by David Dickie
“New what?” asked Grim.
Paj looked uncomfortable. “Sorry, not supposed to say. Really not even supposed to know. Guardsman, you know, just assigned to the Fith’s Hammer for combat support, just temporarily.”
Grim thought for a moment. What had the Hediro’s Wrath been doing out here anyway? Why was the Fith’s Hammer carrying Guardsmen? Kethem Guard were land soldiers. Ships fought with spells, not swords. “So, just a guess. A new ship? A black ship?”
Paj looked at Grim sharply. “You know something.”
Grim shook his head. “That’s what happened to the Wrath and the Venture. A ship larger than any I’ve ever seen before, armed with magic I’ve never heard of. It sank both ships in minutes.”
Paj paled a bit. “I don’t swim,” he said.
Grim wasn’t sure that would matter much. If the black ship hadn’t taken damage, he wasn’t sure there would have been anyone left alive regardless of how comfortable they were in the water. “So the Wrath was looking for the black ship?”
Paj shook his head. “Not exactly. Some Kethem merchants on the Pranan run never made it to port. There were survivors from a couple that had similar stories, a monstrously large black ship closing in and using a new kind of magic to disable them, then boarding. We’ve stepped up patrols, have a few naval intel folk on board and some Kethem Guard for anti-boarding support. It’s supposed to be a find and follow mission, so the anti-boarding was just a precaution, no one was supposed to get close enough for an actual engagement. The Wrath was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Grim said, “Interesting. How…”
He was interrupted by a call from above. “Survivors, thirty degrees to port!” Grim looked up. It was the sailor in the crow’s nest, pointing forward and to the left. Grim looked at Paj. Paj looked at Grim. Then they both went to the left side of the ship. All Grim could see was open water.
Noticing Grim’s searching eyes, Paj said, “Lookout has magnification spells. They’re probably pretty far out.”
A voice too loud to be natural sounded through the ship. “Priest to sails. Man the rescue party. Guard to stations.” Grim felt the ship turn.
Paj stood. “Have to form up,” he said over his shoulder as he ran to join the other soldiers.
Grim felt a sudden breeze as the sails filled out. The ship jumped forward. Storm Bull priests must have channeled the power of their weather god. Grim stood and moved more sedately to the middle of the ship.
In minutes the breeze dropped, and the sails were trimmed. Grim hovered in the background as Druff and a few sailors went through the same drill they had used picking up Grim, Alan and Lug.
“Any wounded?”
Grim heard the faint answer, “No.” It sounded familiar. He wasn’t surprised when Fayyaad was helped onto the deck. The short, athletic man with thinning brown hair wore an expression of baffled discontentment, as if constantly wondering why life had handed him the sharp end of the dagger.
The Holder, Rotan, followed, and Druff’s attention turned naturally to him. Rotan wore a Silver Ring on his finger, but Druff treated him with the deference expected for someone higher up the Holder hierarchy. “My lord, if there’s anything we can do to assist you, please let me know. I’d respectfully request that you stay out of areas marked with a yellow line, but if you feel there is something you need on one of them, please have the crew inform me, and I will assist you.”
Rotan nodded vigorously. He was short, round, had pale blue eyes, sported a well-groomed beard, and seemed one step short of outright panic. He was dressed in fashionable dark pants, a white shirt with a colorful red vest, and had a thin brown cloak that had a Holder’s glyph on the back, one from a Hold Grim did not know. His clothes looked the worse for wear, not designed for soaking in seawater, but Rotan still had the faintly superior air that was a hallmark of the privileged landowning class. “Thank you, sailor.”
Druff froze for a moment, then forced a smile to his lips. “My apologies, Holder, I should have introduced myself first. Commander Druff, Kethem Navy, at your service.”
“Yes, yes,” replied Rotan, waving his hands a bit. “Glad to hear it. I need to get to Tendut without delay. If you could make the boat here,” and his hand-waving went a bit wider to indicate the Fith’s Hammer, “head for Tendut immediately, I would appreciate it deeply.”
The commander’s smile became a bit more forced. “My apologies, Holder. The ship—we call frigates ‘ships’—is on a military mission. No one on board has the authority to redirect it.”
Rotan frowned. “Citizen, I don’t think you understand—”
He was interrupted by a voice Grim hadn’t heard before. “Commander Druff.” Grim looked. An older man with a graying beard in the same uniform as the rest of the crew stood there, but his epaulets were adorned with three stripes and a star on each.
Druff stood at attention. “Captain.”
The Captain nodded amiably, but there was a palpable tension about him that made Grim uneasy. Salin was standing behind the Captain with a barely veiled look of triumph on his face. “We have new orders. We are abandoning the search for survivors and heading for a Kethem Naval Intelligence installation near Struford. The citizens are to be placed in the brig.” The Captain nodded to Rotan. “My lord, with all due respect, I will have you escorted to my cabin, and you may rest there until we reach the installation.”
Rotan frowned. “And after that you will take me to Tendut?”
The Captain replied, “I don’t know yet. It is an unfolding situation. However, I will do everything I can to assist you once I have further orders.” He turned to Druff. “Please have the citizens escorted to the brig. Make them as comfortable as possible.”
Druff nodded. “As you command.” He turned to Fayyaad apologetically. “I will have food and water brought to you immediately.” Then, spotting Grim in the crowd, he called out, “Citizen, please come with me as well.” He looked at the sailors in the rescue party and nodded. They fell in behind Fayyaad and Grim as Grim joined the group. One of the sailors looked curiously at Fayyaad.
“Don’t I know you?” he asked Fayyaad.
“Ya, I was one of the crowd sleeping with your mother, remember?” Fayyaad replied.
The sailor turned red and his mouth set in an angry line. “Brig ho, sailor boy,” Fayyaad said to Druff.
Druff stared at Fayyaad and frowned, but it seemed more from curiosity than anger. Finally, he shrugged and said, “Let’s go.”
Druff led them through a door and down a set of steep stairs in the back of the ship. The brig was, as it turned out, a line of narrow cells with just enough room for a bunk in each. While Fayyaad and Grim were being escorted into two of them, Alan and Lug arrived under guard.
Druff looked apologetic and indicated the cell floors. There were symbols carved there. “Anti-casting glyphs,” he said. “If you have artificer’s gear, I ask that you surrender it.”
Grim had the amulet on under his shirt, but he already knew it wasn’t magic. Alan took off a globby, garish gold ring and handed it through the bars to Druff. If Druff did a magic sweep, it wasn’t obvious to Grim. It seemed like he was taking them at their word.
Druff frowned. “I am sorry. Clearly Salin…”
“Salin what?” Asked Commander Salin as he walked in the door.
Druff looked at him coolly. “Went over the Captain’s head,” he said.
Salin smiled. “The Captain would have been smart to cooperate in the first place,” he said.
Druff said, with some heat, “I wouldn’t count my coins quite so quickly if I were you. If this turns out to be a ride on a dragon, you will not only owe the Captain an apology, you can expect a formal complaint with the high command.”
Salin laughed. “I will take that wager.” He turned and glanced at everyone in their cells, one after the other. “I just wanted you all to know that I’ve already informed the base that you have some tricks to circumvent truthsaying. I do not envy yo
u what’s going to happen when we get there. I did want to give you an opportunity to have me put in a good word for you. You tell me what you know, I can help you avoid a lot of unpleasantness.”
Fayyaad smiled and said, “That sounds like a great deal! How about we start with what I know about your parents. An orc and a mudrake, that’s news. I could make serious coin using you as a star attraction in a freak show.”
Salin turned red. Druff didn’t even try to hide his smile. Salin paused for a moment, then with an obvious effort, said, “Do not forget I gave you this chance. Not because I want you to feel indebted to me. Because I want you to know I will be watching and laughing while you suffer.” And then he turned and left.
Chapter Eight
Two days had gone by. The Fith’s Hammer had dropped them off at the Kethem Naval Intelligence installation, anchoring offshore and transporting them to a small dock by dinghy with a tight-lipped Salin in the boat. They were met by a contingent of guards in the brown colored uniforms of Kethem Naval Intelligence, holding swords and artificer’s weapons. Salin had a quiet conversation with another man whom he treated as an equal. Then Salin returned to the Fith’s Hammer, giving them a grimace as he walked by, but saying nothing. They were escorted a short distance to a stone fort, gray and grimly functional. Rotan, the holder, had been split off from the rest of the group. Then they were stripped of their possessions and clothes, dressed in gray coveralls, and taken to what looked like a makeshift cell, repurposed from military barracks.
Fayyaad was complaining again. “What right?” Fayyaad was saying, “What right do they have to keep us here?”
Grim was sitting on his bed (although the thin straw mattress hardly qualified as such) with his back against the wall. “Kethem Naval Intelligence. The most powerful branch of Kethem’s military. You, not a Holder, not part of the landed gentry. Not to mention spinning up Salin for no reason. Where do you want me to begin?”
Fayyaad said rather plaintively “But I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m still a citizen. I have rights.”
Grim laughed. “You do. Find a Magistrate and he will explain them to you. I don’t think the commander is going to care too much, but you could ask.”
Fayyaad looked at him like he was mad. “There’s no Magistrates in Pranan.”
Grim nodded. “My point exactly. But maybe when we get back to Kethem you can get them to retroactively say it wasn’t fair to lock you up.”
Fayyaad’s expression changed to confusion. “What good would that do me?”
Grim tried to look serious. “None at all.”
Fayyaad rolled his eyes.
On the other side of the room were Alan and Lug. Grim was still confused about their relationship despite spending a fair amount of time with them aboard the Venture, time where Alan seemed to take a particular interest in Grim’s history, punctuated with requests for information on a myriad of things whose only common theme was a complete lack of relevance to anything of importance. Lug had said little the entire trip. Alan had called Lug his bodyguard, but Lug seemed to be more than that, more like a trusted servant. A servant, however, without the servile attitude. Sometimes it even seemed like Lug called the shots. Grim wondered if they were a couple, but there was no intimacy or sense of affection between the two.
Fayyaad looked like he was going to dive into another rant when the door opened and Commander Noth, the man Salin had been talking to at the dock, entered. Noth was old, grizzled, and walked with a permanent chip on his shoulder. He seemed perpetually angry at something. Maybe at everything. He wore light leather armor over the standard mud-brown uniform, a uniform with three round pips on the left collar. The armor had the crossed oar and spyglass symbol of Kethem Naval Intelligence worked into the front.
Noth glared at the group as if expecting them to snap to attention, but he had to know better by now. There had already been three sessions with him over the last two days, the first only an hour after they had arrived, all centered around the question of their role in the sinking of a Kethem light warship. A question where the obvious answer—nothing—was apparently not acceptable. The only copper to be found in that dung heap was that he was better than Salin, tough but not sadistic. Salin had shipped out with the Fith’s Hammer.
“Good morning, Commander Noth!” cried Fayyaad cheerfully, positively beaming. Grim sighed. Under normal circumstances, that would be a pleasant enough greeting, but here it was just designed to irritate the Commander. Fayyaad could be a wise-ass at times. Most of the time, actually. This wasn’t the best time for it. Grim wondered if Fayyaad didn’t understand how far Kethem Naval Intelligence could go if you weren’t a Holder. Or maybe Fayyaad just had a death wish.
The veins on the Commander’s neck were throbbing, and his eyes, already burning embers of an anger that seemed to be a constant companion for the man, lit up like someone was blowing on the coals. He didn’t even bother to ask a question, just launched into a spittle-flinging tirade about their ancestry that, while colorful, could not possibly be true. Grim sat back. Based on experience from the prior sessions, this could take a while to wind down.
Before Noth could work himself into too much of a frenzy, he was interrupted by a younger man, wearing the same armor but with only one pip to his name, who came through the door rather breathlessly. “Commander,” he cried, “Ship approaching… It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”
The Commander went cold in the beat of a heart, fast enough that Grim was sure the entire man-on-the-edge thing was a complete act. “Report. What do you mean, nothing we’ve ever seen before?”
“It’s… it’s huge, Commander.
“And black?” asked the Commander, glancing at the group. They had all told him about the encounter that ended with the sinking of the Hediro’s Wrath and the Venture. The odd thing about it from Grim’s perspective was that the Commander seemed to accept the stories of a ship larger than anything seen afloat in the Lanotalis Sea since the old empire collapsed five centuries earlier without a qualm. But then, Paj, the Kethem Guardsman on the ship, had as much as admitted the Kethem military knew something about it.
“Yes, sir,” answered the younger man.
“And precogs, divinators… they had nothing, no clue it was approaching?”
“Nothing, sir. It’s like the Hediro’s Wrath. We didn’t pick up anything until they used...” Noth gave the younger man a stern look, and he glanced at Grim and stopped. “Nothing, sir,” he finished weakly.
Noth turned back to them and said calmly, “Stay here. We will continue later.” He nodded to the younger man, and they were both heading out the door when there was a strange, muted rumbling noise, like distant thunder, and both of them paused. “What was that?” asked Noth, frowning.
Grim was suddenly terrified. He’d heard that noise before, much closer, when the black ship had attacked the Venture.
There was a bone jarring “Whump!” and a bright light that briefly outlined Noth and the more junior man through the open doorway. They went flying across the room, spraying blood from several inexplicable puncture wounds, both clearly dead before they hit the ground some seven or eight feet from where they had been standing. At the same time, a strange vibration emanated from the stone walls of the room, along with an equally strange rattling sound inside, which eventually revealed itself to be small metal pellets that finally came to rest on the floor, each one the size of a marble.
Grim’s ears were still ringing from the loud noise, but he could hear screams and cursing outside the room. He peered out. The courtyard was a shambles, with men dead or dying everywhere, a few small fires that would become large ones unless someone did something about putting them out, and something that had him really worried. In two spots in the courtyard were large metal balls that did not look like they belonged where they were sitting, two metal balls that were rapidly dispersing a green gas through slots in their sides. And where the gas and men intersected, the men fell to the ground spasming.
Grim watched the last of the bodies stop twitching as the green gas continued to expand from the northeast corner of the courtyard.
Fayyaad said, “The gas… it’s spreading out like oil on water. It’s heavier than air. It will settle, but it may take a while, and it’s still going to be concentrated enough to kill us if it reaches us.”
Grim thought quickly. How Fayyaad could guess what the strange gas would do was a mystery for another time. At the moment, escaping it was the priority.
“We need to move. I think we’re going to have unfriendly visitors. Grab a weapon.” He ran out the door to strip a sword off one of the prone bodies that had died in the first explosion. Alan, Lug, and Fayyaad followed suit, heading south across the courtyard to avoid the rapidly expanding gas. There were several smaller doors on the south side of the compound. Grim was sure they were not airtight, but the gas was spreading slowly, and the doors would hinder it.