I brought my sword up. We faced each other. I knew, in that moment, that I had met my death.
With an opponent that good, there was no other outcome. I resolved to meet it like a Northlander, and to do as much damage as I could.
“To the death!” I roared, and lunged.
My rage was high, my form perfect. But Serrato had speed on his side. With one sword he turned my blade aside and with the other he punched me with the basket hilt. The deck shifted under me but I rallied. I slashed, trying to gut him but he parried left and right. We crossed swords and he broke the bind. We crossed swords again and he deflected my momentum and flicked at my head.
It was only a small cut above the eye but the distraction was enough for him to step in close. His sabres came together like pincers and my sword clattered to the deck.
I blinked. My hands were bleeding but intact. I was defenceless, however, and the elf had a sword at my throat.
“I won’t beg for my life,” I said.
Serrato smiled. “Dear boy, why would I kill you? You’ve given me an excellent bout, something that comes rarely to this old elf. I’m tempted to add you to my crew.”
“The pirate’s life is not for me,”
“Ah well. Now, I can’t have you interfering with my business…”
He tackled me and dumped me over the side. I weighed fifteen stone, almost twice what the elf did, and for him to do that, it was a shocking display of strength. I barely noticed when I hit the water.
I came up spluttering. Someone threw me a life preserver. I looked up and saw Serrato.
“I mean no injury to your honour,” he said. “I’m just a simple pirate trying to make a living in a cold and callous world. My reputation is such that defeating you will not diminish your name.”
“Fish me out. Let’s finish what we started!”
“I think not, my callipygous combatant.” He laughed. “Perhaps we shall meet again. I look forward to it!”
Chapter 11: Angrod
“Well, this explains a lot,” I said.
I sat in the communal area with most of the crew. The ship had hove to for the night and was more or less parked in place. Heronimo and Serrato had already told their sides of the story.
Rather, Heronimo had told his story and Serrato had laughed. Of course, I acted as soon as I had heard enough.
“Can we avoid bloodshed on this trip, Captain?” I had asked. We were sitting on one of the wings
He grinned. “But of course. You are my guests!”
“We’re on a mission here,” I told Heronimo. “We can’t afford personal quarrels.”
My friend took a deep breath. “I follow you, Angrod. It will be as you say.”
“You can always get yourself killed later,” Cruix said.
“What’s all this talk about killing and bloodshed?” Serrato said. “This is a fun ship, not a hardship! Come on, men, can’t any of you sing?”
Someone brought out a harmonica. Another pulled out a fife. A short, skinny crewman produced a fiddle. He was very good. I noticed he was wearing a ball and chain.
“Please help,” the fiddler said. “I’ve been kidnapped!”
“Shut it, Alan,” Serrato said. “You get a share like the rest of us! Your wife thanks you for it.”
“He can’t keep a job on land,” explained the quartermaster. Seated next to me, he was holding a tankard like it was a teacup. “He’s got a drinking problem.”
“Life at sea keeps him sober?” I said. “That’s not water you’re drinking.”
He laughed. It was a laugh you’d expect that from a rolling pile of muscle. “No problem! We ration his alcohol. Mind, he says he needs double rations to get through the day.”
“Don’t we all,” I said, helping myself to more grog.
It was a floating party, full of party pirates. Who knew sea rovers could be so much fun? I suppose it depends on how you meet them. Here I was, eating shrimp on a stick and enjoying a mixed drink. Heronimo had his arms crossed but was starting to spill his life story to our fast-talking captain. Meerwen and Mina chatted with Crystal and Chantal, identical twins who were the ship’s surgeon and carpenter. They were easy to look at, and I reminded myself not to stare. Cruix was interrogating a strange-looking crewman. The deckhand was green, like an avocado, and his features were vaguely reptilian. Cruix wanted to know more about him but the man wasn’t very helpful.
“Look, I just want to know where you’re from,” Cruix said.
“Bohica?” said the man.
“Isn’t that what you are?”
“Bohica.”
“So are you a Bohica, or are you from Bohica?”
“Bohica!”
“Arrrrrgh!”
Serrato shook his head. “You’re not going to get anything with Bohica. He only knows the one word. An excellent sailor all the same.”
My mission was still on, and as urgent as ever. But we’d made good time and needed to relax.
I’ll never forget earlier that day. We had hit what I thought was a fair clip when I noticed there was less spray in my face. I looked down and saw that the entire hull had lifted out of the water.
“Captain, we seem to be flying.”
Serrato laughed. “The Painted Harlot is a hydrofoil. She was a racing yacht back in the days of empire.”
Indeed, there was a wing on the bottom of each outrigger, plus a strut on the stern of the main hull. They had raised the ship so that they were the only things in contact with the sea. With so much less wetted area, there was so much less friction. We skimmed over the waves like a low-flying bird.
I’ve flown before, when I was a dragon. It was much less hair-raising.
“Hah!” Serrato said. He gripped the wheel and barked orders. Some of my own people clung to one wing, where crewmen cranked madly at the winches. Mina had a death grip on the netting but Heronimo was sitting up and letting his hair fly. He wore a big smile.
“How fast are we going?” I asked Serrato.
“Twice as fast the wind!” he said. “Northlands, here we come!”
An hour before dawn and the city of Heorot was darker than an elven city, with none of the warmth of gaslight. The Heimdallr Colossus was a shadow against the sky.
“Gloomy, isn’t it?” Serrato said. “We shall fix that. Mister Skinner!”
A halfling crewman sprang to attention.
“Let’s give the Northlanders a wake-up!” Serrato said. Skinner began shouting orders. Crewman streamed out of the hold, their arms full of crates.
“What are those things?” Meerwen asked.
“A little something I, er, liberated from a capran trader,” Serrato said.
The crates were pried open to reveal some familiar-looking objects. I’d last seen them in another world, on a battlefield, while reliving the memories of my assistant Dagonet. Rocket artillery.
“You can’t bombard Heorot!” I said. “It’s a city of wood!”
Serrato his his hands on his hips. “Gentleman, it is not my intention to destroy anything today.
These fireworks are for amusement only. Put away your blades!”
Heronimo sheathed his sword. My own weapon had leaped into my hand without thought. I eased it back into hammerspace, the wavy blade seeming to vanish into an invisible scabbard.
“That’s better.” Serrato smiled. “Come now, Prince Angrod. I’ve worked hard to build a rep as a fair and honest pirate. Why would I attack innocents in your name?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve only ever seen such devices used as weapons.”
“They are acceptable substitutes for a pyromancer. Less amenable to improvisation but more convenient. Can’t store a wizard in a crate, after all.”
“And you plan to create a spectacle?”
“But of course! It’s not every day that elven royalty visits the Northlands.”
They continued with the preparations on either wing of the ship. Small rockets were placed into frames and their fuses tied together. Larger munitions were
lowered into tubes.
“It couldn’t hurt to make an entrance,” Mina said. “Knowing my father, he’ll try to make an impression as well.”
“When is he arriving?” Heronimo asked. “I haven’t seen any other ships.”
“Prepare to fire!” Serrato said. “Hahahaaa!”
With a slow match, Skinner lit the fuses and stepped back. Suddenly it wasn’t so dark anymore. The tubes erupted in sparks and flame, plumes of smoke and balls of fire. The fireballs thumped and scattered bits of burning light. The sky boomed and crackled. The city leaped to its feet. I could see torches on shore,
the distant shapes of people. Dawn was breaking, but for a few moments we were the brightest thing in sight.
“I love the smell of burning brimstone in the morning,” Serrato said. “More fireworks! Give them more fireworks!”
The deck was thick with acrid smoke. Above us the light bloomed into rings and flowers, horsetails and spiders. They were different colours too.
“More green!” Serrato said. “More green for Drystone!”
He shouted for the colours to come in order. Green for Drystone, the elven capital. White for Corinthe, my home city. Orange for Lamemheth, purple for Vergath, gold for Pithe.”
“What about Mithish?” Meerwen asked.
“Mithish can go fuck itself for all I care,” Serrato said. “More golden blossoms! More purple comets! Do we still have orange butterflies?”
He turned to Skinner. “Get thee into the hold and pull out our remaining stocks,” Serrato said.
“Use everything!”
“Even the cake fireworks?”
“Even them! It’s for a good cause! Ha ha, wheee!”
An artistic fire mage could conjure sculptures out of fire. He might fill the skies with phoenixes diving and serpents a-slithering. But for colour and sound it was hard to beat capran fireworks.
Meerwen was looking up as the shells burst. From the ship, they seemed to fill the world. I pulled her close to me.
“What’re you—” she said, and then I kissed her. With fireworks bursting over our heads and ash settling onto our hair, I kissed her. And she kissed back.
“Longship off the starboard bow,” a crewman said.
“Send ‘em a little something,” Serrato said.
Skinner fired a rocket volley. The smoke and flames were intense. The pyrotechnics flew arrow-like toward the Northlander ship trailing sparks and spreading like a many-fingered burning hand.
“Haha! Look at them run!”
The longship had reversed course, the rowers pulling as hard as they could. By now it was light enough to see oars floating in the water, they’d been dropped in the panic. Heronimo shook his head.
Then the rainbow came out of the sky and struck the shore.
“Rainbows don’t do that,” I said.
“They aren’t usually solid, either,” Cruix said.
A column of horsemen galloped down the translucent ramp, heads high and banners flying. They were caprans. Arawn had arrived, and in style! I traced the rainbow back to the capran airship. It was cigar-shaped, lined with rows of tiny flapping wings. It looked like a giant bristly caterpillar.
“You ever seen a funnier-looking thing?” a crewman asked, and that’s when the turtle surfaced. A huge head and shell burst out of the water and belly-flopped back into the sea, throwing spray in all directions.
It was colossal, one of the great leatherbacks that roamed unchallenged in an ocean full of krakens, leviathans, and sea wyverns. This turtle seemed to wearing a hump or a pack. I squinted and saw that it was a metal canopy. Water spouted from the compartment, arcing in the air and catching the early morning light. It was like a gigantic fountain.
“Is it sinking?” I asked Mina.
She shook her head. “It’s blowing its ballast tanks and running its firefighting gear. I told you he’d make an impression.”
Serrato seemed a bit put out at being upstaged. “Mister Skinner! Why have the fireworks slackened? Did I not say use everything?”
“Aye, sir. Lighting the last of it.”
BOOM.
Something shook the deck.
“What—”
“Holy—!”
“What’s going on?”
BOOM.
“Oh my god.”
“Wrong way!”
“It’s—”
“We put it upside-down!”
BOOM.
The cake firework exploded again. Planks flew and tumbled into the sea.
“My ship!” Serrato pulled at his hair. “My beautiful ship!”
Cruix bent over laughing.
BOOM.
Serrato threw up his hands. “Whyyyy?!”
“Aahh hoo hoo ha hah!” Cruix was holding his sides. “I can’t—I’m dying—I can’t—hooo hoo hoo hoo!”
BOOM.
“Fire on deck!”
Someone on the turtle must have seen. The leatherback swung around, water cannons jetting, and drenched us all.
“Ab! Glub!”
Next thing I knew, Meerwen and I were holding each other. My silver arm was gripping the rail.
Meerwen’s hair was plastered all over hair face. I, too, was in need of a comb.
Serrato tiled his head into one hand, to get the water out. “Everyone here?”
“Man overboard, sir.” A crewman pointed.
Cruix was treading water. “A little help?” he sputtered.
“Get him out of there,” Serrato said. “Now. Mister Skinner. Explain yourself.”
“I followed the instructions, Captain,” the halfling said. “T’was the writing on the the box that was upside-down.”
Serrato pursed his lips. “I shall write to the manufacturer. What kind of world are we living in, when we cannot trust our stolen goods?”
I put a hand down my pants.
“Assessing the damage?” Meerwen asked.
“Sorry,” I said, and pulled out a very confused fish.
Chapter 12: Heronimo
The Northlands! Home!
I stepped off the knarr and smiled. It was a beautiful winter morning in Heorot and the streets were already full of people. My people. More blue-eyed blondes than I had seen in a long time. More pale skin than was common among elves. Mind, plenty of my people were also brown of eye and skin, but they were a minority. Most humans looked much as our Norse ancestors did.
Finally, a crowd where I blended in: Strong, ruddy-faced children. Thick and sturdy tradesmen. Tall, swaggering warriors, ready to take on the World Snake itself. And that was just the shieldmaidens.
The women looked upon me with favour. I was not the penniless revenge-seeker I had been. Back then I’d had no property to my name, no kills to my reputation. I’d had to work my way to Brandish as a common deckhand because I had lacked money for the journey.
Dragon Sacrifice (The First Realm Book 3) Page 9
