Can't Look Back (War for Dominance Book 1)

by Chris Kennedy

  “Aye, sure’n I can,” replied Fitzber. “It wouldn’t be much o’ a gift if’n I didn’t show you how to use it now, would it?” He took the armload of things from John and laid them out on the deck. “This goes on first,” he said, handing John a thick padded shirt with long sleeves.

  “I need a shirt under the mail?” asked John. “Can’t I just wear the chain mail over what I have on?”

  “I guess you could,” replied the gnome, “But that wouldn’t be the brightest thing to do. What do you know about mail?”

  “Not a whole lot, actually,” said John, struggling into the shirt. “In my world, we don’t have anything like it. No one wears armor anymore.”

  “How do they stop a sword thrust then?”

  “No one carries swords. We now have these things called guns. They are kind of like bows in that they launch a projectile, but it goes a lot faster than an arrow and can be shot a lot further. They are also a lot more powerful and go through armor like it is nothing.” John decided that he didn’t want to try to explain the kevlar armor that soldiers wore. “There isn’t a need for armor anymore.”

  “Well, it’s needed here, and that’s the truth,” said Fitzber, handing him the mail shirt. “Okay, this goes on top o’ the padded shirt, and you’ll see the necessity for the shirt in a moment.”

  John slid the mail shirt on. The mail came down to about his elbows and to mid-thigh.

  “If you look at the mail,” said Fitzber, handing him a sword belt to go around his waist, “you can see that it’s made with lots o’ wee interlocking circles o’ steel, so it’s going to be good at stoppin’ sword or knife cuts. This mail is well made, so it will be difficult to penetrate, and it will stop most thrusting or piercing weapons. If a blow doesn’t hit perpendicular to the mail, it will usually just glance off. Even with a well-placed strike, the mail ringlets will absorb the blow by bending rather than breaking. You get a lot o’ defense, even though the mail doesn’t weigh a whole lot. That’s the good part.”

  “What’s the bad?”

  “The bad part is that mail isn’t very effective at stoppin’ impacts,” said Fitzber, adjusting the sword so that it sat correctly. “In order to help save you from the force o’ the sword attack, or to help ward off blows from weapons like maces, you wear the padded shirt underneath it. That will protect you, at least somewhat, from hits that would kill an unarmored man.” He gave a couple of tugs. “There you go; that is how it should all be put on.”

  “Thanks a lot,” said John. “I’m not sure how I’ll be able to pay you back for all of this. In fact, I don’t even know what you use for money. How much did all of this cost?”

  “Don’t say anything to Lady Ellyn, but it was extremely cheap today; we’ll just call it a ‘going out of business’ sale that I took advantage o’, even if the owner didn’t know he was having it. Right now, I doubt he’ll be missing it.” He looked John over with a critical eye and then adjusted where the dagger sheath sat on John’s right side. “Okay, so you’ve got a sword and a dagger o’ your own now. Do you know how to use them?”

  “I’ve never even held a sword before, much less tried to do anything with one. I’m afraid I don’t know anything about them.”

  “Well, sure’n I better teach you a few things, or you’re going to be more o’ a danger to yourself and the rest o’ us than you will be to the enemy. Let’s see you draw the sword.”

  John tried to pull the sword out of its scabbard, but it wouldn’t come out. “It’s stuck,” he finally said, giving up. He heard a choking noise from Fitzber and looked over to see the gnome doing his best not to laugh. “What?”

  “Well, laddie, if’n you want to pull the sword out of its wee scabbard, you need to pull it straight out, rather than trying to bend it 90 degrees. You can use your left had to hold the scabbard if you need to.”

  John tried it again while holding the scabbard with his left hand and was able to pull the sword out.

  “You’ve never done this before?” asked Fitzber. “Ever?”

  “No, I’ve never done this before. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing laddie, nothing to worry your wee little head about. I expect you’ll be sore tomorrow, though...”

  Chapter 45

  Fitzber had been wrong, thought John. He wasn’t going to be sore tomorrow; he was already sore right now. His sword-fighting injuries woke him up in the middle of the night, and they were preventing him from going back to sleep. He wished he had a handful of aspirins he could take, but they were on another world…somewhere else.

  He struggled out of the hammock he had been given in the hold of the ship. Because of his height, or mostly because of his lack thereof, he had been given the bottom hammock. Father Telenor was snoring loudly above him in the upper hammock. John thought that he could still probably have gotten back to sleep...if every part of his body didn’t hurt so much.

  John now understood the need for the padded shirt; if anything, he wished it was heavier. Even though Fitzber had pulled his strikes to keep from hitting John as hard as he could have, getting slapped with a sword, even at half speed, was still enough to hurt. A lot. Dantes said that a few bruises in training were better than cuts in combat, but John was no longer so sure; if you were dead, they wouldn’t hurt as much. As he started moving, he realized that all of his muscles hurt even more than the places he had been hit and bruised. As much as it hurt to lie in his hammock, moving around hurt even more.

  John went topside to get a breath of fresh air and to see if anyone had something that would dull his pain. Seeing a couple of shapes at the back rail of the ship, he went to join them. As he walked aft, he recognized Dantes’ distinctive shape (the horns were a giveaway) and then that of the ship’s captain.

  “How much longer do you think it will take us to get there?” Dantes was asking as John came within hearing distance. “Even without the main mast, it doesn’t seem like we are making very good time toward the island. Am I wrong?”

  “No, you are not mistaken,” said Captain Meyer, looking into the darkness behind the ship, a troubled look on his face. “There is something wrong with the weather. When we left Harbortown, the winds were lighter than they should have been for this time of year. About the time that night fell, the winds fell off to almost nothing.”

  “Any idea why?” asked Dantes. “Is there a storm approaching?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Meyer, “and that’s what bothers me. The winds always blow from the north at this time of the year. Always. They should be pushing us toward Salidar. But not since we left Tasidar. It’s almost like something is holding them back. They’re there, but they have nowhere near the force that they normally do. It’s not natural.”

  Dantes sensed a presence next to him and turned. “How’s our newest swordsman?” he asked.

  “I hurt all over,” said John. “I don’t know which hurts worse, the bruises from getting hit or the muscles from overexertion.”

  “The muscles will get better as you move around,” said Dantes. “The bruises will get better, too...in time. Better a few bruises in training...”

  “...than cuts in combat. Yeah, I know. Blah, blah, blah. That doesn’t make it hurt any less. Do you guys have anything for pain relief? An aspirin or two?”

  “I don’t know what aspirins are, but you could see the second...I mean, the first mate,” said the captain. “Usually she has a tub of some sort of cream for things like that.”

  John woke up in the morning, feeling a little better. After talking with the captain, he had found Tanja Cilia and her tub of cream. He didn’t know if the ointment was magical or not, but it did the trick; he was much less sore as he went up onto the deck. Seeing most of the members of his party clustered around the aft rail with the ship’s captain and first mate, he went to join them.

  “What’s going on?” John asked.

  “That,” said Dantes, pointing to a dark spot on the horizon off the starboard quarter.

  “What’s that?
A storm?”

  “Aye,” said the captain. “It’s a storm, but there’s also a ship that it’s pushing.”

  “I can’t see it,” said John.

  “It’s there,” said Ghorza. “I used a far-seeing spell to look. We’re being chased by a warship.”

  “A warship? Do you suppose someone sent us an escort?’

  “That’s unlikely,” said Dantes, “since no one knows where we are or where we’re going.”

  “So that’s the enemy?”

  “Aye,” said the captain. “Based on the description, it’s probably an orc marauder. It’s got the black sails of the Reaver clan.”

  “Can’t we avoid them somehow?” asked John.

  “No,” said Captain Meyer. “Without our mast, their ship is faster than ours, and they have more of the wind helping them to intercept us. We can make it take longer for them to catch us, but catch us they surely will.” He turned to nod in their direction of travel. “’Tis too bad. We almost made it.” John turned to look and could see the top of a large mountain on the horizon. The mountain’s snowcapped peak glowed brightly in the early morning sunshine although most of its base was shrouded in clouds.

  “The Mountain of Frost,” said Dantes. “You don’t think we can beat them to it?”

  “If our mast was whole, we could sail rings around that pig of a ship,” replied Captain Meyer. “As it is, no. We will be close, but they will overtake us ‘ere we get there.”

  John looked at the mass of black clouds behind the enemy vessel. “What about that storm? Do you think that we can stay away from them long enough for the storm to catch up with us? Maybe we could lose them in it.”

  “If only it were that easy,” replied Meyer. “I’m pretty sure there’s someone on that ship controlling the storm. It has stayed in the same position behind them ever since we first saw it.”

  “Growing up, I heard tales of shamans who were capable of manipulating the weather a little to help the crops,” said Ghorza, “but I never saw any that were ever actually able to do it. I always thought they were just that...tales. The power required to manipulate the weather is beyond anything I have ever seen before. The only shaman I ever saw that could do anything close was Ragula, who could sometimes coax a rain from a cloudy sky, but nothing like this. And besides, he was thought to have died a long time ago.”

  “Did you see his body?” asked Lady Ellyn.

  “No, I did not,” Ghorza replied. “He went missing just before my father fled with me. I never heard what happened to him.”

  “What do you have to defend the ship?” asked Lady Ellyn, changing the subject to one she was more familiar with. “Beside us, that is.”

  “Sadly, not much,” said Meyer. “We have some cutlasses and clubs, and a few crossbows, but nothing big enough to keep them off of us. If you can’t do anything to stop them from getting next to us, you’ll have to kill them as they come aboard. Based on the size of their ship, there are going to be more of them than there are of us when they come over the rails.”

  “Even though there aren’t many of us, we will make them pay dearly for every foot that touches the deck of this ship,” promised Lady Ellyn. “Very dearly.”

  Chapter 46

  Like an avalanche the ship grew in size slowly and inexorably throughout the rest of the morning and afternoon. The closer it came, the more wind spilled over to the companions’ ship, and the rate of closure dropped as the orc ship neared.

  “Is that a picture of a campfire on their flag?” asked John.

  “No,” replied Captain Meyer. “As I feared, the ship is one of the Reaver clan’s. The picture on the flag is a bunch of broken leg bones stacked together. The red you see is the blood coming out of the broken ends.”

  “Gross.”

  “Aye,” said the captain. “They don’t leave anyone alive when they capture a ship, nor do they leave a single body unbroken. They are as horrible an enemy as you would ever want to come across. Sometimes they take prisoners, but I can’t imagine life under them would be very pleasant, or very long.” His voice trailed off, leaving John to imagine all sorts of horrible things that would be done to him if captured. He vowed he wouldn’t be captured...and hoped he would be able to fulfill that vow.

  “There’s a halfling in the front of the boat,” said Fitzber who had the best natural sight of anyone in the group. “’Tis the spitting image of the halfling I caught in the woods with the orcs when they attacked us. The rest of the boat’s crew looks to be orcs, generally bigger than normal ones, if I had to guess.” He looked a little longer. “They appear to be armed with swords and battle axes, all except for the skinny one in the back of the boat that’s jumpin’ up and down with his staff.”

  “What does his staff look like?” asked Ghorza.

  “It’s an odd one,” replied Fitzber. “It isn’t straight up and down; it’s got a wee bit o’ a curve to it and all sorts o’ wee markings and writing on it, if that means anything.”

  “It can’t be,” said Ghorza. “Focus!” she added, casting her far-seeing spell. “By the gods! That is Ragula. He uses a troll’s leg bone as a staff. He killed it when he was young. He’s carved all of his spells into it, along with words of power to increase the potency of his spells. Do not underestimate him; he may look like some backcountry shaman, but he is very powerful.”

  As the group watched, there was a flurry of activity from the other ship.

  “What are they doing?” asked John.

  “Getting ready for battle,” said Father Telenor. “I know. I used to serve on ships when I was young. They are setting up its weapons.” He pointed to the front. “For example, it looks like they have a couple of onagers in the bow.”

  “What’s an onager?” asked John.

  “It’s a light catapult. Onagers aren’t big, but they’re effective. They can throw a 20 pound load over 1,200 feet.”

  “20 pounds?” asked John. “That doesn’t seem like much. Shouldn’t the sides of this ship be able to withstand getting hit by rocks that small?”

  “Oh, I doubt they’d throw rocks with it,” said Father Telenor; “I wouldn’t, anyway.”

  “What would you throw then? They aren’t going to launch their men with them are they? Like to get them up into our sails and rigging?”

  “No,” said Father Telenor with a laugh, “I doubt they’d do that, either. I imagine they’re more likely to launch clay pots full of demon fire.”

  “Demon fire?” asked Ghorza.

  “Yes, it’s a mix of resins and oils that, once ignited, is extremely difficult to extinguish. They’ll lob them over here and get our ship burning. Then, while we’re busy trying to put it out, that’s when they’ll board. If boarding is their intention, anyway. They could also just stand off and watch us burn. It’s not a good way to go.”

  “We’re surrounded by water, though,” said John. “Can’t we rig a hose or something to put out the fires? Like with a pump or something?”

  “I don’t know what this ‘pump’ thing is of which you speak, but trust me, once you get demon fire on board, it is very hard to put out. You can expect to lose all of your rigging. You may keep enough of the hull together to float, but there won’t be much.” He indicated several sailors that were rolling barrels around the deck of the Dancer. “Those are barrels of sand that they will use to smother any flames. Throwing water on demon fire just tends to scatter it all over the place.”

  Father Telenor looked back at the other ship. “They’ve also got six ballistae,” he said, pointing to where the orcs were mounting three of the weapons on each side of the ship. “Those will be fairly accurate today, since the water is smooth, with a range of about 1,500 feet.”

  “How accurate is accurate?” asked Dantes.

  “Inside of about 1,000 feet, a good ballista operator can pick off individual targets,” said Father Telenor.

  “That’s pretty accurate,” Dantes replied.

  “Are these orcs any good?” asked John. />
  “The Reaver clan? They’re the best,” replied Captain Meyer, walking up to look at the enemy. “If they want us dead, the odds are that we’re going to be dead in short order.” He nodded to where several of the Dancer’s sailors were leaning crossbows against the rail. “We’ve got a few surprises of our own,” he added. “We’ll get a few shots off; we’ll just have to make them count, since we won’t be out-running them today.”

  “If you can kill the shaman in the back of the boat,” said Ghorza, “that will release the weather to let it go back to normal.”

  “Aye, he will be the first one we kill,” agreed the captain. “If we get the opportunity.”

  “Why don’t you go down below,” Dantes said to John. “No sense letting them know that you’re here.” John didn’t look happy to be sent below, but left the rail without too much grumbling.

  The vessel approached until it was just outside of bowshot, at which time the shaman in the back of the ship put down his arms. All of the wind ceased, and both boats coasted to a halt. There weren’t even any waves; both boats were completely becalmed. The orc shaman and several of the largest orcs moved to stand with the halfling, aft of the onagers.

  “The crown!” said Ghorza as she got a closer look at the group. “The halfling is wearing a crown. It’s got to be Milos!”

  One of the orcs handed the halfling a hailer, a cone of metal that helped to focus a speaker’s voice, allowing it to travel further. “Ahoy, the Pole Dancer,” he called. “I would like to talk to the outlander.”

  “Ahoy yourself, Milos or Solim, or whatever you’re calling yourself these days,” said Dantes. “I’d like to say that it’s good to see you again. I’d like to, but that would be lying. Something you’re good at, I guess.”