Chapter 4
After a long night on the shoreline of a wasted venture, Eskil wakes before dawn with grit between his teeth and a crick in his neck that speaks to the quality of the ground he slept on.
It’s not like he’s not used to it. A king too good to sleep on the ground with his men is a king too good to bleed beside them and that’s never been him.
It doesn’t mean he has to enjoy a night on the hard-packed sand near the dying fire with his cloak bunched beneath his head and his sword within arm's reach.
He's slept in worse places. He's slept in better ones too, and he's looking forward to being back in one of those as soon as humanly possible.
The camp stirs around him in the grey predawn light.
His crew knows the schedule. They've done this enough times that the process of breaking camp and loading a ship is second nature: tents struck, firepits doused, supplies inventoried and packed in the order they'll be needed on the journey.
Eskil rolls his shoulders, buckles his belt, and begins ordering the day into motion.
The vessel is a Rengaran longship built for open ocean, broad in the beam and deep in the hold, with a single square sail and oar ports for when the wind fails them.
She's not pretty, but she's seaworthy, and she's carried them through worse than the calm bay they're anchored in now.
His men begin ferrying supplies out in longboats, piling on their spoils and provisions as quickly as possible, crate after crate of what little Kalkoa had to offer.
The treasury goods are loaded first, locked chests of gold and gems secured in the lowest hold where the weight will keep the ship stable.
Then the food stores, the barrels of water and ale, the mundane necessities that keep forty warriors alive and in good spirits on open water.
Eskil oversees it all from the shoreline, arms crossed, mentally cataloguing each load against the manifest Bohdi prepared.
The numbers aren't inspiring. He'd hoped for enough to justify the voyage twice over, and instead they're looking at a haul that will barely cover costs.
But dwelling on it won't change the numbers, and the sooner they're underway the sooner he can put this miserable kingdom at his back.
He notices the healer standing apart from the activity. He's been told the young man's name is Indrie, courtesy of Dagny, who had reported it with the triumphant air of a woman winning a victory.
The young man is near the waterline, a few paces removed from the organized chaos of loading.
He's standing very still, satchel over one shoulder, watching the ship with an expression that Eskil can read even at this distance.
Lost. Not confused, he clearly understands what's happening, that they're leaving, that the ship is being loaded, but lost in that particular way of not knowing where he fits in the picture.
His dark hair is loose around his shoulders, stirring in the early morning breeze off the water, and he's holding himself with that careful stillness Eskil has already started to recognize.
Shoulders drawn in, chin low, trying to take up as little space as possible.
Eskil crosses to him. The sand shifts under his boots and Indrie doesn't seem to hear him approach, or if he does he doesn't turn, not until Eskil is beside him and reaching for one of the supply packs stacked nearby.
He picks it up, rope, canvas, a rolled bundle of sailcloth, and places it in Indrie's startled hands.
The young man takes it reflexively, arms closing around the weight, and looks up at Eskil with wide eyes.
Eskil gestures toward the ship. The longboat at the waterline. The men loading it. The meaning should be clear enough.
"Go," he tells him, motioning again.
Indrie stares at him. Those dark eyes search his face, flickering between Eskil's eyes and his mouth and the hand that just released the pack, and Eskil can see the calculation happening behind them.
Not defiance, nothing so bold, but an assessment, a weighing of options that probably comes up empty no matter how many times he runs the numbers.
The young man glances over his shoulder, back toward the castle, back toward the kingdom that is no longer his.
Whatever he sees there, the crumbling walls, the barren fields, the life he was forced to live, doesn't seem to offer him comfort.
He turns back to Eskil. His jaw tightens, just slightly, and he nods once. Then he adjusts the pack in his arms, shifts the satchel higher on his shoulder, and makes his way toward the longboat with a stride that is marginally more confident than his unsure stance at the waterline had been.
Eskil watches him go. Watches one of the men offer Indrie a hand into the boat, watches Indrie hesitate before taking it, watches him settle on the bench with the pack in his lap and his knuckles white around the satchel strap.
He looks very small in the longboat. Very alone, despite the men around him.
Eskil realizes the healer is probably reluctant to come.
More than reluctant. He's being taken from the only land he's ever known by people whose language he barely speaks, toward a destination he knows nothing about, under the authority of a man he has every reason to fear.
The reasonable response to all of that would be reluctance.
Resistance, even. The fact that Indrie went without argument, without protest, without even asking where they're taking him, that's not compliance.
That's learned behavior. The quiet obedience of a body that knows objecting only makes things worse.
But Eskil knows where the boy's future leads if he leaves him here.
The bruises and scars on his body tell a story Eskil doesn't need translated.
A healer, young and slight and without protectors, in a kingdom whose king is dying and whose court has already demonstrated its willingness to beat what it can't break.
And once Armond finally succumbs to Granger's, which he will eventually, even under Indrie’s dedicated care, they'll have no use for the man who kept him alive.
Worse than no use. A healer who couldn't cure the king is a convenient scapegoat for those looking to assign blame.
The safest thing is to find him a better way of life.
Eskil can't promise that's with his people, can't promise anything, really, until they've made the crossing and he's had a chance to discuss it with his brother and his council, but it's the best he can provide.
A chance. An open door, even if Indrie doesn't know it's open yet.
"You make standing around doing nothing look majestic."
Bohdi materializes at his side with the uncanny ability he has to appear exactly where he's least wanted. He's carrying a crate under one arm and looks far too cheerful for someone who slept on the same miserable ground Eskil did.
"It’s called supervising," Eskil says flatly.
"Mm." Bohdi shifts the crate to his other arm and follows Eskil's line of sight to the longboat, where Indrie is now wedged between two of their larger warriors and looking very small. "That one's sitting in the boat looking as though he's headed to his own funeral."
"He's been uprooted from everything he knows. A little reluctance is expected."
"Reluctance, sure." Bohdi glances at him sideways. "You know he didn't sleep last night."
Eskil hadn't known that, but he's not surprised. He keeps his expression neutral. "Did you?"
"I did, thanks for asking. Dagny sat with him by the fire for a while. Ermin too. The boy was up when I did my last round at the fourth bell, sitting on that log, staring at the castle." Bohdi pauses, then adds, more carefully, "You need to be gentle with him, Eskil. Or you're liable to break him."
Eskil's jaw tightens. He turns his head just enough to give Bohdi a look that has ended conversations with lesser men. "If the man hasn't broken this far, then being given a task isn't going to be the thing that does him in."
"I agree. He's resilient. Remarkably so, given the circumstances.
" Bohdi sets the crate down and straightens, crossing his arms. "But he's suffered countless years of abuse at the hands of the king and his men, and maybe we shouldn't start off his journey to a new world by barking at him as though he's a dog. "
The words land harder than Eskil wants them to.
He thinks of the way he'd shoved the pack into Indrie's hands.
The single word, go, delivered as an order, not an invitation.
The gesture toward the ship, a command rather than a request. He'd been efficient.
Direct. The same way he communicates with everyone under his authority, because efficiency keeps things moving and a moving ship is a surviving one.
But Indrie is not one of his crew. Indrie is a young man who flinches at sharp tones and has spent five years learning that orders are followed by violence if he doesn't comply fast enough.
Eskil doesn't say any of this.
"Mind your business, Bohdi. Get back to work."
Bohdi holds his hands up in peace and complies, picking up his crate and turning back toward the supply stacks.
But his words stay with Eskil even though he doesn't want them to.
They lodge themselves under his skin, small and persistent, and he carries them with him through the rest of the morning.
He carries them as he oversees the last of the loading.
As he ensures the water barrels are properly sealed and the provisions accounted for.
As he gives the order to strike the final tent and kick sand over the firepits.
He carries them as he takes one last look at the grey, crumbling kingdom of Kalkoa, its depleted mines and empty fields and hollow-eyed people who deserved better than the king they got, and turns his back on it for the last time.
When the crew finishes loading the ship and the last longboat makes its final trip to the vessel, Eskil could not be happier to board and figuratively wave goodbye to this rotten hellscape of a land.
He climbs over the side and his boots hit the deck and the wood beneath him feels solid in a way that ground hasn't for the past two days.
This is where he belongs. On a ship, on the water, heading home.
He notices Dagny talking to Indrie near the bow.
She has her arm around his shoulders, the gesture already familiar, comfortable in a way that should take years rather than hours, and she's whispering in his ear and gesturing out at the brown landscape they're leaving.
The shoreline of Kalkoa recedes behind them as the oars pull them toward open water, and Dagny is pointing at it with one hand while her other arm holds Indrie close, and Eskil can tell from how animated she is that she's describing their homeland.
Something green and sprawling, leading to mountains and rivers lush with life.
He can almost hear her butchering the words in Indrie's language, painting a picture with broken grammar and wild enthusiasm.
Things Indrie has probably never seen. Things he's probably never imagined.
The young man is watching Dagny's gestures with an expression that's difficult to read at this distance. Not quite hope. Not quite disbelief. Something tentative, balanced on the edge of both.
Eskil crosses to them and Dagny straightens, though she doesn't remove her arm from Indrie's shoulders.
Her chin lifts slightly, not defiance, not exactly, but a subtle positioning that says I'm protecting this one and I'd like to see you argue with me about it. Eskil has seen that look from her before. She gives it to Ermin regularly. He’s also not about to argue with her about it.
Indrie tenses beside her. His body draws inward, shoulders tightening, eyes dropping from wherever they'd been to the deck beneath his feet. He won't look Eskil in the eye. His hands find each other in front of him, fingers lacing together, knuckles going pale.
Bohdi's words come back to him, unwelcome and accurate, and Eskil feels annoyed at having his second-in-command always serve as his conscience.
It's an unfair arrangement. Bohdi gets to observe from the outside while Eskil has to live inside his own head with every misstep replaying on a loop.
The man could at least have the decency to be wrong occasionally.
"Keep him close on the voyage," Eskil tells Dagny. "Keep him occupied. And see what you can do about the language barrier. He can't live among us if he can't speak to anyone."
Dagny's arm tightens around Indrie's shoulders. "I've already started teaching him. He's quick. Smarter than half this crew."
"That's not a high bar."
"No," she agrees, grinning. "But he clears it with room to spare."
Eskil glances at Indrie, who is studying the deck planks beneath his boots with fixed, desperate attention, willing them to swallow him whole.
While he's standing there, he sees Indrie's dark eyes gaze up at him discreetly.
It's a careful look, delivered from beneath lowered lashes, quick and furtive.
The kind of glance someone steals when they think they're not being watched.
But Eskil is watching, has been watching more than he should, more than is wise, and when Indrie catches Eskil looking back at him, he drops his gaze instantly, startled, scorched by the contact.
The pink returns to his cheeks. Just a trace, barely visible, there and gone.
Eskil turns back to Dagny before he can dwell on it.
"Get him settled below and find him some supplies to work with.
Herbs, clean cloth, whatever he needs. Check what we brought from the stores, and if he has a list of what he requires, have him write it down.
Gunnar might know some of the native plants.
" He pauses, then adds, "If the man truly kept someone alive through five years of Granger's, he has knowledge that could benefit every soul on this ship.
There will be injuries and sickness on the journey. There always are."
"I'll handle it," Dagny says, already half-turned to Indrie, already talking to him in her patchwork version of his language, her free hand gesturing toward the hold where the supplies are kept.
Indrie is listening, his posture fractionally less rigid than it was a moment ago, his head tilted toward her, clinging to the sound of his own language however mangled it may be.
Eskil leaves them. He turns toward the helm and the open water ahead and the three weeks of sailing that stand between him and home.
Fuck me, he thinks, gripping the railing as the wind fills the sail and the ship begins to cut through the grey water in earnest. This is going to be a long journey home.