Cold constricting around his chest. Rushing in his ears. Current pulling him along. Nuthea’s hand gone. Vision obscured by white spray, water, white spray again. A mouthful of water. Another. A gulp of air, enough to keep fighting a few moments longer. Being dragged downwards by the weight of the armour. Frantically kicking his legs and flailing his arms to try to fight the downwards drag. Panic. Not knowing how to swim.

A scrap of sound.

“—he is! Help him out, now!”

A hand grabbed Ryn by the arm and yanked hard against the direction of the current.

Pain flared in his shoulder and he thought his arm might pop out of its socket, but Ryn cooperated with the hand all the same.

Another hand found his other arm, pulled.

And then he was up and out of the water, being hauled onto a grassy riverbank by Sagar and Elrann.

He fell to the grass with a thwap, landing face-down, and tasted soggy earth. He never thought the taste of it could be so sweet.

“—stupid pup!” Sagar was saying. “Why didn’t you tell us you couldn’t swim?”

“Yeah, farmboy!” Elrann joined in. “Why shouldn’t you be able to swim? It’s not like there aren’t any rivers or lakes in Efstan! It doesn’t make any sense!”

Ryn raised his head. Like him, they were completely soaked. Sagar’s hair hung like curtains over his eyes and his ponytail stuck limply to his neck. Elrann looked like more of a typical girl for once, her purple hair seeming much longer than usual when wet and plastered to the back of her head.

Ryn ignored their jibes. He couldn’t keep himself from grinning at them, so glad was he still to be alive. “Sorry. What can I say? For some reason I’ve always had this funny thing about water... Never been so keen on it...” Nuthea, he thought. “Nuthea!” he said, looking around frantically.

“I’m here,” Nuthea called from further up the bank. Cid and Vish were with her too, all of them dripping wet.

“Were we followed?” Ryn stood up to survey the river, grass, hills.

“No,” said Cid. “I think we took them completely by surprise. The train carried them off before they had a chance to react. Even if they stop and back up that will still take some time. But all the same we should get as far away from here as we can as quickly as possible.”

“You are correct in that,” said Vish. “They did not follow immediately, but they may still try to. And they had Elpis with them. You should get moving.”

They trudged up the riverbank. A light breeze blew cold against their wet bodies, chilling Ryn’s clothes inside the armour he still wore and making him shiver. Before they had jumped from it, the train had been wending its way through a green, hilly country in which they now found themselves. They traipsed to the top of the nearest hill to get their bearings. The sun was still climbing the bright blue sky, and west, in the direction it was heading, the hills stretched out as far as they could see. In the east they grew to snow-capped mountains.

“Does anyone know where in Mid we are?” said Ryn.

“We’re in Zerlan!” exclaimed Elrann at the same time. “I’d recognise those mountains anywhere! We’re in the foothills of the Pelnian mountains which border Imfis and Manolia!”

“Look!” said Nuthea, pointing.

Over the hills in the east, close to the mountains, its source obscured by one of the larger hills in that direction, was an unmistakable plume of steam, its tail getting slowly further and further away.

“They haven’t turned back.”

“Of course not,” said Vish. “You are merely an irritation to them, not a distraction worth diverting their whole course for.” He still says ‘you’, not ‘we’. “Though you should not assume anything. They may still have sent someone after you.”

“Like that Lady Shadowfinger?” said Nuthea. “‘Elpis’?”

“Perhaps.”

“We should really keep moving then,” said Ryn, beating Sagar to it, who closed his mouth and frowned.

“Which way?” said Elrann.

“Towards Manolia, of course,” said Nuthea.

This time Sagar got there first. “But we’ll never catch that train now—they’ll beat us there, princess, and invade before we can arrive to warn them.”

“Not necessarily…”

They all looked at Nuthea standing sopping wet at the top of the hill.

She bit her lip. Once again Ryn got the distinct impression that she knew more than she was letting on.

“Alright,” said Sagar exasperatedly, “come on, princess—give up the goods. What are you not telling us?”

“I—”

“She can tell us while we are moving,” said Vish, grey eyes scanning the hills. He began to walk, and everyone followed, except—

“HOLD ON!” yelled Elrann.

They all stopped and looked round at her. Her cheeks had turned nearly as purple as her hair. Nearly.

“You should not shout so loudly, girl…” hissed Vish.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Aw, hush up, bountyhunterman. If anyone sneaks up on us I’ll just shoot them like I shot you. What nobody seems to have remembered is that while we may still have our weapons and our lives, thank Yntrik, we’ve lost our packs. It looks like a good day or two’s hike to those mountains, and then we have to get through them, and I for one ain’t too sure our wilderness survival skills are up to a high enough standard to get us through all a’that without any supplies. I say we head to a Zerlanese settlement first and get stocked up—hopefully none of you were so dumb as not to keep your coin about your persons, like I did. I reckon I’m familiar enough with this part of the country that I could sniff out a town out for us.”

“Um, it’s not entirely true that none of us have any supplies...” said Cid, swinging his satchel around to his front by its strap. “I managed to keep hold of this during our escape, and as well as my healer’s provisions it has a little food. Since it was sealed up the contents are all dry and intact, despite our little swim.”

The twitch in Vish’s face did not escape Ryn’s notice.

Cid pulled some waybread, salt beef and a bit of cheese out of his bag. His eyes roved the group. “Did anyone else manage to hold on to anything?”

Nobody volunteered. They all seemed, indeed, to have lost their packs and supplies during the chaos aboard the train.

“Ah.”

A pang of guilt went through Ryn’s stomach. But it was soon swallowed up by hatred as he remembered what had led him to reveal himself on the train. Mum. Dad. Cleasor. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea.

“Well, that settles it, then,” said Elrann. “Instead of south-east, first we go north to find a Zerlanese settlement to restock at. Princess-girl can explain why we’re not in a rush after all on the way.”

Nuthea’s mouth dropped open. “I never said that we were not still in a rush. I just said we were not in as much of a rush as you might think. I want to carry on in the direction of Manolia—”

“Princess!” Sagar snapped. “There is no way we can make it through those mountains with just a bit of bread and salted meat! Not even just the two of us could manage that! You’ve employed me to do a job, but I can only do it if you’re still alive.”

Nuthea opened her mouth again, but then something flickered in her eyes and she shut it. “Hmph.” For once, she backed down. Even she seemed to see the sense in what Elrann and Sagar were saying.

Ryn was torn. Vorr was heading south-east, not north. At the same time, he needed to stay alive as well in order to be able eventually to find Vorr again and kill him. And he still wasn’t strong enough—if nothing else, their most recent confrontation had shown him that. He needed to train more on the way, to get stronger, to get better with his sword. Maybe it was the shock of what had just happened, maybe it was the cold water, but now he began to doubt seriously for the first time whether he would ever be able to kill Vorr. The man was just too strong. Too powerful. He shook his head. No. Don’t think like that. You will get strong enough to kill him. Mum. Dad. Cleasor. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea.

He blinked. In the time he had been thinking, the others had already walked off down the hill.

He ran to catch up with them, tripped over his feet, stumbled a few paces, then lost his balance completely and fell. He twisted his body round to cushion himself against the impact, but the hill was so steep that he rolled down it, turning over several times. He crashed into Sagar from behind, taking the skypirate’s legs out from underneath him, before managing to put his hands out grab onto the grass, raking earth with his fingernails to come to a stop at last.

Sagar was on him at once, flipping him onto his back, kneeling on his arms, drawing his cutlass, holding the blade to Ryn’s throat.

“You stupid pup!” Sagar yelled, face violet with fury, spittle flying from his mouth and flecking Ryn’s cheeks. “What in all the fifty-six hells do you think you’re doing? It’s your fault we got into this bedamned mess in the first place! Because you couldn’t control yourself when you saw that Imperial general! I told you before that if you ever pulled something like yanking me off that cochobo again I would end you, and this comes godsdamn close! Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t slit your throat right now!”

The others were yelling, but Ryn couldn’t hear them properly. All of his attention was taken up by the curved, glinting blade pricking his Adam’s apple.

He had been in this position before. He was trying to remember how to get out of it...

“I… I’m…sorry, Sagar… I…”

Ryn had had enough of this.

Something inside him lit. This time he felt his eyes catch light, and the whole of his vision—from the shining cutlass blade to Sagar’s sneering face—turned red and orange, transfigured by fire.

He didn’t know how to project flames from his eyes.

Instead, as the heat rose up through his chest, Ryn realised he was about to repeat something that he had learned to do back on the train.

Ryn roared, and flames burst from his mouth straight into Sagar’s face.

The skypirate screamed and jumped backwards, dropping his cutlass and clutching at his face. He kept screaming as Ryn got to his feet, still burning with anger and seeing red.

The screams turned into “You bastard! You bastard! You’ve burned me!”

Sagar took his hands away from his face. Ryn couldn’t completely tell in his fire vision, but it looked scorched, darker than usual.

Nothing Cid can’t heal, I’m sure.

Ryn threw a fireball at Sagar—just a small one, not big enough to seriously harm him, just burn him a bit more.

Sagar saw it coming and brought his hand across his body, moving as if to bat the fireball away. A gust of wind issued from his hand, blowing the fire to one side and making it dissipate into the air.

That only renewed Ryn’s rage. He chucked another fireball at Sagar, no longer caring how big it was, another, another.

Sagar blocked each one with his wind powers, fanning them away in gusting flickers. But only barely.

The skypirate’s singed brows tipped back above wide eyes and his jaw went slack.

That’s right. Make him scared. Make him pay. Make him stop bullying me.

“Boltaaaaarrrrraaaah!” someone shouted.

A stab of shock lanced through Ryn. The pain entered at his back, but in an instant spread to every part of his body.

He cried out.

The pain ceased, but Ryn had lost his concentration. His fire vision and aura receded, and the world returned to its usual greens and blues.

What the hell?

“You both stop this at once!” someone was saying in a raised voice behind him. Ah. Nuthea. “I’ve had just about enough of this, from the pair of you!”

She lightninged me. She actually lightninged me. Ryn turned round to receive the rest of his telling off.

Nuthea was shaking with fury and her eyes had doubled in size. “I can’t believe you two! I’ve got a highly important mission to carry out and the pair of you can’t stop squabbling! We’ll never make it to Manolia if we kill each other first! You both need to just grow up!”

Ryn crossed his arms. “He started it,” was all that he could say after a moment. He knew it sounded childish but he was still smarting from being briefly electrocuted by Nuthea and it was the best he could come up with at short notice.

“Well, I finished it. Now apologise to each other, both of you.”

From the fact that Sagar was sitting on the ground, Ryn guessed Nuthea must have hit him with the lightning as well. His face was back to normal. Cid knelt next to him, tight-lipped.

Ryn’s eyes met Sagar’s and the skypirate scowled at him.

But, Ryn realised, it was no longer the scowl of a superior. It was the scowl of an equal. At least he had achieved something.

He probably should apologise for burning the guy’s face though. At least to make Nuthea happy.

“Sorry, Sagar...”

A long moment passed as they held each other’s gaze. Rage seemed to jostle with expectation in Sagar’s brown eyes.

Eventually the skypirate looked away and mumbled something inaudible.

“What was that?”

“I said...rrrrrrsry.”

“Pardon?”

“SORRY!” Sagar shouted. “There! Are you satisfied now, princess?”

“Reasonably,” said Nuthea. “Now come on, both of you, everyone. We have places to be.”