Chapter 27
A Dread Tide Rising by Walt Shuler
Monday is upon us again! Here’s a new chapter of ADTR to go along with it. Hope your coffee’s hot and your workday short.
Previously: The Talon made it to Rakka had a warm welcome from Taina.
Currently: Some of the crew deal with delivery troubles.
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 27
Moonlight streamed in through the window, illuminating three beds and two sleeping figures. A third figure moved slowly across the floor toward the window. A floorboard creaked, and the figure stopped, listening for changes in the breathing of the room’s two other occupants. Hearing nothing, the figure slipped to the window and gently pushed it open. Then came a slithering sound, and a coil of rope descended the outside of the inn. As the figure grasped the rope and stepped out, twisting in the night, the moonlight picked out strong, angular features and broad shoulders. And then Hax was gone, descending to the street and leaving Mac and Gorm asleep in the room behind him.
Hax moved quickly and surely through Rakka’s night-dark streets. Only once did he hesitate. A pair of city guards came toward him, pikes on their shoulders, one carrying a half-shuttered lantern. Hax slipped back into the darker shadows within an alley, muscular frame pressed against the bricks, breath held as the pair moved past. The guards did not so much as pause, and as soon as the light from their lantern faded, he was moving once more. It took him almost half an hour to reach his destination, a dilapidated warehouse on the very edge of the docks. The lingering stench proclaimed the place’s primary role of storing hides for the tanning process. Tonight, it served a different purpose.
Hax studied the entrance for a moment. The massive door hung on an iron track. Wheels at the top allowed the door to roll from side to side, ensuring easy access for wagons loaded down with raw hides entering and empty ones leaving. He raised a fist and rapped on the door, three short knocks followed by three slow ones, then three more short knocks.
Immediately, the door slid aside, revealing the slim, bearded man who had bumped into Pax on his way out of the Hawk earlier that evening.
“Well, if it ain’t the mighty Hax,” he said, a greasy smile flashing behind his beard.
“None of your guff, Heddy,” Hax growled, all but shoving the man out of the way as he pushed into the warehouse. “What’s this meeting about? We told you we’d set the when and where.”
“See, that’s where things get a little murky,” Heddy said, sliding the door closed behind Hax. “Where do you and your sister get off telling us how we’re to run things in our own city?” He stepped into the shadows, disappearing into the darkness of the interior, leaving Hax standing alone. “We’re the Faceless and we run things hereabouts.”
Light flared in the dark as a torch caught fire. Then another, and another. Soon, Hax saw he was ringed in by torches. It was not the flames that bothered him; he knew that each torch was carried by a thief of no little fighting prowess. He noted that most of them were big, burly men, all wearing the Faceless mask.
“Is that what this is about?” Hax asked, loosening his sword in its sheath. He did not want trouble, but if it found him, he was prepared to take as many of them with him as he could. “Just some sort of pissing match? You need to see who’s the bigger man?”
“Not so much,” a woman’s voice drawled. The surrounding thugs moved back.
“What then?” he asked.
“You broke the terms of the contract. You were to deliver as soon as Sparrowhawk entered port in Rakka.”
“We only just arrived today,” Hax protested. “And like Pax told ya, things have changed. We need to renegotiate the deal.”
“Renegotiate? Getting greedy, are we? Perhaps you overestimate the value of your delivery. Or maybe your ability to stay alive in the present circumstances.”
Hax swallowed hard. “Ain’t neither of those. Pax was going to tell you, but seeing as she’s not here, I’ll do the telling.” He let go of his sword hilt and held his arms out, palms up, then took a step toward the woman. “We want out of the contract. Things have changed, and we can’t guarantee delivery no more.”
The woman considered him from beneath a thick hood, then heaved a deep sigh. “You want out of the contract,” she repeated.
Hax nodded.
She shook her head. “You’ve worked with the Faceless before, both you and your sister. You know that once you take a contract, there are only two outcomes: completion or death. You also know that we took a risk hiring both of you after that business on Shaweh when no one else would.”
The thugs surrounding Hax murmured at that, several reaching for their weapons. Hax’s hand found its way back to his sword hilt.
“It don’t have to be that way, though. I’m telling you, things have changed.”
The woman stepped forward then, into the circle of light cast by the torches. In one fluid motion, she pulled her hood back, revealing a spill of dark hair and a half-mask that covered one side of her face. The mask caught Hax’s attention. It was white, while the men gathered around wore black masks. That meant she was high up in the guild. “You think I care about changes?” she demanded. “I want my daughter back, fool!”
“Daughter?” Hax sputtered. “Lady, I gotta tell you, that girl’s a danger to everyone around her.”
“She’s here, in the city. In that god-cursed inn with the rest of your people,” the woman spat.
“So she is,” Hax agreed, trying his best to be amiable. He most certainly did not want to die in this miserable warehouse. “But that don’t change the fact that we can’t deliver. She’s too damn dangerous. You didn’t see what she did to those ships.”
“Ships?” the woman asked, only mildly interested.
“Ships,” Hax nodded. “She sank ‘em. Four ships, matter of fact. In less time than it takes to tell of it.”
“You’re lying,” she accused, one hand reaching into her garments. Hax knew she likely carried a throwing dagger there, probably poisoned.
“Not a whit, lady. Gorm says she’s a weather witch, but I’ve not seen one with that much power. Called down lightning from a cloudless sky and set fire to the ships before she sent them to the bottom.”
“Assuming I believe you, which I don’t, why would my daughter do such a thing? What reason would she have to sink warships?”
Hax shrugged. “They came for us; meant to do us in right enough. They killed her friend, too. Young kid.” He squinted at the masked woman. “Mattie? Something like that.”
The woman gasped, short and sharp. From anyone else, Hax would have dismissed it as nothing, but this lady was something else. That piece of information had filled in a part of a puzzle for her. But what part?
“He’s dead then,” she whispered. She bowed her head for a moment, and when she raised it, Hax imagined he could see the glimmer of unshed tears in the eye not covered by the mask. Then her expression changed, and all he saw was steely determination. “I’ll have my daughter back and you and your sister will live up to the terms of our agreement or pay the price.”
Hax opened his mouth to argue, but she held up a hand, and he wisely said nothing. “Three hours after dawn, you’ll bring her here to the docks, to this very warehouse. You’ll find some excuse to come down to the water, and you’ll bring her and your sister, no others.”
“Fine,” Hax grudgingly agreed. “But you force us to do this, our fee goes up by ten percent.”
The woman laughed. “You’ve got stones, I’ll grant you that.” She thought for a moment. “Fine, ten percent. Never let it be said that the Faceless don’t hold up their end of a bargain.”
Hax must have looked doubtful because she continued. “Think about double-crossing us and you’ll learn why the Faceless are so feared within the Inner Rings. Fail to deliver her by the appointed hour and you’ll wish that you had.” She glanced toward Heddy. “Make sure this fool makes it back to the inn in one piece. If he fails tomorrow, you can tear him to pieces.”
Hax caught a grim smile from Heddy before the thief grabbed his arm and ushered him toward the door. Hax heard grumbles from the assembled thugs and counted himself lucky to have escaped without a fight.
At the door, Heddy left him with a few last words of warning. “Don’t think you can get out of this, neither. Word is she’s high up in the leadership hereabouts. Got some pretty hefty pull. More than likely, she’ll live up to her promises.”
Hax grunted but did not bother to reply. Heddy was a low-level thief and not worth the time or effort.
“You hear me, Hax? Think yer so high and mighty. Don’t deliver that girl and you’ll get what’s comin’ to ya!”
“Enough of your guff,” Hax finally said. “If you want to keep your face the way it is, I’d shut that mouth.”
Heddy glared but realized pushing Hax right now was not the best idea. They walked the rest of the way in silence, occasionally skirting roving patrols without issue.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” Heddy said when they arrived back at the inn. “And, word to the wise, don’t think about trying to skip out. It’ll go the worse for all of you.”
“I’ll be there, little man,” Hax growled. “You just make sure you’ve got my payment, plus ten percent.”
Heddy laughed. “Oh, you’ll get your fee and then some,” he promised, before disappearing into the night.
“Right. And I’m the bleeding emperor,” Hax grumbled, before scaling the inn’s wall and clambering quietly through the window to the room he shared with Gorm and Mac. No one raised a cry, so he assumed that his absence was not noticed and climbed into his bed. It was a long time before sleep finally claimed him, though.
Dawn’s gray light was just filtering through the window when Mac shook Hax awake the next morning.
“Rise and shine,” Mac said. “We’ve a passel to do and only a little while to do it, so let’s get a move on, eh?”
“What? What do we have to do today?” Hax asked, knuckling sleep from his eyes.
“Molly wants us to meet her this morning somewhere down by the docks,” Mac answered as he walked toward the door. “Depending on how that goes, we’ll likely be headed back to Sparrowhawk by afternoon, and off this rock before the evening tide.” The door closed behind Mac and Gorm, leaving Hax to grumble alone in the room.
Hax would like nothing more than to be away from Rakka and back on the sea, although he always preferred a scheme that generated some income to the penniless wandering they had been doing lately. He would have to figure out a way to get Kye away from the group and then rejoin the Talon with no one the wiser about where the girl had gone.
A moment later, there was a brief knock at the door, and then it cracked open. Pax slipped through the opening, a frown on her face.
“All right, brother,” she said, sitting on the bed and looking him in the eye. “What came of last night’s meeting?”
“We’re still on the hook if that’s what you mean,” Hax groused. He kicked the blanket off and rose, standing in front of the wash basin. The water was cold but better than nothing as he tried to wash away the exhaustion he was beginning to feel in his bones. “Met the girl’s mother of all things. She wants her kid back and isn’t prepared to take no for an answer.”
“You explained that the situation changed, though, right? That she’s not safe? She’s a risk to everyone around her?”
Hax shrugged. He had done the best he could to convey that information. “I did, but I don’t think she believed me. And why would she?”
“What aren’t you telling me, Hax?” Pax sat very still, eyes hard.
Hax shot her a sideways glance while he toweled his face dry. “We’ve got to live up to our agreement. They won’t let us out of it, not without blood and pain, at any rate. Delivery is this morning, three hours after dawn, down at the docks.” He glanced out the window. “It’s gotta be, what? A half-hour past dawn already?”
Pax frowned but nodded. “Nearly. So, you’re telling me that we have to somehow get the kid, slip away from Mac and the others, and deliver her to the Faceless all within the next couple of hours?”
“That pretty much sums it up.”
“Bastard,” she cursed, throwing his blanket at him. It bounced off his head and hit the wash basin, knocking it to the floor. Water splashed across his feet. “This is what happens when you send a man to do a woman’s work.”
“I suppose you’d have gotten us out of it, right? Well, I hope your evening was worth all this,” Hax replied. He did not complain too much, though. There were much worse things she could have thrown.
A smile quickly flashed across Pax’s face and then disappeared. “None of your business, brother.” She crossed the room to leave. “Get ready, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not much time to do it. Somehow, we’ve got to live up to this impossible deal, thanks to you.”
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This chapter made me pretty mad! Hax better redeem himself someday...still waiting...I keep thinking he's cool, then not and then cool again.
I mean, it’s good he wants out of the deal…