The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  “They are being asked to join up for a war they don’t understand, and you are doing nothing to help them. How are you going to win this war with a drunken mob blind to reality?”

  “But that’s my problem, isn’t it? It wasn’t an accident that the recruiting stations were found near the pubs, Panna. Better to gin up the fervor now, while they commit themselves to the fight. They’ll have time enough for seriousness when musket balls start flying.”

  Panna’s eyes went wide. It seemed so…manipulative. “So when will you tell them?”

  He looked at her with an air of infinite patience. “Tell them what? The condition of the Fleet? That is confidential information even in peacetime, and we’re at war.”

  “They’ll find out.”

  “Perhaps. But not from you.” His look was a dark promise. Suddenly, Panna realized her error.

  “Of course, I won’t tell anyone.”

  The Prince felt a pang of regret at seeing her falter. She was a beautiful woman, but even more so when she was full of confidence and spirit. “That is true. You won’t. But don’t worry, I’ll make sure your confinement is quite comfortable, until your Packer returns.”

  That night, the Seventh Seal slipped her mooring in darkness, in silence, without a single lamp lit, without so much as a shout from the bosun. The crew moved on deck and in the rigging like so many trained thieves, stealing the wind for their own purposes, pilfering the tide, appropriating the current. The Seal was a small ship, her length overall barely two-thirds that of the Chase, and in spite of a greater beam, she was nimble and quick. And her master knew how to sail her the way an assassin knows how to wield a dagger.

  “Right there!” Packer straightened up, lowered his sword. “That’s when you do it. Did you see how I got to your belly?”

  Delaney shook his head. “No.”

  “Anyone else see it?” Most of the men standing around them in a circle had their arms crossed, striking poses of indifference. They had stripped off their offending dress whites before they had cleared the Bay of Mann, relieved beyond measure to return to their accustomed variety of ragged apparel that shared only its tendency toward a sun-washed and faded gray-green color. The officers, including Packer, still wore their “war whites,” as John Hand called them. He wanted to salvage something of a military bearing for his ship.

  “Someone saw it,” Packer insisted. “How did I get to him?” The men may have affected a lack of interest, but they were truly baffled. Packer had beaten Delaney easily, and had even had the skill to slap the older swordsman in the chest with the flat side of his blade. Mostly magic, more than one answered him silently.

  “He opens up. After he lunges.” Everyone looked to Jonas Deal. His craggy face and darkened teeth loomed down from above, from the quarterdeck rail.

  Packer waited for Deal to say something more, something brutal and insulting, but it was not forthcoming. “That’s right. That’s right, Mr. Deal.” The first mate shrugged. Packer turned back to Delaney. “It’s not just the lunge, but almost any thrust you try. You’re too far forward. Too aggressive.”

  “Too aggressive,” Deal said with a smirk, as though such a thing were not possible.

  “Too eager, then,” Packer countered easily. “Not every thrust will be deadly, whether you want it to be or not. Keep your feet under you. Okay, now lunge again, but this time move your lead foot another six inches forward, get lower. Lunge, but don’t reach.”

  Delaney nodded and gave it a try. It felt awkward to him. But after three more attempts, he was grinning. “I feel the difference!”

  Packer nodded and smiled. “And your belly will feel the difference in battle.”

  Delaney pulled his shirt up to show off his scars. Two white slashes in a rough X marred an otherwise unimpressive chest. “Maybe I won’t be getting a third one of these!”

  The men laughed, but couldn’t help be impressed. Delaney was the best of them with a sword. If Packer could help him, he could help anybody.

  “It’s Drammune we’ll be fighting,” Jonas Deal cut in once again. “Better off learning how to reload a pistol. Or swing an axe.” And he walked off.

  “Big struttin’ bully is what he is,” said Delaney when Deal was out of earshot. “Can’t fathom what the admiral wanted him around for.”

  “To fight, I’m guessing,” Packer offered. “So,” he said as cheerfully as he could, “who’s next?”

  The men looked at one another, and for a moment Packer was afraid Delaney would be both his first and last student. But their hesitance, it turned out, came from a desire not to appear too eager.

  Packer was an ensign in the Royal Navy, but his official title aboard ship was mate-at-arms. He assumed John Hand had invented the title, but the admiral insisted it was real, if somewhat rusty with disuse. As it turned out, mate-at-arms meant pretty much that he was the ship’s swordmaster. After his demonstration with Delaney, he had a steady stream of students.

  The sailor in the crow’s nest of the Trophy Chase squinted into the glare of the setting sun. He adjusted the kerchief that kept his stringy hair from blowing into his eyes, and then raised his telescope.

  Zeb Bones watched the tall ship on the horizon coming up from behind, directly out of the sunset. She was moving fast. She unfurled no flag, displayed no signals, lit no lamps. This was a ship on the attack, and headed straight for the Trophy Chase. Zeb scanned the seas. The Marchessa and the Silver Arrow were far off on the horizon. He looked down below him. The admiral was not on deck. That was good. The quarterdeck was patrolled by Mr. Deal, who was now chatting quietly with the helmsman. That was even better. The rest of the sailors were busy about their work at the end of a long shift, unaware and unwarned. Excellent.

  The lookout put his eye to the telescope again, watched the dark ship as it bore down on them. He could make out figures on the distant deck now but couldn’t distinguish them. One of them would be Scat Wilkins, no doubt. Zeb pulled a polished steel mirror from his pocket, and signaled.

  Scat stood at the prow of the Seventh Seal, his own telescope pressed to his eye, trying to hold the thing steady as he absorbed the all-clear from his man in the crow’s nest. The Chase at sea was a welcome sight, but even though her lack of vigilance played into his hands, her old captain couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret that she was so poorly sailed. The great cat was not prepared for his approach. He could see sails luffing. Scat was quite sure that John Hand was sitting with his feet up in the captain’s cabin, Scat’s cabin, drinking Scat’s rum and planning, planning, planning while his ship wandered ineffectually under lesser men’s guidance.

  Scat took another look through his scope. Bunting! He could hardly believe it, but there it was: the heavy blue-and-white ceremonial bunting still hung from the Chase’s rails. Two rows of it across her stern, one at the afterdeck rail, one under the captain’s windows. What nonsense was this, carrying to sea such pomp and tomfoolery? The Chase was not vigilant, was without precision—and if this was John Hand’s idea of glory, he had lost whatever sailing and fighting instincts he had once had.

  Scat swore. He would rather see his beloved ship with Achawuk spears pricking her hide again than see her all gussied up like this. A lioness with a bow around her neck. A Mortach Demal corseted and painted and powdered for a royal ball.

  John Hand did not deserve her. The prince, the king, none of them knew what they had in the Chase. Scat had summoned every ounce of strength left in him and focused it on this one mission, this single goal. There would be no glory, in Scat’s mind, no gold, no riches, unless he had the Trophy Chase under him again. He would win her back, or die in the attempt.

  Scat’s guess was off the mark in one regard. Admiral Hand did not have his feet up on the table. But he did have a cup of rum in one hand and a pupil across the table from him. He also had a small, polished briar pipe in his other hand. The sweet, pungent aroma of tobacco smoke hung thick as he watched Packer’s eyes. He felt the need to see into the young man,
into his mind, into his heart.

  Ensign Throme swished the cup of rum in his own hand, smelled it, touched the liquid to his lips, but did not drink. He was uncomfortable here in the captain’s saloon, a place he had been more than once and never under pleasant circumstances.

  “The people ashore believe you are touched by God,” Hand said.

  Packer watched the amber liquid swirl. He said nothing.

  “A lot of the men aboard think the same.”

  No response.

  John Hand drew on his pipe, creating a quiet crackle, and then he blew out a thick swath of smoke. He needed to know how much of all this Packer believed about himself. It would tell him how far the young man could be trusted. “Let’s see the scar.”

  Packer instinctively closed his fist, his spirit writhing within him. This was the mark of his failures, and the mark of God’s mercy. But with that thought the verse came to mind. He was not his own. The mark was not his to hide. Packer opened his right hand, holding his palm out, revealing the scarring and the almost perfect “O” of the electrical burn.

  John Hand had seen the boy’s instinctive recoil, thought it a bad sign. But Packer’s willingness to obey without a second prompting was good. The admiral set down his cup, held Packer’s hand to the light of the sunset streaming in from behind him. “So that’s where the lightning of the Firefish entered you?” he asked.

  “I really don’t remember.”

  Hand again looked Packer in the eye. “Do you believe you are touched by God?”

  Now Packer looked at his captain. “God saved us from the Achawuk, and from the Firefish.”

  “In order to save you?”

  Packer shook his head. “God does what He wants to do.”

  “You believe in fate, then.”

  “No. I believe if we will get out of His way, He will do a lot more than if we stand against Him. And I believe that if we ask Him, He will do a lot more yet. But what He does is what He wants.”

  Hand sat back, crossed his arms. “ ‘His thoughts are not our thoughts,’ is that it? ‘Nor are His ways our ways.’ ”

  “Yes.” Packer caught the reference. From the Book of Isaiah. Did John Hand know Scripture?

  “And you do that? You get out of His way, and you ask Him to do things for you?”

  Packer nodded just slightly. “Not just for me.” Now Packer watched the admiral. Why was the man suddenly concerned about God and spiritual matters? “What do you believe? If I may ask. Sir.”

  Hand scratched his beard. Then he picked up his cup, took a slow drink of rum. He set his cup back down. “I’ll tell you the truth, son. I don’t really know.”

  Packer waited.

  Hand took another pull from his pipe and squinted through his own haze. “I grew up in a religious home. I came to see that a whole lot of what the Church teaches makes no sense. At least not to me. But it also seems certain there’s more than sheer logic at work in the universe.”

  “You mean faith.”

  Hand shrugged. “Call it that. I’m just saying that what may seem logical, even unassailable, in the comfort of a classroom or a parlor over port can fall to pieces in the cauldron of reality, when what a man believes is what he dies believing, or what helps him survive by believing.”

  “That’s why you left teaching? To live in the cauldron?”

  Hand laughed. “I suppose if I could have brought sailing into the classroom the way Senslar Zendoda brought swordplay, I might have stayed on. But theory only works in theory. And sailing only works on the sea.”

  In fact, the cauldron of reality was precisely where John Hand wanted to be. His mind tended to work forward and backward, harvesting ideas and thoughts and facts from the past, from ancient writings and teachings, from recent history, from his own experience, then linking these with the circumstances and knowledge of the present, and then using the result to construct potential futures. All that, though, was academic. What John Hand loved best was to play it all out, to add human will and time and desire, in order to blend people, places, things, and ideas into some new reality, to coax or drive or ride the resulting wave. He loved bringing into existence what had not ever existed before.

  But as he rode the unseen, there were always powers at work, or perhaps currents under the surface, that took him in unexpected directions. Packer embodied one of those intrusions, and it was an enormous one. Since the blond-haired stowaway had arrived on board the Chase, everything had changed. He had to understand this current better.

  Zeb Bones watched the Seventh Seal carefully, as Scat Wilkins watched the Trophy Chase. And below both ships, far beneath the surface of the seas, in the dark, cold gloom of endless, eternal salt water, the great beast, the trophy for which the Chase was built and named, and for which she would forever be remembered, watched them both.

  Like a lone hawk looks down from above in a silent, circling vigil, taking the measure of every movement below, with its predator’s brain clicking through a thousand calculations a minute, waiting patiently for a spark, for a moment when its senses and instincts isolate one movement among many—one spot of color, one shape, size, and motion that means opportunity—in the same way from far beneath the surface the Firefish looked up from the echoing depths. Every movement above was being watched. The ancient predator moved freely, keeping its constant vigil, seeing and assessing every creature between it and the light, whether fish, eel, ray, shark, or whale.

  And now, from far below, its brain clicked through the calculations: size, shape, color, and speed. The Firefish would circle, and circle, and rise, and circle, and watch, waiting for its moment. And as the hawk would spiral tighter and tighter, riding on the wind, measuring, assessing, confirming, until it knew, absolutely, that this was the prey, and now was the moment, then plunge, gravity pulling it to earth at unstoppable speed, its perfect shape cutting through the wind and air like a knife until it reached the earth and turned, talons out, to slam into its prey, to break and to grasp and to squeeze and to kill, so would the Firefish circle, pinpoint its target, and fly upward at unimaginable, unstoppable speed, mouth agape, to slam into, to shock, to bite, and to devour.

  This beast had never known anything but hunger. It had never feasted in the Achawuk waters, had only ever roamed the seas in a solitary search, with one thought, one focus, one need: to feed. To feed, it needed to kill. To kill, it needed to hunt. To hunt, it needed to stalk. And so its very hunger drove its patience.

  The beast had been keenly aware of several large creatures on the surface of the ocean tonight. It had circled in the deep below them. They moved, turned, swam in a pack, as a school of fish or a flock of birds might. There were only three of them, but the beast had no ability to count. In the darkness of its primal brain it knew only that more than one was a school, and a school of such large creatures was something to study, to understand. To stalk.

  These were creatures large enough that, should they turn together in attack, as a pack, the beast could not be sure of victory. They moved fast enough that, should they panic, they might escape entirely. So the beast followed, watching from below, circling, waiting. If it could find one alone, then it might be possible to kill it.

  It stalked its prey for a long while, from deep below, alert for any motion that might signal weakness, any scent that might signal opportunity. But it sensed nothing.

  And then, suddenly, two of them moved off, leaving one alone. The beast circled below, watching them all, then followed the one. Here was its chance. The lone one was sleeker, longer than the others. It had a very long, deep ventral fin. It had been the fastest of the three, but now, alone, it slowed. It moved listlessly, without purpose.

  It was vulnerable.

  “The outcome of events cannot be forced, Packer, at least not for long,” John Hand said. “Sheer willpower, the power of fear, of violent action, can only shape the future for a time. Even then, it builds it into blunt and angry shapes that people cast away at the first opportunity. Scatter Wilkins doe
s not understand this. To him, the future is something to be grabbed by the throat and beaten into submission.”

  Packer smiled at the image, but John Hand did not.

  “The great leaders of people, Grot Wimboller of the Urlish, the Hezzan Tul of the Drammune, our own King Fram the Fifth, and before him the Brothers Mann, all of them learned to maneuver within the ebb and flow of time and history. They inspired admiration and love, as well as fear. They took with them entire nations who were grateful to be led through hardship and bloodshed to a better end.” Packer’s intense stare told Hand that he had, at least for the moment, a willing student. “The Hezzan Shul Dramm is such a leader.”

  “The Drammune emperor?”

  John Hand nodded. “He is a fearsome enemy. The Drammune have no religion but Drammun.”

  “They’re like Talon.”

  “A lot like Talon. But they have ancient ways they believe in, and follow. They have a book of law called the Rahk-Taa, written by the first emperor, the Hezzan Tul, many centuries ago.”

  “But the Dead Lands. They believe in an afterlife.”

  “An afterlife, but one a lot like this. No God determines it, but each of us travel an endless journey. The Rahk-Taa defines how to live in this world and prepare for the next. Rahk means ‘law.’ But it isn’t a collection of laws like you or I know them. It’s a lot more like commandments. The Rahk-Taa defines what it means to be Drammune.”

  Packer looked confused. “Commandments without God?”

  “The word Drammun means ‘worthy.’ The Drammune are quite literally the ‘Worthy Ones.’ The rest of us are therefore, by definition, unworthy. All who are not Drammune are Pawns—a rough translation of their word for worthless. We are the worthless ones. To be used or cast aside.”

  Smoke hung in front of John Hand’s eyes as he watched his student grapple with this. Then Packer said, “And so they have the right to all we own.”