by Jamie Davis
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
More orders were passed along. The gun crews began securing their guns, returning their weapons to standby positions secure against the rails on either side of the ship.
The raider ship caught up to them and lowered a boat to come across to the Vengeance as soon as they overhauled Cari’s position. Captain Hitchcock stood at the tiller as the crew rowed him across the gap between the two ships.
Cari waited on the main deck while he climbed up and over the side rail and stood before her.
“Captain Hitchcock, to what do I owe the honor of your presence? I did not realize it was you. That is not your ship.”
“Captain Weldon loaned me his racing sloop, Captain Dix. I have an urgent message for you from him.” He glanced from side to side before continuing. “You’ll want to hear this in private.”
“Very well, come with me down to my cabin. I’ll have some refreshments brought down to us.”
She led the raider captain down to her cabin and sat down at the table, offering her guest a seat across from her. Percy had already set a tray with some fruit, bread, and cheese on the table between them. He poured them each a goblet of wine and left, pulling the door closed behind him.
Captain Hitchcock double checked the door was closed then leaned forward towards her over the table.
“Do you remember Captain Day Ivarson from the council of captains?”
“I do. He was the one who wanted me killed if I remember correctly.”
“He was. Well, he decided to take matters into his own hands. Somehow he heard about the girl you were after. Captain Wheldon isn’t sure where he got that information, though I’m certain he’ll find out. Where he got it doesn’t matter. Captain Ivarson knows who the girl is, and he left right after you did, headed to the mainland. I can only assume he has gone to give the news to the Duke of Charon’s men.”
“That’s not good. Still, he doesn’t know where she is. I do.”
“He’ll turn out all his resources to find her. All he has to do is track you down. You’ll lead him right to her. Do you have the girl with you already?”
“No, but I know where she is,” Cari lied. “She is safe.”
“I was going to offer to take her back to Cairn Island. Jackie and I could take her in and tell folk she’s a niece visiting from her sister on the mainland.”
“No need for that. You could do me a favor, though.”
“Of course.”
“Return to Cairn Island and ask Wheldon to gather the council of captains. The Duke of Charon has control of the Imperial naval commanders in this region. If he decides to hunt the Vengeance down, I’ll likely need assistance. Do you think Crandall can convince them to back me and the future heir to the Imperial throne?”
“I know he’ll try his best. No promises, though.”
“Understood. I have a feeling I’m going to need some help to work my way around this.”
Captain Hitchcock stood and walked around the table to her. She stood and clasped wrists with him.
“I’ll do my best, Captain Dix. If nothing else, I know I can vouch for my ship and crew to return to your aid.”
“I’ll take all the help I can get.”
The two captains returned to the main deck and Cari walked Captain Hitchcock back to the rail and his waiting boat and crew.
“Godspeed, Captain,” the raider captain said as he descended the ladder down to his boat. Cari nodded in reply. He smiled up at her and ordered his crew to row back to his ship.
Cari watched them head back to the other ship for a few seconds then turned to Helen, standing by her side. “We need to get to Jaycee and we need to do it now. How long until we reach the first village?”
“A few hours, maybe more.”
“Put on all the sail we can carry. I want to get there as soon as we are able. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Chapter 27
The pall of smoke hung over the village. Cari and the landing party all had their weapons out as they searched through the scorched remains of the small fishing community.
“Could the Duke of Charon’s men have gotten here ahead of us?” Rodrigo asked, standing up after checking on a villager’s body for signs of life. Most of the bodies had been dead for a day or more.
“I don’t think so. The timeline doesn’t make sense. They shouldn’t have had time to gather any forces and get this far west to do this.”
“Then who?”
“Slavers,” Helen announced. She and Stefan returned from the far side of the village. They had a woman and two children with them.
“How do you know?”
“This is Akira. She and her children managed to hide in the forest while the raid happened. She described a large group of armored men in turbans. A ship put them ashore and sailed away. They came into the village and killed many of the men who fought against them. Then they rounded up the rest of the villagers, chained them together and marched up the coast to the east.”
“Cari, we haven’t seen any Sultanate ships around. The slavers put ashore must be heading to rendezvous with them farther east along the coast.”
“Or they’re moving on to raid the next village along the way,” Helen mused.
“How long ago did the raid happen?” Cari asked.
“Less than a day, miss,” Akira offered.
“Akira, I have to ask you something. There were foster children from Tandon brought here. Was there a girl named Janey among them?”
“No, we only took in five of the children since we’re such a small village. There wasn’t a Janey in that group.”
“That’s a small piece of good news in the midst of this tragedy. Akira, can we take you with us? We can settle you with another village up the coast.”
“We have nothing left for us here, miss. That would be very kind of you. Thank you for taking us in.”
“Alright. Stefan, help her gather what she can from the ruins here and then bring her to the ship. We’re heading on down the coast as soon as you’re aboard.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
Cari turned and headed back to the two boats pulled high onto the sandy beach beside the smoldering fishing boats. She had to catch up to the slavers. They were likely working their way down the coast to meet up with their ship at a prearranged point.”
It didn’t take long to get everyone back aboard the Vengeance and they started on their way to the next village.
They saw the smoke before they rounded the headland and soon after saw the village’s smoldering ruins. A few of the buildings were still on fire. It had taken them the rest of the day to reach the next village and they must have just missed the slaver’s raiding party.
Once again, they picked up a few survivors, and once again, Cari discovered Janey had not been in the village.
“We need to keep going. The slavers are likely to raid the next village at dawn. The survivors say they marched east from here once again.”
Helen shook her head. “We can’t, Cap’n. Sailing along these coastal waters in the dark will only get us run aground or worse, even with your uncanny ship-handling abilities. To get around the next headland, we’ll have to range out to deeper water before turning east again. It’ll take us a full day to round just the small headland here and arrive at the next village. The fourth village is all the way around the whole peninsula. That’s even a longer trip by ship. The slavers are traveling overland. They will arrive much sooner than we can get there.”
“So, we take a party overland and chase after them on foot. They can’t be moving that fast with all the slaves chained together.”
Stefan nodded, “We should be able to overtake them quickly if we can find their trail in the dark. We will definitely catch them soon after they arrive at the third village.”
“Cap’n,” Rodrigo offered. “It would be better to camp here for the night, send the Vengeance on ahead, and we make our way overland first thing in the morning. One of the women told me there
is another trail that’ll take us just under a day of travel overland to get across the narrowest part of the peninsula. We can go past the third village in line and head straight to the fourth village. We wait for the slavers to come to us there. They won’t expect a defensive force protecting the village and we can surprise them, rescuing the captives they’ve already taken. The Vengeance will take more than two additional days to get around the peninsula safe and sound.”
“A fine idea, Rod. Helen, take the survivors and return to the ship. I’ll remain here with the two lieutenants and an additional ten members of the crew. You’ll need the rest aboard the Vengeance to crew it in a fight if you run into the Sultanate slave ship or any of the Duke’s pet naval vessels. We’ll set out in the morning and try and get around the slavers.”
“I’ll head back to the coast as soon as I can, Cari. It’ll take just over two days by my reckoning. Be careful. Keep heading east. I’ll meet you at the fourth village in no more than three days, the wind and the seas willing. Hopefully, we both arrive there before the slaver’s ship does and we can stop them there.”
Helen and Cari clasped wrists and the Vengeance’s first mate headed back to the ship in the two longboats along with the crew members not selected to remain behind in the shore party.
Cari and the others set up their camp and settled in for a what was hopefully a quiet night before they set out the next day cross country.
There were no intrusions during the night and Cari awoke the following morning only a little stiff from sleeping on the ground. She packed up her bedroll, stowing it in her magic backpack.
Joining the rest of the shore party after helping to gather up the rest of the camp items, Cari pointed inland.
“Time to head out. Stefan, you take the lead. You have the training to navigate across rough ground and get where you’re going. Set an aggressive pace but make sure we don’t get off course. We still don’t know how fast the slavers are moving and we want to get ahead of them.”
“Aye, ma’am. I’ll get us there.”
Stefan shouldered his pack and started into the forest. Cari and the others filed in line behind him on a well-worn trail through the woods.
They’d been on the trail for almost three hours when they found the first bodies. A woman and two young children, killed and left to rot on the side of the path.
Cari stared at the bodies, anger filling her at the waste of life lying there. She suspected the mother and children couldn’t keep up with the others and the slavers just killed them rather than slow down.
The bodies were cold, so they’d been there overnight for at least a day. Animals had already been at them, but Cari made herself stare at the three corpses a little longer, internalizing the rage she felt towards the slavers. They were going to pay for this.
“Take a break. Dig three graves. We’ll bury them here so they can find some peace in whatever afterlife they follow.”
“We’ll lose time, Cari,” Rodrigo whispered so no one else heard him. “We don’t have any shovels or picks.”
“I don’t care. They made better time than we thought and got ahead of us. We’ll pick up our pace and catch up, but we’re not going to just leave these people here as food for the scavengers. Get it done.”
It took them too long, just over an hour digging in the hard ground with nothing but their belt knives and sharpened sticks cut from the trees around them.
In the end, though, that stop alone might not have stopped them from reaching the fourth village on time. What delayed them the most was the six other times they stopped to bury more dead left behind by the slavers.
By the time they were finished digging the seventh set of graves, Cari’s anger bubbled like a lake of hot lava beneath the surface, ready to erupt at a moment’s notice. The rest of the shore party looked to be in the same boat. They were all looking for blood.
The last burial party finished their work and Cari said the few words of comfort she knew. They rang hollow in her ears at this point. She wasn’t sure there was anything comforting about anything she said.
On top of the mood of her group, it had grown dark again and they still hadn’t reached their goal. The delays to bury the dead had doubled the duration of their journey. They hadn’t passed the slavers by and hadn’t reached the fourth village. The slavers were going to beat them there. They all settled into camp that night grumbling to themselves at their lack of action.
The morning of the second day arrived along with a slow rain, dripping through the forest canopy to the trail below. By mid-morning, the whole party was soaked to the bone and miserable enough to start snapping at each other for perceived slights.
Their individual pistols and the two muskets they carried were useless. The powder was too wet to burn which would decrease their ability to be useful in a fight.
If Cari thought things were bleak because of the rain, words couldn’t describe how her mood crashed when they reached a point overlooking the fourth village and saw the slaver’s ship anchored in the sheltered cove below.
Not only had the cross-country party of slavers and hostages gotten to the village ahead of them, but the ship to pick up the prospective slaves had arrived, too.
Cari looked out to sea, scanning the horizon in hopes of seeing the Vengeance sailing in to the rescue. The gray line between the low clouds and the horizon was empty of any vessels at all.
Scanning the camp below, Cari’s mind raced, trying to come up with something, some way to make the rescue with the ten sailors she had with her. There were ten times that number now in the group below between the slavers onshore and those cycling back and forth to the ship, loading the slaves.
There was only one thing she could think of, and it was just about the most desperate thing she’d ever considered. Rodrigo and Stefan were not going to be happy with her. She hoped they didn’t disobey orders and try and do something stupid.
Cari turned to her crew and crouched down. “Draw close everyone, I don’t want to raise my voice in case there are any slavers close enough to hear us.”
The men and women clustered around her in a semicircle and Cari smiled at them, meeting each of their eyes to try and reassure them. They all had a look of failure in their eyes.
“We didn’t catch them, did we? That doesn’t mean we have to give up on our rescue, we just have to adjust our plans.”
“Cari, I don’t think—” Rodrigo began.
“That’s Captain Dix to you right now, Lieutenant. Listen, don’t talk.”
She hated rebuking him that way given everyone’s mood, but she needed everyone to follow her orders or none of this was going to work. She called up her charm attribute and tried to bring the skill to bear as she began to explain what she wanted to do.
When she finished laying out her plan, she saw the rebellion in every person’s eyes. She couldn’t afford a mutiny right now or it would all fail before it had a chance to begin.
“I’m the Captain, people, and you will all obey my orders. This is the only plan that has any hope of succeeding. I’m not any happier about it than you all are. It’s the only way I can see of succeeding. There’s a young girl down there whose fate will determine the future of the entire Empire. That calls for extreme action. I’m willing to take the risk, the question is, are you all willing to follow the plan through to the end to make sure it all comes together. Without you following my orders to the letter, the plan will surely fail.”
Cari stared at Rodrigo first, drilling into his eyes with hers, trying to make him agree with her by sheer force of will.
* * *
Charm bonus successful
* * *
Rodrigo nodded. Then he looked away as if ashamed of himself. Stefan was next. Cari made sure each member of the shore party understood what had to happen for this to work. Everyone nodded their ascent in the end, though Francesca, her new eyepatch giving her a savage appearance, held out longest of all.
In the end, she went along as well, shrugging
and muttering, “You’re the Captain.”
Cari took off her backpack and handed it to Stefan. She wouldn’t need it right now, and the others might need the stash of healing potions in there before she did.
“Rodrigo, you have command of the shore party. Follow my orders to the letter or so help me, I’ll come back and haunt you from beyond the grave.”
“If we’re all dead, it won’t matter either way.”
“You let me worry about that, that’s why I get the captain’s pay. Besides, if all goes as planned, I’ll see you again in a few days, a week at the most.”
Cari smiled to try and reassure the others then turned and started down the hill. She drew her sword and dagger, ready to fight her way to the center of the camp if need be. It was time to offer herself in trade to the Sultanate slaver captain.
* * *
Quest accepted — get captured alive by the slavers
Chapter 28
The slavers in the camp didn’t post any guards watching the forest’s edge beside the smoldering village ruins. Cari strode out of the tree line, putting on an air of confidence, hoping the knot twisting her gut at the moment didn’t betray her.
It wouldn’t do for her to be found vomiting behind the wall of a collapsed village cottage. For this to work, it was all about bravado of the sort that it was nearly unbelievable. Only by that could she hope to accomplish her mission.
Cari reached the center of the village before she ran into the first slaver. He did a double take in surprise when he saw she was alone. He kept glancing behind her, looking for anyone else backing her up.
When he didn’t see anyone, he called out and charged at the lone woman walking into their clutches. His cry to his comrades was choked off when Cari parried his scimitar with her dagger while in the same smooth motion she shoved twelve inches of her rapier blade through his throat.
* * *
2,500 experience
