The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (8 page)

“Nobody realizes it,” James said with a dismissive wave of
his hand. “That’s why I pointed it out. I didn’t think you were being
deliberately insensitive.”

“Well, thanks for that at least.”

“No charge.”

James turned and walked back to help Moreen load supplies,
leaving Birch alone with his thoughts.

Language is a necessary evil for communication among mortals. Its very
nature is to share knowledge and understanding, yet to ascribe a word to
something in anything less than totality is to limit your understanding of that
thing to the degree it is not that word.

-
Knerry
Raltin
,

“Forms of Communication” (102 AL)

- 1 -

When the time came to depart, Birch was the last of the
paladins to board the ship. James found him in the main hall of Den-Furral
staring soberly at the throne. The majestic chair had once held a dwarf who was
not only king, but also a paladin of the Blue Facet.
Herrisan
Stoneblood
was the first and only paladin to ever
hold a position of national authority other than an adviser, a position usually
occupied by a Yellow paladin. The king’s daughter,
Jerissa
Stoneblood
, was still a young dwarf, but already she
showed a strength and pride that belied her few years. She would make an able
leader, Birch knew, and had shown a marked maturity as they cremated and buried
her father only the day before. She had yet to assume the title of queen, but
she was already acting in that capacity among the dwarves that had survived the
massacre.

Sal had killed her father and destroyed the seat of power
for the dwarven nation, but word would soon spread that
Jerissa
had survived and was leading her people to a new home. Dwarves were notoriously
superstitious about death-related taboos
[10]
– especially those relating to murder –
and rather than cleansing and refurbishing the mountain city, they were
abandoning it and searching for a new place to call home. Den-Furral had been
closed off as though preparing for a siege, with stone blocks filling every
window and unbreakable locks securing every external door. From the outside, it
was almost impossible to tell anything existed there except a sheer mountain
face.

The dwarves doused every stone hallway with flammable
liquids and cremated the dead where they lay. Only the great hall remained
untouched, and the passageways leading to the outer city and the docks. Those
would be done last, when the fortress was sealed forever.

When they found a new place to settle, dwarves from all over
the world would flock there to take part in building a new home for their
people. That was assuming, of course, there was a world left in which they
could make a home. Lately, Birch had the ominous feeling that something
terrible was on the horizon, and he was about to take the first step in what
would soon become a mad rush toward survival.

“It’s time to go, Birch,” James said, walking up behind him.
“The tides wait for no man, no matter how fierce or faithful.”

Birch turned and James just avoided meeting his eyes. During
their voyage to this island, James had looked into Birch’s eyes while he was
remembering part of his time in Hell, and the Yellow paladin had felt some
small – yet terrifyingly vivid – part of Birch’s experience. He’d seen
something there that had frightened him, Birch could tell, but he’d never asked
James what it was. Now the leader of the
jintaal
avoided Birch’s direct
gaze just the same as everyone else.

From somewhere out in the hall, a gruff, barely intelligible
voice grated out, “
Cem
on, Branch. Jams. Lois
geta
the
shep
.
Thir
waitin
’ t’ fir
thes
place.”

Birch turned and looked at
Benatrangin
Moroken
, more popularly called Ben, and frowned
slightly even as he tried not to smile. The dwarf seemed chronically incapable
of saying Birch’s name correctly. Birch supposed he was lucky the dwarf hadn’t
called him anything obscene or offensive.

“Ye hear me, Barf?”

Birch sighed.

Ben’s entire body was horrendously scarred, including his
throat, which made him all but unintelligible. With practice, Birch could make
out what the dwarf was trying to say, but sometimes it was difficult because
the same word rarely sounded exactly the same from his damaged voice. Some
words occasionally came through perfectly clear, too. Ben claimed the scars
were the result of an accidental keel-hauling he’d received when he was a “
mer
pup o’ a
dwerf
,” as he put
it. Apparently he’d gotten tangled up in a fishing line and yanked overboard,
and by the time they were able to pull him free, Ben was half-drowned and had
been dragged and scraped against most of the lower hull of the ship, which had
the usual coating of sharp barnacles every deep-sea vessel accumulated. Birch
thought it a miracle that Ben had even survived, much less that he was still so
physically capable.

“He’s right, Birch,” James said, laying a friendly hand on
his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Birch nodded, taking one final glance around the room before
allowing James to lead him from the hall. A platoon of dwarves entered somberly
after them and sprayed noxious liquids out of pump-driven barrels, preparing
the room for incineration. They followed Birch and the others all the way out,
coating every wall and floor. As they boarded the ship, flames roared through
the abandoned citadel, and the doors of Den-Furral were locked and sealed
against the living: a city entombed forever.

- 2 -

Their voyage was uneventful for the first week, with the
exception of Moreen’s unrelenting seasickness. Birch winced every time her face
turned green and she launched herself toward the side of the ship or the
nearest bucket. Most of the time she made it. For his part, Birch spent his time
either caring for Moreen or else talking with the other paladins.

Ben and
Dennet
Stonefist
,
a longtime friend to the Prismatic Order, were on another ship with
Jerissa
, the young dwarven princess suddenly turned
queen-in-waiting. Birch counted himself fortunate to escape the scarred dwarf
before Ben found something else to call Birch – something more creative.
Moreen’s dwarven friend Brit Grindstone was also on that ship, reacquainting
himself with his people. Brit had been among humans for several decades, rarely
in contact with another dwarf unless they happened to come into the inn Moreen
had owned. He’d been the bartender and sometime bouncer at the Dragoenix Inn,
which was now gone, destroyed by Sal’s rampage in Demar.

As he’d promised James, Birch tried to spend more time
around Vander and Perky. Perky was easy, since all Birch had to do was sit down
and work on polishing his armor, sharpening his sword, or any other manner of
chore. With a mere nod of invitation, the Green paladin would be nearby and mirroring
whatever activity Birch was doing. Perky was characteristically silent, and
Birch was as talkative as usual, which was to say not very. Usually Nuse would
be nearby, though, and the rail-thin Blue paladin made enough conversation for
all of them. Nuse
Rojena
was one of the oldest
paladins Birch had ever met, and his salt-and-pepper hair had mostly deserted
him, leaving a growing dome of skin atop his head. He had a sharp, dry sense of
humor that made him impossible not to like, even if you were the butt of his
jokes.

“Birch, you really shouldn’t stare quite so fiercely at the
deck when you’re sharpening your sword. I’d rather the whole ship didn’t burn
down around us just because old Fire Eyes glared at the wood.”

But try as he might, Birch could not get to know or like
Vander Wayland. The Orange paladin was reserved around groups, and it was hard
to really tell what he was thinking or doing. Whenever Birch was alone with
him, out came the “I’m-too-secretive-to-tell-you” mystique, followed quickly by
his “the-world’s-problems-revolve-around-me” attitude that set Birch’s teeth on
edge. It was never anything Vander actually said, but Birch could feel it all
the same. It wasn’t even haughtiness. It was as if Vander didn’t even know how
he looked to others.

Whenever possible, Birch stayed outside on the deck of the
ship. The quarters on a ship were too close for him to be comfortable for long.
Ever since his childhood, Birch had felt uncomfortable in enclosed spaces, both
in a physical sense of having the walls around him and in a psychological
sense, like being in a jail cell. He could usually ignore the discomfort, but
if left long enough, he began to get agitated and felt like a thousand ants
were just beneath the surface of his skin, all itching to break free.

He envied Selti his freedom of the skies. Selti and the
other dakkan mounts split their time wheeling in the skies above, cavorting in
the waves behind them, or else resting inside the ship in their alternate forms.
Because it was a dwarven ship, there was an ingenious lift mechanism that
allowed large items of cargo, in this case dakkans in horse or runner shape,
[11]
to be transported from the cargo hold to
the main deck and several locations within the ship. The dakkans were thus able
to enjoy the freedom of the open air and still come back to the ship to rest.
Selti often switched to his gray-scaled drann shape and settled about Birch’s
shoulders. The cat-sized creature also preferred to sleep in Birch’s room,
where it was much warmer than the cargo hold.

On their eleventh day at sea, they were still following a
south-bound tack when the lookout reported sighting a sleek ship bearing
directly toward them. The design was usually found only in pirate ships, and
the captain had them all prepare for battle, just in case. Platemail armor was
dangerous aboard a ship (or rather dangerous if you fell overboard), but James
had them partially suit up anyway as a deterrent to any forthcoming
hostilities. Their ship was the closest to the intruder, and should the
three-to-one odds not provide sufficient deterrent, the sight of several
paladins on board would make any pirate think twice about trying to close for
battle.

As the ship drew closer, the lookout reported someone
signaling them with flags.

“Whoever it is, he’s doing it right strange, too,” the first
mate said from the rail beside Birch. The dwarf had a spyglass to his eye and
was trying to decipher the message from the other ship.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, see that fellow standing there waving the flags? He’s
waving the flags in the right sequence to tell us he means no harm, but he’s
got something wrong with his arm motions. Up close, it don’t look like proper
signaling.”

“May I?” Birch asked, indicating the spyglass. “I know a
thing or two about this sort of thing.”

Birch took the proffered spyglass and put it to his eye, and
almost immediately a smile broke out on his lips.

“Do you have a set of signal flags I can borrow?” he asked.

“What are you going to tell him?” the first mate asked,
frowning.

“It doesn’t matter
what
I tell him, it’s
how
I
tell him that’s important.” The first mate looked confused. “Trust me.”

Birch removed the pieces of his armor that would hamper his
arm movements, not wanting to send the wrong signals by mistake. The first mate
bellowed for flags, and a sailor was soon at their side and opening a box
filled with flags of every conceivable pattern and color. Birch sorted through
them until he had the ones he wanted, then he stood and began waving his arms.

“Damned if he’s not doing it wrong,” the sailor said out the
corner of his mouth to the first mate. “That
ain’t
proper signaling neither.”

Birch ignored them, concentrating instead on translating his
words into the complicated motions of the signal flags. On the surface, he was
telling them the dimensions of the largest fish he’d ever caught. It was one of
the few things he actually remembered how to sign correctly. More important
than the flags and major motions he was using were the smaller, more intricate
movements of the flags and his arms, which conveyed a far different message to
the watchers on the other ship.

In that language, he was saying approximately,
“Yes, the paladin named Birch is on this
vessel, and tell Hoil ‘Hello.’”

The complex double language was something Birch’s brother
had worked out years ago when he’d first started branching out into the world
of smuggling and piracy as a part of his life of organized crime. Given his
long, distinguished history in Marash, Hoil had probably broken every
conceivable law regarding property and money. Birch had never asked if Hoil had
personally broken any more serious laws, such as murder, and Hoil never
volunteered the information.

With the hidden language of the flags, which was based on a
system Birch and Hoil had used as boys, Hoil’s ships could positively identify
each other on the seas, communicate hidden messages when authorities were
watching, and a variety of other things that had helped make Hoil one of the
more successful thieves in history. Birch was perversely proud of his brother’s
accomplishments, however far they were from the path Birch had chosen for
himself.

In a matter of minutes, the sleek vessel had pulled up
alongside their boat, and Hoil and an elf leapt aboard the dwarven ship. Birch
recognized the elf, who only had one ear – a mark of shame among his people, as
Birch understood things.

“
El’Maran
,” he said formally and
inclined his head in respect.