The Battlebone

by Guy Antibes

  Jack focused on the lead ship and extended the frame that held Takia’s Cup. He willed the spell, clutched Eldora’s box with his other hand, and spoke the keyword.

  A spear of flame belched from the cup. It nearly knocked Jack back on his heels, but he was able to keep the cup aimed at the ship. The stream of fire nearly reached the ship but fell short. The sea sizzled as the flames dropped to the waves.

  Jack gasped as he shut off the flow of fire. The fire drained him of energy, but the warded box was quickly recharging him. Sailors looked at Jack in disbelief. The wizard on his side ran to Jack’s side.

  “What was that?”

  Jack couldn’t exactly hide the fact that he used Takia’s Cup. “I have an object of power,” he said. “It obviously doesn’t throw fire long distances. I’ve never tested its range before.”

  “You know it now. That thing may save us all. We’ve never had five ships converge on us before.” The man ran back to his position and gave Jack a thumbs up when he returned to his station.

  Jack returned the gesture. Jack took another look at the sailors who all nodded and encouraged him. He hadn’t recognized their situation was worse than they had been led to believe.

  An idea came to him. He ran to the other side and shot a flame toward the closer of the two ships, just brushing its railing. A fire instantly sprang to life, which the pirates worked to extinguish. Jack returned to see the pirates no longer closing in.

  Suddenly a volley of the fireworks sprang up from their side, but most of them fizzled out as soon as they hit the ship. The captain immediately ordered sailors to dampen the sails. Jack thought it would slow the ship down, but with the pirates having faster ships, perhaps defense against the fireworks would be better. He shook his head. The captain actually had experience fighting pirates, and Jack had none. He was better off following orders, as much as he could.

  Sailors began to roll out beds of spikes on the deck.

  “What are those for?” Jack asked the sailor next to him.

  “Wait, you’ll see.”

  The ships began to converge after another firework. Jack was able to bathe the side of one ship with a full dose of Takia’s fire. It veered off. The attack forced Jack to sit down. The effects of using Takia’s Cup seemed to be cumulative. He could barely move, waiting for Eldora’s box to give him strength. Jack hadn’t realize he couldn’t just keep blazing away.

  He ran to the railing closest to the second ship, but as the fire hit the ship, Takia’s Cup sputtered, and the flame went out. Jack’s magic was exhausted, or the cup had reached its own limit, whatever that was. He looked out. The first ship was burning far behind and the second was drifting back now that the sails had caught a wisp of Takia’s flame.

  Could the gods have limits, or was he the one with limits? Jack didn’t have an answer, or any more time for such thoughts, as the third ship shot more fireworks as it came closer, testing if Jack could throw any more fire. Jack couldn’t with Takia’s Cup, but he had the orb.

  The other ships began to close as well. Jack ran to the other side and pulled out the orb in its cradle.

  “What is that?” Helen asked, coming to his side of the deck.

  “It is my version of the Serpent’s Orb.”

  She bent over and looked at it closely. “That doesn’t look like Fasher’s orb.” Helen squinted at it. “In fact, it looks more like an onion. Jack’s onion!” she said with a mocking tone.

  Jack turned to the ship and used the orb to shoot a stream of liquid fire. It wasn’t as robust as the original orb, but the fire was more like the orb’s liquid fire than the intense blaze from Takia’s Cup. The stream was too thin to bathe the opposite ship, and the range was shorter.

  “I’ve got it. I will call it the Flaming Onion! Good luck with the Flaming Onion,” she said.

  Tanner called her back to his side of the ship.

  Jack realized that his two big weapons had limitations. He tucked the orb, his flaming onion, back into his bag of tricks and pulled out the wand. He would save his sword. Now that he could see the sailors, they wore baggy pants of a much different style than what Passoranians wore. Their shirts didn’t have buttons but were folded across the chest and tied at their waist. They all wore hats, but he noticed a few men with more ornate metal helmets. They had to be officers. He aimed his wand and shocked the men within his range. He was too far away for the bolts to be lethal, but it would give the men pause.

  Jack didn’t wait long before shields were held by other pirates to protect the officers. He sighed. He could only pierce shields if he stood a pace or two away from the officers.

  Jack heard the twang of ballistae, and then there were thumps on the decks as the pirates shot men instead of barbed bolts onto the deck. The other ship had closed more quickly than Jack had thought they could.

  There were screams on the deck as the thrown pirates were impaled on the spikes. Not all the pirates were incapacitated. Jack caught Grigar sending a stream of wizard fire across the gap toward the ships. The battle was truly joined.

  Sailors killed the injured pirates while others fought the men being shot onto the ship. The deck began filling with men on both sides. Helen waded into the fray. Jack returned to his original side of the ship. The captain on this side wasn’t shielded. Jack took advantage of that, and now that the ship was closer, he ended the captain’s life.

  In a moment, shields sprang up around the other officers, but the ship was close enough that Jack could use his Serpent’s Orb to punch holes of fire into the rigging and sails of the pirate ship. Grapples began to be thrown by the pirate ship, but the sailors cut the ropes as soon as the grapples hit. Jack used his orb to set the pirate railing ablaze, and with the loss of sail, it began to drift behind.

  That left the two ships on the other side and the pirates still fighting on the deck. Jack brushed an ember from his face and looked up to see one of the sails burning. No one was near it. He jumped on the rigging and climbed to a spot and used his red-cuffed bracer to stop the fire.

  Another firework pierced a sail. Jack had to climb even higher to extinguish that blaze, but after more of the same, he looked down, too far down, to see the final two pirate ships breaking off. It was then that he realized he was way up in the rigging without a good way down.

  He thought about sliding down a line like he’d seen the sailors do, but that kind of thing wasn’t for him. Others noticed his predicament, and a few sailors began to climb up. Jack felt a thread of panic hit him. He could teleport to the deck, couldn’t he?

  Jack had never tried teleporting up and down, and with the fear of heights that he never knew he had before, he rejected the thought. He could levitate. That he could do. Jack didn’t have much practice, but he decided if he levitated when he hit the deck, the fall would be softened so he took a deep breath and jumped.

  That was going to work, he thought. He began to slowly descend, but then a gust of wind hit, blowing him away from the ship. He looked down to see the ship slide sideways beneath him. The wind affected his descent. Jack frantically tried to think of a solution, and as he watched the ship glide past, he ended up teleporting to the steering deck.

  He appeared a few feet above the deck and fell heavily the rest of the way, sprawled at the captain’s feet. Jack looked up at the captain’s face, which held a look of shock, but then his face cracked into a grin, followed by a gust of laughter.

  The captain bent over to help Jack up. “I don’t know what you did, but I thank you for it. You are a wizard of many talents,” the captain said.

  “I’m sorry. I have a few objects of power that my mentor let me take but I was unfamiliar with them in battle.”

  The captain still grinned as he said. “That was very plain to see, but they saved us. I’ve never had five ships attack before. I wasn’t quite sure how we’d fare, but with you onboard, we did rather well. How did you produce the water in the rigging? I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  “It i
s a spell I picked up in Tesoria,” Jack said. “I never thought it would be useful in a pirate battle, surrounded by the ocean.”

  “We were able to stay underway while our enemy couldn’t keep up.” The captain looked out at his main deck.

  Jack followed his eyes. The bodies of the dead pirates were tied together and stacked on a hatch cover. The sailors lowered the cover onto the surface of the sea.

  “We give their crews a chance to retrieve the bodies. The injured ones are delivered to the authorities at Taiyo. We think they are released to continue their work,” the captain said. “Our own dead sailors are buried at sea.”

  “Will there be more pirates?” Jack asked.

  “Perhaps,” the captain said distractedly as he eyed one of the wizards climbing up to the captain’s deck.

  “You should hire him,” the wizard said.

  The captain’s gaze brushed past Jack and back to the ship’s wizard. “Damage?”

  “Two of the crew down. There are four of the pirates still alive along with twelve dead.”

  “Tell Arsinport about a pack of five,” the captain said. “We will need to learn how to make those damned fireworks. If the pirates get more accurate, we will have to think of something else. You can get back to work.”

  The wizard saluted and returned to the main deck. The captain watched him go. “Wizards are paid nearly as much as captains, you should know. It is a dangerous but lucrative position with little to do unless we are attacked.”

  “Until you are attacked,” Jack said.

  The captain barked out a laugh. “Same thing. You may go, as well. I need to do some navigating to get back on course.”

  Jack tried to mimic the wizard’s salute, but all it did was amuse the captain. Jack climbed down and found Grigar seeing to the pirates. He noticed he was trying to speak to the men. Jack had no idea how much Grigar got across to the pirates.

  “All four will survive,” Grigar said. “They were afraid of the fire you slung at them, and the captain on the other side had to force them at sword point to be shot on deck. That was quite a performance. You are much more comfortable with your magic, aren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t call it comfortable,” Jack said. He looked up at the rigging. “I did some really stupid things today.”

  “Sometimes, stupid things save lives.”

  “This time,” Jack said. “I thought I could float to the deck using levitation, but I didn’t even think of the wind blowing me off course.”

  “Is that so? Good thinking to teleport while you were levitating. I would have been so afraid I would have floated right into the sea,” Grigar said.

  “I didn’t want to get wet,” Jack said with a smile. He actually didn’t care about getting wet; he just didn’t want to die. He didn’t know how long he could stay afloat wearing his armor and everything.

  Chapter Five

  ~

  A fter putting down a two-ship pirate attack that seemed easy, the ship slipped into port. Jack stood on the deck, amazed at the architecture. He had seen drawings in his books, but they didn’t do justice to the colors and overall impression.

  Jack looked at Grigar. “What do we do now?”

  “All foreigners stay at the same inn until they have contacted their sponsor. We aren’t allowed out of the dock area unaccompanied,” Grigar said. “But don’t worry, my old friend from many years ago will be our sponsor.”

  They debarked after the crew assembled to thank them for their role in fending off the pirates. Grigar led them across the large wharf area to a five-story building. Jack couldn’t tell if it was an inn or a business building or even a temple of some kind, his perception of Masukaian architecture was so poor.

  Along the way, Jack recognized a word or two of spoken Masukaian, but if he thought he had made progress during the voyage, he was humbled. The same was probably the case with the rest of them, with the possible exception of Grigar, although Jack thought the older wizard looked as confused as everyone else.

  They made their way into the lobby of the inn. Masukaians staffed a front counter, but they spoke Corandian, the language spoken by most countries in the world.

  “Rooms for four,” Grigar said. “Do you have a messenger available? I would like to contact my sponsor.”

  “You will pay in advance,” an unfriendly Masukaian woman said with a heavy accent. Jack shuddered to think how accented his attempt at the native language would be.

  Grigar gave the woman gold, which she weighed on a scale. She grunted and returned Masukaian coins in exchange. Grigar looked at what was exchanged and turned red, but he returned a good portion of it back to the woman. The exchange rate couldn’t have been very good.

  They took their bags up to their rooms. When Jack had settled in, he answered a knock on the door, expecting Tanner to come in and talk, but instead, Masukaians in scaled leather armor stood at his door.

  “You will come,” an officer said. He was an officer since his armor was painted a different color.

  “Why?” Jack asked, but it appeared that the man only knew three words in Corandian, since his question was ignored. He sighed and checked to make sure his possessions were secure before he followed them out of his room and out of the inn.

  He joined his traveling companions outside, and they were marched across the wharf to a wide two-level building surrounded by a wall. Similarly uniformed men ran through drills as they walked past them into the building and ended up in a meeting room. However, it was apparent that chairs were not used much in Masukai. They were pointed to sit on cushions facing a long, low table with empty cushions on the other side. This was going to be an inquisition. Jack had endured a few on his travels, but he wondered how different a Masukaian interrogation would be.

  “When I was here before, I didn’t have old man’s knees,” Grigar said when he lowered himself onto the cushion.

  Jack smiled.

  “Enjoy your youth, youngster,” Grigar said, with the ghost of a smile.

  The door opened, and four men, dressed in Masukaian costumes, filed in and took their places behind the table much more gracefully than Jack’s group.

  “Who is your sponsor?” One of the men asked.

  Grigar lifted his finger to get attention. “An old friend of mine, Yoki Tirashima.”

  The man produced a paper. Presumably, it was in Grigar’s handwriting. “Tirashima is no longer in Taiyo. What do you intend to do now?”

  “Not here?” Grigar asked, but Jack didn’t think he expected an answer. The older wizard put his hand to his forehead, looking dismayed. “I never thought he would leave his hometown.”

  “It happens,” the man said. He turned to his associates and spouted something in Masukaian that didn’t make any sense other than the sporadic word that Jack recognized. The language was spoken so fast that Jack had no hope to develop any kind of a context. “You will have to return on the ship that brought you. It sails tomorrow morning.” The man rose and led the others out.

  “That’s it?” Tanner said. “We can’t even ask for an extension? What will we do now?”

  Jack had a name back at the inn. He hadn’t bothered to remember it, but Reginart Ephram’s acquaintance was now their only hope to stay in Taiyo.

  “I might have a name. He might not be in Taiyo anymore, either, but Penny’s father knew him well enough to give me his name.”

  The guards marched them back to the inn. Jack retrieved the list of trifles that Reginart had prepared and copied down the name and address and gave it to one of the people at the front desk with a request for an urgent meeting.

  “We can but wait,” Jack said.

  Grigar and Tanner left to talk to the captain of the merchant ship that brought them while Jack sat on a bench in front of the inn soaking up the alienness of Taiyo. He analyzed the dress. It wasn’t hard to differentiate a better-off Masukaian from a worker. The quality of the cloth was one giveaway, but everything was a bit more extreme with better material. Rich men, and
some of their servants, wore robes with wide starched shoulders that gave the appearance of wings. Everyone wore sandals with socks.

  Men’s hair appeared to be waxed on the skull but left to hang down in the back like a ponytail or arranged into a topknot. Women wore full-length dresses that looked like lightly layered robes. The material looked printed or embroidered with flowers where the males wore patterned cloth. Everything was different, but people all wore expressions he had seen on Corandian faces. Women smiled, men laughed. The better the clothes, the dourer the expressions on men’s faces. Despite the differences, Jack thought they were still only people beneath the cultural surface.

  He watched Tanner and Grigar return from the ship. Their heads were bowed in conversation.

  “Are you ready to become a seaman?” Tanner asked as the pair sat down on either side of Jack. “Another trading company has given up on Masukai and has already taken up all the passenger berths on the ship. The captain can’t replace his crew with Masukaians, so he had empty crew spots.”

  “He didn’t discourage our returning with him. Pirates attack ships in both directions,” Grigar said. “He’d let me be an assistant cook.” The man chuckled and leaned over with his hands clasped, elbows on his knees, looking out at the busy wharf. “I didn’t think we would be defeated so easily.”

  No one said a thing for a few moments, each absorbing the bad news in his or her own way.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it yet. There is hope that Penny Ephram’s father will come through.” Jack rose from the bench and went up to his room. He stared at the Masukaian books on his bed and went back downstairs. If nothing else, he could buy the trinkets that Penny’s father listed.

  “How do I get these things?” Jack said to a new woman at the front desk.

  “There are shops on the wharf.” She noticed the name written below the items. “You know Kiro Ganshi?”