Out here, the Sea Shark cutting effortlessly through the vast silver surface of the Burning Sea, the problems that they had left behind them in Duskhallow, and the even greater ones that they, most surely, would face once they docked at Salt Bay, could be forgotten for the moment. Wynn Rhew Gaeaf, or, as she should now more properly be called, the Lady Wynn of Salain, was wearing a simple, but finely made kirtle of white, subtly accented with blue and black, to reflect the colours of her new family, for the crest of the House Salain was described by the Heralds of Brydd as: a castle argent over a fess azure on a field sable. The dress of her handmaiden, the irreverent, gaelic-babbling Angharad, was of that same blue, though of less costly cut.
Wynn had chosen to leave behind her armour, her weapons, her badges of rank, and, physically, her dragon. For now. It was meet. The enormous black, glowering beast Gruduux was still sulking anyway, ranging wide and free although never, ever out of the soul of the dragon-rider to whom he was bonded. For Wynn's song was as strong as his own, though oft times their pitches blended in a grating disharmony. He could not be trusted to behave in the land of the humans. Wynn could.
She turned now and, as the sea breeze ruffled her golden hair, looked up proudly at her husband and, for the first time, felt that she could fully relax: for as ardently as she loved him, he had been something of a bull in a china shop in her homeland, putting his foot in his mouth as often as she could pull it out for him. His concerns: for matters of rank and nobility, were not the concerns of her people: but some sort of noble lineage had been cobbled together, a great and unexpected help coming from that wily old forger Simeon, whom Aldebrand himself had once sentenced to death for clipping coin and forging documents. The bearded old crook could put together a line of descent that could virtually prove that the lowest beggar on the dock had a claim to the throne of Brydd itself!
Wynn.. Lady Wynn, put her arm through her Lord's and rested her head on his shoulder contentedly.
Suddenly, from behind them, the uncouth voice of Angharad cried out: "Anghenfil môr! Gallaf weld anghenfil môr!!"
Wynn immediately let go of her husband's arm, and before she could translate her lady-in-waiting's words for him a shrieking lookout high in the mast saved her the trouble: "Kraken!! Kraken off the starboard bow!!!"
A Flawed Plan Executed Quickly and with Confidence is Better than a Perfect Plan Enacted Too Late.
The past several days had been a whirlwind of bizarre twists.
But it had also been a panoply of unexpected delights.
Every disaster had found its solution. Every machination and attack of their unseen enemies had been met with a skillful or fortunate riposte.
And in the midst of the storm, Aldebrand had found the most unexpected of treasures: Wynn.
Wynn, who was the most remarkable woman he'd ever met, and yet no one he ever would have thought to wed. Their romance had been as the lightning of a storm: Electric, powerful, thunderous, beautiful, frightening, and especially sudden. And like the bolts from above, it had seared its mark into them. Their bond may have begun as a practical one to solve a political difficulty, but each shuddering orgasm seemed to fasten it more securely onto their hearts.
It helped, perhaps, that they were both practical people who were discovering an entirely impractical passion together.
It helped also that they were warriors, with honor and duty as their oathwords.
Aldebrand occasionally feared that the magical maneuvers of their unknown foes also had a hand in it, albeit only as an accidental side-effect of their mystical tampering. But surely, even if borne of such poison, an antivenom was still a curative. The relief it offered was no less real, and certainly no less vital.
His only remaining reticence and worry had been that Wynn's station was not a match for his own. He had made certain assumptions about her that had not quite proved out. But by fortune, she'd been adopted by a High Lord of the Gaelic peoples. In their quarters aboard ship, a document proudly proclaimed her new lineage and noble status. She was a Lady true, from a Duke's own family. Or... what appeared to pass for a Duke in Gael.
That, and a chest of coin, would satisfy his parents' demands and the expectation of the Kingdom. While no one would have planned for such a noble union with Gael, and while such a marriage would surely leave some aghast, no one could honestly deny the value of the match. This was how peace was built across the frontier of war. Usually, it would have cost Brydd a Prince or Princess to make such an alliance. Or perhaps a Duke or Dutchess. But Aldebrand had made an important union as the lowly son of a Count. One slated to inherit, yes. But he did not hold that title, yet. It was a political coup.
Soon, they'd be at the Salt Fort, at the table of his Father, and they would toast his success in acquiring such an important bride. Then mother would probably insist on some sort of Bryddic ceremony, even if the deed was already done.
But his musing on such things, as he stood with his arm entwined with Wynn's on the deck of the Sea Shark, was rudely interrupted.
A Kraken!
The foul creatures spawned in these waters, and were food for dragons. But for ships, they were a potentially deadly foe. For the first time in his life, Aldebrand wished a dragon was near. Wynn's weird watery beast would surely have made short work of the creature.
Aldebrand's mind bounced from idea to idea as he hollered for his arms to be brought up, and stepped to the side of the ship to grasp a boarding spear. The weapons were often kept along a ship's long sides for this reason as well as any more conventional action. Rowers were stowing their oars and opening their benches to get hatchets, short swords, and long knives. There was no escaping a Kraken that had decided to make a meal of a ship. There was only brutalizing it until it let you go.
Seizing the spear he sought, he remembered the tale Wynn had told. Her terrible dream. Lured to the sea. Ravaged by sea-creatures.
Truly a foul dream? Or something more? Their foe seemed to be tainted by brine, either in actual truth or merely painted as such in the mind's eye. An interpretation sifted through nightmares. Either way, such a clue couldn't be ignored.
With their first plot having failed, had their unknown enemy used magic to summon up a Kraken?
He could only guess, cynical and suspicious of every bump in their road.
Looking to his side, he saw Wynn. She was marvelous, proud, seemingly unafraid.
Whoever their enemy was, they had erred more deeply than they could imagine. Aldebrand had a warrior bride. Something he could not have hoped for from a traditional match. His gaze was upon her only for a moment, but he caressed her with his eyes in that moment.
Then he turned towards a rising tentacle, the girth of an ancient tree, and hurled his spear like an angry God.
"Dewch, fy ngwraig! Cuddio!" cried the girl Angharad, grabbing on to her mistress and trying to drag her to a safety that simply did not exist upon a ship under attack from such an ocean-going behemoth.
"Ewch isod!" commanded the Lady Wynn and the girl scuttled off to hide below decks; a location that would prove lethal should the ship go down: a not uncommon fate in attacks of this nature.
It was as a Lady of Brydd that Wynn Rhew Gaeaf had decided to conduct herself beside her beloved husband, and it was as a Lady of Brydd that she now stood, neither retreating nor advancing to the fray: resolute and proud, but not lowering herself to try, like a man, to attack nor defend herself against the wild thrashing tentacles that assailed the crew upon the deck of the Sea Shark, including her own heroic spear-wielding husband.
That lasted about two seconds.
A slimy, sucker-festooned limb wrapped itself around one of the crew - a youngish lad on his first major voyage and he let out a shrill scream as he was bodily lifted off the lurching deck - for the weight of the enormous creature trying to climb up the side of the ship was making it list crazily. Wynn found herself bounding forward, unarmed, and leaping, throwing herself bodily upon the thick tentacle and trying to wrest the lad free. It was magnificent, but it was not war. Another tentacle rose and joined its twin, slithering up her flapping white dress until she experienced a sickening flashback to a night in a sea cave.
Wynn kicked at the new intruder with her free foot: but these were not sturdy dragon-rider boots she was wearing now, but dainty white slippers, and soon both of them were floating in the plashing brine. She could now feel the slimy ooze of the Kraken's limbs on both her legs and feet and on her hands and arms as she hung on for dear life, not daring to let go. But it was too slippery, the next thing she knew, she was being held upside down by the second tentacle, her golden hair dangling down, watching the first tentacle lower the still shrieking lad into the Kraken's maw.
She was doomed, she knew. Swinging upside down over the water, she tried to see Aldrebrand, one last time, on the half submerged deck. Instead, she saw the unlikely sight of an inverted, swaying Angharad pointing an arbalest in her direction... with both eyes closed!
"Naddo!"
Too late. She was in the water now: cold, black, dragging her down by her sodden dress, buffeted by the thrashing motion of the enormous monster under the salt water. Where was Aldebrand? Where was Gruudux? One was many leagues away, the other might as well have been. Where was 'up' - the surface - even? She was dazed. She couldn't hold her breath much longer. Who shot an arbalest with their eyes closed? Was that to be her last thought... ever? The image of that dwp Angharad?!
A Flawed Plan Executed Quickly and with Confidence is Better than a Perfect Plan Enacted Too Late.
Aldebrand never saw whether his spear-throw struck home. A motion hooked his eye as surely as if he was a hungry fish, turning his head on the silk-strong tether of his concern. He would not have imagined it days ago, but he found that invisible strands now connected him to a woman born of House Salain's gravest nemesis.
She now wore a ring he'd taken from a vile sea-pirate. A ring he'd paid for with blood, pain, and death. A ring he'd given her on a night of passion. The greatest passion he'd ever known.
Circumstances had gifted him with the chance to unleash a part of himself he'd never before set loose. It hadn't been right, or useful, or logical. Not ever. Such indulgences were for other men. Lesser men, with lesser concerns.
Until now. Politics was the perfect excuse.
He'd wrapped himself in political justification, then he'd wrapped his arms around Wynn, and he'd lost himself there.
And he'd found himself there.
Now, as his vision was drawn by the movement of a horrible tentacle, he turned to find two things: Wynn was being pulled over the roiling sea. And the ship's boy was arriving with Aldebrand's weapons.
There was rope nearby. On a ship, there was always rope nearby. In this case, a coil of rope at Aldebrand's feet. A hundred yards of it, perhaps. Perhaps a bit less. Perhaps quite a bit less. He'd know soon enough.
Aldebrand picked up one end of the rope and tied it around his waist. He did this almost presciently, predicting what was to come before the descent and the splash actually occurred. Like physical gravity, the events unfolding seemed to have a set of physical rules surrounding them. Rules which, like a cascading line of dominoes, could only have one entirely predictable end: Wynn was going in the water. If he wanted to keep her, he would have to go into the water, too.
He wanted to keep her.
Pulling a knot tight, he reached out to take his dagger from the ship's boy, who dutifully scampered wide-eyed to Aldebrand's side.
"Tie this off," Aldebrand ordered.
Then he leaped.
The waters rose to meet him.
Then the air was gone. The light faded. And Aldebrand was guided almost entirely by his conviction that he must succeed.
Behind him, the rope uncoiled.
The shocked ship's boy stared wide-eyed, finally hearing his command when it was nearly too late.
Wynn was not surprised when something grabbed hold of her once again: she assumed it was another tentacle, reaching out and pulling her in. She dared open her eyes which she had instinctively closed when she had hit the water. The salt in the brine stung horribly and clouded her vision, but she could see, somewhere above her, the shimmering light of the surface - broken and agitated violently by the combined shadow of the ship and the monster: seeming to be miles away as she sank to a watery grave.
But it was not a tentacle, it was hands, hands pushing her, all of sudden, back upwards: up toward the light and there - IMPOSSIBLE!! - Aldebrand sinking quickly toward her, weighed down by his armour like a sailor's leaden plumb-line, and like such a heavy object, attached by a rope. It was almost too late, she could no longer hold back, suddenly her lungs spasmed and salt water cascaded down her throat and up her nose and everything went black.
Aldebrand, his drowning bride pushed into his arms, got only a water-fogged glance at the creature: hideously, hideously ugly and dangerous looking, very, very dangerous looking. Then it was gone.
Up on deck, Angharad, having gone tumbling on the heaving deck after firing off the fatal crossbow bolt, had recovered herself enough to scramble back up just in time to see the fully armoured Sir Aldebrand jump suicidally into the heaving ocean! A young lad was desperately trying to tie a rope fast - had it been attached to the knight?
She babbled excitedly at the boy, "Dywedwch wrthyf beth i'w wneud, byddaf yn eich cynorthwyo!" she yelled, but he could not understand her barbarian tongue. She grabbed the rope and held it tight, although if the fast sinking warrior did, literally, 'come to the end of his tether' she would, at best, suffer burned hands or, at worst, get pulled in after him, unless the lad hurried.
A Flawed Plan Executed Quickly and with Confidence is Better than a Perfect Plan Enacted Too Late.
The merest glimpse, as his beloved came up-
No... was lifted up-
Into his arms.
The merest glimpse, and yet the image was magnified in his imagination and burned into his consciousness.
Some twisted, ugly, sea being. Not a tentacled beast. Nor a fish, nor a whale. No... it was a sea person.
Between one instant and the next, a plethora of emotions burned across his heart. Relief, that he had Wynn. Worry, that she might already be drowning. Fear, that this was some strange plot. For Wynn had told the tale of her dream- a dream of sea-beasts and horrid sea hags and the things they'd done to her.
What game was at play, to have a Kraken attack this ship, and then have a sea-person save her from dying in the assault?
But even a racing mind had only so much time when it was sinking into the dark depths of the sea.
The rope went taut. Aldebrand tightened his hold on his new bride. And then he tried to kick and climb back up the tether.
This was easier attempted than accomplished. It was a mighty struggle to gain mere inches, and the growing burning pressure in his lungs told him that soon he'd take a lungful of saltwater and abruptly cease to exist.
But somewhere up there, someone recognized the danger. Someone stronger than a ship's boy and a well-meaning young servant girl. More likely, several someones. The rope began to tug Aldebrand and his precious cargo up from the depths.
He clung to her, growing pale as spots swirled before his eyes. But he vowed to die before he un-clutched Wynn. Perhaps they'd become watery spirits, drowned together, and so cursed to be together in the depths of the ocean for all time.
There were surely worse fates than that...
Love has made me a romantic, he chastised himself from within his mind. But he didn't mind his mind, much.
His heart had taken over.
Angharad, the girl from the Fenlands had never been on the open sea in a giant ship like this; let alone weathered an attack by an enormous sea monster. Still, as she babbled away in her incomprehensible tongue, her sense of duty to her mistress and master overrode any fear or ignorance of what to do in this dire situation. She and the boy had called over more men to help with the rope and, by some miracle, at that moment the gigantic squid-like beast had ceased its attack and slid away back into the deep blue of the brine, leaving the superstructure of the vessel broken and half wrecked, but still seaworthy. They were not shipping water, which was the main thing.
The sailors, a weather eye kept on the surface of the waves, in case the monster should return, helped pull up Sir Aldebrand and his bride. He was coughing and spluttering, but she looked as if her rescue had been too late, she was inert and as white as the foam atop the waves.
With a cry of "Cusan bywyd!" the girl Angharad sprang forward as soon as fair Wynn was lain upon the deck and, throwing herself to her knees on the swamped decking, put her lips to her fellow Gael and puffed the breath of life back into her. The half-drowned woman suddenly coughed and threw up a gush of seawater, Angharad jumping back just in time to avoid the flow, but then quickly was back at her side, rubbing her back and talking comforting words in her native language.
As soon as Wynn realised where she was, she squirmed around with an anxious cry of "Aldebrand?!"
A Flawed Plan Executed Quickly and with Confidence is Better than a Perfect Plan Enacted Too Late.
Heavy with steel and sodden clothes, weighted by the tensions of the moment, Aldebrand was heaved to heavily fall on planks of solid, sturdy wood.
The attack which had created the emergency seemed to dissipate with the mists and spray of the roiling sea. In a mystery, the beast was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and with no more apparent reason. Regardless of his heart, Aldebrand's mind worked.
His cognition was not, perhaps, the sharpest tool in the toolshed. But it was a relentless hard worker. He likened it to a pick rather than a knife. He hammered at and chipped away at problems until they crumbled before his efforts, rather than expertly cutting them along clever lines.
But he hoped there was something to be said for stubborn persistence.
In this case, he was mystified. He was equally sure that something was afoot. Strange happenings under the sea were at the heart of the matter. It almost seemed as though two factions were battling for the fate of his beloved. One keen to destroy her. Another keen to see her saved.
Or... was this all a pantomime performance designed to influence Aldebrand's feelings and actions?
If that was the case, he didn't care. He was sure that his feelings for his new wife were genuine, and that she had no deceit in her. Even if they were in the midst of a heinous plot, something honest had been forged in the midst of the lies. And perhaps that honest thing would undermine the machinations of whatever evil forces were behind this.
Hands lifted Aldebrand up, and he nodded in thanks, before seeing Wynn being aided by her servant.
There. There was nobility. Even in a peasant girl.
He stepped somewhat unsteadily to Wynn's side as she finished the remarkable resuscitation.
"I am here, my love. And whatever this was... it seems to have ended."
He looked to the servant.
"You have my eternal gratitude."
Wynn opened her eyes... and thanked the Gods of the Drakeri that she saw Aldebrand there.
"I am here, my love. And whatever this was... it seems to have ended."
"I remember..." was all she could say right now, coughing up the sickening salty seawater still.
He looked to the servant.
"You have my eternal gratitude."
The girl didn't say anything, she knew the new Lord of her Lady could not understand her babble. Instead she flashed a smile, a truly happy smile that they were both alive and well and pointed to Wynn, as if to say 'look after her, while I go' and then she dashed off below deck to find warm wine to fortify the two impromptu deep sea divers.
"It was her..." Wynn finally managed to say "The monster that lifted me up: it was she who took me under the sea, the month before we met. I did not dream it. It was she..." she caught her breath. "But why did she help me, My Love?... help us both, today? I think... I think that it was she who saw off the Kraken..."
A Flawed Plan Executed Quickly and with Confidence is Better than a Perfect Plan Enacted Too Late.
"It was her..."
Aldebrand's mouth fell open as Wynn recounted her emerging memory. The mysterious figure in the depths? That had been the one who'd abused Wynn?
Would that he had known! He'd have taken dear Wynn and plunged a blade into that creature's heart in thanks.
Aldebrand's mind reeled at the meaning of it all. Although he was not the sharpest of the Salains, he was not quite the slouch he imagined himself to be in matters of deception and intrigue. He might not know how to deceive others, but he had seen many such machinations in play. Enough to recognize them.
"She must believe that she has imbued you with a terrible purpose," Aldebrand said, "and does not want your end to come before that purpose is fulfilled."
He shook his head, "But she is deceived. She may think that she works with soft clay, but I have seen your heart. It is Iron. And the workings of this sea witch shall not move such a heart against what is Just."
Aldebrand had always trusted in his strength to carry him through any challenge. He could not now imagine that his wife's strength would fail. Surely there was no magic in the world of men, the skies of dragonkind, or the realms of the sea that would cause a good person to turn against their heart.
And so, with this surety of thought, Aldebrand prepared to continue a voyage that would ultimately bring his new bride to the very heart of the Kingdon's power...