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The god of water and the oceans, Aquile, was very benign indeed, as was his daughter, Dismal, the goddess of wind. For the ocean remained calm, and the wind took hold of the sails of the boat with such force that they practically flew out across the waves. The rain did not cease and Prolur feared the boat might well sink due to the precipitation gathering on the weathered deck.
The boat was small and the crew minimal—ten men, including the captain and the ship's cook. They were all dark-skinned, and they dressed in vibrantly colored outfits. Traders from Laidcon, a peninsula in the southeast that lived on trade, but Freido and his men were freelancers. Their boat needed its speed to avoid government ships and pirates, but Prolur was certain that the crew had done their share of pirating as well. A vessel displaying the tell-tale signs of scorch marks or scratches from boat hooks had seen more than friendly trade.
He was standing at the stern of the boat looking out over the water, letting the wind caress his face. The rain fell les intensely the clouds allowing the sun to show itself and it allowed a hint of a rainbow to form in the distance. It looked very much like a bridge across the sea, reflecting itself in its calm darkness. Prolur leaned against the railing of the boat. They had been at sea no more than a couple of hours, and he was already longing for solid ground. He still had a while left, though, if Dismal continued to smile at them. Freido snuck up behind him and smiled his wide smile as Prolur turned to him. The creaking deck announcing his approach.
“Do not worry, Father. We will arrive safely,” Freido told him and patted him on the back. “My crew and ship are the best you will ever find along the southern coast.”
Prolur sat down on a wooden bench that ran along the side of the railing. Freido sat beside him and pulled out a small glass from his belt. He then produced a bottle of something nondescript from under the bench and filled the glass. He offered some to Prolur, who nodded his head and then sniffed the brown liquid. It made his eyes water and he turned his head for a moment. Undoubtedly, the captain made his own liquor below deck, fermented exotic fruits from the orchards of Laidcon. The product was infamous in the south and had landed many a sailor in trouble when drinking during shore leave. Prolur took a sip and winced at the sharp tinge of strong alcohol. Friedo chuckled and drank freely from the bottle.
They sat quietly and stared off into the horizon for a while until Friedo broke the silence. “I heard that there has been some trouble in the kingdom lately,” he said before taking another sip from his bottle.
“Yes,” Prolur replied. “Things have not been easy since the old king died.”
“I heard that he was a good ruler.”
“Better than most. He was a warrior.” Prolur paused for a moment. “He did what he believed was required of him. What he thought was best for the kingdom.”
“This new one is having many killed I have been told.” Friedo spoke haugarian, but with a broken accent, the language being very different from his native tongue.
“He is protecting himself, he says. Getting rid of those who might oppose or harm him.”
“I see. Is that not always the way of kings?” Friedo asked with a smile. “A ruler must clean house in order to create his own legacy. For otherwise he might not rule for any length of time.”
“I suppose you are correct,” Prolur tried to act disinterested in this line of conversation so Freido might leave him alone.
“Have you heard the old laiden pirate tune, The Song of Kings?” Freido turned and looked at Prolur.
“I have, long ago.” The classic shanty was a short ditty, counting nearly thirty various rulers under a minute. Often used in pubs to measure how drunk a man was by how many kings he could remember.
“Then you are aware that it ends with the line and the chaos ended” Freid sang the passage. “The tune was created to reveal what happens to a kingdom when the crown passes from ruler to ruler far too quickly. A long rule is a great rule for the kingdom.”
Freido’s bottle was now empty, and he rose. “Supper will be ready soon, Father. The cook will ring the bell when it is. I will see you below deck.” Freido bowed and wandered away.
Prolur sat by himself and pondered the words of the captain. He was well aware that The Song of Kings detailed the dark years in the history of Laidcon. Thirty rulers in fifteen years. According to the history books in the monastery library, the constant unrest came about because the new ruler refused, or forgot to weed out traitors. King Crauco of Haugar had claimed the throne through subversion and a purge of court was necessary, but he would have liked it if they had kept him out of it.
The bell rang, and he joined the crew below deck in the dining room. The ship only had four rooms below, of which the dining room was the largest. Next to it lay the kitchen, barely big enough to fit the rather large cook. Opposite the dining room lay two sleeping quarters, one slightly larger than the other containing three cots hanging above each other lining the walls. This was where the crew slept. They had assigned Prolur the other room that contained one cot and a desk. This was usually used by Freido, but he had given it up for their most honored guest. This was where Prolur spent most of the voyage. Most of the time he just sat by the desk, staring at the dark wooden walls or lying in the cot, thinking of the past and pondering what the future held for him on the other side of the vast body of water. If anything, life in the monastery had taught him the virtue of boredom. In the army, there was always something needed doing. When night fell, his body would be so weary he passed out in his tent. Then he would listen to the raucous laughter of fellow soldiers. They needed it to vent, to deal with the loss of comrades or the vicious acts the heat of battle had demanded of them. Listening to them was enough for Prolur, and on the boat, it was very much the same. The sound of creaking wood, the cook humming a tune in the kitchen and footfalls overhead. The melody of a vessel moving across water.
The wind did not continue to blow as strongly, and therefore it wasn’t until the morning of the third day that the lookout spotted the shores of Saurania. Prolur rose from his bed. Since he was unable to sleep, he thought he might as well watch as the boat approached the harbor.
It was still dark outside, and a crescent moon looked down on the small boat through a break in the clouds as it glided over the water. The air was warm, and the wind blew ever so slightly, just enough to ruffle the sail. Prolur walked over to the stern, nodding an acknowledgment to the crew member standing at the helm, and running his fingers across the railing as he moved. Mist lay heavy along the coastline, which was visible only as a black stripe through the fog. Saurania and his future lay before him, and it was growing ever closer. It brought him back to the first time he had seen the coast of Saurania all those years ago.
Then he was merely fifteen years old. A young soldier on his way across the ocean together with hundreds upon hundreds of men on their first campaign. They came aboard twenty warships and set their feet on Sauranian soil early in the morning before the sun had even peeked above the horizon. The Sauranians never expected it—not at that time. King Daiun III was a great strategist, and the campaign was the final stage of years of careful planning. They began with King Benlo Sadda II, father of both Daiun III and the current king Crauco I. Prolur and his division of infantry soldiers began marching towards Barnavor with the words of then Lord Craco echoing in their minds. He had captivated them with a fiery speech about how it was their destiny as the heroes of Haugar, that Saurania was rightfully theirs, as was the rest of the world. He lit the fire of aggression in them, and so they marched, towards their destiny. Prolur had little choice. He was born into a poor family, consisting of eight children, and in order to survive, he had joined the army together with his three brothers.
They had promised that the war would be over quickly—because of Sauranian inferiority—and that they would return with glory and riches befitting Haugar’s chosen few.
After the fall of Barnavor, the rest of Saurania was expected to follow easily, but Daiun had underestimated the strength and determination of the Sauranian Army.
The short war lasted twenty-five years and Prolur, who proved himself to be a great warrior, both skillful in the art of hand-to-hand combat and tactics, quickly rose in the ranks. A natural talent, one of his brothers had told him. It was what he was born to do. As Saurania was poised to fall, the king gave him the title of general and awarded him a knighthood. His brothers never returned from the campaign, the victims of disease or battle, he never found out. With the knighthood came the spoils—a family crest and wealth. Prolur never saw his family after he joined the army. As the war was winding down, a new beginning dawned, and his memories of them faded as time passed. Yet he made certain that his awards also spread to his family so that they would not have to live in poverty, and they could take pride in nobility. By that time, the weariness of battle had come over him. The king sent him to stamp out the final enclaves of resistance in the remote villages of the Sauranian backcountry. It meant more killing and torturing.
Prolur blinked away the memories of crying women clutching the limp bodies of their children. The wind returned with newfound strength, and the ship sped up and headed into the mist. The dark shoreline came close, and Prolur could now make out the shapes of trees and the larger buildings of Barnavor in the distance. The moon was sinking, and a thin line of golden light shone under the dark billowing clouds, promising more rain. Freido came up beside him and held up a lit torch that he waved from side to side. On the far right of the coast, a similar light shone, and Freido turned around to his first mate and signaled him. Several sailors began running across the deck, and the boat turned to head in the direction of the navigational signal. As they came closer, they slowed, the mist thinned out, and a peninsula shot out from the shore. At the tip of the peninsula stood a big stone structure with a tower reaching towards the heavens. The top hidden by the dark of night. Around it lay several smaller buildings, all seemingly under construction, and on the water lay a small dock with a tiny rowboat bobbing next to it.
“There is your new home, Father,” Freido said, and extinguished he torch by dipping it in the water. “It will be quite a sight when completed.”
The boat crept closer and closer to the dock of the unfinished monastery. This time he was approaching Saurania as a punishment for the sins he committed on his previous visit. Escaping one’s past was a more difficult feat than he had imagined.