The Huntsman's Amulet (2 page)

Chapter 2

The City of Auracia

N
iccolo’s inn was quiet;
none of the groups of sailors that often congregated by the bar were there. Soren slumped down on a bar stool in relief and waited for the waves of fatigue to wash over him. By the time the innkeeper had put a mug of ale in front of him, Soren was barely able to lift it.

Niccolo’s was usually quiet; one of the reasons Soren chose it. The waterfront district of the city had seen better days but had never been the most desirable of places to stay, and Niccolo’s was right in its centre. It was a solid brick building, but old, and Soren doubted if anyone living would be able to recall when it was last decorated. The furniture was old and worn but functional, and there was a damp, musty smell about the place.

There was never anyone to bother him, apart from the innkeeper, but even he ignored Soren most of the time. On a typical day, perhaps a dozen people would pass through the inn, sometimes more in the evenings, but they tended to keep to themselves.

‘You gonna pay for that?’ the innkeeper said. He stood on the other side of the bar wiping a glass, looking out the corner of his eye at Soren. It was clear that he would not stop without an answer.

‘I’ve coin. I’ll pay when the rest of my bill is due at the end of the week,’ Soren said. His coin was close to running out, and he was still no closer to his reason for coming to Auracia than he had been when he arrived.

He stood and picked up his mug before shuffling over to a table at the other side of the large room that made up the lower level of the inn. It was as much distance as he could put between him and the innkeeper without going outside, and about as much as he thought he could manage without further rest. Even that short distance caused his legs to burn and his mind to swim in dizziness. He hoped the signal that he wished to be left in peace was clear.

Some men came into the bar. Soren sighed. Men meant noise, and more often than not they would be looking for conversation. Perhaps they would not see him in the dim taproom, but it was unlikely. He could always hope though, he thought.

‘A round of drinks please, innkeeper; whatever you have on tap!’ one of the men said. ‘Ho there, friend! Can we get you a drink?’ the man shouted in Soren’s direction.

Soren held up his still half full mug and sloshed it for them to see, forcing a smile as he did, not wanting to appear completely ungrateful.

‘Perhaps later then, my friend.’ He turned back to the bar, and his companions.

Soren felt a little churlish. They were just trying to be friendly. He could tell that they were not Auracian, but he could not place the accent.

‘We’ve been at sea for two weeks, and not in this city for more than three months. What’s been happening in this part of the world?’ the generous man said to the innkeeper.

‘Not much of anything — usually the case these days. Your news of the north is probably fresher than our own. There’s more fighting between the other cities of the Principalities in the south, but there’s nothing new in that.’

Soren let the chatter of the men drift into the background as he fell back into his thoughts, a place he spent much of his waking time these days. He had been in Auracia for nearly two weeks. His initial elation at having escaped a prison cell and the headsman’s block in Ostenheim had flagged as his days melded into what felt like a purposeless existence. He’d come to the city expecting to find Alessandra, naively it seemed.

When he thought of it he realised his recent actions sounded like a ridiculous romance story; the brave and heroic swordsman finally reunited with his great love. The main difference was that Soren didn’t feel brave, and he certainly wasn’t heroic. Of the two factions in Ostia, he was disgraced with one and it now seemed the target for assassination by the other; the one that was currently, and for the foreseeable future, in power. It could only have been Amero who sent those men to kill him.

Auracia wasn’t a large city. Smaller than Ostenheim, so he had thought it would be easy to find her. His expectations proved sorely misplaced. He was rapidly running out of places to search, but what looked to be his best and possibly last hope of finding her would come the next day. Despite the fatigue, the nausea and the headache left behind by the Gift — as much a sign of his neglect of it as of its recent use — the thought made him feel better than he had in some time.

The Harbour Master of Auracia, who professed himself too busy to answer Soren’s questions whenever he had called unannounced, had finally agreed to meet him. The other workers around the harbour had been of little help, but he hoped that the Harbour Master would be different. They were always hazy on the coming and goings of ships more than a week or two previously. The titbits of information they offered up rarely agreed and were often contradictory. The only thing of use they had been able to tell him was that the Harbour Master kept extensive records and knew each and every ship that was a regular visitor to the harbour as though they were old friends.

Soren stood next to the counter in the Harbour Master’s office, doing his best to contain his impatience.

‘From Ostenheim, y’say?’ the Harbour Master said. He was lounging in a captain’s chair behind the counter, and it did not look as though he got out of it very often.

Soren nodded. ‘Ostenheim.’

‘Sailed five weeks ago, y’say?’

‘Five weeks.’ The conversation was grindingly slow, but he needed this man’s help and had to remain polite.

‘Your wife?’

Soren nodded again.

‘Sure she wants to be found?’

Soren smiled, but it was difficult to conceal just how desperate he was for this information.

The man scratched his chin and thought for a moment. ‘A ship that takes female passengers travelling alone between Ostenheim and Auracia. Not every ship will take passengers, fewer still lady folk. Won’t have the facilities to see to a lady’s… needs. Some captains won’t even have women on board at sea. Sailors’ superstitions. They bring bad luck. So that narrows things down a bit. You’re sure you can’t remember the name of the ship?’

‘No. I had to get her out of the city fast. The way things are in Ostenheim now…’

‘Aye, more and more people coming through here every day from Ostenheim, Ruripathia an’ all parts between. I just hope that bastard Duke doesn’t set his sights on the south. They say he might when he’s done with the northerners.’

‘The ship?’ Soren said, hoping to keep the Harbour Master on track. He had been waiting too long to allow the conversation to go off in another direction.

‘Yes, right, the ship. Sailed from Ostenheim ‘bout five weeks ago, so shoulda been here ‘bout a week, ten days after that.’ He took a black ledger book from a shelf behind the counter and began flipping through the pages.

‘Four weeks ago,’ he muttered. ‘Right, here we are. Three pages for that week.’ He ran his finger down each page. ‘A few of ‘em were out of Ostenheim.’ He started listing off names and dismissing them. Then he frowned.

‘What is it?’ Soren said.

‘There was bad weather that week. I’ve three local ships listed as overdue here. I can tell you off the top of my head that none of ‘em have arrived since. By now it’s safe to say they’re lost.’

‘And they’re the only ones likely to have been carrying a passenger?’ Soren felt a wave of nausea pass over him. After all that had happened, to think that she might be lost at sea seemed like a cruel joke, and was too difficult to believe.

The Harbour Master nodded. ‘Reckon the
Wind Sprite
was the ship we’re lookin’ for. She’s the only one doin’ a regular passenger run up and down the coast that’s likely to take a lady on board. Twelve sailors on her, not counting any passengers.’ He grimaced.

‘What if she wasn’t on a local ship, if she came south on an Ostian one? How would I find out about that?’ Soren said, trying to grasp onto any hope. He had convinced himself that he would find what he was looking for here. It had never occurred to him that he would discover something like this.

The Harbour Master shook his head. ‘Haven’t had an Ostian ship stop here since the war started. Not for six weeks. All the warships are fightin’, and the merchants have gone north with supplies and to bring home the plunder. If she came south it was on an Auracian ship. If it was an Auracian ship, it was the Wind Sprite.’

‘There’s no way she was on one of the others?’

The Harbour Master shook his head again. His demeanour had changed from curiosity to sympathetic condolence, and Soren felt as though the room was spinning around him.

‘They have to declare passengers in their custom duty check. I make note of it in the ledger.’ He tapped his finger on the page. ‘No female passengers that week at all. There’ve been a number of them the last two weeks, but they all came here on ships that were still here when your wife would’ve left Ostenheim. I’m sorry, lad, but ships are lost. It’s the way of the sea.’

His words faded into the distance. All Soren could hear was her voice.

Soren went back to the inn, ordered a mug of ale and retreated to the darkest corner of the taproom. His mind raced with conflicting thoughts, and despair threatened to swallow him up whole.

Alessandra had fled their home city of Ostenheim shortly before he had at his suggestion, as guiltless as he in the assassination of the old Duke, but just as heavily implicated. She had been headed for Auracia. He had not expected to get away or be able to keep his promise that he would find her. She knew that it was unlikely he would survive when they parted, but thinking she would be safe was enough for him.

Despair was mixed with anger when he allowed himself to dwell on the reality that she was dead; lost to the sea. The fear she must have felt, the loneliness. He had to fight back sobs of anguish. The same person who sent men to kill him the previous evening was responsible for her having to flee, for tearing them apart and manipulating their lives as though they were little more than tools or playthings. Grief turned to fury as he thought of everything that had gone wrong in his life, of the terrible things that had happened to Alessandra and how they could all be traced back to Amero and his lies, intrigues and manipulation.

Now the bastard was sitting on the throne of Ostia, comfortable in the palace while he sent thousands of men to war and had hundreds more that opposed him murdered, or as it was being called, ‘executed for treason’. That Amero sat there at all was in part down to Soren. Even when he had thought he was making his own choices, Soren had only been playing along with Amero’s master plan, contributing to its forward momentum in his own small — and sometimes not so small — way. Amero was sitting there, smug in the belief that he had destroyed his enemies and could relax as he reached out to tie up any loose ends with no thought to the consequences for the people involved.

Alessandra was the cause of the only true happiness Soren had ever known. Amero had taken that from him, had taken so much from so many. In that moment, Soren decided he was going to kill him for it.