Free A Warrior's Legacy by Guy Stanton III Page A

in no condition to do that by all
accounts.”
    Morning’s light showed an unbroken line of
forest all along the coast that we shadowed.
    “Tomorrow morning before it gets to light
we’ll send a small party ashore to fill some water barrels. I don’t
think the Western Kingdom is following our movements. The part of
their story about these eastern lands being forbidden to them I
believe in part. That forest looks entirely forbidding from here,
but we need the water.”
    “What about the disease? If we contact it we
can never go home for fear of spreading it to our own people.”
Captain Sargas said softly.
    “We have to risk it we need the water. I
have my doubts about the sickness part of the story though. If the
sorcerer gave the Western Kingdom a serum of some kind that saved
them from the disease, why then is this land still forbidden to
them?”
    Captain Sargas shrugged his shoulder, “That
I don’t know, but I do know that I’m grateful to be the captain of
this ship, which means I get to stay on board in the morning and
not go tramping around that forbidden forest.”
    I couldn’t argue with him there, I envied
his position in the moment to.
    He left and Gavin stepped up to the railing
with me, “I want to go along tomorrow.”
    I thought about immediately saying no, but I
decided against it.
    “Did you bring your sword along?” I asked
still staring out at the forest passing by.
    “Both of them!” He said emphatically.
    I smiled, “Well just bring one of them
tomorrow morning, hopefully that’ll be enough.”
    The outlying area of the forest was little
better than a glorified swamp where it met the sea. We coasted the
two boats through the early morning gloom of fog as quietly we
could.
    Finally after a circuitous route through a
series of boggy channels of stagnant seawater mixed with fresh
water we reached what appeared to be solid ground.
    It was a very damp forest that we stepped
into. There wasn’t that much undergrowth because the overhead
canopy cast off too much shade for much to grow. Besides the
occasional herbaceous wetland plants that carpeted the forest floor
here and there everything else was carpeted in green moss.
    The trees, the rocks, perhaps even the enemy
was covered in moss. Turning to the men who had come with me and
Gavin I said, “Talin, you and Holon keep your men here until we’ve
scouted the area out some and have found a potable source of
water.”
    They looked hesitant to obey my orders, but
they did as I said. They had been with me for years and I knew both
of them would rather accompany me than sit by the forest edge
waiting.
    Gavin and I made our way deeper into the
dark wet forest. There were no sounds of nature to herald us not
even a songbird’s twill, which only increased the eerie like
quality this place had to it. We were virtually silent except for
the slight rustling of plant leaves against our pants. The moss
deadened the sound of our passage and there was only a drippy
silence to be heard throughout the forest.
    The terrain was undulating and I headed for
where I thought water might be congregated in the folds of the
land. We slipped in and around massive tree trunks and around large
boulders.
    Areas of the forest still lay in fog, which
only aided the imaginative fear of what kinds of menacing monsters
lay just out of our sight. Rounding a tree I saw a pool of water
just where I had thought that there would be.
    We didn’t approach it immediately, but
instead we studied it and the surrounding forest closely. I
detected nothing in the stillness. Slowly we made our way down to
the pool of water.
    It appeared clear and of a sufficient
quantity as we had need of. I kept looking around at our
surroundings as Gavin kneeled down before the water and cupped some
of it with his hands to bring it up to his mouth to drink.
    I heard the water fall abruptly from his
hands to smack into the pool of water and looking back I watched as
he fell away from the water and