Chapter Twenty
When Lorath awoke, it was before dawn, and Adreona had left sometime during the night.
That did not surprise him. Later that morning, when they came back together on the deck of the Arabel, she greeted him with grim intent.
He sensed no regret from her, no embarrassment, no denial of what had happened, and no need to justify it or explain herself, but she had put her armor back on, and her focus had returned entirely to the purpose before them.
Lorath understood. Whatever existed between them now had no bearing on their present mission into Drowned territory.
He stood with Keldon at the stern, watching as Adreona, Tavie, and a small company of Amazons got situated at the bow.
The lingering smoke and dust in the air turned the sunrise murky and thin, despite a gentle breeze that would make the going easier on their journey west. The old sailor held the tiller with a half smile of amusement as he watched the warriors.
“I wonder how Eshella would’ve felt about this.”
“About what?” Lorath asked.
“Me with a boatful of beautiful women. Probably would’ve laughed. She wasn’t the jealous type, my Esh.” He shook his head in wonder. “Who’d have guessed that one day my Arabel would have a crew of Amazons?”
Lorath felt he knew the sailor well enough now to ask something he had been wondering since boarding the sloop. “Where does the name come from? Arabel? ”
Keldon’s smile subsided. “That were my daughter’s name.”
Lorath wondered why the sailor had never mentioned having a daughter. “Did she leave with her mother?”
“Leave?”
Lorath thought back to what the sailor had already told him. “Forgive me, I thought you said your wife left you.”
Keldon shook his head. “I said my wife had been gone for several years now, and that she ain’t coming back.”
“But—”
“Esh and Arabel were murdered.”
Lorath’s breath caught in his throat. “Murdered?”
“Aye.”
“By the reapers?”
Keldon shook his head. “After that. Kingsport never was a proper place for a wife and child, but after the reapers…I should have got them out of there. I just didn’t know where to go.
You remember how it was. All that chaos.
Nowhere was safe. But anywhere would have been better if it meant they could still be with me. It’s my fault, you see.”
Lorath’s rage stirred on the sailor’s behalf for a woman and child he could do nothing to help or avenge. “It is not your fault, Keldon. It is the fault of the one who murdered them. Do you know who it was?”
“I do.”
Before he could elaborate, Adreona came back to the helm from the bow. “Are we ready to sail?”
“We are, indeed, Captain,” Keldon said. “Just give the word.”
“The word is given.”
Lorath and Adreona then hoisted the sails, and the Arabel got underway.
As they eased past the line of safety behind the warships and out into the sluggish waters of Atanos, the mood on the deck shifted.
The Amazons fell silent, alert, weapons drawn and ready, with all eyes on the surface of the sea.
They had won a decisive victory against the Drowned but had no way of knowing how strong the opposition remained, lurking in the mist.
Adreona guided Keldon through the snarl of channels and shallows that lay between them and the place where the watchfire should have been burning.
They had only a league or so to cover, but given the tortuous nature of their course and the feebleness of the wind, it took them longer than any of them would have liked.
Each moment they spent out there gave the Drowned more opportunity to gather and attack, and every carrion bird they disturbed, every aquatic creature they startled into the water only increased their dread.
At last, the Amazons watching at the prow shouted that they had sighted the watchfire—or, rather, what remained of it.
As the structure took shape in the fog, Lorath saw that its foundation remained intact, a plinth of stone twenty paces to a side, tall as a two-story building, rooted to a jagged islet not much larger than the edifice it supported.
Only the stump of the former tower remained on that footing, felled like a tree.
Its great trunk lay broken along the marshy ground and sumps, a ruin that stretched away to such a length, it seemed clear the watchfire could not have simply collapsed or fallen on its own.
Rather, it appeared as if it had been thrown down.
“It didn’t just burn out,” Tavie whispered. “Something destroyedit.”
“Bring us in closer,” Adreona said.
They lowered the sails, then Lorath used the sculling oar to creep up alongside the island. Then he, Adreona, and the other Amazons leapt ashore to see what clues might be found there, hoping to glean some indication of how the tower had been demolished.
“The Drowned didn’t do this,” Adreona said, staring up at the wreck. “This surpasses any cunning they have ever shown.”
Lorath looked down at the islet’s craggy terrain. He saw no bracken, no seaweed, no crustaceans or other marine life. It appeared the pools and crevices had been scoured clean, as if a giant tidal wave had washed over the entire rock. “A storm?” he suggested.
“What storm?” Adreona said, then shook her head. “A tempest capable of this would have wreaked havoc across the isles. Besides, this tower has stood for a thousand years of gales and waves.”
Tavie pointed at the stubborn remnant of the tower still attached to the plinth. “It’s like something just…chopped it down. What in all of Sanctuary could do that?”
“I don’t know,” said Adreona. “For now, let’s—”
A bell rang out in the mist. Even on land, its dire tone would never be mistaken for a church bell. In Atanos, it filled Lorath with instant dread.
“Drowned!” One of the Amazons shot an arrow at the waterline, where an undead wretch squealed, flailing, and went under.
“Back to the ship!” Adreona shouted as more Drowned lurched out of the sea, dozens of them clambering upward like a swarm of crabs.
Lorath pulled his polearm free and leapt at the enemy, carving a path of escape toward the Arabel.
Keldon had taken the sculling oar in hand and heaved his ship up against the rocks so the Amazons could jump onto the deck, but the Drowned had begun to claw their way over the gunwale.
Lorath waited on the islet until Adreona and the Amazons had made it safely aboard.
Then he vaulted onto the ship and joined the fight to free them.
Keldon let out a roar behind him, and when Lorath spun around, he saw a Drowned wretch had come over the stern and sunk its teeth into the sailor’s forearm.
Before Lorath could attack it, Adreona skewered it with her spear and flung it over the side.
The old sailor clutched his arm, and blood seeped between his fingers.
Lorath rushed to help him at the oar. “How bad is it?”
“I won’t bleed out,” he replied through gritted teeth.
Tavie lobbed a flaming jug into the air behind them, which another Amazon shattered with a shot from her bow, raining fiery oil onto the fiends below. Elsewhere along the deck, the Amazons had ignited other incendiary weapons, driving the Drowned back into the water.
“Head north!” Adreona shouted.
“Why north?” Keldon asked. “Why not east, back to the fort?”
“Do what she says,” Lorath replied. “I trust her judgment.”
As soon as they had cleared the enemy, they raised the Arabel ’s sails and left the fallen tower behind them.
Keldon insisted on staying at the tiller, but he allowed Lorath to wrap his injured arm in the shredded tatters of his own sleeve.
It was an evil-looking wound and would need a thorough cleaning and tending soon.
They moved northward, even more vigilant now, with torches and blades at the ready, listening to distant shrieks and the baleful ringing of bells off in the fog, but they came under no further attack.
Eventually, the Amazons let down their guard somewhat, though they remained alert.
As they sailed for Temis, Adreona came over to Keldon, frowning at his arm. “We should tend to your injury.”
“I’m well enough,” he said. “I’ll see to it once we’re out of these cursed waters.”
Adreona ignored him and reached for his forearm, but he yanked it away from her. “Leave it be, woman. I’ve had worse.”
She gave Lorath a look of grave concern and appeared reluctant to accept Keldon’s answer, but she eventually let him be.
The sailor remained at the tiller as they pressed onward, with Lorath occasionally sculling when they lost the wind.
The day waned, and Keldon looked weaker and more haggard with each passing league, sweat glistening across his pallid brow, but he seemed determined to get them all to safety.
They encountered no more Drowned, but as they reached the edges of the Atanos mist, they heard a rumbling moan from the deep of the Great Ocean to the northwest. It was a sound Lorath recognized.
“What is that?” asked Tavie.
“A leviathan,” Lorath answered. “We encountered it during our crossing from Kingsport.”
“You saw it?” asked Adreona.
“Only its wake,” Lorath answered. “It was…quite large.”
“Large enough to tear down the watchfire?” Adreona asked.
“Possibly,” he said. To imagine such a beast challenged his faculties of reason, but he had traveled with Tyrael long enough to know that Sanctuary contained a multitude of abominations that defied the mortal mind’s ability to comprehend.
At last, the Arabel reached untainted blue waters and turned eastward. That was when Keldon finally collapsed to the deck. Tavie took hold of the tiller, and Adreona helped Lorath carry him down into the forward cabin.
“I should have checked,” she said below her breath. “I should have insisted.”
“He is stubborn,” Lorath said.
“So am I,” she answered, which Lorath had come to know very well.