In Pursuit Of Wisdom (Book 1) (42 page)

He continued on.  “And even if they were able to subjugate us again, Mika, how many of us would die?  Many, and that does not serve their purpose either.  No, they viewed our families as a loose end.  Forty-thousand loose ends.  So they slaughtered them all.  You were lucky, if you consider this fate worth living.”

Mika’s lower lip began to quiver as tears began running freely down each cheek.  She had dropped her bandage while Herodius was speaking, and now blood and tears began to drip from her face as he pulled her close and hugged her.

“Be strong, Mika!  You may yet have a
life with Mikel, if we succeed, but the time has come for me to leave.  I do not know if any will follow me, and I won’t ask anyone to do so who is not willing to die.  Speaking only for myself, I do
not
consider this a fate worth living.  So I will change my fate or die trying; that is the only thing that makes sense to me.  I was born free, I have lived free, and if I am to die, I shall die free, Mika.”

~Trevor~

“Well, well, well—look what we have here!”  One of the drunken
sailors held up a brilliant purple jewel that Trevor had tucked into an inner pocket lining his tunic.  “That’s the largest gem I’ve ever seen!  That thing looks like a sunburst!”

“Hey, I’ve heard of that.  Doesn’t that Elf princess wear something like that?  Ha!  This guy bought a fake jewel, the fool!”  One of the
sailors kicked him and started laughing.

“Doesn’t look fake,” said the first one.  He grabbed it back.  “I’ll keep it just the same.”

“Let me take another look,” said the second.

“Quit squabblin’!” yelled Helmut, though he never took his eyes off the pocket where the first one pocketed the large gem.  “Strip him down and be done with him.  We’ll split the stuff later.”

“Whoa, what is this?”  One of the squabbling sailors said as he rummaged through his clothes.  He found several knives, a lock pick, a small vial, and a pouch with tiny pouches inside, each containing different colored skin-tone powders.  “What is this for?”

Trevor said nothing, his head already pounding from the drinks, the rocking, and the beating.

“Bah!  I knew it.  This is Thief’s Guild stuff.  Cap’n will have his hands for sure, make no mistake.”  Helmut put his face right next to Trevor’s while two other sailors pinned his arms against a wall.  His breath smelled like beer that had been swallowed twice.  “A thief caught at sea is good as dead, son.  You’ll lose your hands, but we won’t be wastin’ food and water on you either.  You’re going overboard soon after.  And I hear it’s hard to swim wit’ no hands.”  He laughed heartily, as the first flashes of lightning illuminated the night sky.

They tore his pants off next, and finally his shoes—his magic shoes.  Trevor immediately shrunk in height half a foot, and was standing there naked, all five-foot-three inches of him.  He was sobering up real quick. 
Just don’t find it!

“What in the world…” Helmut said.  “Boys, this is either the queerest lookin’ dwarf I’ve ever seen, or we got ourselves a wee-little thief on our hands!”  The sailors busted up laughing.  “Throw him downstairs, then pull yourself together.  We need to drop our sails in the approaching storm.”  He reached down to grab the pile of garments lying on the floor.  “What’s this?”

Trevor’s heart sank, but he said nothing and kept his eyes downward, still pinned as he was against the wall.

As he scooped up the clothes, Helmut felt a tiny object sewn into a pocket on the inside of Trevor’s pant leg.  He took one of Trevor’s knives and cut the trousers open.

I can’t believe he found it.

Helmut Bowhistle pulled out an unusual looking ring and held it up to a lantern that swung wildly as the
Modest Mermaid
headed toward a frightful storm.  It was a silver band with an onyx square, with a diamond-shaped emerald embedded in the center of the onyx.  “I have seen this ring before,” was all he said, putting it into his pocket. He turned to look at Trevor, a half grin on his face.  He didn’t ask him where he got it.  A clap of thunder brought everyone to attention.

“Come on, little thief!”  One of the
sailors picked up his belt and began to whip him with it. “Move you scrawny rat!”  The two other sailors flanked him, pushing him while the one behind struck him with his belt every time he slowed down.  After stumbling a few times, Trevor collapsed in his cell, bleeding, naked, shivering, and fully sober.  They locked him in and threw him his belt.

“If I were you, I’d hang myself before morning.”  They laughed and walked away, hearing the first mate calling them to get back to the top deck.

What have you gotten yourself into, Trevor?

~Herodius~

Mika and all the serving women put together a particularly flavorful stew for the General and his men that night.  It had taken about a week for Herodius to finalize his plans.  He began to secretly break the harsh truth to some of the islanders he trusted…and could take the news.  Using the women as messengers and go-betweens, the first phase of their revolt began tonight.  And it started with a stew.

This stew, however, had been made with spidergrass.  It was common enough, a mostly tasteless weed that grew in the marshes.  Spidergrass, Herodius had learned, tended to cause severe abdominal sickness if ingested.  It was a simple thing for one of the women to distract the officer who oversaw the cooking, which allowed the bog plant to be ground up and mixed into the evening meal prepared for the General and his men.

Twenty-four hours later, almost every guard, captain,
and supervising officer was feverish, cramping, vomiting, and squatting in the waste ditches.

Coordinating the attack was trickier, but the system that Herodius designed was simple.  He threw a particularly wide-leafed plant on one of the central campfires, one that was always damp and that he knew produced black smoke. 
You bring me to a bog, I shall use its fruit. 
Herodius grinned as he saw the unguarded campfire send up unmistakably thick, acrid smoke, deep grey against the black sky.

When the Islanders saw the smoke all around their massive camp, they knew the time had come.  Herodius and many of his co-conspirators moved against the sick guards.

“To the blade-hut!” Herodius yelled as he led them in a sprint for the makeshift “armory,” which was really a hut where all swords, spears, and other fighting blades were checked in and out for training each day.  The few guards that were keeping watch drew their swords but were overrun by dozens and dozens of Islanders who, like Herodius, had lost enough weight to work their wrists raw to the point that the shackles no longer held them.  Curved blades, long swords, spears, daggers—everyone grabbed their best weapon.  Herodius handed many out himself.

“Mikel!  Take these—free the rest.”  He found his friend and tossed him keys that he ripped off the corpse of one of the fallen guards.  “Take two more with you.  The rest, with me!”

The commotion at the blade-hut had been heard, and many of the guards scrambled to rebuckle their trousers and armor in the middle of waste pits when the Islanders launched into them.  It did not take long for Herodius to spot Captain Grull, who had just run his sword through one of the Islanders before he vomited onto the squishy ground.

“So.  Herodius.  Is this your little revolution?  Do you think a group of farmers swinging dull swords will do much against an army of True Warriors?”  He coughed and stepped forward, sweating even more than one usually did in the interminable humidity.  The mosquitos were thick in the air, as if even the insects knew they could gorge themselves on blood tonight.  “I should have killed you months ago.  Just like we did your wife and worthless children.  They at least begged for mercy.  Step closer, so I can send you to them!”

Herodius didn’t say a word.  He focused on his footwork, his technique.  He had always been a competent fighter; he had honed these skills and hardened his body over the last couple of months.  Now he put everything he had into a single objective:  to kill this man in front of him.

Grull slashed downward, and despite his poisoning, he was still incredibly strong and highly skilled.  His balance was nearly perfect, and the force of his blows was devastating.  Blow after blow rained down on Herodius, notching and nearly bending his quickly-forged training blade.  The weak metal they used for the ‘soldiers’ was nowhere near the match of the sword Grull wielded.  After a few minutes of constant parrying, Herodius’s blade finally shattered from a particularly fierce overhand strike.

Captain Grull started chuckling.  “I should give you another blade to use, if I wasn’t so bored with your pathetic swordsmanship.  Still…I will say this:  you have spunk, Herodius.  You would have made a fine Captain, a glorious leader in our Master’s army.  It is almost a pity to kill you.”  He advanced for his final stroke.

Expecting another overhand, Herodius gambled and took one quick step forward before diving for Grull’s legs, feet first, scissor-kicking.  He caught the Captain off guard, and finally off balance, as Grull must have expected him to either run away or defend himself up high.  Herodius caught him below
the knee and tripped him on the wet ground.  Grull was on his back.

With amazing agility, Herodius pivoted off the ground and onto the Captain’s chest, who had dropped his sword to try and break his fall.  Herodius then plunged nine inches of jagged metal – the remnants of his sword—into Grull’s throat.

“Hope is a powerful thing, Captain.  My hope is that you will get stabbed in the throat by my murdered family every night for eternity, you piece of scum.”  He gave the hilt one final twist while Grull hopelessly gurgled, then he got up, picked up the Captain’s sword, and looked around for others who needed his help.

~Trevor~

Trevor waited for the trapdoor leading to the upper decks to shut.  As the men left, they carried the only lantern with them, plunging the entire lower deck into utter darkness.  There were no other prisoners down here, either.  Just Trevor and his thoughts.  And rats…he had rats for company as well, feeling one scurry over the top of his bare foot in the pitch black of his cell.  He gave a reflexive kick and flung the squealing rodent off him as thunder pealed and the ship rocked wildly.

Hang myself?  And miss all the fun of being shipwrecked? 
He could feel another wave slam into the same side of the boat as his cell, sending him stumbling into the bars.  He pulled himself up, and felt the lock.

Hmmm…I wonder. 
Trevor got down on his knees in the dark and began feeling around the floor for his belt.  He found it in a small pile of straw, the buckle still slick with his own blood from his beatings earlier.  He used a handful of straw to wipe it off, then took the prong off the buckle.

Still crawling on his knees, in part because of the beatings, in part because of the rough seas, and also in no small part
from the spinning in his head due to the ale, he made his way back to the cell door. 
Focus, you fool.
  He forced himself to stand, and it took him less than a minute to pick the unfamiliar lock in total darkness.  He would have smiled if he wasn’t bloody, naked, freezing, and facing death in the middle of the sea during a raging thunderstorm. 

I need to get that ring…and my jewel.  And I’d really like my shoes back, too.  Actually, I want it all back.

He climbed the stairs leading to the trapdoor, opening it slightly to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the light and to peek out, looking to see who might be close by.  He didn’t have a plan, nor did he have the time or the mental wherewithal to make one. 
Gotta make this one up as you go, Trevor Blink.

He saw one of the men
with whom he had thrown dice earlier standing by the rail, working on some rigging near the stern.  Men shouted all over the place as they worked to lower the sails in the sudden storm.  Rain pelted the deck, and lightning flashed continually.

Well, Trevor, might be the only chance you’ve got. 
On the next thunderclap, he lifted the trapdoor and sprung forward.  He came upon the man by the rail from behind, and used a stranglehold to silently crush his windpipe. 
And they say only Assassins know how to kill.  Hah!

He pulled the body quickly behind some barrels nailed to the deck and immediately disrobed him, took his clothes (though they were too big), and stuffed him into one of the barrels.

He felt the inside of the man’s pockets, and to his luck…he felt the jewel.  This was the guy who had taken it.

You have a choice to make now, Trevor.
  The idea of dropping a lifeboat into the water during the storm was his best chance of getting away from the
Modest Mermaid. 
The little dingy was tied up just a few feet from him…everyone else was toward the bow of the boat.

No.  You have to at least try and get the ring.  Xaro will be furious if you don’t have it.
 
It is, after all, what he paid you to do.
  Trevor rolled up his sleeves and pants, pulled the dead sailors cap low to his face, and began walking around the deck in the driving rain and chaos, trying to look inconspicuous.