Chapter 130

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This was no time to be weighing every little consideration. People were waiting for him, and he had work to do. Ricard quite liked this exotic southern city, but he could not stay long.

In the dim light of dawn, Ricard gathered his belongings and left the inn. The difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures must have been considerable; the breeze brushing his nose was quite chilly.

His pack held only some simple provisions, spare clothes, sewing supplies, medicine, the Order of Flame's reliquary, and his gold Viking bracelet. These were all he possessed now—the weight of his life.

His red cloak fluttered incessantly in the sea breeze. He made his way to the harbor, where sailors were already hard at work carrying cargo at this early hour. After asking them where to find the ship called the Marlin, he headed toward it. Far away, the sky along the horizon blazed red and yellow, the colors mingling into purple.

When he reached the ship he was to board, the sailors were loading assorted cargo. It was small compared with a large vessel and large compared with a small one, with a pointed bow that gave it a sleek appearance. Ricard approached the sailors.

"I'm Ricard. I'm here to guard the mage of the wilderness."

The rough seamen stared at him, then abruptly held out a lemon. He had no idea what it meant, but accepted it anyway.

He walked up the plank and boarded. The ship was not rocking much yet, but it certainly felt different from standing on solid ground.

A mast stood in the center of the deck, with seats for roughly twenty rowers arranged along the rails. It seemed to be some sort of galley. But where was the mage?

"The mage is belowdecks."

Barbara approached and answered the question just as it occurred to him. As on the previous evening, he wore fine clothes, an ornate belt, and a cutlass.

"How long will it take to reach Armosa?"

"Well, that depends on what the wind allows. We may stop somewhere else briefly along the way. It won't take more than two days, so don't worry."

Barbara gave him a somewhat dubious-looking smile.

"And you seem to have misunderstood something. Your job isn't to protect the mage. If anything happens, you're to kill the people belowdecks."

"People? Plural?"

"What, did you think we'd launch a ship this size with nothing but sailors aboard?"

"Is this a slave ship?"

"Oh, we don't use that term. It's just a trading vessel."

Imperial law prohibited the slave trade, however meaningless that prohibition might be.

"And you'd best eat that now," Barbara said, gesturing with his chin at the lemon in Ricard's hand.

"Why?"

"Just a superstition. They say eating one keeps you from falling ill during the voyage."

Ricard considered this for a moment, then drew a dagger from inside his clothes and neatly sliced the lemon in half. Tilting his head back, he opened his mouth and squeezed the juice from both halves into it.

It was unbelievably sour, but his expression did not change. He tossed the two halves into the dark predawn sea.

"If you're thinking of fucking me over, you'd better be ready to stake your life on it."

"I'll bear that in mind."

How seriously Barbara took the warning was anyone's guess, but for now, Ricard went belowdecks.

It was dark, dim, and full of damp belowdecks. The wood was rotten, and there was even water sloshing across the floor. Excrement bobbed in the water, while rats flailed their legs as though swimming.

The ceiling was too low to stand upright, forcing him to stoop. Most shocking of all was that there were people in this place.

He could not tell whether they were all being sold as slaves or merely paying for passage. They were of various ages, and the groups ranged from whole families to women huddled together.

Each little cluster of people who knew one another sat wrapped in sodden blankets. Some kept coughing as though on the verge of death, perhaps suffering from an illness. Most had raw, blotchy faces where patches of skin had peeled away.

Even pigs would struggle to survive in such conditions. Could people—human beings—really be left like this? Could they be treated this way?

And yet the job Ricard had accepted in lieu of passage was to kill them preemptively if they showed signs of rising up aboard the ship.

Perhaps they knew it. They never took their eyes off him, their terrified, wary eyes rolling like those of animals.

The mage of the wilderness was in the farthest corner, still confined to an iron cage with a gag in his mouth.

For now, Ricard went over and sat on a box beside him. Water lapped around his feet. Stay here long enough, and he would be certain to get athlete's foot.

"They say we only have to endure this for two days at most," Ricard told him.

The gagged mage gave a faint smile. What that smile meant, Ricard could not tell.

But in a place where he did not want to spend even a single minute, two days seemed likely to feel as long as two years. Every footstep of the sailors overhead carried down through the ceiling, completely unmuffled. Occasionally there was a heavy pounding, and he could hear every word of their profanity-laced conversations.

This was the worst place Ricard had ever been in his life. It was noisy, uncomfortable, and filthy. The wait for departure was driving him mad. When the hell were they going to leave? Two days were no short span of time after all.

What made it even more unbearable was that the mage of the wilderness was the only person he knew here, so he could not even kill time with idle conversation.

At last, the ship began to tilt as though they were getting underway, and the water on the floor started surging wildly back and forth. Lumps of excrement drifted one way and then the other with it.

Amid all this, someone who had been breaking out in a cold sweat as though feverish began retching, then vomited onto the floor.

Ricard squeezed his eyes shut and tried with all his might to summon beautiful memories. It was not easy, but if it helped him hold out even a little longer...

When the rowers began to pull, creaks echoed so loudly that he wondered whether the ship was coming apart. They repeated in a steady, relentless rhythm.

At first, they moved so slowly he wondered whether the ship was moving at all. Later, by the time Ricard was half out of his mind, they unfurled the sail and caught the wind, picking up speed.

Every swell sent seawater rushing in and out belowdecks, splashing filthy water everywhere. Ricard pulled his cloak up to cover his face below his eyes.

This was going to kill him. Whether it took a month or a year, he would travel by land—or not go at all. Never again would he board a ship. He vowed it hundreds of times.

From inside, he could not tell when the sun rose or set. All he had was a vague sense of time. Perhaps he could have worked it out by paying close attention, but more accurately, he was too dazed to spare a thought for whether it was day or night.

Time stood still here. What felt like an hour turned out to be only a minute. What felt like an entire day was not even an hour.

Ricard reached the limits of his mental endurance over and over. Even as he struggled to accept his circumstances, the urge to throw everything aside kept flaring up.

Surprisingly, what kept him going was his sense of responsibility. Whether he had understood what he was agreeing to or not, he had undertaken a job, and so he would not leave his post belowdecks.

Still, looking at these people, the fear of an uprising seemed unfounded. What sort of revolt could these sickly people stage?

But that was a naive assumption. People driven to their limits could muster astonishing strength even when they seemed about to die.

In any case, it seemed to be night now. No lamps had been lit, leaving only pitch-black darkness. He could no longer tell whether it stank, but the filthy water continued to slosh about.

He would have thought it impossible to sleep in such a place, yet his mind was so exhausted that he nodded off like a sick chicken.

He had no idea how long he had been dozing when someone suddenly shouted from the deck above.

"Enemy ship! Enemy ship! Southwest! Enemy ship!"

What? An enemy ship? What were they talking about? Ricard blinked. He could hear people rushing about overhead.

Still thoroughly disoriented, he hurried over to the hatch. He pounded his fist against it overhead and shouted.

"Hey! What's going on?!"

But there was so much frantic noise that no one answered. Ricard struck the hatch harder and raised his voice.

"Hey! I asked what's going on! Open this!"

"Shut up, you bastard!"

Someone stamped on the hatch with a crash.

At last, Ricard reached the end of his patience and drew his sword. Golden flames blazed along the blade in the pitch-black darkness.

With a single stroke, he sliced through the lock as easily as paper, then slammed the hatch open.

The first thing he saw was the brilliantly shining moon. Then he saw the burning sail. Unnatural flames blazed against the dark night. Something had certainly happened.

Ricard hurried up onto the deck and collided with a sailor running frantically across it. Ricard was only nudged back, but the man landed on his backside. He scowled and snapped at him.

"Don't just stand there gawking! Get out of the way, you bastard!"

"Get out of my way!"

Ricard scowled back and bellowed the words like a roar. The man flinched and clamped his mouth shut.

Ricard quickly looked around to assess the situation. He had neither knowledge nor experience of naval combat, but instinct told him at once that they were in grave danger.

Two ships had drawn right up to them, one alongside and one astern. They had secured grappling hooks and laid planks across, and enemies were swarming aboard.

Whatever else was going on, Ricard first shouted down into the hold.

"Everyone, come out! Get out here!"

Then he ran straight to Barbara and seized him.

"Hey!"

Startled, Barbara turned and reflexively tried to stab him. Ricard easily caught his arm, stopped the blade, and shouted.

"What the hell is going—!"

Just then, something caught Ricard's keen senses. An arrow came flying through the darkness. Without even looking, he swiftly ducked to avoid it.

Unfortunately, the arrow he dodged struck Barbara in the temple.

THUNK!

"Ghk!"

As the arrow drove into his head, his left eyeball bulged out. He collapsed, apparently killed instantly.

Ricard stood stunned for a moment at the sheer absurdity of it. Then he quickly recovered and began cutting down the enemies pouring over the side of the ship, slashing at whoever came within reach.

Under the moonlight, in the middle of the sea, his burning sword flashed, mowing enemies down like a farmer cutting grass with a scythe. Such a sight could hardly escape notice. Friend and foe alike stared wide-eyed.

Ricard did not stop there. He leaped onto one of the planks the enemies had laid across and ran toward their ship.

It swayed so violently that an ordinary person would have struggled simply to balance. Yet he ran as though on level ground, as steady as a chicken's head no matter how much its body was shaken.

In an instant, he was aboard the enemy ship. He brought his flaming sword down on a man who was just loading a crossbow, cleaving him from the crown of his head to his chest in one stroke.

Ricard snatched the crossbow as the enemy dropped it and fired at another man standing there in a daze.

TWANG! THUNK!

The bolt pierced him squarely between the eyes. Ricard tossed the crossbow onto the deck and swung his sword again. The whole sequence flowed as naturally as though it had been rehearsed.

For a moment, everyone watched his astonishing martial prowess in stunned silence.

Ricard simply intended to seize the enemy ship and use it himself. The flames were spreading through his original vessel, and it no longer seemed possible to put them out.

But in the midst of slaughtering his enemies, a thought suddenly struck him. The mage of the wilderness!

He owed the man no loyalty. Yet his body moved before he could make a decision.

All he could picture was the mage sitting alone in his cage. Who else was going to save him?

His own side was streaming across the plank, so Ricard swiftly crossed the taut rope stretched between the ships, walking it like a tightrope.

It was such an incredible sight that people stopped to watch, oblivious to their own danger. Walking a tightrope was one thing, but the ships were pitching violently.

Whether they marveled or not, Ricard went belowdecks again. In the impenetrable darkness, the mage of the wilderness still sat gagged in his cage in the corner.

Ricard splashed over and swung his sword, severing the bars. As he untied the ropes binding the mage's hands and removed his gag, he spoke urgently.

"You're free now. Live as you please. You can follow me for now if you like."

But the mage of the wilderness made no move to leave. He merely gazed calmly at Ricard.

Then he spoke, his voice remarkably deep and clear.

"Mind your flank."

"What?"

Just then, a large ship appeared out of nowhere, as though it had been hiding in the darkness, and rammed Ricard's vessel broadside.

BOOM! CRACK!

The ship split in two in an instant, and Ricard, still belowdecks, was plunged into the sea before he even knew what was happening. A direct blow would have killed him instantly, but fortunately, he had escaped that.

Even so, the impact was so tremendous that it nearly knocked him senseless. Astonishingly, he clung to consciousness and held his breath in that desperate instant.

But his body refused to respond, perhaps because of the shock. Had he broken something? Ricard could hardly tell which way was up. Nor could he dismiss how much his time belowdecks had drained his strength.

Then the moonlight and firelight spilling down from the surface through the broken wreckage caught his eye. They were so beautiful that he could not look away as he sank beneath the sea.

Amid muffled sounds and utter chaos, a quiet peace seemed to descend all at once. His blond hair swayed like seaweed, and his sword drifted slowly nearby.

He needed to hurry and swim to the surface, yet inexplicably, he wanted to savor this stillness a little longer. Was it because his mind and body, exhausted beyond endurance, had suddenly relaxed?

He simply sank, ever so slowly, into the endless abyss. Death, life, the bonds he had formed, lingering attachments—all of them into those fathomless depths.

Then a mysterious, high-pitched sound came from somewhere. It was profoundly alien, something he had never heard or even imagined before. Somehow it was beautiful, mournful, and frightening all at once.

Ricard turned toward the sound.

And came face-to-face with an enormous whale.

Ricard had heard of whales and knew they existed. But he had never even seen a picture of one, and now, confronted with the real thing, everything he knew about them vanished from his mind.

He was simply overwhelmed by its immense size and the wonder of it. Was this a giant of the sea? Or had God appeared before him in another form?

Moonlight and firelight filtering through the surface settled softly on the whale's black back. There was no barrier between them, nothing to keep him safe. They simply faced each other.

The whale glided toward Ricard, seeming at once slow and swift. They had never spoken, and words could never pass between them, yet he felt not the slightest trace of hostility. Through some unspoken communion, he knew clearly that it meant to help him.

The whale slowly extended its enormous fin within Ricard's reach. He took hold of it, and they rose toward the surface a little faster.

Ricard felt as though he were swimming through the night sky—through the cosmos. Was this a dream or reality? It was a moment of pure magic.

Overcome with emotion and wonder so immense that his heart seemed ready to burst, he grew dizzy. Then, in an instant, he lost consciousness.