A Solitary Journey (23 page)

He peered through the steady rain at a line of shadows that crested a nearby ridge and trudged, heads bent beneath the weight of the rain, along a road down a steady slope towards Westport. Marching captured barbarian children through bad weather was ill-advised, he mused, as he watched the line fade into the rain, because they risked illness and that would affect their price in the slave market on the docks. He’d lost count of the number of barbarian children his men had consigned to slavery since beginning the invasion, but
the last tally Doghunter completed made the total beyond six hundred before they plundered the eastern forest for escaped barbarians. Even without his promotion to Warlord, he’d made good money out of the child slaves sent for sale in the western ports. There was still the barbarian capital city to plunder. He couldn’t wait for that feast to begin now that he was the Warlord—when the weather lost its feistiness.

T
he morning sun was still cresting the eastern mountains and seagulls circled the mast. ‘I don’t know anything about sailing,’ Blade Cutter admitted, in greeting the vessel’s shipmaster. The waves rocked the planks under his boots and made him uncertain.

‘There’s nothing I can’t teach you, Warmaster,’ the shipmaster replied, grinning through his thin motley black-and-grey beard. ‘Some of it is words for things. Knowing what winds and what seas and what dangers are in both takes a long time, but the simple art of sailing is any man’s pleasure to learn.’

Cutter thanked the shipmaster for his hospitality and followed him, flanked by his entourage of bodyguards, along the wooden deck, aware of the sailors watching his progress. The King ordered him to personally inspect the newly constructed ships moored in a secluded cove south of Port of Joy before the first attack was made against the Kerwyn navy blockade. ‘Each of these is a gigantic thundermaker,’ the shipmaster explained, pointing to the row of eight large black metal tubes ranged along the starboard railing. ‘There are another eight on the port side, two on the bow and two on the aft top deck. Each one
hurls a thunderclap the same distance as a good longbow—only they cause a lot more damage.’ He locked eyes with Cutter and said, ‘Close in, they’ll blow a Kerwyn ship in two.’

Cutter stooped to run his hands along the first cold, black thundermaker shaft, his rough hands soothed by the silken metal. ‘How many ships do you have?’ he asked.

‘Seven,’ the shipmaster answered.

‘And how many Kerwyn ships hold the blockade?’

The shipmaster shook his head as he replied, ‘Last count was twenty-three, Warmaster.’

‘So how long before you have enough ships to break the blockade?’ Cutter asked, looking over the stern at the other ships in the cove.

The shipmaster chuckled. ‘Already enough, according to the Seers, Warmaster,’ he said. ‘They say their thundermaker magic on one Shessian ship is worth twenty Kerwyn ships. We’re ready to sail.’

Cutter raised an eyebrow at the shipmaster’s brash resolve. The long thin thundermakers on land wrought havoc on the battlefields, but good tactics could nullify their impact. He couldn’t imagine what effect they might have at sea, especially these massive mutations. ‘So when will you sail?’

‘When the King sends the order, Warmaster. We were hoping it came with you.’

Cutter reached into his heavy black coat and withdrew a parchment, which he passed to the shipmaster. ‘This might be what you’re waiting for.’

The shipmaster unrolled the parchment, read it slowly, as if reading didn’t come easily to him, and looked up, his jaw set firmly. ‘By His Majesty’s orders we are to set sail and engage the Kerwyn as soon as the weather permits, Warmaster.’

‘And?’ Cutter asked.

The shipmaster looked up at the grey clouds, assessed the breeze rippling the black Royal ensign on the topmast and turned to study the ocean to the west, before he looked at Cutter and said, ‘When the wind heaves to the south another notch later this morning, we’ll set sail.’

Cutter smiled faintly. ‘Then I’ll be taking my leave, shipmaster. The ocean is not a place for a landsman like me.’ A moth-memory of a long-past dream fluttered in the recesses of his mind, of sinking between planks into the ocean depths, so he was glad to be heading back to shore. ‘I’ll ride hard to tell the King you are coming.’

‘Ride as hard as you can, Warmaster,’ the shipmaster encouraged with a hearty grin. ‘When the southern storm bites and fills our sails, no horse will keep pace with these new ships. Our Kerwyn friends are in for a surprising treat.’

Aboard the Kerwyn flagship,
White Shark,
Sealord Wildwind Faranger saw the black sails bearing down on his fleet from the south and smiled. News that the Shess barbarians were building ships in the southern coves and bays had filtered through to him during the rough, cold days of storms and squalls, so he eagerly anticipated the opportunity to fight another sea battle since defeating the barbarian navy during the invasion year. Mooring aimlessly in a harbour entrance, maintaining a blockade against an enemy too weak to seriously threaten a break-out, was anathema to a man bred to fight. Bored and angry, Sealord Faranger even prayed to the foreign god to send enemy ships to combat and the approaching black sails answered his prayers. ‘Watchman!’ he shouted to a sailor perched on the topmast. ‘How many?’

‘Seven!’ the man shouted in reply.

Seven,
Faranger considered, disappointed.
Not much of a challenge, but enough of a diversion.
He beckoned to his second-in-command, the
White Shark’
s shipmaster, Dolphin Waverider, and said, ‘Send the orders. One ship to each of the enemy ships. Thundermakers to be ready for raking volleys. Let the enemy pass between our ships on the first run. Once they’re downwind, we’ll turn and make a second raking pass. No grappling until the return run. No thunderclaps. We’ll sink as little as we can. Capture the barbarian ships—slaughter their crews.’ Waverider set to the task of dictating Faranger’s orders to his messenger who would use the message-mirror to flash the orders to the other ships, and then spread word for his crew to take their stations.

Faranger checked the wind. The Shessian ships held the first-run advantage, but with so few ships the advantage would be minimal. He pulled the brass magic-eye from his coat pocket, the instrument devised by the barbarian Jarudhan priests and shared with King Ironfist during their sojourn in the Kerwyn kingdom, decompressed it to form a long cylinder and lifted it to his right eye. The distance between the ships shrank through the magic-eye until he could see the black ensigns on the Shessian topmasts and the prows shearing through the waves. They were making fast headway in the choppy seas, driven by a strong southerly afternoon wind that was yet to reach the Kerwyn ships, followed by a bank of grey clouds.
More rain,
Faranger noted. He realised that the Shessian ships also were smaller than their predecessors, lightweight ships built for speed perhaps—or perhaps just built rapidly with limited wood supplies—before he lowered the magic-eye.

‘We’re tacking a few points to starboard!’ shipmaster Waverider called as he turned the wheel, and sailors
scrambled to adjust the sails as the boom swung in the rising breeze. ‘They will have to break their speed to adjust to our positions!’

‘Let them come!’ Faranger bellowed. ‘Let them have the glory of one last run before we consign them to their god!’

Waverider grinned in agreement with his Sealord’s symbolic concession to an already-defeated enemy, crying, ‘As you order, Sealord!’

The thundermaker teams fitted their thin weapons into position on tripods along the railings and prodded the little metal balls and magic powder into the shafts. Faranger watched the cream sails expand and felt the southerly bluster cross his ship and rip the sheets. Waverider yelled orders to his men to rope down the canvas to stop the ship moving and ordered the crew to be ready to weigh anchor as soon as the Shessian ships drew alongside. The thundermakers lit their tapers and held them above the wicks that ignited the magic powder, protecting the tiny flames from the breeze, and Faranger considered how little magic there really was in the thundermaker weapons. Anyone could create them. They weren’t the gifts from Jarudha that the barbarian priests claimed them to be.

‘Steady!’ Waverider yelled. ‘Steady!’ as the leading Shessian ship raced towards the
White Shark,
heeling sharply to port to make the run down the side of the Kerwyn ship. Faranger glimpsed the sleek black metal cylinders along the Shessian rails as the little ship straightened and sluiced through a wave—like gigantic thundermakers—and felt a pang of surprise. ‘Steady!’ Waverider yelled, but his words were lost as the first thundermaker on the attacking Shessian ship’s bow boomed. A black object whistled as it tore through the lower sails aboard the
White Shark
and exploded in a fiery ball near the wheel. The concussion threw
Faranger face down on the wet deck. He lifted his head when Waverider bellowed ‘Fire!’ but the first rattle of the Kerwyn thundermakers was swallowed in a fearsome roar as the boards beneath his chest and legs shivered and bucked. Surrounded by screams and explosions and cracking sounds he instinctively buried his head beneath his arms.

When he ventured to rise, the deck beneath his feet was tilted sharply to port and the
White Shark
was enveloped in billowing smoke. Flames rippled along the mid-deck and the front mast leaned at a crazy angle towards the waves, the burning canvas shredding and dropping little fire dragons onto the wood. Kerwyn sailors were frantically trying to douse myriad flames along the length of the vessel, climbing over fractured planks and shattered beams and the bodies of their fellows and thundermaker crews in their desperation to save the ship. Shipmaster Waverider and three crewmen were hacking at the base of the front mast with axes, cutting through the ropes and pins to release the crippled ship from the mast’s fatal grip.

A booming roar astern made Faranger crouch and spin in fear, but the devastating explosions engulfed another Kerwyn ship as a Shessian vessel raced past. The vision greeting his astonished eyes was more terrifying than any he’d witnessed in battle. Six of his ships were aflame, four already sinking. All seven Shessian ships, instead of racing through to be caught downwind, were weaving through the ranks of his navy, their massive thundermakers wreaking havoc, their awesome firepower overwhelming his shipmasters and their crews. The giant thundermakers were not firing metal balls—they fired thunderclaps that exploded with brutal destruction on the Kerwyn ships, making the Kerwyn thundermakers feeble and pointless. What magic had the barbarian priests wrought to create such weapons? He
winced as a Kerwyn ship exploded—and the danger dawned on him. He staggered across the listing deck to the rail and yelled to three sailors heaving aside a broken beam. ‘The magic powder! All of it! Throw it overboard! Now!’ He pointed at the grey wooden barrel still lashed to the railing for the thundermaker crews’ use. Flames licked its base. The sailors dropped the beam and scrambled for the barrel, lifting it over the rail. As they heaved, the barrel exploded in a massive fireball.

Warmaster Blade Cutter stood beside the King and his courtiers on the palace battlements observing the sea encounter unfold in the path of an incoming storm. The vision of the seven black Shessian sails charging at the Kerwyn fleet in the teeth of the southerly storm reminded him of the heroic ballads—and the one he always recalled first was
The Blue Knight and the Red Lady
because he’d been privileged to know the real Red Lady—Lady Amber—the country girl and young woman who sneaked into his Group before the famous Battle of the Whispering Forest in the hope of finding her soldier lover. He’d seen her again when she transformed from Meg, the girl in a soldier’s clothes, into Lady Amber whose magical abilities enabled the Shessian army to defeat the invading forces of Beranix the Butcher at Kangaroo Ridge. When he learned that she perished fighting the Rebels, he felt the sadness of losing someone close. To himself he admitted being besotted by her beauty and her inexplicable innocent charm, and having slept with her after the Battle of the Whispering Forest he often thought of her. While the popular ballad told the tale of a strong, determined woman whose powers of magic led to the demise of the heroic Rebel leader, Marchlord Treasure Overbrook, the Queen’s bastard son, the Meg he remembered was a
frightened, innocent girl-woman who never seemed to be at ease with her role in the great events of the time.

‘The odds are terrible, Your Highness,’ Intermediary Goodman remarked as the ships closed.

‘Never underestimate Jarudha’s power,’ Seer Vision warned.

The King turned to the newly elected Eminence of the Royal Seers and said, ‘More than Jarudha is in play on the ocean.’

Vision smiled, his youthfulness unusual for a Seer of high importance. ‘The King has yet to accept that Jarudha is within everything. He knows already what will happen in this battle. It is all a part of His greater plan. Only Jarudha is in play on the ocean, Your Highness. Only Jarudha knows what will unfold.’

Cutter watched the little Shessian ships race between the blockading Kerwyn vessels, the explosions, and the ensuing chaos as the damaged and burning Kerwyn ships fought to stay afloat while the undamaged ones tried to ward off their smaller, more nimble enemies. The King and his entourage cheered the unprecedented effectiveness of the big thundermakers aboard the Shessian ships, while Cutter watched silently, aware that Seer Vision was also circumspect in his responses to the crushing victory, even when the remaining Kerwyn ships fled north to escape the fate of their sinking colleagues.

‘Your Highness is pleased with the outcome?’ Vision finally asked with suppressed gratification as the Shessian ships headed into Royal Bay harbour to escape the looming storm.

‘The trapped heated air lifts the cloth,’ Seer Reason explained, ‘and if we stop the heated air from escaping easily and keep reheating it we can keep the cloth afloat.’

Vision stared at the upside-down teardrop of sewn cloth suspended by warm air near the ceiling of the workshop. ‘I’ve seen parchment and leaves fly in the breeze,’ he said. ‘I’ve wondered how birds stay aloft.’

Reason picked up a carefully folded piece of parchment, shaped like an arrowhead, pinched it between his fingers and threw it. The parchment model glided across the chamber and landed softly on a bench near an acolyte who looked up and smiled. ‘Flying is not just for the birds and insects. Jarudha is giving us the knowledge to learn how we can also fly when Paradise is here.’ He picked up another model with flattened wings and a four-spoked wheel-like attachment. ‘This one, outside, will go for much longer distances when we make the spinner work.’

‘Spinner?’ Vision asked.

Reason flicked the attachment with his finger to make it spin. ‘This part. It drives the paper-wing a longer distance.’