The Silent Isle (9 page)

Dane watched for
them, but Mara and Bax never joined the others at the meal.  Bailus sat
beside Dane and was explaining to him the lodging situation.  Most of the
single men would stay in the barracks by the main gate.  Bailus and about
half a dozen others would stay in a smaller room built against the wall at the
opposite side of the compound where the other, smaller gate stood.  The
Thatchers and Josie were sharing one of the houses.  Leech was already at
work outfitting one of the larger outside rooms to be a clinic and hospital. 
He was sleeping in a smaller space next door.  Bailus had offered Elias
one of the houses but the priest had chosen a smaller room near the back
gate. 

"I suppose
I should keep order in the barracks," Dane said. 

"No,"
said Bailus, "You’re our commander.  That wouldn't do.  You need
your own place." 

"Well, then
you deserve your own place as well." 

"I've been
a fighting man all my life, sir," said Bailus.  "I'd be ashamed
not to share quarters with the rest of them."  

"Then why
shouldn’t I?" said Dane. 

"Because,"
Bailus said, leaning close, "We need a leader. 
Someone
apart from us.
 
Beyond us.
 No matter
what tomorrow brings, no matter how bad this gets, the men need to know you'll
lead them." 

Dane wasn't sure
he understood Bailus's reasoning, but he had no chance to question him more as
at that moment Josie came and stood behind him.  He turned towards
her.  If he noted her new attire, he made no sign of it.  "I
want to go out with you tomorrow." 

Dane shook his
head. 
"Absolutely not.
 We don't know
what's out there." 

"My sister
is out there." 

"I'm taking
only a few men. 
Skilled woodsmen and trackers.
 
If there's anything to find, we'll find it.  But we don't have time or
room for tagalongs." 

"Tagalong?
  Is that all you think of
me?" 

"Well, you
did steal away on our ship," said Bailus, but without looking at
her. 

“Besides, there
will be plenty for you to do here while you wait,” Dane said.

She tossed her
hair and put her hand on her hip.  "And what would you have me
do?  Dig graves?" 

"There will
be plenty to do to prepare for the return of the colonists." 

She hesitated
half a moment before saying, "So you think they'll be coming
back?"  Her voice was softer. 
An honest
question, not an interrogation.
 

Dane
hesitated. 
How could he lie to someone he respected so much?
 
She was headstrong and foolish, but also spirited and brave.  Uncommonly
brave. 

She read his
silence.  "I knew it," she said.  She turned to leave but
he caught her arm. 

"I promise
you; as soon as we find anything, you'll be the first to know." 

"You
promise," she said and sighed, she spun on her heel and in half a moment
she was out the door. 

After dinner and
conferring with Elias, Dane went to his room.  Perhaps it had been an
office for the colony’s original occupants.  It formed part of the ring of
buildings built against the inside of the palisade.  It housed a desk, a
shelf, several chairs, and a fireplace.  Bailus had ordered Dirk and
Tanlin, the young men who had manned the ballista while Dane’s party stormed
the beach, to move in a bed and start a fire.  The fire had mostly burned
down by the time Dane entered but he did not bother to build it back up. 
He sat down on the bed and looked out the single window into the night. 
The reflection of the flames on the glass gave the impression the world outside
was burning.

Burning.
  Burning? 
Why hadn’t the settlement
been razed and the ships burned?  Why did this mission make him think of
collecting duck eggs for his father’s table?
  Thinking of eggs made
him think of food, and with the thought of food the words of that maniac voice
sprung into his head again.  Not that they’d ever left him alone. 
They had plagued him all afternoon.  During dinner he found it hard to
concentrate on his conversation with his soldiers.  Once he’d stopped
midsentence while giving Forsythe instructions about tomorrow as the words
jumped into his mind again.  He saw them as though they were painted there
across the inside of his skull. 
Painted in blood.

The voice.
 
The words.
 
They were things one heard in a nightmare.  But he had heard them while
wide awake. 
How
was it
no one else had heard
them, then?  Had he only imagined it? 
He had hallucinated once,
when he was half the age he was now and nearly dead of fever.  But that
had felt surreal even then.  This had been different.  It had been
clear and sharp, as simple and real as the cold light of day.  His men had
heard him call for help, heard his fists pounding the door.  But they had
not heard the voice. 
Impossible.
  Unless. 
Unless the voice had been in his head.
 
In his head, but not of his head.
 
Someone
else’s voice inside his head.
 
Was it really so unbelievable?
 

The enchanters
back home did a brisk business in bindings, spells to give you control over
another person.  Get that girl to fall in love with you.  Influence
the way your father writes up his will.  All it took was the right spell
and the right amount of gold. 
Was not the basic idea to plant a
thought in someone else’s mind?  By extension, could someone be so
powerful in this art they could project whole sentences, scream whole
sentences, into your head? 

Is that what
they had done to him? 
But why?
  To what
end?  What kind of conqueror left the homes and belongings of his victims
untouched and instead threw his boast into the head of their intended
deliverer?
 
How would you find such an enemy?  How would you
fight him?

If the goal had
been to make Dane feel unprepared and inadequate to meet his enemy, their
enchanter had more than earned his fee.

A rap on the
door made Dane nearly jump off the bed.  He opened to Elias.  The
priest began talking before he even entered.  “You piqued my interest when
you related Kenzie’s comments about the rats.”

Dane only
nodded.

“So I checked
out the storeroom.”

Dane’s stomach
tightened involuntarily at the mention of the place.  “Did you find
anything?”

“There’s a
strange draft in there. 
Gave me the chills, in more
ways than one.
  But that’s not the most interesting part.”

Goosebumps
tingled
the tip of Dane’s spine.

“I suppose it’s
not news to you that there’re spells at work here,” Elias said.  “Most of
the men feel it, even if they’re not aware of it.  It makes some of them
quiet; it makes others jumpy.” 

You can count
me among the jumpy,
Dane thought. 

Elias
continued.  “But that’s not all.  I took the time to read the
energies.  There’s a faint bit of magic spread over the items in the
pantry, as though all the food had been dusted with it.”

At this point,
Dane interrupted.  “Fish was afraid the food may have been poisoned. 
But he couldn’t find anything wrong with it.”

“That’s the
strangest part,” Elias said.  “The magic is benign.  It’s actually a
preserving spell. 
It’s
gentle magic, but I feel
something deeper and darker beneath the surface.  
White
magic from a dark source.
  Rather like a word of praise spoken in a
caustic tone.  It’s jarring, unsettling.” 

You can say
that again,
Dane thought. 

“I’m sorry,”
Elias said.  “I’m not making much sense.  It doesn’t make any sense
to me.”

“No,” Dane said,
and with a sinking feeling he knew why this mission made him think of stealing
duck eggs for his father.  “It makes total sense.  My father had the
same idea.  He had his carpenters build nesting boxes for the wild fowl in
the marshes.  Then he eats the eggs as fast as the birds can lay
them.  Whoever did this to the colony was hoping we’d come.  They
blessed the food and they left the buildings standing because they wanted to
make sure we could move right in when we got here.  We’re right where they
want us.  These walls aren’t a fortress.  They’re a trap.”

The morning dawned cold and
cheerless. 

Forsythe left
with his crew before dawn and Dane and Bailus and their squads assembled by the
rear gate.  They had gone over a map the night before.  Dane would
take the mountainous west side of the island and Bailus's squad would take the
lowlands to the east.  Each party consisted of five men and a dog. 

"Regardless
of how far you get, turn back by noon," Dane told Bailus. 

"We're
prepared to overnight it." 

"No,"
said Dane, glancing at the forest which rose darkly just beyond the gate. 
Night still slept under its branches.  "I don't want anyone left
outside the walls by dark." 

Dane’s squad was
Bax, Joseph, Owen and Wink, and Rem Bodkin.  Dane glanced at Bailus’s
squad. 
Tipper and Dioji, Edric Embries, Markis Evans,
and Franklin Moore.
  Franklin’s dog, Blackthorn, was chained up in
the courtyard; and none too happy about it, judging by the racket he was
raising.  Franklin had complained, but it had been an obvious
choice.  Blackthorn was scrappy, always picking fights with the bigger
dogs, and a piss-poor tracker to boot. 

Dane wondered if
it was a mistake to send Edric, along with Markis and Franklin, his two closest
friends, out on patrol.  But Bailus had chosen them and they were
excellent woodsmen. 

Dane had heard
Edric talking with Markis and Franklin on their second night underway. 
They had been reclining against the port gunwale and Dane had been lying
beneath his blanket on the starboard side.  Maybe Edric had thought he was
asleep.  Maybe he didn't care.  "This mission is such
bull," Edric had said to Markis and Franklin. 

"Lord
Hallander wouldn't send his own son on it if there wasn't a good reason,"
Franklin had said.

 "Don't
you get it?” Edric had said.  “The nonsense of it is the reason he's
here." 

"How’s that?"
Markis had asked. 

"Well, why
do you think they only sent thirty of us?" Edric had asked his
companions. 

"Because of
how stingy Lord Hallander is with his fighting men," Franklin had
said. 

"Would you
stop calling him ‘lord’?  It's not like he's god or something.  Maybe
he says he owns the land we live on, but out here we should at least be able to
talk like men.  And think about it - if he was really so stingy with his
fighting men, why would he send thirty of us, including some real soldiers like
us, into this god-knows-what kind of mess on Haven?  If he really cared
about his troops, he would have either sent no
one,
or
an army big enough to really deal with whatever’s going on on the
island." 

"Death and
glory, I suppose,” Markis had said. 

"No,"
Edric had said.  "We're here because of him."  And though
Dane had his eyes closed, he knew Edric had motioned towards him. 
"This is daddy giving junior one last chance to prove
himself
again after he screwed up Loshōn." 

"Then where
do the thirty of us come in?" Franklin had asked.

"Look, if
you want to survive this thing, you've got to stop thinking about the thirty of
us and start thinking about the three of us.  But I'll tell you. 
There's so few of us because Old Man Hallander wanted to give his son an
impossible task.  If he succeeds, than no one can deny he's the stuff of
kings, maybe even gods.  If he fails, well then, small loss - his failure
of a son fails to come home; and the rest of us – well, we were just the
expendable part of the experiment to begin with." 

At this point,
Edric’s cousin, Aaron, who had been sitting nearby in silence, had entered the
conversation.  “Eddie, you should just quiet down.” 

“But, Air, you
can’t argue I’m not right.” 

“You may be
right and you may not.  But it’s not the kind of talk that does anybody
any good.” 

The men were
silent for a moment.  Franklin spoke first.  "I don't think he'd
take the loss of his son so lightly.” 

"Has it
never occurred to you," Edric said, "That, after how he folded at
Loshōn, someone like Arvis Hallander might rather have no heir at all than
an heir like Dane?" 

Dane had lain
there, feigning sleep through the entire conversation.  He thought of
interrupting Edric, of promising the men he would do everything in his power to
ensure they returned safely to their families.  But what was the
point?  They knew the odds as well as he did.  And as for the other
things Edric said, well, what was the good in arguing with someone you know is
right?

Aaron had
offered to take Edric’s place in the excursion.  He was older than Edric
and, though only a cousin, felt some kind of fraternal or nearly paternal duty to
him.  Dane and Bailus had denied him.  Aaron was a good soul but
wasted as a ranger.  The man couldn’t find green on grass.  Dane and
Bailus would have preferred Aaron to Edric for many other reasons, but this
trip had nothing to do with their preferences.  

Bailus cleared
his throat, bringing Dane back to the present.  The senior soldier hefted
his war-hammer in one hand.  Actually,
hefted
is too heavy a word
for the way he wielded the hammer.  Dane had suggested Bailus take a
crossbow like the rest of the men.  Bailus had picked one up and then set
it down, complaining it was too light.  It had looked rather like a toy in
his hand.  Bailus turned to his men.  "Alright, you bunch of
apes, let's move." 

Bailus’ little
party filed out through the gate to the sound of Blackthorn’s howls. 
“Breaks my heart to leave him there,” Franklin said, looking back over his
shoulder.  “I never chain him at home.”

“That spoiled,
overgrown rodent of yours will be here when you get back,” Edric said. 
“As long as one of the night watchmen doesn’t kill him for
interrupting his beauty sleep.”

The men were
soon lost from view among the trees.  Dane's party followed, turning left
out of the gate to head west.   Bax brought up the rear.  Dane
wondered if Bax guessed why Dane had chosen him.  He couldn't change how
Bax treated Mara, but he’d do what he could to keep them apart. 

The little bit
of sleep he’d gotten the night before hadn’t changed Dane’s feelings about the
situation.  The sense of dread had been growing long before his
realizations yesterday.  As soon as Ben Cross arrived with his branded
forehead, Dane had known someone, or something, was trying to lure them to the
island.  Now they were here.  Dane knew they were playing right into
their enemies’ hands, but he tried not to think about it.  The fact was
,
there was no other way to play it.  They had no other
choice.  He gave himself no other choice.  He would not order his men
off the island until they’d learned what had happened to the colonists and done
what they could to avenge it. 

The one thing
that comforted him was being able to go on the offensive.  Even if all
that meant was a blind walk in the woods.  Maybe the settlement had been
left intact for no other purpose than to serve as bait.  Well, now he was
here and he wasn’t leaving.  But he’d be damned before he spent all day
sitting around waiting for these bastards to come to him.

Dane tried to
guess who they would find hiding in the forest first, colonists or
enemies. 
             
The uncertainty weighed on him, gnawed at him.  For days he had dreaded
this mission would end quickly and violently on the beach yesterday.  Now
he almost wished it had.  He had told himself if he could just get his men
through the first day on the island, the worst would be over.  He realized
now the hard work was just beginning.

Dane's party
found themselves moving steeply uphill.  The ground was slick with pine
needles and they often had to use their hands to pull themselves up.  They
climbed between rocky outcroppings which stuck out from the hillsides like
jagged teeth.  The going was tough enough for trained soldiers in their
prime and Dane could hardly imagine women and children fleeing this way. 
But he imagined if he had to lead a band of refugees to relative safety and
shelter, he would bring them here, to the high ground. 

No one
talked.  There was no sound but the crunch of the forest litter beneath
their feet and the breathing of the men and the panting of the dog and the
swishing of branches as the men pushed past them and the rattle of their bolts
in the quivers at their thighs.  No birds sang overhead.  The men
fingered the triggers of the bows and glanced about, distrustful of every
shadow, as they moved deeper in the forest. 

Every now and
then they came to a bare rocky ledge and Dane was able to look back southward
and see the harbor, though not their ships.  Once he even caught sight of
the settlement.  Small and vulnerable it seemed, surrounded by the dark
woods.  Every time he looked back, he was surprised at how high they'd
climbed.  Owen’s dog, Wink, kept up well.  Indeed, he seemed to be
enjoying himself.  He ran on ahead sniffing and then came trotting back to
the men to rub his head against their legs or, even better, to present his head
to be scratched by any willing hand. 

For Dane, there
was something comforting in the dog's presence.  The simple joy it took in
exploring. 
The companionship of another creature.
 
He had yet to see any other living creatures on the island. 

Their path took
them back and forth across the course of a little stream which wound down the
hills.  After they had forded the stream the second time, they came to a
little hill that climbed steeply between two large rocks that sat like squat
towers.  Passing the rocks, Dane spotted something white sitting in a
nearby tree just above eye level.  Coming closer, he saw it was the skull
of a bird. 
A rather large one.
 
A crow or raven judging by the size and the shape of the beak.
 

Dane realized it
did not rest there on its own but that hung by a nail.  Arrayed behind the
skull was a fan of black feathers and from the lower rims of the eye sockets
dangled dark beads on what looked like sinew.  Dane thought it looked like
a shaman's fetish.  Bax stepped up beside him and reached towards the
skull.  Dane pushed his hand away.  "Come on," he
said. 

As they stepped
past the tree, Dane couldn't help feeling they had crossed a line, a
boundary.  They were now on someone else's turf.  The skull left him
with a vague unease about his present theories about what had happened on the
island.  But he couldn't say just why. 

***

For Bailus's
party, the beginning of the journey was much the same. 
Apprehension,
anxiety.
 But their path ran quickly down into swampy ground where
the trees thinned out and were replaced by large grass-like bushes.  For
Edric, bringing up the rear of Bailus's party, the excursion soon became boring
and then miserable.  His feet slipped several times into foul-smelling
puddles until his boots squished and sloshed with every step.  Bailus,
their mad captain, seemed to take Dane's command to keep a straight path to an
extreme.  He walked right through swarms of biting insects, through
knee-deep mud that smelled like a latrine, through plants whose blade-like
leaves would cut you if you gave them half a chance (nasty little razor-fine
slits which itched and burned), and through other plants which left little
barbed pods in your clothes that poked you with every step. 

Edric kept his
eyes on the path directly in front of him, trying to avoid the worst of the
sinkholes.  So it was that it was not until they stopped to drink from
their canteens that he noticed the smoke.  A long, thin trail of pale
smoke was rising above the trees off to their northwest, towards the center of
the island.  "Look," he said, signaling to the others. 

Bailus looked
darkly at the smoke, then slung his canteen back over his shoulder and said,
"Let's go." 

To Edric’s
surprise, Bailus kept blundering forward on the same blind path he'd been on
all morning.  "What are you doing?" he asked. 

Bailus turned
back to him slowly.  "What does it look like?  I'm continuing
the search." 

"The search?
  What do you mean?  Don't you
see the smoke?" 

Bailus frowned
and crossed his arms, cradling his hammer between them.  "What about
it?" 

"Are you
crazy?  That's the kind of thing we've been looking for.  Where
there's smoke, there's fire, and where there's fire, there's
people." 

"Uh-huh,"
Bailus said, as though he were only humoring him.  "And what makes
you think these people will be anyone you want to meet?" 

"Who would
it be but the colonists?  They were attacked and they’re hiding in the
woods and..."

"If they
were hiding in the woods, why would they be foolish enough to make a
fire?" 

"Maybe
they’re signaling for help." 

"And maybe
it's a trap," said Bailus. 

"What, so
now you're scared?  What did all your worry get you yesterday? 
Just a bunch of false alarms and wasted time."
 

"Dane told
us to check this part of the island,” Bailus said.  “I intend to follow
orders." 

"He didn't
tell us to blunder blindly through leech-infested swamps and ignore signs like
this," Edric said, pointing to the smoke.  
"If
you want to waste your time out here, fine.
  But, think about
it.  If there are any more colonists on the island, they won't be hiding
in a miserable place like this." 

"Orders are
orders," Bailus said.  "Are you finished?" 

"Yes, I'm
finished,” Edric said.  “I'm finished with following you." 

Bailus uncrossed
his arms and started towards him.  "This is mutiny."  Maybe
he meant only to raise his fist to emphasize his point but with it he raised
his hammer.