Exiles of Forlorn (5 page)

Uller looked back at her fast. I thought for a moment he might snap at her for doubting him, but he didn’t. “I didn’t say they live
on
the ice,” he explained, “I said they live
in
the ice. In caves carved in rock and ice, thousands of fathoms, where they catch fish and live off melted seawater.”

“No one can drink seawater,” Reiwyn said, rolling her eyes. “They’d go mad.”

“Well,” I interjected, glancing across the boat at her with a grin. “They
do
live under ice already. How much more mad can they get?”

“They’re called the
Do’noai
,” continued Uller. “They’ve adapted to life in the ice, and drinking saltwater doesn’t bother them. They may have been human once. Or ice-fish that learned to walk. They even rather look like fish, at least from the drawings I’ve seen. Hard to tell how accurate they were, as they were drawn from memory based on a story. The
Do’noai
aren’t the social type.”

Blackfoot rolled to his knees and advanced on Uller. The former wizard’s apprentice almost fell off the boat backing away from him. “Is Forlorn part of Eios?”

“The moons are the same,” explained Uller, apparently assuming that Blackfoot was educated enough to know that different continents had different moons. The puzzled look on Blackfoot’s face indicated that this assumption was incorrect. “Different continents have different moons. Ket only has one moon, Eios has three. There are stories of far off continents with more moons, and some without.”

“So is there anything beyond the ice?” asked Blackfoot.

Uller nodded. “Doubtless so, but there are only rumors. Explorers who claim to have met the
Do’noai
say they talk of a narrow waste of dead earth, followed by jungles.”

“So there
are
jungles!” Blackfoot was really interested now. He’d told us how he was looking forward to living on a jungle island. Like many, he assumed all sea-locked islands were like the Abmers off the eastern coast of Illyr. Uller had been all too eager to break to Blackfoot that, so far as we were going to be concerned, Forlorn had no jungles. Blackfoot then began to ask what kind of sea locked island didn’t have jungles, which led Uller to interrupt him with the correction that had begun this entire exchange.

“I suppose,” Uller rolled his eyes and forced a grin. “Eventually, there are jungles, but, it’s still not an island.” The circle was complete.

“We won’t be seeing them,” I said, giving Blackfoot a sorry look. “We’ll have our hands full with the gluttons.”

“Oh, gluttons!” Blackfoot brought his hands together with a loud clap. “I can’t
wait
to see one of those. I hear they’re four strides tall and have skin like an elephant!” He held his fingers to his mouth and imitated long, pointed teeth. “I hear they eat people with their long, sharp teeth.”

“I doubt they’re
that
tall,” moaned Uller. “Probably not even taller than a man. And the rumors about them being cannibals are probably false, too. They say the same thing about the Abmer Islanders, and it’s just racist clapwad—”

“It ain’t no clapwad!” Stree surprised us. He’d been quiet for so long, it was as if he’d just snapped. He scanned us with a crooked finger as his single, bloodshot eye fixed each of us it its milky pool, spending a little longer on Reiwyn than any of us were comfortable with. “The gluttons is real, and they’s a real terror! They ain’t no twelve feet, but they’re three strides if they’re a one—a few half a stride more ‘en that!”

“How the Daevas do you know?” Uller didn’t bother hiding his disdain. “Was it a glutton that ate your eye?” Everyone laughed but Antioc, who watched the Brontish man carefully, like a cat circling another in its territory.

“Naw!” He pointed to the empty socket, ringed with scars. “Took one of them Illyrian bastard’s arrows to the eye.”

“You were a soldier?” asked Antioc. Stree nodded.

Uller laughed. “Why didn’t you have your visor down? Are you an idiot?”

Stree shot him a dirty look with his remaining eye. “I did have me visor down. The arrow plucked right through it! If I hadn’t been wearing the pissin’ helmet, I’d be right hanged.”

Uller stared at him. He wasn’t used to commoner slang, particularly from the impoverished, stinky streets of lower Bronta. None of us were. Antioc seemed to get the gist of it, though. “The helmet slowed the arrow,” he explained, still watching Stree in case he made a move for Uller. “If he hadn’t been wearing it, it would have gone deeper and got his brain. Then he’d be dead.”

Stree’s stern face melted into a smile. He nodded.

“So how do you know about the gluttons?” asked Reiwyn.

“Me brother, he was here a few years back. He died o’ the rot, but afore that, he said he saw one of ‘em when the Sand King made him walk the White Road.”

“What’s the White Road?” I asked. I knew about the Sand King. That was what they called the fellow who governed Forlorn’s colony of exiles. He was also called Arn, and reportedly not fond of the former, more colorful appellation. I imagined him as being much like our King in Morment, portly and regal with a flagon of ale in one hand and a goose leg in the other, and a shaggy head of hair and beard. That was how Gerold V had looked the only time I’d seen him. His girth suggested strongly that he looked like that most other times as well. Until he died, at least. I’d never met his successor, Rorineld II.

“And I thought you killed your brother?” Uller interjected before Stree could answer my question.

“A man can have more en’ one brother, can’t he?” he snapped with another dirty look. He gave me the same look, though his voice was calmer when he said, “And you’ll know soon enough about the White Road. You’ll all know soon enough.”

With that, Stree leaned back against the side of the skiff and resumed watching the port grow in the distance. He was silent for the rest of the trip, and so were we.

4.

T
hat feeling I got when I first spied Forlorn on the horizon came back, and it brought friends. I was the thirdson of a lord, but I’d never considered my childhood home luxurious. Castles were cold, dark places that smelled like cellars and rot. Aside from a few tapestries, they lacked any sense of color or décor. Compared to this, it was a paradise.

Nothing could have prepared me for Forlorn Colony. The whole place smelled of fish and sweaty bodies—of which there were several score on the harbor to meet us. I’d seen commoners before. I’d even seen refugees, out on the front lines of the endless war. The people of Forlorn made royalty of them, with their ratty clothes, sweaty brows, and sunburns. Several of them came to the docks to help us ashore. They seemed eager and helpful, until I realized they weren’t there for us. Instead, they went for the heavy wooden crates and brown cloth sacks laden with supplies. In exchange, they handed over little white bags with twine draw-strings. I saw the sailors pry them open and glance in, shaking them for weight and smiling in satisfaction.

We lost Stree in the assembly following the disembarkment, which was fair as we didn’t like him. My fellows and I gathered together, but found ourselves being pushed into a line with our backs to the sea. I went willingly, but Uller snapped at one of the residents when he came close to touching him. Antioc stood at my side, chest out and back straight like he was presenting for an officer. Blackfoot smiled and took a spot in between him and Reiwyn, comically imitating the disciplined stance of the former to the amusement of the latter.

Once so assembled, a few prominent figures emerged from the crowd. The foremost was tall man with shaggy hair the color of straw on his head and chin. He had a familiar look, with his blue eyes and strong jaw, as if the dreg of this place hadn’t fully consumed him. His clothes were even nicer, with a green jerkin and brown britches. He looked over those in line, speaking softly to a couple of them. The tarnished basket pommel of a sailor’s cutlass jutted from a red sash he wore as a belt.

Close behind stood a tall man with red skin like a sunburn; his bare chest and shoulders covered with scars made into weird lightning bolt designs. His oily black hair was long, but only in a narrow strip flanked by a shaved, red scalp. The locks fell to the left, occasionally blowing over his eyes by the wind. I saw a dagger at his belt with a shiny white blade. Bone, I reckoned; possibly wood. On the other side of his belt rested a coiled lash that I took for a rope, save for the occasional sparkle of white sticking from it as it hung near to his knees. These were the weapons of a primitive; indeed, this one had the look of a savage about him, yet he stood as tall and proud as any here. I’d seen savages before; there were even a few of them in our group, dark skinned Plainsfolk with high cheeks and hard, hairless chins. This fellow seemed like them but taller and broader. The closer he came, the taller he was. He was one of the Tallfolk, a race of savages like the Plainsfolk who lived near the hot southern coast of the Horand Sea. I’d never seen one before. He hovered at the blond man’s side much the same way Antioc had with me when we first met; it had taken me a while to break him of it.

The next man was equal to me in height and build. We even had the same dark black hair, though mine was curly where his was stringy and straight. His snide smile reminded me unpleasantly of my own. The similarities ended there, however. Where I was refined, he was brutal and scarred, with an especially nasty reddish gash running down the left side of his face from his brow to chin. We were spared the image of an empty eye-socket by a black patch, held over his head by a black thong. He eyed us individually, head to toe, as though he were looking for someone in particular. Not finding them, he redirected his attention to the few female members of the assembly, especially Reiwyn. I thought it was funny until I noticed how she was looking back at him. The wick lit inside me again. She did seem to like the bad ones.

Finally came a squat fellow with hirsute arms that ended in huge, muscular hands. His hair was a rim of gray and brown circling a bald scalp, browned by the sun. He wore a gray robe stained with dirt, especially around the frayed ends that dragged on the ground as he walked. He didn’t spend much time looking at us, and the whole time gave the impression that he had other places he would rather be. I could identify with that.

The leader stopped halfway down the line, folded his hands behind his back and turned. The crowd backed away from him, reverent but not obsequious. No one lowered their heads and many kept eye contact with him before he turned again to face us, grinding a rut in the sand with the heel of his boot.

“Welcome to Forlorn.” His strong, commanding voice sent shivers up my spine. He reminded me of my father and brother both. Not normally a good feeling for me. “I’m Arn.”

That’s the Sand King?
I could tell by the gasps and agape mouths of many of the others that the surprise was mutual. He didn’t look particularly kingly at all.

“This is Sharkhart, Ferun, and Melvon.” He gestured to the savage, the patched one, and the one in the dirty robe. “This is our home.” He ran his eyes from one edge of the line to the other. “It can be your home too, if you choose. This is no prison. You can stay or go.” He lifted a hand to the dock, where the skiffs and their crewmen waited, looking anxious to be gone. I identified with that feeling, too. “The boats will wait until you’ve heard the terms of your residency.”

Blackfoot crinkled his brow and looked at me. “Rules,” I whispered, leaning close enough that I could smell him over the sea. “He’s going to give us the rules.” The urchin nodded and resumed watching Arn give his speech. Antioc watched him, too. Reiwyn watched Ferun, while Uller watched Reiwyn watch Ferun. He was seething. It made me grin. I was seething too, but it made me happy to be better at hiding it.

Of rules, there were more than a few. Everyone had to work. Arn explained this, and said they’d be around to decide who got what job based on our individual skills and aptitudes. He went on about that for a while, going into detail about which of his minions were in charge of what. Arn ran the operations of the community. Ferun managed the ranging, foraging and general protection duties. That was a bit of a surprise; he looked less like a fighter and more like a raider, but I suppose those aren’t such different vocations. Melvon was, unsurprisingly, in charge of the workers, farmers and other base labor. He didn’t mention what Sharkhart did. He didn’t really have to. I imagined Sharkhart did whatever Sharkhart wanted.

By the end of his speech, my skin felt so hot I swore my sweat would boil. I rubbed the back of my neck and made a visor with my hand, hiding my eyes enough that I could glance at Reiwyn’s tanned, bare shoulders without her noticing. Even a layer of sweat and beach sand couldn’t mute the effect of her warm, inviting skin.

“You’re here for the same reason as the rest of us. You feel you have nowhere else to go. Your king has abandoned you and left you with no choice but to ride three months to the very end of the world.” He scanned us again. “But you do have a choice. Two choices, actually . . . for now. If you leave now you may arrange passage on the ship that brought you for a landing further east in the Spicelands of Ket, or maybe the arid plains of Ortoos. If you’re up for some light fighting, one of the mercenary companies there will be happy to take you on and send you to die fighting cannibals in the Stonecombs. Otherwise . . .”

He turned to the side and raised his left hand, open as though to catch the wind. The crowd of the unwashed parted like a high wave. Beyond them, at the end of the beach beyond a few squat huts and decaying wooden boardwalks hung from uneven posts in the sand, lay a gate. It was made in the same manner as the wall, of old wooden posts reddened by age and sea salt. The gate was open to a stretch of beach that seemed to run the length of the island behind the cruel stone spires and juts in the shallow sea’s edge. The sand was white like clouds, and reflected the sun so brightly that it nearly blinded me to stare too long.