Dragon! Book Two: "Revenge"

CHAPTER SIX

Tad was not eager to go aboard another boring ship and tried to argue with Gareth as he took them to the ship in the early evening, just after dark. He put up almost as much fight as he had about taking a nap earlier. After departing a port, one day at sea on a ship was much like any other for a small boy. No places to play and the same routine.

But Gareth had an important job to do, and Tad continued to act like a seven-year-old, which shunted attention away from Gareth while drawing attention to the pair of them. Talking to him might help, but probably not. A nanny of some sort might help, but Gareth feared to have anyone too close because they might discover some of his secrets. Besides, it could place them in danger, too.

“It’s a bigger ship. You’ll like it.”

“Ship floors tip and makes me sick.”

“You and I have to talk. Man to man.”

“I thought we were going to stay at that big house.”

The Inn. He had paid for a room but when the City of Adelaide pulled into port his plans changed. He’d expected to stay at least several days waiting for the next ship, but when he saw the Brotherhood he almost panicked. He’d carefully asked at the inn if anyone had ever seen any of the strange passengers in green robes who arrived. None had, although several had traveled to the mainland and had seen them there. But never in the islands.

Blackie had spotted another of the king’s ships searching the tropical seas for him a few days ago, and now two of the Brotherhood arrived in St. Michelle. There was a new, evil voice he’d heard in his mind. His father’s home was attacked. And Tad’s new mental abilities came to light. It had become a busy time.

Gareth placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder and urged him up the gangplank after stopping at the inn long enough to grab their luggage. An officer answered questions and accepted the coins for passage.

The crewman asked their names and welcomed them. He escorted them to their cabin while explaining the ship’s rules and eating arrangements. Their cabin was little different in style or size than the supply ship. After dropping their luggage onto the single bed, they left to explore the ship. Several times Gareth paused to pass a few words with sailors. He would again leave their minds fuzzy and unable to recognize Gareth or his grandson, let alone verify they had ever traveled on the ship.

Tad said, “It smells funny. Bad.”

“Better than the last ship. You said that one stank.”

“Do we have to go to bed right away?”

“Nope. Why don’t we take a quick tour of the ship and maybe sit outside and breathe in some salt air?”

While sitting with two sailors on the bow, both of whom looked hardly older than Tad, he saw a woman board the ship. As she passed under an oil lamp, he recognized her as the one who had followed the Brothers ashore. That was odd. She arrived this afternoon and sailed again on the midnight tide. Why would a woman arrive on an island and then leave later the same day for the same port she’d sailed from?

He watched as she raised her hand to pull the edge of her bonnet forward as if hiding her face. The simple act drew his attention more than her travel arrangements.

The two young sailors sitting beside them were playing a game with squares of wood placed on a board. They were teasing Tad and threatening to teach him how to gamble. Maybe he could borrow a few coppers from his father to play?

Gareth smiled back and considered allowing Tad to play and teach them a lesson. With Tad touching minds with him, and Gareth reading the minds of the two little gamblers, Tad could earn himself some spending money. He said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Listen, Tad and I have to head to our cabin. We have some unpacking to do.”

“We do?” Tad protested.

“Yes. And we have things to discuss,” he turned to the sailors. “Have a nice evening and I’m sure we’ll talk on the voyage.”

First thing in the morning, he’d locate the first officer and get the names and occupations of other passengers, a normal request. Gareth believed there was only one other passenger, the woman who followed the brothers. Had she simply walked ashore after them—or had she been following them?

Tad dumped his travel bag onto the bunk and started filling the drawers built in under the bed. When he finished, the four drawers all held only a few items each, with no drawers for Gareth’s things, but Gareth didn’t object. “Tad, you understand we are here on a very important job?”

“Momma told me.”

“Today when you didn’t want to take a nap, and you were angry. We can’t have that again. It will bring bad people to us.”

Tad gave him the look seven-year-old boys use when they no longer believe children’s stories.

Gareth said, “I’m going to tell you something else important. You can never tell anyone else without talking to me first. Promise?”

The boy finished loading his drawers and tossed his empty travel bag into a corner. He sat beside Gareth and nodded, solemn as if he were forty instead of seven.

There seemed to be no other way but tell him outright. If Tad didn’t understand to keep it to himself, or if he didn’t try to control his mind, Gareth could influence him to either help him be quiet or to confuse him so he would think of other things. “You have a special power. You and I can speak without words.”

He waited for Tad’s surprised reaction. When none came, he tried again. “I can talk to you without words even when I’m in another room.”

Tad shrugged. “I know that.”

The revelation took Gareth by surprise. “You do?”

“I can always hear you in my head when I listen for you. But I sometimes get confused in my head. Who is thinking? You or me. What does it mean to influence me?”

Gareth locked his mind down. The boy had already heard too much. He hears everything I think? “It means to fill your mind with other things so you cannot pass on information you shouldn’t.”

“Like about us talking inside our heads?”

“How long has this been going on with you? How long have you been listing to what is in my head?”

“I could always hear you.”

“Well, now I can hear you, too.”

“Isn’t that good?”

“No. The problem is that you don’t know how to only touch my mind. Just you and me. When you speak with your mind, everyone hears you.”

“Is that why you smother me?”

“Smother?”

“You hold down my thoughts so I can’t talk to you.”

Gareth settled back on the bed and tried to think of where this was going and how to approach it in a manner a seven-year-old would understand.

Tad said, “I understand more than you think.”

“How much of what I just thought did you hear?”

“All of it. You said you wondered where this was going and how to talk to me in a way a seven-year-old boy would know.”

Orderly shouting came from the decks above. Feet ran in response. Orders were issued. Tad looked at Gareth. “We’re leaving.”

“Yes. This is not the best time to talk. Want to go above decks and watch?”

“You do, so I do too,” Tad said, obviously still reading Gareth’s feelings, if not his words.

Tad walked out the door and climbed the steep ladder to the main deck. They stood out of the way, near the stern where a door led to the crew’s quarters. Sailors pulled the heavy ropes that tied the ship to the pier aboard and coiled them, and an officer, not the Captain, shouted more orders. One sail was raised. The wind was light and the tide running. The ship pulled slowly away from the pier with the wind and tide pushing it. The sail captured the wind, and the helmsman turned the ship gently to face the open sea.

Tad nudged Gareth. “She peeked out the door, saw us and ducked inside.”

Gareth directed his mind to Tad’s. “The woman following the Brothers?”

“Yes. I saw her for just a second. She acted scared.”

The answer came so naturally that if asked, Gareth believed Tad would say he had heard the words out loud.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Tad corrected. “I know the difference.”

“I think we should go to our cabin and catch some sleep.”

“I know what you’re thinking. Tomorrow you will begin to teach me how to use my powers.”

Gareth laughed out loud as he ushered the boy ahead of him.

After breakfast they walked the sunny decks for a short time, then Tad suggested they get started on the lessons. He seemed anxious to learn.

Gareth said, “I don’t even know where we start, but yes.”

Once in the room, they faced each other. By the mid-day meal, Gareth was astounded to find the boy had jumped through all the mental hoops Gareth provided with ease. His only drawback was that he could not control his thinking to direct it at a single mind, yet. His thoughts would have burst from his mind like fireworks, spreading his thoughts to all who could hear if Gareth had not dampened them, or smothered them as Tad called it.

But even dampening Tad’s thoughts didn’t mean some energy might escape beyond the ship, and Gareth tried to keep it to a point that only he and the boy could hear.

By the time the ship passed the twin statues of the famous mythical Rete, at the headlands of Reteam harbor near dusk a few days later, Tad could already partially control his thinking. When he attempted to direct it at Gareth, they touched minds and spoke as if in the same room. However, Tad had not learned to control his wild thinking, especially when angry. There were times when Gareth had to use all his skill to squelch the thoughts and keep them from spreading to all sensitives, and yet, he believed some had escaped.

The commercial area of the Reteam port held over twenty piers extending into the deep water like fingers reaching from the shore. Ships tied up to both sides. Further along were hundreds of other piers for small craft, like fishing and shrimping boats. As the City of Adelaide dipped her sails and navigated closer to one of the piers, Gareth saw a pair of Brothers watching the ship.

Keeping his reaction to a minimum, he searched the other piers and docks. On almost all he found pairs of Brothers. More of them strolled the cargo loading area. Casually, he motioned for Tad to return to their cabin. Once safely inside Gareth touched the minds of each crewman and blurred the images of the two passengers, making them both be remembered as old women, the wives of traders who frequented the vessel.

Tad sensed his frightened mood and sat on the bed, watching but not speaking. Gareth moved to the porthole and pulled the dark curtain aside. As the ship turned into the pier, the current and wind moved it closer, more Brothers arrived until there were ten spread out on the land and the pier. Lanterns on tall poles were lit in anticipation of unloading passengers and cargo. Stevedores gathered in groups, waiting for the ship to finish tying up.

“Are they bad men?” Tad asked.

“Well, not exactly bad, but not good for us, either. We’ll want to avoid them. When we get to Freeport, we need to get off this ship without people like them knowing we were there.”

“How can we do that?”

“I’m not sure, yet.”

“You could have Blackie rescue us. He could dive down at them, and they’d run like sheep from a dog.”

Gareth chuckled and tried to ease the mind of the boy. “No, we don’t want to do that. He’s far away and waiting for us in the mountains, and all we need to do is sneak past the men out there at the next port if there are any of them.”

Tad nodded and said, “There will be more.”

Gareth had been considering that. But maybe there were no more inland if they got past the ones watching the docks. However, if he could see ten, it made sense there were more he couldn’t see. He calculated and decided there might be as many as twenty Brothers, or ten pairs watching the ships and port. Reteam was a small port city, unlike Freeport, which was a major city. How many of the Brotherhood were in Reteam on a regular basis? Maybe three pairs at most? If that was true, where had the other seven pair come from? And why?

Answering his own question, he decided they must have come from the surrounded towns and villages, meaning the Brotherhood was concentrating all of their attention on arriving ships. It also meant that if he managed to get inland, there would be far less of the Brotherhood to evade because they were all at the ports.

If Reteam held this many brothers searching, how many would Freeport have waiting for arriving ships? A hundred? It didn’t matter. He felt certain they were waiting and searching for him, although he had no idea of how they knew he would arrive on a ship. He’d love to touch minds with one of them, but they were sensitives also, and would know instantly what he had done. They were probably hoping for such a mistake.

Tad eased to the porthole and watched with him, but said nothing. Gareth opened his mind enough for Tad to enter.

Gareth allowed his mind to reach out to one of the friendly young sailors they had met the first night on the ship. Gently, he touched minds. Having seen the sailor, and spoken with him, it was far easier to make mental contact because he was familiar. “There are so many of the Brotherhood out there, I wonder what’s going on?”

The sailor lifted his head from the line he was coiling and looked to the pier, only a stone’s throw away. He said, “Spike, have you ever seen so many of those green men?”

“Always a couple of them around, but never seen so many gathered at one time.”

Gareth heard the second voice in his mind as clearly as the young sailor heard it in his ears. He pulled back. One by one he touched each crewman on the ship and suggested that they felt uncomfortable discussing anything with the Brotherhood. They would defy them by lying in answers to any questions, especially about the ship, the cargo, or passengers.

As expected, every crewman instantly leaped on the idea with glee. They already distrusted the Brotherhood and misleading them felt right. Gareth allowed them to do what came naturally, even if he did encourage it a little more than they might have if the ship carried different passengers.

Now Tad and Gareth could stay out of sight until the ship sailed, but they still faced, even more, odds in Freeport. More odds meaning more Brothers watching. Gareth glanced at Tad and said, “I know you don’t like ships. Maybe we should try to escape from this one at this port instead of going on.”

“I’ll pack.”

There was no hesitation in Tad. Not only did he not like ships, but he also didn't like the Brotherhood. Gareth gathered his things too and stuffed the little he carried with him in a bag much like those sailors carried over their shoulders. He felt the gentle bump as the ship nudged the pier, and almost at once the motion of the ship changed to one of being contained.

A knock came from the cabin door. Expecting to find a steward or crewman, Gareth was surprised to find a woman. Moreover, it was the woman who had followed the Brotherhood ashore in St. Michelle. Without asking, she pushed the door further open and slipped inside. She closed the door with a firm hand. She appeared both excited and scared.

“Can I help you?” Gareth managed to say.

“The other way around. I’m here to help you, Gareth.”