“Look!” Shaella ordered the man before her. She pointed her blade tip towards the barge behind them. She looked fierce and beautiful. Her face was mottled red with rage and exertion, causing the tear-like scar on her cheek to stand out in its paleness. She’s a force to be reckoned with, Gerard thought proudly. She’s a natural born leader, with a wicked magical blade glowing in her hand, and I’m her lover. It was all he could do to pull his eyes away from her, to look at what she was pointing out to her wounded captive.
On the barge, Flick and Cole were stalking across the tops of the crates, blasting anything that moved with hot, crimson bolts of magical energy.
“Do as I say or you’ll die,” Shaella told the terrified man.
With a grim nod, he conceded defeat.
“As you wish,” he said, as he limped into the pilothouse.
Shaella flashed Gerard a triumphant grin as she followed the man. She was enjoying herself, he saw, and he found that he was too.
Of the men that had been on the boat with them, only her prisoner was moving about. He began doing something in the pilothouse that caused the boat to slow in the river’s current, so that the barge was suddenly coming upon them most swiftly. Beyond the barge, Gerard saw a huge, billowing plume of black smoke rising up into the air. He started to ask what it was, but the barge was coming at them so fast now that his train of thought was forced into preparing himself for the coming impact.
Just before the collision would’ve taken place, a handful frightened men, under Flick’s watchful eye, came down off of the crates, and bodily guided the river boat around the barge. Once they were beside the barge, Gerard saw the source of the dark smoke. A push-boat, or the flaming hulk of one, was drifting behind them in the current. A few men, and a lot of debris, were in the water around it. Some of them were cursing and splashing. Another was screaming horribly, and a few others were floating lifelessly in the flow. A rather large splash sounded, and the man who had been screaming, disappeared under the water. A large, rippling wake could be seen trailing towards the marshy side of the river channel. The others in the water suddenly grew very still.
It became obvious to Gerard what they were doing. They had pirated the barge. They were going to push it with the boat they were in. Gerard learned that the man Shaella had spared was a Water-Mage. Berda had told of them in one of her tales.
Water-Magi came from Highwander, and used some sort of elemental magic, Gerard remembered. They could make a boat move up or down a river, or in the case of Berda’s tale, across a stormy sea. Shaella confirmed this when Gerard asked her about it. She explained that the magi could only work their power on ships and boats fitted with transoms lined with Wardstone. It was the stone that held the power, she explained. The ability to command the stuff was a specialized skill though. One could only legitimately learn the art at the Port of Weir, in the Kingdom of Highwander. Willa the Witch Queen’s Castle, Shaella told him, was built on the only place where the magical rock could be found.
“It’s what gives her so much power,” Shaella said, with a teasing look in her eyes. “That, and the fact that she eats her soldiers after they die.”
“Don’t fill his head with old wives’ tales,” Cole said, with a grin. “He did too well today to get less than the truth out of us from here on out.”
Gerard felt a bit of pride after hearing this, but no one told him anything more. As the day wore on, things settled. The four men, who had been taken forcibly from the barge, had been told that they would eventually be paid and released if they served and obeyed. Mutiny, of course, meant death, so they really had no choice. The Water-Mage, however, knew better than to believe the lie. He knew he was as good as dead. He co-operated more for the sake of the four bargemen’s lives, than for his own. He had thanked Shaella sincerely after she had healed his gashed side, but she was no fool either. She caught him eyeing his possibilities, and placed Greyber in the pilothouse to watch over him, just in case he got any ideas.
Later in the afternoon things got tense. Ahead of them, the river split into a “Y,” and down either branch, there were people and buildings. To the right, was the Westland flow, and to the left, the channel that eased along the Kingdom of Dakahn. Several docks reached out into the river from each side, and hundreds of people could see them pass. Cole and Flick both pulled up their hoods and stayed where the barge men could see them. Shaella joined Greyber and the Water-Mage in the pilothouse. If any of them were going to attempt something foolish, this would be the best opportunity for it.
No one did.