by Tony Johnson
While Kyoko gave the warrior a tutorial of how to load a cannon safely and properly, Haruto brought Grizz to a roped-down crate and pried the lid off of it. Carefully organized inside were glass bottles half-filled with blackpowder and half with liquor. An alcohol-soaked rag stuck out of the bottle's opening. Haruto pulled one out and handed it to the Dwarf.
“A scorcher bomb?” Grizz questioned with a voice of surprise, even though he knew what he was holding. “I haven't seen one of these in years. I used to make them as a kid. Got in a lot of trouble too.”
“We've got this crate full of them and another on the other side of the ship,” Haruto explained. “There’s around twenty-five total. We can throw them when Jarek’s ships come alongside ours.”
“How do you even know they’ll get that close? They could easily sit back and pepper us with cannonballs until we sink.”
“They won’t do that if they want our money. They can’t risk putting us under until our gold is in their hands and they’ll need to board us to get it.”
“What are these?” Steve asked, coming over to Grizz and Haruto with Kyoko. Picking up a scorcher bomb, he observed it in his hand.
“You light this cloth on fire, wait a few seconds, and toss it,” Haruto explained. “The explosion on impact turns the glass into shrapnel and sets flame to whatever it hits.”
“Will they be using these too?”
“Jarek’s never been known to,” Kyoko answered, although the question was directed to her cousin. “He’d rather drink the alcohol than waste it.”
“Arrows!” Ty yelled down to the main deck from the stern. Another fleet rained down over them and again everyone avoided them by taking cover.
“He’s trying to scare us into surrendering,” Haruto shouted over the storm, rising from behind a crate of cannonballs. “That won’t happen. Come on, they’re close now. Let’s finish up our final preparations.”
Together, Haruto, Grizz, and Steve went around, each carrying a container of pitch, topping off the sconces on the main deck. Kyoko came through and lit them all with a torch. “Usually we only keep these lit at night for safety” she explained, “but we can use them to light the scorcher bombs.”
Not more than a minute after they had finished, Ty called down Jun-Lei’s orders from the stern deck railing, “Portside! Portside!”
“They won’t be on our left side for a few more minutes,” Grizz was confused.
“My mom must be planning something.” Quickly, Kyoko handed Haruto, Grizz, and Steve a flaming torch to light Andonia’s left-side cannons with. “Be ready.”
On the stern deck, Jun-Lei said a quick prayer, knowing once she fired upon Captain Jarek’s ships there was no going back. Taking a deep breath after everyone was in position on the main deck, the shipmaster dramatically spun the wheel of her ship. In a bold maneuver she knew Jarek would be unsuspecting of, she turned Andonia and paralleled herself to the closest ship in pursuit, Sevenoak.
“Fire!” Jun-Lei ordered, which was relayed to the cannonmen through Ty, then Kyoko. Lighting the wicks on Andonia’s three portside cannons caused the blackpowder bags inside the metal bores to explode, launching nine cannonballs through the rainy storm. Six holes punctured the side of Sevenoak. Three of the shots missed completely, but would’ve hit if Sevenoak had a forecastle.
“It’ll take over ten times that amount to sink that ship and it’s their smallest one,” Grizz complained.
Sevenoak, which was a couple hundred feet across from Andonia, was only equipped with four cannons total, however, unlike Andonia, their cannons were not bolted down to the main deck. They had wheels which allowed pirates to roll them to the portside or starboard side of the ship.
Noticing the ship’s sailors moving the cannons and getting torches to ignite the wicks, Haruto yelled, “Incoming!”
Again, like with arrows, everyone took cover. Grizz, seeing that Copper hadn’t heard the instruction, used his element to cover his armor in a protective sheet of rock and stand in front of the direfox. A cannonball struck him square in the chest, but his conjured defense saved him from being torn in half. Still, the impact was enough that it sent the Dwarf falling backwards to the deck, where a wave crashed over him.
“You okay?” Steve moved to help him up.
“Yeah, but that’ll leave a bruise in the morning,” Grizz answered while choking on seawater and rubbing his chest. Then turning to Haruto, he angrily said, “I thought you said they wouldn’t shoot their cannons at us!”
“It’s just another scare tactic. They won’t keep it up much longer.”
“Hold onto something!” Kyoko yelled, noticing the giant crest of a wave about to fall on the starboard side of Andonia. The unavoidable force of water was enough to knock everyone off their feet, expect Grizz, who kept his element activated, which nearly doubled his weight and allowed him to withstand the storm.
“Stay down, stay down!” he warned, seeing in the clearing of the wave that Tiderunner was now on their starboard side and firing their own set of cannons. Two of the cannonballs ripped completely through the front mast, scattering splinters of wood all over the forecastle deck.
Like a giant tree being chopped down, the entire mast and sail toppled over, crashing down backwards, towards the center of the ship. Haruto and Kyoko had to roll out of the way to avoid being hit by the giant wooden pole.
They’re bombarding us! Steve thought. We’re losing, and they haven’t even used their main ship yet. Kari can’t pick them off one by one because they’re too far away. She’d just be wasting her arrows. And Grizz’s element has little effect out here on the open sea. I don’t know what we can do.
“Quick! Starboard!” Kyoko yelled after everyone took cover from another assault of flaming arrows launched from Sharksbane. “Tiderunner is still in range of our cannons!”
Together she helped Steve, Grizz, and Haruto launch the three cannons on Andonia’s right side, but each one missed because of an errant wave that pushed Tiderunner out of their crosshairs. “Reload the cannons on both sides,” Kyoko instructed the men. She ran to the front of the shipmaster’s cabin and looked up to the stern railing where her mother was standing, assessing the damage of the fallen mast. “Mom, what are we supposed to do?” she shouted upwards with both arms helplessly extended.
Seeing Kyoko worrying and at a loss for what their next course of action would be, Jun-Lei told Myoki to take the helm of the ship as she jogged down the stairs and embraced her sixteen-year-old.
“They’re killing us,” Kyoko cried.
Wiping the rain from her daughter’s face and pushing back her messy, wet-soaked hair, the shipmaster calmed her daughter by saying, “Myoki and Ty say they’re not firing at us anymore. Jarek was merely testing us to see if we would fight back.”
With Steve, Grizz, and Haruto coming over to see what the shipmaster’s orders were, she explained to them all, “Now that he knows the lengths we’re willing to go through to defend ourselves, he’ll have his men take it from us forcefully. It’s time to prepare for a more physical fight.”
Jun-Lei reached into the crate holding the scorcher bombs and handed them to her crewmates and the two heroes. “From the crow’s nest, Kari alerted me that Sharksbane is approaching,” the shipmaster pointed to the portside of Andonia, where Jarek’s massive hull was quickly coming alongside them. The giant, five-masted Sharksbane had a large crew. What few rays of sun poked through the gray clouds highlighted their silhouttes against the dark backdrop. Spears, swords, shields, bows, and arrows marked the figures.
Jun-Lei led everyone over to the portside rail and shouted over a crashing wave at the bow of the ship, “We’re nearing the center of the storm now. The weather will become worse, but throw as many of these bottles as you can. We need every advantage we can get.”
Holding her alcohol-soaked cloth up to a sconce to light it, she continued giving directions as everyone else lit their own. “Do as much damage as yo
u can. Don’t hold back! Make them regret the day they attacked Andonia! On my mark!
“Now!”
Chapter 71
Five flaming glass bottles soared through the air, hitting the forecastle deck of Sharksbane. Each temporarily ignited the ship’s water-logged wood, but the burning didn’t last long.
“Keep throwing!” Jun-Lei shouted, sending the first of six more scorchers over the gap. Three of bottles shattered by hitting pirates, setting the men on fire, forcing them to jump into the sea to extinguish themselves. Two were able to use Sharksbane’s cargo net to pull themselves back onto the boat, only mildly injured, but one of the pirates never emerged from the waters, crushed to death as the two hulls grated against each other by the strong waves. Since Sharksbane’s main deck and rail sat five feet taller than Jun-Lei’s ship, pirates were able to jump across to one of Andonia’s ratlines or jump down onto the main deck.
The pirates who didn’t traverse the small gap from Sharksbane to Andonia were archers posted throughout Jarek’s ship. As the biggest threat to her friends below, Kari focused her arrows on them, drawing their fire to herself. Occassionally she changed her target to the men climbing up the ratlines after her, but mostly attempted to pick off enemy archers one-by-one.
“Get behind us and keep throwing those scorchers!” Steve yelled to Jun-Lei, Haruto, and Kyoko as he drew Brightflame. They’ll be safer with those ranged attacks rather than fighting alongside us with their subpar weapons, he knew, deflecting a blow from a pirate and kicking him over the railing.
Within seconds, fifteen pirates were on the main deck, battling Steve, Grizz, and Copper, who did everything they could to protect Andonia’s crew. Grizz took most of the enemy on himself, wildly swinging the axe and hammer of his multi-headed, rock-encased weapon into anyone who came in his vicinity. Surrounded by so many, a few pirates were able to come directly behind him and land the most powerful blow they could, but their weapons did nothing upon hitting his elementally-empowered armor.
Battling near Grizz, Steve wasn’t as successful. Two pirates grappled him, one ripping his shield away, and the other trying to snap his right arm to render Brightflame useless. Copper killed one of the men, lunging himself into the pirate, while Steve picked up an unlit scorcher bottle and smashed it into the head of the other, knocking him unconscious. Steve moved on to attack others, but not before he watched Grizz use a stone encased boot to step down and crush the skull of the defenseless man.
“You don't have to kill them!” Steve yelled at the Dwarf while parrying a blow from an attacker.
“Why would I let them live? So they can come to and stab you in the back?”
Shaking his head at his unruly companion, Steve noticed a giant wave about to crash over Andonia and lunged for a ladder rung on the main mast to fasten himself to. The pirate who’d engaged him in combat wasn’t so fast to react, so he and four others were washed away. In the clearing, a heavy-set man wearing a half-plate of silver armor and carrying a sword and triangular shield made his way down onto the deck of Andonia.
Captain Jarek, Steve said to himself, readying his sword and heading straight for the pirate leader.
Just as the pirates from Sharksbane were overrunning the main deck, they were also overwhelming Ty and Myoki on the stern deck. Myoki was forced to let go of the spokes of the wheel so she could draw her sword and defend herself. With no one at the helm, the entire ship tilted to one side, its control relinquished to the unpredictable waters of Lake Azure.
I wish I had taken ten more doses of ginger root, Ty thought, dizzily pushing a guy with his gauntlet, sending him falling over the stern deck railing to the main deck below. The Elf picked up one of his swords he had dropped from the slippery rain and crossed them just in time to catch an axe blade from spitting his head open.
In a struggle with the pirate, Ty was unable to defend himself against another assailant headed to stab him in the back, but both that pirate as well as the one in front of Ty were brought down by a barrage of arrows from the crow’s nest.
Thank you, Kari! he was relieved by the archer’s help high above. Ty moved to continue protecting Myoki, who still had not been able to return to the wheel with the constant influx of pirates. As the warrior Elf incapacitated two enemies, he moved to defeat a third, but Andonia violently tossed again, causing everyone to fall and be drenched by the largest wave yet.
Before he could pick himself up and regain his footing on the swaying ship, Captain Jarek kicked Steve in the side.
“You made this much harder than it had to be!” Jarek yelled as he slammed his shield down into Steve’s back. “I was going to let you live if you surrendered and gave us the gold, but now that you've decided to attack us, I'm going to kill you all.”
Jarek assaulted Steve with his broadsword, swinging violent strikes meant to kill the irksome warrior. Steve parried each blow with Brightflame while working his way up into a standing position. Deflecting the powerful swings from an awkward stance set him off balance and made him unprepared for each successive blow.
Seeing his opponent trying to get his bearings, the captain charged at Steve, tackling him backwards and into the post of the main mast.
Grimacing in pain from his already sore back, Steve again was unsuccessful in protecting himself when Jarek roughly grabbed the back of his head by his hair, turned him around, and smashed his face into the post. Blood poured down the warrior’s face, blinding him as the cut on his forhead, received from his broken helmet when falling off Clyx, reopened. Dozens of red droplets splashed into the seawater covering the floor of Andonia’s main deck as Jarek put Steve in a headlock and began using his metal gauntlets to punch the warrior, opening the cut even further.
From his vantage point on the stern deck, Ty could see the heroes and Jun-Lei’s crew, who had been forced to take up arms, were struggling. Jarek was dragging a bloodied Steve towards the side of the ship, where he looked like he intended to throw the red-armored warrior overboard. Grizz was cornered by eight pirates and Ty could tell he was exhausted and losing the ability to maintain his element. Haruto, Kyoko, and Jun-Lei were alive, but fighting in an unorthodox style that would be only a matter of time before a more-skilled fighter easily killed them.
Andonia was struggling to keep even-keeled against the violent storm. To make matters worse, Tiderunner had pulled up along Andonia’s starboard side and more pirates were boarding Jun-Lei’s ship, some of whom swarmed around Copper while others climbed up the ratlines to kill Kari, who had run out of arrows.
As Ty surveyed the chaos, everything seemed to slow down. The crew, pirates, and heroes started moving in slow motion. Even the wind, rain, and surging lake became a thousand times slower than their normal speed. Above him, a streak of lightning spread across the sky, fracturing into dozens of tributaries. Pure, white light blotted out everything before his eyes.
It was at that moment Ty received his vision.
Chapter 72
The day he turned sixteen, Malorek turned to the one thing he knew could turn his life around. Wanting to gain the respect he never received in the orphanage, he knew he could earn it as a figure of authority, a warrior.
Between the amount of time he spent in Celestial's libraries, studying the history of warriors, battles, and war strategy, and the experience he obtained from serving as a volunteer squire, Malorek was easily able to pass his Warriors Admittance Exam. “Come back here in three months,” he was told, “the day before the autumn equinox. That's when training begins.”
“Welcome to Warriors' Boot Camp,” a Dwarf named Captain Ostrakvaski spoke to the influx of sixteen-year-old trainees. Malorek stood among 144 others who were all equally spaced in columns and rows in the outdoor training yard of the warriors' barracks. Crickets chirruped under the night sky as Ostravaski continued, “For the next year of your lives, we will make sure you’re conditioned to peak physical strength.”
Standing nervously, Malorek questioned if
he was strong enough to last through the Boot Camp portion of training. I’ve been running excessively and doing calisthenics over the past several months, but I should’ve worked harder than I did, he doubted himself as he looked around at the boys standing around him who seemed bigger and more physically fit. How do I know this isn’t going to be any different than three years ago when I started working out so that I could beat up Cain? I wanted to make him stop bullying me, but he pulverized me.
Thinking back to the night he murdered Cain and his foster sister Emilia, Malorek jolted out of the memory when Ostravaski walked past him, shouting to the recruits.
“Look at the person to the right of you,” the captain shouted, “and now whoever’s to the left. Out of the three of you, chances are one of you will fail to make it through the year of Boot Camp. Another of you will fail to pass the mental portion of Warrior Training following Boot Camp within the four-year deadline. Will you be one who will persevere and succeed?
“For now, you’re dismissed. Head to the barracks, get to know your fellow trainees, and get some good rest. Tomorrow is the start of the most challenging year of your life.”
Seventy-two bunk beds, Malorek counted within seconds by multiplying the rows and columns after walking into a large room attached to the mess hall. He watched as other teenagers split off with close friends who had also made it into Warrior Training. Not knowing anyone, Malorek walked down aisle after aisle, searching for someone willing to share a bunk.
“Is this bed open?” he asked a muscular Giant who towered over him. It was clear no one else had claimed it yet.
