The Red Hand was above tasks such as sailing and fishing.
But…if he killed the small sloop’s crew, he and his disciple would have no one to help him get across the ocean. He could intimidate and threaten the three-man crew, and there was nothing they could do to stop him—they wouldn’t even be able to lay a hand on him—but he and his disciple couldn’t sail the ship alone.
So he sat on the stern of the ship, holding a fishing net out over the water. He wore a plain brown cloak over his black frock coat, and he had wrapped a frayed strip of cloth over his blood-red glove.
“How far do you think we are, sir?” Khara, his one remaining disciple, asked. She held a bucket of wood chips between her legs. Every so often, she reached in and picked up a handful, then scattered them off the back of the ship. The sprinkles on the surface of the ocean would attract fish, which they could scoop up with the net.
The Hand glanced over his shoulder for a second. The sloop, the Seabrick, was a pathetic, thirty-pace long vessel that could barely survive the high seas. It had a single mast in its center, with a long yard stretched across it. Right now, they had one sail up—one giant triangular sheet. The sail had probably once been white, but it was so sun-bleached and patched-up that it was off-brown.
It had no superstructure nor any raised decks. Weapons? One of the sailors had a crossbow, and the other carried a longbow.
But it was something to get them moving. After the chaos in the Greanewash harbour, there hadn’t been many ships left to take across the ocean.
“You feel the temperature getting warmer?” the Hand asked. “The strong easterlies are pushing us down in an arc. We’ll pass some small, backwater islands. If you thought the Elven Continent was bad…well, these will make their land look grand. Then we’ll hit Half-Crossing, and—”
The Hand cut himself off. Khara was a seafolk; she was from Half-Crossing.
“And we will pick up a better ship at Half-Crossing,” the Hand said, restraining himself from providing any colour-commentary on the island. Sure, Khara wouldn’t be able to hurt him, nor would she even show a reaction to him, but the Hand had been training her for over two years now. He knew her, and he knew that she wasn’t in the right headspace for a conversation like that.
“When do you think we’ll find the heir?” Khara demanded, clenching her fist so tight that sawdust leaked out from between her fingers. “Or Leursyn?”
“They’ll have to stop for supplies at some point. We will stop at every island they could have passed and ask about airships.”
That seemed to satisfy her for the moment.
The Hand had his best guesses, though. He’d seen the flocks of Rustlers soaring high up in the air, screeching as they tore through clouds and ripped flocks of birds to shreds. When there were no birds, the beasts went after low clouds, swiping through them until the mist was all but scattered.
It didn’t take a scholar of sacred beasts to know that they were agitated. If there was an airship, they’d have gone after it.
And on and on. It led the Hand to a conclusion: Dulfer’s Reach was the most likely place the heir stopped. It was close by, had an air harbour, and there were plenty of supplies to repair a ship after a Rustler attack.
The Seabrick was planning on stopping there, anyways, so it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to hop off and look around.
“Sir!” Khara called. “Scoop it!”
The Hand’s eyes flashed back to the water. A couple fish snapped at the surface of the water, their silver scales glimmering. The Hand hooked the tip of the net onto a wooden spar, then pushed it to the side, scooping the net through the water. It snapped up a pair of fish. Working together, he and his disciple hauled it up out of the water.
Khara used a boar-Path technique to enhance her strength. She funneled soft red Essence from her Familiar, which manifested in the air as a link, and flooded into her arms. It illuminated the Essence channels she was using, strengthening her muscles and bracing her bones. Without a winch, she and the Hand hoisted the net up out of the water. They dropped it unceremoniously on the stern deck.
“You’ve been practicing,” said the Hand.
“It was only with your guidance that I formed a five-Timber foundation, sir.” She shook her arms out, scattering Essence into the air. “But I still can’t hold the Brute’s Brace for too long, and it was starting to strain my channels…”
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“That means you need to keep practicing.” The Hand drew his sword and stabbed both fish in quick succession. He grumbled, “We’ve got plenty of time, after all.”
“I’ll practice until I can punch a hole straight through that elf’s chest.” She paused, glancing back at her boar. It must have said something. “Or…if you need to kill him…then I’ll just make sure to deal with the traitorous sprite filth.”
“I need the Heir’s head,” said the Hand. “In a state that it’s…recognizable. It should be my hand; I would trust no one else.”
“Then let me have Leursyn,” Khara whispered. “For Nael.”
“You don’t need me to lecture you about rage.”
“No, sir.”
The Hand stood up and began to walk back towards the bow of the ship. Soon, his exile would be over—even if it meant bending the terms and leaving the Elven Continent. He would redeem himself to the Emperor of the Dominion. Instead of catching a ride aboard a small sloop, he would again have armadas under his command.
When they had left Greanewash, there hadn’t been a single un-damaged warship in the harbour, and certainly nothing as fast as the Seabrick. Despite its name, it managed a decent pace.
When the Hand had made it a quarter of the way along the deck, he passed under a small tarp. The sloop’s captain stood beside the tiller, holding it steady while his two employees trimmed the sail.
“We are stopping at Dulfer’s Reach, correct?” the Hand asked.
“Oh, indeed!” The captain’s eyes lit up, and he eagerly said, “You’ll be…getting off and finding a different ship, aye?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
The Hand hadn’t told the captain his name or his purpose. Without his glove visible, he could have been anyone. They seemed more afraid of Khara than him—she hadn’t hidden her magic or her Familiar.
“That’s my business,” said the Hand.
“All’s well enough, I s’pose,” the captain mumbled. “But we ain’t waitin’ on you. Once we drop off the mail for the city—and those casks of ale the Saltsprays requested—we’re outta there.”
“I’m sure we can find another ship,” the Hand said. “So long as you don’t need the extra hands.”
“We’ll make do without two strays fishing off our stern, or varnishin’ the railings. About all you’re good for.” The captain shook his head. “Your wizard friend could probably hoist somethin’ now and again, if she wasn’t gettin’ so exhausted just from looking at her hairy pig. And you’re just a sack of meat with a sword.”
The Hand snorted. “You should be careful who you say that to. My ‘wizard friend’ may obey my commands, and will tolerate it so long as we need you. But there are other wizards out here.” He stared at the man intensely. If he killed the captain, maybe the rest of the crew would fall into line…
Or he’d have to kill them all, and he’d be stranded.
Shaking his head, the Hand said, “I can’t picture any of the island sects letting you off lightly for that.”
The captain inched away from the Hand cautiously. “Then it’s a good thing we won’t be lingering.”
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By evening, Dulfer’s Reach appeared on the horizon. The Hand stood at the Seabrick’s prow, holding a rope while the sailors tugged on it. He kept his gaze glued to the island.
A dark cloud of Rustlers swarmed around its peak, dipping and soaring in the currents of the Eane. They wouldn’t glide low enough to attack a ship, nor any of the shore settlements, but they had already started destroying the treeline higher up the slope of the mountain.
The Seabrick sailed to the sandy side of the island and sloshed up to a pier. The harbour was built in a sheltered bay, and although it was too shallow for any respectable ships, it was bustling with sloops and a few small Dominion warships.
As soon as the pier was parallel with the Seabrick’s hull, the Hand and Khara jumped down. Her boar squealed for a second, until she commanded it in her native language. The boar pranced up on the railing and jumped down to the pier as well.
Everyone in the port was buzzing. Dominion soldiers patrolled up and down the docks, and every ship seemed to have a personal sentry posted. But if they were worried about Rustlers, swords and spears wouldn’t do them much good.
When the Hand found a Dominion low-marshal, he immediately stopped the ostal, putting a hand on his shoulder and demanding, “What’s going on?”
The ostal sneered, then tried to push the Hand away, but the Hand shifted to the side, maintaining his grip. “I asked you a question, marshal. Answer me.”
“Shove off, vagabond, or I’ll bring you to Dulfer and slot you into a repair crew.”
The Hand pushed back on the ostal’s shoulder while swiping his legs out from beneath him with a kick. The ostal fell hard on his back, gasping for breath. A bunch of gasps arose from the crowd, and a pair of soldiers sprinted over.
The Hand nodded to Khara. She took down both of the soldiers with a quick, Essence-enhanced punch.
Oh, it felt good to throw some weight around again…
Bending over the low-marshal, the Hand pulled his red glove out of his pocket and dangled it. “Do you know what this means, marshal?”
The marshal stammered for a few seconds, but he said nothing intelligent.
“What is going on here, marshal?”
“W—wizard!” the marshal sputtered, finally. “An Embercore! Beat up a platoon of soldiers, then ran off! We don’t know where he went, or if he’s still on the island. I swear it on the Eane…sir?”
The Hand straightened up, then turned to Khara. “It’s him. We have a hunt.” Without waiting for her to acknowledge, he began to walk away. First, he unclasped his cloak and let it fall off his shoulders, then he tugged the strip of fabric off his glove.