HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Left Coast Design
Cover image © Shutterstock/Melkor3D
THE TROPHY CHASE SAGA
Copyright © 2007, 2008 by George Bryan Polivka
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
978-0-7369-6739-6 (eBook)
Compilation of:
The Legend of the Firefish
Copyright © 2007 by George Bryan Polivka
978-0-7369-1956-2 (pbk.)
The Hand That Bears the Sword
Copyright © 2007 by George Bryan Polivka
978-0-7369-1957-9 (pbk.)
The Battle for Vast Dominion
Copyright © 2008 by George Bryan Polivka
978-0-7369-1958-6 (pbk.)
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s and publisher’s rights is strictly prohibited.
CONTENTS
The Legend of the Firefish
The Hand That Bears the Sword
The Battle for Vast Dominion
About the Author
About the Publisher
Read More from George Bryan Polivka
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
THE LEGEND OF THE FIREFISH
Copyright © 2007 by George Bryan Polivka
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Polivka, Bryan.
The legend of the Firefish / George Bryan Polivka.
p. cm.—(Trophy Chase trilogy; bk. 1)
ISBN 978-0-7369-1956-2 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS3616.O5677L44 2007
813.’6—dc22
2006021727
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s and publisher’s rights is strictly prohibited.
Dedication
For Jeri, Jake, and Aime
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I offer my grateful thanks to Hugh Smallwood for his generous help with the many details of tall-ship sailing as it was known in the past of our own world. Heartfelt thanks to John Patterson for his unwavering friendship and support on the long and sometimes perilous journey. Humble thanks to John Russell for helping me launch this ship. Delighted thanks to Tom Hawkins, who survived the Firefish, and who stood by me in my hour of peril. And wholehearted, full-and-by thanks to my beloved family for their understanding, patience, and unwavering support; for being my anchor and my safe harbor.
CONTENTS
Dedication
Acknowledgments
A Personal Note from George Bryan Polivka…
Map
1. The Chase
2. The Mission
3. The Stowaway
4. Keelhauled
5. The Promise
6. Banished
7. The Bargain
8. Mutiny
9. The Beast
10. Brotherhood
11. The Criminal
12. The Storm
13. Accused
14. Achawuk
15. The Feeding Waters
16. The Ghost
17. Bait
18. Bounty
19. The Gates of Heaven
20. The Palace
21. Duel
22. Home
A PERSONAL NOTE FROM GEORGE BRYAN POLIVKA…
C.S. Lewis believed that the longings we all experience for something greater and deeper are captured in Myth, where the great truths of the universe shine out from simple stories. I hope you will find in The Legend of the Firefish a mythical story of that order.
The kingdom of Nearing Vast is a seafaring land without modern technology or science and, much like during our own history in such eras, tales of great sea monsters are told and retold. But in Nearing Vast the legends are true. There are monsters in the Vast Sea. These solitary, predatory beasts are as long as a sailing ship, snakelike in appearance, and capable of tremendous acts of destruction. But they are also highly desirable—legend has it that the meat of the Firefish bestows considerable powers upon all who consume it.
And so The Legend of the Firefish is the saga of a few brave and sometimes foolish souls who seek to discover and exploit the secrets of these beasts. Their individual quests for honor, love, power, riches, and redemption all revolve around the great sailing ship, the Trophy Chase, and its pursuit of the Firefish.
In The Legend of the Firefish, Packer Throme takes up the sword and goes to sea in order to redeem himself and restore the reputation of his father. Panna Seline sets out alone in a hostile world to find love and fulfillment. Scatter Wilkins seeks riches and glory at almost any cost. Talon, sworn enemy of all that is holy, is bent on proving that raw, ruthless power runs the universe and that no God exists to protect the weak and helpless.
Although the kingdom of Nearing Vast is mythical, it is not magical. Like our world, it is populated with people who have very real limitations. The world, the flesh, and the devil press in, and threaten destruction. But here, as in our world, there is power in faith, and all people have hope for redemption. This is not a “sword and sorcery” tale, but one of “sword and spirit.” There is no magic…but there are miracles.
It’s my prayer that anyone in search of something more, something greater…anyone who faces trials and troubles on the journey, anyone who has ever walked with trepidation among enemies or sought a conquering faith alongside true believers…will find a home in Nearing Vast.
Map
Thy great deliverance is a greater thing
Than purest imagination can foregrasp,
A thing beyond all conscious hungering,
Beyond all hope that makes the poet sing,
It takes the clinging world, undoes its clasp,
Floats it afar upon a mighty sea,
And leaves us quiet with love and liberty and thee.
—GEORGE MACDONALD, DIARY OF AN OLD SOUL
CHAPTER 1
The Chase
“You deaf, boy?�
�
Packer Throme didn’t answer. The last thing he wanted now was a fight. Dog Blestoe was a big man, bigger than Packer by three inches and thirty pounds, and Packer’s elder by thirty years. Leathery, gray-headed, lean and muscular from a lifetime of hard labor, Dog stood across the table with his hands knotted into fists.
Packer stayed seated and silent.
Dog snorted. He had made sure Packer had left town humiliated four years ago. He would make sure the boy returned the same way. He rammed the table with his thigh, sloshing the mug of ale sitting on it. Packer caught it before it tipped.
“Say something!”
Packer didn’t look up.
Dog grabbed the back of a wooden chair and tossed it aside, clattering it across the plank flooring, where it nearly shinned one of the regulars. “Disrespect!” he seethed, nodding around the pub at the undeniable proof Packer had just offered them all.
They did not nod back. These fishermen had come with their usual intentions, to talk and drink and smoke their pipes and do some modest complaining after a hard day at sea. Not to witness this. Not again.
“Stand up, boy!”
Packer studied his ale. Cap Hillis, the pub’s friendly proprietor, had set the dark, white-capped mug there just moments ago. The modest complaining today had been about the pirate, Scatter Wilkins, and the rumors flying around that the feared outlaw had turned fisherman, and was now using harvesting techniques like those of their rivals across the sea in the Kingdom of Drammun. In so doing, Scat, as almost everyone called him, was helping to empty the sea of fish and glut the world’s markets. In the process, he was also helping himself to a fortune, and making the fishing villages—like Hangman’s Cliffs—all poorer by the day.
Dog believed the rumors. They gave him a specific target for a deep, general sense of discontent.
“The Trophy Chase wasn’t built to catch cod,” Packer had offered, the only full sentence he had spoken since arriving.
“I said stand up!” Dog now ordered. Packer did not comply.
Dog eyed Packer carefully. The boy had grown some, gained some weight. His pimples had turned to pockmarks. His mop of blond hair was even shaggier, if that were possible. But he was still the same spineless kid who wouldn’t speak up, who couldn’t look a man in the eye.
“They teach you this at seminary?” Dog sneered. “How to mock your elders?” He leaned on the table, his big, hard hands now splayed on the worn wood, his eyes locked on Packer as though they could burn through him. He dropped his voice. “Oh, no—I forgot. They didn’t want you there, either.”
Packer grimaced. He closed his eyes again, letting the pain, and then the anger, pass. Everyone in the village knew he had been expelled after less than a year at the seminary, rejected as a priest. But he was not prepared to have it flung at him the moment he returned.
Dog saw he was getting to the boy. He kept pushing. “So why’d you come back? You don’t like hard work. That’s what we have here. No books. No tea parties.”
One groggy old fisherman, head hung over his ale, looked suddenly perturbed. “Hey, I got a book,” he countered thickly. He was called Fourtooth, a nickname he’d earned after losing a run-in with a jib boom as a young man. Having had his say, he let his mug work its way back toward his mouth.
Packer took a sip of his own ale, careful to do it calmly and deliberately. It was cool, and his mouth was dry, and it felt good going down. He closed his eyes, and his mind returned him to where he’d been just this afternoon, standing atop the Hangman’s Cliffs, the rugged precipices after which this village was named. He had been looking down on the inlet below, down on the great, sleek Trophy Chase shining in the sun, with her two escort ships beside her. Basking in the wrinkled blue water.
Packer alone knew of the pirate’s ship hidden in the inlet below…and he knew he had to be aboard that ship. He wished he were standing on its forecastle deck, facing the Vast Sea, right now.
“You’re cow dung,” Dog sniffed, bringing Packer back to the moment. “And the only thing worse than cow dung is cow dung with no respect.”
Packer tried not to imagine how a respectful pile of manure might behave. Would it salute? He tried to take another sip, but Dog must have noticed that he had let a trace of a smirk slip through, because the older man slapped him hard across the mouth with the back of his hand. The cool drink went flying, and the mug skittered across the floor.
Packer stroked his stinging jaw, but didn’t respond, didn’t look up. The innkeeper, round and red-faced, scrambled over, recovered the mug, examined it. It was made of sterner stuff than it appeared. He mopped halfheartedly with a rag at some of the puddled ale on the floor but was immediately distracted. It would soak into the open grain soon enough, absorbed like a thousand spills before it.
“Dog, lay off. Why not just hear him out?” a voice from the back of the room suggested. “Find out what he knows.” Others echoed agreement.
“But he has nothing to say,” Dog countered. “Do you, boy?”
Packer drew a line with his finger down a rough scar on the tabletop. The gash looked to Packer like it had been carved carefully with a knife, artwork made to look like an act of violence.
“Seems to me he’s about to head right back out of town, now that he’s finished his ale. Isn’t that right, boy?” Dog snorted his disdain, pondering whether the lad needed hitting again. He decided against it and allowed himself half a smile. “Just as well you broke your promise to Panna. Marrying you would have ruined her.”
There were a few oohs, and a whistle. Dog was hitting low.
Packer’s jaw clenched just slightly, as Dog’s words sliced through him. But this, too, was a familiar pain—the truth was, he couldn’t disagree. A more honorable man would have come home to Panna after the seminary rejected him and settled down to the quiet life of a fisherman. But Packer had not.
Dog laughed and turned away to pick up his chair. “Go ahead, try to act like nothing bothers you. If you want us to think you’re turning the other cheek like some holy man, it ain’t workin’. We all know you better than that. They sure knew better at your priest school. Like I’ve always told Panna,” he continued casually, “you’re just a worthless dreamer. Good for nothing.” Dog stood over Packer now and delivered his final blow in a whisper. “Exactly like your daddy.”
Audible breaths were taken and held.
Packer’s face revealed nothing. But he stood up slowly, his blue eyes cold. Dog straightened, hands still clenching the back of the upright chair. Packer now looked Dog in the eye, a direct challenge. The fisherman smiled broadly. “What, you don’t like me talking that way about your old man?”
Packer was smaller than Dog, but at just a shade under six feet, he was bigger than almost everyone else in the room. His shoulders were usually slouched some, but now he put his head back, squaring himself to the older man. He didn’t look quite so soft, suddenly.
Dog was unimpressed. He looked for something else with which to bait him. He found it on Packer’s belt. “Look at this! What do you know, boys! Did you see? He’s a swordsman! Is that how you protect yourself from all us old fishermen?” Dog pantomimed a little loose-wristed swordplay, gaining laughs from around the room.
Packer’s heartbeat quickened, but his cold gaze didn’t change. He waited a moment longer, wrestling with his conscience, knowing he should walk away, not wanting to. Dog had crossed a line.
Dog’s moment of mockery turned to disgust. “You’re not fooling anybody. Your daddy was an embarrassment, and so are you. Tuck your tail and get.”
Packer made his decision. He unbuckled his belt and gently laid it, with its scarred and stained leather scabbard, on the table. It was a dueling sword, a thin, straight, double-edged rapier. When all eyes were resting on it, Packer looked at Dog and spoke softly. “I’m sorry if this frightened you.”
Dog’s face went red, and the room erupted in a flash, amazed, gleeful. Packer had some fight in him after all.
“D
raw it!” Dog demanded. Then without looking away, “Give me your iron, Cap!” Everyone knew what the innkeeper kept behind the bar for protection.
“No, Dog,” Cap protested, his high voice strained. “Not swords!” But it didn’t slow Dog or the others. One of them, a dark-spirited man named Ned Basser, reached behind the bar, and with a wild grin tossed Dog the barkeeper’s sword. Cap tried vainly to intercept it, but his short, thick arms flailed uselessly as the rusted blade sailed over his bald head. Dog snatched it out of the air by the blade, proving to all who cared to notice just how dull it was. “There you go, Dog!” Ned called out. “Sic ’em!”
“No, leave him be!” Cap warned Dog in a shrill voice, grabbing at the big man’s elbow. The innkeeper leaned in, stood on his tiptoes to speak into Dog’s ear. “They say after he left the seminary he studied swordplay at the Academy…let it go, Dog.”
But Dog’s slitted eyes were now drilling into Packer’s. He shook the barkeeper off his arm. “They can say what they like. I know what this boy’s made of, and a few lessons in a lace drawing room can’t change that.”
Packer took his sword and scabbard from the table and looked at it, weighed it in his hands for a moment, and then suddenly unsheathed the blade. The oiled steel hissed as the blade flashed into view. It was a gleaming, finely crafted piece of work, with ornate detail engraved a third of the way up its length.
The older man’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. This was truly a swordsman’s sword, the kind that Hangman’s Cliffs had rarely seen. How Packer had gotten it and whether he knew how to use it were questions that only now formed in the older man’s mind. He couldn’t keep from looking down at Cap’s sword, to which he had paid scant attention until this moment. The darkened thing looked like a fireplace poker by comparison. The blade was slightly bent, the tip rounded and dull, the hand-guard little more than a loose crosspiece of bent metal. He frowned. No matter. This was about manhood, not armor.
The Trophy Chase Saga Page 1
