The officers mumbled to themselves as they left the sterncastle, leaving Kanika, the captain, and the navigator alone at the after rail.
“Captain?” The only question Kanika thought appropriate at the moment.
The old man stood, his left hand stroking his salt-and-pepper beard while his right hand crossed over his belly.
When he didn’t answer, the navigator asked, “Captain, what are your orders?”
“We need to survive until dark. If we can make it until dark, we can outmaneuver him. They are pacing us, for whatever reason. Navigator, you need to plot a course into the open gap. If we get a chance, we will lose this bastard. Kanika, for this to work we will have to move silently. You know how sound travels over the water. You need to have this crew silence the ship. It’s a long way until dark. Let’s use our time wisely.”
“We will have some warning. For them to gain on us, they need to add more sail,” the navigator stated the obvious.
“How far to the void?” the captain asked. The void was the place cracks intersected. It would give them open water in at least four directions, maybe more.
The navigator studied the sails. “We should hit it in a few hours at this speed.”
Kanika glanced between the two men. “We could dump the cargo. If they’re after the cargo, it will give them something to chase, even if it floated. In any case, we could speed up, maybe outrun them.”
“We’re not dumping the cargo at the first sign of trouble. They might not be after the cargo.” The captain stopped that line of thought.
“If they’re not after the cargo, what could they want?” Navigator asked.
“Us,” Kanika finished the sentence that nobody else wanted to think. “They might be slavers. The cargo would just be a bonus.”
“It won’t do any good to speculate on things we’ve no control of. If they mean to board us, we’ll have some warning. Kanika, just in case, take half of the crew and start fortifying the rails, and be prepared to break out the weapons. The gunnels should give us some protection if the arrows start flying.”
Kanika took a moment and considered the crew. Most of them wore nothing but a loincloth. “We should have the crew change into something more protective.”
“That should be the crew’s choice. You’ve your orders, let’s carry them out smartly.”
“Aye, Captain,” the pair replied in unison.
Navigator’s estimate was spot on. In two hours, the call came down from the bird’s nest, “Void, dead ahead.”
Kanika let out a sigh of relief, as if the open space would give protection from the impending attack. There came two calls shortly after that, one from the bird’s nest and one from the sterncastle.
“Sails off the port bow,” the crow’s nest cried.
“They’re making their move, everyone prepare for combat!” the captain shouted from the sterncastle.
Kanika was unsure if the sails on the horizon signified their relief or doom. Harper showed themself a real bitch today.
The crew scurried about, gathering weapons, preparing for the incoming attack from the aft. Kanika swerved her way to the sterncastle, running to be by the captain’s side.
Arriving at the stern rail, she was surprised at how quickly the chasing ship had gained on them. It closed the distance to a mile. It must’ve been creeping up on them for a time, slowly shortening the gap until they felt ready to strike.
“Do we head for the new ship in front of us or try to outrun them both?” Kanika asked the captain.
“This doesn’t look good. I would think it would be impossible to coordinate an attack over such a distance. But in my heart, I feel we are doomed. Somehow, someone has brought us to this point.” The man that Kanika always saw as so strong now appeared old, frail, and defeated.
“We can’t give up. If they’re slavers, they will take us. All of us,” Kanika pleaded with her father.
“If they’re only after the cargo, they may take pity on us and set us adrift in our longboats. We can make the island. We would survive.”
Before Kanika made an argument against surrender, there came another call from the bird’s nest, “Another ship off the starboard bow.”
Three against one. If all three were of the same design that chased them, their fate just became sealed. They may have put up a defense against one, but three? They had no chance. If they fought, Kanika knew in her heart, they would die.
Kanika focused on her father with pleading eyes. “Father, which is worse: a life of slavery or an honorable death?”
She witnessed pain and uncertainty fill the man’s eyes. He’d been her rock for so long. The star in her life she set her course to and made all her decisions based on his beliefs. Before he answered, his eyes bulged. From two hundred yards away, well out of arrow range, the raider vessel launched an attack. An arrow the thickness of Kanika’s wrist penetrated the captain’s chest. Attached to the tail end, a line led back to the following ship. Before she spoke any last words to her father, he was jerked over the rail and into the water.
“No!” Kanika shouted. Looking behind, she could plainly see the attackers’ ship with two gigantic mounted crossbows with menacing harpoons ready to launch. She ducked as the next one flew towards her, over her head, and lodged into the helm.
Fury flooded her mind, her emotions and training took over. In a fluid motion, her sword of office leaped from its scabbard and sliced the line from the arrow. “Make evasive maneuvers now!” she shouted the command. A quick look back, and she saw them reel her father’s body onto the attacking ship. It bounced limply in death against the hull, like a catch of fish.
She could tell they hadn’t changed course, as the wake still flowed directly into the oncoming attack. “You need to change course now, or they’re going to steal our wind,” she ordered again.
A frantic call came from the helmsman, “I can’t change course, the helm is jammed.”
Kanika sprinted to the side of the helmsman and found the second arrow lodged in the wheel, effectively locking them into a single heading.
Kanika glared at the helmsman. “You need to get us maneuvering, or we’re dead.” Before he answered, an arrow lodged into the man’s neck, blood spraying her as he died.
The marauders launched a withering barrage of arrows onto the open deck of the vessel. Most of the crew had not prepared for the attack. They died as the hail of arrows pierced their unprotected flesh.
As she watched her crew die, another harpoon pierced an aft sail batten. When the raider engaged the capstan, it ripped the cloth and wooden structure from the mast, pulling the entire weight on top of Kanika. Her lights went out as she prepared to give the next order. “Don’t stop the fight, kill all the bastards.” No one heard her order.
The Resolute died that day without firing a shot.
This is the end of
Loss of the Resolute.
Next in the series
Fractured Bonds
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Gods of the Shards:
Over the past hundred years or so, the spread of trade around the local city states has caused a number of separate gods to be melded into a single cosmology. The cities may or may not agree on this understanding of the gods, as there is still flux in the belief systems. No one system has spread to cover all known shards. Some still undiscovered civilizations might have a completely different belief system.
Creation Myth
The gods have always been. Humans are a recent addition to the shards and cracks.
The Father and the First Son had a fight of earth-shattering proportions. The result was the area of the shards called the beach, a great wasteland the shards radiate out from. There is a rumor that at the center of the beach lies a great black glass desert, and at the center of that glass sheet, there is a hole that leads to the realm of the gods, the hells. None have ever been able to reach the glass or the center of the beach and
live to tell about it, so it is all speculation.
The Son won the battle. In winning, he dropped the Father so hard on the ground, it shattered the earth and cast the Father deep to the center.
During the fight, blood was shed over the shards, from the blood of the Father came man. The First Son begat the animals and monsters.
The brotherhood believe they come straight from the monsters that sprang up from the blood of the First Son.
Most humans think little about the gods and religion. They pray to whomever is expedient. A few will become devoted followers of a divine for special favors. Rivals between the different holy orders and nonbelievers can be brutal and bloody. There is little room for differing opinions between the fanatics.
A few strange explorers have tried to master the many shards and cracks. Few have been able to chart more than a few. The Father keeps the people scattered to protect them from the horrors of the world. A few believe the shards are connected, and all people spring from one connection between the Mother and the Father. Like the gods, they are made in their image. This is a limited belief mostly driven underground.
Father
Also known as: The Sleeping One, the Absent God, the Uncaring Bastard
Patron: Currently not in favor of any specific city
Realms: Lost causes, sleep, and dreams.
Depicted as: A senile crippled old man beat senseless by his eldest son. A twisted staff of wood for his weapon
Mother
Also known as: Durra’ah
Patron: Zar; flag: white tree on blue field
Realms: Spring/rebirth and motherhood
Depicted as: A beautiful mother figure. A small set of shears for a weapon
Eldest Son
Also known as: The First Son, the One Son
Patron: Abaraka and the Brotherhood of the One Son; flag: black fist on a red field
Realms: God of war and the mountains
Depicted as: A large man with flames for hair. A giant metal staff for a weapon
Eldest Daughter
Also known as: Sinead, the unstable one, crazy bitch, keeper of the dead
Patron: Freeport; flag: plain black
Realms: The sea, the dead, and crazy people
Depicted as: A naked woman with green scaled skin, sea snakes for hair. She needs no weapon, she controls the sea
Second Son
Also known as: Zinan
Patron: No city will claim him, but most taverns will have a shrine to him. Drunks, drug users, actors, and any profession that deals with the above people
Realms: Altered states
Depicted as: A small man with a huge erect penis. He can use his member to great effect, ending most fights before they start
Second Daughter
Also known as: The Huntress
Patron: Currently the main temple for the Huntress in in Cliffside; flag: solid green
Realms: Childbirth and hunting
Depicted as: A young woman in green leathers, she hunts with a bow
Third Son
Also known as: Yuan
Patron: Perdition; flag: white scales on black field
Realms: Trade and commerce
Depicted as: A man that carries a large sack slung over his shoulder. The bag, full of coin, he can wield with great effect
Third Daughter
Also known as: Anshika
Patron: Only a few scattered schools outside the wall
Realms: Magic and the twin moons
Depicted as: A pale woman, normally naked, her body covered in magical runes, one breast larger than the other. She throws magic at ease
The Fourth Child
Also known as: Harper or the Conjoined Fates.
Patron: No city would risk the bad effects of worshiping this god
Realms: Good and bad luck, fate
Depicted as: Male and female conjoined twins. Good and bad luck is all the twins ever need
The Old Ones
Over the history of the shards, any number of human and nonhuman deities have been worshiped. Many of these have slipped out of fashion and into antiquity with no current concentration of followers as far as the citizens of the city-states know of. Collectively, they are called the Old Ones. In rare cases, may be collectively known as the Ginners.
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Preview: Fractured Bonds
Chapter 1, Kanika:
Before she opened her eyes, the creaking and groans told Kanika she was on a ship that sailed the cracks. Her body ached, not just hurt but screamed. Afraid to open her eyes, she remembered the horror that befell her ship, the Resolute, and how many died before her. Tears fell from her closed eyes over the death of her father and the sailors she considered her family. They mixed with the bilge water as they dripped from her filthy cheeks. Fuck me, she thought.
Water rushed over her body, which meant the ship sank or she was in the hold, the lowest level of the craft, sitting in the filth that needed to be pumped out. The saltwater stung the lower part of her body. She knew from the flair of pain that her body had been violated. She was unsure how many times, but a raw pain burned inside her in more ways than one.
Her shoulders throbbed, arms held outstretched over her head by crude shackles. Afraid to move, she contemplated a possible way of escape from this hell. A soft whisper of sound and the stench of unwashed bodies compounded her fears. Risking all, she willed her eyes open, able to clearly see out of only one—her left eye would not follow her command and stayed shut. With the smallest of movements, she scanned the hold. Bodies lay shackled in cells, men and women both stripped, with the women separated. She was a captive in the hold of a slaver’s ship.
A woman’s soft voice whispered to her, “They’ll be changin’ the watch soon. That’s when the guards ‘ill be down ta take care of their needs. Best ta stay layin’ down, and sleepin’ perchance they’ll be passin’ ya by. Ya can hear them before they come.”
Kanika struggled to find who spoke, all she really wanted was to be free of the filth and cage she had been locked in. Killing each of the crew on the ship would be a bonus. “Who are you?” she whispered without ever seeing the source of the voice.
“People call me Lizzie. I’m a high priestess of Anshika—”
“You’re a witch.” She spit through her teeth.
“—Goddess of the Moons. I’ve been called such yeah.”
She had heard of such but never met one, intrigued she forced her head around to get a glimpse of the woman in the adjoining cell. What she found didn’t impress her much, the tiny woman seemed covered in her own filth.
“They did this to you because you are a witch?” Kanika asked.
“I’ve been here longer than most, they can’t sell me, most people fear me. The few that didn’t fear me came to rape me, this deters ‘em.”
“Can’t you call your magic down and destroy them all?” Kanika returned to her relatively comfortable position on her side facing away from Lizzie.
“It doesn’t work like that, but the all-seeing Anshika has foretold your comin’. Thin’s are about to change. The awakenin’ is about to happen.”
“Sounds like shit to me. You know anything useful?” Kanika laid her head down, trying to decide the best way out of this mess.
“I know a great many thin’s—” before she finished her thought, the eight bells rang out clear from above, and the tread of heavy footfalls echoed down the ladderway. “They be comin’ now. Mind yourself…” The witch didn’t take time to add more.
Kanika expected more attackers, she plainly made out a single pair of feet descending the wooden ladder at the head of the compartment. The slaver’s bare feet sloshed in the putrid water. How any man could get a hard-on in these conditions was beyond her. The water had to be up to his ankles, filled with the refuse from the human cargo.
A clanking sound announced the guard’s approach, it must have been the key. The asshole taunted the female captives with the sound ringing through the fetid space. If Kanika found an opportunity, she would kill the man with that key, or any other weapon available.
For some reason, the witch in the cell next started chanting. That would get old quickly. The footfalls stopped, Kanika grew sure, right outside her cell. Key scraped against metal as the key was inserted into the lock. The cell door protested movement, layers of rust coated the hinges, nearly binding their movement.
Before he touched her, she felt his presence standing over her. The sound of rough hands rubbing on cloth reached her ears. Eyes closed she only guessed what horrors the monster did over her body. Her stomach turned at the thought of such garbage so near to her and yet still out of reach. Her mind shrieked while she forced her body to remain still. The chanting in the cell next to her grew louder, the tempo increasing the closer the creature slumped over Kanika.
Hands like sharkskin grabbed her ankles. She wanted to recoil, to lash out with every fiber in her body, yet she quieted her mind and remained limp. She knew some bastards like their victims to fight back. She wouldn’t give the dickbiter the pleasure of fighting. Prepared for the worst, she forced her mind calmer despite the chanting, yet the witch continued to a crescendo. Kanika was flipped on her back, her legs forced wide.
Loss of the Resolute: A Dark Fantasy (Fractured Lands Book 1) Page 5
