I didn’t immediately press the Captain for details about how he was going to get Segerick’s people off of the island. He looked like he was in a horrible mood. Having a couple of your troops ignore your orders and turn mutineer probably isn’t something a commander wants to deal with in the best of times. These weren’t the best of times.
Instead, I wandered over to the mining site to check out the progress that was made while we were gone. It looked like the others had done fairly well in my absence. They had harvested a lot of gold and most of it had been refined. It appeared to me that we were about ready to head back down the mountain, even though the seam was not played out yet. Honestly, I wasn’t certain that we had the strength to carry everything that had already been refined. Perhaps the Captain would look more favorably on us if we let him have the leftovers. He could use it to pay bonuses to his men or something. Or maybe we could slip some to Segerick’s people. A small degree of wealth would provide all of them a better start in their new lives.
I was tired to the bone. I honestly hadn’t expected that last fight. I thought that the Captain had a crew of well-disciplined soldiers that would follow his commands. That shows you what I know. I glanced over to where two lacerated corpses swung from a tree branch at the edge of the clearing. Seeing them bob around in the light breeze blowing down the mountain made me swallow hard. If that’s what the Captain would do to his own men to enforce discipline, what would he be like to his enemies? I was glad that I had decided to complete the mission he assigned me. If I hadn’t, I had no doubt he would have slaughtered all of us and not missed any sleep over it.
As I was heading to the campsite, a soldier walked up to me. My hand tightened on the hilt of my sword because I recognized him. He was one of the men who had been planning on attacking us but had run away on the trail.
He stopped briefly to talk to me. I eyed him warily, ready to fight if I had to. But he didn’t seem like he was there to fight. He looked like he wanted to talk.
“What can I do for you?” I asked him.
“I just want to thank you for giving us the chance to run,” he said. “If you hadn’t, that might be me swinging up there.”
“Peer pressure is real,” I said. “It’s one thing to sit around a campfire and hatch a plan for revenge. Enacting that plan, like most ideas, can be a lot more problematic. I’m glad you ran. I wouldn’t want your death on my conscious.”
“You don’t seem to have much problem with Domnin’s death, though,” he muttered.
“Honestly, I don’t,” I said. “He had crept up and he was spying on us. He made too much noise. We are in hostile territory. Other companies have tried to rob us on numerous occasions. That’s what we thought was about to happen. It obviously wasn’t, but we can only act on the information we have. How would your force react if they caught someone spying on them?”
“That’s a good point, I guess,” he replied. “We wouldn’t react very nicely. That other person who ran away when your woman killed Domnin, that was me. I didn’t even see her approach. She just popped up and then he was dead. I replay it over and over in my sleep. We thought there was no way you would be able to defend yourself back out on the trail. We thought everything would be over and done with quickly.”
“I have fought a lot recently,” I responded. “And Aleyda has battled since she was old enough to hold a weapon. You probably could have overwhelmed us with numbers, but I’d like to think some of you would have fallen in the process.”
“Well,” he said. “Thanks again for not ratting me out. I owe you one.”
“You won’t be able to repay me,” I said. “Our time here is coming to an end. At some point in the future, though, you are going to run into someone who needs a little forgiveness, a little grace. That’s when you need to remember what you owe.” Then, I turned and walked away from him back towards our camp.
I caught a few hours of sleep before the rest of our workers all filtered in.
“I think we need to have a short meeting,” I announced.
Everyone gathered around.
“I was successful in bringing down the portal,” I said. “The Captain has one other thing for me to do before we depart. I say we stop mining, refine what we have harvested, and head down the mountain. We have more than we can reasonably carry at this point. We need to send a couple of people ahead to let Captain Clemenzio know that we are ready to immediately load up and depart. When we get back to town, we need to look unhappy, like we hadn’t been successful gaining anything of value. We can’t talk about the gold, and we can’t spend the gold here on the island. If we do, people will chase us back all the way to Shroud Hallow trying to take from us what we have worked so hard to accomplish. We need to move meekly. We need to be invisible if we are going to make it out both rich and alive.”
“Who put you in charge?” Yahg asked.
“Nobody put me in charge,” I said. “Was anything I said wrong, though? If you want to discuss why I am wrong, let’s do it. But we are few and our potential enemies are legion. It would be ridiculous for all of us to risk ourselves, to do all this hard work, and then end up dead here or out on the ocean because of it. Do you want to be rich and alive or formerly rich and dead? I know you are tough but you aren’t tough enough to fight off all the other companies on this island.”
“I think what James said is right,” Tikter interjected. “If we go running our mouths about any of this then we are begging for trouble,”
“I thought we could enjoy ourselves for a day or two back at port before we left,” Yahg whined.
“You will have the rest of your life to enjoy yourself back home,” Pregu said. “What we have here is life changing wealth. We just need to stay alive long enough to enjoy it.”
“It won’t be once my wife gets to spending,” Yahg replied.
“Don’t let her know how much you have,” Pregu said. “Save some for when you really need it. It is not like we can come back here and do this all again later. This is what we came here for. If you really can’t discipline yourself long enough to get us free of this island, then it’s not just your risk, it is all of our risk. Think of someone other than yourself for a minute. I have lost good friends here. To honor their memories, we need to finish strong. We need to succeed.”
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“When I go back through town, I will need to be disguised,” I said. “So will Bowen and Aleyda. There are too many things connecting us to the sabotage for me to be comfortable.”
“Why did you work for the enemy anyway?” Yahg demanded.
“So you could be rich and alive,” I replied. That shut him up.
There was quite a bit more discussion about that particulars of our plan, but by and large everyone thought it was a good one. Even Yahg came around once he realized which way the wind was blowing. It was decided that Tikter, Aleyda, Bowen and I would go back to the ship first to get things ready. Then, the rest would join us leaving in three days. Tomorrow, I would need to get Segerick’s people ready to depart. That’s why I told them the Captain wanted me to do one other thing for him.
After the meeting broke up, I got up and went to find the Captain. He was busy conferring with some of his subordinates so I waited patiently until he was finished. I may have dozed a little. Maybe it was more than a little because I was roughly shaken awake by one of the sergeants after the meeting had broken up. I think I may have drooled on myself a little during my nap. I got up and walked over to the Captain.
“What can I do for you,” he asked.
“We intend to depart in three days,” I said. “Tomorrow, I was hoping that we could go get the people that you said you would evacuate from the island. The rest of the company obviously does not know about them, so I wanted to get them loaded up on a ship where they would be relatively safe. Also, we mined and refined more gold than we can carry. I was hoping that you would accept the excess and either hold it in trust so that the people you are transporting can start a new life with a leg up or you could pay it out as a bonus to your troops.”
“I did promise that, didn’t I,” he replied. “I will send out a squad with you tomorrow. The squad can take the people back to the ships without passing anywhere close to camp. That will preserve your secret. We will take the extra gold to pay for their room and board on the way back.”
“That sounds fair,” I replied. “We are leaving before that gold seam is fully played out and we won’t be taking our tools with us. It’s too obvious.”
“Maybe I will have the men dig out their own bonuses,” he mused.
“I never intend to come back to this place,” I said. “So have at it. And just so you know, I hope you win. Too much profit has been made here off of the misery of my people.”
“There was something else I meant to talk to you about,” he said. “I was impressed by the ingenuity you showed in completing your mission. If you want to pack up your people and bring them north, I can set aside a comfortable place for you all to live. I would also have other things that you can do for us. Things that would be pretty profitable for you.”
“I have to admit I am tempted,” I said. “Not facing the threat of slavery at every turn would be a load off all of my people’s minds. We would be giving up a lot that we have built, though. And I am not certain how we would make our way north to you.”
“Hire a ship,” he said. “You’re going to be rich.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I replied. “I bet I could pay Captain Clemenzio to get us there. What would life be like if we moved to your country?”
“For your people it would still be hard,” he said. “Five-fingers are treated as the lowest of the low in our society. Of course, a certain degree of wealth can buffer all of that. For you, life would be difficult in a different way. The tasks you are assigned would be dangerous. My liege has certain aspirations. His plans involve conflict. You would be involved in that conflict.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” I said. “If I decide to take you up on the offer, where would we go?”
“My base of operations is at Kollavik. It is many miles inland. The city can be reached by riverboat from a port on the inner sea named Restru. I will send word back so you would be expected.”
“How would you get word all that way when you are here?” I asked.
“Don’t they have magic in your world?” he asked. “We use paired journals to communicate. What is written in one appears in the other, regardless of distance. Anyway, I don’t expect I will be here long in any event. I serve as a troubleshooter. My task was to find a way to take down that portal and unless you are lying to me, I have completed my task.”
“I am not lying to you,” I said.
“Actually, I know that,” he replied with a smile. “I have other assets on this island. I received word that you were successful before you returned.”
“So, what are you? Head of the secret police or something?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “You can view me as the operational arm of our spy service. I solve problems.”
“Well, I appreciate you solving the problem of all those people being stuck on the island waiting for rescue,” I said. “I wasn’t certain exactly how I was going to manage to get them all off.”
“You are obviously tired,” he replied. “Get some rest and tomorrow you can go get your people.”
“Oh, by the way I told the others that I had to do another mission for you,” I said. “That’s my cover story.”
“We can work with that,” he replied. Then, with a nod, I took my leave.
I walked back over to our camp. Both Aleyda and Bowen were somehow still awake. They must have been made of heartier stuff than I was.
“Did you get things straight with the Captain?” Aleyda asked.
“Evacuation is tomorrow,” I said. “I am going to leave most of our spending money with Segerick’s people so they have a few resources to start a new life. It’s not like we will have anywhere on the ship to spend it anyway.”
“That’s generous,” Bowen said.
“If we pull this off, money won’t be a major concern. I am very much looking forward to home. By the way, the Captain gave me an interesting offer . . .” I went on to describe the proposition, keeping my voice low so we could not be overheard by the others milling about nearby.
“That is a good offer, but do you trust him?” Bowen asked.
“He’s been straight with us so far,” I replied. “And living somewhere where we don’t have to look over our shoulders every moment of every day has some appeal to me.”
“It has some appeal to me as well,” Aleyda allowed. “But you just made a bunch of new friends back at Greynard.”
“Well, you know if we can eventually pull this off we are going to be fairly rich with possibly lucrative, if dangerous, employment. I was kind of hoping that we could ask Sathebeena, Anxo and Goulug’s family to come along. I don’t know if they would consider it, but we could use some extra people.”
“What are we going to do with Bethany?” Bowen asked.
“She will have to decide what she wants to do,” I said. “If she wants to come with us, we will find her on the trail tomorrow. Then, we will buy out the company’s share and let them know that we will be training her as our servant on the way back. Who knows, though. She has spent more time with Segerick and his people than with us. Maybe she has developed some friendships there and wants to remain with them. No matter what happens, though, tomorrow is going to be a busy day.”
Without further discussion, we all bedded down to get some sleep.