“Uh, if you don’t mind me asking, who the hell are you?”
“Fuck you.”
“What a pretty name.”
For someone who could have been dwarfed by a sack of potatoes, she packed a deadly left hook. In fact, I was surprised she managed to reach my face at all, but lo she did, and I spent the next minute clutching at my poor nose which had made the unhealthiest of noises upon colliding with her fist. I supposed that, at her measly height, I should count myself lucky that she hadn’t decided to release her ire on somewhere much more tender and at a worryingly convenient level, but at the moment I was far too concerned by the troubling quantity of blood which was trickling from my aching nose.
“Nice to meet you too.” The words had an annoying nasal buzz to them, but upon trying to clear my nose I found myself almost choking on warm liquid copper. Hell, if this was how she greeted people, I wasn’t sure I wanted to experience her farewells.
Under the pretence of trying to stow my bleeding face, I took the opportunity to cast another furtive glance at my assailant. I had already caught a brief glimpse of her dinky height when she first cornered me, but I was curious to see what other features she possessed.
My sidelong look offered me a momentary view of a short but shapely woman, smooth ebony skin concealed beneath travel-worn gear of faded grey denim and black cotton, a burst of bright colour livening up her drab outfit in the form of a vibrantly dyed cloth wrapped about her waist much like a belt, the kind that is common in the far regions of the Southern Kingdoms.
Despite her disadvantaged height, the foreigner was packed with the musculature of a lightweight wrestler and the look on her full-lipped face made it clear that she was not afraid to throttle me with it. She tossed her thick black hair out of her lacklustre-golden eyes much like an ill-tempered stallion, pressing the point of her dagger more insistently to my skin until I deemed it wise to drag my eyes away.
“Where is he?”
“Who?” I was being spiteful now, but you can hardly blame me. From the feel of it, I feared that my nose might never set straight again, and that was one of my finest features!
“You know who! And don’t try acting snarky with me again, or this time it’ll be a knife and not a fist.”
“Look, if I knew where he was do you really think I would have been standing here alone like I was, shouting at the cliffs like an idiot? The answer is overwhelmingly no, in case you were wondering.”
I heard a disgusted scoff from behind me, but the declaration appeared to have her reconsidering the situation as her subsequent silence suggested wary hesitation. I tried another small peek at her, hoping I might catch sight of some weak spot I could use to my advantage. Instead I caught her glancing down at my ass, which I found both provocative but also highly indelicate considering my mortal circumstances.
“Your breeches are on back to front…”
Of course they were. Dammit, I had completely forgotten about that. In my defence, it had been a long and trialling day in which looking like a plonker was the least of my worries. Still, it doesn’t mean that the realisation wasn’t just as humiliating, and I felt my face burn red as I averted my eyes to spare myself further embarrassment.
“Is that really the most pressing matter right now?” I retorted, surreptitiously adjusting my soiled garments into a slightly more presentable manner, “You were asking me where ‘he’ is. Does this man happen to go by the name of ‘Finnr Larsen’? Unnaturally tall bloke? Pointy face? Got a bit carried away with his makeup? Lives in a shed with dead fish? That man?”
“So you do know him.” Her accent was lush and tropical, and I was finding it difficult to concentrate on her words more than the delightful sound of them.
“He tricked me. Killed my own father and who knows how many others,” I couldn’t hide the bitterness in my tone even if I had wanted to, but suddenly I paused, a creeping realisation coming over me, “Why? What did he do to you?”
I could sense the reluctance in the strained quiet which followed, but finally she relented. Perhaps it was that my own admission had prompted her to share similarly, or it was possible that she just liked the sound of her own voice. I certainly did.
“He promised that he would take my family and I to safety,” She admitted in a tense tone, and I could practically hear the venom dripping from her tongue as she added acridly, “He lied.”
“What a surprise.” I hadn’t meant for my sarcasm to sound quite so patronising- after all, she was the one with a blade to my back and I in no way wanted to prompt it any closer- but then I realised that sarcasm is generally patronising any way you put it. I am aware that I really should start thinking through my sentences before speaking them, but sometimes I swear that my tongue has a mind of its own and is resolute in bringing about my utter ruin.
“Don’t you dare make it out like I am the idiot here!” As predicted I felt the knife’s edge dig agonisingly into my lower back, and at this point I was bending over backwards, both literally and metaphorically, to escape its sharp cut, “From what you say, you made exactly the same mistake!”
“It’s hardly as if I had a choice in the matter!” I claimed hotly, “The bastard was all over the place and then suddenly he was stabbing me in the hand with some magic voodoo shell!”
“Oh please, don’t be so ridiculous-“
“Girls, girls,” We both froze in place, rebukes caught half-formed in our throats as the dreadfully familiar voice crooned above the breaking waves, that odd hyenic cackle cracking the air into disorienting shards that were sharper and far less predictable than the knife against my back, “Enough with the petty bickering, hm? Allow me to put the argument to rest: you’re both idiots. Hahahee!”
“You.” My original assailant’s voice split with icy rage, though, like myself, she seemed at a temporary loss for words at our common foe’s abrupt arrival. I felt the piercing pressure slacken from my spine, and slowly I let my posture resume its natural angle before peering portentously at my surroundings as I rubbed the stiffness from my back.
I could see nothing of the looming figure whom I had expected to be hunched somewhere nearby, a dagger to the woman’s throat or simply sneering at us from behind. A heavy haar was rolling in, a thick wall of greasy grey that had progressively encompassed us as we communed in a haze of oozing air that tasted strongly of salt and something stagnant and rotten, so that now, as I squinted through it, all that remained of the rugged landscape were blockish blue shapes or jagged black forms piercing the veil like thorns. I felt myself taking an unconscious step back, somehow feeling safer the closer I was to the angry backstabber than the empty air- mostly because it didn’t feel empty at all.
“You lying coward!” It took me a moment to realise that it was not myself whom my immediate company was talking to, and then another to register that she had begun stalking away into the clutches of the mist, leaving me all too aware of every distorted sound which penetrated the gloom. The shifting sand sounded far too similar to laboured breathing, and every tumbling shard of dislodged stone was the skittering of clawed feet over the rocks. I didn’t even hesitate before plunging after her, foggy tendrils clinging about my legs like ghostly fingers. If she thought she could shrug me off in that frigid sea fret then she was very much mistaken.
“I asked you to take them to safety! To put them on a boat out of there!” Her wrath was diminished by the thick fog, her voice seeming to seep from every rocky pore as the air deadened every note of noise, but I pushed on, determined not to be left out there alone, “You said you would do that for me. We had a deal!”
“I said that I would put your family on a boat,” The tyrant’s teases twisted through the bleakness, somehow sharper and clearer than any other sound about it, “and I did.”
“You put them on a slave ship!” Her voice was wrenched with grief now, and I have to say that from that astounding revelation I really couldn’t blame her. I was liking this sick rotter less and less.
“I put them on a perfectly respectable vessel bound for safety. Teehee! I can hardly be held accountable for any misfortunes which afflicted them thereafter. Is it really my fault that it was their ship that just so happened to be stormed by slavers?”
“You should have known.” Her voice was less certain now, quieter, but determined all the same. It was then that I finally stumbled within sight of her once more, after fearing to have lost her trail, and it was shortly thereafter that I realised that one of the rocks nearby which she had been glaring at was not a rock at all; it trembled with stifled laughter, issued by Larsen in a way which only vaguely resembled humour and worked closer in operation to an irritating cough that constantly tickled one’s throat. I paused, fearing to draw too close yet encapsulated all the same.
“Should I?” The open-ended question was spoken lightly, but the effect which it had on its subject was one of a heavy weight. The stranger’s shoulders slumped visibly, and her head bowed a fraction.
A cascade of pebbles dislodged from the cliff edge overhead had me startling out of my skin, and though it appeared to have no affect on my associates I darted an alarmed look at the ragged skyline. Unbeknownst to me, the haar had already begun to thin and retreat back out to sea as quickly as it had arrived, but in doing so it had revealed the stark outlines of two figures on horseback traversing the rocky ridge. Two figures who could likely see I just as well as I could see them, and whom had stopped in their tracks to point down to my current standing spot. Bollocks! They must have sent out patrols! I scuttled behind the nearest jut of rock with sweat and sea spray congealing uncomfortably upon my skin, finding it highly unfair that no one had paid me the least bit of attention before, but now that I was a fugitive I couldn’t get away from the bastards!
“No… you shouldn’t,” A drawn-out reply from the lady that likes threatening strangers, finally finding the words to come back with, “but you are responsible all the same. You told me that you would see them to safety. I intend to see you hold your end of the bargain.”
I couldn’t believe that those two idiots were still having a heated conversation, oblivious to the attention that they were drawing. Another shy glance at the clifftop showed that one of the riders had dismounted and was now attempting the perilous descent to the rocks below. Oh hell…
“What are you suggesting?”
“What I am suggesting,” There was the soft shing of steel slicing the air, and I stared agitatedly at the dagger which the woman now had pressed to the black-eyed scoundrel’s lying throat, “is that you correct your mistakes and see our deal honoured, or I spill your life’s blood all over these rocks.”
The following pause was suspiciously shorter than I would have expected.
“Well then, ahaha! I suppose I have little other option than to graciously accept.”
“Now wait just a darn second!” By now I had given up trying to conceal myself, so sure that my end was tightening its grip about me, and I strode towards the two with blustering defiance spurred on largely by a fresh surge of fear, “I was here first! By rights the heathen should be helping me!”
“I would love to help you friend, aha, I really would, but the lady and I made a deal,” The hermit had pushed himself to his feet from the slimy rock upon which he had been sat, and he loomed over me for a second, face split with the most antagonising of grins, before adding innocently as he turned to swagger away, “Come back later, maybe?”
“What? No! I can’t just ‘come back later’ you twat! I’ll probably be locked up in a dungeon by then!” I didn’t want to admit what my subconscious feared; in a dungeon, or dead.
Neither of the two seemed even to hear me, though, as the laughing loon lurched across the sharp shoreline with company at his heels. I bumbled in chase, daring not to cast a glance over my shoulder at how close my own pursuers had come. Sooner than expected we reached the edge of the ocean, where Finnr had lead us to a sheltered inlet of calm brackish water upon which a small fishing boat bobbed contentedly. The former boarded the small seafaring vessel without pause, and the other hesitated only a heartbeat before leaping on after him. I, on the other hand, was much less keen.
“You can’t just leave me here!” I begged, clutching vehemently at the wall of crudely cut rock to my left, scared to let it go lest the world crumble around me, “They might have me killed!”
“Then come with us,” The man had already untethered the boat from it’s place of dock, and the rocking craft was beginning to slip away from land as he grabbed a pair of oars; his shipmate didn’t look all too pleased with this suggestion, it was clear from every piece of body language including the knife brandished threateningly my way, but the captain seemed oblivious as he shrugged lazily and slotted the oars into the rowlocks, “Or stay. It’s up to you…”
I weighed up the particularly deadly dagger, the lying scumbag, the threat hounding my heels. If I left on the boat then I was dubious of my chances with the current company, but if I at least survived a day or two then I might abandon them at the first stop for supplies and carry on by myself. If I stayed…
I don’t know what it was that gave me the final push onto that ship. Perhaps it was fate, as the old witch had said, or maybe it was the sound of crashing footsteps at my back and the knowledge that their two swords were certainly bigger and deadlier than the one awaiting me on that boat. Either way, I soon found myself gladly helping to row myself and two strangers out to sea and over the breaking waves as two men howled at me from the rocks, too late to see me restrained.
However, it was only as I watched the shoreline dwindle into the distance, pinned in a small boat between a murdering lunatic and a madwoman hellbent on revenge, that I began to realise with growing disquiet that I might just have made the worst decision of my life.
What I didn’t know at that point was that it was only the first of many more to come.
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