The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

He smiled. “Ah, you were paying attention. Yes, to quote the Rahk-Taa, ‘The Law commands the Worthy Ones to rule. Therefore the Worthy One who takes the life of the Unworthy earns all his titles and treasures.’ That’s what they call the Right of Transfer. Kar Ixthano, in Drammune. Friendly little concept, isn’t it?”

  Packer pondered it. “Sounds a lot like piracy.”

  Hand laughed once. “If you think Scatter Wilkins is a fierce foe, wait till you meet the Drammune.”

  Finally, the invitation to attack could not be resisted. This prey had its guard down. And so the Firefish circled, circled again, and then, its brain and body locked onto its prey, made its decision. It shot upward, mouth agape, scales glowing yellow, for the kill.

  Now, at last, it would feast.

  Hand pulled on his pipe, found it had gone out. But at that moment a loud splash could be heard astern, a cannonball striking the water outside the admiral’s quarters. A fraction of a second later, the boom of a cannon. A dark shadow passed in front of the sun.

  Hand’s eyes grew wide, not in fear or surprise, but in excitement. “Finally!” He jumped up and ran to the double windows of his cabin at the stern, threw them open. The setting sun made the Seventh Seal look darker than she was, sails fibrous and translucent as she cast her shadow on the Chase. She was three hundred yards away and closing fast.

  As the beast flew upward on its attack path, it detected another creature approaching. An attack! Its instincts told it that it had been lured, that the deep-finned one had lured it, and its companion was attacking from the flank. Pack behavior. But the beast, ablaze with the light of the attack, ignored the intruder. It would kill, then turn and kill again.

  But then, an amazing thing—a surprising thing that had no precedent in the beast’s mind or memory. Thunder, a flash of lightning, a storm closer to the surface of the waters than the beast had ever felt or heard or seen.

  To be at the surface when the sky cracked, when the fire struck the waters: This was death even to Firefish. With a great effort, with the fear of the greatest powers of nature turning it from its feast, it broke off its upward surge. It whipped itself downward. As it did, the tip of its tail struck the deepest part of the deep fin. It was a slight blow, but enough to convince the beast that this was no fleshy creature. This was a shellfish.

  The beast dove, and circled again, deep down, to watch. To wait. To learn. And then to stalk again.

  The ship lurched and shuddered. “What was that?” Packer asked.

  John Hand ignored the question. “The bunting, Packer!” Somehow John Hand had a knife in his fist and was cutting tie lines with it, the ropes that held the colored bunting across the stern of the Chase. “Cut away the bunting!”

  A flash from the prow of the approaching vessel was followed immediately by a cannonball that whirred through the open window between Packer and the admiral. It traveled through the captain’s quarters and exploded against the far wall of the saloon behind them. The impact of the blast knocked Packer against the window post, toward the water, almost tumbling him out. He ducked his head against a horizontal rain of debris that stung him like sleet.

  John Hand looked at Packer, saw he was alive, and bellowed his command again. “Go cut the tie lines! Release the bunting!”

  Packer looked out the window and saw blue-and-white bunting float down into the sea behind the Trophy Chase. The admiral had already cut the bunting away. Packer didn’t understand.

  Hand grabbed Packer by the collar as another flash erupted from the Seventh Seal, yanked him hard to the floorboards. A tremendous crash jarred them both as the cannonball exploded against the hull just under the open window. The admiral was on his feet now, pulling Packer back up.

  “Go cut the bunting away on the afterdeck rail above us!” Hand now seethed, his face a knot of frustration, inches from Packer’s. “Go!” And he threw Packer toward the saloon door.

  Finally comprehending what his orders were, though having no clue as to the reason behind them, Packer left at a dead run, glancing briefly at the splintered pile that a moment ago had been a table supporting two cups of rum.

  The Seventh Seal had fired her first cannon before any loyal sailor aboard the Chase had seen her approach. “To arms!” one of those in the rigging finally managed. “To arms! We’re under attack!”

  The benighted helmsman, understanding at last the danger, began spinning the wheel, turning the ship to starboard. He looked at Jonas Deal, but the first mate standing beside him was silent, and still as a post. “We’re under attack,” the helmsman repeated, pleading with the first mate. Deal turned a stony look toward him, but did not act. “All hands!” the helmsman yelled, turning away with a grimace. “Battle sta—” he started, but never finished the command. An explosion at his right ear threw him to the deck in a pool of blood. He was dead. Jonas Deal’s pistol smoked.

  Deal caught the spinning wheel and calmly eased the ship back onto its former course.

  The helmsman’s last instinct had been the correct one. The attacker came from upwind, starboard astern. Scat had meant to take out the Chase’s rudder as he approached, then rake her starboard hull with a full broadside as he passed. Turning into the attack would have made a rudder shot more difficult, would have given the Chase’s cannon a chance to fire on the approaching ship. Most importantly, it would have forced the attacker to choose between ramming the Chase and veering to port, giving the Chase the upwind position, the advantage known to seamen in battle as the “weather gauge.”

  Scat would indeed have yielded that advantage rather than ram his beloved ship. But now he had no need. The Seal would pass as she pleased.

  “Siege! To arms!” came more cries from the rigging. These calls, with the report of Jonas’s pistol and the cannon shots ringing from astern, finally roused the sleepy Chase. But the great cat’s reactions were confused and slow. The first sailors to reach the armory found it locked, and no one seemed to have a key. The three-man crews that operated each cannon had trouble forming; each seemed to be missing at least one man.

  The last thing Scat wanted was to sink the Chase. But he would do anything short of that to take her prize. He would not aim his cannon at the waterline, but at her hull, her cannon, her decks. Some men aboard the new flagship of the Fleet were aware of Scat’s intentions; some were not. But every man was attuned to one brutal fact: The Seventh Seal would let loose a broadside in a matter of minutes, and the Chase was completely unprepared to return fire.

  Packer came to a sudden halt as he exited the captain’s quarters and found Jonas Deal reloading his pistol. The lifeless, bloody form of the helmsman lay at Deal’s feet. Packer instinctively drew his sword. He stood that way for a moment, watching Jonas Deal ram the ball home. Reloaded now, Deal looked up and calmly pointed his pistol between Packer’s eyes. Packer settled into the guard position, his body moving of its own volition. Deal readjusted his aim, and clicked back the hammer. At that moment an explosion from behind Packer crashed a musket ball into Deal’s scowling brow. The man stood as though dazed for a moment, uncomprehending, then dropped his arm and his weapon and crumpled backward, landing splayed out and face up across the helmsman’s body.

  The admiral walked past Packer and pulled the sword from the first mate’s belt. When he stood up, he faced Packer, shook his head, and then smacked Packer hard across the chest with the flat of it. Where was the boy’s fire now, now that it mattered? “The bunting!” Hand pointed up, behind Packer. “The afterdeck!” The admiral walked away and calmly began cutting tie lines at the quarterdeck rail.

  Packer looked at the sword in his hand. He felt like he was in a trance. But somehow he managed to scramble up the ladder to the afterdeck. He brought the edge of his blade down on the tie lines that held the top row of bunting across the ship’s stern, above the captain’s quarters. His blade was razor-sharp, and the bunting fell easily away.

  The swivel cannon on the Seal’s prow flashed again, just as Packer cut the final tie. The ball
struck the Chase and exploded not three feet below where Packer stood, jarring him so he needed to grab the handrail to keep from falling overboard. He looked down at the hull to assess the damage.

  And then he saw it. He finally understood what John Hand was doing, why the bunting needed to be cut away. His heart leaped. He looked up at the Seventh Seal. Her bowsprit was now almost even with the stern of the Chase. Below the prow of the attacking ship Packer saw clearly her figurehead, the bust of an angel, a dark, grim angel carved with an outstretched right arm. Yellow and red painted flames rose up from her open right hand, an offering of fire.

  Now musket fire rang out from the Seal, from the sailors on her prow. Musket balls pattered into the Chase’s hull and whistled through the air. Sailors aboard the Chase returned fire, multiple cracks traced by plumes of blue smoke that lashed out at the attackers. Packer felt a calm energy now, certainty and clarity. He knew his role, and he knew the reason for it. And he knew the Chase would prevail. He looked up to heaven, deeply thankful, and then, with a guttural yell that came without being summoned, he hurtled over the afterdeck rail, sword in hand, and landed on the quarterdeck. He ran past John Hand, who was cutting away the bunting there, and sprang down onto the main deck. Packer’s hand burned as he moved down the rail, attacking the tie lines as though each were a bitter enemy to be dispatched.

  The gathered folds of the bunting fell away. Sailors moved back to give him room, eyes wide at his determination, at the speed and precision of his work, but to a man baffled as to his purpose.

  Packer was already amidships when the Seventh Seal began firing her cannon. She was close, not twenty yards away, and she let loose a long, sustained volley, explosion after explosion, an enormous and ponderous string of fireworks that would rip the Chase from stern to bow. The blasts were hideously loud, cracking and booming like a thunderstorm inside a cave. The Chase staggered and shuddered as blast after blast exploded from the Seal and tore into her.

  Near the prow of the Chase, Packer went down, unable to stand, his legs kicked out from under him as though he had been standing on ice. The Seal was firing directly below him now, at the ship’s hull just under him. But he had finished his task; the bunting along the starboard rail was gone.

  The booms turned to a high-pitched whine as Packer’s ears stopped themselves up, refusing to process the sounds. The ship beneath him jarred and rocked. He tried to hold onto the floorboards, but was batted against them again and again as they slapped him into the air. And then finally, the Seventh Seal had passed by, and the air went still.

  Packer sat up, stunned by the sheer, violent chaos of the broadside, the shriek in his ears otherworldly. He tried to take in the scene. Acrid-sweet blue-white clouds of gunpowder smoke draped a haze over everything, burning his eyes and his throat. Men ran, reloaded, knelt over fallen comrades. Then he saw John Hand, saw the admiral stride swiftly to the main-deck gunwale. He looked up at Packer, a gleam in his eye. Smiling! He mouthed some words Packer couldn’t hear, couldn’t understand, but he grinned back anyway. It had worked. Of course it had worked.

  “Look, men!” Hand called, pointing down, and now Packer could hear him. “Take heart, lads, there is no damage to the hull! Come about, prepare the cannon! We’ll cut her to shreds in the next pass!”

  The admiral’s words were more shocking to the crew than the broadside had been. They rushed to the rail to see if somehow it might be true.

  And it was true—utterly so. Not a single cannonball had penetrated the Chase’s hull. Where bunting had been cut away, wide and overlapping strips of gray metallic material now lay unfurled. Not even a pock or a bunch showed where the cannonballs had struck it. It was pristine. Word passed through the ship, a single thought that seemed to strike every sailor’s brain at once. They knew now what hung along their hull…it was Firefish scales, the hide of their great enemy and their great benefactor, their prehistoric predator, their highly profitable prey.

  The thin, impenetrable material had been rolled up under the bunting, hidden there, waiting to be unfurled by Packer Throme and John Hand just in time to protect the ship. The men aboard reacted with unrestrained delight. John Hand had outwitted Scat Wilkins. Packer Throme, with his furious sword, had clothed the Chase with armor just ahead of the cannon fire.

  But before the men could unleash their joy, even as swords went into air and mouths opened, a loud call came down from above them. “For Captain Wilkins!” shouted the lookout. Zeb Bones had unfurled the white skull and bones hovering over a black field.

  Silence fell as all the men looked up at the pirate flag under which they now sailed. The blue and red flag of Nearing Vast, with the kingdom’s great seal, the interlaced initials NV emblazoned over a ship’s wheel, fluttered casually away to port, down, into the waves. The silence aboard, and the confusion that drove it, ended with a gunshot from the afterdeck. The body of Zeb Bones tumbled from the crow’s nest. Lifeless, he struck the forestay of the mainmast and pinwheeled into the sea. The men watched, frozen in astonishment.

  John Hand lowered the enormous pistol, Mr. Deal’s reloaded hand cannon, its barrel smoking once again. “Pirates,” he said under his breath. Then, “Somebody strike that flag!” Four men scrambled up through the lines, racing for the privilege.

  “For John Hand!” shouted Andrew Haas. “All loyal men fight for the admiral, and for Nearing Vast!”

  Swords came out, but remained held high, or pointed toward the decks. Sailors aimed their pistols downward as well, just below one another’s feet, not wanting to give offense to an honest brother. All waited for some evidence that would betray a mutineer.

  Packer looked out to the ocean, to the spot where Zeb Bones’s body had splashed into the sea. Then he looked farther, and saw the Seventh Seal turning sharply in preparation for another pass. “Where is the Marchessa?” Packer asked aloud, to no one in particular. “Where is the Silver Arrow?” He scanned the horizon, and finally found two small white dots, the Chase’s escorts, tacking into the wind in an attempt to join the fray. They would be no help.

  The tense, awkward moment was finally broken by another shout from above.

  “White flag! White flag!” called the sailor who had scrambled into the vacant crow’s nest. He pointed at the Seventh Seal.

  John Hand shook his head. “Now there’s something I thought I’d never see. Captain Scat Wilkins wants a parley.”

  The storm on the surface raged, and the Firefish watched from deep below. And then, another surprise. A small bit of something drifted down from the deep-finned one. The great predator waited. The morsel would come down to it.

  CHAPTER 5

  Parley

  Panna quickly learned to despise the palace and its atmosphere, its cold marble and shining, polished wood, where everyone dressed and behaved as though they were going to some fabulous event every minute of every day, where everyone judged everyone else by their ability to look and act as if their own fabulous events were more fabulous than anyone else’s fabulous events. Panna rebelled against all this, refusing to wear anything but her peasant dress. This distressed the prince, which in turn pleased Panna. She avoided him as much as possible anyway. She tried to get to know the servants, but the older ones were standoffish, as though born to a privilege she could never achieve, and the younger ones were skittish, speaking politely with her, but with eyes always scanning, looking for an exit. The prince had them all well-trained.

  The dragoons were the worst. Big, hulking, angry-looking, they were henchmen in fancy uniforms, starched blue with shiny brass buttons, carrying huge pikes and spears, or what looked like enormous meat cleavers on the end of long poles. They were everywhere, and they watched her always. Only when she was in her rooms, the Blue Rooms, with doors shut and windows shuttered, was she free of their glare. Even on her porch, they watched her from the ramparts. If she were to try to escape in the dark, to climb over the stone railing, they would wait for her, politely and impassively but forcibly returning her to
the palace. This she learned the hard way. Eventually, she grew accustomed to their dark, cold stares. She learned to ignore them. But she was never at ease.

  She truly loved the library, with its histories and travelogues, philosophers and political thinkers. Here she could lose herself, and forget for a while that she was a captive. This one room opened up worlds to her she had never known existed. But she didn’t spend as much time there as she would have liked, because Mather was always coming and going there, looking up a battle or something about Vast or Drammune history. And whatever topic it was, he always wanted to chat about it, as though he felt it his duty to tutor her in the ways of war and good government.

  Her saving grace was that the palace sat on some twenty acres of well-tended paths, ponds, and flower-covered hills, so Panna could, and did, spend most of her days outside in the gardens. She found these distressingly sterile as well, with their perfect, perfectly unnatural grooming and shaping, but at least plants grew at their own pace, and flowers ignored royal commands, blooming only when they were good and ready. And then they wore precisely the blooms they wanted, as God intended. They were arrayed, as the Lord promised, more fabulously than any of the fabulous finery within the palace walls.

  Panna had found a relatively secluded pond—not far from the palace but far enough away, and off the walks and bridges—where she could sit and read and think. It was not too far from a wide, open expanse, a grass-covered amphitheater called the Green, but here a shady, gently sloping lawn allowed her to take off her shoes, feel cool grass under her feet, dip her toes in the water, and listen to birds singing. If she closed her eyes she could imagine she was on a hillside somewhere in the real world. But when she opened them, she always remembered that she was not. A quick look around would reveal some grim dragoon watching from between two trees or from behind a hedge.

  Just before noon on one of a series of otherwise identical days, the Princess Jacqalyn, Mather’s sister, the eldest child of King Reynard, wandered into the garden to chat. Panna had met her before, and knew she was the wife of a mostly absent baron. The introduction had been formal, of course, and the princess had made Panna feel very uneasy. Her fabulous events seemed fit for no one but Jacqalyn, and she eyed Panna like the girl were some rare species, a captive bird from a distant locale, not very exotic or interesting, but unusual nonetheless.