03 - Hour of the Daemon

  “I noticed it as it bumped up against one o’ the pilings,” Hans explained. “Caught it without trouble and pulled it close to wait for you.” He glanced down at the man below. “He ain’t moved once.” All three of them looked at once towards the slender shafts protruding from both the raft and the man stretched upon it, their fletchings stiff from river water, but still discernible. Someone had not wanted this man to get away alive.

  Then the man stirred. His hands twitched and his head shifted, turning to the side. Now they could see his face, and all three men gasped.

  “Fetch a healer immediately,” the harbourmaster told Fredrich. “Hurry!” Then he turned back to Hans. “Get Jan and Pieter,” he instructed the dockworker. “Tell them to take a skiff, bring it around, and pull that man onboard.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hans set his pole down and ran off searching for his fellows, leaving the harbourmaster alone, looking down at the man on the raft.

  At first glance, the harbourmaster had thought the man old, but now he saw that was not the case. It was the hair that had fooled him. It was white as snow, and so he had assumed the stranger to be elderly. Examined more carefully, the man could not be beyond middle-age. His face was horrible, mere shreds of flesh clinging to raw tissue, with bone showing through in several places, but beneath the terrible damage it did not seem the face of an old man. Nor did the hands and feet seem withered enough to be those of an older fellow. Why was his hair white? An illness? A family trait? Or some terrible shock?

  The man was wearing tattered rags, and the harbourmaster doubted there would be anything in those cloth scraps to identify the stranger. If he didn’t wake up, they might never find out who he was.

  “Welcome to Nuln,” the harbourmaster whispered finally. “I hope, whoever you are, that you survive long enough to see it.” And, he added silently, for us to learn who you are, and to know what happened to leave you in this sorry state. For surely there was a tale there. He only hoped they would have a chance to hear it.

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