The Coastal Kingdoms of Olvion: Book Two of The Chronicles of Olvion (25 page)

Somewhere in a far-distant spot in the back of his mind Taggart registered that fact.  The King’s Sword himself came to see about her safety.

Glaid continued.  “When she killed the last one he sort of fell on her.  She was trying to push him off when others came in.  They were going to kill her because of what she did to their friends, but another one…they called him a Quartermaster?  Anyway, that man told them not to hurt her.  He said she was valuable.  As a slave.”  Her head dropped, and her shoulders shook as she quietly sobbed.

King Tyner signaled the same steward and told him to escort the girl back to her quarters.  When they had gone he sat back heavily in his chair and sighed.

“And there it is,” he said.  “I wish the news was better.  There is a very slight chance that she was able to slip away from them somehow between the courtyard and the ships, but I fear she is gone.”  He leaned closer to look more directly at Taggart.  “I was very fond of that girl.  She is a lovely woman and an excellent healer.  I would be on my way to being blind if it were not for her.  I want you to know that this kingdom will put everything we have at your disposal should we find a way to track them from wherever it is they came.”

At that moment Jo-Dal entered the office.  As he crossed the room to where they sat, Taggart saw for the first time that he was bandaged on one arm and his brow had been nicked by a blade.  A small trickle of blood had dried halfway to his cheek.  His uniform was torn in several places and there were stains on the left knee which looked like drying blood.  He started to salute, but Tyner waved the effort away before it began.

“Sit, my friend,” he commanded.  “You must be exhausted.  Do your wounds need attending to?”

“No, Your Majesty, they are minor.”  The warrior looked at Taggart.  “From your expression I gather the news about Healer Dwan is not good?”

“No, it appears fairly certain that she has been taken, but I need answers.  I intend to go after her.  The king has offered his assistance.  I need to know how soon we can mount a pursuit.”

Jo-Dal pulled over the chair that Glaid had been using and sat heavily.  He rubbed his face with both hands.  “Speed is not the issue.  I keep wagons stocked and provisioned to last a hundred warriors for an entire season.  We could muster a detail and leave by tomorrow morning, but we have no way to find them.”

Taggart must have looked either shocked or angry because the king quickly interjected.

“You must understand, Good Warrior.  These people come from a place that we have never before known existed.  They found us because I foolishly sent out an emissary searching for…what?  It seems so idiotic now.  I have always thought that there were other land masses out there somewhere with exotic people with whom we could interact and trade.  We of the three Coastal Kingdoms have never devoted any resources to broaden our horizons.”

“There was no way you could have possibly foreseen these occurrences,” Jo-Dal consoled. 

Taggart impatiently interjected.  “So, are you saying you have no way to find these people and recover my…our women?”

“That is the situation.”  Jo-Dal held up both hands.  “They must have intercepted our ship at sea and overtaken it.  We saw our engineer when they brought him to the gate, but we have not been able to speak to him or any of our crew members.  So we would have no means of detecting where they would be.  The pirates did all of the talking.

“The other obstacle that we would have to overcome is the actual transportation.  Even if we knew where to go, which we don’t, we have no ships designed for long distance travel on the sea.  Our fleet is comprised solely of small trade and fishing vessels.  If they stay at sea even overnight it would be unusual.  We trade with the other two Coastal Kingdoms, but we are so close to each other that their ships can make the trip in one day.  Any rescue ship would have to be large enough to carry a significant number of warriors and the provisions to sustain them for days or weeks at sea.  More importantly, they would have to be constructed so that they could withstand the stresses of the sea.  We simply don’t have any such vessels, and I am unaware of any of the other Coastal Kingdoms having any.”

Taggart rose from his chair and paced while he thought.  The other two men and Toria kept silent. 

Taggart looked back at King Tyner.  He was surprised to learn of his efforts to seek out other humans on undiscovered continents.  In all of his conversations with Dwan and others, Taggart had learned that the prevailing thought was that the continent of Maltania (the one in which the four kingdoms were located) was the only land mass on this world.  They qualified this reasoning by noting that there had been no record of contact from the sea.  Taggart had always thought that reasoning to be odd since the citizens of the four kingdoms, themselves, had never ventured out on the sea in search of others.

Toria was doing her best to remain silent, but a thought hit her, and she was unable to resist verbalizing it.  “Wait.  You said the pirates did all of the talking.  They spoke our language?”

The king and Jo-Dal both looked at each other with surprised expressions.

“By the Stars,” the king said.  “We have been so involved with ensuring the security of the castle and stronghold that we never even realized that.”

Jo-Dal stood.  “Yes.  They all had strange accents, but they clearly spoke Olvioni.”  He looked back at Taggart.  “How would that be possible?”

The king held out both hands palms out.  “The answer is obvious now.  They are connected to us sometime in the past.  Wait, let me get something.”

Jo-Dal came over to Taggart while the king searched in a large cabinet located next to his desk.

“I am very sorry about Healer Dwan.  If we are able to determine a manner in which to pursue her I will petition the King to allow me to resign as Sword and accompany you.  She and the other women were trusting me to provide them with security. I consider their taking to be my personal failure.”

In spite of the situation and his sense of immense frustration, Taggart found himself liking both of these men.  He put his hand on Jo-Dal’s shoulder.

“This was not a failure, it was war, an attack upon your kingdom by a larger force.  You were successful in holding them off for a long time.  It is simple bad fortune that they were able to find a way into the stronghold.  If they had taken just one more day to locate it their bodies would be feeding the flies now.    The force from Archer’s Gate along with the armies from the other kingdoms would have shown them what happens to those who make war on us.”

“That may be true.  I suspect that they had observers on the highest dunes.  They would have seen the dust being raised by a force as large as the ones you are describing.  When they found the place to tunnel under us they must have already been preparing to slink back to their home port.  We watched them loading their ships and assumed they were giving up on the siege.”  He shrugged.  “They fooled us.”

“Ah!  Here it is,” the king shouted.

They went back over to the wall upon which the cabinet was mounted.  Next to it was a chart table.  The king swept the table clean of other charts and maps which were already on it.  He then laid a small rolled scroll on the table and looked to the men.  Toria, now almost completely forgotten by the others in the room, wedged herself in between Taggart and Jo-Dal.  The king saw her actions and smiled.

“Is this young woman a relation?” he asked.

“My friend,” he responded.

Tyner smiled at her then turned serious again.  He slowly and carefully unrolled the stiff animal skin scroll.  Once fully opened he placed a small metal weight at each corner to hold it open.  Taggart looked at it.  It was about the size of a normal hardback book.  It had that appearance that all really ancient things had.  The king was engaged in silently reading the text that was written on it, his lips moving.

“Yes!  Here it is.”  He looked up at the men and down at Toria.  “This scroll is from the time of the first Great War.  This part,” he pointed to a line of text, “tells of a large group of our people who fled the coming war.  Groups from all of the coastal kingdoms were convinced that Olvion would not be able to hold the Lion’s Road against the onslaught of the Grey Ones.  They banded together on fishing vessels and other boats and ships that were in use at that time and simply sailed away.”  The king looked up.  “There were thousands of them.  The scrolls refer to them as “The Lost”.  There was never any word of them in any of the other scrolls that I have studied, and I have studied most of them.  It is my preferred pastime.  I trade ancient writings with King Pryus and King Minos.  Never have I seen even one additional mention of those lost people.”

Taggart considered this for a moment.  “It would appear more likely than not to me that these pirates are the descendants of those people.  The common language cannot be explained any other way, but,” he sighed and wiped his face with his hands.  “the information does not really help us, does it?”

The king and Jo-Dal both looked defeated.  That was how Taggart felt also.  He was on the verge of taking the largest fishing boat in the harbor and sailing out to search the sea for Dwan.  He had no experience in sailing and did not have the first idea as to how it was accomplished, but he was ready to try.  He could not simply do nothing.  He was still pondering his next move when the doors to the office swung open, and a warrior rushed in.  She crossed the room and saluted first King Tyner, then Jo-Dal.

“My Lords,” she said with a slight inclination of her head towards Tyner.  “There is a ship approaching the harbor.  It appears to be one of the pirate ships.”

***

Fauwler stood at the bow of the Dreadnaught with the wind in his face.  The smell of the salt spray invigorated him as it always did.  For the thousandth time he wondered why any man would elect to spend his entire life on dirt.  He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

“Captain, are you quite certain of this decision?”  The question came from Mal-Bree, First Mate of Fauwler’s flagship.

The Captain opened his eyes and looked at his friend and first officer.  Like all of the people in this world he had dark hair and eyes with a complexion that looked like he’d spent many days in the sun.  He was of average height, maybe five feet, six inches and had a large ruby in each ear.  Unlike most of the Kylee Pirates, Mal-Bree was educated.  He had been taught the principles of engineering in the city and kingdom of Marbus on the continent of Bantar.  His intelligence had been noted early in his life and he was eventually put on the royal staff.  Two years later he snuck away after having been beaten for spilling ink on a drawing.  He had made his way to Kylee and offered his services to Fauwler.  The young captain had recognized the man’s potential, and now he was second in command of the Dreadnaught.

“Certain, Mal?  No, not certain.  Hopeful would be a better word.”

“Well, hope is a good thing.  Sometimes.”

Fauwler smiled.  “Doubting your Captain?”

“Doubting you?  Never.  Doubting the capacity of a looted city for forgiveness?  Absolutely.  But I put my coins in your purse a long time ago.  You’ve never been wrong one time when it really counted.”

“Never, Mal?  What about that time in Aalgun?  We barely got out of that one with our lives.”

“Barely, yes, but get out of it, we did.”

Fauwler looked back to the coastal city that they had left just a few days before.  He had left the rest of his fleet and those of the other loyal captains in a large natural cove he’d found north of Aspell.  Then he had sailed the Dreadnaught close enough to the city to put watchers ashore.  They had sat offshore until the pirate fleet had departed, and his spies had signaled him with a simple fire.  Now he was preparing to take the greatest risk of his entire life.

The ship dropped all but one sail as it glided gracefully through the entrance to the harbor.  Fauwler saw the uniformed military of the city lining the wharf.  He was not surprised.  Once he was comfortably inside the harbor he ordered the stern anchor released and his boat lowered.  He took only two crewmen with him.  He refused Mal-Bree’s suggestion that he be one of them.

“No, my friend.  If this goes wrong our crew will need a captain.  Keep the anchor windlass manned.  If you see me coming back in a boat full of their military and my red kerchief is not in my hand you’ll know my gamble failed.  Raise anchor, and leave immediately.  Take the Dreadnaught, and follow whatever path you choose.”

“I’d argue with you, but that has never worked for me before.”

“And this time would be no different.  Now bring me our engineer friend.

Taggart watched from the shore as the small boat approached the wharf.  It had four men inside.  Two were rowing, the other two talking as the craft was expertly paddled through a light surf and came to rest alongside one of the low level piers.  A man hopped ashore and tied the bow and stern lines to cleats then extended a hand to help the other two out of the boat.  They were immediately surrounded and searched.  A ripple of discussion reached him as the warriors appeared to recognize one of the four men.  Taggart saw Jo-Dal part the formation of warriors and join in the discussion.  He was surprised to see the Sword of the King embrace one of them.  Then they were all walking back toward the castle stronghold. 

Taggart, accompanied by Toria, followed the procession up to the castle.  While one of the men from the boat was obviously a friend of Jo-Dal’s, the other was treated with suspicion.  He wished he was close enough to overhear their conversation, but the warrior detail was clustered around the group and would not allow anyone to get any closer.