Tales of Kingshold

by D P Woolliscroft

  Once on-board ship, Kolsen surveyed his new home, starboard oar number five, first seat. It had a well-worn bench, chains to keep him in place, and the lovely aroma of urine the previous tenant had nurtured so well. And luckily for him, he was well-acquainted with his neighbor.

  “Well, how are you liking it so far?” Kolsen asked his former cellmate.

  The man didn’t look to be enjoying himself. His head was bowed, resting on the oar handle in front of him. Kolsen looked around and saw that the new guy had managed to fit in quickly. Though the older hands were sleeping rather than questioning the life choices that had led them there. The man looked up at Kolsen and sighed.

  “Mareth.”

  “Pardon?” asked Kolsen.

  “You asked my name before. It’s Mareth.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mareth,” said Kolsen, reaching out a chained hand, “I’m—”

  “Kolsen. I was listening before, and I’m good at remembering names. Why are you looking so happy? We will die here.”

  “My friend, I am happy because this is an improvement in my surroundings. I was wrongly accused of murder back in that stink-hole of a village, but no magistrate would have sided with me. Besides, this ship is a 60-foot galleon, and it will be well-stocked. We’ll likely eat better than those fools left behind. And it’s not like we have to row all the time.”

  “We don’t?”

  “No. The oars are used only when the sea is becalmed or for coming into port. And maneuvering in battle, of course.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I have spent a lot of time on the seas. Once, I was a merchant seaman and saw many vessels like this.” Kolsen carefully considered his words and the truth of them. As a young man, he had spent many years traveling the trade routes with different merchant vessels. He had merely chosen to leave out the fact that he hadn’t been in that line of work for a while now.

  It was a particular affectation for Kolsen, and especially for a pirate. He was always careful not to lie. He remembered seeing a Priest of Marlth asking for alms on a street corner in his home city of Ioth when he was a young boy. He had a bright shiny copper coin in his pocket from a neighborhood lady he called his grandmother, and he was going to buy a honey stick. When the priest had asked him for a donation, Kolsen had said he was penniless. Somehow, the priest had known he was lying. The young Kolsen was grabbed by the earlobe before he could run away. The priest had screamed in his face that he was a liar and a sinner and that Marlth would put out his eyes and eat his tongue in the next life if he didn’t change his ways. That kind of early experience can really impact you.

  This did not mean Kolsen was honest. Far from it. He had no qualms about misleading people and creating illusions the unwary could choose to follow. Experience had led him to realize that the truth, edited for the audience, was far more effective than lies.

  Mareth nodded, buying the story, but Kolsen could see he was slipping back into his own thoughts again. “So how did you end up in the cell back there?” he asked, trying to bring Mareth back.

  “I think I hurt someone. Didn’t meant to. Hallucinations. Skyweed.”

  “I thought you were drunk when they threw you in the gaol. What did you see?”

  “I was drunk. I tried to stop the visions by drinking fast until I blacked out. But it didn’t work. Made it worse, I think. You don’t want to know. I was an adventurer, and we saw some bad stuff.” Mareth’s thousand-mile stare returned as though he were remembering something. “Terrible. It killed all of my friends. I should be dead, too. Well, it won’t be long now, I suppose.”

  “There’s looking on the bright side,” said Kolsen, meaning it. “You never know what will happen. As long as you’re breathing, you’re fighting. And there’s no better way to get cleaned up than being chained to an oar.”

  Being an oarsman (Kolsen refused to call himself a galley slave) on a ship like this wasn’t that bad. It didn’t smell too good, what with there not even being a pot to piss in, but the food was not terrible. It was certainly more plentiful than in the gaol and the work was not too backbreaking.

  The first day had been the worst. Getting into the rhythm of the other oars when Kolsen and Mareth were a new pairing had not been easy, and they had both received a couple of lashes of the whip from Miss Carliss. Not that Kolsen blamed her. How could she keep order without using a bit of the whip? Once they had matched the beat of the oar, the ogress changed her tune and began saying they could earn their freedom. Ha! He’d never heard of any slave doing that on a pirate ship before. Sounded like gull shit to him, and an unnecessary motivational technique. A swig of grog and no whip would have been incentive enough for most in his position.

  On top of all that, Kolsen had been forced to give up his boots. They would have gone rotten in the bilge of the rowing hold anyway, but it was still a wrench. They were good boots, been with him a long time. Lived through a few soles. He’d always considered boots to be better than people. More than a few people could do with re-souling, himself included.

  Mareth noted Kolsen’s webbed toes as he, too, took off his boots to hand over to Miss Carliss. Kolsen explained that when he was born with the webbing between his toes, his mother knew he would be destined for a life at sea. He didn’t share how the other villagers steered clear of him, thinking him devil-borne. It drove his mother so mad. Mad enough that they had left the fishing village of her birth to move to Ioth, another home by the sea. Kolsen thought she also felt a guilt for passing on her own deformity to her child, and wanted to protect him from the mocking she suffered.

  Kolsen noticed Mareth’s boots. They were a good pair, but not as nice as his. Well, he thought, they will be going to some other man now. Maybe the merchant’s patter in Trima would prove true and they would last longer than him.

  Things improved steadily from the second day through day twelve. Even Mareth got used to his new role in life and embraced the simple peace of knowing your place. Captain makes the order on deck, oar rope is pulled, bell rings, woman yells, and you row.

  And when you row, you are just a single cog in the human machine. If your oar is out of pace with the others, then accidents happen. On the second day, one of the other new rowers from the gaol fell out of time and hit the oar in front of his, the handle hitting him in the face. It wasn’t pretty, nose like a smear and what remained of his front teeth bashed in. Nearly choked on one of them, too, until Miss Carliss came along and thumped his back with her big plate of a hand until he choked it up. Then she whipped him to make sure he had learned his lesson.

  Times like these always made Kolsen philosophical, and he didn’t mind sharing his thoughts with others. Given the seating arrangements and lack of mobility, Mareth was the natural receiver of much of Kolsen’s wisdom. There was a lot you could learn about life from being an oarsman. It taught you to be watchful of the timing of others, to conserve your energy for when it was needed, to value good, honest, simple exercise and look out for your partner. What went unsaid was bide your time, assess your surroundings, and then be ready.

  Mareth became more talkative, too. The second and third days had been rougher for him than Kolsen, what with getting off the skyweed. He’d complained of his head hurting like the seven hells, and he’d vomited down his shirt more than once, causing him to discard it and go shirtless.

  A few more days had passed when Kolsen enquired about the scars on his chest. Mareth opened up about his life as an adventurer. A bard no less, looking to make famous tales of himself and his friends. But all they had managed to do was go from one terrifying situation to another until he had been the only one left. Seemed to sum up Kolsen’s life pretty well too.

  They had been talking about women. The oars were in. Kolsen and Mareth leaned forward to rest on the worn wooden handles, heads conspiratorially close together as they shared tales of lost beauties and brief flirtations, when a shout went up from on deck. A call to starboard.

  In the past fortnight, there had been only two
moments of action. A pirate’s life, much as any other sailor’s, could be weeks of boredom and monotony interrupted by moments of terrifying and intoxicating danger.

  The first time they had rowed to position the ship offshore from Hulmouth, a town Kolsen recognized after peering through the oar hole. The Scythe had joined up with four other corsair vessels to raid this large town, and he and Mareth had watched as longboats had taken scores of pirates ashore. The crew had returned many hours later, laden with a haul bigger than they’d managed at Little Eaton, crowing so loudly about their success it could be heard below deck.

  The other time they had been called to action was to man the oars and ram a merchant ship on the open sea. The impact and the ear-splitting squeals and shrieks of timber and man unnerved Mareth, who had not known what to expect. Kolsen had found himself grinning, even though he knew he would not be waiting at the railing to leap over and see what chance had brought them today.

  “Can you see what has been sighted?” Kolsen asked Mareth once he heard the call. His oar mate leaned to the hole in the hull and peered out.

  “I can’t see anything. Just the sea and the sky.”

  Another cry, muffled at first but clearer as it was repeated.

  “Pienza Navy!”

  Kolsen sighed. That was not good news. Raiding towns and villages always led to trouble. He had little time to reflect on shifting fortune though, as the whip was cracked and they rowed for all they were worth.

  “Why do we row when there is so much wind today Kolsen?” asked Mareth between strokes.

  “I don’t know for sure, but it’s likely the navy ship is faster than we are. More sails and so it will catch up.”

  “Shut up!” screamed Miss Carliss, and the whip flicked out and hit Kolsen on the back of his neck, blood mingling with sweat as it trickled down between his shoulder blades. He doubled his efforts, silently imagining ways to gain his revenge on this banshee.

  Pulling the oars when the sea was so choppy was difficult, and there was little respite. Lunch came and went with only a brief begrudging break for water and to wolf down a biscuit after one of their fellow oarsmen keeled off his perch. The captain of this vessel and his crew were clearly desperate. These oars would not save them unless the weather shifted.

  “If the navy catch them, then aren’t we going to be free?” asked Mareth, chancing another question when Miss Carliss was prowling the stern.

  “Maybe,” said Kolsen, “but don’t bet on it. They rarely care about distinguishing between who wants to be on board and who doesn’t, unless you are clearly of means and have been kidnapped. Likely as not we’d still be explaining it while they put the ropes around our necks.”

  Mareth screamed as the whip left a long red mark across his shirtless back.

  “Shut up and row, you worthless shits!” screamed Miss Carliss. This time Mareth stopped with the questions.

  Bellows from on deck signaled the pursuer was close. Shouts rose as the crew riled themselves up for the fight to come.

  Then the port side oars slammed backward into their teams with a sickening crack as men and women were crushed against one another. The boat listed to the starboard side from the collision. Oil lamps swayed from the ceiling of the rowing hold, sending shadows spinning in different directions and painting the grisly scene of crushed bone and spilled blood in a sickly yellow light.

  “Hold your oars!” screamed the ogress. Too late, though. Too late for the poor souls who were unlucky enough to sit on the far side from Kolsen. “Stow!”

  Miss Carliss waited long enough to see that her order had been carried out before disappearing up the stairs. Water began to slosh into the ship through cracks in the ship’s hull. He tried to move but Kolsen was still chained to his post; the best he could do was stand and listen to the sounds of battle from above, but they were strangely muffled and remote to the denizens of the hold.

  Kolsen had heard others talk about the chaos of large battles on land where one army would throw itself against another, the maelstrom of chaos you would find yourself in; but he didn’t know about that. He only knew what it was like to fight on a ship when the deck moved beneath your feet, when the fires started, and when there was nowhere to run. Kolsen had seen big men, men who had told him about fighting for hours in some idiot’s war, last no more than five seconds in the middle of a fight at sea.

  He didn’t know which way the fight was going, but he could hazard a guess. This was not a large pirate vessel.

  Mareth was quiet as he tried to free his chains. From up the stairs, Miss Carliss returned with two men in tow. One set to work unlocking the chains; the other left behind a box of boat hooks, mallets, cudgels, and chisels before disappearing back up to the fight. “Get upstairs and fight! If you live, you’re free. If you don’t, you’re dead,” she called.

  Kolsen and Mareth rubbed life back into their feet before being hauled to stand unsteadily. Tools repurposed as weapons were pressed into their hands and they ascended the stairs, Miss Carliss and the other pirate right behind them.

  The final flight of stairs was like being born again, but into a world of hell and thunder.

  The Pienza naval ship was an additional deck taller than the pirate ship. Its golden prow decoration of a screaming eagle, wings swept backward, loomed across the deck where the ship had crashed into the mainmast, which now leaned at an angle. Marines had boarded and engaged the pirates. They fought tooth and nail for their lives and all they owned, but the odds were against them.

  Along the naval vessel railing stood a row of crossbow men, picking their targets and firing into the melee. Kolsen saw one bolt whistle across the deck and take a man in the neck. He fell gurgling to the floor. It was Creed, the boy who had volunteered from the village.

  The man accompanying Miss Carliss rushed past Kolsen to help their comrades, and Carliss pushed Mareth forward to join them.

  There’s no way I’m wading into that, thought Kolsen. He turned and took Miss Carliss by surprise, burying his chisel in her eye, through her skull, and into the brain.

  Mareth turned and saw what had happened, a question on the tip of his tongue. “We’ve got to get out of here,” shouted Kolsen. He picked up the sword Miss Carliss had been holding and Mareth did the same with a discarded one at his feet.

  “This is my sword. The one they took from me at the gaol,” said Mareth.

  “Well, isn’t it your lucky day?” said Kolsen. Mareth looked idiotically happy. Kolsen looked over his shoulder and signaled to the stern. “Come on.”

  The fight was clearly turning against the pirates. The mainmast was leaning over to the side and its weight was causing the ship to pitch. Only the attacking vessel’s proximity kept it close to level.

  Crossbow bolts thudded where Kolsen and Mareth had been standing, but they ran to the stern where Kolsen had seen a longboat tethered. Working together, they cut the ropes holding it down and pushed it over the rail.

  “Come on!” Kolsen called above the noise of battle and jumped into the sea. He swam to the boat and pulled himself out of the dark waters, looking for Mareth.

  Kolsen pulled his oar mate on board and noticed another figure struggling to swim amongst the waves. Back at the oars once more, they rowed away from the scenes of shipborne carnage.

  “Kolsen, it’s the boy, Karr, from the village. We have to get him.”

  “No, we don’t. We have to get away.”

  “How far from land are we? We need another set of arms to row.”

  Reluctantly, Kolsen let the boat be steered toward the boy thrashing around in the water. Mareth reached over to grasp his flailing arm and pull him in to the boat. The boy lay there in a sodden lump, his coughing and spluttering turned into tears and blubbering.

  “Creed,” he wailed between gasps of air, “he’s dead. I saw him die.”

  “Shut up, boy,” hissed Kolsen, “or I’ll throw you back and you can join him. If you must mourn your friend, do it in peace.”

  M
areth regained his seat, and he and Kolsen rowed away from the lurching pirate ship. Fire arrows, launched skyward from the navy ship, caught its sails. Flames licked high into the night sky. They could not turn their eyes away, knowing the pirates would be dead or captured to pay publicly for their attack on Hulmouth.

  So, they said nothing but focused on the long pulls of their oars. They were free now, but chained to their destiny just the same, unsure whether they were heading toward land or out to the North Sea.

  “How much farther do we have to go?” asked Karr. His blubbering had turned to snores last night, only to be replaced by annoying questions once day broke and he took his turn at the oars.

  “We don’t know,” said Kolsen. “We haven’t been above decks in two weeks. You were in the crow’s nest. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know which way is land. I was only to keep lookout. I didn’t even want to come.” And the boy sniveled and whimpered once more. To Kolsen’s mind, it seemed he didn’t know how to row either. What kind of kid grows up in a fishing village and doesn’t learn how to row? But he thought for once it was better to hold his tongue, especially as he was the one resting.

  “Well, that way is east. East is guaranteed to be land, but north or south could be faster depending on where we are…” Kolsen let the sentence hang, its meaning clear. Without food or water, they would need to hope luck was on their side.

  Night followed day and day followed night as is the way of the world. No food and no water. The boy had tried to drink the sea and Kolsen had hit him, too tired to explain his stupidity. Karr had cried again.

  Then Mareth had sung. He had told Kolsen he was a bard, but he’d kept his songs and stories to himself, even when asked. It had seemed like a strange moment to get into the festive spirit, but Kolsen was happy for a way to help pass the time.