War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy

by D. S. Halyard

  Coril and he turned out to be the only two men on the ship who hadn't been married at one time or another. "Some girl will get her hooks in ye, never you fear." D'barran Brinn turned a knowing eye in the direction of the two young men. "You'll come into port some morning, thinking you've nothing to be afraid of, and by nightfall your head'll be full of some pretty girl's eyes and your ears full of her laughing." He looked over at Elo, laughing. "Or maybe more than one morning it'll happen." Elo blushed as the other sailors, not one of them half his size, joined in the gentle ribbing.

  A hard warning voice came from the dark abovedecks, where the mate's hammock was slung. "Alright, you jolly boys, we're under full sail 'neath a full moon and we crossed the bay line an hour ago. Time to shut yer traps and sleep if you can."

  Levin heard a few sharp intakes of breath as the crew quarters lapsed instantly into uneasy silence. Someone hastily blew out the single candle, throwing the room into utter blackness. He turned his head, puzzled, to where the top of Coril's bunk was slung. "What does he mean, we crossed the bay line?" His voice was a whisper, but from the dark he heard several others shushing him.

  Coril's voice was a whisper so slight, he scarcely heard the words. "The bay line is where the magic comes back, Levin. We've got to keep a sharp eye for the next three days for warded ships and wind callers." Unfortunately, it was no explanation at all, and Levin wanted more.

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means there's probably some spook-pusher out there listening to you speak, boy! Shut up before they set a course on us!" The whisper was harsh, not Coril's, but Levin couldn't say who had spoken. It had almost sounded like the mate. He shut his mouth, but he lay awake long into the night, wondering what it was all about.

  Sunrise found Levin coiling rope as usual, wrapping the lines that had come loose during the night or that had been carelessly stowed by others. It wasn't until he began swabbing the night's brine from the main deck that he noticed the dearth of wind. The mate caught his eye and nodded grimly. "We're not becalmed yet, boy, but there's barely a breath coming on us."

  "The wind was fine yesterday." Levin replied, knowing he sounded foolish.

  "That it was, boy. Today it ain't and tomorrow it'll likely be back. The wind ain't gonna swab our deck, though, is it?" Levin returned to what he'd been doing. After a few minutes Coril joined him.

  "What was all that about last night?" Levin wanted to know.

  "We crossed the bay line last night, that's all." Coril sounded uncomfortable, despite his nonchalant words. Like the rest of the crew, he'd been speaking no louder than a whisper since the night before. "We're in the Sea of Rhum proper now, and we will be for three days. More if we don't get some wind." He looked at the flat water around the boat with an uneasy twist to his lips.

  "What was that business about the magic coming back?"

  Coril looked even more uncomfortable. "It's like this, Levin, and you gotta understand this a sailor's thing, not something you go spreading around in a port where a bunch of lubbers can hear you. You talk this thing up in the King's Town or even in Torth, and you'll wind up talking to an inquisitor about it, right before they stretch your neck." Levin's eyebrows arched. "I'm serious." Coril continued. "There isn't supposed to be no such thing as magic, at least according to the priests of Lio, but every sailor who comes south of the line between Fortress Arias and Torth knows that's a lie. Now no Mortentian ships carry witches, nor Thimenian ships neither, for that matter, but there are some others who aren't so particular. Half the pirates out of Hyndrant carry witches on 'em, and they can ward their ship so's you can't see it until it's right on you, or they can call up the wind so they can catch up with you in the water while you lay becalmed." Coril eyed the nearly still waters that surrounded the Sally's High Touch uneasily.

  "Are you serious?" Levin demanded in a low voice. "That kind of talk is heresy. If a godsknight heard you speaking like that…"

  "You'd better just shut up and listen, Levin." Coril interrupted. "If the captain or anyone else on this ship hears you mention godsknights or inquisitors or any other Lionite authority, you'll be chucked over the side with nothing but a good-riddance and a 'lost at sea' note on your log. Sailors have known there's magic out beyond Mortentia forever, Levin, and the king knows it, too, I'd warrant. You talk about it in the wrong places, though, and it’s a stack of firewood you'll sleep on that night, if you get me."

  Levin shook his head. "I get you, Coril." He replied. "I just don't believe it."

  "I hope you never have to find out."

  For the rest of that day the sea lay flat and oily beneath a bare touch of wind that took them vaguely eastward in fits and starts. A faint haze obscured the edges of the sun, although it did nothing to make things cooler, in an otherwise blue-seeming sky. The horizons were mere suggestions rather than the stark contrast between sea and sky they had been the day before.

  As the day's heat increased, the crew's work slowed until Parry Meade had an opportunity to hiss disparagingly at each of them in turn. Even Levin was not unaffected, although he still worked nearly as hard as he had previously. The crew was plainly under tension, both from being below the Bay Line and from the lack of wind, and despite the heat, they seemed agitated and nervous.

  Levin found himself drenched in sweat, polishing the mirror on the mainmast's watchbasket, a mirror whose purpose he still did not fully understand, while Elo, the lookout, took a water break below. It was as fine a piece of equipment as any other on the ship, polished so that he could see every detail of the sun-dark, bearded, cropped head face that looked back at him. He looked a far cry from Levin Askelyne of King's Town, he well knew. He grinned at his own tan, stranger's face.

  He blinked.

  Behind his head he'd seen a tiny shape in the mirror, like the distant profile of the front of a ship, her black sails full-bellied in a good wind. When he turned and looked at the horizon, however, there was no ship. He frowned and slowly rotated the mirror on its band of iron around the mast. It seemed to have been purposefully put at eye level so that it could turn just so. He saw it again, first one ship, still many leagues…no, on the water they called them miles…away, then another, coming behind it, scarcely visible on the eastern horizon. No, it was the western horizon. He had to remember he was looking in a mirror. Looking to the west, however, he could still see no ship, not even the trace of one, although the horizon still looked hazed and uncertain.

  "Mate, it’s Levin, up in the nest." He called down to Parry Meade below, and the mate looked up with annoyance.

  "What do you want, boy? You'd better not be slacking off up there!" Meade, who usually yelled, had raised his voice to conversational level in order to be heard from twenty ells high. In the dead wind his voice carried clearly.

  "I was looking in the mirror up here and I thought I saw a ship…" The rest of his thought was interrupted by a chorus of loud oaths from the men working below. For a moment the tableau held, although Parry dropped the wooden mallet he was holding onto the deck with a loud clatter. Then the mate, with a nimbleness that Levin found surprising in a man of his bulk, sprang up onto the rigging and began hauling himself upward with a speed that rivalled the swiftest squirrel in Root's Bridge.

  "Get outta the nest, boy!" Parry's voice was a harsh command, uttered even as the mate scrambled for his next handhold. Levin stepped out of the watchbasket and onto the rigging next to it. In a few seconds the beetle-browed mate was climbing into the watchbasket in Levin's place with a loud oath. One look in the mirror was enough.

  "Black sailed pirates, damn them! Full sail, hard to port!" He commanded, and the men below sprang to obey. In less than a minute the Touch had full sail on, but it took her several minutes to turn nearly straight north. Captain Berrol came running out of his quarters, still in his night shirt. He looked up at the two of them on the highest point of his ship.

  "What's going on, Parry?" He asked of his mate. "Why have you turned the ship?"

  "Raid
ers, sir! Two of 'em, about six miles out."

  The captain's face twisted angrily. "All right, mate. Get to the pilot wheel and head north, as high into the wind as we can tack." Then, to Levin's surprise, he saw the captain coming up the rigging from below. "Levin, leave off what you were doing and get on the deck. All hands, tighten her up! We need every bit of wind we can squeeze into the sails."

  Levin scrambled down to the main deck and began helping Coril tighten a winch on the forward jib.

  Two hours later the wind began to pick up, but only slightly. Captain Berrol remained in the watchbasket, looking directly behind the ship. The two pirate vessels, which had remained cloaked in hazy mist up until a quarter of an hour ago, could now be seen clearly. Each of them was a good ten paces longer than the Sally's High Touch, but they were of a different type, wider and less seaworthy-looking. Nevertheless, they surely seemed to be gaining on the Mortentian ship.

  "I don't get it." Levin said to Coril after watching for a few seconds. They had tightened up the ship and were both watching the tell-tales on the forward jib languidly twisting in the breeze. "Neither one of those ships carries half the sail we do, and they both sit like fat old hens in the water. How can they be catching us up?"

  "They've a spook-pusher on board, Levin, that's how. They're using witchery to call up the wind. That's why their sails are so full. If we don't make it back across the Bay Line before they can catch us, they'll catch us." His face looked grim.

  "Have you ever been taken before?" Levin's voice nearly cracked.

  "Never." Even as he spoke, Coril opened the dogged down hatch holding a collection of boarding cutlasses. "I won't be taken this time, either. Not alive." The other members of the crew walked over to the open hatch, and each picked up a cutlass. Three men picked up heavy crossbows as well.

  "Don't worry, Levin." Elo said with what was meant to be a reassuring grin. "I been with Cap'm Berrol for two years, and we've outrun pirates before. Never in a dead calm, mind you, but we've done it."

  "All we have to do is get across the Bay Line." Eldrian the cook continued. "Once we get up there they lose their witchery and its ship against ship. Those fat hogs won't stand a chance of catching the Touch without their extra wind."

  "How far out are we?" Levin asked.

  "We sailed all night and half a day since we crossed the Bay Line." Coril explained. "But that was running before the wind, not on a tack. With both jibs running the Touch sails faster on a hard tack than she can before the wind. Plus, we were running just aslant of the Bay Line, not directly away from it. Now we're running straight for it, as fast as we possibly can. We've got a good chance."

  "How come we couldn't see them until just a little while ago?"

  "They're warded, boy. Witchery to make them look like mist or fog or whatever. You can only see a warded ship if you look in a mirror. That's why we got one in the watchbasket." Elo explained even as he took a stone and began putting an edge on a cutlass.

  "Who ordered the cutlasses out?" Levin was surprised to see Captain Berrol standing suddenly amidst the gathered men.

  "I thought it would be a good idea, sir…" Coril began.

  "Not for at least another hour, seaman." The captain rejoined. "We've still got a few cards up our sleeves." It was an odd comment, Levin thought, for a man who disapproved of gambling. "Well, since you've got them out, you might as well wear them. Get the scabbards out, too. You, Levin, can you use a sword?"

  "A longsword, Captain, just barely. I don't know much about using a cutlass." The captain gave him an appraising eye.

  "A nobleman's weapon, is it? All right. I happen to have more than one." With that he walked to his quarters. He returned in a moment carrying two scabbards, each one attached to a finely tooled leather belt. He held one out to Levin. It was plainly a nobleman's weapon, made of high Orrville steel with a basket hilt chaised in a filigree of gold and silver. "Belt this on, seaman. It used to belong to a nobleman of Zoric, I'm told." The captain's own weapon was only slightly better, with a basket of gold and a blue cloth wrapped around the hilts.

  "She's gaining on us!" Parry's voice came from the rear of the ship. There was no longer any need for a man in the watch basket, for both of the following ships were plainly visible. If there were more ships behind them, it would make little difference. The Touch could not hope to avoid being taken by the two they could plainly see.

  Little by little the distance between the vessels narrowed, until the faces of the men on the following ship were clear. At least half a hundred men stood on the clumsy prow of the pirate ship, and as many more hung from places in the rigging. Levin gawked at the sight of a large wooden engine mounted just behind the prow. "Is that a catapult, Captain?" He asked. Captain Berrol shielded his eyes.

  "Aye, that it is." He turned and looked at the placid water through which the Sally's High Touch coasted. "Damn this calm!" Levin had never heard the captain curse, and for a moment the man seemed embarrassed to have done it. "Parry, get out the Touch!"

  As the first mate scrambled onto the poop and began undogging what Levin had taken for a wide cargo hatch there, the captain turned to his crew. "Boys, I hope you'll understand something here. I don't see how we're to get out of this without me taking desperate means. You'll understand in a minute why you can't ever breathe a word to a soul about what we do here today. When we come out of this, you'll have seen why we named this ship, a secret that could be the death of your captain if you ever mention it in port, you get me?"

  Elo O'Zoric looked slightly confused, but spoke confidently. "You're the Captain, Captain. Ain't no one going to speak a word against you, I promise you that. The man does that has to deal with me." He flexed his huge muscular chest, rippling with skintintings like spilt oil, and looked into the eyes of the rest of the crew.

  "Don't you worry Captain." D'barran Brinn added. "Anyone Elo doesn't worry will have to deal with me, too." Several other voices chimed in agreement, even, to his surprise, Levin's own.

  Parry had the hatch open, and had climbed inside. When he emerged, everyone on deck was surprised at what came up with him. As Parry turned a winch handle, the broad wooden platform on which he was standing slowly rose until it was at the same level as the hatch covers he'd thrown aside. In the center of the platform a marvelous machine stood mounted.

  In shape it looked like nothing so much as a gigantic crossbow, mounted on wheels and sporting several handles to turn it into position. A mounted wooden chair sat at the rear of it so that a single man sitting there could reach all of the weapon's controls. Pedals at the feet permitted the user to turn it left and right, and handles at the back end of the engine allowed it to be raised up and down. Parry turned to another winch handle and drew back the machine's 'bow string', a thick cable that seemed to be woven of several fine strands of steel wire. Once he had the machine pulled back tight, he turned to Berrol. "She's all yours, Captain."

  Captain Berrol opened a long wooden box that had been in the compartment with the machine, and pulled out a barbed spear, half again as tall as he was. "This is called a ballista, boys." He pointed at the engine. "I took it off a wreck in the Western Ocean, and never you mind what I was doing there." From yet another wooden box, this one flat and no more than two feet wide, he gently pulled out a fist-sized clay jar wrapped in twine. At least two dozen other similar jars were in the box, each cradled in a leather cloth within separate wooden compartments. He tied the jar to the tip of the great spear by winding yet more twine around it until it was secure as a bug in a spider's cocoon. "If I drop this on deck, it'll burn. Don't pour water on it, use sand or flour instead."

  Behind them, the black sailed vessel was getting closer, close enough for Levin to hear the taunts and curses being thrown across the water at them. Looking at the deck of the following ship, he saw men with painted faces and all manner of weaponry, from simple sailors' cutlasses and long swords like his own to giant, two-handed axes. The men on the other ship were a mixture of races, som
e of whom looked as bad as warpainted Auligs or worse, and chief among their taunts were the words 'no quarter'.

  Suddenly a great wooden arm lifted from the deck of the pirate ship, flinging a barrel of flaming oil high into the air. It landed far to the rear of the Touch, at least half a furlong too short, and splashed down into the sea. Still, the pirate was closing fast, and the witch wind that drove it sent a plume of rippling water before it. The sails of the Sally's High Touch began to feel that wind, even though they were configured to catch the west wind, and they bellied outward. The extra lift would not be enough to escape the pirate, however.

  The Captain turned to his men. "This is the part you can't talk about, boys. The ballista's no secret, although we don't have the making of them since the Age of Dragons ended. What you are about to see is Brizaki fire. It's not even allowed to talk about such a thing in front of a priest." The captain turned back to the ballista and manipulated the controls, aiming the weapon carefully. Levin could see several men on the pirate ship pointing at the captain's machine, while several others worked to tighten up the arm on the catapult.

  The captain pulled a lever and the ballista snapped suddenly. The spear crossed the distance to the following ship almost as swiftly as the eye could follow, struck the mainmast squarely, and burst in a powdery shower of white-hot flame. In less than a second the enemy vessel's sails were completely engulfed in flame, and fire spattered downward onto the heads of the men gathered on the decks below. Levin watched in fascinated horror as men wreathed in flame dove from the rigging of the pirate ship and fell screaming onto the decks below or into the sea. Even as they went underwater the flame seemed to go with them, burning them until they sank, blackened and lifeless, beneath the waves.