck. “If we can salvage the arrows, we can replenish our stores.” He raised his head to contemplate the sails. “Someone will need to start mending those, as well.”
Grumbling, most of the Talon moved off to begin the tedious work of getting Sparrowhawk shipshape once more. In the galley, Mac took in Mattie’s body laid out on the table and Derro trussed like a prisoner with a single raised brow.
“There’s less to tell than it might seem,” Gorm said as the other members of the Talon crowded in. Kye stood at the side of the table, one of Mattie’s hands in her own. “That’s young Mattie there. He helped get me out of a tight spot back in Rom, and he was a stout companion throughout everything we’ve seen since then.” Kye shot him a look of gratitude.
“And Derro?” Mac asked.
Gorm’s face darkened. “That’s not Derro.”
Mac looked from Derro back to Gorm and then back at Derro again. Understanding suddenly dawned. “He’s one of those things?”
Gorm nodded.
“You’d best fill me in then.”
Leaving Mattie’s body where it was, Gorm grabbed a couple of chairs and outlined everything that had happened since they’d parted ways in Rom. As he talked, members of the Talon filtered into the galley, adding pieces here and there to flesh everything out. Afterward, Mac leaned back in his chair, digesting everything he’d learned.
“So, your friend’s widow isn’t a widow, and there’s a hidden cave beneath her home where shape changers are plotting something nefarious. Old Holua is somehow in bed with Thynne, and he knows that you stole his documents.”
“That’s the gist of it, I suppose,” Gorm replied. “Don’t forget about Derro.” He paused to glare at the sailor who was now bound, gagged, and awake. “I know I’m not.”
Mac heaved a huge sigh. “Ain’t this a pretty kettle of fish?” He stood up, stepping over to where Kye stood near Mattie’s body. “I’m sorry you lost your friend. He sounds like a true companion.”
Kye sniffed and nodded. “One more name to add to the list,” she muttered.
“What list?”
Kye looked up, and the ice in her eyes startled Mac. “The list of people I need to pay back someday. Holua’s on it now.”
Not knowing what to say, Mac turned to Derro. “What are we going to do with you?” he wondered aloud. Was that a flicker of fear in the man’s eyes? Mac wasn’t sure. If Derro were a shapeshifter, could you even read their emotions the way you could a human’s?
“Before we worry overmuch about Derro, I think we need to do something else first,” Gorm said.
“What’s that?” Mac asked.
“Well, it seems to me that there’s an awful lot of folks running around these days who aren’t who they say they are. Not even what they say they are.”
Mac nodded. “I’ll not disagree. There’s a fair bit of mummery going on, and we seem to have put our foot right in the middle of it.”
“Just so. And it seems easy enough for these shapeshifters to pass as one of us. Derro slept and ate with us for weeks before he made his move, and we could never tell the difference. And, well, you’ve been gone for a while now. You were even officially killed, and your body was dumped in the harbor.”
“And you’re thinking it would be all too easy for some shape-changer to have replaced me with you all none the wiser,” Mac finished for him.
Gorm nodded. “Always were a quick study.”
“What do you propose we do about it? How can I convince you I am who I say I am?” Mac left the table and slowly returned to his seat, aware that the atmosphere in the galley had changed and not favorably so.
Gorm shrugged. “Nothing comes to mind. They seem to be perfect mimics of whoever they replace. They even have their memories and body language.”
“Not quite,” Callan piped up from the doorway. “There were little things that seemed off, but I chalked them up to running the Straits.”
“Such as?” Mac asked, all ears if there was a simple way out of the situation.
Callan stepped further into the galley but kept his distance from Not-Derro. “Like I said, little things. We were talking about home, and he didn’t remember the color of our mother’s hair. Another time, he couldn’t remember Batis-Bota. He made out like the name eluded him, and we both laughed about it, but when I said the name, there was no recognition in his eyes.”
“It sounds like the shape changers can steal some memories from those they replace, but not all of them,” Gorm said.
“Good, then ask your questions.” Mac grinned and tipped his chair back.
Gorm raised an eyebrow. “In front of him?” he asked, indicating Derro, who had suddenly perked up.
“Uh, no, better we go outside for this, I think.”
“A wise decision,” Gorm said. The two men left the galley, heedless of Derro’s murderous glare. Callan followed them out. On deck, the freshening breeze picked at their clothing, blowing away the last vestiges of the fight.
Mac leaned on the rail and took a deep breath of salty sea air. “Ah, it’s good to be home, Gorm. It’s been a long, strange trip, but it looks like we might finally be getting closer to some answers.”
“Speaking of answers,” Gorm said.
“Right. Ask your questions, and let’s get this over with. It’s getting a mite tedious.”
“Hax!” Gorm called. The tall warrior set down the bundle of arrows he had been gathering and came to where Mac and Gorm stood. “I think you’ll enjoy this. I need you to cover Mac here with your bow. If I give you the signal, you put an arrow through his heart.”
Confusion gave way to interest on Hax’s face. “Sure,” was all he said as he located his bow and knocked an arrow. “I can do that.”
Mac looked from Hax to Gorm. “Is that really necessary?”
“You know it is.”
“Fine, but after this, I get to aim pointy sticks at you and see how you like it.”
“Whatever makes your little heart happy,” Gorm said with a slight smile.
Mac grinned back.
“When you and I first met Iron John, you called me a name. What was it?” Gorm asked.
Mac grinned. “A showboating bastard, if I recall.”
Gorm nodded, but was not yet finished. “Where did you and Molly first meet?”
“Easy! Rakka.” Mac tapped his index finger on the rail. “To be more precise, it was at the Sign of the Hawk down in Docktown. She sought us out and…”
“You couldn’t take your eyes off her. Almost forgot to charge her for the job!” Gorm finished for him.
“Hey, I thought I played it pretty cool!” Mac laughed. “But it would have been the best gold we’d ever lost.”
“Well done so far. Final question, then. What were your last words to your father?”
The smile vanished from Mac’s face. “That’s not anything I want to revisit right this moment.”
Hax’s bowstring creaked as he drew back. “Should I put a hole in him? Is he one of those shape changers?”
Mac glared, but Gorm waved it aside. “Answer the question, Mac. We’re not clear on what memories these things can steal and which ones they can’t. This might bear on the situation beyond this conversation.”
Mac’s brows stayed drawn down, a thundercloud that promised no good, but he answered the question. “They were harsh words. He was disappointed about my decision to go to Süt. I was angry that…well, I was angry, let’s leave it at that. He said I was a fool, that there were better paths that didn’t lead to premature death on a Rakkian spear. I called him a coward and stormed out. Never saw him, my mother, or my brothers, again.”
He turned away and stared out across the waves.
“I think that’s enough sharing for one day,” Mac growled. At Gorm’s signal, Hax relaxed his bowstring, a slight look of disappointment on his face.
“You want to go interrogate our guest now?” Gorm asked.
“Damn right, I do. Also, I had something of a thought. If Derro can be replaced that easily, who else might not be who they seem?”
“I can vouch for the crew,” Gorm answered.
Mac shook his head. “I was thinking of someone else,” he said, absently rubbing the still-healing crossbow wound. Gorm took his meaning immediately. Mac turned on his heel and stalked toward the galley. “Callan, why don’t you join us?” he called to the sailor, who fell in behind them.
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The adventure continues! Great reunion. When will they talk about Kye!?!
Phew! The gang is back together!