Upon a Pale Horse- Raiding the Seven Seas

by Simon Archer

  That raised a question in my mind that I had to save for the moment. where did the fae come from? Were they a part of the spirit world, or were they from somewhere else? I stayed silent and listened.

  “I knew then that I had found my path, my eyes and ears were opened to the unseen and unheard, and I was ready. The notch in my ear was the mark I asked for, and the name that the old shaman gave me.” She lifted her head and looked me in the eyes. “I know that it is not much of a tale to one such as you.”

  “But it is,” I said as I let one hand slide down to her firm backside. “It is a tale of you, and so, I will treasure it.”

  “As you treasure the tales of your other wives?” she asked as she gave a teasing wriggle.

  I responded by giving her ass a squeeze. “Aye. I know Mary’s story of how she came to be in the dungeon of Insmere which is how I met her. Tabitha told me of her folk and how she came to leave them to see the world. Then, there is Ligeia, and her story of lost love and hope restored. All these and more, I know, and I am happy to learn this tale of how you got your name.”

  Adra laughed then. “You are a strange orc, Splitter of Skulls,” she said to me. “I am happy to know you and happier still to be among your clan.”

  With those words, she stopped me from answering with a firm and hungry kiss, which led to other pleasant things.

  13

  It was less hassle than I expected to move Adra into my quarters. There was room to spare on the bed, and she had very few possessions. The shaman and Mary were, as they say, thick as thieves, and Tabitha joined them quickly. The next couple of days were a whirlwind of activity and celebration amongst us, though we were all concerned at the continued absence of Ligeia.

  I was on watch at the helm under a gibbous moon, with Rhianne Corvis, of all people, lurking nearby. The undead witch kept to herself mostly and avoided the light of day. Tonight, though, she was out and about. We were on course and practically flying along with the witchwind, as we hadn’t yet had a chance to put Adra’s idea in motion.

  “You seem pensive, Captain,” Rhianne observed suddenly. “What troubles you?”

  I gave her a sidelong look and a scowl before answering, “Ligeia has yet to return.” It wasn’t easy to admit my concern, especially to a former enemy, but once I had, the words came easier. “I fear she might’ve run into problems.”

  The witch was quiet for a moment. In the darkness, her pale skin fairly glowed, and the burning green fire in her missing eye was much more noticeable. “If you have something of hers, I could work with Ember and Mary to scry her. I am bound to you, after all. It is not like I could act against you or any of those close to you.”

  That was true. While we were in Insmere, Mary and Ember had led us through the bonding ceremony, tying Rhianne to me and my commands by the threat of losing her powers.

  I nodded. “There might be a strand or two of her hair in that bloody hat o’ hers. If ye ask Binx or Adra, they can retrieve it for ye. Then if ye need both o’ them for yer hex, I can hold the wind ‘pon us.”

  “I am happy to help,” Rhianne intoned with a slow nod of her head. She started to move away then paused partway to the stairs. “You and yours did me a great service, Captain Bardak Skullsplitter. I am grateful even for this mockery of life, and I mean to redeem myself through our bonding.”

  “Good for ye, lass,” I said. “Thank ye for that, and for yer aid in returnin’ Arde’s undead to their rest.”

  She hissed softly and smiled crookedly back over her shoulder at me. “Thank you for killing that bastard and freeing me.” That said, Rhianne turned and glided down the stairs to seek Tabitha, I suspected, and I returned my attention to the helm.

  I still had one concern about Rhianne Corvis, and it wasn’t one that Mary shared or at least she hadn’t expressed it to me. That was the question of what hold the creature Lack had over his creations. Was the undead witch a way for the sorcerer to watch us and learn our weaknesses and our secrets?

  Hopefully, she was not, but if she were, then I’d have to deal with her.

  For the next few hours, as the moon made its journey across the cloudy sky and The Hullbreaker sailed on. Rhianne collected Mary and Ember, and it had fallen to me to hold the wind as well as our course. Rather than pick up on Mary’s song, like I’d done before, I focused on the small army of little elementals that danced around the ship in the wake of the witchwind gale.

  Within a few minutes, I convinced them to take the place of the magical wind, dancing and throwing themselves into the sails in sort of race. They weren’t as forceful as the witchwind, but they were able to get us moving faster than an un-augmented wind could carry us. They also didn’t require constant singing.

  Adra was right. If we could bind one of the larger gale elementals, as opposed to the sprites and zephyrs that now pushed my ship along, then we could free up the witches for other tasks.

  “Oy!” Tabitha hollered up the stairs from the main deck. “Permission to approach the helm?”

  “Granted,” I said with a laugh. “What brings ye here, Cap’n Binx?”

  “I am ‘twixt watches,” she replied. “Ye’ve a bloody machine for a crew, Bardak. All these bastards know their job an’ get it done without half the hand-holdin’ I’ve seen in many crews. Even that jackass Mocker, stealin’ off my first mate for canoodling at every opportunity, gets his work done first an’ foremost.” The Ailur woman shook her head. “I swear, though, if he knocks her up, I’m takin’ it out o’ his share.”

  “I ain’t so sure we got an agreement to that effect, Tabitha, but if ye have a mind to renegotiate contracts, I can oblige ye.” I smirked at her playfully.

  She shot me a dark glance, then grinned. “It’s bloody hard to tell if ye be kiddin’, Cap’n,” she grumbled.

  “How do ye know I am?” I asked, keeping a serious face.

  “Because ye don’t always look like a snarly bloody orc,” Tabitha answered. “Usually ye carry a bit o’ lightheartedness about ye, except when ye be tryin’ to pull a gal’s leg.”

  “Well, damn,” I huffed and looked off to the fore. The night was almost done. I could barely detect a pinkening of the eastern horizon as the sun climbed from below. The cloud cover had thickened over the night, too. While I’d been distracted, a storm had brewed, and not a weak one, either.

  I glanced down as Tabitha put a hand on my arm. She smiled up at me. “I’ll keep yer secret, Cap’n.”

  “Good,” I said with a smirk. “I’d hate to have to keelhaul ye for snitchin’.”

  Her grin grew fierce, but there still remained a spark of mischief in her catlike eyes. “Ye might find me hard to keelhaul.”

  I suspected she was right. The little woman was fast, agile, and fierce as any orc. I didn’t want to get on her bad side.

  Further discussion was interrupted as Mary came padding up the stairs with a smile on her face. Tabitha bounded playfully into the witch’s arms, licked her nose, and scooted away before Mary could return the favor.

  “I’ll deal with you later, cat,” my witch threatened with a broad grin before she looked to me. “Good news, my Captain. We not only managed to scry Ligeia, but we were able to speak with her. I’d forgotten how much a coven could accomplish.”

  “What did ye find out?” I demanded.

  “She’s fine, and she made a new friend. Even now they follow in our wake and should catch us before we actually reach the frozen sea,” Mary replied. “I told her of Adra, and she said, and I quote, ‘It is about time that they got together.’”

  “Good,” I sighed. Even the seemingly oblivious siren had picked up on the attraction that had bloomed between the shamaness and me. I didn’t feel any different about any of the others, either, and they all seemed genuinely happy to be part of my family. “So, what is her new companion?”

  In all honesty, I half expected her to show up with a lascu or kraken or some other impossible sea beast.

  “A King Narwhal,” Mary replied. She lea
ned against the railing between the aftcastle deck and the main deck, her arms folded beneath her ample and barely concealed breasts.

  Tabitha mimicked the little witch on the opposite side, right down to teasing her blouse open a bit more to show off her black-furred cleavage. The pair certainly knew how to tease me, and they knew the price they’d pay for it later… if it really was a price.

  I nodded slowly. A King Narwhal was, like a Dragon Turtle, a lascu, or a kraken, an impossible sea beast, like I’d expected. Why couldn’t she have just gathered a gray whale, or a shark, or something less rare? I supposed it fit with her being a siren. She was a magical creature of the sea, so she was drawn to others more or less like her.

  “How big is it?” I asked. Regular narwhals where perhaps the length of launch or a large dinghy. While I’d heard of greater versions of them, I had never heard any description of the size of the larger King Narwhal.

  Mary thought for a minute. “Minus his horn, about the length of The Hullbreaker. The horn itself is about fifteen feet or so, I’d guess. The mental image was hers, so it might be biased or incorrect.”

  I shook my head. It was doubtful that Ligeia would exaggerate the features of her ally. If anything, she might understate them, as she’d done in Tiny’s case.

  “Like as not, ‘twill be larger than she described,” I said. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  A bell rang the watch change on the main deck, and sailors finished their work and passed it off to their replacements before they headed below to their berths. Tabitha had chosen morning watch at the helm, and Adra emerged from below to join us as I handed off the ship’s wheel to the feline woman.

  The shaman paused and gazed up at the billowing sails and dancing elementals. “Crude,” she observed, “but workable. Are they going to keep us going through my watch?”

  I shrugged and replied in Orgik, “I set no time on their work.”

  “So, as soon as they grow bored, they will dissipate,” she stated with a nod. “Hold before you head below, and we will deal with this.”

  I nodded and looked to Mary and Tabitha for a moment before I focused on Adra. “Show me what I need to do.”

  She motioned me back from the helm, and we sat down facing each other beneath the mizzenmast. Mary padded over and joined us unbidden, drawing a raised eyebrow from Adra.

  “I can lend energy if not work the same spells you can,” she explained, perhaps a touch defensively.

  Adra smiled suddenly and said, “I do not question your power, Mary Night. You just surprised me with your willingness to join us. This is not magic of the sort taught by your Sisterhood.”

  “We should never be unwilling to learn something new,” Mary opined. “If there is a better way to accomplish the same thing, should we not investigate it, at the very least?”

  “Hah!” the shamaness exclaimed. “Very wise of you. Well, then, I will teach, and you both will learn.”

  I nodded and took a deep breath of the cold air to clear my head of the worry that had plagued me since the first day without my siren. It went easily as Adra led Mary and me through an exercise of breathing while drumming her hands on her bare knees in a monotonous, almost hypnotic rhythm.

  Much of a shaman’s power comes from without, from the unseen world, while witches deal with internalized energy. Mary could perceive the unseen, much as Adra and I could, which gave the little witch a small advantage. Under Adra’s guidance, all three of us fell into a light trance.

  “I will lead,” the shamaness said softly. “Bardak, take this rhythm.” With that, she clapped her hands together once, then thrice quickly, then once.

  I lifted my hands and mimicked the clapping a couple of times, until she said, “Good. Now keep it up. Mary, I will need you to sing along with Bardak. No words, just weave your voice with his rhythm.”

  Mary said nothing in answer, only began to sing softly as I held the rhythm.

  “You are both naturals at this,” Adra murmured. “Now, I will call a Gale.”

  She began to chant, weaving her voice in and out of my clapping and Mary’s wordless song. “North wind cold. South wind warm. East wind, West wind, bring the storm. Unseen lord of the winds, I call.”

  In my ears, her voice echoed with power and sang with the roar of the tempest. It was beautiful and terrible, and I wanted to hear more. Mary held her song, and I held my rhythm as the shamaness repeated her summons.

  Finally, something answered her. A gale-force wind sprang up from nowhere and howled over and around The Hullbreaker. The lesser elementals scattered and fled before the presence that loomed over us now, as big as the sky itself and as fierce as a hurricane.

  “Thank you, great Gale!” Adra shouted. Then she looked down at me and motioned to me. Apparently, she meant for me to bargain with the thing for its services.

  I kept up the rhythm as I raised my head to gaze into the lightning blue eyes of the largest elemental I had ever seen. I swallowed hard and steeled myself.

  “Great Gale, accept my offering and bind yourself to my will!” I shouted as I opened my heart to the winds.

  Mary and Adra froze as the elemental poured down on me. Gale force winds roared in my ears and lifted me into the air from the deck. The elemental studied me from all angles, spinning me in the air as it weighed my offering.

  “Never has one of your kind offered something like this,” the creature spoke only to me. “For a year and a day, I will serve. If your offering continues to please me, our agreement can be renewed.”

  “I accept that,” I said firmly. “Will you bind yourself to my ship and gift it with speed and protection?”

  “I will,” the elemental replied. “Prepare thyself.”

  Suddenly, all was still, and I dropped heavily to the deck. Stifling a groan, I straightened and sat up as Mary and Adra stared at me in disbelief.

  “My Captain,” my witch whispered, “what did you do?”

  The breeze began to pick up around us as the sails flapped and filled. My ship began to pick up speed.

  Adra let out a pleased cry and clapped me on the shoulder. “He did it!” she exclaimed, then caught both Mary and me in a surprisingly strong embrace. “He bound the Gale!”

  14

  The Gale was as good as the witchwind, perhaps better. Once it learned that the sails and masts had limits, the elemental happily restrained itself. I wondered if I could reinforce the masts and structure further, so as to get even more speed from the thing. With the right modifications and permanently bound elementals, I could dispense with the oars altogether.

  Hell, maybe I could even make The Hullbreaker fly.

  Perhaps the best feature of the powerful elemental was that it could control its winds much better than even the finest witchwind. The taut sails creaked and snapped with the force of the spirit’s might, but the deck was free of the howling winds. Speech certainly came much easier.

  It was early morning, the wan light of the sun occasionally broke through the heavy cloud cover to glimmer on the dark sea. It was cold, too. The temperature had been dropping steadily for the past few days as we drove northwards, and much to my frustration, Ligeia and her King Narwhal still had not shown up.

  “Icebergs ho!” Gol the Clanless bellowed down from the crow’s nest, and I perked up to stare out to the fore.

  We were coming up on the outer edges of the frozen sea, then. I checked my inner chart and nodded to myself. We were ahead of schedule, now.

  “Bearing?” I yelled back.

  “Dead ahead!” came the reply. “Adjust two or three degrees starboard!”

  I made the change to our course, then opened my senses to the waters. It would be easier if I could sense the massive, floating chunks of ice rather than having to rely upon a sailor up above.

  Sometime after the first sighting, we passed the iceberg. It was a great, craggy thing, drifting many leagues south of the frozen sea itself. Though melting from being so far south, it was still easily the size of The Pale H
orse, and that was only the portion above the water. Clumps of smaller bits of ice thudded against the hull as we kept going.

  “Cap’n!” Gol shouted. “Somethin’ ain’t right about the ice.”

  About that moment, I felt a sudden change in the spiritual energy of the immediate area. A flare of magic darkened my sight, and things launched themselves into the air from the surface of the iceberg, while other creatures swarmed up from below.

  “All hands to fight!” I roared, and the deck crew scrambled. Fortunately for me, I’d taken to wearing my armor with its padded leather undercoat as the air grew colder. I also kept my axe and pistols on me out of habit.

  The Hullbreaker lurched and slowed as I looked up to see the Gale bound and struggling in chains of dark shadow. I’d sensed this kind of power before when a cloaked figure raised The Indomitable and its crew from the dark depths near the Aigon Straits.

  Lack.

  The sorcerer's creatures were long-limbed, lanky things with great, toothy maws, and talons like daggers. Some flapped around and circled the ship on great, leathery wings, while others climbed up the sides of the ship to attack. Sailors rallied to defend the ship and themselves while I unlimbered my axe. With the ship drifting in the suddenly still, cold air, I could join the fight without any real fear of running us into one of the icebergs.

  Two of the flying things dove at me as I released the wheel. Instead of swinging at them, I drew one of my flintlocks and shot one square in the center of its bony chest. The pistol ball threw it back, but it didn’t die. With a shriek of indignation, the creature flapped ponderously back up into the sky while its comrade tried to gut me.

  Talons raked over my chainmail. The things were fast, and I barely avoided serious injury as I backpedaled away. It dodged my counterswipe and rose to join the first of the things.