The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  And then, with that portal opened, that hatch into the hold of his own darkest soul, Scat’s hatred expanded. It grew in his chest, up into his throat, and broke open and soaked his mind, his reason. From there it moved into his memory, into time itself, blackening all the circumstances of his life, all the lost opportunities, all the times he had been thwarted by lesser men and women, vain princes and idiot kings, scheming men and dangerous women. He hated everyone and everything that kept him from being what he was, what he was born to be: the richest, most powerful, most glorified man on earth.

  And then in the heart of that darkness a darker revelation slid through him like cold, black water. The root, the wellspring of his hatred was that his glory was not inevitable. Some fate bound him to the finality of his losses, decreed he should fail. It was the way the world was built, the way it was managed that had frustrated him. He hated whoever it was who created and sustained this world.

  Yes, yes! That was it. With that thought, the cold black water in his veins transmuted itself into powder, dry black powder. And that powder ignited. Hatred ripped through him like an explosion, as though that gunpowder had been packed away into every fiber of his being for a lifetime—and now it all flashed in an instant, enraging him, ripping him to bits like the scrapshot that had decimated his decks. Here, at the very gates of eternity, from his deepest, most hidden heart, from the very bowels of his being, he unleashed a full-bodied, fully formed blasphemy, delivered as richly and as furiously and as finally as he could deliver it, directly into the face of God.

  The doomed ship creaked and groaned. Timbers cracked. A rush of wind, air escaping her hold, was followed by three or four enormous glugs from the holes now penetrating her hull, as though the Seventh Seal choked on seawater, as though the ship herself were drowning. The angle of her decks continued to grow more and more acute.

  The decks of the Trophy Chase were still and silent. All sailors watched the forecastle of the Seventh Seal. Scat Wilkins was still rising toward them, as though being put on display. When the ship reached a severe enough angle, somewhere around forty degrees, Scat’s right hand, still gripping his pearl-handled wheel-lock pistol, rose up from the deck. Gasps were heard along the length of the Chase. A few men stepped back in instinctive fear. Scat’s elbow crooked, and the pistol hovered for a moment, pointed at the darkening sky. Anger flashed across his face. And then he went limp.

  As his closed fist settled down on his chest, the barrel of his pistol nestled under his bearded chin for just a moment. Then the weapon fell away and skittered down the wooden deck, splashing into the sea. Scat lay with both arms folded across his chest for a few more seconds, looking almost peaceful, until the ship rolled over toward the Chase, bowing to her superiority.

  With the accompaniment of a final breathy gasp from the Seventh Seal and a great series of loud groans and cracks, Scat Wilkins’ limp body crumpled down to the gunwale; his left leg and left arm protruded grotesquely between the rail posts. And then, without ceremony or honor, the Seventh Seal rolled over onto him, burying him under her timbers.

  Sailors aboard the Chase stepped back from the rails, fearing that the masts and sails of the Seal would come down upon them. But the tip of her mainmast slapped the cold water six feet from the Chase’s hull. There, the white flag of a broken truce sank into the black waters of the sea.

  As if commanded, the Seal’s surviving sailors gave in, gave up, and leaped toward safety, splashing into the water wherever they could, swimming toward their executioners, calling out for mercy. As the sails sank into the sea, drowning pirates were caught beneath them, fighting yards of canvas for air. More fortunate sailors scrambled across the top of the sails and the rigging, clawing their way toward the Chase.

  Packer watched it all through the porthole. It was over. These men were desperate now. They had abandoned their weapons and they swam toward the Chase, now become their beacon of hope. Their faces were stricken with fear, their voices ragged with panic. They begged for their lives. And yet Packer had seen the words: Take no prisoners. He felt he should fall to his knees and ask God to protect them, to save them from what was about to happen. But he didn’t. He couldn’t pull his eyes away. His mind spun; he felt dizzy, and he had the strange sense that the world had turned, that the Seventh Seal was still upright, and he, aboard the Chase, looked down onto her decks, hovering above, watching as the pirates climbed up the rigging toward him. He closed his eyes to regain equilibrium, and the pepper of small-arms fire began. His heart pounded, louder with each pistol report and musket crack. He opened his eyes to watch pirates swim, call out, raise their hands, stop swimming, and sink beneath the waves.

  A thousand thoughts streamed through his head until they merged into a single river, a feeling deeper than thought, a sense of dread and helplessness that careened toward hopelessness. God’s judgment was over. Scat was dead. Would John Hand have no mercy even now? None at all? How could he quote Scripture, call on God to rally his troops, and then slaughter men who were surrendering, denying them the most basic mercy of battle? Packer knew now he could not trust John Hand any more than he could trust Scat Wilkins. And John Hand was much smarter, clearly more cunning than any pirate had ever been.

  In agony of spirit, Packer finally sank to his knees and cried out to God.

  Pop, pop…crack!

  It was still going on. But it had to stop. Packer couldn’t keep praying, couldn’t wait for an answer. He sprang to his feet and sprinted to the quarterdeck.

  He ran toward John Hand, speaking before he thought. “Stop firing! Cease fire!” he demanded, not addressing the crew but the admiral. Packer’s face was inches from John Hand’s, his voice carrying a tone no one could misunderstand.

  Hand was startled to the point of shock. Packer had simply appeared before him. The admiral had been watching his men take aim and fire, reload and fire again, but the swimmers kept swimming. Some of them went down, yes, but not many. His men reloaded with ponderous deliberation, and their aim was uncharacteristically bad. John Hand knew why, of course. They were not pleased with his order. The first of Scat’s refugees had already reached the Chase. The man was crying out piteously.

  Hand could hardly rescind his order. He had given it just moments ago, and precisely so his men would know their captain, would know that John Hand would execute judgment; he was every bit the fearful commander Scat Wilkins was. He had thought they needed to know this. The men would fear and respect this. That was the theory. But in the cauldron of reality, the closer the enemy got, the less enemy they seemed.

  And then Packer appeared, an apparition, eyes piercing with that bright intensity, voice the essence of command. It took the admiral only a moment to understand the gift he was being given. “Cease fire!” he called out, not taking his eyes off Packer.

  It was an order that needed to be given only once. In fact, it hardly needed to be given at all, as every man had ceased shooting when Packer had started shouting. Now, with John Hand’s confirmation, the butt of every musket hit the deck.

  “You would give quarter to our enemies?” Hand asked Packer. His voice was steel, but a sparkle glinted in his eyes.

  Packer was taken aback. “Well. Yes. These ones, anyway. They’re Vast, sir, not Drammune. They can fight. We’ll need them. Won’t we, sir?”

  Hand nodded. “Mr. Throme believes we should show these blaggards some mercy!” he called out, still not taking his eyes off Packer. “All right, men, throw them a line!”

  A cheer went up, then died quickly away as the crewmen went to work throwing coils of rope and rope ladders, lowering the ship’s boats. Lines whirred and windlasses clicked metallically as the men buzzed with renewed enthusiasm for their work.

  Packer felt dazed. That was all it took? He looked at Admiral Hand with such an earnestly quizzical expression that Hand laughed out loud. Packer found that stranger yet.

  John Hand grasped Packer’s shoulder, shook him gently, even affectionately. “You do have courage in
you, son. Let’s make sure you pour it out on the Drammune.”

  Packer nodded, then noticed blood flowing from the whiskers at Admiral Hand’s neck. He pointed. “You’re hit, sir.”

  John Hand felt the warmth on his neck, cold wetness on his shoulder. When he fingered his jaw, he realized that Scat’s final shot had very nearly done its job. The ball had traced a crease just below his jawline, as near to the jugular as a shot could come without opening it. He granted his old friend and partner a nod of appreciation. The man could shoot.

  “Help them aboard,” John Hand ordered, nodding toward the men in the water below. He noticed that the boy still carried no pistol. He grimaced. Twice now, Packer had appeared from nowhere, calling for mercy: once with the Achawuk, and once with these pirates. Both times, it was the right thing to do. But John Hand still didn’t know. And he needed to know. The men all loved and respected Packer Throme. They thought God was with him. John Hand had fed that belief. This was good, certainly, but only to a point. He had just sent Packer to fight, and again the lad had not fought.

  The admiral looked at the blood on his fingertips, then pressed them back against the wound at his jaw. Strange as it seemed, as he navigated this small current of history, in the crucible of this present reality, John Hand found he strongly believed that the success of this voyage, and perhaps therefore the outcome of the entire war, hinged on the answer to one stark question.

  Would Packer kill?

  The beast had collected each morsel as it drifted downward. There was no need to shock these; they were but bits of flesh. No need to snap down on them. It just opened wide its jaws, left its mouth agape like a great net, and swam about scooping them all in. Blood scent was everywhere now, wonderfully rich, and the morsels were sweet. But the Firefish stayed low, away from the thunder on the surface.

  And then it realized that one of the shellfish creatures had begun to dive!

  At the surface the rotund creature had turned over. It made sounds—booms, cracks, and bellows. Its enormous fins, like great wings, settled into the water. It was submerging. It was leaving the surface. The Firefish circled, worried it might have been spotted. Was this storm creature diving to hunt, to attack?

  No, this was not a dive. The creature was not swimming. It was sinking. Motionless but for the fluttering of its winglike fins in the current, it sank, just as the morsels had sunk. And then the beast knew. This storm creature was dead! The beast sped up to it, circled once. It was bloody. And its shell was cracked open!

  And then the beast saw a single flailing morsel clinging to its shell, at one end of the creature. Here was the weak spot, then. Here was a place where the meat oozed from the shell. Here was where the Firefish could attack, break through the shell, and feast!

  The beast swam down, turned upward, and saw the morsel flail. Yes. This was the place to attack.

  Scatter Wilkins opened his eyes as the last glimmers of light filtered through the seawater. The crush and cold of the sea pierced him. The creaks and echoing cracks of his sinking ship reached into and rang within his ears. He was sliding downward. He was sinking with his ship. He was drowning. He tried to move, but succeeded only in waving his arms. He felt no desire to save himself. He felt quite peaceful. It was an unaccustomed sensation.

  And then, from below him, he felt a rumble. It seemed vaguely familiar, this sound, this reverberation. Some distant memory tried to reach him, but it would not form in his mind. He looked down into the darkness toward which he drifted. As he did, he remembered the blasphemy he had uttered. It was comforting to him. He had cursed God. Now he would die. He marveled that he felt no fear. All his life he had feared what he would face on the other side of death. But now that he was dying, he felt nothing like that at all. He would go somewhere far from God, far down into the cold and black. He was content.

  Scat felt the darkness below him grow darker yet, and thicker, colder. It seemed to him like a hole was opening, a pit into which he was falling, falling rapidly, not drifting down any more, but plummeting. It was almost as if the black hole were coming up at him.

  And as that darkness grew, as he fell into it, he noticed, calmly, with a peaceful curiosity, that the hole was surrounded by white teeth. Odd. A hole with huge white teeth around its rim, growing so quickly, so rapidly, that it seemed as if the world were being swallowed by some great beast.

  And then, like a lightning bolt searing through him, panic overwhelmed his entire being. His mind snapped awake as he realized at last, as he knew with utter clarity, what was happening to him.

  Then his terror swallowed him whole.

  John Hand walked to the quarterdeck rail. “What are our casualties, Mr. Haas?”

  “Light, Admiral,” Haas called up to him. “We lost Zeb Bones on lookout, Jonas Deal, and Mutton Caller. Those three for sure. We got four other men injured, Jack Mack and the bosun the worst.”

  “Stil Meander? How bad?”

  “Got a nasty splinter in his thigh.”

  “A splinter?”

  “Aye, about eight inches long and almost as wide. Jack took a ball below the elbow.” Andrew shook his head. “We lost a good sounding pole overboard from that one. Stitch thinks the arm’ll need to go as well.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all I know about for sure, but there’s a bunch of men bleeding here and there.”

  John Hand’s eyes widened. Maybe God really was with them.

  At that moment a shudder came from under the water astern, from the place where the Seventh Seal had gone down. A huge bubble of water broke the surface, broken boards and kegs and bits of mast and sail coming up with it. Sailors who had been looking in that direction reported they’d seen an explosion beneath the surface.

  “Must have had a whole lot of powder in that hold,” Delaney said to Packer. Packer looked at him carefully, saw the doubt. What makes a keg of powder explode underwater? But they both chose to leave any other possibility unspoken.

  “Line the prisoners up on the main deck!” Hand ordered, apparently unconcerned with the death throes of the Seal.

  “What will you do with them, Admiral?” Packer asked.

  He shrugged. “I guess we need to decide whether to hang ’em or jail ’em or just sign ’em up.” But he smiled. “Do you have a suggestion?”

  “I say sign them up, sir. If they’ll join.”

  “Had the same thought myself.”

  Packer nodded appreciatively, then helped Delaney, who was struggling with a line, trying to haul a particularly large pirate up the side of the ship. Despite Packer’s help, the wounded man lost his grip and crashed back into the sea. “Get yourself on the ship’s boat, ye great side a’ beef!” Delaney called down to him. “We can’t haul ye!” Delaney turned his familiar grin toward Packer. “Man needs to be put on rations.”

  Packer laughed. He looked past Delaney, to where the Silver Arrow and the Marchessa approached from the west. “Now where do you suppose they’ve been?”

  Delaney nodded. “Exactly. Puzzles me why Admiral ordered them off a great distance, just this afternoon.”

  They had been to sea for nearly a week now. Scat had attacked only just tonight, and only after the other two ships had been sent away. But the logbook explained it. Hand had lured Scat in.

  Packer didn’t let it worry him. The mood on the decks was light, and he soaked it in like a sponge. Victory had been won, an implacable foe defeated, and mercy had been shown. John Hand had ultimately done the right thing. Packer looked to the heavens, thankful. Then he threw himself back into the work of saving pirates.

  Even at the farthest distance, with the sun all but set and the light fading, the Chase’s lookout could tell that the ships on the horizon were not Vast ships. Their sails were not the usual white, square-rigged sheets every Vast ship boasted. They were small crimson triangles, layered one over the other like scales. He focused his telescope, and shook his head.

  “Drammune!” he called. “Drammune warships, due
east!”

  The light mood on deck vanished like a mist in a sudden gust of wind. Sailors rushed to the gunwales and into the rigging. One or two wet pirates, halfway up the side of the Chase, went back into the drink.

  The crew had hardly begun to mutter the questions that rose in their hearts when the lookout cried again. “Drammune warships! Nor’east!”

  The sailors scanned the horizon northward, feeling the cold chill of fear.

  And then they heard, “Drammune warships, sou’east!”

  Within minutes, the entire eastern horizon, as far as anyone could see, was speckled with blood-red sails.

  “Well, condemn me for a hanged man,” Delaney said softly to Packer, breaking a stunned silence on deck, “if it ain’t their whole heavin’ navy.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Warrior

  It was not the whole heavin’ Drammune navy that sailed for Nearing Vast. But almost. How they came to be strewn across the sea in attack formation, headed toward the City of Mann with a full load of fighting men and women, ammunition, and every weapon of war available on Drammune shores, was a tale that several now watching wide-eyed aboard the Trophy Chase would have been amazed to hear told.

  John Hand in particular would have listened eagerly, seeking to understand the genesis of these events, how the great and long-festering animosities between kings and kingdoms had converged with peculiar and particular fates, hopes, and ambitions of individuals, in order to bring these ships here, to him. If he could have, the professor would have stared deeply into this steaming cauldron, stirring it, testing it, trying to unlock its secrets.

  It was a story that reached back to the bleak, cold months at the wane of the previous year, and would reach forward for many years to come.