Chapter 155: New Arrival

Chapter 155: New Arrival

“Make new friends, but keep the old; Those are silver, these are gold.”

Joseph Parry

New POV

This was the back end of beyond. He honestly didn’t know why he had decided to travel so far. He certainly would have never even considered it if it had not been for Lady Acacia’s request and their history. Crossing the southern cardinal kingdom of Ostro had been easy enough, something he had done many times before, but the ordinal kingdom of Libeccio was challenging for all the wrong reasons; he couldn’t right the world’s wrongs. It never ended well, and he was only one beastkin; without a tribe, army or nation, there was only so much he could do, especially as he was simply passing through. It had not gotten any easier once he had to start travelling by sea to head out to the Ponentian Archipelago. It had taken him months. His destination was the furthest isle west of the compass kingdoms. If he had gone any further, he would have sailed off the edge of the map into the unknown. Not that he could sail at all, forced to rely on whatever vessels would consent to take him further west.

That had been the main problem. Beastkin and water rarely mixed. Especially when you had his particular heritage, he had to search hard for a vessel to take him so far, and the one he had found was hardly the most reputable. Still, the journey was almost over. The trip had better be worth it. It was a favour owed but, at the same time, a promising pupil from what she had been able to reveal to him. He looked up at the imposing cliffs. It would be good to stretch his legs once he was finally off the boat. The boat was too small to move at all. He could cross its width and length in a single leap, and he had no desire to leap any further and end up in the water.

He wrinkled his nose in disgust as he caught another whiff of the crew. Or rather, the slaves that silently worked the ship. Superior senses, while essential for tracking, fighting and daily life among the beastkin tribes of Ostro are not always pleasant to have when trapped on a boat with such foul-smelling humans. Slavery was a sad fact for many in the Southern Kingdoms of the Compass Continent. But the true evil in his mind was the stench they lived in and inflicted on those unfortunate enough to travel with them. Intellectually, he knew it was not their fault, but the fact that this was the only vessel that he had been able to convince to travel this far out from the pirate-cursed Libeccian waters did not appease the beast within that was almost tempted to damn the water, jump in and swim to shore.

In retrospect, he wondered whether it had been worth the time saved sailing directly northwest rather than travelling further up the coast to the Ponentian capital before travelling west through the archipelago to reach the Western Isles. He really should have requested Lady Acacia’s guidance for his travel plans. But he was used to making his way in the world, his pride in his abilities large enough to stub his toe on. In the end, it did not matter. He had finally made it as the ship slid into the harbour at the base of the cliffs. He was ever eager to disembark. The sooner, the better.

“This is Wester Ponente?” He checked a final time with the ship’s captain.

“Aye, Namir.” The captain answered. “As I have said, it’s the last known isle west of the world. The western horizon of humanity, if you will.” The captain looked more pirate than a merchant, two daggers tattooed into his forearms, a compass on his palm, while a cat o nine tails adorned his left bicep. Finally, a rope and grapple wrapped around his torso, although his shirt covered them. The fine clothing was worn for today when he would be making his first impression on the town and a possible attempt to look more merchant than a pirate with Libeccian sailors. Sometimes there was little difference, and often only depended on the harbour you sailed from. “Is your friend expecting you?” he asked.

“I’m long overdue, so expecting might be the wrong word, but she knows I’m coming.” He answered. “Maybe I will see you in town. Farewell.” He said as he leapt to the dock without needing a plank or for the boat to stop rocking with the tide as it made its final approach. He travelled light with one hand on the railing and the other holding his travelling bag. He landed at the base of the stairs and, without looking back, started to quickly make his way up them at a pace that would have had the merchant sprinting but, to him, looked like a light jog despite the nearly vertical ladder of stairs that climbed the cliffs.

He finally relaxed as he left the odoriferous vessel that had been his berth for far too long.

. . . .

New Captain’s POV

“Children to your grandpa’s.” Aaron Silverkin shouted, sending them off before joining the guards on the wall.

“Where is it then?” he asked when reaching the top.

“We don’t know. We lost sight of it when we closed the gates and ran to the top of the wall.” The young men confessed guiltily.

“You’re sure you're not just seeing things.” The reinforcements' leader asked critically and sceptically, as nothing could be seen on the slope up to the cliff tops.

“No! We both saw it. It must have reached the eastern coppices and stopped there.” He argued vehemently, denying the accusation that they had made this up.

“You expect us to believe that it made it to the coppice from the clifftop in the same time it took us to cross half the town.” He raised an eyebrow disbelievingly at the thought.

“It was moving incredibly quickly.” The other eastern gate guard backed up his younger compatriot.

“Then we will see it soon enough.” Aaron intervened between the younger eastern guard gates and the older reinforcements though everyone was new to their jobs. They waited with bated breath anxiously for their foe to finally reveal themselves. It would be good to know the truth of what they would have to face rather than relying on vague earlier sightings that implied a beast that had crawled out of the depths of the sea and climbed the cliffs that protected them from most denizens of the depths.

With anticlimactic relief, they saw a man leave the eastern coppice on the path that led to the cliffs and the docks at the base of them. He was taller than average, and his features were hidden under a hood, but he was not the rampaging monster they had feared they would be facing.

“That’s your monster?” the leader of the reinforcements was not impressed at being dragged across town and the frantic fear they had all faced at the idea of a break from the Lodestone depths.

“ . . . ” The two eastern gate guards were forced into silence by their embarrassment but were also stuck for words to explain what they had seen.

“Seeing as we are all here now, we can at least give our new arrival a warm welcome,” Aaron added, defusing the tension between the two sets of guards as the man made his final approach to the town.

Raising his open palm in greeting, “Straight bearings to you, I seek the Silverseas.” Namir shouted up to them as he pushed back his hood, revealing his features.