by Dylan Doose
I Remember My First Time
A Sword and Sorcery Story
Dylan Doose
Contents
Also by Dylan Doose
I Remember My First Time
Sample chapter
Also by Dylan Doose
About the Author
Also by Dylan Doose
Sword and Sorcery:
Fire and Sword ( Volume 1 )
Catacombs of Times ( Volume 2 )
I Remember My First Time (A Sword and Sorcery short story; can be read at any point in the series)
The Pyres ( Volume 3 )
Ice and Stone ( Volume 4 )
As They Burn ( Volume 5 )
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Copyright © 2016 by Dylan Doose
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9948283-3-0
I Remember My First Time
A Sword and Sorcery Short Story
O n the seventh evening of the chase, the Brynthian hulk caught us beneath a blazing red sun drowning in the endless sea. They had more men, more guns, and a goodly dose of arrogance—that alone was enough to sink us. And the two other destroyers several leagues behind, well, they were just a bloody formality. That was what they thought, the king’s bloodhounds on the sea, those bastards who were hunting us .
But they had never faced us .
They had never faced the Sea Maggot and her reinforced brass hull. They had never gotten close enough to board, to suffer the eagle accuracy of our muskets and pistols. They had never seen the flash of steel wielded by hands from a score of different nations, steel thirsty for the blood of the Brynthian Empire, the blood of those mage-killing, temple-smashing, book-burning tyrants.
They had never faced our mage, Stiggis the Walker.
He was old as a man could get without being a corpse. His filthy white beard was closer to yellow, and closer still to brown where he braided it through golden rings. His cheeks were sunken deep into his skull and his eyes were grey and filmy like a blind man’s, but even so, Stiggis had sight better than any man I’d ever known. Despite his gauntness and apparent age, he was so tall and wide in frame that it was hard to find a horse that could carry him, hence the moniker “the Walker.” He was called a druid in his homeland, a bender of the elements. He said he spoke to spirits, in the air and the sea, and I believed him. I had seen him do it many times, and each time the hair on my neck would stand on end and gooseflesh would rise .
Stiggis was a danger to any ship that did battle with us. I’d once seen him summon an undertow so strong it pulled three launches filled with men into water that had been calm as glass only moments before. He kept a maelstrom whirling and killed every last man, and he did it sitting in a tree on the shore.
But our greatest asset still was our captain, and it was she and she alone who saw us through those terrible days that came after our night facing the Brynthian hulk .
The enemy ship was in firing range, and even though I knew the plan, I knew the cost too, and I do confess that my hands were shaking like they used to every time I saw Hilda in the Church of the Luminescent as a lad. I was filled with a mixture of anticipation and excitement, but also an unshakable fear that the thing I was looking at was going to destroy me .
They were two hundred and fifty yards to our port side, half their ship behind our stern, but that didn’t matter, for the Brynthian hulk towered with eighty-four guns. Even getting hit by a portion of their broadside would be catastrophic.
Our captain stood dead center of the deck, smiling a sharp white grin that glowed in contrast to her dark brown skin. She wore the pink and white scars that embroidered the flesh of her arms, face, and shaved head with pride, testament to a hundred battles at sea, on land, waist deep in a bloody tide on a white sandy beach. She fought for those scars.
She had sailed as first mate under Filthy Jack Lawrence. She had beaten Stiggis the Walker at his own game of wits on a wager, and won our crew his services and, later, his loyalty. She met Admiral Wallace on the high sea, gave him a thrashing, invited him to tea, and that night he joined her crew. We call him Wayward Wallace now .
Given enough time, she was a woman capable of swaying anyone to her cause. And it wasn’t always with a sharp sword that she did so, but a sharp tongue and a sharp mind as needs must. She was an ordinary mortal, not a drop of magic in her blood, a dark-skinned woman, by her own words a pagan in a pig-skinned man’s world, where the Church of the Luminescent ruled, and their beast the Leviathan Company reached its tentacles out from the abyss to take whatever and whomever it pleased. Against these odds she had resisted and done so admirably. To a man, we idolized her. She was more than our captain; she was our will to fight.
She swayed us to her impossible plan with a few precise sentences. Now, she brought us closer to the Brynthian hulk with its three levels of guns, a volley being loaded. We did not try to gain speed, or load quicker and fire before they did. Instead, the captain ordered Krigs to turn us hard at them. Right at them .
I stared at the dark mouths of the cannons and was certain that when that volley was unleashed we would be done for, and so I am not ashamed to admit—for these were still the early years of my career as Timothy “Golden Boy” O’Connor. I was yet to hang a prince and yet to flay a sultan. I was yet to ever even have killed a man in sword combat—my legs were shaking as well as my hands, and my balls felt like beetles trying to squirm back into my stomach and scuttle out my ass .
But I trusted the captain’s plan, I trusted my mates, and I trusted the primordial power of Stiggis the Walker to see us through. The wizard was standing in the center of the deck next to the captain, the top of her head hardly past his waist, his primitive long axe in hand as he began to speak to the spirits. It was a chant in an ancient tongue that started as a whisper and slowly grew. And as his chant reached toward the sky, we steeled ourselves for what was to come .
The wood of the deck beneath his feet came alive, peeling back in thin strands that first twirled and knotted together, then split into thick, branchlike forms that wrapped round the wizard’s legs, grounding him sturdy as a tree. With a strong grip on his coat, the captain braced herself, and I clung to one of the rope railings, of which we had many on the ship, for sailing on the Sea Maggot was sailing rough, and fighting rougher still. Of all the formidable skills I honed in my years on that deck, an iron grip was the first.
“Now, Stiggis!” cried the captain as she peered through her telescope.
To a man, we stood, cutlasses and pistols drawn, the air pulled from our very lungs as Stiggis drew his magic from the air, the wind, the sea .
The wizard clenched his fist at his side. His veins bulged in his neck and his chant became the sounds of madness as he roared with such volume it contested the boom of the admiral’s cannons as they fired. Great metal balls hurtled toward us at incredible speed, but not too fast to see, just too fast for us to avoid. That was likely what they thought.
The crew knew otherwise. We had seen Stiggis do magic before. We had seen the effect of magic’s delicate economy on his form, for after the spell was cast, there was always a cost. The greater the spell, the clos
er to death Stiggis walked.
And the spell he wove now was the greatest.
Before we were sent to a watery grave, the ship tilted hard to its starboard side, sending the crew scuttling across the deck, clutching for anything that was tied down. The sea grew beneath us in a monstrous wave so tall that all three levels of guns were evaded, their projectiles smashing into the wall of water we now rode .
“Brace!” the captain ordered, and the grin on her face stretched ear to ear as she squinted against the mist spraying up from the sea .
The ship sat atop the crest of the wave. My stomach was in my chest, and then we dropped like a wagon racing down a treacherously steep hill and my gut dropped at the same time as my breakfast rose. The prow raced down toward the enemy deck, men like ants scurrying fore and aft .
The moment our figurehead—a woman’s form, bare from the waist up, her features twisted and decayed, with maggots crawling from between her lips—crashed into their starboard, sending splinters of wood in every direction, my shoulders jarred and my grip was torn from the rope. I went sprawling and hit my head hard on the deck, and when I got to my feet my vision was obscured with crimson. My ears rang as men screamed and muskets blared. I wiped the blood from my eyes, stumbling, bile in the back of my throat, seeing everything through a hazy lens. I could hardly stand. The musket ball that ripped into the muscle of my shoulder assisted me in lying back down .
I vaguely recall dragging myself across the deck unashamedly screaming in agony, tears running down my face, but the memory of Stiggis falling to one knee wearing the face of death is not vague at all .
A swarm of purple—legs and arms and faces twisted with hate, sabers and boarding axes, pistols and muskets—clambered onto the deck. I remained still on the ground, my shoulder heavy and weak at the same time, with a throb that beat in tandem with the combat around me. I was in no condition to fight. I was not the best fighter when in condition for it. I decided to play dead, until one of the purple coats stabbed me in the arse cheek. When I squealed like a pig, he pulled the blade free and I rolled over just in time to stare down the barrel of his musket.
He pulled the trigger.
Misfire.
I laughed, and years later I came to think that Timothy “Golden Boy” O’Connor became a man that day .
He raised his musket like a spear, but before he could stick me through, Wayward Wallace charged across the deck and his wooden club whistled through the air and cracked against the purple coat’s skull. Instead of my guts on the deck, it was bits of his brain raining down on me in a shower.
I wiped brain and blood from my eyes and saw the captain fighting five men with her two Kheldeshi blades.
“Up, Golden Boy!” Wallace shouted, and he hoisted me up to my feet, then spun round to parry a saber. In two blows—one to the side of the knee, the other to the throat when the man fell—Wallace slew another. I heard the report of a rifle—it had a sharper crack than a musket—and then Wallace went down .
I grabbed him and dragged him toward the stern, passing Stiggis, who had not moved from the place he had collapsed, but from his lips came the sound of a low hum, words without form in a tongue I did not know, and again I felt my lungs tighten, the air thin. Somehow, Stiggis was rallying the forces to him, and before my eyes, he seemed to fill with life .
He surged to his feet and, with a roar, axe in hand, charged at the Brynthian hulk. Our prow was buried deep in her starboard, grappling hooks holding us close despite the raging waves beneath the ships. The wizard climbed onto their deck and drew a deep breath. Arms back and out to the sides, neck straining forward, he breathed out like one of the winged, scaled beasts his ancestors worshipped. Each man his breath touched turned to a statue of ice, features twisted in a mask of horror. Then he swept his axe back and forth, hewing down men left and right. But his blade did not cut. Instead the frozen men shattered.
“Cut her loose!” Stiggis cried, and he took a volley of musket fire. He was still swinging his axe, and chanting his spells, blood pouring from his mouth as purple-coated men swarmed him .
“Get us underway!” the captain cried to the helmsman, and then she unloaded her pistol into the face of a man not three feet from her .
“What about Stiggis?” I yelled. He was too important a man to leave behind. And he was my friend.
“This is his will, to die with his axe in his hand!” said Wallace. “Has he not told us so many a time ?”
I looked to the captain and then to Stiggis, and as I did, he brought his massive axe down, severing one of the ropes that bound the two ships.
His sacrifice and commitment inspired me beyond any way I can explain, and I found a sword sticking out of a dead man’s chest, its hilt wet with blood, and cut at the ropes of the grappling hooks that tethered us to our foe. Next to me, Wallace was back on his feet. His ear was gone and half his head was covered in blood, and when he saw me sawing at the ropes he smiled at me, pulled his knife from his belt, and did the same .
I caught a glimpse of the captain, a whirlwind of death, clearing the remaining enemy from our deck. Across the increasing gap between the ships, she and Stiggis stared at each other for what felt like a long moment. Then Stiggis nodded.
The wind took our sails and drew us away. We all watched as a maelstrom began to form, and as it grew, it pulled the enemy ship in toward its center. Frantic, the purple coats climbed the rigging, spun the wheel, pulled on ropes, and finally cut them. To no avail.
On the deck, Stiggis was pushed back until he was pressed against the rail, still swinging his axe. And then he was pushed overboard into the gaping maw of the maelstrom. Tears welled in my eyes for the sacrifice of that legendary warrior.
We sailed away while their ship followed Stiggis into the depths.
It was another day still before we reached our wharf. We were separated now from the remaining Brynthian destroyers by near ten hours. But we had little doubt they knew where we were heading and they would follow. We had no time to dally, no opportunity to lick our wounds.
We anchored the Sea Maggot , and I recall how empty our launches looked as we passed between the natural stone walls of the cove that towered into the sky. We had wrapped our dead and sent them over the side as we fled the destroyers. Now, I stared up at the stalactites and listened to the oars. The last time our oars echoed as they dipped into this water, paddling us toward the fort, we had twenty-two more men packed into the launches, men I had called friends. They would be mourned, but first they would be avenged.
Wayward Wallace helped me up the beach, though he was as injured as I .
“You’re all right, Golden Boy,” Wallace said, with six inches of wooden splinter sticking out of the monstrous muscles on the back of his neck. “Just brush it off. We’ll have a drink in the fort and take that hot piece of lead right out of your shoulder.” He slapped me on the side of my arse that wasn’t bleeding. “And sew up your new asshole tight as it were before.”
I was shaking from the pain and sweating profusely, but when we reached the fort in the cave, the fort that we called home, I felt a rise in my vigor, if only for long enough to get to the rum. Wallace no doubt felt the same, because all at once the two of us, propping each other up, stumbled as quickly as we could through the front gate .
An hour and a jug of rum later, I was drunk—thank the forces that be for that—when our medic, Shakes, dug the lead ball out of my shoulder. We didn’t have the time to stitch up every man’s wounds, so he used a hot iron. I screamed and tears rolled down my cheeks, but I thanked him when it was done. And hoped that the stink was only burning flesh and that I had not finally lost the fight against my bowels.
I was still drinking—I suppose I should not have been—when I heard whistles and snare drums on the beach. The purple coats were amassing. I limped across the floor to where our men sharpened their blades and cleaned the barrels of their guns. Their faces were grim .
The captain strode among the men, assigning tasks. S
he sent me to carry a crate of small glass globes filled with oil, slow-burning rope wicks at the mouth of each, to Wallace, who had been assigned to one of the fort’s two defensive towers. They were cylindrical and perfectly smooth outside and in, smooth as wet stone, the walls a foot thick, with narrow slits for firing at the enemy. What tools had been used to make the fort thousands of years ago was a complete mystery. The natives of the island we called home, Poino, believed it once belonged to the gods, and so they never dared set foot here. Now it belonged to devils.
With my shoulder screaming, I hobbled up the stairs. Wallace’s wounds were bandaged, his barrel chest bare, a half-full bottle of rum in his hand, and he looked lovingly down at the Deck Sweeper, his five-barreled musket. Laid out neatly next to him were eight more muskets, all loaded.
“I have killing on my mind,” Wallace said with a big smile. “Let’s make Stiggis proud.”
I nodded and set down the crate. A diamond skink scuttled across the worn stone floor on its eight scaled legs, and as it went, all I could think about was how I had gone from being on a ship bound for the seminary in Fracia four years ago, where I was set to become a priest in the Church of the Luminescent, to being part of a pirate crew, to sitting here in this fortress looking at a lizard scuttle across the ground, just as we had scuttled to our hiding place. Wallace saw it too, and cracked his foot down on its skull in a flash.
It crunched.
I cringed.
I didn’t have the stomach for cruelty. I saw violence all the time; I was a gentleman of fortune, after all and fortune’s path was a fucking bloody one. I loaded cannons, sure. I fired a pistol and a musket onto the enemy deck, threw a lit glass globe and plugged my ears as I heard men screaming, burning alive. But for those first four years, with charm and wit, with excuses and evasive tactics, I had avoided being thrust into the thick of a close-quarters combat. This battle at sea was the most direct fight I had been in since joining the crew. Usually the captain’s name ensured that we faced meager resistance when taking our prizes. I thought our luck had to end eventually.
