The Gorgon's Blood Solution (7 page)

Carefully, he stretched himself over Angelica and began to cut at the ropes on her wrists, his face just inches from hers as he vigorously sawed.  He switched hands to maintain the force of the cut, then switched again, and saw quickening progress as he reached the soft core of the rope, and the fibers parted with relative ease.

“As soon as we finish, you roll over and we’ll climb down under the pier,” Marco breathed to Angelica.  “There’s a hiding place down there that should be safe.”

“Can’t you get us off the pier, up to the castle or someplace safe?” Angelica whispered back.

Marco felt the last fibers part; and the sorcerer was turned away still.  He backed away from the girl and towards the edge of the pier, so that his feet immediately hung over the edge.

“Roll down here; follow me,” he said, as he dangled his feet down.  He felt the servant girl grab them and guide them directly to the beam, making his descent easier.  “Here!  Quickly!” he urged Angelica.  “Just roll!” he warned her as she started to rise up to a sitting position.

She glanced down at him, startled by the urgency in his voice, then slid down to the edge of the pier, and allowed him to guide her over the edge.  As she lowered her head, he heard the tread of footsteps approaching.

“Hurry!” he urged, panic rising.  “Follow me!  Stay on the beams and watch your footing!” he warned, then awkwardly brushed past the nameless servant girl and began to lead the two freed captives under the pier towards his cubby.  There was a short barked phrase, and then a murmuring voice near where the two girls had previously laid, and Marco worried that the sorcerer had detected the disappearance of the captives, though how he could miss two girls when there were so many others was difficult for Macro to fathom.

There was a sudden flash of light behind them, making Angelica give a startled squeak, but Marco kept on moving as quickly as he could, then dropped down a level to just above the water to reduce their visibility further; he stopped there to listen for pursuit, but heard none.  He began to lead again, and so led the two girls back to the blanketed doorway a minute later.

He struck the flint and steel to light the lamp, then ushered the girls into the room.

“What is this place?  Who are you?  Are we safe?” Angelica burst out the soft-voiced questions.

“You’re the boy from the alchemist shop,” the servant said.  “Thank you for rescuing us.

“I thought we were on our way to a horrible fate,” she said, and Angelica shuddered.

“Your name is Marco,” she added.  “I heard the alchemist call you that,” she told the other two as they both looked at her in surprise.

“Are we safe here?” Angelica repeated. 

“If we stay quiet, and don’t let any light escape out the doorway, I don’t think they can find us,” Marco said reassuringly.

“What’s happening?  Why are you here?” the servant asked.

“This is my room,” Marco stammered.  “I come here to relax, or sleep.  I came here tonight, and then the Corsairs came, and I had to stay – there was no getting away.”

“Why weren’t you out at the festival?” the servant asked.

“Could you go back up there?” Angelica asked at the same time.

“Back up there?  To where the Corsairs are?” Marco asked in confusion.

“They took all my family’s riches.  We won’t have anything left; we’ll be poverty-stricken,” Angelica answered.  “If you could just go grab a few things back, we’d have something to live on.”

“The Corsairs are up there,” Marco answered, unable to believe the beautiful girl would ask such a favor of him.

She leaned towards him, her eyes intently staring into his.  He looked at her, and saw that her torn gown gaped open, showing a wide swath of her flesh.  It was less revealing than the models had so casually displayed during the afternoon, yet it also seemed nonetheless much more seductive because it wasn’t meant to be seen.

He swiftly shifted his eyes back up to her face.

“Please do this for me,” she asked.  She reached her hand out and clasped his.  “I will be in your debt forever.”

Marco swallowed.

“Let me go see what they’re doing,” he said at length, as he thought.  If no one was looking, he could easily reach up over the edge of the dock and pull a few items down to bring back to Angelica.

“Don’t make any noise,” he cautioned as he stood up.  “Don’t open this blanket for any reason.”

“Be careful,” Angelica told him, looking at him with a grateful expression on her face.

Chapter  5 – The Sorcerer

Marco, slithered past a narrowly pulled-back blanket, then began traipsing back among the beams and posts on his way to the spot where he had brought the girls down to freedom.  The pier was noisy, he noticed.  There wasn’t the trampling sound of many feet walking atop the surface, but there was a rumbling, indistinct noise that was growing louder.

When he reached his spot beneath the pier’s surface, he noticed that the ship in front of him appeared to be lower in the water; he could see different features than he had seen before, and the markings he recognized were below his feet.  He paused and listened closely, but heard no sounds to signify anyone was present nearby, so he cautiously lifted his head to look around. 

Much of the bountiful riches had been moved from the dock.  There had been little time, and little noise to allow for the movement of so much confiscated goods and people, but less than half the plunder remained, and it was further from the edge of the wooden surface than Marco had hoped to reach.

He looked down the length of the pier and saw that several of the Corsairs were gathered up against the interior of the yellow dome.  Outside, facing them, was a large, angry mob of townspeople.  The mob was the cause of the noise that Marco had heard, as they shouted and raged against their attackers.

Without the protective yellow shelter, the Corsairs would have been overwhelmed.  The mob was a numerous gathering, and the Corsairs were far outnumbered.  From the numbers of them that he could see, not all the Corsairs were within the dome, Marco noted.  Several must have been still out in the city trying greedily to gather more goods.  Those Corsairs were now cut off from a safe return, and Marco wondered what would happen next.

He slowly crawled up onto the pier, and reached for a large golden bowl, possibly a soup tureen, that was the closest thing within reach.  He had the knife stuffed into his waistband as one hand was needed to grip the pier while the other was stretched far in advance of his body grabbing for the items he was supposed to recover.

There was a slight creaking sound somewhere behind him, then a thud, and a foot landed on his wrist.  Marco was startled, panicked, and in pain.   The booted foot had landed forcefully on his left wrist, and the matching boot was just two feet away.  Marco gave a shout, and flipped himself over, to look up at the elongated figure of the Corsair’s sorcerer.  The man had apparently been on the deck of the ship, had spotted Marco, and then jumped over onto the pier to capture Marco in the midst of his thievery.

The sorcerer reached down and grabbed the front of Marco’s shirt, then shifted his foot to free the trapped, injured wrist.  With a heave, he lifted Marco to his feet, staring into his eyes.

The sorcerer’s eyes were dark, and cruel.  He looked at Marco the way a hawk looked at a rabbit, it seemed, and Marco knew that he was in trouble.

Just as that moment there came a shout from the end of the pier, a loud garbled shout in the language of the Corsairs.  The shout was a distraction, and the sorcerer looked down at the point where the yellow dome cut the pier off from the city, as he listened to the words.

Something in Marco told him that he was unlikely to live much longer, unless he did something dramatic.  Marco had never felt so energized and motivated by fear, but he knew that the instinct was correct, and that he had to act.

As the sorcerer listened to the shouts coming from the Corsairs at the end of the pier, Marco grabbed for the knife in his waistband.  The sorcerer was distracted by the activity at the end of the pier, as well as confident that the scrawny teenage boy he held in his strong grip was under control, and didn’t see Marco’s knife until he felt the boy stab it forcefully into his gut.

Marco had never committed such an act of violence in his life.  He watched the face of the sorcerer change, as the man’s attention to the distant pier shifted.  The man’s mouth opened wide, and the color drained from his face.  The sorcerer was wordless, making no sound.  His grip on Marco loosened, and one hand groped down to his stomach to find Marco’s right hand still wrapped around the hilt of the knife.

The sorcerer’s fingers tried momentarily to unwrap Marco’s fingers from the knife, and then his efforts grew weak.  Marco saw his eyes roll up into his head, then his eyelids shut, his head flopped to the side, and the man collapsed.  And as he did, the great yellow dome all around the pier flickered for a moment, then vanished.

There was a violent cawing sound from overhead, and a large black raven dove at Marco, making him duck his head momentarily.  When he looked up, the raven was gone.

Darkness rushed onto the pier in the absence of the glowing yellow dome, and Marco blinked as the torches at the end of the pier became the primary illumination of the scene taking place around him.  He felt the sorcerer falling, and his knife remained stuck in the flesh, pulling Marco downward as he tried to maintain his hold on the hilt.

The crowd of citizens of the city gave a great roar, a full-throated, blood-thirsty roar of delight as the protective dome disappeared, and they instantly surged forward against the Corsair defenders on the pier, who immediately began to retreat in Marco’s direction.

Marco was on his knees, drawn down by the weight of the unconscious sorcerer.  He pulled forcefully on his knife, and it came free from the sorcerer’s body.  Marco hastily swiped the blade on the injured man’s robe, then stuck his knife back in his waist band.  He heard the approaching sound of the advancing battlefront between the retreating Corsairs and the onrushing citizens of the Lion City.

He grabbed for the golden tureen and bent over the edge of the pier, hoping he could recover at least one item of value for Angelica to prove his value to her.  He lay on his stomach and stretched his arms below the top of the pier, only able to effectively use his right hand to guide the heavy metal object to a resting place from which he planned to grab it later.

As he lay prone on the wooden boards of the pier, there was a sudden stamping of feet.  He ignored it momentarily as the bowl settled into place; when he turned his head to see what was happening, he was horrified to see a trio of Corsairs nearly upon him.

One of them began hacking with his sword at the ropes tying the ship to the pier, while another one lifted the sorcerer from the pier, and began to carry him towards the ship.

The third Corsair kicked Marco in the side of his head, the heavy boot connecting painfully, and drawing a scream from Marco as he tasted blood from the inside of his mouth.  Before he could begin to move to protect himself, the Corsair stomped with his boot again, driving it heavily into Marco’s lower back, and causing further unspeakable pain.

More Corsairs were running towards the ship now.  Their orderly retreat down the pier turned into a rout, and they began to flee towards the ship that their comrades were attempting to prepare for a hasty departure.

The Corsair grabbed the back of Marco’s shirt and pants, lifting the whimpering boy with ease, and tossed him bodily inside the hull of the ship.  He used his sword to hack at the nearest rope that tied the ship to the pier, and the boat began to bounce actively as more of the retreating Corsairs began to arrive, hurling themselves off the pier and onto the deck of the ship.  The first arrivals grabbed long, stout poles from the inside of the ship, and began straining to push the ship away from the pierside.

City residents began arriving.  They grabbed the last Corsairs before the men could jump onto the boat, and then the widening gap between the escaping vessel and the pier, doomed the last Corsair arrivals to a violent death at the hands of the mob.  The Corsair ship was pelted with a unrelenting stream of thrown objects – knives, spears, rocks, paving bricks.

Marco was passed out, lying atop a pile of ropes and cables on the deck of the ship.  The Corsairs worked around him as they quickly unshipped oars, then maneuvered their ship towards the mouth of the dark harbor to escape from the raid on the city that had turned so deadly for the attackers.  As they grunted and slid back and forth on their benches, putting every last ounce of possible effort into rowing themselves to safety, they muttered questions to each other about what had gone wrong, what had happened to the sorcerer to cause his magical protection to fail, and they mourned the companions they had left behind to certain death, and especially they mourned all the spoils of war they had failed to come away with after the promising beginning to their raid on the unsuspecting Lion City.

Once the ship passed the jetty that protected the harbor from rough seas, the Corsairs raised their sails, relieving them of the need to row to safety.  Their highest ranking leader listened to the stories about finding the gravely wounded sorcerer, who remained unconscious, and finding the living and thieving Marco in the immediate vicinity.

Marco, still unconscious, was tied to the mast, and flogged with twenty five strokes of the whip before sunrise even began.  The brutal assault raised whimpers from the youth, who was then thrown down into the bilge compartment of the ship, as the crew left him to suffer; they presumed his guilt in defeating their raid, and intended to make him suffer more fully when – and if – the sorcerer awoke to confirm their suspicions.  And if the sorcerer didn’t revive to confirm Marco’s guilt, the boy would at best be sold in a slave market in some distant land on the south shore of the great sea.

Marco’s body was washed over repeatedly by the foul, briny fluids that sloshed within the bilge, until he gained partial consciousness many hours later.

“Mother,” he murmured, his consciousness spurred by the faint glimmer of light that filtered down into the bilge from the sunlight that fell on the sailing ship in the mid-afternoon.  Marco had not seen his mother in several years, not since she had packed a wrapped meal for him and sent him on his way out of the family’s small, poverty-stricken mountain village.   He had been destined to go to a broker in the Lion City, one who had promised to secure an apprenticeship for him with a furniture maker.   When Marco arrived in the city two days later, his meal long gone, the boy dirty and hungry and alone, the broker informed him that his family’s payment had not been sufficient for the furniture maker after all.  And that’s how Marco had been shuffled off to the much less reputable career of alchemist, though he no doubt enjoyed his apprenticeship with Algornia much more than he would have liked being an apprentice who made stools and tables and chairs.

“Mother,” he murmured again, as his broken body tried to avoid awakening to the excruciating pain that awaited it.

“Sshh,” a comforting voice answered, and a hand stroked his scalp gently.  “Sleep some more and rest,” the voice soothed him, and Marco obeyed, dropping back into a deeper unconsciousness.