The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  Like a number of sailors in the rigging, John Hand saw the activity on the deck of the approaching Rahk Thanu but did not comprehend its meaning. He was focused on attacking once again the Thanu’s starboard side, where the damage was already significant, and where at least some of the cannon had been put out of action. He was not surprised when the other captain seemed willing to oblige. The two ships were on a collision course, prow to prow, until the Thanu veered southward, preferring to offer its wounded side once again rather than give up the weather gauge.

  John Hand also guessed that his enemy had movable cannon placements and could therefore replace lost cannon with good ones quickly. He had heard of this innovation, and was anxious to see whether the Drammune had perfected it.

  They had.

  Twelve damaged pieces were dumped into the sea; ten were replaced with spares. The other two were not recoverable; the floorboards on which they had been mounted were obliterated. The sailors aboard the Thanu prepared themselves and their armaments well this time. They had steel in their hands and in their hearts, cannon loaded and ready at their feet.

  Admiral Hand surveyed the set of the battle, the placement of the Drammune warships against his own. The quickness of his ship had left him in good stead. The next closest ship to the Chase was the Kaza Fahn. It had veered sharply north as the Chase passed by the first time, not pleased to be both in range and downwind of the attacker. Now the Fahn was well out of cannon range, in irons, stern facing the Chase. In a few more minutes it would complete its turn and be facing east, capable of pursuing. But in a few more minutes John Hand expected to have completed his second pass, west to east, and to be running like the wind with the Thanu crippled or sunk behind him. The Fahn would not catch him.

  The other Drammune warships had slowed, some were turning, but none was capable of taking part in this battle unless it became a prolonged one.

  So it was the Chase versus the Thanu again. The admiral was content.

  Mux had his grappling guns out on his decks and in the forefront of his battle plan. The Drammune flagship’s commander had honor to redeem, and he would redeem it at close quarters. He had decided against attempting to sink the Chase. Not only would that be counter to the Hezzan’s orders, it would not be nearly vengeance enough. He wanted his men on the decks of that ship with swords in hand, where they would crush the soft Vast sailors, sledgehammers on salamanders. Then he could preserve that maddening but sterling vessel for his emperor, with or without her officers left alive. He wouldn’t disobey orders, not directly. But the contingencies of war often confounded the best-laid plans, and the Hezzan would simply need to be content with whatever outcome Mux delivered.

  John Hand gave Packer his spare pistol and its accoutrements, a bag of charges and musket balls, and ordered him to the starboard rail. No one on board now doubted Packer’s courage. He had stood firm in the crossfire, stood tall when the Firefish faced him. Some, however, were beginning to doubt his mortality. How could a mere human summon the beast from the depths like that, look it in the eye…and the beast not attack?

  The admiral was not among the doubters. He was quite sure Packer was perfectly capable of getting himself killed. What he still doubted was whether the boy was capable of killing. Packer had not yet drawn blood, and drawing blood was precisely the service required now. Packer Throme with pistol and sword, firing, fighting, a comrade in arms, that was what his men needed to see. It was what John Hand needed to see. A war-hardened Packer would be a great asset, far more practical than a haloed figurehead. And if Packer were to die—well, John Hand could use that as well. A martyr was always a great asset to any cause.

  The Chase came under fire early as she approached the Thanu. The Drammune would not wait this time. Cannon belched, and grapeshot spattered the Chase’s hull and rails. A few men fell, a few men swore. John Hand called for small-arms fire in return, holding his cannon back, wanting to blister the Thanu once again at close quarters. But why grapeshot? Hand wondered. Did their commander know about the armor? So few cannon had been fired against the Chase, how could he…?

  Then, suddenly, Hand understood. “Hard to port!” he yelled. He now realized what the activity on the decks of the Thanu was all about. His men looked at him quizzically, even as the ship’s prow began to turn away from her prey.

  “Fire at will!” Hand ordered, as soon as the angle of his hull allowed for direct shots. Cannon erupted, and the already damaged starboard hull of the Thanu took more damage yet. But this was nothing like the consuming fire of the first pass. The Chase was still almost fifty yards from her enemy; the cannon fire was sporadic as crews took careful aim, and not all the projectiles found a target.

  Packer raised his pistol. He aimed at a Drammune warrior across more than forty yards of ocean and pulled the trigger. But the best that could be said about Packer’s skill with a pistol was that he was good with a sword. The kick surprised him; this was a harder jolt than he had experienced firing his one round from the rigging in the Achawuk battle. His intended target was unimpressed and unaware; the ball struck the hull of the Thanu eight feet below him.

  Packer dropped a charge packet into the smoking barrel, but as he put the ramrod down into it, the Thanu’s grappling guns fired their missiles.

  It was an odd sound, a multitude of small, muffled pops. Because of the distance and the angle of the barrels, the reports were softer even than those of muskets. Packer saw the rising shower of hooks, slow, peaceful, almost gentle, each trailing a thin line like a spider’s web rising upward. They arced high in the air and then began raining down from above, many clearing the uppermost sails, the sky and the main topgallant, many catching in lines and guys, on canvas and mast.

  One sailor on deck cursed loudly and ripped an offending hook from his shoulder. He stared at it in wide-eyed dismay, as if it were some strange creature that had just bit him. Then, as if to prove him right, it leaped from his hand and began a quick, jerky journey across the deck, back toward the gunwale. Dozens of them did the same, spiders scurrying toward hidden nests.

  “Cut the lines! Cut the lines!” Hand ordered, his anxiety unmasked. Others joined in the call, and swords and knives came out as any sailor near a grappling hook severed, or tried to sever, its lifeline.

  The little things moved fast. The crewmen set a dozen free, but three times that many were caught in standing rigging, yards, guys, sails. The total number of grappling hooks astonished the crew as did the speed at which they went taut. Almost immediately, the seasoned sea legs of the crew could feel the Chase tremble as she was pulled toward the Thanu.

  Crewmen who scrambled up into the rigging to release the spiders’ grip were stopped by grapeshot from cannon and musket balls fired by marksmen on the Thanu, their long rifles perched on tripods for just this purpose. And these marksmen were tested less every second as the Chase was drawn closer and closer.

  On the decks of the Rahk Thanu, Drammune sailors lined up in rows like men in a tug-o’-war contest, pulling on the thin lines like madmen, hand over hand, knowing that time was their enemy. The faster they pulled, they knew, the less time their enemy would have to cut the lines, and the better their chances would be to overrun their foes.

  “Cannon, fire!” John Hand repeated, but now got little response. Crews had stopped reloading to marvel at the grappling hooks, and had then left these duties to follow the new orders, to cut the hooks away. Now they returned to their artillery, and a few cannon boomed, but the effect on the Thanu was slight.

  Hand grimaced. There would be no quick pass. The Fist of the Law had caught them and was pulling them into a death struggle.

  Then the Kaza Fahn surprised him as well. Long range guns blasted the Chase from across a span of water John Hand would not have believed possible. And their cannoneers aimed true. Concussions knocked his men to the floorboards, drew them away from the starboard rails.

  “Charnak!” yelled the commander of the Drammune Armada, in a voice easily heard by John Han
d and the Vast sailors. Fire!

  Cannon roared again from the Rahk Thanu. Packer hit the deck along with many others who stood at the starboard gunwale. A few of them went down bleeding, but most went down of their own free will, out of the line of fire. Now splinters and wood chunks from the railings and masts and cabinets and cabins, anything above the protective armor, went flying all around them.

  Now it was the Thanu’s turn to blister its enemy. The Chase’s decks quickly became a deafening, pounding battleground. Grapeshot shattered and skeletonized the Chase’s structures like locusts passing over a cornfield. Endless cannon fire drummed out rational thought. Packer’s cheek was pressed hard against the decking. He looked at his right hand and saw the back of it turn red with spattered blood. He wondered whether it was his own. In this maelstrom there seemed no way to know.

  And then suddenly the cannon fire was twice as loud, twice as close. For a moment, Packer couldn’t understand what had happened. Had the Thanu’s cannon moved directly onto the Chase’s decks? He covered his ears to protect them, but the firing seemed to come from within his skull.

  Then, finally, he realized this was the sound of his own shipmates returning fire. Packer felt a sense of pride bordering on awe. How could anyone function in this smoke-choked hell? And yet they did.

  Cannonballs from the Chase once again blasted the Thanu, cratering its hull, then its decks. But the cannonade was not thick and not prolonged. This time, Vast cannoneers were taking heavy fire, with casualties mounting quickly. By the time the cannon had been emptied, no more than two-thirds of the cannon crews were capable of reloading.

  When the blasts finally slowed, Packer raised his head from the deck. He was shocked to see that the rails of the Rahk Thanu were no more than five yards from their own. Somehow, the Drammune had continued pulling those lines and had closed the gap in the midst of that thunderous volley. He looked up into the rigging, saw Drammune warriors swinging toward him, coming down from above.

  The Chase was being boarded.

  Packer leaped to his feet and drew his sword.

  John Hand’s voice cut through the fray. “Fight, men, or say your prayers!”

  As the gap between the ships closed to mere feet, small arms erupted and men fell.

  “Nochtai Vastcha!” Fen Abbaka Mux cried in his deep, resonate rasp. Death to the Vast!

  Drammune warriors roared the refrain. “Nochtai Vastcha!” And then they came pouring across, up from the decks of the Thanu, a swarm of hornets.

  Packer’s first foe leaped across the gap, then struggled to climb up over the rail. He was grim and determined, helmeted, short, and built like a boulder. He was no more than an arm’s-length from Packer. Without thinking, Packer rammed his blade into the man just below the breastbone.

  But the sword did not penetrate; it flexed with the force of the thrust and then almost sprang out of his hand as it recoiled. Packer’s wrist and hand exploded with pain. The man looked up at him with stunned anger in his eyes, a look that spoke of instant vengeance. Packer took an involuntary step back as the lumbering man cleared the rail. Then the man’s short, curved sword came up, a sweep from Packer’s left. Packer blocked it neatly, but his head spun, trying to understand how a man could…

  And then it hit him. Where Packer’s sword had struck, the color was scraped away in a gash, leaving a gray, mottled, metallic sheen. It was some kind of chain mail, steel mesh. The man’s vest—a short tunic, really—was armor. It was a hauberk. That realization, slow as it was to make its way to his brain, ushered with it a great sense of relief. There was no magic here; the man was not made of iron. Packer immediately put his sword through the man’s throat, buried it until its hilt struck the man’s jaw. Then he shoved him away. The thick warrior collapsed backward and landed sitting on the deck, his back against the rail, eyes locked on Packer and frozen wide in surprise.

  Packer’s own expression mirrored the dead man’s. But he couldn’t think about what he’d just done. He needed to think about that armor. The man’s helmet was made of the same crimson material.

  “Armor!” Packer cried out. He remembered how Lund Lander had instructed his shipmates from the battle deck. “They’re wearing armor! Go for the throat!”

  But when he looked around, all he saw were his shipmates being cut down. Almost all of them had once been pirates, and were still as fierce in a fight as any Drammune warrior. Most were better with a sword. But the jabs that struck Drammune bellies, the cuts across heads and torsos, the thrusts into chests—none of them mattered. None of them penetrated. The Drammune fought on, pressing forward in their aggressive strength, backing bewildered Vast sailors into one another, into railings, into corners, where they died.

  Mux stood on the quarterdeck rail and watched with growing satisfaction. Salamanders under sledgehammers, hammers wielded by the Fist of the Law. Mux was pleased. The Drammune were worthy.

  Packer raised his eyes to God. The Chase’s crew was being slaughtered. No response came back. His heart thundered in his chest. Lives were draining away all around him; his countrymen, his friends. He looked at the sails. They were full, but bound with what seemed like a hundred cords. There would be no breath of God this time, just as John Hand predicted. I want your sword in your hand, he had said. It came into Packer’s mind that he should fight harder, more fiercely. But it also came into his mind that no amount of effort would matter. They were destined to lose.

  Packer dropped to his knees, put his head back, and closed his eyes. Fighting raged around him. He was completely vulnerable, but kneeling, he was all but invisible. “They’re killing us!” he said aloud, looking up into the sails. “Is that what You want?”

  Now he closed his eyes, and for a moment the sounds of fighting faded, and Packer was sitting on the edge of Hangman’s Cliffs, looking out over the sea. Clouds were sprinkled across a blue sky, the sun peeking in and out of them. It was a memory, but a powerful one, and now it came to him like a waking dream, like a vision. Packer could feel the warm ocean wind in his hair, hear the waves crashing far below him, the cry of gulls. He was here, really here again, where all was peace and serenity, and the earth in its infinite detail spread out on an unimaginable scale.

  And now Packer, as he had done so many years ago, asked his Creator, “What is it You want?”

  And the answer came back once again, not in words, but in tenderness, in the peace of the moment, the breath of the breeze, that He wanted Packer’s heart. And as he had done then, Packer gave it, instantly, wholly, willingly, without reserve, without condition. Life or death, ease or hardship, pleasure or pain.

  And then Packer asked again, as he had done all those years before, “What do You want me to do?” And God told him, once again, as He had before, that Packer could ask whatever he wished.

  And Packer remembered the joy he felt that the God of the universe would say such a thing. And Packer said now what he had said then: “I want to do good on the earth.”

  Then Packer realized that God had let him choose, had always let him choose his own path, so long as his heart was in God’s hands. And with his head bowed now on the blood-streaked decks, he asked God, pled with the God of the Universe, the God of life and joy and peace, the God of time and eternity, for the grace to do a mighty work now, for a space of time, to help his shipmates, his country, and his king:

  “I want to fight!”

  He heard no voice, saw no visions. The sound of the deck returned to him in all its brutal ugliness.

  “Fight!”

  Packer looked up to the source of the word, the single syllable of command. John Hand stood at the quarterdeck rail, a pistol in each hand. The admiral pointed a pistol at Packer, and fired. A Drammune soldier fell at Packer’s right hand.

  Packer looked at the admiral and smiled.

  Now John Hand could see fire in the boy. And not just in his face, not just in his expression—his whole being seemed alight. As Packer stood, Hand took a deep breath and turned his attention
to another target. “Religion,” he muttered, and fired again.

  Packer stood slowly, his heart eager, and looked around him. Marcus Pile was struggling against the port rail, trying to hold off a much larger, much stronger Drammune sailor. Anger rose in Packer, but anger like a smooth flow of molten steel, a power that drove him forward without thought.

  Blows were raining down on Marcus; his defenses were crumbling. Packer came upon the Drammune warrior from behind, his mind focused to a pinpoint, like blazing sunlight through a convex lens. He put his sword tip through the back of the big warrior’s neck, just at the base of the skull. He didn’t think about protocol or form. The honor of the duel did not cross his mind, nor would it for the remainder of the battle. All that mattered was that the battle end, that he stop the Drammune from killing his shipmates.

  That he must kill to stop the killing was a simple fact. He would fight until there was no fight left within him. He pulled his sword free from Marcus Pile’s attacker, now a body crumpled at the boy’s feet.

  The young man looked Packer in the eye, and Packer saw and felt his fear and his relief. “Thanks.” A half a smile.

  “They have armor,” Packer told him. “Go for the throat.” And then he turned, ready now to even the odds wherever he could.

  As quickly as his reflexes and his training and his natural gifts would allow, Packer moved from one armor-clad Drammune warrior to the next. He had no concern about whom, or even whether, his enemy was fighting. It did not matter which way the man faced, or what his weapons were. Without conscious thought, driven to help his shipmates, to slay his enemies, he fought. He fought as though every Vast sailor was but a feint, a decoy put there to distract the enemy so Packer Throme could kill him. He moved like lightning, struck like thunder. All his training at the hand of Senslar Zendoda was preparation for this very battle.

  But when he looked around again, he knew it would not be enough. Panting, he surveyed the decks of the Trophy Chase. He killed many. But he was only one man, and in the time it took him to stop five warriors, eight Vast crewmen had died. He questioned God once again. Why grant him this strength, this answer to prayer, and then let the Drammune win the battle anyway?