If he closed his eyes, he could still hear that night, the night the freak summer storm upended his life.  Aelle, he, and his company were sailing north from Adeluna, packed onto ships with weapons and supplies to last half a year.  As they came up the coast, a spring squall grew out of nowhere and the shipmasters had no time to find a sheltered part of the coastline for the small fleet.  Their only hope was to outrun the storm, but even with every hand bailing and working the oars, the winds ripped their sails to shreds and toppled their masts. It sounded like the crash of armies as spars snapped and men screamed before the sea swallowed them. A pulley, loose on the end of a line had struck him on the side of his head and when he regained consciousness, he found himself waterlogged on a beach in the south of the Highlands, a beach where outriders of the man he had sailed north to kill were waiting.  A year he had lost in the man's cells, a year of barbarity and cruelty that he could not begin to truly put into words.  It had taken a toll on him, stooping his back, hollowing his cheeks, and giving his once-mirthful eyes a wary, haunted look.  

So, a dirty cloak wrapped around his shoulders and a pint of wine in front of him, Galin sat in a small dockside tavern in Vilpamolan, trying to fuddle his wits enough with the drink that he would be able to sleep that night.  Every night since he was released, he heard the scampering of the rats over the damp flagstones, smelt the filth of humanity, and felt the hungry eyes of the other prisoners on him.  He slept like he had then, a blade concealed on him, fitfully, waking at every little noise.  It had not been enough to save him every time but it had seen of some of the worst of it, or so he told himself.  The wine seemed to help, to dull the sense of panic enough to let him fall deep into a dreamless sleep that left him feeling as tired as he had felt when he fell asleep.  He knew it was starting to eat at his mind, gnawing away at the edges of his perception and perhaps his sanity, but there was nothing more that he could do.  When the mood struck and he found himself staring down the possibility of starvation, he always found a way to make enough coin to see out the week, doing odd jobs around the tavern or on the docks.  The people had stopped asking questions about the shaggy, sad eyed Highlander, accepting him as just another character that had washed up in this city of misfits. 

"I'll have another, lass," he said softly and drained the rest of the poor red wine from the horn.  "And no need to pretend about the fancy stuff.  Rotgut's just fine for me."  He pushed a coin across the table the propped him up and smiled, a smile that did not fully reach his eyes.  Scratching his beard, he looked out at the tide coming in and with it, a new handful of boats that would moor overnight.  He could find work there tomorrow on one of the labor gangs unloading the illicit goods, whatever they would be, as quickly as possible, and that would keep him in wine and warm meals for a few days at least.  The woman returned and put the wine down in front of him.

"Can I get ye anything else?"

"Oh no, nothing at all," he mumbled before he turned his attention to the sea again.  So many good men lost there, swallowed up by the ocean without a trace.  He had asked, when he got out, about any survivors, but after a year, not even the fishermen along the coast could rightly tell one wreck from another, so he never knew for sure.  So, as he did every evening until the sun dipped down in the west, he stared at the sea, praying with half-closed eyes and whispered prayers for the men it had taken from him and for his life that could never be the same.

A year had passed since Katja had taken her first steps onboard the longship she was to take her first voyage at sea. Her life, what she could remember of it, had taken a turn for the better not long before that. Being taken in by a company of Highlanders hadn’t exactly been what she would have chosen for a fairytale life, but it hadn’t been all bad. When she had been caught stealing from the company, their leader offered her a change in her life rather than taking her hand. She hadn’t the need to steal any longer, and they kept her clothed and fed and bathed, and what quarters she had been given! She had taken long strides in learning the ways of combat, something she had no experience in when she had first arrived. Of course, there were other reasons why her days at the company’s keep were a bright point in her limited memory - though she chose to quash those reasons down, not able to bear the sorrow those memories inflicted on her.

When she had boarded that ship, Katja thought she had been headed for the Highlands. Instead, a storm that none of the men had expected had hit the seas they travelled on, and she was washed overboard. She remembered hearing some of the men shouting her name as she fell, though the crashing noise of the waves soon drowned out any other sounds. She fought against the currents in the sea, attempting to make her way back to the ship - but soon, the she lost sight of the ship against the tumultuous waves, and she began to choke on the seawater that tossed her about. Luckily, a chunk of driftwood had smacked her in the arm, and she managed to grab ahold, drifting in the sea for some ungodly amount of time, losing consciousness at one point. She wasn’t sure of how long she had been out there, but eventually she had washed ashore in some small fishing village, with no idea where she was or where any of the men had ended up, if there had been any survivors.

For weeks, Katja had asked around about the company in that village and the surrounding ones she could get to on foot. She asked about Aelle, the man that she had been introduced to as she boarded the ship; she asked about Cooper, the man who had taught her all that she had learned thusfar about fighting; and of course, she asked about Galin, the leader of the company that had taken her in when she had nearly nothing to her name. No one had heard the names, and no one knew of any particular shipwrecks that she had been asking about.

Somehow, over the course of a year, she had ended up in Vilpamolan, and things had reverted back to how they had been before once she had given up looking for the men from the company. The healthy weight and muscle she had gained during her training at the keep had deteriorated, and she was back to skin and bones as she had been before. Her hair and her skin held a sizeable amount of filth, though that wasn’t out of the ordinary in the pirate city. A faint scar was visible underneath one eye - a gash she had recieved from a near miss with a morningstar during combat practice one day. A small cord of leather was tied around her neck, though the necklacing of her tunic hid what it carried from sight. The leather leggings she wore had a few holes and tears from wear, and her bootsoles were nearly worn through. She had seen better days. Her eyes, a piercing blue, looked dark and weary in comparison to the bright color they had once shown.

Having no real skills other than a bit of fighting and her ability to steal unnoticed, she had resorted to stealing once more, becoming rather adept at picking the pockets of the drunkards in the taverns of Viplamolan - which was exactly what she was doing this night. She had followed a couple of men in from the docks, with the intention of relieving one of them of their coin purse - though when she had entered, her eyes fell on what seemed to be an easier target.

A man sat alone at a table, half using the table to hold himself up. He seemed rather preoccupied between his demeanor and the gaze he had fixated out the window. His beard and his hair gave way that he was no nobleman, nor one of the sailors coming in from the docks. She could see, at his waist, a coin pouch. With a quick enough movement, she would easily be able to cut the cord holding it to his waist and liberate the entire pouch.

Not wanting to draw attention to herself, as usual, she walked to the bar counter, ordering a dram of whiskey and plopping a coin on the counter as payment. She downed the dram in a few gulps, and moved as though she were going to make her way back out of the tavern. Taking a small detour, she slipped behind the table the man sat at, and with a fluid motion, she stumbled slightly, falling to one knee. She caught the edge of the man’s chair with one hand, near where his coin pouch was, a very small blade concealed in her palm.

“Sorry, sir, I must’ve lost my footing. Such a fool,” she said to the back of his head, feigning embarassment. The scent of the whiskey on her breath would perhaps help with the idea that she had imbibed a bit too much and simply tripped, though her speech may have sounded slightly out of place, but not all that uncommon in a city with such a mixing pot of inhabitants. As she moved to stand back up, she made a smooth motion in an attempt to cut the cord on the coin pouch, planning on darting out the door once the pouch was in her possession.

When the woman leaned over his chair, Galin smelled the liquor on her breath and thought nothing of it for a moment.  He felt her breath on the back of his neck and noticed that she had not moved quickly on.  Even a drunk would have the good sense to pull away, in a place like this, after stumbling into a stranger.  Bothering a man when he was trying to drink was an excellent way to get yourself killed in Vilpamolan.  She moved slowly back to her feet and he felt, more than saw, he moving closer to his coin purse.  Galin's lips twitched in a smirk.  "Oh, not bother at all," he almost growled as his right hand closed around the hilt of his fighting dagger.  As she leaned forward a fraction to cut his purse strings, his muscles tensed and he sprung into action.  

Planting his left foot on the floorboards, he kicked his chair backwards with his right as he stood, sending the chair into the woman's left leg.  She took a staggering half step back and as she did, he pivoted to the right and drew his blade.  He found himself nearly behind the woman and a half step to his right brought him around her back.  He grabbed her by her matted hair and yanked her back toward him, unbalancing her, and kicked her in the back of the leg.  She began to fall and he twisted her by the hair as she fell so she fell back first into the floor.  As her body struck, he knelt over her chest, his knee on the hand with the concealed knife and his own blade pressed against the soft flesh of her throat.  "So what's this," he asked, jerking his head toward the blade in her palm.  "Try and steal from a man in this city, lass, and you'll lose your hands, if you're lucky."  None of the other patrons seemed to notice or care, knowing that if the drunk Highlander felt he needed to move, there was clearly a good reason.  "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't slit your throat and leave you here so I can finish my wine in peace?"

Katja was certainly taken by surprise as her mark moved so quickly - she had been most certain that she was going to get away with her heist. She had been successful with it many times in the past, on men that came off as much more intimidating than this one had at first glance. As the man moved behind her and grabbed a fistful of her hair, she let out a sharp yelp as she felt pain shoot through both her scalp and her neck from being snapped backward. Coupled with the kick he so graciously granted to her leg, she felt herself falling backward, towards him - though he moved rather quickly and her back hit the floor with a hard thud, a burst of air mixed with a groan escaping her lips.

She struggled against him briefly, ceasing most movement as she felt the cool metal of the blade pressed close against her throat, knowing full well that if she struggled too much, the blade would be biting into her flesh and her blood would be spilled on the dirty floor of the tavern. As the man spat his threats at her, Katja’s eyes found his face, and she felt her breath catch in her chest, though it was not due to the pressure of the man kneeling atop her.

No, the man’s face, beneath the shaggy and unkempt hair and the unshaven beard, was awfully familiar to her. Her hand relaxed, the small concealed blade clattering uneventfully to the wooden floor. Her body, which had been tensed up in fear of her throat being cut, relaxed beneath him, and her eyes softened from the intense, narrowed expression they had held as he had pinned her.

The last time she had seen that face, the beard hadn’t been there, nor had his hair been quite so unkempt. That face was a face she had searched for after she had washed ashore from the shipwreck - a face that she could never forget. It was the face of a man she thought long dead, even though there was a part of her that would never lose that hope.

Blinking once, her eyes meeting his own, Katja managed to speak one single word.

“Galin?”

Some skills never left, even after the drinking and the dungeon. Galin knew that he was able to move well and it was that sort of skill that had given him his reputation as a man you left alone in the tavern. Apparently the woman who had tried to slice his purse had not gotten that message. Another thief had tried to take his purse a month before and the tavern’s owner still complained that the blood had not fully come out from the lower rafters after Galin lopped off his knife hand and cauterized the stump in the kitchen fire. He did not want to do the same to a woman but a man did not maintain a reputation by letting himself appear to be soft.

Once she felt the pressure of the knife against her throat, she stopped struggling which was better for them both. Truth be told, he did not want to have to kill her. He was content to just do what had become his routine, drink until the tavern shut its doors, then curl up in a shared room over the small stable. It was not an impressive routine but it was one that kept him from having to properly cope with the last year. The wine and the work seemed to be enough to do it for him and he saw no reason to change the routine that night.

It appeared that the woman was coming to her senses when he heard the clatter of his blade on the floorboards and she began to relax. When he heard the knife, he let up some of the pressure on his own blade against her neck. Her face changed as well and he looked puzzled at the change. She seemed to be thinking of something but for the life of him, he could not make sense of it. Then she spoke a name, a name he had not heard in a year, and he recoiled as though the word itself burned. He shoved his knife back into its sheath and sat back on his table. “I don’t know what you mean by that, thief, but I don’t know who or what that is. Be lucky I’m not going to finish what you started. Maker’s balls, you have a mind on you woman.” He drained what was left of his drink and called for a bottle instead of another cup.

“Now why don’t you just get the hell along and let me drink in peace? That’s all I want. Just some damned peace. Hells,” he took off his coin purse and threw it at her feet. “Just take it, if it’ll mean you’re gone.”

Her eyes stared at him in disbelief as he vehemently denied his true name, acting as though it held no meaning to him whatsoever. Katja felt a pang of resentment at that fact, bringing herself back to her feet as he moved away from her and back to the table he had been previously seated at. As he tossed his coin purse to her feet, she let out a sarcastic bit of a chuckle, almost as though she were amused at the situation, not surprised and disappointed as she truly was. Slowly, she bent down and picked the coin purse back up, setting it down on the table.

She kept her eyes on him for a good moment, unmoving. After so long, after a year of wondering what had happened, a year of assuming the man who had a huge part in turning her life around was dead, here he was, sitting in front of her, denying who he truly was. The pain and emptiness of the loss of Galin and the rest of the men that had been in the shipwreck had numbed her mind for some time - but she now found that numbness replaced with slight anger at the situation in front her.

“If you want to pretend, fine,” she finally said in a rather hushed tone. Though she tried to remain stoic, there was a tone of pain to her voice. “Doesn’t change a thing,” she added, breathing out sharply through her nose and turning her head away from him. “You know, of all the times I heard him say it, I never agreed with him, but Coop was right, you are a damned idiot,” she said. With a quick movement, she pulled something small from around her neck, fastened to a small cord. She set it next to the coin purse, in front of Galin: a ring set with a small black stone. She said nothing more, and turned, walking toward the door of the tavern.

When Katja was no more than a few feet from the door, there was a soft rumble - her first thought was of ships in the harbor firing their cannons. That thought, however, was quickly wiped from her mind as her foot sunk through the floor with her next step. She let out a sharp yelp as she sunk down, throwing herself back onto the floor - moments later, the floorboards began splintering. Katja skittered backward, moving away from the gaping hole beginning to form in the floor.

The other patrons in the tavern reacted in a multitude of ways - several attempted to get out the front door, which resulted in one man being knocked into the cavernous rift that had opened, disappearing with a scream. Moments later, something dark began to emerge from the opening in the floor - the something resembled a tendril of black smoke, though there was something shiny to it, almost opalescent. The barkeep began shouting for the patrons of the tavern to exit through the door in the storeroom, to which some did, others staying to see what was happening with the rift.

One of the tendrils snaked its way around Katja’s ankle, which caused a panicked yell to escape her lips. Instinctively, she reached for the small dagger she carried and lurched forward, lodging the blade into the tendril just beyond where it wrapped around her. It immediately loosened its grasp and she scooted back further, the dagger staying lodged in the tendril as that particular one pulled back into the rift in the floor, leaving Katja stunned and wondering just what was happening.

The room rumbled and began to shake violently as Katja turned to leave. Galin, already on edge from the chance meeting after so long, quickly got to his feet. The floor near the main door began to open into a dark maw that expanded rapidly in the tavern’s taproom. He glanced quickly around the room, looking for a way out that would keep him from having to fight with whatever sort of evil the rift clearly represented, but the tavern had been plunged into chaos. Men ran toward the door instinctively and some were sucked into the rift while others began to pour out the back through the kitchens. Galin knew that he could not make it through the front and waiting to get out to the rear could end up with him engulfed in the rift. Instead, he ducked behind the bar itself and pried up a small trap door there where he had given the tavern keeper what had survived of his possessions as a surety against his rent. He tossed the heavy leather sacks onto the bar and was about to make his escape when he heard Katja yelling. “Maker’s balls,” he spat, and yanked a falchion out of its leather wrapping.

“Get the hell back,” he shouted at Katja as he slid over the bar and took the handful of steps to get to the rift. One of the tendrils whipped out toward him and Galin slashed out instinctively with the falchion, biting into the shadowy limb. The tendril recoiled like a wounded animal back into the rift and as others began to slither from the hole, Galin grabbed the Katja by the back of her tunic and dragged her bodily away from the rift like she was a bag of flour he was loading onto one of the ships in the harbor. He kept backing up until he was flush against the bar. He left Katja there and moved back toward the rift, hacking and slashing at the sinuous shadow limbs like a farmer trying to cut hay to beat the rains. “Grab the bags on bar,” he shouted back over the loud rendering of the rift. “And when you see me running toward you, you follow me.” He hacked again and the tendril writhed as though in pain before withdrawing. The rift seemed to calm for a moment but Galin did not trust the change. He began to inch backward again, checking his escape route was still clear.

The split second glance had been a mistake. With an otherwordly roar, a dozen of the tendrils of the abyss leapt out of the maw at once, racing toward Galin. Cursing, he turned on his heel and sprinted toward the bar, grabbing one of the bags as he ran past Katja. “Now’s when we move!” To the side of the bar was a glass paned window of which the owner was inordinately proud. It was fine, clear glass, and the lead that held the panes was delicate, and it was Galin’s escape. He flung the heavy leather bag at the window, shattering a month of the tavern’s profits into shards on the street, and threw himself through the frame after it. He landed heavily on his bag and rolled aside as Katja followed him through with the other bag in tow. The tendrils licked at their heels through the window but then began to withdraw, collapsing the tavern around them as they did. “Shite… You are some bad luck, you are,” Galin groaned.

A bottle of wine rolled from the wreckage toward them and Galin grabbed it off the street. “Not all bad luck, looks like. The good stuff too, and here Declan was saying he didn’t have any. The prick.” He knocked the neck off the bottle with his falchion and took a long drink before offering it to Katja. “So, where’s home for you, lass, these days? Mine seems a bit… indisposed at the moment and I need somewhere to sit down and make sense of what in the nine hells and the Maker’s heaven just happened. And do mind the bag, it’s some valuable stuff.” He pushed the falchion into his belt without a scabbard and wordlessly took the rest of the wine from her and downed it in the blink of an eye, tossing the empty bottle into the wreckage of the tavern. “So lead on, would you? Or do I have to do everything myself again?” He tilted his head back and let out a braying laugh to the sky. “Times change, people bloody don’t.”

The force with which Galin grabbed the back of her tunic and pulled her away took her by surprise, though she found herself feeling grateful in the moment - at least he had the sense to pull her away from the gaping rift opening in the ground, something she herself had not been bright enough to do. She got up when he released her, eyes locked on him as he moved back toward the opening. She did as she was instructed, grabbing the bags from the bar and waiting for Galin’s signal, at which she followed his instruction to the letter.

When the events had unfolded and the pair had made it fairly unscathed out of the now collapsing tavern, Katja could do nothing for a few moments but blink in disbelief, staring at the wreckage. She snapped back to reality as Galin accused her of being bad luck, and made a clicking sound with her tongue in response. She snatched the wine out of his hands unceremoniously as he offered it to her, taking a long drink from the bottle and being careful so as not to cut her lips on the jagged glass. She remained silent as he took the bottle back from her, tossing it back towards the once tavern after he had drained it.

“It’s nothing to look at, but it’s this way,” she said, turning on her heel in the direction of the shack she had made her home, the bag she had grabbed from the bar still firmly in her grasp. With Galin in tow, she took the five-minute walk from the tavern more towards the edge of the village, stopping at a dilapidated shack. She fished a key out from her belt pouch and unlocked the shoddy door, pushing it open.

Inside, a straw-stuffed mattress was against one wall, a shelf next to it with a few odds and ends on it. A wooden crate sat at the end of the mattress, a few different swords and daggers tucked into it, each in various states of repair. A map was tacked on the wall, with charcoal marks crossing out some of the cities and villages. There was also a small table and a chair near the door. Katja lay the bag on the floor near the table as the pair walked in, lighting the single lantern that sat on the table’s surface to give the room a bit of life.

She looked at Galin, and for a moment it seemed as though she were at a loss for words. There was a part of her that wanted to scream at him for not being immediately as excited as she had been to see him again, call him an idiot and be done with it - and another part of her that wanted to jump on him and knock him to the floor, kissing him with the passion that she had a year ago. Unable to decide between the two, she chose silence.

“Thank you,” she said, rather quietly, after a moment. “For getting me away from that, well.. Whatever that was,” she said, her brow furrowing as she thought back to what had taken place in the tavern. “Glad I didn’t end up in that hole with those poor blokes that fell in,” she said. She walked over towards the mattress and leaned towards the wall, standing back up with a brown bottle in her hand. With her free hand she tipped over the crate holding weapons and dragged it over to the table, flipping it over as she set the bottle on the table. She sat down on the underside of the crate and gestured for Galin to take the single chair.

She pulled the cork out of the bottle and took a pull before pushing it towards Galin. “Whiskey,” she said, grimacing at the burn she felt in her throat. “Not that fancy Highland whiskey you introduced me to, but it’s better than trying to comprehend this with nothing to drink,” she said with a sharp, bitter laugh.

After a moment of silence, she spoke again. “I thought you were dead,” she said quietly, her eyes fixated pointedly on the floor. “Didn’t think I’d see you again.” She drew in a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “Kind of seems like you may have preferred that,” she added, though there was no sharpness to her words, no ire. It was merely a statement, a reflection of what she had summarized when he had denied his identity. “Glad you’re not dead, though,” she added, still averting her gaze.

“I washed up on shore with Aelfric,” she said, though the question hadn’t been asked. “He wasn’t dead, not yet, but I couldn’t save him,” she said, her fingers moving to the slight scar on her face - the scar had been given to her by a scathing blow from the morningstar that Aelfric had wielded during a training spar. “I tried,” she said, her voice still with no emotion. “He was coughing, sputtering, the sea in his lungs. Bastard was terrible at swinging that morningstar and terrible at dying,” she said with a cold laugh.

“Can’t remember the name of the village I ended up in, but I made my way here. Figured a haven for pirates would give me the best chance of hearing something of the men, if there was anyone left,” she said, trailing off as she realized she was going deep into details that hadn’t been asked of her.

“What happened to you?”

“Damn right, it sure isn’t much to look at,” Galin quipped as he tossed the heavy bags down near the straw mattress. “Seen worse, lived in worse even, so I don’t think I’ll be too offended by the lack of liveried servants coming to wash the dust of the road from my cloak.” He began to open the bags, each filled with gear that he had salvaged from the wreck of the small invasion fleet he and Katja had been a part of almost a year before. Most of his own armor had survived the wreck of the ship, as it had been in shallow, tidal waters, but his men, most already armored for battle, had not been so lucky. “And you’re welcome. There’s no sense in letting a perfectly good mediocre thief die in an abyss-looking floor hole if you can help it. Especially you.” He smiled a little, then grimaced at the smell of the leather liner of his mail hauberk. “Bloody man, let it run to mold,” he muttered, and tossed it onto the mattress. Next he hauled out the hauberk itself, luckily not rusted terribly he noted, and a plate cuirass.

He politely declined the offer of the chair and stayed focused on his equipment, running his hands almost lovingly over the hilt of his sword as he unwrapped the fleece that surrounded it. “I was dead, near enough,” he said softly, not really looking at Katja as he laid out his arms like some sort of ritual, and in a way, it was. He had locked this life away after it took everything from him and now he was returning to it because there was likely no other option. When the world itself began to swallow people whole, it was not the time to sit drinking and unloading pirate ships in a backwater port. The Maker would not see dying in a back alley, pissing blood, as a worthy end to one of the faithful. Instead, he had decided in that tavern, he would have to accept that call again, even with its pain.

“A pulley hit me in the head and knocked me into the seas. Our ship, remember, was closest to shore, but you seem to have been swept farther south than I was. We were, remember, a day away from landing and storming the castle, so within our enemy’s reach. When I came to on the beach, I gathered the handful of men that survived and did my best to bring in our gear from the wreck. A day later, riders appeared, a hundred at least, on the crest of a hill above us. I hid this gear, my only possessions left, in a cave by the wreck, and faced them in a dead man’s armor.” He paused and finally took a sip of the whiskey. “It was a massacre.”

“They killed everyone but me, and me they cut and stabbed until I fell, but they did not let me die. Instead, they carried me back to the lord’s stronghold and I spent a year in his cells, struggling to stay alive as I felt my mind begin to fray. Thank the Maker he died and his cousin took the lands. He had no bad blood with me so I was released. I returned to that beach and got all this,” he gestured to the war gear, “and ended up here. I traded the gear to the taverner as a surety for my bills in case I did not pay, and I lived as you found me. I didn’t look for survivors after that because, after the beach, I knew in my heart there could not have been.” He straightened up and passed her back that bottle. “I’m glad I was wrong.”

Screwing up his face, he pulled the stinking leather coat on, feeling the familiar weight as he fastened the clasps. “Now, I know I’m getting the hell out of this place and you’re more than welcome to come along. I know a man with a fast sailing brig that can have us safe in Adeluna by tomorrow night if the winds are right and the day after if not. This is all I own, really,” he said, considering how best to armor himself for what he assumed would be chaos at the docks. “Pack what you need, and we’ll head to the wharf. That is,” he said with a hint of a smile while he fastened his cuirass, “if you’re coming.” He put his mail coat back in the leather bag and strapped his war belt on again so it hung where it had so many times before. His sword was high on his left side and his war hammer in a loop on the right, with a dagger beside it. A little time with a barber and he would look a proper soldier again, he thought with a laugh. The rest, some odds and ends, he shoved in with the mail and slung it over his left shoulder. “Oh, and bring the whiskey.”

As they moved through the streets toward the docks, more and more people came into view. Galin looked over at Katja. “Well, looks like we may have to do this the hard way, so be ready.” He overheard people speaking in panicked tones about more rifts opening around the city, buildings collapsing and people lost to the voids. “Maker’s balls, sounds worse than it looked. I haven’t heard a damned thing about this until just now Kat. How about you?” He did not have time to wait for her answer. The brig that he had planned to sail south on was at the far end of a smaller quay and people were already starting to press down, begging to be let out of the city, and the shipmasters were starting to sense panic and profit in equal measure. A man shoved into Galin and tried to moved past him but the old soldier elbowed him just below the belt and then grabbed his war hammer from the loop on his belt. Using it to force a way down the quay, shoving, prodding, and occasionally braining a man with butt end, Galin made it to the gangplank with Katja in tow. “Querin, you owe me a favor,” he called and the stern looking captain simply inclined his head and waved at the gangway. “We’re square,” Galin said as he and Katja came aboard and staked out their own place on the deck.

“Now, first, that whiskey, and then tell me whatever you’ve heard. It’s bad enough to make me put this on again so I need to know all I can.”