Home. I never thought the day would come when I would finally be in a bad enough situation to say it, but damn was it good to be there. To feel once again the sullen dampness of perpetual fog congesting the air, to witness the toothless faces of piss-stained peasants peering at me in all their miserable glory. Hell, I was even glad to see the pigs, and I found myself waving blissfully to my porky partners as they ambled alongside my horse with expressions of glee. One got so excited that it launched itself majestically into the sky- which was suddenly a pristine blue framed by sparkling rainbows- under the power of its own wind.

Ah, to be home.

The other swine began morphing seamlessly into various peasants, and I was even surprised to see a few that I recognised swimming among their swooning ranks I was bound along the path on the back of a parade. Molly was beaming at me from a face full of freckles as she skipped along by my side, Myranda near-weeping in her happiness at having me returned. The rest were just as joyous, bowing under my gaze, caressing my mount’s chest and hindquarters, reaching, grasping, clawing, screaming.

I yelled in alarm as hungry hands tore me from my horse, the terrified beast bucking wildly with rolling white eyes as the bodies blundered against its flanks, scarlet frothing from his flaring nostrils as talons tore at his belly and face like a pack of rabid wolves. I was almost trampled under his frenzied stomping as I tumbled to the ground in shock but, claimed as I was by a hundred prying fingers, I found that I could not roll away.

Cold hands were dragging me into the glistening black mud which oozed around me and clung to my limbs like tar, threatening to suffocate my silent shrieks as tens of battering bodies pushed me into the putrid muck. I tried to squirm free, kicking and flailing and wailing for help, but the earth had me in a deathly vice and my cries held no sway over the sheer mass of squalling faces all around. I could feel frigid dead fingers tearing at my flesh- my stomach, my throat, my eyes.

Amid those gaping eyeless faces I saw my father’s grim grey countenance, squirming among the mass of human maggots beside my uncles and the sloughed red skull of my grandfather. My father loomed closer, closer, mother’s dagger still skewering the red ribbons of his guts, and to my horror it was my hand which pinned it there, glistening with gore.

‘I-I’m sorry!’ I choked, sobs now competing with my cries, the blade twisting deeper into his gut, bathing me in hot red rain.

‘It wasn’t me!’ Another thrust from the blade in my hand, though I willed it to stop, and another rush of red, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Please! I didn’t mean it! Father, I’m sorry!”

But with every blundered apology came another slash, another gag of guilt, another wave of dead bodies and mud until grit caused my eyes to bleed and tar cloaked my lungs like led. Again, I tried to scream, horror possessing me like a parasite, but when I opened my mouth all that came out was a huge black snake, slick with rot.

I awakened with a jolt and a strangled gasp, heart going nineteen to the dozen, pounding against my chest like the blustering beat of a funeral drum, sweat slathered over my skin despite the deathly cold which immediately met me. For a moment the serpent still slithered in the back of my throat, twisting its vile way through my insides, and I spent the next minute or so emptying my innards into the inky ocean as menaces of my nightmare lingered, leering faces crowding the dark.

It took what felt like forever but, after a few ragged gasps of crisp night air, the barrage belated and all I was left with was an unpleasant aftertaste and a lingering sense of unease, the haunting countenances of my dream diminishing into the black until all that remained was the cold glint of their eyes in the suffocation of stars spread above me.

If only the starlight could erase my guilt so easily.

It was bound to catch up with me at some point: the guilt, the fear, everything associated with one’s father’s murder in general and knowing that, to an extent, it’s your own fault. Yes, that’s right. I admit it. I wanted to believe so badly that it wasn’t true, that the dream and everything before it had been only that, but lying to oneself is easier in the daylight. Right now, in the empty dark, all I had was silence and a black canvas to torturously relay every scene of the past few days- and by Gods did it hurt.

I had hoped that I might have experienced at least a short period of blissful ignorance upon waking. That I might have forgotten my current vices in the way that sleep encourages and been rocked back to reality by the gentle roll of the boat beneath me, like a child’s cradle, safe and secure and at least temporarily at ease. Instead I had been cursed with complete and immediate recall of every unfortunate thing which had occurred over the past month, greeted with that snowballing sense of dread and shame that I couldn’t seem to shake while jostled about like a rag doll as the large piece of driftwood, which had been proclaimed a ‘boat’, was tossed around on the choppy coastal waves.

It felt like all the adrenaline of the day had somehow erected a ginormous wall in my mind separating consciousness from any and all emotions which hounded the gates, so that as soon as I had time to stop and think and calm down the wall crumbled, the floodgates flew open, and all of a sudden I was weeping into the ocean in torrents, salt tears streaking my face like some dewy-eyed fool. Dammit, how humiliating! I only hoped that the other two passengers were still asleep, or that it was too dark for them to spy my tears. At least I wasn’t bawling like a newborn babe, or I might have been forced to abandon ship just to survive the deathly mortification.

Once my stomach and waterworks had settled somewhat I peeled myself away from the small boat’s splintering edge and, shuddering, shrank inwards against the north’s bitter breath and the slackening clutches of my dream. I stared upwards. Above, the sky was moonless and uninviting, crowded with cloud and a blanket of stars which no longer held any sense of comfort for me. I gave a small dispirited groan and slumped deeper into the bowels of the boat’s puddled belly.

I had been so adamant to avoid falling asleep- my reasons simple to decipher given my present company- but evidently it had crept up on me all the same, spurred on no doubt by the approach of the stars and my sleepless night of the one before. To tell the truth, I’m still rather surprised that I managed to droop an eyelid, what with the terrible seasickness which had almost immediately claimed me upon setting out on the waves.

“Enjoy your beauty sleep?” I almost shat my back-to-front breeches, hissing jumbled curses and swiping the tell-tale dampness from my cheeks as the disturbing tones of Finnr Larsen trickled to me over the churning sound of the breaking waves on the not too distant coast, followed by his trademark titter which had already become a pet hate of mine, “Zabi and I were just debating whether to toss you into the sea while you were asleep to lose some unnecessary baggage. Shame that you woke before we could tie the anchor about your ankles, haha!”

Zabi? I blinked as I struggled into a sitting position, squinting through night’s veil at our female accomplice who was glaring coolly at the knife clutched tightly on her lap… or I guessed as much from the silhouette and the slither of silver pricked by the starlight. I found it hard to believe that she had said one word since boarding, and indeed I hadn’t heard one such utterance the entire time I had been awake.

A rogue wave tipped the little sailboat at an alarming angle, and I did my best to hold both myself and what remained of Lord Crawford’s vintage wine in place as I deliberated whether I should honour his comment with a reply. Another wave, another roil of my gut, and my decision was made for me.

                                   ***

The rest of the journey went horribly, as can be expected. My seasickness had started up again after weakly reloading my stomach with fresh ammunition in the form of a breakfast of leather and dried twigs. The cold and congealed stew which accompanied it had been the only thing which offered even a semblance of taste that was better on the way down than it was on the way back up, and I spent the majority of that morning poisoning the local fish supply as I coughed and retched over the side of the boat. Zabi, as I assumed to be her name, said very little, unlike her hooked blade which spent the morning singing threateningly across a whetstone. Therefore, it was a great shock when its master finally spoke, although it was only after some prompting on behalf of myself as a feeble distraction from my misery.

“Surely you can’t trust him, do you?” I was currently clinging to the side of the boat, feeling that my stomach had settled enough to speak but not having enough confidence in it to move somewhere more central. Zabi was sitting as far from myself and our mutual antagonist as possible; probably because she could not bring herself to sit near the man who had allegedly doomed her family to slavery, nor near the other man who stank to high heaven of vomit and was likely to share his breakfast with her in the most ungallant way. Despite this, I shuffled closer anyway as I glanced distrustfully toward the man at the front of the boat.

Finnr had a length of rope and was feeding it through his spider-like fingers, willing it into an assortment of knots and seemingly paying no heed to his passengers, though something about the way he leaned ever so slightly toward us said otherwise. I made a point to lower my voice: I didn’t trust the man one bit. There was something horribly ‘off’ about him, and I’m not just talking about the fact that he was a stone-cold killer, though that certainly plays a part. He was too selfish, too slippery… ‘Too much like myself’, whispered a voice at the back of my head. I immediately silenced that part of my consciousness with a crossbow and reloaded to fire another.

“I don’t know much about you, but you don’t look like an idiot- so surely you must see how suspicious this all is? How easily he bent to your will?” I tore my eyes away from Larsen and rested it upon Zabi with no less distrust. She reminded me of a cat: beautiful and inviting, but just as likely to tear one’s hand to shreds than tolerate it. The only difference with Zabi was that she didn’t bother pretending that she wasn’t going to bite- even her smile, as rare as it was, was practically a snarl.

At first, I thought that my gentle prompting would not have any effect- unsurprising, since it had never worked previously- but just as I gave up and angled myself in the direction of the sea, crippled with another spasm of nausea, she finally answered in a clipped response.

“I have an intimidating personality.”

I hadn’t expected her to reply, so it took longer than necessary to formulate a response as I struggled to keep the rare experience of conversation running.

“Yes, I’m aware of that,” I caught myself subconsciously touching my tender nose, and pretended to stroke my moustache instead as I leaned carefully closer and hissed beneath my breath, “But he didn’t even put up a fight! Not one finger lifted, not even a word of protest! Now, for a man that I’m certain murdered my family and who I am in no doubt is probably responsible for the murder of many more, does that not strike you as a tad odd?”

“No,” Her amber eyes glared petulantly at the frilled caps of the waves opposite, her strong jaws clenching as she mulled over my words until, with a sudden faltering of surety, they flickered finally to meet my own, “…Maybe. But that does not matter. I will deal with him if he steps even a toe out of line. And if he does have some treason planned… I do not care. He is my best chance at getting my family back- maybe my only chance. He may be treacherous, deceitful and cruel, but I am willing to overcome that if he can get me what I need, as I believe only he can.”

“What you’ll get is dead in a ditch somewhere, rotting in the gutters while you’re pickpocketed by urchins.” I couldn’t believe the concept was so difficult for her to grasp.

“And you care?”

“No,” I scoffed, reclining against the pitiful thing they called a mast as I pulled a scratchy woollen blanket about my shoulders, “but if persuading you out of a bad decision also conveniently assists me with my own problems, then I’m happy to help.”

I’m generally not a charitable person, but the quicker we were done dealing with Zabi’s dirty laundry, the sooner we could get back to more important matters- me.