Scarlet Seas

The Eternal Storm had thrashed across the seas of Illia unceasingly for more than ten years, shattering every dragon ship and fisherman’s skiff that ever dared venture forth from the fjords and harbors. It never waned, never showed any signs of relenting even a modicum of its ferocity. It stood at Illia’s shores like a great moving wall of wind and water, as high as the heavens and deep as the fathomless depths.

It's name was a misnomer, though. Many remembered well the day it arose from beyond the horizon and ended their seafaring days, starting as a bruise-colored smudge but quickly growing into something far uglier.

But if there ever was a sure law of both gods and nature, it was that everything that arises must eventually fade away, and very often endings are only transformations.

Still, the name had persisted. Perhaps in part because of the name people had come to believe it would last forever, trapping them until time's very end on Illia’s shores and severing them from a world of treasures and possibilities and strange magics.

They were dismayed when the Eternal Storm did fade into a light mist and the sun began to burn through the clouds. They went mad at the sight of clear blue skies, drank themselves to oblivion, and ran wild in the streets. The druids painted themselves in blacks and whites and reds, hammering their drums and chanting their incantations.

What ended the Storm mattered not. Eternal or timebound, divine or human, by nightfall of the first clear day, the fires in the feasting halls were well stoked, crowded wall to wall with men and women, and children darting between their legs. They began to plan their voyages then, readying themselves for war.

They were the Sea Wolves and had been deprived of their feeding grounds for far too long. Their appetite was a terrible thing and with the Scarlet Seas open to them at last, it would be satisfied.

###

Amon Taith sat in what passed for a library and debated if his moment of glory would be worth a long, gruesome, and very public death.

The paper before him had been sitting there for the better part of the afternoon. With a few strokes of the pen – plus a couple of lads to help with the heavy lifting – two barrels of mead could very easily go missing from the Chieftain’s supply. How could the man ever miss a mere two barrels? The alcohol flowed like water here. No one had audited the storerooms for years. A few flicks of the wrist and he could be a hero, if only for a day.

He could already see the fruits of his crime. Lucia’s face would light up like a great hearth fire when he strolled into town with a barrel of Illia’s finest mead under each arm. She would bathe him with her warm smile, maybe even kiss him. Every man, woman, and child in the village would be singing his praises.

Would it be enough to open her skirts, though? If he was going to be disemboweled, he hoped so. Hardly worth it otherwise, but at this point he might settle for a kiss.

He might actually get away with it, but it would only take one sniveling rat from the thrall village, hungry for a few more scraps from the master’s table, and Chieftain Odrin would string Amon up in the market square, regardless of what the man had once promised Amon’s father. It would be a small rebellion with a violent end, but perhaps better than waking up to the same again.

Coward. You should have done it an hour ago and finished it off.

He spent many of his waking hours planning his little rebellions, but something always seemed to halt him in the end. His hand hovered over the quill, stayed by some invisible force.

A burst of laughter reached him through the window.

Amon rose. The pitiful library sat on the far, neglected end of Odrin’s great longhouse, but it offered a clear view of the palisaded yard.

Slaine and Kessen were strolling through the earthen gate, dressed in their usual hunting attire of leather jerkin, high boots, and fine wool cloaks. They passed the four warriors that manned the entrance, sharing a skin of mead. They let out another burst of laughter.

Slaine, with his luxurious curls of golden hair and handsome smile, wearing the silver torc that signified him as only a step below the Chieftain himself. He walked across the yard as if he already owned all of Beckhead.

One day he would. He’d married Odrin’s daughter the year before and had taken to treating the chiefdom like his own from the start.

Amon scowled, the heat of anger burning at base of his chest. They’d probably come from having crippled another thrall for fun. Or perhaps they’d been tormenting small forest creatures, giggling all the while.

Amon hated that Slaine could to this to him, but the sight of the Chieftain’s heir unfailingly reminded him of all he’d lost. Stolen before he’d ever had it. Had events tilted one way instead of another, this would have been Amon’s inheritance, not Slaine’s.

And Kessen, with his misshapen egg head, corpse-like skin, and penchant for cruelty, would rise on Slaine’s tide until he was head of the Chieftain’s Guard.

“They can go to hell,” he muttered to himself, and turned sharply toward the desk.

He was going to do it. Damn them all. Better to take his chances than serve the likes of those two.

He picked up the quill, but again some invisible force seemed to halt him there.

He forced himself to think of Lucia, the way she’d looked at Herain when the older, stronger man had come into the village dragging slain reindeer on his sled. Lucia had looked at the man as if he had everything a woman could desire in abundance.

She’d never looked at him that way. And why would she? All he’d ever done was act like a subservient, impotent thrall. At best, she treated him like a favorite brother.

His hand and the quill began moving. All he had to do was report the delivery as eighteen barrels instead of twenty.

The door burst open.

It so shocked Amon that the quill tumbled from his hands, blood suddenly rushing to his face. He scrambled to pick it up, even as he turned to see the source of the commotion.

It was Scribe Vestro and his irritation was immediately obvious.

The old man had served as Chieftain Odrin’s personal scribe and secretary since the Eternal Storm first settled at Illia’s southern shores. He was Cassadan, of course, like most thralls, though older than the average by far. Those that worked indoors – where one was decidedly less likely to run into ice bears, giants, or creaches – tended to live longest, though the dark hue of his wrinkled, sun-browned skin and something about the way he carried himself told Amon he had not spent all his life at a desk reviewing accounts and copying manuscripts.

“You’re still working?” Vestro said in a tone of exasperated agitation.

Amon’s heart hammered wildly, like a scared and cornered animal in his chest. Act normal, he told himself, and grabbed the quill from the ground. He tried to shuffle papers around on his desk to hide the one he’d been about to falsify.

“You must be daydreaming again,” Vestro said, in his heavy Cassadan accent, which seemed to turn every sentence into a song.

Amon’s panic was subsiding slightly, as he realized he was in no immediate danger of being caught. He wondered what had stirred the man up so much. Scribe work was seldom urgent. “What’s happening? Do you need help?” he asked.

Vestro motioned toward the window.

It was only then that Amon heard a second kind of noise coming from the yard. He went to the window again and saw a malnourished horse, absent a rider. It must have entered just after Slaine and Kessen. Two thralls were helping a third to her feet. The rider, he guessed. She seemed injured, unable to hold up her own weight, though it was impossible to tell how seriously.

“A messenger?” Amon asked.

Vestro quickly gathered up his leather satchel, containing ink, parchments, and spare pens. “I must go at once. Odrin waits. I don’t know what takes you so damned long, but finish your work and get home, boy.”

Curiosity bloomed in Amon. He couldn’t remember the last time such an urgent message had come. The rider looked as if she’d nearly ridden herself to death to get here.

And Odrin had called Vestro to record whatever this woman had to say.

Vestro left as quickly as he’d come, the door slamming shut behind him.

He could do as Vestro said. He could finish his work and walk back to the Thrall village. Or he could finish what he started and abscond with the mead.

But Amon didn’t think he could do either of those things anymore. The curiosity was burning more brightly now, unarticulated questions bubbling to the surface.

If he could find out what the woman had ridden all this way to say a and bring the news back to the village elders, it might make him a minor hero of sorts. Not so much as a couple of barrels of mead would. It wouldn’t have the same kind of glory, but he might learn something more valuable in the long run.

Amon quickly and neatly put the papers away and went to find out what was so important to say that a woman had nearly died to say it.