Teagan dug an oilcloth cloak out of his belongings before heading out to the stables yet again, this time to ask the stable master about where Simon's father might be found. To his pleasure, he was just in time to intercept the man, about to head down to the town on the self-same errand, accompanied by the young fisherman. Teagan quickly joined the pair.
"I don't believe I learned your names," he said hesitantly as they crossed the bridge together.
"Matthew, my lord," the stable master answered calmly.
"Kelly," the fisherman said nervously. "My lord."
"Just plain 'Teagan' will do, I think – no need to stand on formalities at a time like this."
"Yes, my lord," the stable master said.
Teagan concealed a smile for a moment, then frowned as they turned down hill towards the town. "How long is this storm likely to last?"
Kelly shrugged. "Overnight, at least... might slacken off before morning, if we're lucky."
They were on the final stretch down to town when the hail started. They picked up their pace, hurrying down the last of the slope, Matthew and Teagan following close on Kelly's heels as he lead the way to Joram's house.
The old fisherman was surprised to have three people come knocking on his door in the middle of such a ferocious storm, and hurriedly let them in. He recognized Matthew and Kelly, of course, but gave Teagan a puzzled look, wondering who the third man could be.
Matthew glanced back and forth between the two, and realized some introductions were likely in order. "This is Bann Teagan, the Arl's younger brother," he told Joram.
Joram blinked, stunned. He started to bow and stammer out a greeting, but Teagan held up on hand, stopping him. "Please, for tonight ignore that I am a Bann. We have come bearing distressing news, I'm afraid. Matthew, perhaps it would be best for you to explain...?"
Matthew nodded, and quickly explained to Joram the reason for their visit.
Joram went pale, and shook his head. "Out on the lake, in this..."
"We can't give up hope yet," Teagan pointed out. "There is some chance, however small, that the boys were already somewhere safe when the storm rolled in, or that your son Simon's seamanship will be enough to see them through it. I think we should assume they are living, until we find..." he paused, thinking that 'their bodies' was not a terribly kind phrase to use in front of a distressed parent. "Until we find evidence to the contrary."
Joram nodded, sighed. "Aye. Well, we'll need to get men organized to start a search as soon as it's light enough tomorrow – assuming this storm blows over by then. And think about where they might have gone," he said. "I'll send my boy around to get a few of the others over here..." he said distractedly, hurrying over to a doorway and leaning through it. "Rolf! Come here, I need you. Annie, put the kettle on, we've got guests here, and will have more soon."
Rolf was duly given a list of names by both his father and Kelly, and dashed out the door, a cloak held tented over his head to protect him from the continuing hailstones.
Joram's wife, Annie, bustled into the room a few minutes later with a tray of tea things, which she almost dropped to the floor in her surprise at seeing a nobleman seated with her husband. Once the tray had been safely seen to the table, Joram went aside with her to tell her about Simon. She turned white as a sheet, then drew a drop breath. "We'll need more tea," she said firmly. "And food. And..." she turned and left the room, muttering distractedly to herself.
The house quickly turned into a veritable beehive of activity. Within an astonishingly short time, the front room was packed with an assortment of fishermen of all ages, and various females were popping in and out of the kitchen, brewing gallons of tea and preparing mountains of food that the men snacked on while they pored over maps and argued over where the boys might have gone. The general consensus was that they'd probably gone out looking for some place to escape the heat, and given the direction they'd last been seen heading – west – there were thankfully very few reasonable options; a narrow stone shingle some two hours sail along the coast, a sand spit running off from the north side of the castle island, and a cluster of rocky islets some distance to the northwest. Nothing else was in reach of a group of boys that knew they needed to be back before nightfall.
Teagan couldn't really follow much of the talk after that – it was all about wind directions and water currents, close hauled and reaches and running, heeling and scudding and broaching. Broaching must be something bad, Teagan judged by the brief silence and the furtive glances towards the kitchen after someone used the term.
"Would your boy have known to try a sea anchor?" one of the older fishermen asked.
Joram shook his head. "I don't think so. He only went out maybe a half-dozen times with me and Rolf, and that was all in fine weather. He never was very interested in being a fisherman."
Eventually the men were talked out. Some headed home through the continuing downpour – the hail, for a mercy, had finally let up – while others settled down wherever they happened to be sitting, arms crossed and eyes closed, catching short naps. Teagan considered returning to the castle to get some sleep himself, then decided that if he did so, there was a more then reasonable chance the fishermen would 'forget' to let him know when they were setting out.
He settled back in his seat and tried the arms-crossed position of the fishermen, wondering how they managed to doze in such an uncomfortable looking position. And dropped right off into an uneasy doze within minutes.
When the boat went over, Alistair's first thought had been that they were all dead, or as good as.
He didn't even know if any of them except himself knew how to swim; he was only lucky enough to know how to because of an overnight trip with one of the grooms the summer before, to deliver some mares in foal to one of the outlying farms. Coming back, the groom had insisted on taking a break where the road ran alongside the river for a while. He'd been amused at Alistair's astonishment when he'd stripped down to his smalls and waded out into the water, and given him a swimming lesson on the spot.
Of course, swimming in a comparatively placid river and in a storm-tossed deep lake were two entirely different things.
He looked around, first spotting the capsized hull of the boat off to one side, and in the other direction, Peatrick, looking frightened, floating on his back with one arm holding Simon's limp body in front of him, head above water. A choking sound made Alistair turn and look behind him. Tam, upright in the water with just his face above the surface, eyes wide and frightened, mouth gaping like a fish. Even as he watched, a wave broke over Tam's face, filling his mouth with water, and he choked again.
Alistair kicked closer, and seeing nothing else he could grab, grabbed him by the hair, hauling him further out of the water. Of course, pulling up pushed himself down, and for a frightening moment he was submerged again. Then he felt Tam jerk and something knocked his arm loose. He surfaced again to find Tam managing to swim, at least well enough to keep his own head above water. He tapped his shoulder to get Tam's attention, then gestured at the upturned boat, not trusting his voice to be heard over the wind and rain. Tam nodded and started swimming that way.
Where were the others? Jory, Leon, Jase...
A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the scene, and he caught a glimpse of a pale form in the water beyond where Peatrick and Simon still floated, Peatrick slowly steering the two of them toward the boat. He swam past them, squinting into the darkness... there! Jase, managing to float on his back well enough to keep his head above water, one arm crooked oddly over his chest while he paddled with the other. He looked around as Alistair drew close. His face was white and strained.
"Can you swim?" Alistair shouted.
Jase shook his head. "Think I broke my arm when we went over. And something's wrong with one leg, too. You'll have to tow me."
Alistair nodded, swimming around to where he could take hold of Jase's hand, and begin swimming back towards the boat, Jase floating along behind him.
The winds were dying down, the rain starting to slacken off. The hail had ended at some point since they'd capsized. He could hear Jase chanting as he dragged him through the water, the words just barely audible, oddly spaced by the difficulty of breathing between waves.
"For there... is no darkness... nor... death either, in... the Maker's Light. And... nothing... that He has... wrought... shall be lost..."
It sent a chill down Alistair's spine; those were the words most commonly spoken at funerals. He supposed they were the easiest for Jase to remember. Especially when they were so lost.
They were almost back to the boat when Jase abruptly broke off. "Alistair... there's something in the water with us," he called quietly, voice hoarse with fear.
Alistair felt every hair on his head straining upwards as he felt it too... a pressure and turbulence in the water as something big passed near them. Grimly, he kicked harder, swimming for the boat as quickly as he could. The light was poor, but he could see the others already there, clinging to the hull – not just Peatrick, Simon and Tam, but someone else as well – Jory, by the size of him.
Jase gave a strangled cry, suddenly jerking back and to one side, hand tightening convulsively on Alistair's. For a moment he was dragged along, helplessly. He had only the briefest glimpse of what had Jase, of massive jaws locked around Jase's waist with crushing force. Streaming along in the water beside it, he found himself staring directly into a dark eye as big as his own head, set in a vast smooth curve of dark silvery grey skin, felt the effortless power with which it sliced through the water. Jase's hand slackened and released his as the creature's head sank beneath the waves, its immensely long body following in a long slow curve as it turned for bottom. He floated there, staring wild-eyed at the wall of flesh curving past him in a seemingly never-ending stream. Longer then the boat – longer then three boats - far longer. Maybe even as long as the castle bridge.
And then it was gone, and Jase with it.
He forced himself back into motion, swam over to the boat, shaking with exhaustion and terror.
"What was that!" Tam asked, his voice awed and frightened.
Peatrick answered shakily. "I'm not sure... might have been what the fisher's call a silver eel."
"It wasn't scaled," Alistair said, his own voice shaking.
"They aren't. Smooth blubbery skin, kind of like a dolphin, but eel-shaped."
"Yeah, that sounds like it," Alistair agreed, thinking back to what little he'd seen.
"Will it be back? Are there more?" Jory asked, sounding scared.
"No idea," Alistair said when it became clear that Peatrick had no answer for that, then looked around. "Anyone seen Leon?"
"Not since the boat went over," Tam said quietly. "He might be alive out there somewhere – he knows how to swim."
Alistair nodded tiredly. "How's Simon doing?" he asked.
"He's still breathing," Peatrick replied. "Other then that..." he voice trailed off. "He needs a healer."
"Right. Well, let's just concentrate on making it through the night, first."
Teagan started awake at a touch on his shoulder. He found the fisherman's wife – Annie, that was it – bending over him, a fresh cup of tea in hand. "Storm's slacking off," she told him quietly.
He nodded as he sat up, accepting the offered tea. "Good. Thank you, Annie."
She smiled slightly, still looking worried, but obviously pleased that he'd remembered her name, then hurried back to her kitchen to organize breakfast for everyone.
It was still overcast, with just enough pre-dawn light to see by, everything leeched of colour, when they set out. The two biggest boats – small ships, really – were to split up, one following the shore westwards in case the boys had stuck close to land, the other to head first for the rocky islets to the northwest and then wherever else seemed likely after that. Smaller boats were setting out to check the eastward shore, and the sand spit in back of the castle island, as well as a few other likely destinations.
Teagan elected to join the men on the boat heading for the islets. He knew he wouldn't be of any real help – if anything, he was likely to be a hindrance, if he went and got underfoot of the men who actually knew what they were doing – but he couldn't imagine just staying back and waiting on shore for word of the fate of the boys.
Alistair frowned, wondering what had roused him from his half-drowse. Then he felt it, as much as heard it, a shiver and lurch of the boat's hull, and a grating sound, as much felt as heard.
"What was that?" Tam asked worriedly.
"Dunno," Peatrick answered tiredly.
It happened again. By now they were all – apart from Simon – fully awake and looking around in concern.
"I think the end of the mast is scraping bottom," Alistair said when it happened a third time. Hoping it was only bottom and not something worse. "We might have reached one of those shallows Simon talked about."
"End of the mast is not exactly what I'd call shallow," Peatrick said dryly.
Alistair snorted. "It's shallower, at least."
The next time the grating contact happened, it didn't stop; they could feel the near-continuous shivering as the tip grated along bottom, before it dug in enough to stop, jerking into motion again a minute later. After a few minutes of that, Alistair noticed the boat hull had started to heel a little to one side. It took him some thought to figure out what must be causing that; the surface wind and waves still pushing the boat steadily in one direction – north, he guessed – while the tip of the mast dragged along the increasingly shallow bottom, resisting the push and gradually levering the boat to the side.
As the boat heeled ever further over, a trickle of bubbles escaped from underneath it. The hull settled a little deeper in the water. Alistair frowned. That wasn't good...
"We may have to abandon the boat," he said, keeping his voice as calm as he could. "I think if it tilts too far it's going to lose the air that's trapped inside the hull. I'm... not sure if it'll still float after that, or sink."
That met with silence from all of them.
"I'm going to try to get up on the hull and look around," Alistair said.
Jory nodded and moved closer. "Here, you can use me as a ladder," he said, holding on tightly to the hull.
Alistair nodded, and scrambled up his shoulders, out of the water, onto the upturned curve of the hull. He crouched there a moment, until he was sure he had his balance, then rose to his feet and looked around. Nothing to the northwest or north, but to the northeast... It was close to dawn; as the light improved he became certain. It didn't look like dry land, but it was something...
He crouched down, looking back at the others still hanging on in the water. "That way," he pointed. "We'll have to swim it, the waves are pushing us past something that's over that way. I'm not sure what it is – an island or a shallows of some kind."
They all exchanged uneasy looks. The mast tip grated again, and Alistair almost fell off into the water again as the sudden jerk threw him belly-down on the hull. More bubbles trickled out from underneath, the hull settling even lower.
"Better shallows then a sinking boat," Peatrick said decisively. "Tell me if I start swimming the wrong way, I can't look where I'm going," he said, and pushed off the hull, swimming backwards in the direction Alistair had indicated, Simon still held to his chest. Tam and Jory barely hesitated before starting after him.
Alistair watched them go, then rose to a crouch and scooted along to the easternmot end of the hull to dive into the water and follow them. He didn't tell them what he'd glimpsed in the murky dawn-lit waters under them after he'd been thrown down on his stomach; Leon's body, tangled in the rigging partway down the slanting mast, long drowned.
What he'd spotted proved to be a small island of rock and mucky sand, lying so low to the surface that much of it was currently awash under wind-driven waves, but refreshingly solid underfoot after a night spent clinging to an overturned boat. They were all plastered from head to toe with muck by the time they reached the rocky above-water bit of it.
They were also all hungry and exhausted, badly in need of real sleep after their exertions.
"We need to have people stay awake in turns," Alistair mumbled out. "Keep watch for boats."
Silence met his statement; he peered blurrily around and saw that Tad, Jory and Peatrick were already all fast asleep. Tiredly he rose to his feet, began pacing around to keep himself from falling asleep
One of the fishermen was sure he'd found signs that the boys may have been at the islets – scrape marks where a boat had been pulled up on one, temporarily beached, presumably while the boy had played in the surrounding shallows. Others shook their heads, dismissing the marks - no way of telling how fresh they were, or who had left them. Still, they admitted it was at least possible that the marks had been left the day before.
They decided to head back eastward after that. The shore swung hard north not far westwards from Redcliffe, so if the boys had gone that way, the other ship would likely find them.
Hours passed without any further sign of the missing; they were beginning to discuss turning back to find out if any of the small boats had had any better luck, when one of the men suddenly cried out and pointed off to the north. A tiny figure was just barely visible, waving frantically at them, joined shortly by a second figure, then more.
As they drew closer they could make out a low swell of rocky land, just barely above surface, and the cluster of waiting boys.
"I only see four," someone said after a moment, voice hushed.
"Five, look, there's someone lying down, too," someone else corrected.
Teagan's heart plummeted. Five boys... and they'd been looking for seven.
The water was too shallow for the ship to get in close, but they had a second, smaller boat, a lightweight coracle of hide-covered wood, that they lowered over the side, a couple of men rowing it over and back to ferry the boys to the ship.
Teagan felt a surge of relief when he spotted the smallest of them; naked, plastered with stinking mud, and only identifiable by his muck-daubed shock of blond hair as Alistair.
"You'd have been proud of him, Eamon," Teagan told his brother, wearily accepting a second glass of brandy. "So tired he was almost falling down, but he wouldn't rest until he was sure the other four were looked after, and that he'd told us what had happened to the missing pair. Poor boys – they've had a pretty thoroughly nasty experience."
Eamon nodded in acknowledgement. "Yes, lucky indeed," he agreed. "I suppose it could have been a lot worse."
"It still may be – that Simon boy is in a pretty bad way. The healer has done what he could; says it's up to the Maker now whether or not he'll live."
"Will you be staying on?" Eamon asked, half-hopefully. "It sounds like you're pretty tired out as well."
"No, this business up north won't wait; I'll stay the night, but I need to set out first thing tomorrow."
"A pity," Eamon said. "Perhaps you can stop in on your way back for a longer visit?"
Teagan smiled. "Hopefully. It'll be a few weeks; after visiting Highever I'm thinking of heading east to look into an investment opportunity in Ameranthine, and then going south to Denerim, before coming back this way."
Eamon nodded. "Well, you know you're always welcome here. And of course you're welcome to make use of my estate while you're in Denerim."
"Thank you. I may well do that; the rooms there are much more comfortable then those at the Gnawed Noble."
Eamon smiled. "I'll send word to my steward there to expect you, then. Now, are you feeling up to that game of chess we didn't have last night, or do you feel the need to retire already?"
Teagan smiled warmly at him. "I think I can last one game, though I can't guarantee that I'll be up to my usual standard of play."
"Good, all the more chance that I'll be able to beat you, then," Eamon said contentedly, already moving to take his seat at the table.
Eamon glanced up from his desk as the boy Alistair was led in, nodded in acknowledgement to the Seneschal, who bowed and discretely withdrew. He returned his attention to the correspondence in front of him, finishing the letter he was writing and carefully sanding it and putting it to one side before finally turning his attention on the nervous young boy.
"Sit," he said, pointing at a straight-backed wooden chair before his desk.
"Yes, sir," Alistair said nervously, and perched on the very edge of the chair, back bolt upright, hands clasped together in his lap.
"I wanted to talk to you about your recent... little adventure," Eamon said, voice heavy with disapproval. "The stable master has mentioned to me that you were most likely the leader of that ill-fated group."
"Yes, sir," Alistair said quietly, looking down and flushing.
Eamon frowned. "You remember that when I told you of your parentage, I cautioned you that this changed nothing; that you're common-born, and are not to give yourself airs or put yourself forward because of it."
Alistair looked up, eyes going wide. "I didn't! I wasn't..."
"Alistair," Eamon said warningly, frowning in disapproval as he cut off whatever excuses the boy might have been trying to make. "You disobeyed my instructions. I am profoundly disappointed in you, especially since your ill-advised leadership led to the deaths of several other boys. Perhaps now you'll listen to me when I tell you that you have no aptitude for leadership. I am willing to forgive you – this time – as I feel the deaths of your young comrades should give you sufficient pause to prevent a recurrence of this... aberration on your part. But any future efforts of you to take a position of leadership to which you are not entitled by birth or training will cause me the most severe displeasure. Do I make myself clear?"
During his speech the boy had shrunk in his chair, hunching up with shoulders and back rounded, head lowered. "Yes, sir," Alistair choked out, flushing with shame.
"Good. Now get out of my sight."
Alistair nodded. "Yes, sir," he said softly, and rose to his feet. He bowed, as was proper, and turned away.
He had almost reached the door when Eamon thought of something else. "One other thing," he called.
Alistair looked back questioningly. "Yes, sir?"
"You may go down to the village tomorrow to attend the funeral of young Simon, but after that you are confined to the castle grounds until further notice."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," Alistair said, bowed again, and slipped out of the room.
Drat the child, Eamon thought as he returned to his correspondence. He'd have to think of something to do with him to make sure he stayed out of mischief. Perhaps Isolde's suggestion that the boy should be sent away had some merit after all. He'd have to think on it.
"What? Lead? Me? No, no, no. No leading. Bad things happen when I lead. We get lost, people die, and the next thing you know I'm stranded somewhere without any pants."
- Alistair