My pupil awoke with a sound like drowning. From his throat came a wet, coughing hack. A convulsion between breath and water, blood in his case.
The sound was familiar to the sailors aboard the Gull’s Drunk Flight, and fear spurred them to jump to his aid. Folk legend has it that sailors refuse to learn to swim, lest their ship go down and they be stranded in the waves. This is only true of sea sailors. The men that Captain Kallum employed were river men, where falling overboard was but one quick panic and thrust of the body to reach the shore.(1)
Hands strong from rowing, and rough from hemp rope, pressed down on Lucius’ chest and blasted the air from his lips. Out came a sputtering of blood, and in came fresh air. “He lives!” one of them shouted. “He needs a doctor!”
“I’m fine,” Lucius said, and grabbed one of the sailors by the arm to pull himself upright. “I need water though. Someone get me water, please.” Naturally, as this was the Giordanan coast, the crew hadn’t been the only ones to leap to the newly awakened man. The flies were there too, drawn by his drying blood. Inert as he had been, bites covered his chest, the inflammation at war with the power of his stigmata.
A group of soldiers began to gather around him, their eyes scrutinizing. Only after he had put the drink to his lips did my pupil realize that his helm had come off while he had been in the embrace of the Shepherd, the embrace of fleeting death. Before any questioned him, he pulled the waterskin from his lips. He took the initiative for himself, and asked, “How many of us are aboard?”
“Two hundred and sixty, Sir,” a young auxiliary said. He clearly lacked the physical stature to be among the voluntaries. The danger was all the higher for it. Men of the auxiliaries were more familiar with the true Lucius. The identity sat upon my pupil like paint; liable to flake off. Watching a subject for some days and only from afar does little to teach an actor how to play his role; but, it was the best we had.
He had been prepared well enough. “How much food do we have? How much was carried from the camp?”
Lieutenant Tyrion pushed through the ranks to answer him. “No more than a day’s worth. After speaking with Captain Kallum, the trip would take us a week at best. We’ve overburdened the barge and maneuvering will be difficult.” The leader of the voluntaries was older than Lucius, and had the scars to show his years of service. Not one part of his body didn’t have a scar from all the weapons known to man. If it weren’t for the thick, brown beard he wore, his visage would have scared away any woman he didn’t pay for.(2)
Lucius answered him, “We will have to live off the land then, unless someone happens to be an expert fisherman.”
That sent a murmur through the troops. Many had already seen to bedding down. They wrapped themselves in cloaks and leaned against one another for protection from the sea wind. Many didn’t find it so easy to dull their minds after a fight, and those were the ones who gave rise to a question, one which Lieutenant Tyrion took upon himself to ask. “Sir, if I may be blunt; how did you survive?”
“The spear thrust?” Lucius asked. “He wasn’t very good with it.”
A few men found the humor in his statement. It didn’t touch Tyrion’s gaze. “The report was that your head had been cut off after you attacked the Medini family. I see that was exaggerated?”
Lucius smiled. His teeth were still red with blood. “Actually, I don’t think it was. My memory is hazy of the incident, but, I woke alone on the street, passed by like rubbish of the battle. I had certainly been left for dead, but…” He ran a hand through his hair. Only sweat stained his fingers. “Here I am. It’s as though the Shepherd sent me back.”
The answer didn’t impress the veteran. “And so you came back, alone?”
“I went to the garrison camp first, but that had been overrun. It was all I could do to outfit myself in the dark and rejoin you. Lieutenant, I want to thank you for taking charge in the chaos. You acted appropriately. You saved the lives of everyone here.”
Pride can be such a wonderful nuance to a lie; but, it isn’t enough to completely sell a falsehood. It merely bought Lucius more time. The leader of the voluntaries had to occupy his thoughts not just with his doubts over Lucius, but, of how to survive with or without him. Concern over the change in appearance pressed on him just slightly less than the prospect of an empty stomach on the morrow. While a trained soldier can go without food for a day or even two, if the marching is easy, a week of hunger was too much.
“What did you mean by live off the land?” Lieutenant Tyrion asked.
My pupil gritted his teeth. He was on a fine line of pressing the man. Military decorum dictated that a subordinate--which Tyrion was--should speak formally. Lucius von Solhart had done nothing to earn the respect of his auxiliaries, let alone the visiting voluntaries. Demanding the lieutenant address him as such would have been like pushing a candle closer to a scroll to read it; liable to conflagrate the entire thing. He said, “That’s what swords are good for, isn’t it?”
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
That put a dark expression across Tyrion’s face, and my pupil met it with a pained pressing of his lips. He didn’t show the man a single twitch of eagerness to do what he had proposed; to take their provisions from the locals. The voluntaries had pride to them, and the thought of pillaging for supplies greeted them like curdling in their milk. Empty stomachs were terribly persuasive though.
“Let me through, let me through,” Doctor Samson said as he squeezed between the men. Getting him out of the restaurant and to the barge in time had been quite the feat; one which Lucius never thanked me for. I imagine he never forgave the shock it gave him.
From his perspective, this was perhaps the worst thing that could have occurred. The appearance of the doctor was the appearance of someone who had seen him face to face at the same time the original Lucius had been at camp. He had taken my deal however, so while Lucius reached for his dagger, what came out of Sammy’s mouth was, “You’re tougher than you look, Commander Solhart.”
Lucius was no stranger to improvisation, even before I took him under my wing. “Tougher than I was yesterday, at least.”
“Come, take your armor off. I need to see this stigmata if I’m to understand how to treat you,” Sammy said, and knelt beside my pupil. Under his breath and between the two of them, he said, “You’ll need a private checkup soon. When we can close the door.”
Lucius grunted and between the two of them, they stripped his bloody armor off. A soldier was summoned to clean it up, for he had no squire present, and the doctor set about inspecting his throat. Thanks to his stigmata, not even a scar remained. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. You’ll need to eat well,” the doctor said, his voice loud enough that Lieutenant Tyrion would hear it. “Come on then, shirt too, or do I have to cut it off you? Let’s see the sigil.”
The announcement drew the attention of many soldiers, most of which did not bother to disguise their spying. The coming dawn put enough rose into the sky that they could see the markings across his chest. There, displayed for all to see, Lucius revealed the indecipherable script of the divine; his stigmata that defied even my comprehension. Perhaps a dozen soldiers in the Vassish army had stigmata, Lieutenant Tyrion among them. Common sigils by and large, and their commonness matched their simplicity.
None had seen one as boldly written as his [Undying].
“So,” Lieutenant Tyrion said, “That’s what grew his head back? I wasn’t aware something like that was possible.”
“Anything is possible with a stigmata. The trick is figuring out the nuances,” Sammy said, pressing his hands to Lucius’ chest and feeling the muscles. “If you would, commander, when you awoke with this, were you clothed?”
“Excuse me?”
“Did you regrow from the head or from your body?”
“Ah, I was clothed.” Which would have been a lie, had he actually been beheaded. We had done the experiment in the past; it was his head that formed the new body. That however, was a secret kept between the two of us.
Sammy nodded and tugged on Lucius’ eyelid to inspect his eyes again. “That would explain a few things. Sir, as far as my medical opinion goes, you’re even healthier than you were two days ago. Blood loss and hunger notwithstanding. If I had to guess, your healing doesn’t discriminate between wounds and sickness. Your years of drinking have been alleviated. I’d say you’ve been born anew.”
Now, I would not rate Sammy as a particularly good actor. He wasn’t trained in it. He only had to carry his part for so long however. With the morning light, came the true special guest.
The South Sea is a splendid and timeless sight. I recommend anyone with the means of travel to visit at least once, if for no other reason than passing from Vassermark to Ailleterre. The water glitters like a sea of gems in the placid win. The change in heat unfortunately lures out all manner of insects from the coast, but in turn that encourages the sluggish fish to feed. Finding a school of the little predators can bring the surface to a roil, at least until the supreme predators arrive to dine on the fish. I do not mean the fishermen of Giordana, but the raptors.
And, the greatest among those birds would be the black raptors; the blessed birds of the Shepherd. Divine beasts nearly as tall as a man, and smarter than most. One by the name of Golden alighted upon the prow of The Gull’s Drunk Flight. If only I could have seen the panic when the sailors and soldiers realized what had landed on their ship; a sight few priests even saw. In truth however, their legend far surpasses their power. They are capable of only a few tricks, such as binding oaths; but, Golden had always been a reliable messenger for the right price.
“Bring me your leader,” the prideful crow demanded.
And so, Lieutenant Tyrion was forced under the gaze of his men, to assent that my pupil was his leader, and to let him go forward as their representative.
----------------------------------------
1. Of course, finding oneself stranded along the edge of the Tavina River can be as desolate as the middle of the ocean, but any sensible captain would throw anchor to retrieve a soggy sailor running on the shore.
2. An astute reader may currently be wondering why so many men followed but one soldier; Lieutenant Tyrion. The Vassish army that Lucius first put his hands on very nearly resembled an organized mob of hunting parties, and their discipline held solely by the authority of their centurion, their lieutenant as I have so translated to stay in constance with future developments. The voluntaries numbered two hundred, and therefore had two centurions; but, the historical record has little trace of the other man. Lieutenant Alf barely even spoke to Lucius the whole trip, for he was sick in the head from venereal disease he had contracted either in Puerto Faro or from one of the tribes in the wastelands. Had he tried to exert his enfeebled mind, the soldiers would have been at great peril, for it was Lieutenant Tyrion who had been raised by a merchant and knew his way around provisions management.