Fate’s Seal — The Turning

Brothers of Destiny — Book 3

(Excerpt)

CHAPTER I

The sky was pissing down, oppressive and threatening. Black, thunderous clouds hung low, pressing gloom and foreboding onto the heads and shoulders of the frantically working deck-hands scampering about on the slippery, wooden-slatted, open deck of the small, fat and battered cargo ship. This sudden squall was the harbinger of something worse. They could all feel it in their bones, and the very air, laden with brine and saltwater, was laced with dancing electricity.

‘Look lively, lads. Reef those bloody canvases before we lose them to this bitch of a wind!’ barked the short, wiry Captain with a surprisingly loud and domineering voice.

The rough-clad sailors struggled to pull down the broad, unruly, mainsail and the lesser one at the aft, before the spiteful, gusting winds could tear them flapping from their vibrating masts. These men were tough and weathered. They knew little fear whilst their wooden island was secure beneath their feet, but out there — out there where the dark, fathomless waters were beginning to froth at the tips of ever-growing, erratic waves — they held a terror, like a man standing on the brink of a cliff; one step further, and oblivion. Their full-bellied tub of a barge was beginning to wallow and roll. So much like an unfaithful sow of a fish-wife when her husband was called to the sea. A wanton hussy, heaving and bucking for a new lover.

‘Father Brine, I know she is a whore, but she is my whore. Please don’t take her under,’ prayed the Captain, covered beneath a muttered breath.

With a steady gaze, he tried to separate the black sky from plunging, slate-grey sea and had to quickly avert his eyes from the disturbingly indistinguishable horizon as a fit of queasy dizziness sought to overcome him. His unsettled vision anchored onto the only figure on board not caught up in a desperate struggle to prepare for the oncoming, dreaded storm, and a deep frown creased his already lined face. A massive wave broke against the side of his ship, making her shudder along every beam of timber in her stout frame and drenched his already sodden, wet body in cold saltwater. He dared not wipe his face free of the clinging and obscuring liquid for both hands were locked tightly to the quivering tiller as he tried to turn his whore into the waves so that she could take the pounding on her prow, but finding the right direction was near on impossible and this tub of pig’s fat, was very reluctant to respond to his demands.

He was the Captain of a Merchant ship, and this was his call in life. A man should concentrate on one thing and one thing only. He didn’t take paying passengers. Now the god had turned his back on him for breaking his salt-code and being a greedy fool. The tall, lean man -wrapped from head to toe in a ragged, hooded cloak that hid his features despite the warm morning sun rising over the docks- had offered him a bloody diamond. He had been hypnotised, his imagination forming the illusory fleet he could buy with such a rare bauble. He was a stupid sod, and old Father Brine was hell-bent on revealing his stupidity so that all could plainly see. What’s the use of a pretty stone when fishes were feasting on your eyeballs?

The man in question sat unmoving in the shadow of the bow, unperturbed by the growing maelstrom surrounding them.

‘Landlubber bastard! Why wasn’t he shitting his pants like everybody else?’

There was something unnaturally still and contained about this stranger. It had been quite clear that he wanted to be away from the Kingdom and to be unobserved while doing so. Whoever he was, he was a talisman of ill luck. Maybe it wasn’t too late to throw his secretive carcass overboard as an appeasing sacrifice to the watery god. Still, a deal had been struck, a payment given and accepted. A Captain who abandoned his cargo, animate or inanimate, was not worth his salt and would lose all future custom as bad word spread from port to port like a stinking pox. The distracted Captain threw himself to the decking as his mainsail went tearing by overhead, dragging with it a howling sailor who had managed to get himself entangled in the shredded bowline. He was a goner; doomed for an early, watery grave; the poor sod.

‘Can’t you do anything right!’ he screamed at his surviving mates.

‘Hold on tight, you bastards! We’re in for it now!’

The storm was upon them. Where in hell’s name had it come from? For all his years at sea, he had never been so taken by surprise. He had seen the cursed land-lubber staring into the distance, but he had uttered not a word of what he had seen, then ‘boom’ this roiling blackness had appeared. ‘Dark magic, that’s what it was!’ He had brought a black-hearted magician on board. May the god protect and have mercy on his soul for a storm at sea was merciless.

The wind and waves now had him by his shrunken balls, and his little whore was running with them all. There was nothing they could do but lash themselves to the trembling vessel with corded ropes and pray. Racing dark water waves, mountain high, cresting with terror numbing white, churning edges of destruction, broke on the stern of the running sow, trying to pull her under and plough her to the seabed, but she fought them off gamely, trying to keep whatever virtue she still had.

‘Good girl, run, you bitch, run!’ yelled the Captain at the top of his lungs, his desperate words ripped and torn away by the roaring wind.

The black devil still sat in the lee of the spray battered prow, his body swaying and riding the waves as a peerless horseman would ride his galloping horse, smooth and one with the beast.

‘Bastard!’

The storm tore through the night, taking them with it. Their tormented bodies, leached of all warmth, and their minds, soon frozen and numb. All thoughts of profit, even of survival, suspended in a veil that hovered at the boundaries of death. Sometime towards dawn, the Captain lost hope and consciousness.

He came to with a fear clawing start and floundered into a world awash with sunshine, calmness and serenity. As he struggled to his feet on shaky sea-legs, he saw the cloak wrapped figure like the grim reaper himself, watching the sunrise filling the spaces with burning colour. He was still at his station at the stem. As the Captain looked around him in near panic, deep, even words, like rumbling thunder and smoked brandy, reached out and steadied him.

‘Stand down, Captain, you have steered your ship into a safe harbour.’

The still groggy Captain craned his neck around, looking for his men on the swamped and broken ship.

‘They did not make it. The sea has taken them as payment for your safety. May they sail the waves forever.’

These were the words of the sea initiates. How did the devil know them? Before he could get his salt-encrusted throat to work, the black magician spoke again, still without turning.

‘The current is now in your favour, Captain. In about an hour’s time, it will drift you into the cove behind that jutting headland alee of your present position. The Fates have decided to let your thread continue, Captain. They have further plans for you, it seems.’

‘Who in tarnation are you?’ croaked the Captain.

The figure turned, smooth and oiled. The Captain caught a glimpse of a bearded face under the deep cowl, with eyes that shone with an unholy light, penetrating his very soul and examining it. Gods, he wished he hadn’t asked that question.

‘I am somebody you have never seen, Captain. Remember this, and you may stay alive long enough to see time turn your hair grey. Thank you for an interesting sea passage.’

With that, the demon dove over the side, making hardly a splash in the still waters and disappeared from view. The Captain stared for over five minutes, struck dumb and unmoving until a head emerged an impossible distance away in the shimmering sea and strong arms propelled the stranger away landward with hardly a ripple.

‘Not bloody human,’ muttered the bewildered and frightened Captain.

CHAPTER II

The boy sat wrapped in a dog-eared, sheep-skin cloak, tapping his staff idly on a moss-covered rock. Each tap punctuated his drifting thoughts as he dreamed the dream of becoming a warrior — his stick being a fearsome sword striking the armoured heads of his enemies. He had had a terrible night, huddled in a small cave while the frightening winds and terrifying rains tore into the headland where his small, coastal, fishing village lay snuggled. His father was the headman, and being the oldest son, it was his duty to guard the small herd of toughened sheep and goats. If it weren’t for Crusher, his old, rangy and faithful wolf-hound, he wouldn’t have been able to find them early this morning as the storm had scattered the live-stock in the same way that it had everything else during the dark hours of terror. However, everything was now back to how it should be. Crusher was noisily breaking open a mildewed and dirty sheep’s bone, the sun was bathing the rugged and rocky landscape in a warm, golden blanket, and he had reclaimed his daydreams. Suddenly, a deep snarling rumble emanated from the massive chest of Crusher, startling the boy out of his fantasy world. His shaven head, balanced on a scrawny neck, popped up and craned around like a cockerel becoming aware of a fox outside the hen-house. He leapt to his feet, dropping his stick clattering to the rocks, as he saw looming above him a dripping apparition of doom, a sea bottom crawler for sure, with the sun rising dazzlingly behind its form, hooded and terrible. Crusher launched himself at the sea-creature of death, a deadly growl resonating from his savage throat. Just as he was confident that his alpha dog, fierce and indomitable, would rip this abomination spawned from the dark waves, from the face of the land of the living, Crusher inexplicably flopped to his stomach like a craven bitch and crawled whining towards the outstretched hand of the sea demon. The boy stared in horror as a sun-browned, long-fingered, elegant hand, scratched his betraying dog between its deceitful ears. It sat there panting happily and wagging its tail. ‘Bastard mongrel of a dog!’

‘Your friend is faithful and is the finest of animals,’ reverberated a deep, resonant voice from beneath the shadowed cowl.

‘He is my dog!’

‘Yes, of course, he is. Are you both from yonder village?’

‘I won’t let you hex my people! You’ll get nothing from me, sea demon!’

‘I see. You are a brave lad. I mean no harm to you or your people, son.’

‘Then release my dog from your spell!’

‘Your dog and I share a kinship, but that’s another story for another time.’

The demon reached up with both hands and pulled his hood back. The boy tensed, ready to run for his life, but the face revealed stayed his intended action. It was the face of a king, majestic and proud, yet humble at the same time — the visage of a father and a protector. Long hair streaked with the occasional grey, framed royally carved, high cheekbones above which were unfathomable brown eyes, steady and calm — eyes that engendered trust and unfailing loyalty.

‘You don’t look much like a sea-demon!’ said the boy with the direct words of a ten-year-old.

‘Looks can be deceiving, son, but no, I’m not a sea-demon. I’m many things, but not that.’

‘What do you want from my village then?’

‘Nothing, son, nothing at all. I was just being polite. There is something you might help me with though.’

‘Ah, here it comes now,’ thought the boy. ‘My Pa always says that the true colour of a man’s underclothes always comes out after a bit of washing.’

Seemingly unaware of the boy’s suspicions of him, the man continued.

‘Who is the present lord of this region? Is it still Lord Bremford?’

‘Are you daft, man? Lord Bremford died when my grandpa was still a youngling like me. So says my pa, anyway. Lord Breakspear, his weak-kneed, raper of baby girls grandson, now rules — he is a bastard, my pa says. Who are you anyway, Mister? You don’t look that old.’

‘I commend you for your varied and colourful vocabulary, son. You remind me of someone. Your pa has good cause to be proud of you. It has been my pleasure to have made your acquaintance, but I must be moving on. The best of regards to your father. Farewell, young shepherd.’

Before the boy could say anything more, the strange man moved away, his long strides flowing like a shadow over the uneven ground. It didn’t take long before he disappeared from sight.

Shaking his head at the foolishness of outsiders, the boy returned to his herd, his dog, and his daydreams.

The following morning, when his three nights stint as a herder of sheep and goats had come to an end, the hardy youngster returned to his village calling to his flock and his dog, keeping their movements tight and orderly. He had been doing this since his eight summer, and it was almost second nature to him. As he descended the narrow, rough path winding down from the headland, he paused to survey his home. Sandwiched between two craggy points over which white-water surf burst lustily, lay a part shingle, part sand-covered cove. Behind the sloping, rude beach was a sturdily built sea-wall forming a platform dividing unpredictable waves from the collection of low built, triangular, wooden-beam houses topped with turf which littered the spaces with their irregularity and dullness. A recently broken jetty pointed its way daringly into the now sheltered and calm sea, but its part destruction bore testimony to the battering it had received just two nights ago.

The village appeared deserted except for a brood of idly strolling chickens which pecked assiduously at everything and anything that seemed to be edible to their eyes, and two horses which stood patiently by a hitch-rail, occasionally switching their long tails at non-existent flies.

‘Another useless meeting, I suppose,’ mumbled the young shepherd. ‘Pa do love his meetings.’

Making his way between the silent houses, the boy stopped at his father’s and penned his flock into a covered lean-to shed then trotted through the bare passages that served as streets to a large building facing the sea which was the village’s communal hall. As he entered the cavernous, open-planned, smoky interior, lit by an open space in the high roof designed to let out the fumes from the roaring fire set in its central hearth, he saw sitting at the long table a wiry, haggard-looking man who was tearing into the carcass of a roasted fowl, ripping its flesh and crunching its bones in a breathless frenzy. The entire population of the village it seemed, was gathered around him in silence. Whether they were awed by his ability to devour food or by who he was, the boy was not sure. After what appeared to be ages of wet, salivary munching and crunching the man said.

‘He was a black wizard, I tell you. Didn’t have a face, just burning eyes; like a cat’s in the fire-light. Called up the poxy storm. For what dark purpose only Father Brine knows.’

‘Didn’t have a face?’ enquired the boy’s father, just to make sure that he had heard right.

‘Well, not that I could see, anyway. Wore a hood like a shroud for the entire voyage.’

‘And he called up the tempest you say? Did you see him do this?’

‘Aye, that I did, Headman. Stood at the cutwater and chanted cursed words in a foul tongue.’

‘Pa,’ said the boy, pulling on his father’s belt to get his attention.

‘Not now, son!’ whispered the Headman fiercely under his breath.

‘The lord will have to be informed, Headman,’ said a stout, white-bearded fisherman.

‘Pa…’

‘Not now, Severn! Yes, we will send word immediately. This strange wizard will have to be brought in for questioning. Can’t have him wandering the countryside causing havoc and fear with the good-folk.’

‘Pa…I saw him!’

All eyes turned on Severn.

‘He hexed poor Crusher and asked questions about the village.’

‘Did he hurt you boy or kill any of my sheep?’

‘No, pa, but he thought that Lord Bremford still ruled.’

‘What!’ shouted the stocky fisherman. ‘Old Bremford has been dead for donkeys of years!’

‘That’s what I said to im,’ grumbled Severn.

After a period of uncomfortable silence, an old, crippled man, noted in the village for his extensive travels and worldly knowledge quavered into the silence.

‘Heard tell once that old Bremford had himself a pet magician. Got up one morning and disappeared into the sea during a storm. Dived right in he did. Not long after, old Bremford died mysteriously.’

‘There you have it!’ exclaimed the wiry man. ‘A dark magician has reappeared in the midst of another tempest. Through his black arts, he doomed my ship and took my men as his sacrifice. What do you make of that now, Headman? Still think I’m a fool of a sea captain? Disappeared in a storm, back in another.’

‘It is a strange coincidence, I do admit,’ was the troubled reply.

‘We had better inform the lord,’ said the stocky fisherman.

All heads nodded in unison.