The Strength of the Few by James Islington - 2

EMISSA SITS BY MY SIDE as I lie there. She strokes my cheek absently, murmuring gentle reassurances, and then green eyes dancing as she laughs at something I’ve said, though I immediately cannot remember what it was. Her long dark hair falling over her smiling face. Falling over mine as she kisses me. Never once letting my attention wander.

I know, distantly, that there is something wrong with my arm. I feel its ache through her soothing. But as long as she is here with me, it is bearable. As long as she is with me, I will be alright.

My eyes open once and there’s blue sky. They open again and there are bright stars in a moonless night. I hear waves. The creak of wood, the splash of oars.

Those waking moments, my shoulder afire, all I want is to close my eyes again. I know she is a dream. I know she is not real. I still need her back.

Sometimes, just the fiction is comfort enough.

But eventually, as if a warm blanket has been stolen away, I wake.

Clarity comes slowly. I can’t find the energy to pry my eyes open straight away. There’s a rhythmic rocking, the smell of salt, the snap of a sail, and the gentle slosh of water all around. Damp boards at my back, and a spring breeze ruffling my tunic. Not aboard a large ship, then, else surely I’d be belowdecks.

My drowsing mind strains to catch up. There was that circle of bronze blades, the words carved on my arm. The blocked exit back to the Labyrinth, and then…

And then that strange white rotunda amidst the snow, high on the mountaintop, flickering in and out of reality.

Blood.

My left arm gone.

I exhale shakily. Grief in the act. I don’t have to look to confirm it—the pain there is more than enough—but I prise my eyes open anyway. Squint against the minor agony of the sunlight, twist my head away from the cloud-dotted blue above.

The sodden bandage around the short stump jutting from my shoulder is more black than red. My throat closes at the sight.

“ Tá sé ina dhúiseacht .” The growl comes from above my head. I swallow my anguish and try to shift, managing enough to see the form of a man a few paces away. The stranger responds to my movement, coming to crouch beside me. He’s muscled. Clad only in simple breeches. A mass of intricate whorls and patterns cover his torso, startlingly blue against pale skin. “ Bheith fós .” He’s addressing me, this time. His tone’s not pleased, but it doesn’t seem overtly aggressive, either.

I moan and shake my head, trying to indicate I don’t understand. I go to speak, but only a dry rasp comes out.

The man disappears briefly, returning with a waterskin and holding it to my lips. I drink too eagerly, choking on the first gulp.

“ Mall .” Gruff, but insistent. “ Ól go mall .”

I nod, getting the gist, letting the water trickle down my throat this time. It helps. I lie there until I can pluck up the resolve to sit.

The big man growls as soon as I awkwardly move, using a single finger on my chest to force me back down. “ Bheith fós .”

I scowl, though there’s more irritation than malice in his act. I’m not bound. I don’t think I’m a prisoner. “I don’t know what you’re saying.” A blank look in response. “ Dydw i ddim yn deall ?” I venture, trying Cymrian, which to my ear sounds the closest language I know to whatever this man is speaking. It doesn’t change his expression.

Before long I’ve dredged up enough wit to croak out the same thing in four other languages—including Vetusian, which I have the vaguest sense of having heard in that strange rotunda, though I can recall nothing of what was actually said to me through the shocked agony of those awful moments. None of it seems to make a dent, regardless. The stranger proffers the waterskin again. I accept gratefully. That, along with a sharp sea breeze, banishes any lingering mental fog. My breathing eases.

I move to rise again and this time, when the man goes to restrain me, I growl in response. He pulls his hand back in surprise, then barks a laugh and backs off.

After a brief, clumsy struggle into a seated position with my back propped up against the hull, I take stock. Our boat is small: barely twenty feet long and crudely constructed, just a single mast with a square white sail in its centre. Aside from the man I’ve been attempting to converse with, there are only two other occupants.

The second man watches me curiously from the tiller but offers no greeting. Like the first, he looks wild. Fierce. The same long red hair that seems caked with some sort of white substance, allowing them both to spike it high and back, stiff despite the breeze. The same swirling, elaborate blue marks on his naked torso, too. The symbols remind me more than a little of Eidhin’s tattoos, but these are thick and bright. Painted on.

The third stranger reclines near him at the other end of the boat, asleep. Across his chest lies a staff. Wooden and gnarled, intricate carvings that divide it into several distinct sections covering the rowan. Hard to see his features from this angle, but he’s swathed in a white cloak. I have a hazy memory of someone on the mountaintop, just before I passed out, wearing the same. That can’t be a coincidence.

I point. “I need to speak with him.” My vision swims; the staff seems almost like it’s glowing. I shouldn’t have sat up.

“ Fos .” Tone and frowning demeanour indicate the answer well enough. I hazard an attempt to stand and immediately collapse back again, to the laughter of the two men. It’s an ugly sound, no sympathy in it.

I revise my earlier assessment. Perhaps I have no bonds because they are simply not needed.

“How did you get me past the Seawall? Where are you taking me?” I mutter it hazily and point forward this time, my gaze roving across the water. The swells sparkle blue. Lush green coastline rises to our right; we’re skirting the shore, though nothing’s familiar over there.

“ Bhailcnoc ,” says the man closest to me, guessing the query and gesturing in the same direction.

“ Bhailcnoc ,” I repeat. The name of our destination, perhaps. Or the word for “village,” maybe. Or “city.” Or “home.” Or gods-damned “where we’re going to kill you.” No way to tell.

My gaze drifts to the sleeping man and I consider yelling to stir him, but my initial spurt of energy upon waking has already dissipated. I’m suddenly, unbearably tired. The rocking motion of the boat is too sharp for the waves.

I lie down, to the evident satisfaction of the men watching me, and search again for the comfort of Emissa’s imagined company.

“ÉIRIGH SUAS.”

I groan at insistent prodding, and open my eyes. A perfect starlit sky sways above. Water still slaps wood. I do not know if only the one day has passed, or several.

I haul myself awkwardly into a seated position, almost slipping as I instinctively go to use my left arm. The man in the white cloak stares down at me, his staff retreating from where it was about to jab me once again. He’s approaching forty, slender where the other two are burly, his long red hair curling well past his shoulders rather than spiked up. A thick beard covers his chin. Blue eyes study me.

I recognise him.

“You… remember me? You… speak this language?” I address him hopefully, my ancient Vetusian more than a little rough, but surely good enough to recognise.

His brow furrows. “ Cén teanga í sin? ”

Vek. “There was a… white… place,” I say slowly, enunciating each word. “In the mountains. Snow. Two others. You… spoke?”

The man just frowns, glancing around at the other two as if to ask whether they understand any better. When he gets only shrugs, he sighs.

“Cian,” the white-clad stranger addresses me again, pointing to himself.

“Vis.” I poke myself feebly in the chest, swaying unsteadily with the motion of a larger wave. Still weak, and worse, without any natural sense of balance.

Cian sees it too and mutters something, digging behind him and producing what appears to be some salted fish along with a waterskin. My stomach growls. I accept both eagerly.

Cian chatters away blithely at me as I scoff down food and water, some semblance of strength returning with the sustenance. From the way the sound of his speech occasionally changes, he’s trying different languages on me. The other two men remain at the far end of the boat and seem to lose interest after a few minutes.

“Do not make words,” Cian says suddenly, so cheerfully and absentmindedly that I almost don’t register that I can understand him this time. “Danger.”

It takes all my self-control not to react. It’s that same awkward dialect of Vetusian. I keep chewing and continue to scan the coastline, not looking at him. The swells are tipped with faint silver. Lush hills rise ahead and to both sides; we’re in a bay, I realise, headed for what appears to be a collection of simple houses surrounded by a spiked wooden barricade. Wisps of cooking smoke drift above it into the faint promise of dawn. A rough jetty protrudes.

“ Bhailcnoc ,” I presume.

“We were to kill you at the island. I have delayed it. But not much.” A stream of some other tongue, delivered equally cheerfully, me still gazing ahead at our destination. From the corner of my eye, I see no sign of the other two men showing interest in us. “Tonight. Be ready. Cause no trouble before. Touch head if understand.”

I scratch my head absently, still looking out over the starlit water.

Cian throws up his hands in exasperation and calls something across to his companions, who chuckle. He wanders back across to them and engages in what sounds like casual conversation, disregarding me completely.

My mind races, pain and exhaustion and confusion all secondary now. I keep my expression curious, my stance relaxed, as the shore slides closer. I have no idea where I am or even how long we’ve been travelling, but I have an ally. First step is to get away. Worry about everything else later.

We dock, a lone sentry dressed in muted green hauling us in as we drift into the torchlight of the jetty. Cian alights first. His white cloak, I notice for the first time, has intricate green embroidery, interlocking whorls not dissimilar to those painted on the two warriors’ torsos. He offers me a hand as I rise unsteadily, and I accept the help onto solid ground. Balance is going to be an issue for a while, I think.

When I recover enough to set my feet, I have a spear levelled unwaveringly at my chest.

There’s some brief, animated discussion, the woman on guard evidently surprised by my presence, before she steps back and I’m being marched off the dock and past the spiny wooden barricades. The structures beyond are simple affairs, round with thatched straw roofs, the walls made from wattle and daub. The empty paths between them are little more than torchlit, muddy tracks. Where are we? I can’t place the style, and I can’t think of anywhere in the Republic that would be allowed to have kept their town’s defences, however rudimentary.

I stumble several times, a combination of imbalance and exhaustion, until I’m being guided into a windowless hut with a slot for a locking wooden beam across the door. The structure is supported by a single pole in its centre; a smouldering fire in a clay pot, set into the floor, illuminates benches covered with animal skins, but nothing else. I sit without invitation. My breath is short, vision swimming. Even this small exertion has been too much.

Cian watches my struggling, then says something to the two warriors. They eye me and leave, shutting the door behind them.

“They will return in moments.” His detached demeanour vanishes as soon as we are alone, his words barely breathed as he crouches in front of me, producing something from a small pouch on his belt. A vial, green liquid in it. “Drink.”

“What is it?” I whisper too, examining it warily.

“It will help you sleep. Deeply. You will feel restored when you wake.” He sees my lingering suspicion. “You are still weak. You cannot be so if you hope to escape tonight, and tonight is our only chance.”

I take the vial reluctantly. “Not sure I need help sleeping,” I mutter to myself in weary Common, and then, “Why do these men… want… kill me?” Far easier to translate than to dredge the right Vetusian for my own speech, unfortunately.

“Not these. The ones on their way. Ruarc and the Grove.” He hesitates. Eyes meeting mine. “They fear you, Traveller.” A half question hidden in the answer, I think, but there’s a call from outside and Cian flinches before I can say anything.

“Drink. Now,” he urges again.

A hundred more questions bubble through my weariness. The names he just mentioned mean nothing to me; I want to know who they are, where I am, what in all the hells happened to my gods-damned arm in the Labyrinth. But there’s no denying the urgency in Cian’s voice, and for all my confusion, he does seem genuine in his concern for my safety.

“When we are free, I am to take you to meet someone. I do not have their name, but I am told they will be known to you. Will speak your tongue,” the white-cloaked man adds quickly, seeing my doubts. “They will explain all.”

It’s the mixture of determination and reassurance in his blue eyes, I think, more than the sudden hope of the words. I grimly down the green concoction in one swift motion, almost choking at the bitter taste, and hand the vial back.

The door bangs opens a heartbeat later and Cian tucks the empty bottle away, unseen by the warriors at the entrance, before turning to them. “ Fós aon rud ,” he growls, shooting me an irritable look. “ Ná lig aon duine isteach nó amach go dtí anocht. ” The latter is an instruction of some kind, I think.

The two men step aside to let him by, Cian leaving without a backward glance. The door shuts.

There’s the heavy thud of the beam outside being dropped into place, and I am alone.