By Blood Hunted: Kingsblood Chronicles Part Two (The Kingsblood Chronicles Book 2)

by David J. Houpt

  “Direct hit, Alan, sir!” Kess exclaimed, excited by the accuracy of his chief’s fire.

  Alan replied with a grunt as he cranked on the loading lever with all he had. It took about thirty seconds to wind up the weapon, but once wound, the next bolt would magically snap into place, nocked and ready to launch, and the firestone would turn that to flame as well. Watching the range continue to decrease as Belladonna turned into the wind to try to bring her broadside onagers to bear—although Alan knew Cedrick didn’t plan to enter their range—he shouted, “Drop my elevation to thirty, Mr. Kess!”

  Slipping a catch into the firing mechanism on his own engine, Kess rushed over to the port ballista and quickly lowered the weapon to the lower elevation.

  Alan had already turned the weapon to bring the aft portside scorpion into view and let fly before the weapon could bear on anything but the Searcher’s bowsprit. The flaming bolt, taking a lower trajectory, smashed into the deckwale before the enemy engineers, shattering the siege weapon itself and sending flames sheeting over the afterdeck. Men cried out and tried to take cover against the overwhelming power of the firebolts, and the Varshan helmsmen were forced to abandon the wheel until they saw that the fires weren’t spreading much beyond the impact point.

  The forces of the wind and water acted to pull the rudder to the right, spinning the wheel the same direction, taking Belladonna onto a more southerly course. It had little effect, as the ship had set a dangerously close reach and was in risk of putting itself into irons and losing motive power. The Varshans would have had to turn starboard soon in any event or their ship would lose her maneuverability until they could pull her back around downwind.

  “Hold your turn, Mr. Trev!” came Cedrick’s shout as they passed astern of the bigger ship, curving back around to the southwest.

  Garvel and Alo skillfully oversaw the swinging of the main and mizzen booms. “PULL you dogs! All hands mind the BOOM!” Garvel’s powerful voice exhorted as the riggers and deck crew alike hauled on the lines to prevent the boom from snapping around too quickly. Olaf had already moved forward with a smaller crew to readjust the jib sails, but that wasn’t as time critical, as the main sails were now robbing wind from them.

  Searcher’s gybe around to the opposite weather heading was a dangerous maneuver in full sail. In lesser hands the ship might have heeled over, or the standing rigging snapped, or the men swept out to sea to their certain deaths by the boom, but the officers knew their work and Searcher surged forward as she came into a broad reach.

  Snog’s ballista never bore on the Belladonna before he lost the range, but the aft starboard engine on the Varshan ship sent a bolt skittering off the mainmast. It tore literally through the lower arm of one of the riggers, hurling him against the deck and nearly off the ship. Blood fountained from the near-severed wrist and the man cried out in pain. The cook Stelin descended upon him with tourniquet in hand.

  “Hold him down!” Stelin shouted, as Quindo moved quickly to help. The wounded man cried out in despair, knowing he was going to lose the hand, and the cook and sailmaker worked grimly to keep him from bleeding to death.

  Alan’s ballista still had as many fiery shots as the other two, for his was the largest gem, but he was out of range again until the Varshans could come about to the west. He saw that Cedrick aimed to cross her bow.

  He’s casting! Gem exclaimed to Alan’s mind, focusing his eyes on a man standing near the foremast, gesturing while he sang.

  “Wizard ahead of the foremast!” Alan yelled back toward the bosun, who was amidships, knowing he’d repeat it to the captain and Snog. To Kess, he ordered, “If you get a shot on him, take it!”

  “Aye, Mr. Alan,” Kess replied, “you know I don’t want him throwing lightning at us!”

  I’d rather it be lightning, I think, Gem thought as she watched the spell forming. Flaming balls of steel the size of robin’s eggs leapt from the man’s outstretched fingers, arcing out past Belladonna’s jib stay and descending on the Searcher’s sails.

  But Cedrick and Reidar had planned for a fire attack on the sails, and while the balls sent fiery shards of yellow-hot steel as they exploded onto the deck and onto a number of the crew, they neither lit the sails on fire nor penetrated them. The scorpion bolt had possessed far more force as it fell from the tremendous height of its arc, although the steel shrapnel was vastly more numerous.

  Had the sails not been enspelled to be resistant to penetration, the shrapnel would have torn through the men below with a terrible fury. As it was, several of the crew cried out from the painful slivers, but no one was seriously injured.

  Alan and Gem watched helplessly, out of range of their weapon, as the caster sang another song, sending a flight of black gulls against the crew. It’s as Lord Grey predicted, Alan said to Gem. His better spells don’t have this kind of range. The armed and ready crew made fairly short work of the gulls, who attacked with suicidal fury, and Cedrick and Olaf—giving his booming voice free rein in battle—broke out laughing at the wizard’s efforts; the laughter was contagious throughout the sailing crew.

  The mage’s face purpled, though Alan knew he’d have missed that if he wasn’t taking advantage of Gem’s visual enhancements. The wizard began casting another spell in anger, and Alan knew this one would be to deadly effect.

  But Cedrick and Olaf had timed their taunt well, and the robed figure of the mage entered the visual field of Snog’s firestone. The goblin scout was ready, quickly centered the gem on the sorcerer’s position, and fired. The wizard’s spell cut off instantly as he sought to shield himself from the powerful bolt, but the enchantments on the weapon were far too powerful for his defenses.

  The strike on the wizard’s position pinned him to the foremast, and the explosion of flame spread to the foresails, obviously not fire-proofed as were the Searcher’s sails. Alan switched his target to the forward starboard scorpion, and as he aimed the enemy gunner’s bolt shot out of the engine toward the mercenaries. The opposing engineers fired almost simultaneously.

  The scorpion shattered as its earlier mates had done, the deck underneath it exploding into wooden shards from the force. Alan looked aft, for the scorpion gunner hadn’t aimed at him but rather at the sternchaser. The shot was a long one—as had been Alan’s—but it had found its mark in Snog’s loader Kemprit, penetrating through his chest and pinning a second sailor to the after railing by his calf and Kemprit’s body.

  Cursing, Cedrick ran to the ballista and cranked it back for Snog as quickly as Alan could have; the captain’s limp didn’t hamper his upper body strength. Snog didn’t waste words, aiming for the forward keel where it met Belladonna’s dolphin striker as the big warship rose to the crest of the current wave. His bolt burned through the base of the bowsprit and exploded upward, hungry magical flames devouring the inner and outer forestays in an instant.

  “Good shot!” exclaimed Cedrick, though he didn’t pause in his efforts to reload Snog’s weapon. Snog nodded but didn’t reply, taking control of the weapon again once Cedrick was done loading.

  On Belladonna, the sudden release of tension on the topmasts, coupled with the earlier strike on the foremast, snapped that mast suddenly astern. It crashed into the mainmast, leaving them hopelessly entangled. Standing rigging snapped and whipped free, the tremendous tension released to deadly effect, bringing tackle down on men and sweeping them off the decks and into bulkheads. The port spar smashed into the forward port onager, crushing its crew and snapping the arm, which spun about its axle uselessly.

  Belladonna’s captain ordered the ship hard to starboard in a desperate bid to bring her remaining port onager to bear while Searcher was at her closest point, but Cedrick had already ordered them hard to starboard himself, whirling her away from the clumsier galleon long before her engines could reach them.

  The catapult’s crew fired anyway at the point of closest approach, hoping the combination of wave and wind would bring their heavy load of ball and chain spinning into Searcher�
�s rigging, for if the fore-and-aft-rigged ship lost a spar, the crippled galleon might still overtake her with aftersail and spanker. Although the Varshan warship’s sails could no longer bear the load they’d normally carry because of the loss of the mainstay rigging, they could still be used to make way.

  The engineers did their best, timing their shot to the hardest starboard roll to give them as much elevation as possible, but the ammunition splashed into the sea more than a hundred yards away, spent uselessly.

  Second mage! Gem suddenly said, and Alan could feel her gathering power at his sudden appearance. The staff before the enemy wizard was crackling with power as he took a position beside the forward onager.

  Not yet, Alan said to her, even though with their ballistae facing forward he and Kess were helpless to do anything about the wizard. He was glad that Reidar, Mari Suris, or even Arden wasn’t on board, for any of them would have felt Gem’s gathering power. He knew Gem was aware that she was still risking discovery in case any of the remaining crew had a little mage talent of their own.

  Where the first mage had allowed emotion to cloud his judgment, the second one calmly intoned and gestured with the staff. Snog’s weapon was ready for another shot by this time, and his bolt hurled toward the sorcerer. To the goblin’s surprise, but not to Alan’s, the bolt exploded twenty yards before it struck, the glimmering power of the wizard’s staff visibly dimming with the effort of shielding against the bolt.

  Cedrick signaled that he’d bring the ship about so the forward ballistae could bear, and Alan acknowledged. “Kess, don’t fire at the wizard,” he said. “I don’t know if you’ll get a chance to bear on the ship, but aim for the waterline well astern or ahead of him.”

  “Shouldn’t we fire on the wizard?” Kess asked, surprised.

  “He wants us to,” Alan said. “He can’t protect the whole ship, so he used that flashy magic on his staff to attract our attention. He’s a brave one, no doubt. If I were him, I don’t know if I could have stood against a firebolt like that one streaking in at me.”

  “Fire on the waterline away from the wizard, aye, sir,” Kess said, his voice edged with respect for Alan’s calm under fire.

  Alan turned back to his weapon, waiting for the opportunity to take another shot at the stricken warship. He whispered, “Lord Grey, we may have to reveal you; we can’t let the caster stay in the action.” He hoped anyone watching him would assume he was praying in Brythiri; because no one but Mari Suris and Nan spoke it, they wouldn’t expect to understand him.

  The skull’s faint voice carried to Alan’s ear, expertly pitched not to carry. “If the time comes, take me out of the bag and hold me aloft. I’ll make it plain the magic’s coming from me.”

  I’d prefer we keep his magic a secret, my boy, Gem said mentally, but didn’t say anything else, as she could tell from Alan’s emotions he didn’t want to reveal the necromancer’s powers, either.

  Searcher came back around on the crippled galleon in only a few minutes. Belladonna’s crewmen were working feverishly to cut away tangled sails and to run a temporary mainstay to support the strain on the remaining sails.

  “Direct your fire on the aftermast!” Cedrick ordered.

  Alan ordered, “Fire on the aftermast, Kess!” and the younger engineer responded by letting fly at the remaining undamaged mast. He didn’t time his shot as well as Alan had, but the bolt smashed into thick timber and shattered its base anyhow—it was nearly six feet in diameter, so it had been a big target. The force of the wind carried the broken mast over the starboard side, splashing the sails into the sea and hauling the ship to list.

  Alan, who’d held his shot in case Kess missed, fired at the hull below the mizzenmast, which Alan knew was likely aligned with one of the ship’s ribs. His target was the lower hull four feet below the draftline, the subsea portion of the hull exposed because of Belladonna’s list. The bolt hit true, smashing inward through the rib, and the explosion of flame sent smoke out of the gap.

  The warship rocked back port, and water began to pour in through the four-foot hole.

  “Hard to starboard,” came Cedrick’s order immediately after both forward ballistae let fly. By turning into the wind he reduced Searcher’s speed as she turned, preventing them from coming into the onager’s range. Searcher’s momentum took them past the point of the wind and turned them onto a southeasterly heading.

  The second wizard, realizing they were going to fire on the ship and not at him, dispensed with his spellshield and hurriedly cast an offensive spell as the mercenaries were mid-turn, aiming his power at the helm and after-ballista. Bright balls of light smashed into the afterdeck, but the mage’s angle on the deck was poor and most of them passed beyond the ship harmlessly.

  Two of the balls, however, took Trevally’s assistant helmsmen clear off the ship, and another smashed into the railing, sending splinters of wood showering into Alo, and the bosun’s mate cried out and fell, pierced in several places.

  Trevally grunted as he held the turn, preventing the wheel from spinning back to port by main force. Ignoring the magical threat, the other sailor lent his back to the wheel, helping the helmsman hold the curve of the course Cedrick wanted.

  Snog, however, had been carefully watching for such an opportunity, and the firebolt leapt out of his engine in the instant that it sighted on the mage. The sorcerer didn’t have a focus as powerful as Lord Grey—using the skull as a necromantic focus, Lyrial had been able to gather and cast spell after spell in an incredibly short time during their battle in Greythorn. This wizard wasn’t able to gather the energy he needed to raise his defensive shield in time, and Snog’s shot smashed into the deckwale right under him, exploding into flame and throwing the dying mage back away from it.

  With only a broken mainmast and taking water from the bow and port side, Belladonna was out of action. Cedrick widened his course, keeping well out of range of the onagers and out of the firing arc of the remaining bolt-thrower, conferring quickly with Olaf before calling new orders to maintain a circular course around the warship as it drifted further out to sea, smoke billowing from its fiery wounds.

  Chapter Six

  “In dreaming, we touch upon the face of Sineh Ever-Shadowed. Though many fear the night, She can show us much in the darkness. Embrace your dreams! for they are the gateway to understanding.”

  -- Priest of Sineh the Night Goddess to his acolytes

  The small frog figurine sat on the bobbing cork, unerringly turning to face east.

  He’s still at sea, the observer thought, pondering the behavior of the jade statuette in the bowl before him. He’d been following his quarry’s progress for more than a month, since he’d recovered the figurine from its hidden storage cache, and his careful triangulation of the frog’s bearings showed that he wasn’t much closer.

  He had no idea where the boy was heading, but he was reasonably confident no one else could track him because it was absolutely certain that no one else had the opportunity and access to the particular, unique, and specific magic needed to do so.

  He’d catch up to his subject at sea if he had to, but he’d vastly prefer to separate him from the ship to avoid complications with the crew. The fugitive prince knew well he was a hunted man, and he wouldn’t react well to someone unknown approaching him; anyone around him might pitch in to help if he reacted as if he were under attack.

  He sat back on his heels as he slowly chewed on the bite of dried meat he’d bitten off earlier. It was tough and heavily salted, but it was nourishment, and the observer was nothing if not pragmatic. He wouldn’t make the mistake of letting his quarry slip away, but neither could he wait forever. Others might find a way around the powerful warding that protected him from discovery, and his narrow advantage might be lost.

  He knew that the Usurper would be spending Dunshor’s coffers liberally to find the last legitimate heir, and every defense had a weakness.

  Hurry ashore, Your Highness, the man thought toward his distant quarry. T
he Avani elf named Celewyn hoped Prince Lian would do so in time.

  ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

  “We were fortunate that the Varshan Mageborn weren’t Masters,” Lord Grey said in the relative safety of their cabin. “I could likely have handled it if one or both had been, but it would have been memorable, and the Usurper’s troops saw a memorable use of necromantic magic on our escape from Dunshor City, if you’ll recall.” The skull sounded quite annoyed at the moment, as the four of them had just learned that the captains had expected mages of at least journeyman stripe to be posted to the warship.

  The rest of the battle, if it could be called that, had gone well. Searcher had rounded the island to discover a pair of merchantmen who had lain at anchorage northeast of Gaelin Island but decided to move off to the north to avoid danger. Cedrick had matched courses with the smaller of the two ships, Tallwyn, and he and the merchant captain had had quite a shouting match until Alan had loosed a firebolt across Tallwyn’s bow from the still-loaded and ready port engine.

  After that, Tallwyn and the other merchant ship, Ugly Maiden, meekly headed for Belladonna to render aid and take off her crew, after which Cedrick herded them into Gaelin’s small harbor to put off their crews and the doomed warship’s survivors.

  “No point in making the Varshans hate us more than necessary,” Cedrick had said while he, Olaf, and Alan watched Snog working with the Searcher’s wounded. Although some of the crew had been influenced by Mari Suris’ prejudice against the scout, the majority of them had seen him at work, and they welcomed his attentions as he worked to deal with the worst of the injuries, with the sailmaker and carpenters helping him.