Deceptions (Ascendant Book 3)
Page 19
“Captain,” it was the captain’s turn to interrupt his man, as a cheer arose around the two of them. “That is no pirate.”
Partly obscured by wisps of fog, the figure was spinning the great wheel, causing the Hildegard to turn back onto her intended course, now heading slightly to the left of the docks. The pressure of wind against her sails was giving her just enough headway to make the turn; the current would do the rest. When the upper sails luffed from lack of wind, the ship was running only on momentum, and the current was now pulling her along straight for the docks. On the docks, pirates shouted and screamed and shook their fists, even shooting arrows at the dark bulk of the merchant ship bearing inexorably down on them. “Who is that?” Reed questioned in amazement. “My glass! Give me my glass!” A sailor pulled the spyglass from a leather pouch slung over a shoulder and handed it to his captain. Reed extended the tube to its full length and put it to his eye, but darkness and remaining fog made it impossible to see who guided his former ship. “I can’t tell who- Jofer?” Reed gasped in shock, realizing he had not seen the old codger since they left the Hildegard. “Jofer! Has anyone seen Jofer?” he shouted frantically, bobbing his head this way and that to scan the deck of their small boat. Reed had not seen Jofer since Alfonze departed with the other boats, and Reed had not personally counted heads as sailors scrambled down rope netting into those boats. He also had not seen Jofer while the much smaller crew set the Lady Hildegard on course for the docks and lashed the great wheel. The man could have hidden below deck, but for what insane purpose would he-
Just then, the thin fog parted momentarily and Reed caught a glimpse of the tiny dark figure still standing at the wheel as the Hildegard glided the last few yards and crashed into the outer docks, scattering and crushing pirate ships. Relentlessly, the great mass of the merchant ship snapped the docks before it like matchsticks, and pirate ships began sinking or being crushed under the onrushing ship, or both. The figure at the wheel staggered, holding the wheel with both hands in grim determination, though there was no longer any need or ability to steer the ship as her bow neared the dockyard buildings at the shore of the piers. Was Reed imagining what his eye saw through the spyglass? The figure staggered again, then held onto the wheel with one hand, while turning to face the ship’s former crew in their little boat. With his right arm, the figure snapped a salute and held it as the deck beneath the man’s feet splintered.
“That is Jofer,” Reed whispered, and the whisper traveled from stern to stem of the boat. Reed lowered the glass, and returned the salute, a gesture picked up by every man not pulling on an oar with all his might. “Jofer. Who’d have thought it?” Reed wondered just as the Lady Hildegard rammed its bowsprit into a sturdy building atop a pier, and the building fell over onto the ship’s deck.
The Hildegard erupted in a shocking explosion, sending burning debris and flaming oil high and wide. In moments, every pirate ship still docked and those few that had been cut loose were on fire, with flames raging across water and shore as burning gouts of oil fountained upward from the Hildegard’s hold.
Using his vessel as a fire ship had been Captain Reed’s idea, thinking that a suitable end for his great Lady. No sad fate of rotting away at anchor for the Hildegard, her death had thoroughly destroyed the pirate base and almost all their ships. Her death had given her crew a fighting chance to get away, and struck a hard blow for the free world.
“Cap’n,” a sailor clapped a hand on Reed’s back, patting him gently. Seeing tears rolling free and unashamedly down his captain’s face, the sailor remarked quietly “She was a good ship, she took care of us well right to the end.”
“Aye,” Reed rubbed away tears with the back of his hand. “She was a good ship, none finer I served aboard. I’m not sad for her, I grieve for old Jofer.”
“Jofer got what he wanted, Captain,” another sailor grunted between pulls at an oar. “He was sick, you see, and he also didn’t want to waste away on land in some hospital. Or, knowing Jofer, in a tavern.”
“I didn’t know,” Reed replied, ashamed of that.
“Not your fault, Captain. Jofer wanted it kept private. Huh,” the sailor chuckled softly. “Old Jofer finally got what he always wanted; to be part of a true story as exciting as the lies he was fond of telling.”
“That he is,” Reed found himself smiling. “If we live to return home, I will tell the legend of Jofer in every tavern I visit. Now, men,” he glanced at the two guard ships, which were still making swiftly for the docks, likely hoping to help extinguish the flames before they entirely consumed every ship, pier and building in the heart of Tokmanto harbor. Reed thought the errand of the guard ships to be foolish, he knew how much oil was now burning along that shore. Before they slipped anchor to put to sea, he had taken on barrels of flammable oil as ballast, the ship’s only ballast. Working with Lord Salva, Alfonze had rigged the Hildegard so that when her bow crumpled, a timber would be forced backward to pierce a barrel of oil and tip over a lantern, setting the oil on fire. All the other barrels had their lids removed before Reed left the ship, making them veritable bombs. With all that oil floating on the water, and some barrels still exploding, Reed knew the pirates had no hope of stopping the flames before they burned themselves out. “Pull! Make for Alfonze, or we will not survive this night!”
“That’s the signal,” Alfonze announced with a wince at a sharp pain from a cut across his left forearm. The signal was a burning torch on a beach farther up the eastern shore, and it meant their true mission had been accomplished; the wizards were safely ashore and had not been seen by the enemy. The four men who had rowed the exhausted wizards to the beach were out in the bay somewhere, their small boat invisible in the misty darkness. Now, even if the entire crew was killed, the mission they had been hired to perform was completed successfully. “They’ll meet up with us between the beach and the reef. Or they won’t. Can anyone see the captain’s boat?” Alfonse could not hold a glass steady with one hand, his left arm was too painful and shaky from being slashed by a pirate’s sword.
While Captain Reed set the Lady Hildegard on course to crash into the docks, and a team of four sailors got the wizards safely ashore unseen, Alfonze had taken most of the crew on a raiding party in three boats. Along the eastern shore of the harbor was a pier with three pirate longships, a few buildings, and pens where slaves were kept. Those three ships could cut off the sailor’s escape, so the mission for Alfonze had been to attack and sink two of the longships, or all three if it could not be helped. The three boats had reached the pier unnoticed, as the few pirates awake there assumed the guard ships would warn of any danger. Five unlucky pirates had their throats slit or swords run through their bellies before one pirate managed to shout an alarm. It was too late, for Alfonze and his men were chopping holes in the hulls of the two longships that were tied together, leaving the third for an escape attempt. Those two longships actually sank shortly before the Hildegard exploded, but a bank of fog across the middle of the bay prevented the main docks from seeing trouble to the east, and they had been entirely focused on the Hildegard looming toward them.
With two longships sunk at the pier and the other ship secured and being made ready, Alfonze had led a charge on the slave pens to release the wretches held captive there. Freed slaves could at least cause confusion amongst the pirates, but Alfonze hoped to find some captives healthy enough to help row the longship. He had lost four men in the fight, and had been disappointed to find only two dozen slaves huddled in the pen. But of the newly-freed slaves, all but five were capable of manning a longship’s oars, and every one of them was tearfully eager to do what they could for the people who had given them freedom, short though that may be.
When the rowing benches were crewed by a mix of his own men and the freed slaves, Alfonze had ordered the longship’s lateen sail hoisted, and he personally hacked away the lines tying the ship to the pier. With the sail catching wind blowing straight across the harbor and oars pulling, the longship wa
s making encouraging progress toward the reef. The problem for Alfonze was; in which direction to steer? Captain Reed had instructed Alfonze that picking up the captain and his one boat full of men was less important than escaping with most of the crew, and Alfonze knew that was a very wise and practical decision. He also had no intention of following those orders unless he had no choice.
“I see them!” A sailor pointed along the spyglass he held. “They’re between us and that guard ship!”
“Where?” Alfonze tried holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the yellow flames raging where the pirate docks used to be. “I can’t see- is that them?” He thought he saw something bobbing in the water.
“Yes, that’s them. That, that guard ship went right past them,” the sailor added excitedly.
“We have a chance, then,” Alfonze leaned on the tiller, turning the longship toward Reed’s boat. “If those guard ships think we are pirates coming to help them, we just might make a success of this,” he muttered to himself.
“If not?” The sailor helping him with the tiller asked under his breath.
“If not, then this is our last chance to see how a pirate ship fights another pirate ship.”
“Captain,” Alfonze tried to sit down hours later, before realizing his muscles were too stiff and sore to bend so much, even leaning on a railing made his legs scream in sharp agony. “The men cannot row another stroke, we are all exhausted.” Lowering his voice, he bent to speak privately, or as privately as possible in the open deck of the longship. “The former slaves gave their all, I fear two of them will not live to see the dawn, but they were ill-treated before we released them. They all need rest, and more food than we have aboard.” From the Lady Hildegard, her crew had brought casks of biscuit, dried soup and water, for they knew the water supply aboard a pirate ship of Acedor could not be trusted to be consumed. Water was not an immediate issue, a furious rain squall recently passing had filled several casks the sailors had scrubbed clean, but food had already been scarce before former slaves had swelled the number of mouths to feed. The Hildegard’s crew had no hope of acquiring more food other than fish until they could sail eastward along the coast back to Tarador, and the prevailing winds would propel the ship in the wrong direction. With its triangular lateen sail, the longship could point closer into the wind, but reaching safety would require many days of beating back and forth over the horizon from the coastline to remain concealed from pirate ships lurking closer to shore. To speed their progress by extending the oars and rowing would make their food supply problem worse; those manning the oars would need more food than sailors merely tending sails and the rudder.
“Aye,” Reed gritted his teeth, shifting his weight from one side to the other as he sat on the rough wood bench at the ship’s stern, holding the long tiller that was attached to the rudder post. He had taken several shifts at the oars and now he was shaking from exhaustion, and no amount of fidgeting on the seat found a comfortable position to sit. Reed was already past the time his shift at the tiller was supposed to have ended, he had volunteered to remain steering the ship because feared he could not rise from the seat. Through rents in the clouds scudding low above the ship’s lone mast, he could see the eastern sky becoming ever so slightly pink. “Belay the oars, give everyone rest. Sun will be up soon enough and we’ll face the day then.” Face their fate, Captain Reed said to himself. He was not optimistic.
Through the long night when no one aboard the longship got a wink of sleep, they had fearfully watched torches aboard two pirate ships hunting them, those pirates were no doubt mad as hornets and seeking blood. Only one torch was visible at the moment, but that was poor comfort to Reed and his crew. The other ship could have doused its torch, or be hidden behind a rain squall. Reed did not trust his luck enough to hope the second ship was over the horizon or had turned around to go back into the harbor. Their longship had not set course east after clearing the harbor entrance channel, instead they had taken advantage of a favorable though light breeze to sail straight away from land before turning east, Reed hoped that maneuver had surprised the pirate ships searching for him.
Daylight would bring no cover and no solace for the exhausted crew, Reed felt deep down they had pushed their luck as far as it could stretch and escaping the harbor was the last favor the fates would offer the former crew of the good ship Lady Hildegard. The prevailing wind along the coast blew toward the west as did the current, although the morning breeze had not yet made an appearance. Reed looked up to the single, triangular sail, luffing in the barest ghost of a breeze and the boom creaking against the mast.
“Aye, Cap’n,” Alfonze acknowledged leaning against the rail to steady his aching legs and back. “There’s kindling and oil aboard, when the sun is up we can get a fire going in the stove and heat soup for the crew?”
Reed nodded without making the effort to speak. He felt the tiller gently tugging under his arm and turned his head to feel the breeze ruffling his beard. Soon enough, the wind would pick up from the east, pushing the longship back toward the pirate harbor, and the pirates would bring fresh crews out to row against wind and current. With less than a full complement of rowers, and both former slaves and former men of the Hildegard unable to lift one of the great oars, Reed had no hope of surviving the day.
He smiled in spite of the dire circumstances. They had won a great victory, sneaking into the feared pirate harbor of Tokmanto, burning nearly every pirate ship there, destroying piers and dockyards, and most importantly setting the two wizards ashore without the enemy noticing in the chaos. Though their action that night would not break the pirate blockade of Tarador, Captain Reed and his brave people had hit the pirates hard in their own home, and perhaps gained a measure of revenge for the terrible crimes those pirates had committed on the high seas in the past year. If he died that day, he could take satisfaction that the pirates had to be burning up with rage to see their impenetrable harbor burned to uselessness.
Reed shifted on the seat again, trying to get comfortable when he realized the long tiller was pushing under his arm. He wiggled it gently, puzzled. With barely any wind, the longship made so little headway that he had been able to use only finger pressure on the tiller to keep the ship pointed in the right direction, and now the oars had been stowed, the ship was drifting listlessly on the current.
Except it wasn’t. He looked up in surprise to see the sail flapping, the boom groaning against the mast, and his beard tickled as a freshening breeze wafted past. He pulled on the tiller, remembering that unlike the wheel on the Hildegard, a tiller is steered in the direction opposite where he wanted to go. With the longship pointed properly to catch the wind, the sail filled, the lines straining and creaking under the pressure. “Alfonze!” Reed called excitedly, pointing to the sail. “Let her out,” he ordered, and Alfonze with two others adjusted the lines to let the boom swing over, catching more of the wind.
Reed looked toward the shore, still unseen just over the horizon. This unusual morning wind was coming from the northwest, and the longship was able to skip across the swells at a good clip, with the wind continuing to build. The motion of the ship heeling over awakened more of her exhausted crew, and they adjusted lines and shifted themselves and their meager supplies to the windward rail without needing to be ordered. Within a quarter hour, with the eastern sky becoming distinctly light as dawn approached, the longship had a wake boiling behind her and everyone who was not tending sails were stacked along with windward rail, their weight keeping the ship’s long, narrow and shallow hull from heeling over too far. Reed and Alfonze, their desperate tiredness forgotten for the moment, discussed the finer points of handling the unfamiliar ship to get the best speed out of her. They experimented with trimming the sail while expressing disgust about its poor condition, and found that moving more of the crew aft made the ship happier and swifter across the wavetops. Reed found himself actually grinning as he saw the first orange light of the rising sun through gaps in the fleeting clouds.
“They do!” Reed answered, wincing as his sore back tightened with a twinge of pain. A sore back he could live with and the pain no longer constantly bothered him, as he urged the wind to continue.
“Then the fates smile upon us this morning,” Alfonze said before fearing he may have jinxed them by his eagerness.
“Fates?” Reed agreed, then frowned. “Hmmm.”
“What is it, Captain?” Alfonze asked with concern.
“I wonder, Alfonze, if we owe this fortunate wind not to the fates, but to a wizard.”
“A wizard? Oh,” Alfonze felt his hair standing on end. “A wizard, eh?”
Lord Mwazo extended his senses slowly, carefully. Even through the cloud cover, he could feel the sun would soon rise above the horizon and indeed the thin clouds in the east were lighter in color. Since splashing ashore, the two wizards had climbed the hillside ringing the harbor, avoiding well-traveled roads and trails, striking out through rough country or following faint paths created by the goats and other wild animals who somehow managed to live in the inhospitable country. At first, the wizards cared about little else but speed and distance; getting as far from the harbor as quickly as possible. With the flaming chaos in the harbor fully occupying the attention of the pirates and soldiers of Acedor, no one was patrolling the lands away from the harbor. Other than the harbor facilities of Tokmanto, there was nothing of importance in the area, what had been fertile farmland before the arrival of the demon was now reduced to bare soil, scrub brush and huddled groves of sickly trees. With dawn fast approaching, Cecil needed to locate enemy patrols and outposts so they could avoid being caught out in the open. Though a quick check soon after setting their feet on solid ground determined no enemy wizards were in the area, at least a few were sure to arrive in reaction to the total destruction of the dockyard facilities, piers and almost all the pirate ships. Cecil and Paedris needed to find a route inland, that remained far away from any roads that would be traveled by enemy wizards on their rush to reach the harbor.