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Broken Tides

The Undying - Part One

Fifteen years later…

With a soft thud, the last of three brown robed guards stumbled backward against the side of the carriage, a shaft with green fletching protruding from his shoulder. Muttering curses and struggling to right himself, he managed to get to one knee before the bitter tang of steel pressed rather insistently against the side of his neck. Sucking in a breath through his teeth, the guard glared upward at the figure standing over him on the other end of the blade, “You’re making a big mistake. This is going to Escadi…you won’t get far,” the short-haired guard thumbed his uninjured hand at a large crest painted on the side of the double doors behind him.

Like he said, the marking was unmistakable, a golden lotus blossom over a white field. It would be next to impossible to travel with it on unsanctioned roads, the main road toward the capital was out of the question.

Sharp enough to shave with, the blade pressed closer, drawing an angry red line on the guard’s throat. He fought the urge to swallow, and spoke in the lightest of whispers, “You don’t have to do this…we can work something out. Whatever you want.” He tried to focus his attention on his attacker, rather than the threat implied, but the sun was almost directly overhead and nearly blinding.

“Escadi. If it’s going there, it’s probably for the Baron. Which means it’s worth the trouble I went through,” the assailant finally spoke, almost thinking aloud.

If the definitely feminine voice surprised him, the guard didn’t let it show, “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but the Baron doesn’t suffer thieves. You’d be lucky to lose both your hands for the trouble,” he croaked out, mindful of his windpipe.

“And you’ll be lucky if I let you go crawling back to whatever rock they found you under. Now, be quiet while I decide what to do with the three of you,” the shadow stood up straight, though the blade never so much as wavered.

The two of them remained at a standstill for nearly two minutes longer, before the blade was withdrawn and sheathed before the guard could draw a sigh of relief. Despite his self-serving warning, this was only the fourth time he’d worked escort duty on this route, and the first time they’d been ambushed. The Emperor’s seal had long been a deterrent for highway robbery. Then again, that was before the problems on the western border two years ago. Which was why they’d taken to traveling in groups of three.

He shot a quick glance at his fellows, both of whom were laid out flat on the side of the road, almost hidden in the weeds. It was supposed to have been a quick piss break. Now they were up to their necks in it. Shit, they would be hard pressed to keep their jobs after this. Forget telling the Captain exactly what had happened either. This was of course assuming they were heading back at all in the first place. “This mean you’re letting us go?”

“I guess that depends on your cargo, and what it’s worth,” the backlit figure mused, putting a hand on its hip. “Care to enlighten me?”

The guard was dumb-struck. There actually were people willing to risk inciting the Baron’s anger on a gamble, even with the recent trouble around the countryside, it was an absurd notion. He craned his head back, glancing at the coach, he eyed the prominently displayed golden crest. Then again, the Baron wasn’t the only person that bore considering. This was a personal delivery from the Emperor, himself. Not that it was anything of particularly high value, or there would have been a much larger escort. At least, that’s what the three of them had been told, none of the escorts actually knew what was inside. It wasn’t their business, it was enough to know that it belonged to the Baron, the guard conceded to himself.

It seemed the guard’s involuntary silence wasn’t the answer the robber was looking for, and a sharp cough bit the air, “You don’t have all day. And, neither do I.”

The guard turned his attention back, wincing as the motion jarred his shoulder, just as the rough sole of a leather boot slammed into him. The kick caught him in the center of his chest and sent him sprawling flat on his back. Fresh waves of nausea laced pain roiled in his gut from the tumble.

“This works better for me,” the lithe figure loomed over the downed guard for a moment, then keeping him pinned with a foot across his chest and upper arm, yanked the fletched arrow free from his shoulder. The steel tip wasn‘t pronged and slipped free with some small effort. “Sit there until I leave. One or both of your friends should be waking up shortly. If you three have a brain among you, none of you should have to worry about bleeding to death,” the pressure left his chest as the robber stepped away to the door of the carriage. “Now, let’s take a look, shall we.”

Deciding it was a lost cause at this point, the guard lay there while the carriage was rummaged through, keeping as much pressure as he could bare, to staunch the free flowing blood. He could only hope that the injury would mitigate his punishment for failing in his duty. Not that second chances were likely.

She’d been at this for nearly three years now, and her sense of what was useful, and what amounted to little more than an aristocrat’s fancy, had grown by leaps and bounds. Most of that knowledge was hard won through trial and error, and of course, making a few friends in the right places. Picking the lock on the doors of the carriage had proved a moment’s work, and no sooner said than done.

Throwing the doors open wide to the sunlight and warm breeze the young woman, known to most as the Red Sylph, found the Baron’s precious cargo to be somewhat lacking.

“This is everything,” the question was tossed over her shoulder to the downed escort, though she received no reply. Indeed, there was very little in the way of cargo, precious or otherwise. Nothing more than a few pallets of folded cloth, two wooden chests, and a few other odds and ends stacked up under a shelf at the back of the carriage.

Rifling through the cargo, she checked the chests first, and let the lids drop back down after only a moment. They held several large glass jars, each filled with various colored powders. It might have been spices, but even so was worthless to her. She could probably find a willing buyer in the city, there was just the tiny matter of hauling around the containers. The crates all bore the Crest, and was just asking for trouble, not to mention moving them in the first place. “Well, this is just great,” her prospects were quickly dwindling.

After a bit, she cleared a space through the junk and was able to get to the shelf at the back to get at a tied up trio of leather tubes and a small lacquered box. “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to hand this,” she rolled her eyes, “There better be something halfway decent in here,” she unsecured the box, taking it down from the shelf. An intricate golden design was painted across the surface of the dark red wood, just under the varnish. It was a little too flowery, and definitely far too light, for her liking.

As with the door, the maker of the box might as well not have bothered attaching a lock. Popping the lid, she peered inside and it was all she could do to keep from tossing it against the wall in frustration. Nothing but a few sheaves of parchment, not even worth breaking the latch in the first place. Moreover, the scrawl that passed for writing on the top page was horribly illegible. The best she could make of the top sheet was that it appeared to be some kind of writ for taxation. While it might be important to the Baron, it was next to useless to someone like her.

Rifling to the bottom, just to be sure, she ended up tossing it back onto the shelf. Frankly, it didn’t really matter to her one way or the other what the Baron, or even the other Landlords were doing. The Emperor’s word might be Law, but Escadi was hardly the Capital. Out here, the Baron and his followers made their own rules, and whether the citizens money lined their coffers or the Emperor’s it was all the same at the end of the day. Everyone did what they had to, to survive. She’d long come to terms with that. And if surviving meant stealing from the rich to feed yourself, then so be it.

Leather gloved fingers closed around the trio of tubes, praying for even a small bit of fortune to offset the time and effort she’d already spent gathering the information on this delivery in the first place. Not bothering to separate the three hard cases, the red-haired robber popped all of them open, peering down into the meter long cylinders. Each bore a thin roll of soft leather. Setting it all down, she withdrew one of the rolls, letting it unfurl so she could see it in the sunlight that poked in through the open doors. Her eye traveled over some of the familiar, and not so familiar markings etched onto the soft hide. “A map…but something’s missing.”

Indeed, a large section on what appeared to be the eastern edge was simply blank. While she hadn’t seen a true map of the Empire before, there was little doubt that she was holding such a thing in her hands. It was enough that she found Escadi clearly marked out. The hand was much neater and obviously not the same that had scrawled the writs she’d found. On a hunch, she set aside the first map and dug out one of the others.

This one, like its sister, was curiously missing the northern half. Laying it too down, she took the final map out, unrolling it next to the others. Since the third map was blank to the west and southern region, it wasn’t hard to put the three back into the right order. Crouching down, the redhead considered her handiwork. “So, this is the whole of it then,” her eyes roamed across the lands that the Empire spanned, the original country lines still visible, but in most cases renamed as either protectorates, or dolled out to various Lords in longstanding service to the Emperor’s seat.

There were a few curious things about the map, but the one that caught her eye was a spot not far from Escadi. Unlike the rest of the otherwise pristine skin, this section appeared to be deliberately marred, almost like someone had started to burn it off but then reconsidered at the last moment. Under the charred blotch she could barely make out a few bits of blue that might be a lake, or a spring. Given the sheer size of the map, it was hard to judge distances, but the blotch was somewhere to the north east of the city, close to the foothills. Maybe one of the locals would know a thing or two about it, should she get bored enough to ask around.

Rolling up the three halves, the woman who some called Red Slyph, among other less flattering names, slung the bundle of tubes across a shoulder, where they thumped softly against the quiver of arrows on her back. Taking one last quick check around the place, she shook her head and stepped back out into the afternoon sun. It might have been a waste, and then again, maybe not. There were people willing to pay for such a detailed map, even if it was a little damaged. That the protective casings were unmarked by the Golden Lotus made the possibility if pawning it off much greater.

The downed guard watched with troubled eyes as the future of his career faded away, like the blazing flash of red that disappeared into the tall grass at the edge of the dirt road. How was he supposed to explain this to the Baron? Who would even believe that three trained soldiers were bested by one brigand…and a woman at that. If his shoulder didn’t hurt quite so much, he might have laughed at the absurdity of it all.

Instead, he pulled himself back to his feet and went to check on the other two, maybe they were luckier and had only been knocked unconscious. The woman had only implied that she’d left them alive, so there were no guarantees. If worse came to worse, and he found them dead, well he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.