The of a Wendigo

The sky is dark, the moon is bright and the air is warm. You float on a small rowboat over a sea that reflects more stars than the sky seems to hold. The reflection leaves its depths impenetrable, but the mission you’re on floats in the forefront of your mind and its goal couldn’t be clearer. Go to Duke Fatheron Island, find the Wendigo pirate gang and kill its captain: Captain Wendy 'Go' Washkin.

Your guide, a salty old stick of a man who could have been mistaken for a line of rope used in a knot tying completion if not for the bush of a white beard on his face, had guided you here perfectly. The complexities of the deep currents winding through the vast archipelago -the Corin Islands, littered before the cost of Coronac itself- could fill several books, were someone of the mind to write them. Sadly, such a writer would have to be a native; someone born to them and lived and died by their flow, and such people had no need for books and would toothlessly tell you so with much vigour. Still, with nothing but a boat, a single ore, two days, and 15 silver pieces, he has brought you here.

The Island looms like a broken mountain and flickers with the muted, dotted lights of scattered activity. All your bribes, tips, and threats had given you this place and this time. Captain Washkin should be meeting one of her subordinate captains here, tonight. She couldn’t be taken when commanding a boat; the High lords of Mainland Coronac learned that many times over; land is her weakness, but no civilised land would tolerate her presence unless she it upon them by strength, which would be poor position for casual negotiation. As a result, when it comes time to parley with other captains, or stretch her legs, or do whatever it is ex-whore pirate lords do, she apparently goes here, to Duke Fatheron Island. Her little hideaway. Her unofficial weakness. It took a lot of time and work to learn its place. Were anyone allowed to speak about it casually, Wendigo Island is what it would be called.

The time to begin is mere minutes away, but it takes only seconds for you to recall everything you learned about her during the last two months of extensive investigation. It would be a tragic story if it didn’t have such a bestial result. You count the stages of her life off in your head, from past to present and least known to most. A pleasant costal town gets unpleasantly raided, a peasant girl gets captured by pirates and sold into slavery at 6. Being a girl, the turned whore by 7, and a ships whore by 11. By 15, she turned lecherous captain into a dead captain and promptly replaced him, leaving a slew of notable corpses in her wake. She captured the first ship sent to bring her in at 18, and used it and her own to capture the next ship in a long line. Now at 35 years of age, she has 26 ships of varying classes to her name and over 19 allied, all raiding the islands and mainland alike; from icy north to baking south, and even across the seas to the principalities in the east. Your interviews spoke of the savagery in those attacks, from the red faced oaths of high lords and merchants alike, to the look of sad despair on the faces of widows and newly expectant mothers. She’s truly a that has to be stopped, and fortunately, most of the world agrees.

The bounty on her currently stands at 50,000 gold pieces and includes land rights to the island of Selka which you have on good authority ‘isn’t bad’. You’re loathed to liken yourself with the opportunistic dealings of bounty hunters, but the prize does seem worth it: more money than you, your parents, or even the lord overseeing your hometown had ever seen; a volume that truly speaks of how dead the civilized world wants her.

Still, the comparison rankles. As an Agent of the right-honourable Principalities, you’re currently operating under the authority of the colony lords, and through them, the empty throne and the high prince in absence himself! Admittedly this position is open to everyone, but it requires oaths of fealty and the honour to uphold them. Good luck getting that out of a bounty hunter! And besides, there is no need for ghoulish trophy’s or barbarous actions on this bounty. The captain needs to die, to be sure, but the only proof the authorities need is the amulet around her neck. The Amulet of Abyet; stolen from a high born lady, it is both easily identifiable and impossible to forge. Plus it never leaves its new owners neck, until tonight. News of her and the power struggle that will follow will spread like wildfire and be proof enough of success, but the necklace is proof you did it; a glorified receipt for the butchers bill.

The train of thought naturally brings you to the metal splinter that has been plaguing you for the last several weeks, stinging you with every step you took to get here.

You’re an Agent of the Principalities, not an assassin.

Others play those roles like they are one and the same, but you haven’t yet. Your naturally sharp mind has helped the Guard to solve many crimes and you couldn’t have found this place without it, but has it now lead you into a trap? Arrogance has likely killed more men than swords, as has greed. True, you can defend yourself if you need to, and have killed a man once in the process, a year ago, who was drunk at the time. And your sleuthing has seen you find all manner of hidden things; stealing information either by quick hands or by crafty words, and by recreation or righteous need, you’ve learned to slip through shadows as sure as any thief. You have the skills, you think, but being an assassin seems so very different. You’re a more of a temple paid detective, or a Guard sworn investigator at best, than a cold blooded killer.

As you have done before, you leave the thought unresolved. It’s too late to turn back now, and there is no other way forward.

You take these final moments to lean over and look at your moon lit reflection in the waters still surface. A porcelain doll, people have called you. At 25 years old, you’re still quite young by the central calendar, though you rebuke it whenever anyone makes mention. It doesn’t help that you’re short and look younger than you are, particularly when asking people hard questions. One man had said that talking to you was like being browbeaten by a mouse’s glare. He had talked in the end, so you remember it fondly.

The long hair you keep, pulled back tight and into small bun at the back of your head, looks almost black in the silver light. It looks good, far better than the listless mousy brown the sun would reveal. It matches your eyes, the night leaving your grey iris rings almost none existent by light hungry pupils at their centre. When did they grow so wide? Is that just the trace of fear that you can’t keep hidden? Apprehension at what you’ll have to do?

“Far’s I go.” You close your eyes as the soft rasp of the old man’s voice washes over you, kept low even this far from the island. “’member, far end o the island, ‘bout half mile out. Be there by sunrise or I won’t be.”

You sit up and tighten the leather straps of your wax sealed backpack and prepare for the swim. Staying low, you climb over the side and lower yourself into the cool water with barely a ripple. It’s a bit further to the islands shore than you guide boasted he could get you, but you feel that this is no time for complaining. Unlike your guide you choose not to remind him of what he already knows and set off without a word.

The swim is tense but remains gentle by necessity. As you get closer to the crescent cove, you begin to aim for the more deserted, shadow filled side. Seaweed floats like tentacled scum, sending shivers through you as you brush it, but it’s oddly accommodating, parting quickly for your passage. As your bare kicking feet just start to touch the sand of the rising sea bed, you see a man further down the beach. He stands alone, face in shadow, between you and the far off ramshackle docks.

He’s looking straight at you.

You stop. He hasn’t moved or made a sound since his discovery and the moment stretches, with you gently bobbing on the water, among the weeds, with as little of yourself above as possible. After a handful of seconds that feel like a lifetime of days, he seems to think you less than what you are; a trick of the light or perhaps simply some strange flotsam. He turns around and continues his half-hearted patrol, walking away from where you aim.

You push forward, leaving the water to scamper over the rockier part of the beach and into the tree line just beyond, keeping low to deaden the waterfall pouring off you. Hopefully, the warm night air will be enough to evaporate any evidence of you trespass; the dry sand laps up the water but the stones bare an odd pattern of heavy wet drops, fading fast or only visible when they reflect the sky.

You take a deep breath and relax. The most risky part of this is done. The island is replete with foliage and shadows, while the sea is not. You hadn’t expected a guard along the coast though. If he had been more attentive you would have certainly been caught, however, he was not and you have not been yet.

Is a close call so soon a good sign or bad omen? Too early to tell. Staying in the darkness of the bushes you keep an eye on the beach and take off your backpack. Breaking the wax seal you hope has managed to keep the contents dry.

Success, definitely a good sign!

You neatly place its contents on the ground. First, a pair of soft black shoes, then black trousers, and a baggy but long sleeved black top, all neatly folded. Then came a fine stiletto dagger, thin pointed and sharped edged, painted mostly black to stop it catching the light. It’s threaded through two small leather loops that are attached to two wider leather loops designed to strap to the thigh and be reached through a small slit in the right of trousers, and all that is wrapped in a black length of cloth usable as a facemask. Finally there was a small vial of poison, potent enough to kill in minutes which can be ingested of coated on blades.

While these clothes are similar to the ones you wear now, they are thankfully dry. As expected, your swim had left your current attire clinging to your form in uncomfortable ways and leaving trails of water in your wake that you have no time to dry. It is a late hour already, and you’re to be gone before morning.

You begin to strip off your wet clothing, pulling the top over your head and revealing your bare breasts to the gloom. Next you peel off your trousers, bundling and wringing them both together out of instinct before taking a quick, guilty look at the beach. Standing naked, even in the dark, your pale skin almost glows un-naturally, drinking in the patches of moonlight and reflecting them with abandon. You feel yourself hunch over nervously, sinking more behind the nearby foliage; the guard had still not returned, and while he probably wouldn’t be able to see you behind your bush, it was the principle of the thing.

Folding up your wet clothes, again on instinct, you place them on a nearby rock. Next, you take a small white handkerchief out of the bag -the last item within and used as its lining- unfolding it and beginning the process of drying yourself. You smile; you had nearly not included it. You run the handkerchief over the soft contours of your face and down your slightly skinny arms and narrow shoulders, then down to your chest, still heavily rising and falling with the exertion of a long swim full of tense moments and the nervousness of standing naked on an island of criminals. As you move your hands over and around your small breasts you remember with ill ease that they can still serve as a distraction for any suspicious and not so suspicious men on the island if it came to it. Next came the stomach and then groin, whose hairs soak the handkerchief even more. You remember with a greater feeling of sickness that you really don’t want the islands pirates to be distracted by that. Over petite hips and flat buttocks, down thin legs and bony knees until your dry enough to get dressed. You unwrap and strap the stiletto to your right thigh, adding the poison vial to its little holster there as well, before your step into and pull up your pleasantly dry and clean trousers. You then sit on the rock and use the handkerchief to wipe your feet free of sand before you can put on your shoes.

While you’re doing this, you see the guards return, stopping to look out to sea roughly around the point you two had your staring competition. You cover your breasts automatically. It’s a foolish gesture really, he’s not even facing you. The man is lanky and thin, but with knots of muscle and a few long scars big enough to see at the slight and dimly lit distance. He wears a short, sleeveless leather jacket in the garish yellow and red style worn by some pirate crews, a large pair of worn shorts with more than the usual three holes and nothing on his feet. You still can’t see his face so what he sees or doesn’t’ see remains a mystery.

You quietly slip on the pair of black leather shoes, more pumps really, before pulling the long sleeved black top over your head. Taking the piece of material unwrapped from your blade (a large, thin black handkerchief), you tie it around your head so it covers your nose and mouth, hanging down to the middle of your neck and leaving only your eyes and forehead visible. Matching the look you cultivated before your bedroom mirror, your gaze returns to the man and you watch as his purpose quickly reveals itself. He drops his shorts down to the sand, baring his skinny and oddly pale behind to you, and starts to urinate into the ocean.

As the sounds of relief drift over to you, your mind begins to race. Briefly considered is a silent prayer, spared the disgusting task of swimming up a few minutes later. A bonus for your guide perhaps, when you are done. Next for consideration is hat to do next.

Without a detailed plan of the island and unable to trust anyone enough to act as a man inside, you were always going to need to improvise a plan. The strands of such a plan begin to form in your mind as you think of the best way to use this to your advantage. The pirates don’t really have a uniform but you know they use colours to tell each other apart in a fight. Red and white are the colours of Captain Washkin and this man’s are clearly Red and yellow, making him a member of another pirate crew. While it would be unpleasant to wear his unwashed clothes, they would probably allow you to learn your targets location from other pirates and travel the island more easily. Many pirate crews have women aboard though they are almost always in the minority. You could sneak down to him easily enough, but should you try to kill him outright or get some of that information out of him first? It would be a risk as you can’t let him live to raze the alarm either way. Alternatively, you were always prepared for a stealthier approached; simply leaving him be is an option. You would be travelling onwards blindly but the island is not that big and only one person needs to die tonight.

So, you can kill a man to gain his colours; a quick stealthy strike before wondering the island as a pirate. You can risk interrogating him before you kill him and take his clothes anyway, learning where to go but hoping he doesn’t somehow raze the alarm or escape or overpower you before you properly end him. Or you can just leave him and the filthy rags he wears, searching the island by stealth and hoping to see your target or overhear wear she is. It’s a tough call. As the first you make on this island, you really don’t want to get it wrong.