(eng) Jon Kiln - Veiled Dagger 04 by Assassin's Remorse

Author:Assassin's Remorse [Remorse, Assassin's]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Inland. Inland was the only way to get to the hidden cove, Chappy had said. All the King’s navy had tried to track down the Iniquity and her crew on more than one occasion, and they had chased them as far as the Isle of the Skull before losing them suddenly. They would circle the island, over and over, hunting for where the great and terrible ship had laid up, but could never find her.

“Only the crew of the Iniquity can sail into the cove,” Chappy had finally told them. “But if you cut across the island and search long enough, you have to find it. It is not that big of an island after all.”

The island was, perhaps, not that large at all, but it was very high. The center of the Isle of the Skull consisted of a cluster of nearly impassible peaks and ridges, divided by gorges through which flowed swift streams, their walls slick with moss and lichen.

It would take time to find a way through the wilderness, and time was something that Rothar feared he did not have much of. He hacked through webs of vines, using a curved blade sword he had commandeered from Chappy’s squalor. Trying to make progress to the north as much as possible, he and Lief waded through springs and scaled walls over rushing rivers, searching for the fastest route to the other side of the isle.

The sun had risen, and the heat was becoming unbearable. Lief had removed his tunic and wrapped it around his head to shield him from the sun. With his bare chest, rolled trousers and knife belt, Rothar felt he looked as much like a pirate as any man on the island.

“We ought to stop and get our bearings,” Lief said, breathlessly.

“We’ve no time to stop, and I know where we are,” Rothar replied. “We are right about the center of the island. That tall peak right there is about center. I saw it from the sea.”

Lief looked at him doubtfully. “Truly? Because when I saw that peak from the ship, it looked to be on the easternmost side of the isle.”

The two men stopped walking and stared at one another for a moment, neither one wanting to admit that they could be wrong, both afraid that they were.

“Wait, look there,” said Lief. He was pointing to a spot on the ground nearby, a soft area near one of the countless creeks. “Is that a footprint?”

Rothar knelt at the spot. Indeed, it was the bare footprint of a human, and a fresh one. A short way off they found another, and yet another, and they began to track whoever it was that was in the wild with them. The tracks led them westward a way, then north, then west again, meandering through gullies and skipping over streams. Finally, they came to a sheer granite bluff, extending straight upwards before them. The wet prints continued straight up the wall, one foot in front of the other, for nearly ten feet, then they disappeared.

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