Path of Revenge by Russell Kirkpatrick

Tell me, fisherman, would the Hegeoman of this puerile village give you or your family a moment’s thought if threatened with the loss of the hundred gold coins we offer for your son? Would he not be much more likely to hand your family over to the two Recruiters who followed them to his house?’
    ‘Betrayer!’ Noetos cried, consumed by fury, and leapt at his tormentors. The bridge gave way under his left foot.
    Yawing crazily, it threw him towards the gully twenty paces below. His right foot snagged in the sleeve that housed the pin. His ankle twisted painfully, but held. For a moment he hung out over the gully, and the dry, rocky watercourse below him spiralled as he swung; then the bridge tilted back and he dragged himself up to the path. Improbably, the stone carving still remained nestled in his belt.
    The leader of the Recruiters hissed his annoyance—his reaction telling the fisherman they wished him dead—and signalled his fellows to scramble across the gully as best they could. Noetos turned and ran.
    Despair rose to smother his fear. Undoubtedly the beast told the truth. He had lost everything in one dreadful afternoon except his own life, and that now appeared forfeit. He sprinted away from The Crater, down towards Red Rocks Lane and the sea, working feeling into his ankle as he ran.
    They were fifty paces behind him when he reached Red Rocks Lane, and he knew by the time he reached Beach Lane he had come to the end of his endurance. He was a strong man, he knew that, a strength born of twenty years on the boats, but that strength was concentrated in his upper body. His lungs still had air, but his calves felt like tree stumps.
    There was only one place he could make use of his advantages. To his right lay the boats of the village. At the far end of the row, the largest. The Arathé.
    Now for it. Using the last of his strength, he stumbled across the dry mid-tide sands. Curse the tide! He would have to drag the boat across the beach to the water. Impossible. Give up now.
    Still he tried. Stubborn ! The Arathé was slim and lightweight but it was a large boat, easily holding a crew of three, and usually it took all of them to launch her. The nets alone weighed as much as any one of them could carry, but there were no nets in her today. Noetos grabbed her stern and pulled hard, but she did nothing but squirm around on the sand.
    One last refuge, then. Kicking off his sandals, the fisherman ran a hundred paces out into the surf, then threw himself into the water where the deep channel flowed. With relief he saw the tide was still going out, and the current surged along with him. Burdened as he was by the stone carving, he employed his powerful frame to swim out towards the reef, away from his pursuers.
    ‘We have most of what really matters,’ the head Recruiter remarked to his two companions as they watched their quarry swim away. ‘With patience, we will obtain it all. Bilitharn has the mother and the boy, and the father seems resourceful enough to mount some sort of rescue attempt.’
    ‘Perhaps we could exchange the woman for the stone?’ one of his companions suggested.
    ‘It will not be necessary. He will come to us, and we will deal with him when he does. We will leave now, cutting short the rest of our journey. I feel certain that when we arrive at the Great Keep with the golden-voiced boy and the huanu stone, we will be able to name our own reward.’
    ‘Could the father cause us any problems?’ the second Recruiter asked.
    The head Recruiter gazed out into the harbour, where a faint splashing and flat wake marked the progress of the surprising fisherman. ‘No,’ he said after a pause. ‘No man is dangerous when what he holds dear is in the hands of his enemies.’ He cupped his hand in an unmistakable gesture. ‘Such a man moves with caution, lest he harm that which he wishes to redeem. We have nothing to fear from him.’
    It took Noetos an hour to swim out to the reef. Once, more than