Traveler of the Blue Road
Part 2 - Sailing into a Trap
Chapter 4 - Escape
The captive sailors gathered nervously around Chagum as he outlined his plan to escape. When he reached the part where he’d need to steal a ship, one of the sailors raised his hand.
“It seems that you’ll need a few men who can operate a ship,” he said. “Please allow me to accompany you, Your Majesty.”
Several other sailors raised their hands and begged to be allowed to speak.
Chagum’s face clouded over. “Wait. I appreciate the offer of help, but it will probably be difficult for anyone who isn’t Sangalese to navigate in these waters. Besides, anyone caught escaping could be killed to serve as an example to the rest of us. I don’t want anyone to sacrifice themselves for me.”
The first man to volunteer to come with him shook his head. “I am unmarried. I have no other family. Please make use of me however you see fit, Your Majesty.”
Another young man leaned forward. “I’m also single and have no family. I’m an advanced practitioner of rusagu, the traditional fighting style of our people. Ask anything of me, Your Majesty, and I will do it.”
Chagum remained silent. He had no time to think things over. It was true that having skilled sailors and warriors along to handle the ship would be a huge help. He glanced over at Jin, who nodded at him.
“All right,” Chagum said. “Then I’ll ask both of you for your assistance. Please tell me your names.”
“Tagal Tolkusu,” the first man said.
“Oru Narouzu,” the second man said.
Jin leaned in and whispered the the particulars of the plan to Tagal and Oru. The two men nodded in understanding. Jin and Oru got up and stood near the doorway of the hut. The other sailors were clearly worried about Chagum’s safety; they watched the movements of the would-be escapees very carefully.
“Your Majesty...” Ruin trailed off.
Chagum turned to face him and put a finger to his lips. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I’ll make it out of here. Brave sailors survive a storm and live to see better weather. I swear I’ll find some way to free you all. Until that time, do your best to survive.”
Tears overflowed in Ruin’s eyes. He looked down so that Chagum wouldn’t see him crying.
Four sailors removed their belts and tied them together to create a long rope. These four stood between Jin and Oru.
Jin made eye contact with the sailors standing near the door and nodded.
“We have a sick man in here!” one of the sailors yelled. “Oi! He’s really sick! We need water!”
The other sailors called out for water. The sound of their shouting was clearly audible on the other side of the door where their guards stood. As the sound of footsteps outside the door grew louder, Oru held up three fingers--there were three men outside the door.
“Wait,” a Sangalese guard called out in halting Yogoese. “We will bring water. Step back. ”
The door opened, revealing two guards and a man carrying a large water jug. The moment the man carrying water entered the hut, Jin slipped out of the hut behind him.
The guards noticed him immediately. Jin slammed the place below the first guard’ s ears with the blades of his hands, knocking him out instantly. The other guard unsheathed his sword and slashed at Jin; Jin dodged easily and brought his elbow sharply into the guard’s solar plexus. He followed the blow with a solid strike to the guard’ s lower stomach. Both guards wore chest armor, but their stomachs were completely unprotected. In the space of two breaths, Jin had incapacitated both of them.
Oru knocked out the man who’d brought in the water jar. Tagal left the hut behind Jin, with Chagum following. Oru brought up the rear.
The sailors who had made the rope with their belts started tying up the guards. “The rest is up to you,” one sailor said. “ Good luck.”
Jin and Tagal helped themselves to the swords the guards were carrying. Chagum also took a knife to help defend himself. It was Sangalese in style, so the grip felt a little strange.
There was a wide, sandy beach outside the hut. Jin gave the signal for Chagum and the others to hide beneath the hut, between the poles that supported its floor. Chagum crouched down under the hut.
“Look,” Jin whispered. “That’s where the other guards are staying. ” Jin left Chagum, Oru and Tagal where they were and started scouting the beach for a boat to steal. Oru and Tagal knelt on the sand under the hut and didn’t make a sound.
Waiting for Jin to come back seemed to take a long time. Chagum kept worrying that Jin had gotten caught somehow, or worse. He crossed and uncrossed his legs several times, feeling the urgent need to move.
Chagum wondered when the changing of the guard was. He watched the other hut from the cover of the prison hut’s foundation, waiting for the door to open. The night passed slowly. Oru didn’t move at all; he was as still and silent as a statue. Tagal remained standing beneath the hut and stared into the darkness.
Near dawn, the dim outlines of the trees beyond the beach and the guardhouse became visible again. Oru’s leg twitched. He pointed to a shadowy figure emerging from the trees.
It was Jin. He beckoned for them to come closer to him. Chagum, Oru and Tagal crawled out from under the prisoners ’ hut and sprinted toward Jin.
“There’ s a bay not far from here where some ships are docked,” Jin whispered. “I found a fishing boat that we should be able to manage. Follow me.”
Jin led them rapidly through the grove of pine trees behind the guardhouse. Just as they all broke into a run, someone inside the prisoners’ hut screamed.
The Yogoese sailors inside the prisoners’ hut watched over their Sangalese guards in shifts. They had been bound and gagged just like Yun. By the time Yun regained consciousness, Chagum was already hiding beneath the hut. When he came to, he struggled to understand what was happening; he only knew that something about the current situation had changed.
As Yun listened to the whispers of the men around him, he realized that Chagum had escaped. Jin had betrayed him.
What the hell is he thinking?!
Rage burned in Yun’s eyes. Jin had given into his emotions and defied the Mikado’ s orders. If Chagum fell into the King of Sangal’s hands--or the Emperor of Talsh’s--he could be used as a powerful bargaining chip against New Yogo.
Jin, you’re such an idiot.
Yun absolutely had to kill the Crown Prince. He struggled against the ropes binding his hands behind his back, but the more he struggled, the tighter the bonds became. Yun shifted impatiently toward the bound and gagged Sangalese guards sitting near him. He rubbed the edge of his gag against the metal fittings used to secure the chest armor of the closest guard. He was trying to get the fabric caught so that the fittings would pull it out. By slow degrees, the gag started to loosen; in less than a minute, Yun was able to spit the soaked cloth out of his mouth.
Yun took a deep breath and shouted at the top of his lungs: “ The prisoners are escaping! They’ve killed the guards! They’ re getting away!”
Yun repeated this shout as loudly as he could before the surprised sailors surrounding him could gag him again.
The hut swayed in the wind. Two guards that had come to relieve the others slammed the door open. Their weapons were drawn. In the dim light of dawn, the footprints of Chagum, Jin, Oru and Tagal were faintly visible on the beach. The guards turned around and chased after the escaped prisoners.
Chagum focused on nothing except running. Jin was out in front of him; Oru and Tagal were behind him. They’d been given Sangalese sandals as footwear when they’d been captured, but the shoes didn’t fit very well. The material of their jackets tore as branched snagged at them. They shed both their jackets and their shoes as they ran.
The grove’s palm trees started growing closer together. Tree roots grew thick and clustered on top of each other, forcing Jin and the others to slow down.
They crashed into a thicket of deep green nettles that were as sharp as tiny blades. Chagum shielded his face with his hands, gritted his teeth and kept running. Jin drew his sword with his left hand and started hacking a clear path through the hazardous vegetation. Their pursuers were closing the distance; it wouldn’t be long before they caught up. Jin kept hacking through the nettles and underbrush at a frantic pace.
They ran for a long time before emerging from the woods onto a sandy beach. Small huts dotted the shore; fishermen were already casting their nets into the sea. Chagum saw a few fishermen sailing in boats just offshore.
“Tagal, Oru, run faster!” Jin shouted. “Take that boat, there!”
Tagal and Oru sprinted down the beach. Their faces were covered in sweat. They fumbled at their belts to free the weapons they ’d taken from the guards.
“Your Majesty, follow them,” Jin said. “I’ll hold them off. Leave without me if I can’t make it.”
Armed Sangalese soldiers ran out of the trees above the beach. Jin faced them squarely and rushed to meet them.
Chagum kept running. Tagal and Oru scattered a group of terrified fishermen gathered on the beach and jumped onto an empty fishing boat. Chagum was right behind them. He cut the string that kept the sails from unfurling with his knife and prepared the boat to set sail based on what his grandfather had taught him. He ’d never made such preparations before, so his hands were clumsy at it.
“Tagal! Oru! Push us out!”
Tagal and Oru gave the boat a solid shove into the ocean on either side, then clambered into the boat. The fishermen on the beach shouted angrily at them and picked up their harpoons. Several harpoons flew toward the boat from the direction of the beach. Chagum felt a rush of warm air on his right side and leaned backwards. A harpoon cut into his left shoulder, sending pain like burning through his entire body.
The tip of the harpoon cut completely through his shoulder and poked out on the other side. “Your Majesty!” Tagal cried out. He dropped to his knees at Chagum ’s side.
“I’m...fine,” Chagum gritted out. “ Sail...the ship.”
Oru expertly adjusted the boat’s sail as he dodged more flying harpoons.
The pain in Chagum’s shoulder was too severe for him to ignore, but he tried to focus past the pain so that he could see what was going on.
Jin was still fighting on the beach. At least ten soldiers surrounded him, but he blocked all their strikes and kept them away from the other boats on the shore.
“Ah!” Chagum sucked in a painful breath. Some of the soldiers took up nets that the fishermen had left to dry in the sun the previous day. They cast the nets over Jin, but the nets were wide and large, so Jin managed to avoid getting caught.
Then a tall man who appeared to be the leader of the soldiers got behind Jin and cast a more targeted net over him from where he couldn’t see or dodge it. Chagum saw Jin being overwhelmed by the soldiers, but he was too far away to make out what happened next.
The terrible pain of his wound made Chagum’s stomach turn over. He tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry. Every breath he took hurt. He broke into a cold sweat and tried not to pass out.
Chagum collapsed face-up on the deck with the sail directly above his head.
“Your Majesty! Crown Prince Chagum!” Tagal propped his head up so that the tip of the harpoon wouldn’t scrape across the deck. “What should we do? Where should we go?”
“Anywhere!” Chagum shouted. “Use the wind to get away from here, quickly! I can’t help you right now--just be careful. There are reefs, and the water’s shallow. ”
Tagal looked down at the harpoon in his shoulder. Even though the tip had completely passed through Chagum, there was very little blood. The wound would probably gush if Tagal tried to remove the harpoon. To make things worse, the tip of the harpoon was spiked with several sharp barbs. Pulling it out would injure Chagum even more.
Chagum’s eyes rolled back in his head; he was unconscious. Tagal kept supporting his head and shoulders. His face was sweaty and very pale.
“Oi,” Oru called out, “there’s a ship over there! It ’s headed right toward us on the starboard side!”
Tagal looked over his shoulder. A Sangalese ship of medium size was gliding across the water. The ship was so close that its shadow touched the edges of the fishing boat. Sangalese soldiers were lined up on the ship ’s deck. The tips of their spears and shields glinted in the light of the rising sun.
“Huh? Why? How did they get here so fast?”
The soldiers they’d fled from initially were still on the beach, so far away they were scarcely visible. Where had this ship come from? How had they known to find them here?
Tagal and Oru exchanged glances. There was no hope of outpacing this ship; they were too close. They couldn’t fight their way past them, either: the two of them couldn’t possibly win against a ship full of soldiers. Crown Prince Chagum was severely injured and needed immediate help.
The ship halted alongside the fishing boat and used long poles with grips on the end to pull the boat all the way in. Tagal and Oru could do nothing but sit and stare as the side of their boat contacted the Sangalese ship ’s hull.
The soldiers and sailors standing on the deck were laughing and calling out to one another as if they didn’ t have a care in the world. Even the older men looked as happy and excited as young children at a festival.
Oru frowned deeply. “These don’t look like any soldiers I’ve ever seen before,” he muttered. The chest armor they wore was old and unpolished. They stood in relaxed poses and didn’t appear to want a fight.
Suddenly, the soldiers on the deck formed two lines, making a path for a young man standing behind them.
Tagal and Oru blinked in shock. They had never seen the man before, but they could tell at a glance that he was Yogoese. He carried a sword in his right hand. Suddenly, he leaped from the deck of the ship onto the fishing boat.
“It seems he’s alive,” the man said as he stared down at Chagum.
Tagal frowned up at him. The man spoke Yogoese, but his accent was strange.
The man fixed Tagal with piercing eyes. “I’ll only save him if you go back and don’t fight. Understand?”
Chagum desperately needed medical treatment. Tagal and Oru nodded in agreement.
I don't know if I've already asked this question on a different post but how old is Ruin supposed to be?
ReplyDeleteAlso, um, Chagum is apparently fainting on the deck but has the stamina to shout and give instructions at the same time? I'm pretty sure if I just fell on the deck and hit my head (or fell because I was too dizzy to stand) I wouldn't be having a lucid conversation with anybody for at least a minute.
IIRC Ruin was 8 when Chagum got him in Guardian of the Spirit, so he is probably 12 now (Chagum is 15).
DeleteI translate these things; I don't write them :P And he's desperate, so it's not impossible.