Path of the Stonebreaker

Chapter 38

The Tidewall

Femira spent the rest of the journey to Heraldport in a sullen reserve. She had been so confident now that she’d become soulforged that she would be able to prove that she was stronger than Endrin and to wipe that stupid smug expression of his face.

He was rarely ever hostile towards her, mostly he ignored her. She wasn’t sure which irked her more. Why did she even care what Endrin thought of her? There were certainly factions within the bloodshedders and Endrin seemed to have a lot of influence with a big portion of them. She hadn’t paid much mind to the nobility of people’s families in the ranks of bloodshedders, she’d foolishly assumed that highborn ranks weren’t as important here. That strength and skill were what was truly valued, but perhaps she was wrong.

Jaz was highborn and she guessed that Endrin and Loreli were too. She didn’t know about Misandrei, up until recently the woman had never spoken of her life outside of the bloodshedders.

“Don’t let it get to you,” Jaz advised her as the ferry made its way into the harbour, “it’s just his method. I think he’s actually trying to help you.”

“I don’t want his help,” Femira retorted, “I don’t need his help.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“What do you know? I’ve beaten you every time we’ve sparred,” she said bitterly and then regretted it.

She knew that Jaz had been holding back with her, he didn’t want to accidentally injure her with his abilities. Being a grenadier, Jaz’s strengths were in fiery destructive blasts, they weren’t the kind of skills you practised on your friends.

“He’s been a stonebreaker a lot longer than you,” Jaz said with slight reproach, “don’t be so arrogant to think that you know everything.” He was right of course and she knew that. But just why did it have to be Endrin. There were a number of skilled stonebreakers in the ranks, but so far she hadn’t been able to get any time for training with them. Endrin was the only one out of them that had paid her any attention. She turned to apologise to Jaz but he was already walking away towards where the hull where the horses were being kept for the journey across the bay.

Heraldport was impressive, she’d seen it once before when she’d first arrived in Reldon. Back then she’d been in such a whirlwind of change with learning how to properly harness the power of the earthstone and also trying to navigate what Garld and Misandrei’s intentions of her were that she hadn’t really taken in the impressive immensity of the place.

The cliffs of the Tidewall were tall and imposing. Their rock faces had unnatural patterns that were distinctly different to the cliffs that the city of Altarea sat on. The Altrean cliffs had layers that you could see when the tides were out, but these were a solid dark grey. Dozens of long floating jetties snaked out from the leeward side of the Tidewall. The jetties heaved and bopped with the swell of the sea currents, the jetties would rise with the tides up to higher reaches of the cliffs where tips of tower battlements could be seen peeking out. Hundreds of ships were docked along the jetties.

This was the closest major port to Epilas, it was the trading hub between Reldon and the rest of the world. The ships ranged from fishing dinghies to trading vessels of unrecognisable origins and large Reldoni warships. She even spotted the red rigged sails of a Yarji junk ship.

The group disembarked and were brought to the top of the cliffs by counterweighted lifts made of wood in groups of six. Femira had struggled at first as to how the worked without a stormguard pushing on the base on the lift as they did in Altarea but her gaze followed the thick steel coils that strained as they lifted the platforms connected to a pulley and a counterweight; a huge lump of metal that descended past them as the gradually rose. She could feel it with her edir as it dropped further and further below them. I could dissolve that in a few minutes now with enhanced abilities. She thought, this platform and all of us on it would crash to the waters below. It seemed like a monumental design flaw, couldn’t they just counterweight with more wood. Maybe it’s not heavy enough. Or maybe they just trusted that some lunatic stonebreaker wasn’t going to just casually destroy the lift.

Either way the knowledge that someone could do that while she was riding it didn’t make her feel at all comfortable. She edged towards the cliff face, which crawled past them as they rose. She’d had a few slips while climbing before but she’d always managed to catch a grip, she wasn’t entirely sure she could catch on in a freefall, but it made her feel a little less apprehensive being closer to the cliff.

Once the full group and their horses had ascended, Misandrei led them through the bustling town. It reminded her of dockside in Altarea but with a much heavier military presence with soldiers and cannons lining the battlements. Bloodshedders were a rarer sight outside of Epilas and many looked at their black uniforms with deference; regular soldiers saluted, sailors and merchants avoided their path.

Jaz was riding further ahead on the line and Femira wanted to ask him about why there was such a strong martial presence but she suspected he was still annoyed with her from their earlier conversation. Instead she kept to herself, Endrin was keeping up the rear of the column. She noticed Loreli pulling up beside her. Like everyone else, she wore the black bloodshedder’s uniform although she also wore pauldrons and greaves of dark steel, her bright red-gold hair was tied back and braided.

“Hey,” she said as she pulled up. Femira simply nodded in response.

“We’re both on Endrin’s squad for the attack,” Loreli started.

“You’ve made it pretty clear you don’t trust me,” Femira replied.

“And I still don’t… but this will be the first time that our lives will be on the line,” Loreli said with gravity, “and this is a warning; If you betray us, I’ll kill you myself. Are we clear?” Femira bit her tongue, she wanted to lash out at her but her most recent embarrassment with Endrin still stung at her.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Femira rebuked.

“We both know these aren’t corsairs attacking ships,” Loreli continued, “it's the Altareans. We know the stormguards are trying to build a resistance.” Femira didn’t respond, her horse following along after the one in front, “you don’t care that you’ll be fighting your own people?” She asked bitterly, “those stormguards once protected you.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Femira rounded on her with bared teeth, “you don’t know a fucking thing. The stormguards never did shit for me.” She gripped the reins tightly, and kicked into her horse, she still wasn’t comfortable riding it but as Jaz had instructed her, keep a tight rein and show the beast who’s in control.

Fucking stormguards protecting me. The most protection Femira had ever gotten from a stormguard had been when one had chosen to kick her in the stomach rather than in the face when she’d been caught stealing food. That had been before she and her brothers had been taken in by Lichtin, before she’d been taught how to avoid drawing their attention. Most of her childhood had been spent keeping an anxious watch for bluecloaks and bronze armour in the crowds. The bastards would make a judgement of her based on her raggy dirty clothes and assumed she’d been pickpocketing. I mean they were right, I usually was pickpocketing. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have an instilled distaste for them. She would have no issue cutting one down.

***

The road north from Heraldport lead along the top of the cliffs. To the east was the expansive and unstrained turbulence of the Altasjura. Deep blue and black waves swelled and crashed in a roaring mess. It was a familiar sight for her having spent most of her life living on a relatively small island city. There were other smaller ports and fishing villages dotted along the cliff tops, each with their own retractable floating jetties that could be taken in during particularly strong tides or storms. Femira couldn’t understand how they lived here with the constant bellow of the wind crashing in from the east.

Large towns like Heraldport would have stormstone runewielders that would divert the strongest gales away but out here the locals were exposed to the brunt of it. Their own group was protected by those that had the stormstones on them. Inside of their range, the wind was quieted to a brisk breeze but she could still hear the whistling of the wind as it passed around them. Trees and hedges grew on the side of ridges in the cliffs but were bent and gnarled from years of wearing from the winds.

They stayed in inns along the Tidewall and mostly kept to themselves. The locals seemed to make the connection that they were patrolling the cliffs as a response to the recent corsair attacks. It was the dominant point of discussion with any locals, the increase of corsairs in recent months. At one village—built in the shelter of Inish Head—they took a report from a group of fisherman who claimed that they had seen three warships flying unmarked sails and had just been lucky and the waves had prevented their small fishing boat from being spotted.

“They didn’t look like Reldoni ships,” the eldest of them said, “They had the look of pirates, but they were too big and three of them sailing together I’ve not seen that before.”

“Thank you,” Captain Misandrei said to him, “and you spotted them last week?”

“Aye,” he replied, “they were heading back out east, not sure where they’d come from though. Only villages like ours further north as far as Devon.” Misandrei paid them some copper coins for the information and dismissed them, turning back Endrin and some of the other bloodshedders that were nearby. Femira noted that Misandrei waited until they were all well out of earshot of the locals before she spoke.

“It seems they’ve taken the bait,” she informed them, “three Altarean warships which we can only assume will be fully armed and manned.”

“Could be two-hundred soldiers on each of them,” Endrin replied, “at best we would be outnumbered by forty-to-one. Even for us that would be a wildly arrogant move.”

“We’ll keep to the plan,” Misandrei directed, “they won’t have anywhere close to those numbers in runewielders. Most of their stormguards were killed in the assault on the Altarean palace, the General estimated they couldn’t have much more than fifty remaining. We have an opportunity to potentially crush their resistance before it properly forms.”

“Where do you think they’ve been hiding?” Loreli asked, “We still have warships occupying Altarea; they couldn’t be sailing back and forth from there.”

“We also have patrol ships to the south, they couldn’t be taking refuge in Rein or Keiren,” Endrin put in. “Someone is helping the Altareans,” Misandrei agreed, “hopefully we can take some of them alive. Get some answers.”

Before the conversation could derail further into who might be sheltering the Altarean ships, Misandrei continued, “the decoy vessel will be docking here tomorrow. The sightings of the unmarked warships leads me to believe that the information we’ve spread has reached the Altarean resistance ships. They’ll be lured close to the coastline by the Rubanian decoy, and we’ll have our ambush ready on Inish Head,” she informed them, “make any final preparations in town. We’ll be camping on the headland tonight.”

***

Femira had slept outside enough in her life that sleeping in a camp didn’t bother her in the slightest. She had a military-grade tent and they had set their camp in the relative shelter of a rocky outcrop on the top of the cliffs. She’d spent many a night sleeping in nooks on roofs that the sleeping roll she had was a welcome comfort.

It wasn’t the camp that kept sleep at bay but the promise of awaited them. Her first real battle. She’d seen a battle before, in Altarea. She’d felt the rush of it but she hadn’t been part of it, she’d merely capitalised on the opportunity the battle had presented to finally sneak into the inner depths of the Altarean palace. She hadn’t had to fight for her life, she hadn’t had to kill anyone.

People had died because of her before, but she’d never actually killed a person before. She knew she could do it, she’d thought about it enough times. She’d thought of killing Lichtin for letting her brothers die. She’d thought of killing the stormguards that had been the ones to throw them off the cliffs. She’d have killed Karas the night he had attacked her in the Pillar… if she had been able to and Landryn and Vestyr hadn’t beaten her to it. But now that she was faced with the imminent prospect of it, she felt herself growing apprehensive.

“You’re still up,” Misandrei said to her. Femira sat on a rock above the camp, watching the coastline. The wind wasn’t particularly strong and Femira suspected that Misandrei was diverting its flow to avoid the camp. “You are nervous.”

“I’m not,” she lied.

“It’s ok to be scared,” Misandrei told her, “I would worry if you weren’t. You need a certain level of confidence to be a bloodshedder, but too much makes people foolish and reckless. I need all of you at the top of your game.”

“I’ll be fine,” she replied. Reflections of the moons tossed about in broken shards on the sea, she hadn’t realised how much she missed looking out at the sea at night especially on clear nights like this.

“Pre-battle jitters are normal,” Misandrei went on, “but don’t let them keep you from—”

“—Why did Garld recruit me?” Femira asked her bluntly, turning to face the other woman, “you know that I’m not the real Annali. Was it really just because I look like her?” Misandrei didn’t respond for a time, she didn’t look offended at being interrupted but then again she was always so stone faced it was hard to tell when the woman was offended or not.

“I don’t know where or how Garld found you,” Misandrei replied, “and I can’t tell you for certain why he brought you in. This is simply what he does, he finds people that have unique skills and recruits them.”

“I’ve never been in a battle,” Femira admitted.

“I could guess that.”

“I don’t know—I’m not sure… if I’m strong enough.”

“You’re ready,” Misandrei told her, “Garld thinks you are. You’re here because he wants you to get combat experience.”

“Is this what I am?” Femira asked, “…a soldier?”

“Is that what you want to be?”

“I…” she paused. Was it? She had been aware that ultimately that’s where her training had been directed. But now faced with the realisation, it was a difficult thing to imagine herself as, “I don’t know.”

“You’re a stealth operative,” Misandrei replied, “that’s what you’ve always been.”

“You mean a thief,” Femira said, a bitter smile tugging at her lips.

“The same skills really. You’re an excellent runeweilder and you have skills that no one else in the bloodshedders do. You can move unseen, we’re not very good at doing that. Our combat styles and our our training, it’s all designed to be flashy and intimidating. Bloodshedders invoke fear, and break the morale of our opponents—even without a Foebreaker. Our enemies have lost the moment their swords hesitate… but with you,” Misandrei put her hand on Femira’s shoulder, “they’ve lost before they even see you.”

“So you want me to be an assassin?”

“You decide who and what you are, Annali” Misandrei said, “and whatever your skills allow you to be.” With that the woman rose and began to walk back towards the camp.

“Femira,” Femira said, unable to restrain herself.

“What was that?” Misandrei asked, turning back to her.

“Femira,” she repeated, getting to her feet, “My name is Femira.”

Misandrei smiled at her, “thank you for sharing that with me,” she said and then added pointedly, “but you still must be Annali.”

“Is it really only yourself and Garld that know?” she asked.

“I don’t know if anyone else has figured it out. I don’t think they have. It’s important that you continue to hold up the persona, Annali. Is anyone else suspicious?” Femira thought immediately of Darza and his attempts at blackmailing her. He was successful, she supposed, she had recommended him to be the new appointed commander of the stormguards, after all.

“No one,” femira replied, deciding to keep that to herself. She hadn’t heard if Darza had gotten that promotion or not. He hadn’t attempted to contact her again, but then again, it had barely been two weeks since the events that night in the Pillar.

“Do you know what has happened to Honorsword Jahasa?” Femira asked, the last she’d heard was that he was still in custody. They couldn’t detain him for much longer, not without the Keiran becoming alarmed on why their Honorsword delegates had gone silent.

“I don’t,” Misandrei replied, “it is not our concern.”

“But what if—”

“—focus only on the mission at hand, Femira,” Misandrei advised her, “you can ask the General when we return. But for now, I need you to keep your mind on the mission ahead.”