1

“Fuck!”

Footsteps thudded against the wooden dock below as he ran in a panic, stopping only when the dock ended and, a foot below, the lake began.

Behind him were more footsteps and profane exclamations as the sailors ran uselessly to him, driven by the same panic that filled him. All that running and I’m still no closer to helping. But it would change nothing even had they all dove into the water and swam the great distance that separated them from the sinking Lion’s Paw.

He gripped his head tight with both hands and felt the pull on his hairs.

“Get the boats out there,” Caldwell said in a croaking voice.

“They’s dead, lad.” The man to his side, with his long bushy beard and long bushy eyebrows that had both gone to gray, looked on in morose resignation. By the stories Caldwell knew that this was not the first time Thunor the Salted had seen a ship sink.

“I’ll be damned if we don’t try,” Caldwell said.

“As ye command, lad.”

“Damnit all.” Frozen at his spot, Caldwell looked up to the clearest blue sky he could recall. The air was chilled, his breath a cloud that went out before him, and there was no wind to be felt. A fine winter day, by all accounts.

But inside him was a storm of emotions.

He had to go alert the Baron.

2

As a result of bad fortune Luck has been increased by 1 to compensate.

Would you like to use Creation Points to increase Luck further?

Current Creation Points: 12

Alden rubbed his eyes and stared coldly across the lake. Three row boats were returning, though only one carried survivors. The Lion’s Paw had manned more than twenty sailors when it left the dock just an hour before. Twenty men, and now only three returned to him alive, each of them bundled in thick furs and shivering so hard it must have hurt.

“Do I have to ask?” There was silence from his right, followed by the creaking of the dock below as Caldwell shifted his weight. That was all the answer he needed. “How did it happen?”

He could have guessed, but the look that Caldwell had given him… Gosfrid had warned him it was too much responsibility too quickly, but he hadn’t listened. Now he had to piece the boy’s confidence back together, bit by bit.

“Thunor thinks the ice broke the hull. Not uncommon this time of year, he says. Ice can get too thick to handle. Just bad luck.”

Luck. Was there any such thing, Alden wondered. The System certainly seemed to think so. But despite its incredible power, he thought that it was wrong in this particular instance. It was not luck that threatened to tear his barony apart from beneath his feet. It was human failure, and he was the sole owner.

An argument could have been made, he admitted. That the two closest appraisers to Lyonpool who had the appropriate skills lived in Titemore and Licester was a cruel turn of fate; crueler still was that one had been killed en route, and the other forbidden to make the journey by none other than Mina, the first person he had seen upon waking up over a year ago. How else to see it but ill luck, some might say? Or has she turned against me now that I’ve outlived my usefulness?

Only time would tell. Time, and planning.

He began stripping.

“I’ll retrieve the bodies. And the bone.” There was no argument. It had to be done, and only he could do it.

When he leapt into the lake’s icy depths his mind went white, frozen over from the shock. His lungs forced his mouth open in search of air, and water filled the empty space.

Warning

Sudden exposure to cold water has induced a harmful involuntary action. 1 Creation Point has been expended to solve the issue.

New Special Ability

Cold Resistance Lv 1

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Warmth spread out from his chest and into his limbs, the feeling as hot as fire compared the cold waters that surrounded him. His mind thawed. Above him was a shimmering ceiling of sapphire that ebbed and flowed; the lake’s surface.

Breaking the surface, Alden took a deep breath, then turned towards the sunken ship.

Unpleasant as the work was, it was quick. Most of the bodies were floating near the surface, staring out into nothingness with the sort of surprise that only death brought. A few had closed their eyes in their last moments. They looked peaceful, he liked to think.

He tossed their bodies one by one from the water and into the row boats that came to aid him. Then, seeing no more but still short by three, Alden dove deep to the lake’s bottom where the Lion’s Paw lay, ever thankful that this section of the lake did not descend into eternal darkness as some parts of the lake were known to do.

Blasting the top deck with a bolt of magic, he swam inside and found the other bodies floating lifelessly around the prize they were to deliver: a single, 25 foot long rib of the flesheater.

When all was done and Alden was dredging towards the shore, the rib balanced on his right shoulder and so heavy he feared it would topple him, he saw Yesui waiting for him with a dour look.

Perhaps it is luck. He didn’t want to ask her what had happened, nor did he want to be the one to fix it. He had half a mind to make Caldwell do it, or else Uhtric or Gosfrid. Gosfrid, most likely. But if he did he knew he’d be left with little to do but think, and of late the only things he thought of were his failing barony and Amice.

I want her. To be with her. To embrace her.

What was stopping him? The desire he had for her was a reflection of her own. Yet neither made a move, and the tension between them grew greater and greater.

There are too many concerns for us now. The Count’s invitation hung over him like a guillotine, sharp and deadly, and the day to day affairs of running a barony bound his attention.

Affairs like dealing with an injured horse.

Yesui led him to the fields with a furious gait, where he found five young Chanat resting by the outer fence. The oldest was of age with Caldwell, he knew, but to look on them he would have thought them years younger. When they spotted him they jumped to attention, eyes downcast.

“Them,” Yesui said. “They have shamed you.”

“Is this true?” he asked. None so much as looked at him.

“It is true,” Yesui said. “I saw so myself. They jumped on the Great One together and held themselves up by his black mane until he lost himself and fell.”

Alden heard the truth in her voice, though wished he did not. The Chanat, nomadic as they were, revered horses and cattle and all beasts of burden. To harm one, especially one owned by another, was considered an act of war.

“You will have to kill the Great One, as a mercy.”

“No,” Alden said, too harshly. Yesui backed away.

“It is the right thing to do,” she protested. “The Great One cannot walk. Life will be only suffering for him.”

Alden leveled a cold stare at her, suddenly angry. “Do not doubt what I am capable of.”

He strode toward the destrier, the one the Chanat called the Great One. An honorific title, not the beast's true name, given due to the beast’s incredible size and strength, as well as being Alden’s primary mount. But to Alden the horse was little more than that; it was Airabella, the winged-deer monster he had tamed some months ago, that was his true mount. Or so he liked to believe; he had not seen Airabella in nigh on a month.

It was the Great One’s front leg that had broken. The bone had pierced through skin, leaving the dirt and grass covered in a dark red-brown of blood. The stallion, whose name he had never settled on, lay on its side. Exhausted, its chest rose and fell in heavy breaths. It made no sound as he approached, but it stared at him, and he thought he could see its emotions.

I don’t want to die, it said. Fix me.

Alden knelt beside the stallion, gently placed a hand on its chest, and felt the warmth that radiated off of it. Alive, in every way that mattered.

Pouring his magic into it, the wound healed, costing him the barest fragment of mana. The horse rolled itself onto its feet, whinnying pleasantly, then galloped off.

“That’s some fine work, my lord,” Caldwell said. Flat praise, though Alden detected a hint of truth in it.

“If only all my problems were so easily solved,” he said, thinking of the drowned men. Men who served him, and died for it. Add them to the tally.

“If only, my lord. Sorry to say, though, that I come with more problems.”

“The rib.”

Caldwell nodded. “Damned thing’s heavy. Too heavy for a normal carriage, or so says the driver. We’ll have to build a new one. That, and it’ll take all your best work horses to pull it, not to mention all the horses needed for the other carriages.”

“Other carriages?”

“Supplies. Spare wheels for the big carriage, plus food, rope, probably some weapons and armor. Thing’s worth a fortune. Carriage is bound to come across someone curious enough to try and take it. Assuming we can’t scare them off first.”

Alden tallied the only cost that mattered in his head: time. The time for a new carriage alone, even with his help, would take a day or two. Then there was the actual traveling to Licester or Titemore which, even for a single rider, could take two weeks.

“There’s no need for a new carriage. Faster to just break the rib in two and send only half.”

Caldwell flushed with embarrassment. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said, kicking the dirt. “We’ll still need your best horses, though. Even half’s too heavy for most of’em.”

Alden sighed. Takes a fortune to make a fortune, I suppose. There were enough horses to seat nearly every trained fighter in the town thanks to the Chanat; the horses they bred were good riding stock, perfect for traversing the flat plains and low hills of Tejin’s Strait. What they were not perfect for, however, was heavy hauling. For that he needed the towering muscle of Drygallin work horses, of which the Great One was one.

He spotted the Great One running happily through the field, his fine black coat glimmering in the light and reminding Alden of gold. But on another look he saw it was not the horse’s coat at all, but, emanating from the Great One’s body, was a thread of gold that rose up into the sky and led north. A phenomenon that he had witnessed nearly each day for several weeks now, though had time again dismissed it. Until the business with the flesheater he had been uncertain as to what it meant.

“He’s a stallion, isn’t he?” Caldwell asked, having followed his gaze. “Good breed, too. If only you could breed him with one of the other horses.”

“If only,” Alden replied. Work horses, especially good ones, cost a fortune. Had he any mares of similar breed he would have attempted it, but as it was the only mares in the barony were of the Chanat breeds or of other inferior breeds. Even if he did breed the Great One, it would be almost another year before the foal to be born. There’s no speeding up nature, he thought.

The idea sparked in his mind, then became an inferno.

“Caldwell,” he said. Caldwell looked up at him, curious. “I don’t think I’ll be sending the Great One after all.”