by Simon Archer
Finally, as the sun dipped in a shallow journey below the horizon, we reached the island, or at least as close to it as we could come. The thickness of the ice reached a point where even The Hullbreaker’s ram couldn’t shatter it.
As I walked down from the aftcastle deck, I called out to Jimmy Mocker. “I’ll be takin’ a scouting crew to suss out where the ironclad hides. Ye have command while we’re gone.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” he said with a chest-pounding salute.
Within an hour, a group of us clambered down a rope ladder to the frozen surface and gathered a short distance from my ship. The night was dark, but brilliant green, blue, and rose colors danced in the sky, shimmering and shifting like waves.
“That is beautiful,” Mary said in a hushed voice, staring up at the dancing lights.
She, a dwarf named Caldern, Daka, Dogar, and Tabitha Binx were all I had for a scouting group. Ligeia and the giant narwhal were to keep the ice around my ship mostly broken up so that we could get underway again, if necessary. Ember would help with her fire hexes, should the need arise.
We all stared at the spectacle. I’d heard sailor’s stories of the dancing lights over the seas of the far north but had never seen them before, myself. They were impressive as all hell, rivaling some of the magic I’d seen lately. For a moment, all our troubles seemed far away.
Finally, I shook my head and broke the spell of the lights. “All right, ye lot. Let’s move.”
Suiting action to words, I started off over the ice, and my people followed. For about a half-hour we marched over the rough surface. It wasn’t nearly so slick as I’d feared, but it was sharp. Fortunately, all of us, even my normally barefoot witch, had good, warm boots with thick soles.
The island itself spread off to the north and west as we approached. It would be another half-hour or so to reach one of the lower portions, where we could climb up to the forested land that composed most of the thing. That wasn’t our interest, though. We headed straight for the base of the cliff and began to follow it north around the edge of the island. Here, the dwarf took the lead, searching for any tell-tale signs of his people’s construction.
We found the entrance to the sea-cave surprisingly quickly. It was half-blocked with ice that rose up almost twice my height, and the dark space beyond blended well with the cliff’s edge, rendering the whole almost invisible to the sea approach. Only by exploring on foot, over the ice, were we able to discover the opening so easily.
Of course, knowing it was there also provided us with a bit of an advantage over casual explorers.
“All right,” I said. “This is it. I want to see this damned thing before we head back to the ship and start bringing the work crew over. Any o’ ye want to come with me?”
A chorus of assents followed, and we started the relatively difficult task of climbing over the ice. It was old and jagged, but not fragile in the least, and resisted our efforts to drive in pitons for a rope line. Eventually, though, we persevered, and one by one, we clambered over the frozen seawall into the sea cave proper.
It led us deep into the island beneath the cliffs, curving from west to north abruptly, and then opened out into a frozen vista. Trapped in the ice was a ship roughly the same length as The Hullbreaker, but about half-again as wide. It had no masts, only a pair of tall, round stacks mounted to either side of a massive, armored shell that protected the main deck. A wheelhouse, similarly armored, squatted atop the main shell about amidships. Like my ship, the ironclad possessed a sharp ramming prow, with what looked to be cannons mounted to either side. Trap doors lined the armored deck.
“I’ll be damned,” I muttered. “The old bastard was on to something.”
“That isn’t nearly as pretty as I thought it’d be,” Mary observed.
“Who the feck cares about pretty?” Caldern grumbled. “I just want to see if the bloody thing works.”
“There’ll be time for that,” I said. “It exists. Now we have to figure the best way to get the work teams over, then the rest of us will need to explore the bloody island t’see if there be anythin’ useful here, like food an’ fresh water.”
The dwarf pointed past the ironclad. “There, Cap’n. She be chained to a stone wharf, an’ I think I can make out some stairs an’ such leadin’ up. Yer friend said the place was abandoned, aye?”
“Aye,” I replied. “Least he didn’t say they found anyone, but then, they were looters an’ pirates.”
Caldern spat. “Aye, true, an’ there doesn’t seem to be signs o’ life about.”
“I could investigate,” Mary offered. “I seem to be the one best suited for moving fast over here.”
I grunted. She was right, even if I didn’t care for the idea. A good captain, though, must use every advantage he’s got. “Do it, lass, but don’t go out o’ sight. We’ve no idea if anythin’ might o’ denned up in that hulk.”
“Aye, my Captain,” the witch said with a teasing grin before she bounded off, practically gliding over the smooth ice of the underground cove.
The rest of the scouting team watched with me as my eyes followed her progress to the ship, then past it and up onto the nearly invisible pier. She drifted around a bit, then scampered up what had to have been the stairs Caldern mentioned.
About halfway up, Mary paused and then turned and started back down again, moving a bit more carefully. Once she reached the bottom, she backtracked most of her course and returned to where we waited in short order.
“There are stairs,” she reported, “but they’re blocked. Everything is bloody well blended into the background and the walls, and there’s some kind of residue of cloth or netting around the ship.”
“Camouflage nets, I’ll wager,” the dwarf said. “Here be what I think, Cap’n. We see if we can get The Hullbreaker closer, then set a team to breakin’ the ice at the cave mouth, while another team works to clear the stairs. We should be able to open both ways quick as ye like an’ get to work on yon vessel.”
I could tell that Caldern was practically champing at the bit to get his hands into the guts of the ironclad, and likely all the rest of the dwarves would be the same. Of course, if anyone could get the thing moving again, it’d be Bord and his crew. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take them too long. With any luck, it’d take longer to unload their gear than it would for them to get the old ship going again.
Of course, that was assuming our luck didn’t go bad.
And, of course, that’s when a clear, sardonic voice rang out through the cave.
“Bardak Skullsplitter, I suspected I’d find you here. No ship, little crew, and no siren to save the day.”
We all spun to face the cave’s mouth, and there, standing atop the seawall of ice, was a cloaked figure. He was half coated in ice, and his dark robes were tattered, but we all recognized him immediately.
“Lack,” I snarled. With one hand I picked my helmet from my pack and shoved it onto my head while I reached for my axe with the other.
19
The rest of my company armed up as we faced the sorcerer. He stood, legs apart, atop the ice barrier that separated us from the outside and freedom. His eyes burned with green fire as the world outside dipped further into darkness.
“What do ye want, Lack?” I demanded as I tensed and shifted my grip on the haft of my axe. I wished I’d brought the Huntsman’s Spear, as effective as it had proven against more magical enemies.
Something like a heat shimmer surrounded the black-robed man, and he didn’t quite stand upon the ice so much as hover over it.
“I made that little boat with my own hands,” Lack said, and his quiet voice carried across the distance. “Enchanted her and protected her for longer years than any of you have been alive. You destroyed her with less thought than you’d give to swatting a fly.” His eyes blazed up. “I will take from you your ship, orc pirate. Your crew and everything you love will be destroyed. But you… you, I will spare and leave stranded here among the ancient memories and the frozen wastes.”
“Enough!” I roared. “Let us fight, then, ye blackheart, an’ see if yer words mean more than the air with which ye spoke them!” With those words, I shifted to a one-handed grip of the axe as I drew and fired one of my flintlocks.
The rest of the crew took that as their cue. Mary’s evil eye blazed up in golden light, while Daka, Dogar, Tabitha, and Caldern all drew firearms of their own and blasted away. Some sparks flew from the heat shimmer as Lack raised his arms, and several of the flying demons from before soared in from above.
In the aftermath of that first volley, I could barely make out the echoing boom of cannons and cracks of distant gunfire. The tactic was sound, too. Keep the group of us here, while the sorcerer’s demons swarmed the ship.
Big mistake. The Hullbreaker was still under the protection of some of my best people. Still, I wanted to make short work of the demons and the sorcerer both, so I charged in right behind the bullets, making an elementally assisted leap right into Lack’s pale, grinning face.
The overhead blow from my greataxe would have split him from stem to stern, so to speak, but I hadn’t counted on how close the other demons were or how fast the things could fly. One of them intercepted me in mid-air, and we flew off to the side, crashing in a struggling tangle into the ice. It cracked and creaked beneath our weight but held as we began to slide towards the cavern wall.
My mail shirt did a good job against the monster’s talons, and I abandoned my greataxe for the moment to grasp the demon’s head and slam my own helmeted noggin into its toothy, grinning face. We both were surprised when the heavy metal brow of my new helm broke the thing’s nose, shattered half its teeth, and sent it flying off me.
Maybe that helm really was an orcish relic that I’d gotten on the cheap.
So much the better.
I rolled to my feet and came up with my axe while the bleeding demon struggled to recover. As I sheathed my blade in elemental ice, I threw all my strength behind it. I cleaved my opponent’s head clean off, grabbed one of its arms as it fell, and hurled the corpse into another one of the flyers. Both of them crashed in a tangle of arms and legs and flopping wings.
Meanwhile, Mary held the line with Daka and Dogar, while Caldern and Tabitha fired and reloaded as rapidly as they could. With my witch’s hexes enhancing the pistol balls, they did hurt the demons… when they hit. Against the diving and darting flying monsters, even Jimmy Mocker would have been hard-pressed to bring one down.
Still, it kept them busy.
Lack seemed to not be paying any mind to me. The sorcerer drew a wand of some polished, black wood and was in the middle of some sort of magical working. I could feel the power he drew up, and my exposed skin went up in goosebumps.
So, I could fight the demons or try to interrupt whatever the damned sorcerer was doing. It was barely a choice. My elemental attendants sprang to my will, and with the wind at my back and aiding my hands, I reached the half-blocked entrance to the sea cave and swung my empowered axe not at Lack, but at the ice.
Wind and elemental water blasted into the sudden cracks. Lack looked down at me, and his burning eyes went wide. I roared up him, and then the ice exploded. Once again, the sorcerer was thrown up and away, but this time, one of his demons was there to catch him.
As the ice crashed out of the passage, I turned my gaze up, drew a second pistol, and fired. The elementals came to my call once more, and instead of a lead ball launching at the flying target, the air mingled with the spark of powder, and a bolt of lightning blasted from the barrel of my gun to strike the demon. Electricity coursed over both it and Lack, and they fell as I tossed aside the slagged flintlock.
I definitely needed to figure out how to channel the skyfire without destroying whatever weapon I held, but still, it did what I needed to do, even it wasn’t nearly as exact or precise as I might want.
Lack and his rescuer crashed hard to the ice not far from me. The sorcerer rose to face me, but the demon didn’t move.
“You will die,” Lack spat, lifting his wand.
“Not by yer hand,” I roared as I charged and swung as hard as I could, meaning to split the man in two across the middle, but he dropped the arm holding the wand and parried the blow with the slender looking wand.
It stopped my axe cold, and water blasted past the black-clad man as the elemental sheath of ice around the blade melted and fell violently away.
“What was that you were saying?” Lack hissed at me, lips pulled back in a grin that would have terrified a lesser man.
More shots and curses and war cries sounded from my crew, then Tabitha let out a howl of victory as two more demons fell. I could only spare the glance as Lack knocked my axe aside and shifted his grip on the wand. He came at me like a knife fighter, then, and I barely dodged. The bastard was good.
I dropped an elbow at his head, and he slipped aside but stayed close, slashing his unusual weapon across my mail-clad middle. Sparks flew, and I felt the heat of the impact. Bringing a knee up, I barely put enough space between us for me to drop the greataxe and draw Pott’s gun-axe.
Lack chuckled as he saw it. “Do you think that will save you?”
I grinned back. “It doesn’t have to save me, sorcerer, just kill you.”
He snarled and came at me with an intricate series of slashes and stabs. It was a lot like fighting Bloody Bill in a way. I stayed sharp, though. That particular fight had been an eye-opener, and since then, I’d take the opportunity to practice more with Jimmy and Mary in how to deal with fast and precise opponents.
I dodged and parried but couldn’t help taking a few slashes of the energized wand across my armor. The blows didn’t seem to do much, but my strength flagged a little each time Lack hit me, and he only grew more vital. The demons kept my allies away and occupied, so this was my fight. There was no way I was going to let this bastard spawn of whatever unfortunate hell he came from stopping me.
Layne would fall, and I would free the Archipelago.
Rage swelled in my heart. I hadn’t needed it nearly so much as I had before I began my journey down the path of shamanism, but it was still there, and it flared up like a bonfire as I stoked it with all the thoughts of what this man, this monster, had put me and mine through.
I wanted him dead.
“What?” Lack demanded in surprise as I stepped in and caught his arm mid-blow.
“This,” I growled and headbutted him. His head rocked back, but the barrier held around him. It burned my hand, too, but I ignored it.
Lifting the gun-axe, I hammered it down again and again against the heat shimmer that protected the sorcerer. Sparks flew as he struggled while I rained down blow after blow. How long would the damned thing hold?
How strong did I have to be?
Lack stared in disbelief as I hung onto him, flinging his body around as I struck at it with the gun-axe. Somehow, he held onto the wand through all of this. Despite it all, none of my blows managed to break his defenses, so I changed my focus. Even with the red rage clouding my thoughts, I knew that wand was the source of at least part of my problem, and it didn’t have an aura protecting it.
I took the sorcerer bodily down to the ice and pinned his wrist while he struck at me with his other arm. The gun-axe rose and fell on the wand, and a detonation of magic threw us apart. I sailed through the air, landed heavily on my back, and rolled back to my feet. The gun-axe had come through better than I’d expected. It was scorched and discolored, but the powder hadn’t cooked off nor had the blade melted.
Lack staggered to his feet, grimacing at me from about ten feet away as he clutched the bleeding remains of his right hand to his chest. Demons screeched and disengaged from my crew to swoop towards their injured master.
I narrowed my eyes. The heat shimmer was gone, so I raised the weapon and pulled the trigger. Pott’s gun-axe boomed and kicked in my hand. The shot took Lack dead center in his broad, pale forehead, punched a smoking hole in, and blew the contents of his skull over the ice behind him. As h
is body toppled over, the green flames in his eyes faded and went out. The flying creatures let out a last, mournful cry, then vanished in bursts of sulfurous flame.
I took a staggering step towards my friends, saw that they were little worse for wear, then turned and rushed to the cavern entrance. The shots from The Hullbreaker had ceased, but I wanted to see with my own eyes.
On my way, I scooped up my greataxe, and a few moments later, I stood in the hole the elementals had blown in the packed ice that once blocked the way. Off in the distance, The Hullbreaker looked fine. Some smoke wisped up from the hull and into the freezing air, but nothing that looked like major damage. The King Narwal was visible as it broke through the ice near the ship, then dove back under.
I turned back to the others and raised my axe in tired triumph. Lack had come closer than anyone or anything since Bloody Bill, and if it hadn’t been for my armor, I’d have been in much worse shape.
Mary and Tabitha reached me first, and the witch set to caring for my burned hand. The skin was blistered in an intricate series of coiling patterns that spiraled over the flesh of my palm and fingers.
“Damned demons kept us from helping,” Dogar rumbled while the two women fussed over me.
“I saw,” I told him. “Ye all did good. I liked how ye blocked for the shooters an’ let them work their magic. Good tactic, that. ‘Twas a good show, an’ likely kept Lack’s pets from makin’ things all the worse for me.”
With my free hand, I tugged off the heavy helmet and grinned at the two orcs. Caldern held a position off to the side, musket at the ready while he studied the fallen form of Lack the sorcerer.
“I can hardly believe he’s dead,” Mary commented when she noticed me looking off in that direction as well.
“Pistol ball to the forehead’s pretty final,” Tabitha observed. “But if ye want, we can take off his head, too. Maybe burn the corpse.”
I chuckled, then frowned as a thought hit me. “Ye might be on the right path, lass,” I said. “We’ve got the bloody corpse, so we might as well make damned sure he won’t rise again. If the Admiral’s got another pet sorcerer half as talented, they could likely bring this bastard back.”