He couldn't concentrate. Staying still too long just led to panic, giving him the time to think about what was happening to Lily. Since he'd been forced back by the storm, Kall-Su had been frantic, latching onto the only course of action he could conceive -- to pursue her kidnappers and get her back. The vision of the girl on the street, brutally raped -- thoughtlessly raped -- kept appearing over and over in his head. It had happened a thousand times probably under his command when his armies had rampaged over the south and he'd never once given such actions a second thought. To the victor the spoils, after all. Schneider had taught him that. Only it had never been anyone he'd loved. It had never been Lily.
Schneider's presence was still stunning. Astounding actually. And infuriating. That he had the gall to stride up out of the blue and to offer his sardonic opinions as if they were the wisdom of the gods. He always had thought he knew so much more than the rest of the world. He got rather offended if one ventured to disagree with that opinion. Lily had said he reminded her of the Prophet in that respect. Kall had disagreed, wanting no comparison of anything he loved ever made with that vile man.
At the moment, after what Schneider had said, he was having second thoughts. Schneider was overbearing and opinionated and Kall in no wise wished to be bullied into anything by him.So he retreated back to the much abused port village. To the docks where the pirate ship he had crippled sat being refurbished.The men that did it were grim and hard faced, having lost as much or more than he had in this raid. Damned and determined to get back what was theirs. Coastal sailors. Fishermen mostly, but all of them born and bred by the sea and sensitive to her whims and her moods, which Kall was not. They had as much stake in this as he did, so he trusted them. The two surviving pirates had a stake also. To remain living. Out of the survivors these two spoke a spattering of his language. He had used the ones that didn't as examples. There wasn't enough left of them to bury so they had tossed the chunks of flesh and organs into the hungry sea. Nothing that he had not done before, but it had been a long while. Long enough to make him want to avoid the warehouse where the interrogations had taken place. Long enough to make him wish for Lily to never know of it.
They had told him what he needed to know, for the most part. the older one had lost an arm up to the elbow in the interrogation. The ice that had took it, had cauterized the wound to a certain degree and if the man had felt pain, which he must have, he refused to show it. They were strange men, who were clearly afraid, yet refused to cower. Who despised him and despised the folk they had ravaged. They called him Kafir Djinn and made signs against evil. He was used to the latter.
Since there was nothing else he felt comfortable doing, and it was place to escape Schneider if he followed him to the docks, he went to the ship. Went down to see his prisoners The slight rocking of the ship made him a little uneasy, but he pushed Schneider's words as far away as he could get them. Down into the place they kept their slaves, in the belly of their ship, they had been fastened with existing chains linked to manacles about their necks.
He stood a few feet away from them, offended by the smell down in the cramped cargo hold. The reek of the infected flesh was sickeningly sweet. There were no ports, no natural light that could reach here, so he made one of his own. Their dark eyes stared up at him balefully.
"We'll be four days behind them. Can we overtake them before they reach this Blood Coast?"
The younger man cast a nervous glance to his comrade. The older clutched the stump of his arm and spat at Kall's feet. He uttered what sounded like a curse in his language. "If the Al Rab is with us, who knows." The man said. "Perhaps the Al Rab will be with you -- if he notices unbelievers -- or perhaps he will be with the Brother of the Sea who you wish so badly to catch. I think when you do, Kafir Djinn, the fates will turn against you, for no one bests a Brother of Sea in the arms of the ocean."
"What is a Brother of the Sea?"
The old pirate laughed. "Ah. Like you, Kafir Djinn, but spawned from the mother sea. They are supreme among those who ride the waves. You will not take him or that which he holds. He will take you, if he so pleases."
"You think?" Kall said icily. "You won't live to see it." He promised. He spun on his heels, bothered by the man's fearlessness. The pirate's quiet laughter followed him out.
The air of the lower ship was stifling. He sought the deck with single minded determination. There was a great concentration of men on it, hauling on ropes to get the main mast back into place. He stood for a moment on the swaying deck, watching them position the towering thing, while others scurried out at its base, bolting it into place. Soon then, for the mast had been the main casualty from the ice he had called to form about the ship.
"When?" he asked of the old, gimp legged man who stood at the forecastle observing the progress of raising the mast. Arag was his name. They had argued among themselves who would command this foreign ship they had been gifted with. The old man was a fisher captain, who had in his youth sailed the coast and to the outer islands as a merchant. He was the only one out of the lot of them that had not looked reluctantly fearful when Kall had told them what he wanted them to do. He was the only one who had stepped forward and declared that no foreign pirate could outsail him. The others still had doubts, but with a combination of the promise of monetary reward and none too subtly veiled threats, their minds had been changed.
"Can't wait too long." Old Arag said, looking at the cloud littered sky. "It'll take the rest of the day to get the rigging up, but if we're lucky we might make the morning tide."
"Work through the night if you have to."
"Aye." The old man nodded. "They have a granddaughter of mine. I've no wish to let the bloody bastards sail clean away with her."
There was nothing else, really for him to do on the ship. The motion of the waves, even the mild ones of shore made his equilibrium questionable. He did not quite envy the grace these seasoned sailors exhibited, scurrying about the rigging, balancing precariously on the rail as they hauled canvas and rope and wood into place, but he found himself subtly impressed.
He stepped back onto the solidity of land. The row of buildings along the harbor side were blackened and burned. Few of them were fit for human occupancy. A warehouse the pirates had not the chance to loot before Kall had interrupted their plans. A tavern with a charred facade, but a relatively intact interior. He went to the tavern, stopped at the doorway at the discordant strum of a lute. For a moment, all he could think of was Lily and her delicate fingers brushing the strings of her lute, her dark eyes thoughtful and inviting. The tavern they had been staying at had burnt to the ground and all their belongings with it. Her lute was likely ash now.
It was Crayl toying with this one. The harper looked up as Kall-Su entered, his one good arm testing the strings of a battered instrument, while he held it awkwardly with his other bandaged one. His eyes were tired and no little bit wary. They flickered to the bar, which was untended by its native barkeep, but behind which lounged Schneider, who had pilfered a dusty bottle of what might have been wine and was swirling the pale liquid around in a crude ceramic mug.
"What a pitiful selection of spirits." He observed, tasting the wine and making a face in disapproval. Kall stared, not certain whether he wished to stay or go, certainly not wishing further disagreement with Schneider. Schneider motioned him in with a rolling motion of one long fingered hand. Silently, he drifted towards the bar.
"You can hardly complain," Crayl said reasonably from the table where he had his boots propped up. "They've had everything of value taken from them. I suppose that includes any fine vintages they might have had."
"I can complain." Schneider contradicted him. "But, see how cheerfully I do it. I don't bite people's heads off." He gave Kall-Su an arch look. Kall looked away, thinking darkly that Schneider did worse than that when he was in a mood. Schneider conveniently forgot his own tantrums.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, because he couldn't remember if he'd asked before, and if he had, the answer eluded him.
Schneider walked around the bar, collected the bottle and the mug from the other side and went to sit down at one of the many empty tables about the room. About half of them were upright, the rest strewn and broken about the floor. There were bloodstains on the plank flooring. "I was getting something for Yoko. Your ice storm mucked up everything in my villa. I do expect restitution, by the way. I sensed your castings and thought I'd see what you were up to. I didn't realize it was complete foolishness. You hit me, you know?"
"It's not --" then he shut his mouth, because he didn't have the energy or the patience to argue the point. He hadn't slept since the night before Tolmuth had been raided. Schneider was not an obstacle one tackled tired and not thinking straight. "I'm sorry. I'm fine. Go back to Yoko, She'll worry."
Schneider arched a brow. "Don't tell me what to do."
Kall rested his forehead in his hand, beyond his endurance. "What do you want?"
No answer. Schneider sipped his wine. Crayl looked uncomfortable to be there.
"Damn you." He said softly. And Schneider did not even respond to that, playing enigmatic for once. So Kall fled his presence and went to the one soul in this wounded town who didn't remind him of Lily or choose to berate him. He went to find comfort in Brawaith's stolid presence and all it took for complete understanding was the offering of an apple.
"It's probably not my place to say," Crayl said carefully, and Schneider gave him a look that plainly asked why he was speaking if he felt that way. " - -but you could afford him a little sympathy. He's -- distraught, over Lily's kidnapping."
"He should have taken better care for her." Schneider responded airily.
"It wasn't a matter of taking care. They came so fast. They took her and our friends and countless others. There was no warning. He wasn't here or he might have stopped it."
Why this mere harper chose to correct him, Schneider couldn't guess. He looked the man up and down crossly, dark brows drawn. "You and a dozen other towns up and down the coast. That's life. If you can't defend yourself, you get trampled by those that can."
The pale haired bard gave him an incredulous look. "You can't be serious? That sounds like something -- like something out of the dark ages when all there was was war."
"I am out of the dark ages." Schneider gave him a humorless grin. "I used to live by those words. So did Kall-Su, for that matter. For a bard you don't seem to know your history. He knows about loss. He needs to get over it. He probably won't be able to find her anyway."
"You don't want him to go after her." Crayl stared at him, understanding dawning in his blue eyes. "Why ever not?"
Schneider leaned forward, eyes gleaming dangerously. "You have great faith in my patience, don't you, little harper? I'm not much for being questioned."
The bard sat back, his fingers clutching the neck of his lute, uncertainly clouding his eyes. "You must have a reason."
Out of sheer respect for the courage it took to press the query, Schneider answered. "Its pointless. You don't realize how big the ocean is. How much more of the world there is than the chunk of it we're living on. They're not from this continent, which means they could be anywhere. He is not up to this. The magic's back, but it's not all back."
"What would you do if it were your woman?"
"It wouldn't be." Schneider snapped, suddenly, coldly angry. The harper shrank back, lowering his lashes, sensing the change in the air. It irritated him that the man had the audacity to even ask. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, wondering why he'd even bothered to come at all. Kall certainly had no gratitude. A waste of time. A monumental waste of time, when he could have been back in Yoko's arms by now.
Kall-Su must have dozed, in the quiet warmth of the stable, where the odor of horse and dung almost overpowered the bitter smell of ashes. He'd been dreaming about fighting with Schneider. Schneider berating him for something, sneering at him demeaningly as if he couldn't do anything right. It was a very old dream that he hadn't had for many years. Decades even. He hadn't really fought with Schneider in a very long time. Well, not of his own free will, at any rate. One supposed the argument -- Schneider's blasé attitude about Lily's capture -- spurred the dream. One had to be careful of dreams. They could be one's downfall or salvation. He had gotten into the habit of scrutinizing the wisps of memory he had of them.
Brawaith cared not a whit about such things. He stuck his muzzle over the stall door and nudged his master, who sat slumped on a bench outside the stall. Kall obediently scratched under the large jaw. He'd made Crayl promise to take care for the stallion. He hoped the horse would cooperate with a minstrel who knew very little of horses in general or one or the other of the two would be sorry.
He brushed stray dust and straw from his clothes and headed outside where the sound of voices gradually grew louder. The light was still pale, the sun hardly risen past the horizon. The air was cool and damp so early in the morning. The coolness of autumn approaching was a relief, he was tired of summer.
A street over and the ocean was visible. People gathered on the docks. Maybe all the people left of this ravaged village, come to look at the sleek, foreign vessel that had carried marauders into their midst. It sat passively at dock now, its proud mainmast thrusting up into the gray sky, its canvas sails neatly rolled and secured. The old sailor had been true to his word, it seemed. He'd gotten the ship ready for the morning tide.
Folk saw him coming, shifted away cautiously to make a path for him, wary of his temper and of the things they had seen him do. But the eagerness on their faces warred with the trepidation. They dared not touch him, but anonymous voices wished for success. Save my wife, my sister, my son, my children. He didn't look at them, vaguely guilty that he could not find a great deal of concern over their casualties -- that it was only his own that drove him.
Automatically he looked for Schneider, lurking at the edges, glowering in disapproval, but he wasn't to be found. It was a niggling concern, that absence, since Schneider was never one to abandon a cause so easily, but one effortlessly brushed aside as his attention was taken up with the ship and the old man limping down the gangway with a grim look of satisfaction on his lined face.
"We did it, milord."
"I see." Kall looked past him to the scant handful of sailors along the rail. It would be enough of a crew to manage this ship, Arag had promised. They wouldn't need to fight, after all, when they caught their quarry. They had a wizard for that.
"We're supplied as best as possible, what with the pirates own stores and what the folk here were able to scrape together to give us. If we're to make the tide this morning, we'd best be about it, though."
Kall took a breath, nodding his assent. Something coiled in his stomach that had nothing to do with anticipation to be about this pursuit or worry about Lily. It had solely to do with the fact that Schneider had been right about his wretched ability to adapt to the sea. It seemed unlikely that he had changed after -- what, almost fifty years or more -- of avoiding the ocean. He was probably about to put himself through as miserable as experience as any could easily think of and he could think of quite a few terrible things.
He had no wish to stay longer on the ship than was necessary, and little desire to stay on the docks among the milling crowd while the sailors finished whatever nautical preparations they had to make before Arag decided they were ready to sail. So he went in search of Crayl.
The harper wasn't far. He was sitting on a bench outside the surviving tavern, watching the activity around the ship. For once, he didn't have his lute with him. His arm was pressed to his side in a sling, and his face drawn and pained. Kall thought he ought to have asked Schneider to have done something for the man, since his own healing skills were at the moment unreachable.
"They're ready to go, almost." The harper observed.
Kall handed him a small bag of coin. The last he had, since the major potion of his funds had been filched at a fair some weeks past. "In case I'm gone longer than I anticipate. Make sure Brawaith has the proper care. If I am not back in a reasonable time, see that he gets back to Sta-Veron."
"I will. Bring them back, please. I know what she means to you, but the others -- they're my closest friends in the world-- I can't very well go around calling myself a troupe without them."
Kall nodded, uncomfortable. "Have you seen -- him? Schneider?"
"Not since last night. He drank a great deal, surprising since he complained so bitterly about the quality of the brew. He called you a fair number of unflattering things -- I won't repeat a one of them -- then he left maybe two hours before sunrise. The two of you don't seem to get along very well. I seem to recall legends and tales that claimed differently."
Kall gave him a dark look, not particularly fond of the various legends, wivestales and ballads that had sprung up over the years about the deeds of Schneider and his Lord's of Havoc. Lily had mentioned something very similar to what Crayl said some time past. He couldn't remember exactly when.
"We get along fine." He said shortly. When we're not at cross purposes.
A boy ran up from the dock, bright eyed and out of breath. "Old Arag is callin' fer you, sir. He's wantin' ta cast off."
He looked back at the ship.
Up the narrow, swaying gangway, which a sailor pulled in behind him and aft to where the wheel was. The old man was shouting orders. Ropes were cast off from the pilings of the pier. Slowly, the ship drifted away from the constraints of dock and into the deep waters of the harbor. They passed a few masts and prows sticking up from the water, ships sunk by the pirates during the nighttime raid. The tide took them rapidly out to sea. The sails were unfurled and caught a fair breeze.
Kall gripped the rail behind him with white knuckled hands, trying vainly to reason with his equilibrium that it was just a matter of learning to shift with the constant, rhythmic sway of the deck. And that even if he never did get his sea legs, it ought not to effect the state of his stomach quite so thoroughly. He sat on a crate and wrapped his arm around the secondary mast jutting up from beside it, pressed his cheek against the wood and told himself sternly that he'd endured worse things and that a half hour out to sea was too early to begin wishing he hadn't consumed food in the last week. With a strength of will, he forced the queasiness away.
When the land was a thin line behind them, Arag strolled up, graceful as you please on the swaying deck and stood with his hands in his pockets staring at the endless panorama of ocean before them.
"She sails smooth. Real smooth." He said approvingly. If we keep the wind at our backs, we'll make good time."
"We will." Kall promised him. He would make sure of that, if it killed him. He shut his eyes, not as impressed by the undulating field of grayish green waves as the captain.
"You look a little pale." The old man observed. "Sorta have a greenish cast. Not much for the sea, are you?"
Kall-Su did not see the point in answering. Just talking about it made his head swim a little. He thought about going below deck and lying down, but the thought of the stifling darkness was not encouraging.
Two hours out and the wind shifted, dying back a little. The sails lost some of their fullness. The captain looked to Kall expectantly. Kall sighed, summoning the stamina to call up a few minor northern elementals to breath life in the sails. The wind would be cold as hell, but it would be there. Then rather unexpectently, without him doing a thing, the canvas snapped taught with a burst of gusty wind. The ship surged forward like a horse slapped on her rump. Kall-Su clutched at his support. The captain smiled, pleased, thinking no doubt that he had been responsible.
Kall stared up suspiciously at the invisible currents of air filling the sails. There were the hints of playful air sprites curling about the rigging. Not creatures answerable to him by any means. He looked towards where the shore had been. It was gone from view now. Miles and miles behind them. Something dark obscured his view, swooping down with a flutter of cloak and a faint turbulence of air. With a grace that would have made any hollow boned bird envious, Dark Schneider touched down on deck, impeccable in black and silver, looking disdainful and put upon. His blue eyes scanned the deck, his well shaped lips turned up in a sneer. He fixed his gaze on Kall-Su. Kall-Su stared at him wordlessly.
"You're seasick already, aren't you?" Schneider demanded, with a condescending lift of one dark brow.
"Why are you here?" Kall ignored the question and asked one of his own, very wary of Schneider's presence. "You said it was hopeless and a waste of time."
"Well, I see there's nothing wrong with your retention. It is hopeless and it is a waste of time, but at least now, when you're too sick to stand up, much less make a coherent decision, there will be somebody to tell this grimy little crew to turn around and take us back to port."
Kall didn't say anything. He thought all number of things. The ship lurched upon a particularly large swell. And though he could never prove afterwards that Schneider had anything to do with it -- and he had his suspicions -- an aggressive wave of nausea rushed over him and it was all he could do to get to the rail to empty his guts into the sea. It was not an auspicious beginning.
There were worse things to come.