The Knight's Cross

Part II

Eleven months later.

 

                The docks at the port in Halifax weren’t incredibly crowded, which was preferable to Captain Alistair Knight. His intentions for coming to this port over any other in the northern waters of the coast was something that he had chosen to keep to himself. He was still new to the position of being captain, and he was well aware that certain men aboard his ship, the Ghost Runner, were not the sort of men he trusted with the absolute truth of his endeavor.

Coming to Halifax was well out of the way of their usual sailing routs, but Alistair had been very insistent about coming. While some were curious as to what in particular enticed their new captain to this place so much, some were familiar with the place from the rare times that Alistair’s father had sailed here.

It had been nearly a year since Alistair had taken the responsibility of captain, and though he was still considerably young for such a position, he had yet to let his crew down. There had been a few times that he might have acted against better judgment, but he was a clever young man, and knew how to get himself out of almost any troubling situation. His crew still remained wary, but they gave him the benefit of the doubt, as he was so clearly his father’s son.

Halifax, while not a place that he had spent an exuberant amount of time, was still a place that Alistair had been fond of for various reasons. Other than the Ghost Runner, Halifax was essentially the only place that he ever considered as home. He had been born there and lived there for the first few years of his life. When his mother died of sickness, his father had returned at taken him aboard his ship.

A few years later, Alistair was returned to Halifax, where he stayed with a woman who was to make something of an educated man out of him. He had stayed there for about two years, learning to read, write, and speak French (it had been more of a side effect that he’d learned a second language, as his teacher was a woman who had come from France when she was a girl). Alistair also discovered he was very good at mathematics. He was quick and keen and never seemed to get a problem wrong. His father had been very pleased with him then, and had taken him back aboard the Ghost Runner, where he began teaching Alistair about navigation and sailing.

That had been years ago now.

Alistair supposed he should have been grateful, but for the longest time, he hated being out at sea. His father always spoke of the grand freedom of sailing, but Alistair had never experienced it for himself. And in the last few years, his father had become very distant, treating him as “just another member of the crew” the majority of the time.

It had only been just before his father had mysteriously disappeared – thought to be dead – that he had told Alistair of the map and treasure. In this last year, Alistair had tried to continue searching for the treasure his father spoke of. He had found almost all the remaining pieces of the map, though the final corner was still to be acquired. He had spent the last six months trying to find that one piece, and it was irritating him to no end that the piece was still missing.

His father had a list of clues or maps to where the pieces had been, and Alistair had followed them to the letter and was properly rewarded. But there was nothing for the last piece. The most Alistair had been able to uncover regarding it was the name “Halifax,” hastily scrawled on a piece of paper in the back of his father’s journal.

And that was what brought Alistair here now. He didn’t know where in Halifax he was supposed to go. He didn’t even know if the final piece of the map was here. But if his father had bothered to write it down, then there must have been something of importance in this place.