Scarlet From Gold (Book 3) (31 page)

Marco heard the snapping twang of a bow string, and raised his head just in time to see an archer fire an arrow at him from the upper floor window of a warehouse beside the harbor front.

The arrow flew a straight and swift path, leaving Marco no time to react before it struck him in the chest.  He felt the pain of the powerful contact as the arrow head collided with his breast.

Marco fell backwards, pain exploding in his chest, and he landed in a seated position, for just a moment recollecting the day he had landed on his seat in the square outside of Algornia’s shop.  He caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, and saw the arrow that had struck him bounce away and land on the pavement next to him.  He gasped for air and shook his head in astonishment, as he heard shouts and screams from the surrounding crowd.

There was a rip in his shirt, he saw as he looked down, and the flesh that was revealed by the arrow’s strike was the skin that was covered by the small flower mark that had been emblazoned upon his flesh when he had first visited the Isle of Ophiuchus.  The flower had saved his life, preventing the arrow from piercing his heart, as he recollected it had done before.

“He’s alive!” someone shouted, and without knowing precisely what he was doing, Marco made a move to protect himself by waving his hand in front of him and raising a protective dome of energy around himself.

There were more shouts from the crowd.  Marco took one more deep breath and then pushed himself back up to his feet.

“Look out!” he heard a shout.

“The Corsairs are back!” another voice said in panic.

“Run for your lives!” several screamed.

He was creating panic, Marco realized, causing potential harm to many, and damaging his chances of peacefully negotiating with the Doge to have an army sent to liberate Athens.  He stood still, desperately trying to discern the best solution to his problem, when he heard a splash and a scream off to the waterside of the harbor.

Looking over, Marco saw a woman screaming as she stood looking down at the water below, as people around her jostled her and bumped her.  To his horror, Marco saw the woman get knocked vigorously and lose her balance, so that she fell down into the water, dropping out of sight as her voice abruptly stopped.

Without hesitation, Marco ran towards the scene of the accident, causing more panic and making more people scream.  He reached the edge, and felt a sense of a being nudged.  Looking behind him he saw a pair of arrows sitting on the paving stones, arrows that had apparently been shot at him and had bounced off his shield.  He turned around and looked down, and saw the woman and a toddler both struggling to stay afloat in the water of the harbor.

There were scores of people nearby, but they were frantic with excitement and fear about his presence, and none were doing anything to help the family in the water.  Without hesitation, Marco stripped off his pack and his sword, placing them on the ground.  “No one touch these, or you will die,” he shouted a warning, then he willed the protective shield to dissolve, and he dove into the water.

The water of the harbor was dirty.  He had never truly realized it until Pesino and Cassius had pointed it out to him the previous fall, but as he entered the water and then surfaced, he was acutely aware of the truth of the matter.  He shook his head to clear his hair and the water from his eyes, and saw what direction the struggling couple was in, then reached them in a matter of five strokes.

He reached for the woman first, and grabbed her, then felt her grab onto him.

“The child, grab hold of your child,” he told the panicked woman.

She immediately reached out and grabbed the toddler.

“We can’t swim!” she said desperately.

“I’ll help you, just hold onto your child and keep his head out of the water,” Marco urged.  He looked at the distance to the nearest pier, and judged that he could carry the pair far enough to get them to the pilings, and end their trauma in the harbor waters.

“Hold on to the child and hold on to my shoulder,” Marco instructed his companion in the water.  “I’m going to swim over to that pier, so we can get out of the water.”

“Thank you, thank you,” the woman breathlessly responded.  She was easing out of her panic, accepting that she and her child would survive their ordeal, as Marco began to stroke through the water, moving slowly as he pulled the weight of the two rescued people behind him.  The short distance seemed to stretch out in front of him, and even though he was a good swimmer, Marco felt his leg muscles start to burn with exhaustion when he had crossed only half the distance to the security of the stout wooden posts he aimed for.

He continued to stroke, slowing down, but making progress, and he vaguely heard sounds, sounds of voices calling from the pier and the docks above, but he didn’t have time to look as his focus became more and more concentrated on the singular goal of reaching the dark wood that rested just ahead.

Small waves lapped against the pilings, and Marco drew close enough to see the barnacles that had attached themselves to the wood.  He was only a few strokes away, and breathing heavily, his legs barely fluttering as he willed his arms to reach forward and stroke.  The limbs flew slowly into the air, arched forward and down, then reached the water, and he dragged them back towards his body, gaining a few more inches of progress every time.

Marco took the last needed stroke and reached the pier at last.  He wrapped an arm around the wood, ignoring the pain of the barnacles cutting into his flesh.  His arms were leaden, too tired to reach upwards to grab onto the cross beam that was barely above the level of the water.

“You did it!  Thank you!” the woman’s voice was nearby, but sounded faint in Marco’s ears, as he seemed to mostly hear his our heart pounding wildly to try to pump blood to all of his oxygen-starved muscles.

“I was sure we were going to die from that sorcerer, and then I was sure we were going to die from drowning,” the woman said.  She released her hold on Marco and grabbed onto the crossbeam.

“Is there some place we can climb up?” she asked.  “Is it safe to climb up there where the sorcerer is?”

“The sorcerer isn’t up there anymore,” Marco panted to the woman who didn’t recognize him.  He moved slowly to one side of the post, and looked around.  “There’s a ladder over there,” he finally could raise an arm and point across the bottom of the pier.  “We can climb up there.  I can carry your baby if you need,” he said, though he knew he’d need a few more minutes of time to rest and recuperate before he’d be able to actually do so.

“I’m ready,” the woman said.  Marco looked at her for the first time, and saw that she was an older woman, older than he had anticipated to have such a young child.

“This is your child?” he asked.

“My granddaughter actually,” the woman admitted.  “I was walking her along the harbor front today to let my daughter have time to run errands around the city.”

“That was nice of you,” Marco grunted as he finally started to move towards the ladder, holding onto beams and pulling himself out in front of the grandmother, then stopping.  “Let me take your granddaughter,” he said, and he took the bright-eyed girl into the crook of his arm, allowing the woman to move out around him and towards the ladder. 

They passed out of view of the crowd that stood atop the harbor wall, several feet overhead, and Marco saw men holding bows aimed at him, waiting to take a shot.  He hadn’t intended to use the child as a protective shield, but that was just what was happening, he realized.  And it meant that he was sure to be ambushed when he climbed up the ladder and reached the surface of the pier.

Marco pondered what to do as he moved towards the ladder and paused at the base to rest.  He watched the woman start climbing upward.  She made slow progress, the weight of her sodden clothes dragging her downward as she rained harbor water down upon the heads of Marco and the toddler he held below her.  When the woman was three rungs above him, Marco hitched the child up close to his body, cradled it with his right arm, and used his left arm to start rising upward as he pulled himself along one rung at a time.

He looked up as he climbed, blinked through the dripping water from the grandmother’s garments, and within three minutes saw her leave the ladder and step onto the pier surface.

Another minute of climbing took Marco to the top.  He looked up and saw the grandmother reaching down for the baby, a frightened look on her face, as a circle of armed men surrounded her, weapons drawn.

It was time to protect himself, he decided.  He climbed up further, still holding the child, and stepped onto the pier.

“Put your weapons down, and I’ll give this child back to her grandmother,” Marco said.  He watched as the Guard members looked at one another, then slowly lowered their weapons.

Marco closed his eyes and focused, remembering the curse he had issued in Clovis, the one that had protected him from attacks by the monks of the city.  “Any weapon that is used to attack me in the Lion City harbor will deliver its injury to the person who wields that weapon,” Marco told those around him.  He shifted the baby from his right arm to his left, then raised his right hand and summoned his sense of injustice at the situation, using it to fire up the sorcery within his hand, and unleashing a wave of green light that spread forth from his palm and expanded in all directions as it pulsed outward across the city.

“Here’s your granddaughter,” Marco said as he handed the child to the woman, whose arms reached out and snatched the girl back, before she turned and shouldered her way out of the group of Guards, and fled from the scene.

“Sorcerer, you cannot fool us.  You’re bluffing!” one of the Guards told Marco.  “Now come with us to the municipal prison,” he ordered.

“Let me gather my belongings,” Marco said.  He moved forward, as though he were going to push his way between two of the armed men in order to get to his sword and pack that he had left on the dock.  One guard swept his sword in front of Marco, then seemed to pull it back as the blade abruptly switched direction and struck the man in his own chest, opening a long but shallow slash that made the man howl with shock and pain at the unexpected occurrence.

His belongings were left untouched, Marco saw with relief as the guards backed away from him in fear and astonishment following their companion’s wound.   He picked up his sword and felt a palpable sense of comfort as he held the handle of the blade within his fingers, then strapped the belt back around his hips.  He raised the pack, and turned to look at the guards who now followed him closely.

“I mean no harm to the Lion City.  I am here to see the Doge, and pass along a message from the Temple of Ophiuchus,” he said.  “Will you inform the Doge’s palace that I will come to see him tomorrow morning at the palace?”  Marco asked.  “I have other errands to attend to in the meantime.”

With that, Marco started strolling away, followed at first by an uncertain cluster of guards and hangers-on, who scattered and ran for cover at one point when Marco wheeled and pointed his hand, making it glow as though he was about to unleash an attack of sorcerer’s energy.

After that he walked unimpeded as he made the trip to Algornia’s shop, then opened the door and walked in with a sigh of great relief.

“How do you do?” Master Algornia was seated at a stool, closely examining some ancient text on alchemy when Marco walked into the front of the shop, and the master needed a few blinks of his eyes to realize who he faced.

“Bless your buttons!” Algornia’s face broke into a warm smile and he rose from his seat.  “You are still alive!  Good for you!” the old man came around the corner of the counter and the two of them met in a prolonged, affectionate hug.

“It’s been almost a year now,” Algornia said.  “I’d given you up for lost at best.  Tell me what happened.”

“It’s a long tale master,” Marco said.  “Before I start, let me ask if you can sign the paperwork that will remove my name from the list of runaway apprentices?  It gave me some difficulty in town just now.”

“Have I not done that?” Algornia said apologetically.  “Of course – first thing tomorrow morning I’ll go to the Registrar’s office to fix that.  Now tell me all that’s happened.  You’re still alive, so you must not have encountered the Echidna; did Clovis not provide the information you needed to find the monster?”

“Actually, it did,” Marco said mildly, and he launched into an abbreviated version of his story that astounded Algornia as he unfolded the tale.

“So you came up from the underworld without your memories?” the master asked minutes later as they conversed.

“Grandfather!  There’s a sorcerer on the loose destroying the city!” Teresa, Algornia’s granddaughter came flying into the shop from the back of the building.

“Oh, I beg your pardon, I didn’t know you had a customer,” the girl said, looking briefly at Marco and then back at Algornia.  “There’s a sorcerer loose in the city!  Aren’t you frightened?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Do you know anything about this?” Algornia turned to Marco.  “Somehow I suspect that you do.”

Teresa turned to look at Marco again, wondering what visitor would know about sorcerers, and suddenly her mind registered who she saw before her.

“Marco?” her voice rose.  “Marco are you back?  Did you come to fight the sorcerer?  It’s good to see you!” she flung herself forward as though she were about to hug him, then stopped.

“What is that around your neck?” she asked suspiciously.

“It’s a marriage band,” Marco answered.  “It’s a custom up in the north lands.”

“You married a girl from the north?” Teresa asked.

“You didn’t mention that in your story; congratulations,” Algornia said.

“No, I didn’t marry a girl from the north.  I just had a wedding in the north,” Marco explained, and he realized the conversation was about to get confounding.

“Where’s your wife?” Teresa asked, probing for more information.  “I’m dating a nice boy you know,” she immediately added, determined to assert her own position in society.

“Is that so?” Algornia said with a deceptive mildness.