Page 7 of Crucible of Chaos

Befuddled fool.He’d nearly sucked water into his lungs again. Fortunately, even those few syllables were enough to reinvigorate the mule’s efforts to stay afloat, and soon the two were colliding together.

‘Steady, Imperious,’ Estevar said, as soothingly as he could manage while shouting over the storm raging above them. ‘Deliverance is at hand, I swear it.’

Quickly, he untied his end of the long rope and looped it around both his chest and the mule’s neck, binding them together. He began pulling for all he was worth, but he felt only slack.

Damnable monk!he raged silently, ceasing his wasted efforts.Never trust a man who claims to serve the will of the gods, yet would leave a mule to drown alone in this cruel sea.Surely any divine being who could countenance such callow disregard was worthy of no man’s prayers.

‘We will have to make for the shore ourselves,’ he told the mule, but the throbbing scarlet gash on the beast’s forehead and the glassy-eyed stare suggested Imperious was long past the end of his own rope.

Estevar wrapped his arms around the animal’s neck, determined to keep him from sinking into the depths, though all too aware that he lacked the power to save him. He cursed his own pride, his perpetual insistence that a keen mind was a more potent weapon than all the brute strength in the world. Tears began to slide down his cheeks, such a useless manifestation of grief. Oh, what he wouldn’t give for a little brute strength now—

Suddenly he was jerked backwards, and Imperious yanked along with him. The rope was taut around them now, crushing them together as they were pulled along, slowly but surely. Estevar turned his head and there, some twenty feet away, was the monk hauling on the rope, dragging them towards the rowboat. Bless every god dead and living, he was an even more towering figure standing than he’d appeared when seated.

‘Are you planning to help, you overstuffed buffoon?’ the monk shouted at him.

Estevar got as good a grip on the rope as he could,though his hands were so feeble he might as well have been trying to grip the water itself, and pulled with all his might. Inch by inch, he and the monk fought the currents, shrinking the distance between them. A few minutes of teeth-grinding effort later and Estevar was sliding himself up and over the edge of the rowboat. But when he turned to help Imperious come aboard, he felt an open-handed blow to the back of his head.

The monk had slapped him.

‘He’s too heavy, you idiot! He’ll capsize the boat!’

‘I told you before, I’ll not leave him behind—’

But Estevar had made a terrible mistake: the rapier with which he’d cajoled the monk earlier was now rolling in the bottom of the boat, out of his reach. Worse, his efforts to rescue Imperious had cost him his last ounce of strength.

‘Please,’ Estevar begged, ‘in the name of whichever god you serve, help me—’

‘Don’t be so quick to invoke the gods,’ the grey-hooded man warned. ‘Not these days, and not this close to Isola Sombra.’ Taking up his oars, he moved back to sit on the very edge of the stern. ‘Hold the beast’s head above the water,’ he instructed. ‘Try to shift as much of your own weight back towards me as you can. With luck, I can row us back without the two of you tipping us over!’

Estevar did as he was told, arms wrapped around Imperious’ neck, the mule’s frantic pulse throbbing against his cheek. He muttered soothing words into the poor beast’s ear even as he fought the constant feeling of terror that he was being pulled back into the water himself.

‘Sentimental halfwit,’ the monk growled, pulling against the current with arms stronger than Estevar would have expected in a man of the cloth. ‘Greatcoats, they call you? More like Greatfools!’

Imperious brayed piteously, trying to get his hooves up over the side himself, and Estevar was forced to prevent him from doing so lest he have them all over. He pleaded with the mule to trust him, whispering promises of the warm hay and hot mash awaiting them onshore, and all the while, the rain pounded mercilessly against his back and lightning crackled menacingly above as if it sought to set the sea aflame.

How easy it had been, back on the causeway, to dismiss the notion that Isola Sombra was under some form of crazed witch attack or demonic infestation. Now, it was taking all of Estevar’s commitment to reason and investigative dispassion to keep himself from praying to any god who might heed his plea for salvation. In the back of his mind, though, was the unsettling awareness of the parchment in his coat carrying the Margrave of Someil’s scrawled warning:

As you love life and value your soul, do not set foot on Isola Sombra.

Something scraped beneath the hull of the rowboat, and it came to a wrenching halt. He feared the rickety vessel had run aground on a reef, but suddenly Imperious reared up, breaking Estevar’s grip on his neck as his front hooves found purchase on the boat’s wooden stern thwart and he surged forwards.

The monk stepped out into the water, which Estevar saw was now only up to his knees, and started dragging the boat higher onto the beach. Some fifty yards up the rocky path stood the tall arch of a massive iron gate, and beyond it, stone steps twelve feet wide rising up to the curved cobblestone road that wound around the tiny island like a serpent until, at the very top, it kissed the foot of the abbey towering above them all.

Once the rowboat was beached, Estevar rose unsteadily, every muscle in his body groaning. He surveyed the boat, searching for the dark crimson leather of his greatcoat, but found only the rope that had saved his life, lying in a pool of frigid water sloshing at the bottom.

‘Where is my coat?’ he demanded.

‘How should I know?’ the monk replied, tossing his oars in. ‘The boat was being tossed about like a leaf in the wind out there– probably fell over the side.’

Estevar’s ears, trained to discern the least bit of rehearsal in the testimony from witnesses appearing before him, found the monk’s delivery too confident, too smooth. Now that they stood together on the shore, he noted how tall the man was– topping his own six feet by several inches. The fellow’s shoulders were broad, and when he bent to tie the boat to its mooring, the sleeves of his robes exposed thick, powerful wrists and hands big as mallets. Most conspicuous of all, the man’s straight-backed bearing was far more reminiscent of a soldier accustomed to the weight of armour than the stooped posture of a monk who spent his days kneeling in prayer.

‘And what of my rapier?’ Estevar asked.

The monk offered him a shrug, paired with a sneer. ‘Guess that fell overboard, too.’

‘A suspicious person might consider such ill-luck more than coincidence.’

The monk laughed, his back to Estevar as he set off along the rocky path for the gate. ‘Welcome to Isola Sombra,Trattari,’ he said, spitting out the archaic Tristian word for ‘tatter-cloak’ so often used to denigrate the Greatcoats. ‘Hope you survive the experience.’

---