by King, Dante
“They killed my bloody kraken,” she roared, and I could hear the undiluted fury in her voice.
“Well, if it makes ye feel any better, lass,” Barry called back, “me gizzard is telling me that all of us are going to be sitting with that monster of yours at the bottom of the sea within the hour.”
“Fuck that!” Isobel Galeflint bellowed. “I’m not letting any of this scum set foot in the halls of Castle Goldskull. We will finish them here and now!”
I didn’t want to be the one to use simple arithmetic to tell her that we were hopelessly outnumbered, so I kept my lip buttoned up nice and tight.
The nine enemy ships were spreading out across the far side of the bay. They were taking up a formation that looked like they would encircle our three boats in a loose crescent moon formation and then let us have it from three directions at once with their mana-cannons.
A barrage like that with no shields…
The phrase ‘a snowball's chance in Hell’ bounced into my mind like a pinball.
The enemy ships moved in closer and closer, fanning out, but with every one of their vessels keeping a similar distance away from us. It was obvious that they meant to keep on the very edge of mana-cannon range to minimize their own casualties, while being able to concentrate their own fire in a way that would cause maximum damage to our three hemmed-in ships.
“Anyone got any fuckin’ bright ideas?” Chopsticks Nutlee called from the deck of the Tainted Waif. “How about you, Chillgrave, ye double-crossing rotter? No doubt you’ll manage to snake your way out of this mess somehow.”
“Fuck you very much, Nutlee,” Barry replied evenly, his eyes sliding from one enemy ship to the next.
“Just give them everything you have as soon as they’re in range!” I shouted the words so that every renegade nearby could hear. “There’s nothing to be gained now by reserving mana. Give them hell!”
To my surprise, and secret delight, a colossal roar went up. Not just from the rebels on my ship, but from many of the sailors on The Hellbringer, and even on Captain Nutlee’s tub.
The nine ships drew closer.
It wouldn’t be long now before the flash and roar of the cannons sounded.
I licked my lips, which had gone suddenly dry, and pondered on what spell to use. Maybe a Meteor Shower followed by a Rain of Toads followed by as many Blazing Bolts as I was capable of letting off before the enemy guns did us in.
I toyed with the idea of loosing an Abomination, but I had no idea whether the thing could swim or survive in salt water, even though it looked more than half like a giant jellyfish. While I was all for every mage going balls to the wall with their magic, I wasn’t about to waste a buttload of mana on an incantation that may or may not work.
No. Better to stick with what would actually fuck up the Arcane Council’s fleet as much as possible, rather than roll the dice on the Abomination.
“Hey,” I said, addressing the five women next to me, five of my best friends in all the world. “Hey, I just wanted to say something to you all.”
“Uh oh, this isn’t one of those goddamn sort of cute, sort of worrying we’re-about-to-die-so-I-better-tell-you-all-how-much-you-mean-to-me speeches, is it?” Janet quipped.
I paused and looked around at the five anxious but determined faces.
“Fuck no!” I said casually, rolling my eyes as if this was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard and not precisely what I had been about to do.
“Good,” said Janet.
“No, I was just going to tell you ladies that, if we get through this, you should really try and put a bit more effort into your appearance, you know?” I said.
I looked at the five absolutely stunning visions of female beauty standing in front of me, with their wild hair and their dirt and blood-stained threads, their grimy hands and their faces besmirched with mana-cannon dust and crusted with salt. Even though they looked like they had been dragged through a battle zone backwards by a Humvee, they still somehow managed to exude a sexual femininity that was only enhanced by all the blood and muck.
“I mean, I know we’re at sea and everything, but we really shouldn’t be letting standards slip like this,” I finished with a wink.
The five girls laughed. It was an incongruous sound, surrounded as it was by all that death and destruction.
“Kiss my arse, Justin Mauler,” Cecilia said, kissing me affectionately on the cheek.
Mallory was shaking her head and chuckling in a bemused fashion. Janet was clutching her ribs and laughing harder than either of the others. Alura simply smiled and shook her head, while Enwyn placed her hands on her hips and tutted to herself.
“It’s a good job Barry isn’t here,” Janet said between gasps. “Can you imagine what he’d think of all that wasted seafood? A kraken is probably a delicacy he’s just itching to cook up.”
Their laughter puttered slowly out.
“I wish that we could see all those guys again,” I said as we watched the Arcane Council net tighten.
“Meh, who’s to say that we won’t?” Janet said. “Who’s to say that death isn’t just like life?”
“In what respect?” Enwyn asked.
“In the way that no one really knows how to live,” I interrupted. “They just live. Right, Janet?”
Janet shrugged and nodded. “Yeah. Who’s to say that death isn’t like that too?”
I took a long, deep breath of tangy sea air. The sun was warm on my face, and I had five of my closest friends at my side.
“If we’re fated to face insurmountable odds and perish in our attempt to beat them,” I said, “at least we have a good day for it.”
The cannons roared their challenge.
Only, they weren’t the cannons of the Arcane Council’s ships.
Then, with another reverberating roar of guns, seven ships rounded the headland on our right. One of the Arcane Council ships was hit with a silvery, greasy-looking barrage of manaballs. I guessed the manaballs were overflowing with Chaos Magic, because instead of blowing the vessel up or setting it on fire, they melted it like it had been an ice-cream sat next to a blast furnace.
“It’s goddamn Reginald Chaosbane!” Janet screamed with delight. “It’s the goddamn Headmaster and the rest of them!”
It was goddamn Reginald Chaosbane, and he did look to be leading the rest of the rebel fleet that I thought had been spread to the four winds.
The other seven ships didn’t mess around once they arrived at the scene of the battle. There was no waving of flags or cheering. That would have been a complete waste of time.
The Headmaster was known to be an eerily perceptive man, and clearly he knew exactly who was who and what ships needed taking out. With his ship leading, the half dozen other rebel ships set to destroying the amazed Arcane Council fleet with gusto.
We had the advantage of numbers, and we had the advantage of surprise. Not only that, but we also had the will, determination, and courage of some of the most notable young mages at the Mazirian Academy; Rick, Damien, Bradley, Nigel. Combined with the skillful older hands such as Madame Xel, Odette Scaleblade, Idman Thunderstone, Igor, Leah, and Mort Chaosbane, Aunt Ruth, and Reginald himself, and we had some of the heaviest hitting mages in Avalonia on our side.
The sudden appearance of our own ragtag armada bolstered the flagging confidence of the three ships. The Hellbringer unfurled sail and set straight out to take the fight to the enemy, and I could tell that Barry Chillgrave was keen to do the same.
Isobel Galeflint and her ship passed out of easy earshot and the thunder of cannons from almost twenty warships threatened to crack the very sky open with their noise. It was then that the revolting and traitorous pirate captain, Chopsticks Nutlee, made her move.
It was the age-old double-cross while everyone was looking in the other direction, while everyone else was busy fighting for their lives against a common enemy.
On paper, it was just about the most lowdown son of a bitch maneuver that you could pull
on someone, and I had to say that it personified Chopsticks Nutlee down to a tee. Might’ve worked too, had she been trying to take out the greenest greenhorn this side of Greenland.
Who she was really trying to hoodwink and get the drop on, though, was none other than Captain Barry motherfuckin’ Chillgrave.
The Tainted Waif was already close to our schooner, so it was an easy task for Chopsticks Nutlee to use a line to swing her bulk over to our poop deck. I saw the movement out of the corner of my eye, but it was only luck that I wasn’t looking out at the clashing fleets along with everyone else. I was too far away to do anything and, with the rocking of the boat and all the hanging ropes and the smoke, firing a Storm Bolt or the like would have been too risky.
Nutlee landed behind the distracted Barry with an incredible lightness for someone with upturned bowling pins for legs. The expression on her fat, hideous face was the look of the cat that had finally got its paws on the cream and meant to drain it to the dregs.
In any fictional world there would have been one of those great culminating fights where the two pirates fight their way along the yardarms or along the plank or some other shit like that.
What Barry told me afterward was that he smelled something foul and turned in time to block Chopstick Nutlee’s initial stab with the butt of the pistol that he was holding. Both dagger and pistol went skittering across the deck and out of reach of either pirate captain.
Captain Nutlee wrapped her sausage-like fingers around Barry’s scrawny neck and began to squeeze.
“If ye look up the word ‘traitor’ in the dictionary,” Chopsticks hissed venomously between her teeth, “ye’ll find a picture of you, Chillgrave.”
“Aye, well, at least my dictionary doesn’t have pictures in it, ye fuckin’ idiot,” Barry retorted and made his move.
The poltergeist captain rammed his head forward and shattered Chopsticks’s already deformed-looking nose with a savage headbutt. As the gnoll staggered away, Barry stamped on the haft of a fallen throwing axe that lay nearby. The little throwing axe somersaulted into the air, and Barry snatched at it as it drew level with his face. As Chopstick’s Nutlee went for his throat with her pudgy fingers outstretched, Barry kicked the gnoll captain square in the vajayjay.
“Oooooh,” said Alura, who had turned to see what had distracted me and was watching the fight.
As Nutlee let out a squawk, Barry shoved the axe blade under the pirate captain’s fifth chin and swiped it across her throat. Dark blood sprayed out of Captain Nutlee’s slit neck and splashed across Barry’s chest.
And that, as they say, was the end of Captain Nutlee.
Barry, taking just enough time to wipe the worst of Chopsticks’s blood away, quickly leaned over the poop rail and bellowed for the first mate of the Tainted Waif.
When he had told the faery woman what had happened to Captain Nutlee, it turned out that dear old Chopsticks had not been overly loved by her crew. In fact, I was tempted to say that she had been viewed as nothing less than an excrescence.
The first mate seemed enthusiastic to follow Barry, especially when he had informed her that she had been bumped up to captain with an appropriate pay rise. He told her to follow him into battle and watch his back.
“Aye, aye, sir!” called the purple skinned faery, saluting with gusto.
The coming of Reginald Chaosbane and the rest of the gang was the turning of the tide in the sea battle. The Arcane Council sailors lost heart at the very moment that us renegades plumbed new depths of courage in ours.
Gradually, we worked our way through their fleet, taking one ship at a time with some rather nifty nautical teamwork.
As we were sweeping the deck under the baleful eye of Captain Chillgrave, I saw one of my fellow rebel pirates getting forced back by a wicked-faced elf with a pair of axes and charged in to help her out. I barged the back-peddling wood nymph out of harm’s way and sent her sprawling, then turned my attention to the elf.
I brought up my staff and blocked a swing from the elf, armed as he was with a pair of short-handled axes.
He growled as sparks burst into the air from the meeting of the two weapons and lunged at me again. I parried the follow-up, and then knocked the elf’s leg from under him with a beautiful rear sweep. The elf grunted and cursed for a brief instant as he hit the deck, before I brought my boot heel down as hard as I could and crushed his throat.
I switched my staff from right hand to left, scooped up a dropped dagger from the blood-slicked decking, and hurled it at a halfling bearing down on one of my fellow renegades. Unfortunately, I wasn’t Jason Bourne, and the flying knife caught the halfling in the back of the dome handle first. It was enough to put the wee fella off his stride, though. He fell with a curse, clutching at the back of head. He attempted to right himself, bright red blood pumping from the superficial wound on his scalp. He made it two paces before a blast of magic swaddled him in a suffocating cocoon of spider’s silk.
The female warrior whom I had just saved rolled to her feet, still brandishing her vector, which appeared to be a fingerless leather glove she wore, and dispatched the trapped halfling who had almost taken her down, using a nasty little vine wrapping hex that strangled the halfling in about two seconds flat.
She turned to me, eyes bright with battle fury, and smiled. The two of us locked gazes, and she nodded her head at me in thanks. Then, without warning, she scooped up a discarded spear that lay nearby and threw it as hard as she could right at me.
The spear shot over my shoulder before I even had a chance to think of getting out of the way and went right through the face of a dwarf who’d been on the verge of stabbing me in the back with a billhook.
The dwarf keeled over like a felled tree. Not really knowing what else to do, and functioning on something that resembled autopilot, I ripped the spear free of the fallen dwarf’s pulped head, noting the yellow teeth spread out across the deck like dropped jewelry. I didn’t know why I did that, maybe I meant to toss it back to the female rebel, I’m not sure. You did weird things in combat, I had noticed.
I turned, a smile of thanks now on my blood-speckled face, just in time to see the female renegade have the back of her head hacked open by a centaur that galloped past behind her.
The renegade stumbled, her mouth hanging slack, one eye crossed. She rotated on the spot, moving with the force of the blow that had killed her. The back of her skull had been cleaved clean away. I could see her brain glistening wetly in the awful gaping wound.
She fell and lay still, eyes staring up into the sky visible between the flapping sails of the mainmast. Staring into the blue. Staring beyond it.
Not nice. Not pleasant to see. Necessary though, many would argue, in the quest to save the Multiverse, which had been set out before us.
And, perhaps, a fair trade for a ghost army. For that is what, when all the smoke cleared and the last of our enemies was cast over the side of their burning ship, was what we had.
While the rebels and pirates celebrated together on the decks of the remaining ships, I joined Reginald Chaosbane and Isobel Galeflint on the poop deck of The Hellbringer.
There are few things that bring people together more effectively than surviving a hellish sea battle, and Isobel Galeflint and I had now cemented quite a friendship.
“You have my word we will supply Spectral troops for your cause, Justin Mauler,” the Pirate Queen said to me as she and Reginald shook hands. She turned her gray eyes on me. “What is more, after the courage that you and your compatriots showed here today, I think the very least I can do is guide you to where the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits is.”
I let out a sigh that was at least thirty-three-point-three percent relieved laughter.
“Thank fuck for that,” I said.
“Thank fuck indeed,” Reginald Chaosbane said with a small smile. “And now, I think there are quite a few people who are keen on sharing some libations with you, Mr. Mauler.”
He pointed down to the deck of The Hellb
ringer where Janet, Mallory, Cecilia, Enwyn, Alura, and all the frat boys were now gathered.
I smiled down at them.
“Yeah,” I said, “some libations would be fucking great.”
Chapter 21
The journey to the Stronghold of the Twin Spirits was one that was, thankfully, quite uneventful, though it took five days. For as long a stretch as I could remember, since setting foot in the Kingdom of Avalonia and its adjacent realms, I undertook a journey that was not fraught with peril from the outset.
Actually, that might not be entirely accurate.
A slim peril did loom for the duration of the voyage, in the form of getting alcohol poisoning. Everyone was celebrating like they had just come through some insane trial of fire and blood, a trial that they felt lucky to have survived at all. I couldn’t think why.
It was damned good to see all my friends again, and to have us all under one roof—or set of sails as the case might have been. We arranged things so that all those who had been in this thing from what might be called the start spent the voyage all on the same boat, as The Hellbringer was the largest and grandest vessel.
There was me, Bradley, Rick, Nigel, Damien, Cecilia, Alura, Mallory, and Janet, of course; my fellow students who had faced numerous unimaginable dangers at my side. Enwyn Emberskull, my very first magical acquaintance and crush was there too, alongside the Chaosbanes—Reginald, Mort, Leah, Igor, Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock, and Aunt Ruth.
Barry Chillgrave was there too, acting in the role as Isobel Galeflint’s first mate, although with all the ale that he spent his time sinking, it was a good thing that he wasn’t required to sink any ships. Chubbs, the Chaosbane’s werewolf ranch hand had sparked up a friendship with the other poltergeist sailor, Buttuck, and the two of them wiled away their time playing backgammon and drinking rum.