“Drop sail! We have to get clear or we will be overwhelmed,” ordered Hawkwood.
A sailor cut the rigging and the mainsail fell in a blanketed heap, catching the light breeze from the surf. The Kraken rocked once and turned almost as if she was coming about and knocked a slew of canoes on her port side into one another, crushing a score of men beneath her hull.
On the other side, Tultecacans lost their footing and fell into the lagoon, temporarily granting a reprieve for the defenders. Already there were casualties, a good half of the men were wounded and some few dead.
The Kraken pushed out toward the mouth of the bay and the sea beyond. The pilot dodged the handful of arrows coming his way as he steered her toward open water. “We’ve made it captain!” he shouted as a spear took him in the back. He fell, clutching the wheel, making the ship bank into another pursuing canoe.
A mighty jerk caused everyone aboard to fall over as the ship struck a sandbar.
“We’re doomed,” cried one of the sailors.
Niels charged at the wheel and straightened her course. The wind pushed the sails full and they broke free again.
A dozen fire arrows burned through the air like comets. The canvas sails the new targets.
Black smoke billowed as the flames licked over the sail and whatever section of the ship the fire arrows had struck. The Tultecacans were no longer able to slash their way toward the defenders but they cheered as if they didn’t need too. The fire would take their enemies.
“Cut the rigging!” shouted Hawkwood.
They worked feverishly to douse the flames whether dashing buckets of seawater on the blaze or cutting the sail and letting it drop to smother upon itself as they stamped out the danger.
A few of the fore sails still pulled the Viper out to sea, but it had slowed tremendously as they had temporarily lost t both the main and aft sails. The gods blessed them that no more arrows streaked their way as those on the beach with torches could no longer reach them as they passed out of the lagoon.
But the long dugout canoes continued the chase.
“Every archer take those dogs at the fore!” cried Gathelaus.
“Let’s get another sail back up!” barked Hawkwood.
Archers took deadly shots at the oncoming canoes, but for every man they slew there were twenty more behind him, rowing ever closer.
“We get the sails back up, I’m sure we can outrun them,” growled Hawkwood.
“Get it up then, I’ll hold these dogs off!”
“There’s too many,” cried one of Hawkwood’s sailors as he was suddenly overwhelmed and retreated his position from a dugout teeming with bloodthirsty savages. Flint-lined paddles and spears slammed across the port side, tearing away a long chunk of the gunwale and anyone unfortunate enough to be within reach. Blood splashed across the deck as Gathelaus cleaved a pair of painted warriors across the breast and neck that were first to climb over the side.
Niels looked back and saw attackers on the other side of the ship, he spun the wheel and the Kraken lurched hard to the left and cut off a dugout smashing it to splinters. On the opposite side, men in transit fell into the sea and only a small host of attackers made it aboard.
Pressing them, Gathelaus, Mixamaxtla, and the rest of the gladiators hacked them to pieces or forced them to jump overboard.
Hawkwood prepared the sails with the help of a few crewmen and had almost adjusted the rigging, albeit without all of the safety harnesses.
“They’re still coming!” cried Coco.
“Did you think they would stop?” asked Gathelaus.
She shook her head. “What will we do?”
“We slay.”
The ship lurched again as it struck something underwater.
Niels couldn’t see what was there but wondered if it was another sandbar or unseen reef, either one could be disastrous at this point, a dozen dugouts with twenty men apiece were still in close range and pursuing doggedly.
Gathelaus slashed a pair of men that had clambered up the side of the ship with knives in their teeth. He caught sight of a massive gaudy palanquin on the shore.
King Itzcoatl had arrived. He stood imperious on the shore, staring with hard eyes at the ship. The throng of bodies made the lagoon almost imperceptible, so thick was the human flesh swarming toward the Kraken.
The breeze caught the sails and it lurched across a barely concealed sandbar. Once free, it pulled away from the mass of attackers for a few spans and Gathelaus waved at Itzcoatl with a salute.
More men poured in from across the mangroves and from the mouth of the bay with a slurry of dugouts bristling with armed men, their obsidian weapons glinting in the light.
“We’re hemmed in. Not sure we can break out with this weak breeze and so many bodies trying to drag us down,” said Niels, as he cast an empty bucket at a Tultecacan warrior who tried to climb up the back of the pilot’s house.
Dugouts clashed with the front of the Kraken and the sheer mass of men and boats brought the cutter to a near standstill. They were surrounded by a sea of warriors crying for blood.
Gathelaus swept a cutlass across the starboard when a loud gong sounded from somewhere on the beach.
At that signal, virtually all the Tultecacan warriors ceased fighting but stood their ground, not allowing the Kraken or her crew passage. The men in front of the ship kept up a steady rowing motion to fight against the power of her sails and keep her in place. Toward the shore and behind them an even more spectacular event took place. The warriors to a man, went prone in their canoes and dugouts and Itzcoatl approached the Kraken, walking upon their backs.
It was the most bizarre manner of a king’s approach Gathelaus had ever seen. Even Hawkwood paused and watched in curios amazement.
Itzcoatl wore a long cape of red and yellow feathers and had a serpent-like golden crown upon his head. He carried a long scepter and stared straight ahead at Gathelaus in his audacious coming.
“I take it you have something to say,” called Gathelaus.
Itzcoatl said nothing until he was almost upon the ship and stood on the backs of his men a mere ten feet away from the Kraken.
“You came to my land and destroyed our gods and spread hateful lies that what we do in life is wrong. Tell me why, before I have you utterly destroyed,” said Itzcoatl.
Gathelaus wiped the sweat and blood from his brow. “I didn’t ask to come here. But if you insist on buying our lives it will cost you dearly.”
“Why did you come here?”
Gathelaus clenched his jaw and answered, “I was sold into slavery by my enemies and was brought here by forces beyond my understanding.”
“The truth!” demanded Itzcoatl.
“That is the truth. Do you have the courage to hear it?”
“Tell me!”
“I met an old woman calling herself Coatlicue. She said she sent for me to throw down the Nine. I have done that, and now I wish to leave. But I tell you that it was never my intent to come here. Let me go.”
Itzcoatl balked at the mention of Coatlicue, but he steeled himself and looked at his mass of prostrate warriors. “If I believe you, am I less a king? Less a priest and protector of my peoples? Am I still the same man I was?”
“Does it matter?” challenged Gathelaus. “Do what is right, let the consequence follow.”
“Everything I have lived all my life. What if I was wrong?”
“To challenge that and move on is the bravest and best thing you could do,” said Gathelaus. “Serve your people to the best of your ability. But trying to slay me won’t bring back the past, nor honor the men who serve you here today. It takes a brave man to see the error of his ways.”
Itzcoatl pondered that a long moment then stepped down from the backs of the men he lorded over and set foot upon the wooden deck of a canoe. His men looked up at him in awe and perhaps appreciation.
“I will do what is right as I can see it. Help me.”
“I have my own lands to return to and my own
folk to lead. You do right and have good men beside you, like Mixamaxtla.”
The gladiator looked to his blood brother and bowed his head slightly.
“I will,” said Itzcoatl loudly, for all his men to hear. “I have been humbled and will rebuild my kingdom.”
“Good,” said Gathelaus. “You have good men here. Let no more blood be spilt and allow a fresh peace to grow from the mistakes that have happened.’
The warriors looked from their king to Gathelaus and back again.
“It will be so,” said Itzcoatl.
Follow the Roving Star
Bread was broken, and farewells exchanged. Gathelaus and his men boarded the ship and dropped sail. Their friends, the Alux, waved them off and sang songs in a melodious dirge of gratitude and longing.
Hawkwood approached Gathelaus and said, “You have spared all of our lives, but I made an oath against you and I cannot go against it.”
Gathelaus stared him down and asked, “Do you wish to end our disagreement here and now? Or wait until we set foot upon our own familiar lands?”
Hawkwood rubbed at his beard. “I should think that I would prefer to take up our disagreement on the solid firmament of our own lands. What say you?”
They shook hands. “Until we reach the shores of Vjorn then.”
“Agreed.”
Not understanding the embrace, the warriors of Itzcoatl and the gathered Alux cheered.
“Someday, I’ll return,” Gathelaus promised them.
He clasped Coco to his side and sailed out on the world, and it was as if the dawn sailed with him.
FIERCE: A Heroic Fantasy Adventure (BRUTAL TRILOGY Book 2) Page 31
