CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT’S BEEN FIVE DAYS since she left.
I had to make a choice. It was life or death.
Their lives, or her death.
I chose them. I’ll always choose them.
Captain’s Log, Mayhem
Captain Fraser Connell
PRESENT DAY ...
I went down to the harbor at dawn, just like I had every other day since returning to Hastrior. Except for the first one. It was two weeks since Ozora and Taenya fell back into my life, and I still wished I could do that day over.
Try as I might to contain it, I seethed that in such a short amount of time, they’d coerced me into staying in the city I hated, to train with the women who broke my heart and sank my ship.
In magic. Magecraft magic, not the numinous energy work the elemental and sylvan elder races use, but actual spells.
For what? All those females were delusional if they thought we had a chance against a millennia-old emperor.
That I had to accept their claims about Cilirian elves and the Crimson Birth still annoyed me.
However, they’d shown me weapons and bodies that were obviously elvish, and I checked the wreckage of the galleons.
It was a nasty pill to swallow, but I couldn’t deny the truth when it was in front of me.
Which meant home really was in the danger Cleobah claimed. Yes, home. Longing rippled through me, echoing along a long thread that connected me to them. My hippocamps, or rather one special hippocamp.
Yes, mine. But I was also his. I’d never left him before, hadn’t needed or wanted to.
He still lived. The bond was stretched thin, still there, but I couldn’t tell anything else. We’d been apart too long.
A deep inhale, and I filled my lungs with the clean scent of morning. There, outside the keep, it was fresh and sweet-scented with the meadows that rolled out to the tip of Hastrior’s peninsula. That would change as I walked through town. This was my last untainted breath for a bit.
I wanted to leave. The need to go, to see that everything was okay, that they were safe at home, consumed me. I just couldn’t, and those reasons ate at me like crabs on a carcass, tearing away at my resolve, pushing me to do things I’d regret. Again.
Even if I weren’t bound there by the sphinx’s threats, Mayhem was stuck.
I fretted and chafed at a restriction that had nothing to do with the women at the keep.
Much as I might have wanted to blame them for everything, it wasn’t their fault it had taken me a week to find craftsfolk with the skills to repair her.
Hastrior wasn’t a ghost town, but it wasn’t the thriving port it once had been.
I’d learned from my crew that many of its citizens had left after Gordon disappeared about two years ago.
To the east, the hilltops glowed like a forge, the sun was a white-hot circle climbing into a golden sky that faded to the palest blue.
Not a single cloud crossed the vast bowl above.
I could tell already it was going to be hot.
The morning air was velvety soft against my arms and face, without a hint of chill as I strolled through the streets to the harbor.
It was too early for the shipwrights to be on the job, but that was fine with me.
I liked to get to my ship before them; the quiet and emptiness suited me.
Cassyrra and Cleobah insisted I remain up at the keep, even though I would’ve preferred to stay aboard Mayhem.
A rule that chafed, almost as abrasively as constantly being around Ozora.
My days were now filled with lessons from the dragon on spellcraft, in addition to managing my crew, and monitoring the shipwrights.
There were also the inevitable arguments with Ozora and Taenya about almost everything; from the current state of squalor in Hastrior to the emperor’s invasion plans, with those two hopelessly na?ve about our chances of success.
How are the five of us supposed to stop the Cilirian Empire? Even with a dragon on our side? It took all the world’s dragons, plus the Ayduin elves, to stop them the last time. Just one wouldn’t be enough.
They’ll probably figure out it’s impossible around the time Mayhem’s seaworthy. Until then, I would play along. Once they admitted they couldn’t stop an empire, this fanciful idea to create a new kind of mage school would die, and we’d all go our separate ways.
And I could banish Ozora once more to the past. All I had to do was be patient.
Hastrior’s harbor sat on the south side of the peninsula, and that early, it lay in shadow as the sun’s first rays crested the hills beyond the city.
Soon, washes of light painted the buildings and streets in gleaming rose-gold tints.
Out toward the horizon, fast-fading dusky purples and dim blues still coated the sky but vanished as I walked.
Night chased away by the day’s brilliance.
The light did not improve Hastrior’s streets. Bulky shadows became trash piled in the gutters and corners of the abandoned buildings while rats darted among the refuse as I made my way through a particularly squalid part of town.
It was alarming how the city could go from fairly decent to completely ruined in just a few blocks.
Where the citizens fled, large swaths of businesses closed, and were boarded up on street after street, while other sections still had commerce and residents who stubbornly refused to budge from their homes.
However, there was no city governance, at all.
The council had fled after Gordon’s disappearance.
A couple of gulls wheeled overhead, crying piteously to each other. Their sorrowful screeches bounced off the warehouses lining the boulevard. In this abandoned section, the homeless and broken gathered. However, few stirred so early, passed out from too much drink or other drug of choice.
After two weeks, I’d stopped counting how many likely dead bodies I passed walking from the keep down to the harbor.
The desolate folks clumped together in the deserted sections of Hastrior’s once beautiful streets.
Collections of people passed out, huddled in the doorways of the shuttered buildings were a common sight on my morning walks.
I wasn’t prepared for the mess that Hastrior had become.
True, businesses and residents still survived in what had once been the biggest port on the coast, just not as many.
Certainly the harbor still had some traffic, and not all the districts were empty, but that former glory was gone.
I couldn’t fathom how anyone would let it get this bad, let alone why.
According to the residents questioned by my crew, when Gordon went missing the entire city council fled, and took all the city guards.
Lawlessness was the rule rather than the exception.
My crew were tough, but they weren’t enough to clear all of Hastrior.
The patrols I’d ordered at least kept the area around the harbor and near the keep safe.
As I dropped from street level to the quay, I drew in another deep, grateful breath.
The salty tang of the harbor soothed me as I left behind the palpable odor of the city.
Short, shallow breaths were best while I walked through the odor of waste from the city’s vagrants, fermenting in the streets and gutters.
I followed the long stone quay that jutted out into the harbor.
Mayhem rested next to it, nestled close to the stone and shore.
Her wooden planks were smooth under my palm as I passed by, before following my stone path further out into the bay.
“We’ll get you fixed up soon, girl,” I whispered, “then we’ll go home. ”
Once I reached the end of the quay, my hopeful gaze rested on the horizon as I waited, and relished the sun heating my back and legs.
Where was Gordon? It was my favorite problem to wrestle with as I stood there, morning after morning. We simply hadn’t been able to find him. He’d vanished, and even the rumor well had dried up.
Five years ago, it was Gordon who’d encouraged me to go after Ozora sank Skirmisher. Told me to go and save the hippocamps that a local noble was selling. He would stay in Hastrior, and Mayhem would always have a safe port there.
Once we had the ‘camps and freed the prisoners on that noble’s island, I was too busy to think about her. After things settled down, I didn’t care about what happened on the mainland, and had evicted her from my head and heart.
Or so I thought, until I saw her again. All it took was two timeless moments. Two breaths. Two heartbeats, was all it took to bring it all back.
How I wanted her.
How I needed her. Still. Even after all that had happened.
And I hated myself for the longing.
For letting a dream five years dead try to come back to haunt me. All those old feelings and memories, dredged up from the darker corners of my mind, towed all that pain in their wake.
I didn’t want them. Didn’t want them distracting me with how she smelled like lilies, how soft her skin was. How she’d gasp with delight when my hand ran down her thigh...
With a violent shake of my head, I tried again let go of all of it. Or shovel those memories back down into the pit where I’d stuffed them for all those years.
But it was kind of hard to ignore them when the source was always around. My trips down to check on Mayhem were an excuse, but the truth was I needed a break from her. To be somewhere her presence didn’t fill everything.
From out in the harbor, three small bubbles popped on the surface, breaking the silence and my dreary thoughts. Relief flooded through me, as if released by those little pops.
The water’s surface erupted, boiling then breaking as Bastion’s head crashed through the surface, followed by his long, arching neck and powerful shoulders.
Our bond flared into brilliant life as our eyes met, and I was pulled into the rush of connection.
His heart and thoughts twined with mine as our numin wove together.
Bastion let loose a trumpeting neigh of greeting, shattering the quiet with echoes that bounced off the stone walls of the harbor.
“Quiet, idiot!” I whispered, sending the same command down the bond. He shot me a reproachful look, swiveling perked-up ears back flat against his head, but he clamped his lips shut and stretched his neck, swimming for the end of the quay.
Stairs leading into the water were off to my left, and I ran down them until I was up to my hips in the harbor.
Bastion planted his forehooves on either side and braced his tail against the underwater steps to loom over me like a big dog giving a too-enthusiastic greeting.
His blue and gold-streaked head rubbed against my torso as he uttered happy little whickers and grunts.
Nostrils flared to snuffle my loose shirt and shorts, then he pulled me in with his head until I was tucked against his broad chest. I wrapped my arms around his neck and leaned in. His glistening hide soaked through the last dry spot on my shirt, but that didn’t matter.
“I missed you, too, my friend.” The bond reverberated between us with warmth, trust. Love.
Right there and then, everything was okay.
Soon, I’d have to go check in with the shipwrights. Then later, I’d have to go meet with Cassyrra and Ozora to train in spellcraft.
Right now, I don’t care. This was the moment I’d waited two weeks for, the moment I’d gone down there every morning for. I pressed my face against his short, sleek coat, my tears lost in the saltwater running from his dark blue dappled hide.
He whuffled, his throat vibrating against my chest. Through the bond, soothing calm flowed into my heart to chase away doubt, hurt, and pain. Bastion and the moment were all that mattered.
The water was so warm, I barely felt it lapping against my thighs. I breathed in the scent of hippocamp, a sweet and tangy mix of saltwater and horse, while my fingers combed through his long, curly mane.
++ Everything’s okay. They’re all safe. ++ Images and emotions along with his words poured through the bond, telling me that all was well back home.
I’d bonded with many hippocamps while living with my nereid family under the waves, but Bastion was unique.
When I left home two weeks before, I worried that being so far apart would strain our bond to breaking, but the battle I headed into wasn’t one for the big stallion.
I told him to stay, to guard our home, and while he’d been clear he hated the idea, he obeyed.
The morning after my disastrous first day, I came down to the harbor and called him to me, to Hastrior.
Across the miles, I sent my call through our attenuated bond; that it still existed was the only hope I had that he would hear, and find me.
Each day, I went to the harbor where the water would enhance the bond to call, to listen, and hope.
No other hippocamp could’ve done it. Lots of them wouldn’t have; would’ve instead chosen to return to the wild. Only Bastion would’ve crossed the miles and dangers of the open sea to return to me, because of our bond.
I leaned my forehead against his neck, reassured by his strong, steady heartbeat beneath mine, gave thanks to Gahan that we were together again.
This was why I chose to stay. Why I’d do all I could to make Hastrior safe again. Not for Ozora, not for the mage school.
Because I would do anything to keep Bastion and our home safe. If I had to fight an entire empire of Cilirian elves, then they’d better be ready.
Fraser Connell hasn’t lost a fight yet.