“Let me help you boys out,” a white-haired Greencloak muttered as he rushed over to their aid. It took Rollan a moment to realize that the man was Finn. Together, all three threw their might against the helm.
The ship turned sharply to the right – its nose headed straight into the enemy ship’s side. Suicide, Rollan thought.
The two ships rammed into each other.
The Tellun’s Pride sandwiched the Conquerors’ ship against the jagged rocks of the bay. Wood splinters flew through the air. The impact jolted everyone off their feet. Rollan’s head slammed hard into the deck. For an instant, the entire world blurred – sounds muffled and everything went dark. He fought against the encroaching blackness. No, I can’t lose consciousness right now! High above him, he heard Essix’s piercing war cry. She was trying to keep him awake.
Then he felt a hand grab his shirt and haul him to his feet. Conor threw an arm around him. “We have to jump!” he was yelling. “Can you hear me, Rollan? Jump!”
Rollan reached blindly for the railing. His hand connected with slick wood, and he carefully hoisted himself up. His feet dangled over the edge. The ocean churned beneath him, all darkness and fire and broken wood. We’re too high up! But Conor’s shouts rang in his ears, and he felt the other boy tug sharply on his arm. With a deep, shuddering breath, Rollan launched himself from the side. Air and glittering water rushed all around him, parting for him as he plummeted like a stone. The fall seemed like it took an eternity. Then he hit the water.
The icy cold of the sea knocked all the breath out of him. He floundered helplessly, not knowing top from bottom, where he was, or how to get to the surface. The distant, blurred noise of fighting, fire, and breaking of wood rumbled somewhere around him. Rollan had the sudden notion that this was how he would die.
What would happen to Essix if he did?
A talisman bumped against his chest in the water. He realized that the Coral Octopus was looped around his neck. Rollan reached desperately for it. His fingers closed around it, and suddenly he could breathe. He blinked, looking around in the water.
Abeke was struggling nearby.
Rollan swam toward her. He grabbed for her hand, lacing his fingers with hers, and then turned up toward the surface and kicked as furiously as he could. He tugged Abeke with him.
They surfaced with a terrible gasp. Suddenly the noise around him was deafening. He saw the wreckage of two ships, both in flames, crumbling slowly into the sea.
Conor waved a hand at them from several dozen feet away. Maya was already in front of them, Tini clinging tightly to the top of her head.
Abeke spit water from her mouth, then wiped a hand across her face. She turned toward land. “This way!” she shouted.
“Hang on to me,” Rollan shouted back, submerging again. With the Coral Octopus’s help, he was able to swim without surfacing as Abeke gripped his shoulders, floating along above him.
Conquerors and Greencloaks alike struggled in the choppy waves. Some fought each other. A few screamed.
Rollan saw a dark shape swim by. Chills ran down his spine. The fish was hideously lumpy and discolored, with red-and-black spots. Its sides were adorned with vicious, spiky fins. It swam between the struggling legs, disturbed by the churning debris. An explosion issued from the Conquerors’ ship, sending tremors through the water. Rollan could feel the heat of the fire, even submerged in the cold water. He didn’t dare look back.
I’m so tired. His waterlogged clothes threatened to pull him under. But still, he kept kicking, kept swimming. Abeke hung gamely on to his shoulders. Muffled shouts came from every direction.
Rollan had no idea how long they were in the water. Somewhere up ahead, he saw Kalani swimming through the murky blue, hanging on to one of her dolphin’s side fins while Conor clung to the other.
Finally Rollan saw land underneath him. Moments later, his feet hit sand. He dragged himself through the surf, then collapsed onto the beach. His breath came in ragged gasps. Beside him, Conor rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes for a moment, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Abeke coughed up water nearby.
“Are you all right?” Kalani said as she hopped onto the sand and crouched down to them. Her dolphin leaped once in the water, then vanished in a flash of light to return to her shoulder. Around them, others were crawling onto the beach too. More Greencloaks fought with the few Conquerors on the sand who had survived the explosion and the ocean. Rollan looked on in exhaustion as the last Conqueror was finally defeated.
None of them said a word. They could only look back at where an inferno had completely engulfed the dying Tellun’s Pride and the Conquerors’ ship. Both were locked together and sinking slowly as the waves crashed them mercilessly against the rocks. Smaller fires dotted the water.
“Dorian!”
Rollan suddenly recognized one of the Greencloaks struggling through the sand beside him. The man collapsed onto his back as Rollan crawled to his side. Aside from multiple wounds and cuts from wood splinters, Dorian’s face was ghostly white and his lips had turned a deep shade of purple. He trembled from head to toe. The exposed skin of his arms and legs was an unnatural color, covered with angry red welts.
Rollan looked up at Kalani as the others joined him. “What’s wrong with him?” he said frantically.
Kalani just shook her head. “Poison,” she replied. “From stonefish stings. If Stetriol’s stonefish are anything like what I saw back home, he is in a great deal of pain. He must have swum right into one.”
Dorian coughed, the sound terrible and raspy. He tried to focus on Rollan hovering above him, but he couldn’t seem to see very clearly. Whatever words he tried to speak were too garbled to understand. Rollan struggled to say something, anything, to comfort him, but all he could do was stare. The vicious-looking fish he’d seen in the water returned to his mind.
Dorian drew one last, shuddering breath. Then he slowly went still.
Rollan sat back in the sand, stunned.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. Then, louder. “I’m sorry!” He repeated it several times until he was shouting it. Abeke finally reached for his hand and told him gently that Dorian couldn’t hear him.
Conor lowered his head and closed his eyes. Kalani murmured over the fallen Greencloak’s head. “From the sea we came,” she said, “and to the sea we return.”
Overwhelmed, the small group sat on the beach and looked out to where the ships had both already disappeared from view. No more people struggled in the water. No Conquerors, no Greencloaks. A small handful of their original crew had survived and made their way to the beach, but it was a tiny number. And now the Tellun’s Pride, which had carried them all so faithfully on so many voyages, had taken her last breath too.
Rollan swallowed hard. They made it to Stetriol … and there was no turning back.
AS THE FEW REMAINING SUPPLIES THAT HAD WASHED TO shore were salvaged, Conor gathered around Finn with Abeke and Rollan. The elder Greencloak had taken charge after Dorian’s death. Altogether, their already small party now numbered only a dozen. Everyone else had perished. Conor noticed a few of the Greencloaks crying over the limp bodies of their spirit animals. A stoat, a blue jay, a lynx. He also saw a few animals fleeing into the underbrush. Spirit animals that must have lost their beloved human partners. The sight weighed down his heart.
One look at Finn’s face was all that Conor needed to get a sense of their chances. The man’s eyes were bleak, almost as dark as the inky ocean. He carried out the grim job of taking the old maps of Stetriol from Dorian’s body, where they were still rolled up and tucked at his belt. Beside him, Donn hung his head and nuzzled Finn’s leg in mourning.
“We need to head into the nearest village,” he said to the small group gathered around him. He pointed down at the waterlogged map. “If there are any. There were once settlements on this coast, but that was a long time ago.”
“What if we can’t find any?” one of the Greencloaks asked. His voice was choked with t
ears. Conor had seen the man earlier, crouched in anguish over the body of the lynx.
Finn tightened his lips. “We have no choice but to find one. We do not have enough supplies to last us for more than a few days, and we need horses.”
“And water,” Conor piped up. “Don’t we?”
“Yes, Conor,” the man replied. “We barely have any water left, other than the canteens strapped to our belts. There’s no time to lose.” He paused, looking out into the churning seas. “But first, we’ll pay our respects.”
The sand was too wet to bury Dorian – and, it seemed to Conor, too disrespectful. Lowering fallen Greencloaks into pits half-filled with dark, icy water was no burial at all. Instead, Kalani and her spirit animal helped gather up large segments of wood that had broken from the body of the Tellun’s Pride. They eased their fallen companions onto the boards, spreading their green cloaks neatly beneath them. They placed small tokens on each of the dead’s chests. For Dorian, Conor chose the glittering tile fragment he’d found in Balanhara.
For the first time since they’d boarded the Tellun’s Pride, Conor called for Briggan. The wolf appeared beside him in a flash of light. His great head turned, surveying the tragic scene. He stared for a long moment, then lowered his head and leaned against Conor’s hand. He uttered a low, mournful whine. It seemed as if Conor could feel Briggan’s grief through the wolf’s fur. Uraza had emerged beside Abeke too, looking on, her pose subdued. Essix sat quietly on Rollan’s shoulder, her expression fierce. Rollan’s eyes stayed downcast in grief and guilt.
As Finn spoke words of respect for each, Conor glanced at Rollan from the corner of his eye. His friend’s hand stayed wrapped tightly around the Coral Octopus hanging at his neck. Rollan looked like he was holding it together well enough, but Conor could tell he was thinking of all the things he’d said to Dorian.
He walked over to Rollan, then put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” he said softly. Rollan startled, looking up at him. “We’re going to win this war. We’ll make Dorian proud.”
Rollan looked back down at the Greencloak’s still figure. “Yeah,” he replied, although he didn’t sound like he believed himself.
Conor wished he could see into the future, that he could have a dream that told him everything would be okay. But his mind remained clouded and uncertain. He’d always known their journey would be full of danger, but even after the attack at Balanhara, even after everything they’d all been through, it had still seemed like they would find a way.
Now he wasn’t so sure. What if they all died in the uncharted lands of Stetriol, before they could even find Kovo’s prison? Before they could rescue Meilin? If the Conquerors had already swept through so many cities, and the lands were starting to shudder from the shadow falling over them, then what would happen if Gerathon and Shane managed to free Kovo? What would be left?
Nothing. The answer that echoed in his thoughts made him shudder. Nothing would be left.
He could not allow that to happen.
Finn’s last words faded away over the final body. A brief silence fell over everyone. Then they pushed each board out into the sea, watching from the shore as their friends floated out across the water on the broken strips of their beloved ship. Conor murmured a farewell under his breath.
They belonged to the sea and sky now.
“I can see why they wiped this place off the maps,” Rollan muttered. “Not exactly a dream destination, is it?”
They had spent the entire day chopping their way through dry, brittle underbrush and a dying forest. Now, as they finally emerged on the other side, they saw a desolate, yellow expanse of plains spread out before them, with a small village situated at the bottom of bare foothills.
Conor had to admit – Stetriol didn’t look like a country that anyone would visit voluntarily.
“Hide your cloaks,” Finn said to all of them. “Greencloaks will not be welcome here.”
Conor and Abeke removed theirs, but Rollan hesitated. His fingers fiddled with the clasp of his cloak. Conor remembered that it was not Rollan’s cloak, but Tarik’s.
“Tarik once told us never to take our cloaks off to win favor,” Rollan mumbled. “In Boulder City.”
Finn walked over to where Rollan stood. He gave him a sympathetic nod. “Wise words,” he said gently. “But he will be with you now, cloak or not, just as you will always be a Greencloak.”
Rollan nodded. Still, his eyes stayed down. “Yeah, you’re right.” Finally he unhooked the clasp. The cloak fell to the ground in a heap, sending up a shower of dirt. Rollan immediately bent down, picked it up, and started shaking dust from it. Conor looked on as Rollan folded the cloak carefully. He packed it tightly into his bag.
As the first town came into view, Conor was struck by how gray and brown everything looked. A long, low wall surrounded the cluster of homes, but the wall’s rocks were chipped and crumbling. Some parts of it had collapsed entirely. The land around the town was dry and sparsely dotted with weeds. A couple of mules pulling carts of supplies waited at the wall’s rusted entrance gates. The animals’ hides were dull and dappled with sores, and Conor could see their ribs.
They entered the town quietly after the mules and their carts. The two guards stationed at the gates didn’t look like guards at all, Conor thought, but merely poor peasant farmers in tattered tunics and shoes. As the Greencloaks walked in, he thought the two farmers cast them sidelong glances.
Conor looked away and instinctively scanned the sky for birds. He hadn’t forgotten Balanhara yet.
“Don’t worry,” Rollan said, pointing up at Essix. “If any bird looks suspicious, Essix will make a lunch out of it.”
“Lucky, being allowed to keep Essix out,” Abeke muttered at Rollan. “I wish I could let Uraza prowl around, but Finn said it’s too dangerous for her to be seen here. People might pass the word to the Conquerors that the Four Fallen have arrived.”
Conor wished he could let Briggan out from his dormant state too – he missed the silent comfort of his presence.
Rollan just shrugged. “Now that you mention it, where are the Conquerors? I figured this place would be swarming with them.”
“Maybe Shane is already gathering their entire army near Kovo’s prison,” Conor whispered.
Faded tavern signs with the town’s name swung in the breeze. “Gray Hills,” read Abeke. As their small group wandered through the marketplace – or what Conor could only assume was a marketplace – the people walking past them averted their gazes, keeping their hats pulled low and mouths tight in thin lines. Once, Conor accidentally brushed the arm of a passing woman. The woman cringed as if he’d burned her, then hunched her shoulders and walked away as fast as she could.
Abeke stopped to smile at a little boy with dirty cheeks who stooped at the entrance of an alley, quietly watching them pass. As she did, the boy sneered at her, then spit in her direction before running off. She watched him go with her mouth open.
“With my remarkable powers of perception,” Rollan said beside her, “I’m getting the very subtle hint that people might … possibly … not like us here. But it’s hard to tell.”
Abeke raised an eyebrow at Rollan’s sarcasm, then returned to looking around the nearly deserted marketplace. “Why does everyone look so hostile? Like they think we’re going to hurt them?” A few yards away, Finn and several other Greencloaks stopped at a corral to haggle over the prices of horses. “I’d understand if Uraza was prowling around, but it’s not as if our spirit animals are out.”
“I wonder if they can tell that we’re Greencloaks,” Conor whispered back.
The three made their way over to the corral. The owner, a man in ragged clothes, showed Finn his meager stable of horses. Even here, right in the middle of a business transaction, Conor could tell that the horse dealer was trying his best to not meet Finn’s eyes.
The elder Greencloak handed over a small pouch of coins and came back with several horses. None looked healthy. They seemed to Conor not unlik
e the mules they’d seen entering the town earlier. He patted one horse’s muzzle sympathetically, and it grunted in return.
As they led the horses away, Finn leaned down to them and said in a low, gruff voice, “Keep your wits about you. We’re not staying long. The people fear us, because they think we might be Conquerors in disguise, spying on them.”
“Conquerors in disguise?” Conor said.
“Apparently some Conquerors have been doing that to the border towns, to make sure the people stay meek and obedient. The towns are afraid of anyone they don’t recognize.”
Abeke exchanged a look with Rollan. “They keep their own people in a state of fear?” she said in a low voice. Then she glanced around. Conor followed her gaze, wondering with an uneasy feeling whether any of these townspeople were Conquerors in disguise, watching them.
Finn nodded. “Some have been whispering that a patrol of Conquerors came through here less than a week ago. We aren’t far behind them.” He sighed. “They took a great deal of the town’s few food stores with them, as well as precious water supplies. There’s not much left for us to purchase from anyone.”
The thought unsettled Conor. Without water, they would run into trouble in the Stetriolan deserts in no time. “Do we have any?”
“Some,” Finn replied. He looked across the marketplace, where two Greencloaks were tying provisions to the backs of their horses. “Not much. We’ll need to make good time. They say this village is the only one for miles.”
Miles … with nothing but desert surrounding them. Conor could feel his throat turning dry at the very thought. If this mission failed, and they all perished in the wastelands of Stetriol, it would be his vision that led them out here.
Finn saw Conor’s expression and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “We all chose this,” he said in a lowered voice. “And we’re going to follow you, Abeke, and Rollan to the end.”