Chapter 8 Hardin
HARDIN
The salt-laden breeze blew across the bustling port of Stormwatch, where weathered wooden planks groaned beneath the weight of endless foot traffic.
Hardin leaned against a shipping crate that bore the scars of countless voyages, its wooden surface smooth from years of handling.
His shoulder brushed against Sasja’s leg with deliberate gentleness, like a moth drawn to flame.
When she allowed the contact to linger, his heart performed an intricate dance in his chest, a symphony of hope and disbelief intertwined.
Their voyage across the strait from Doran still felt dreamlike, as though the eight gods themselves had conspired to place her in his path.
He had expected her to disappear into the labyrinth of streets within the city the moment they made port.
Yet here she was, her presence as tangible as the ruby pendant that hung around her neck, catching in the light with an almost supernatural radiance.
Hardin cleared his throat, the news clipping tight in his calloused fingers as he held it out. “Tel Roan Killed. Dragon Gone Missing. Astral City Shocked at Nordraven’s Escalation.”
Sasja’s glacial blue eyes held his hazel gaze captive. Her hair was the opposite of his dark black shaggy mop. Her braids were blonde like spun gold, the tips danced against his shoulders with a teasing intimacy as she leaned over him. The warmth of her sent playful shivers down his spine.
“Tel Roan, isn’t he the Paragon you were telling me about; the one you were traveling to Astral City to see? You wanted to hire him, right?” she asked, her voice sounding sweet like summer wine.
“Hire a Paragon like Tel Roan...” Hardin allowed his mind to wander through a path of an impossible dream. If he was built more like a soldier of Lamar instead of the wiry, tan-skinned singer he was currently, he might’ve entertained coming to Lamar with hopes of training to be a Knight.
What a wonderful fantasy that would be, he thought.
Yet, the weight of the coin given to him by respected members of his town pressed against his hip. The hidden purse acted as a constant reminder of their trust in him. A purse that might as well have been filled with wishes for all the good it would do in securing a true Paragon’s services.
My best hope lay in finding a Knight whose ambitions have dulled to the point of accepting this modest sum.
He considered telling her the truth. But blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Lamarian beauties like Sasja didn’t waste precious moments with penniless dreamers from a westerly kingdom.
“Isn’t that what you told me when we boarded the ship at Dagger’s Landing?” Sasja asked.
“That’s right, I did say that. I’m on a quest to hire a hero from the Vermillion Keep,” Hardin declared, his focus returning. Sasja’s golden braids tickled his scalp, and he tilted back to meet her azure gaze.
“I’ve never met anyone as young as you who was rich enough to afford a Paragon,” Sasja mused.
“That may be true,” he said. His thought faded into nothing as her fingers trailed through his dark wavy hair with deliberate grace. He felt as though he were floating as she continued tracing the sharp angle of his jaw, ghosting across the stubble that marked his attempt at rugged masculinity
“You must have come from a Doranian Princedom to have that kind of money,” Sasja murmured.
Truth writhed inside him, demanding release. The collected hopes of his people weighed heavier than any coin purse.
“It’s a group of investors actually,” Hardin said, the lie tasting of ash. Somehow, this young woman was able to make him say things he otherwise wouldn’t.
“What will you do with all the money now that Tel Roan is dead?” Sasja’s question cut through the spell her gentle touch had over him.
“I thought I’d still—”
The thundering of boots against wood shattered the moment. Hardin’s senses snapped to attention. Through gaps in the stacked crates on the wharf, he caught sight of a newly familiar shop owner leading a contingent of city watchmen in matching armor.
“Ash,” he cursed.
Sasja transformed beside him as she dropped from her perch with liquid grace.
The playful girl vanished, replaced by something altogether more dangerous.
She snatched the burlap sack from beside his lute with practiced efficiency, her earlier languorous touches now seemed like the careful assessment of a thief studying her mark.
Was she only staying with me for a chance at my money?
The question should have stung more as he realized the truth of it. Yet he couldn’t quite extinguish the flutter in his chest when she moved close to peer around the edge of their hiding place.
“I told you, you shouldn’t have taken that outfit from Monsanto’s window display,” Hardin accused, but the words lacked real conviction. In his mind’s eye, he saw his journey crumbling.
His imagination created the scene with brutal clarity: Sasja’s false tears, would flow freely before the guards.
Her voice, so recently warm with affection, would turn to poison.
Honest, sir. He put me up to it. He’s got a way with words, being a silver-tongued bard and all.
He forced me to take the fine clothes. See, they aren’t even for a woman.
The male jailers would believe her, they always did.
The beautiful young innocent woman would weave her spell of deception while Hardin’s protests withered and died in his throat.
Then it would be the mines in the southern Astral Range.
Not the beautiful halls of dwarven mines under the Everburning Forest, no.
He would be sent to a place where hopes go to die and dreams turn to dust. All because he couldn’t resist the wiles of a girl with ocean-blue eyes and a smile that promised adventure.
“They’re probably going to think I stole the coin I have on me as well,” he muttered.
“Hush your mumbling,” Sasja commanded in a surprisingly sharp tone. “I can see a way out of this before Monsanto gets here. Just keep your head down and follow me.”
Hardin secured his lute with the shoulder strap and set out to follow her.
Sasja approached the dock’s edge. A rope tied to one of the posts anchoring the wharf was strung in a taut line from the wharf to the ship moored there.
Starting from the post under the cargo crates, the line stretched fifty feet to the portside of the ship. Sasja was studying it.
Is she going to climb that rope? That’s insane, they’ll see us.
Sasja tied the burlap sack containing the stolen goods to her belt before peering over the edge. Hardin’s blood ran cold as he, too, peered into the churning waters below.
Beneath the surface, certain death swam in unpredictable patterns.
The monstrous crocks flashed in streaks of purple and dark blue.
Azgron crocks patrolled the waters, ever so patient to await their prey.
Like dragons of the sea, their scaley bodies and powerful jaws, made them the nightmare of any creature careless enough to enter the water.
These predatory creatures, were living legends.
The azgron crock was the focal point of many a sailor’s darkest tales.
They haunted the space between dragon and demon in the hierarchy of terrors in Sataran.
Hardin’s memory of his first azgron sighting rose unbidden.
The creature was sprawled across the main pier back in Doran.
Its massive form dwarfed the fishing nets that had somehow proved its undoing.
At first, Hardin thought it was a fallen dragon; then, a noble beast brought down by mortal means and fished out of the water.
But as Sense Kalu said the name, Hardin saw it.
Something darker lurked in the creature’s cold dead eyes.
The way its scales glistened with an almost hypnotic beauty, their purple-blue iridescence masking armor that could turn aside a ship’s ram.
Primal fear had clutched him then as it did now.
The azgrons below mocked his dreams of heroism.
“I saw one of them hiding in that stack,” a thick southern accent cut through these thoughts, the footsteps of pursuit slowing to a deliberate stalking pace.
Hardin’s gaze snapped away from the water for just a moment, catching a glimpse of Sasja as she made her choice.
She leapt out away from the wharf’s edge.
His heart stopped in a moment that seemed infinite.
Saja hung with her arms outstretched suspended between the ship’s rope and certain death twenty feet below.
An instant later, her grip caught the line.
It flexed as she used her momentum to swing, horizontally, around the rope.
Sasja thrust her hips just before letting go, giving herself the perfect arch to land back on the opposite side of the shipping crates.
Landing safely on the other side of the cargo stack, she disappeared from view.
A breath later and she’d stuck her head back out, leaning over the water.
Her rich blue eyes caught his, extending both the invitation and challenge to follow.
“Check right there,” Monsanto said, nearing the slot in the cargo where Hardin hid.
The mooring rope lay before him, a lifeline and a judge. You can do this, he told himself. Without looking down, he launched himself into empty space.
The world dissolved into pure sensation. The wooden planks vanished beneath his feet and were replaced by the vast nothingness that expanded between him and the water’s surface. The air seemed to hold its breath as he stretched for the rope.
The coarse fiber met his grasp with a shock wave that rippled through his sinuous body. Reality arrived with brutal clarity. Momentum carried him in an arc. He pumped his hips like Sasja had, every taut muscle straining toward a landing that suddenly seemed as distant as his home’s salvation.