Prologue

“Idiot kids,” grumbled Thaellas as he shut the mess cabin door behind him. The nine-tailed cat would come lashing with the morning. He’d told the recent recruits time and again never to get drunk while on the ship, and to never take even a sip of drink while up North. But they were new to trading in this part of the world, and they were young. The young rarely learned without experience. Unfortunately, experience here often meant death. Yes, there was good money in trading what warmer countries considered mundane for the ornate trinkets of the half-human barbarians of the cold North, especially after recent colonial exploits, the establishment of new trade routes, and an increase in long-distance travel had generated a growing interest for the foreign and the strange among various nobilities, but it was still dangerous to do business with the very people who had been constantly harassing northern borders all across the Holy Empire for the last ten or more centuries.

To an extent, Thaellas was glad the cold came so hard and fast to the lands north of the Ostran Sea, just as he was grateful for the biting wind that drowned out the ruckus below deck as he stomped up the stairs. Pausing at the last steps, he pulled down his fur hat, even though it couldn’t go any lower, and wrapped his scarf over his nose and mouth a couple times before tying it in place. Yet the air still caught him off guard as he emerged from below deck into the wind. An Ithaenian man is made for warmer weather, not the icy autumn nights of the barbarian north.

Blackness surrounded them. On most nights, the stars and moon shown with eerie, silver light across the narrow strips of grassland bordering the river in which they were anchored, framed by dense, untamed forests and tall, rocky mountains, the favored haunts of monsters and the fae. However, clouds covered the sky tonight, and a light snow had begun to fall, hiding even the plain in darkness. Even that thought made the man shiver. A man of ports and seas and open air, Thaellas had always associated enclosed spaces with entrapment. He didn’t like cities–too many people in too little space–and only stayed long at any one place to winter. Even so, he would take a crowded city to this Northern wilderness and its inhabitants, especially the half-fae-half-human barbarian tribes that infested the hills, forests, and mountains in most of the Northlands.

At the ship’s stern, a lantern glowed gold upon a shivering sentry, a winter-primed rifle lying across his lap. Thaellas called out, “Any sign of trouble?”

“N-n-no, captain. Nothin’ tonight,” replied the sentry. “Not even a river sprite, much less a mixed-blood.”

“Won’t see many more naiads this time of year,” said Thaellas, sitting down on a nearby bench. “See that frost on the edge of the river, once that starts up, they go into hiding. I wonder if some fairy folk hibernate, like the bears up here and the like. As for the rendeilxue, well, you never know with them. If they were human, I’d say they’d be crazy to be out on a night like this, but with that fairy blood of theirs,” he shrugged, “never know what to expect of them. If only iron worked on them like it does the rest of the fae. But it doesn’t, the bastards.”

“I-I s-s-see, s-s-sir. V-v-very t-t-true, s-s-sir.”

Beneath his scarf, Thaellas grinned to himself. Here was another young man–what was his name? He was Aurelan… ah, right, Mauranius–a youth more willing to work than most of his fellows, but who still didn’t know Thaellas could recognize an exaggerated stutter anywhere. He kept that to himself for now and simply said, “Get down below deck, Mauranius. I’ll take the next shift. Get some food and drink in you, but not too much of either. I’m a bit short-handed at the moment, and I’m sure you can guess why. But if you keep up the good work, I won’t bleed your back and kick you off the ship at the next port like the rest of your peers. Got it?”

The young man beamed, his stutter mysteriously vanishing as he said, “Yes, sir! Thank you, captain, sir!”

Laughing quietly, Thaellas accepted the sentry’s rifle and watched him disappear below deck before looking out into the blackness. The snow continued to fall. From the lamplight, he could see a little past the riverbank, where a layer of white was gradually growing. By morning, the grass would probably be covered, and by tomorrow afternoon, it would be half-gone again, the air still a little too warm during the day to protect the snow from the sun, even if the earth was ready for winter. After checking that the rifle was ready in case of trouble, he dug into his pocket and pulled out a wooden pipe and tobacco box. Thaellas didn’t usually smoke this late at night or while on guard duty, but the alien cold and silence and the sharp smell of snow made him crave the familiar comfort. Lighting a match took some time due to the wind, but eventually he had the leaves lit and the mouth of the pipe slipped between the layers of scarf.

Much time passed, made more bearable by the pleasurable taste and smell of tobacco and the feel of the pipe between his teeth. The snow was getting heavy, now, and Thaellas worried they might have to delay departure tomorrow. He never sailed at night in the Northlands. The water was too rocky, there were too many shallow areas, and with the added danger of ice and snow… he hoped to God he hadn’t delayed their return too late this year. He was just considering finding someone to take over as sentry so he could pull aside his navigator to discuss plans for the morning when hints of sound drifted out from the shore, causing his arms to automatically lift the rifle toward the darkness.

At first, he thought he might have been mistaken, hoped it, even. Then came a voice, faint on the wind and weak, and two figures suddenly appeared within the curve of snow tinted gold from the lantern light. A pair of rendeilxue, one dragging the other along by an arm draped over his shoulder. The one being dragged appeared unconscious, and the man carrying him looked wan and pale as he stumbled out of the darkness through the snow, yelling hoarsely for help in strongly accented but still understandable Ithaenian.

Thaellas gaped at them, still unsure if he was seeing truth or an illusion. Then the walking man saw him. Their eyes met, and there was no denying the reality of those frantic, fevered, and determined eyes. A moment later, those eyes rolled back, and their owner groaned and collapsed. From reflex alone, the ship man jumped up to help the figures now slowly disappearing beneath the falling snow, but when the man’s mind caught up with his body, he paused. These were not humans. They were rendeilxue. For all he knew, this was a trap to lure him and his crew off the ship before raiders snuck aboard to gut the ship, kill the crew, and steal his goods. Such a thing had happened to a fellow merchant, an acquaintance who had dropped his guard at the wrong moment and washed up on shore with the ruins of his boat down where the river met the Ostran Sea, the only witness a member of the crew who had come ashore with him and died a few days later. What if this was a similar trick? If they were pure-blooded fae, Thaellas would assume so, but….

Thaellas cursed their half-human blood as he ran below deck.