There are times I wonder who of my companions, lovers, and acquaintances made it into the historical record. As with everything, the number of them bleed out over time. Someday, perhaps, there will be none. Even I will be forgotten when the next strata of the world is born.
I do not believe I have read every chronicle of the Heacharid conquest of Axichis. In the ones I have read, none mention Dromesia by name. Phaeliope appears in a few, but none detail our friendship. The only figure that consistently appears is Melodora Bardane, for reasons that should be obvious for any who know of me.
The women in this volume are all important to me in their way, but to a historian, they are but footnotes. Dromesia, if she is mentioned at all, it is as an unspecified healer who nursed me through my first encounter with Lysethe. Einoë and Kallea are far more infamous in their current incarnations than as my largely unnamed hetairoi. And none of them mention my week with the sellsword Talynore Tazo.
In the scheme of the war itself, it had no import. It provided another ship to the amazons, a few stormwights, but that was all. And all it cost me was my faithful ironwood staff. As for Talynore and me, it explains our later association, but that would come in time.
This interlude began with an ambush. One, I'm afraid, I was on the wrong side of. Perhaps I should have seen it coming. While the Axichan archipelago had but six major islands, it was filled with smaller spits of land, some barely more than a few salt-scoured rocks. Plenty of places for ships to hide. Easy to forget in my arrogance and rage.
We caught a Heacharid ship in an inlet of one of these islands, in a section of the sea littered with spits of land that only had names to the most experienced of Axichan mariners. The Heacharid ship was a nice fat prize that the crew of
Naeri's Revenge
couldn't turn down. My storm had the Heacharids pinned against the shore and I was about to commence with the process of killing when three more ships came around the windward side of the island.
Kallea kissed my cheek and settled her helmet into place, ready to repel boarders. The leaden clouds were thick over the area, and as the three Heacharid ships sailed hard for us, their catapults flinging the first volley of stone, an idea sparked into my mind. The ships left the bright and shining day for the false night of my storm. This was the answer.
"Hold fast," I murmured.
"Hold fast!" Einoë called to the crew.
Kucyone bellowed orders over the deck, the ship wheeling for open water. We would not make it before the catapults chewed us apart. If I knew it, everyone on the ship knew it.
I was deep in my spell, the magical energy wreathing me, flowing through my will, sharpened by my words, shaped by my hands, and overlaid on the world. I felt it all around me, surging in my blood, thundering with my heart. I dove into ocean of magic and made it dance.
The spell felt like one of the great sea monsters that lurk in the deep waters at the edge of the world, old and powerful beyond reckoning. It thrashed in my grip, its strength incredible and growing with every shuddering heartbeat. I don't know if I ever thought I could control it. If even that was my intent. I only know that when it twisted its way free, I found myself hurled into the gunwale.
My senses returned to me, the starry field of magic leaving my sight in favor of the heaving sea. The storm battered us. Sheets of rain slicked the decks. Gales tore at us with talons of ice. Lightning raked the seas and thunder shook the skies. The Heacharid ships were scarcely visible through the driving rain. The deck pitched and rolled beneath my feet, the ship seemingly desperate to fling me from its back. Waves crashed over the deck, soaking me to my skin.
"Tent brother!" Einoë bellowed, clutching the mast. "Your spell will kill us!"
"End it!" Kallea shouted, her knuckles white as she gripped the rigging.
I raised my arms, summoning my will, ready to focus it through my voice. I would hold this convulsing maelstrom of a spell. I would force it to bend to my desires. I would fling it behind
Naeri's Revenge
, into the teeth of the Heacharids. I saw the way though, shining brightly through the chaos of the spell. I saw how to take it and wrestle it to my will.
The wave hit me full in the chest right as the deck fell from beneath my feet. I felt myself hurtling through the air. My ironwood staff, Spire, flew from my hands. That would be the last time I ever saw it. Oddrin clutched my robes, his glow rendering what I could see strange and eerie.
And then I hit the sea. The water surged up, trying to drown me. Perhaps it would have succeeded, but my elven garment was light. The robe held none of the water. I could see only the wooden behemoth of my ship, bucking up and down as though trying to stamp the life from me, rain and seawater obscuring the rest. I struck out to where I thought the shore might be. Get to safety, then arrange rescue.
A current caught me, pulling me somewhere. Shadows loomed from the dark. Lightning lanced from the heavens, splitting one of the Heacharid ships in two. I allowed myself a small moment of pleasure as the current pulled me past the burning and sinking wreckage, screaming sailors falling into the surging sea.
Rain tried to drown me from above and the sea from below. I stopped trying to swim altogether and concentrated only on staying afloat. Distantly, I could see daylight, but it was a long way off. My spell had spread, perhaps joining the fabric of a storm already brewing.
The sea fueled by my own storm, tore at me. I pushed myself past exhaustion merely keeping my head above water. Oddrin perched there, his claws drawing stinging rivulets of blood. I do not know how long I stayed in the water, but I do know that it was dark under clear skies when I saw that little spit of rock that would be my home for the next week. I summoned every last ounce of will I had left and struck out hard for it. The current nearly swept me past, but I managed to haul myself into the shallows.
I put my feet beneath me and staggered onto shore, ready to die. The water spilled from my elven robes. Two things hung from my belt, secured so well that even the storm could not tear them from me. My sweetwater goblet, the gift from Thalalei on my right hip, Ellisyr's sword on my left. A tool and a trophy. Life and death.
The shore was rocky, punctuated by deep pools teeming with life. I staggered up past the waves, to the edge of a small expanse of sand and collapsed. I lay there, in the air, chill with evening wind, sucking air into aching lungs. Every muscle in my body felt loose, a faint burn at the edge of feeling.
I do not know how long I lay there. It is possible I lost consciousness, sleep claiming me for scattered moments. Oddrin's hiss brought me to awareness. I sat up only with difficulty. A shape floundered in the shallows. I forced myself to my feet, my exhausted mind too addled to think clearly. I shambled into the surging waves. The shape was female, though as she got to her feet, I saw that she was no amazon.
Her armor was a patchwork of leather and plate. Enough to keep her limber, extra protection on the parts of her most vulnerable in a fight. It struck me as the armor of someone who knew exactly what she would need. One who knew her own strengths and weaknesses from a lifetime of use. She wore a blade on each hip, one long, the other short, both with a slight curve.
She stood up straight, her eyes meeting mine.
She was beautiful but it was the beauty of the perfect killing stroke. She was tall and lithe, more lovely in motion than she ever was at rest. Her hair was auburn, lightly streaked with gold, bound into a high braid that went to the middle of her back. Her slanted eyes were a shocking shade of magenta. Her bronze skin was tinged with gray. Her face was angular, with a strong, stubborn jaw. Her canine teeth and her ears came to delicate points. This was Talynore Tazo, of course, but I did not yet know her name.
"You!" she said. Both blades whispered into her hands. "Time to die." Her accent was from somewhere in Aucor, but differed from the Heacharid accents I'd heard.
I drew Ellisyr's sword. I'd been practicing with my hetairoi and now was the time to put that training to use. I was better with a staff or even a spear, but I didn't have one of those.
She lunged. Talynore is a terrifying opponent, as swift as a viper and precise as an iasos, but no one is swift or precise after the best part of a day spent not drowning. Her attacks were clumsy, and I gave her ground, parrying what I could and dodging the rest. I focused my will and spat sparks, trying to build a spell that would slay her. She cursed at me in Eomet.
Our battle was neither epic nor elegant. We flailed drunkenly, far too spent to make a good accounting of ourselves. My muscled burned. Her breath was ragged, the blades of her longsword dragging in the sand. If we were not so set on killing the other, it might have been funny.
"This is foolish," I said in Rhandic.
"Of course it is," she said in the same tongue. "We're in a war." She did not attack, but she remained in her fighting posture, half-crouched, but both her weapons dipped.
"You are not a Heacharid."
