by Rosie Scott
Behind Altan, a few of his soldiers lowered the blue flag, before hoisting up the red flag, signaling to his group that they were free to attack at will. At the far end of our navy, the sound of another war horn cut through the air from Uriel's ship, and a glimmering shield of life magic flickered into place as the healer prepared for battle.
“Red flag! Up, up, up!” Cyrus directed his men, watching as the soldiers hurried to follow his order. The Sentinel turned around, walking to the back of the ship to oversee the ten galleons following us. Lifting his own war horn, Cyrus took a deep breath, before blowing through it to the navy behind us.
HUUURRRNNNNN!
As if on cue, the ships behind us started to spread themselves over the water, life shields appearing over each of them. The galleons looked so tiny from our place on the battleship. The soldiers were energetic for battle. Out of all the armies I'd ever fought alongside, the Eteri Army was especially ecstatic going into war. Their constant use of war horns not only seemed like a form of communication and direction but also celebration.
Cyrus turned back to the ocean ahead and lifted the binoculars to his face. He laughed joyously, before handing the magnifier tool to me. “Look at them, Kai! Scrambling around like ants!”
Through the glass, I saw the dwarves on board the nearing warships scurrying around on deck, moving siege weapons into place. I smiled as I asked, “Do you think they fear the war horns?”
“Never thought about that,” Cyrus admitted, “but maybe they do. Here. Give them something to fear.”
I pulled the binoculars down to find the Sentinel was handing me his war horn. “You sure you didn't mean to hand this to Nyx? She's pretty great at blowing things.”
Cyrus chuckled. “No, I meant to hand it to you. Don't sell yourself short, Kai. Cerin seems like a very happy man.”
I laughed at the unexpected joke, before I left the poop deck with the horn, walking past soldiers and friends alike until I reached the railing of the bow. I took a deep breath, lifting the conical tool to my lips. As I blew the horn, it shook intensely, forcing the deep sound toward the enemy ships with harsh vibrations.
HUUURRRNNNNN!
We were close enough to the coast now that I could see the dwarves rushing around with my own eyes. I smiled with amusement.
Yes, they do fear the war horns. As I heard more of the horns going off, I saw Altan waving to me playfully from his ship, as if trying to one-up me after noticing I'd been the one to make the noise. I laughed at his enthusiasm, before facing forward.
Let's give them a reason to fear.
Twenty-six
BOOM! Shhhheeeerrr...!
A volley of round cannonballs flew through the air in an arc toward Altan's ship, crashing into the white life magic and ricocheting into the blue waters below, causing geysers of white foam to explode upward. The life mages on board stayed near the metal chargers, refreshing the shields. Given the long distance the cannonballs had to cover, not many of them had hit. The closer we came to the other ships, the more damage they would do.
“Haha! It's gonna take more than that, ya filthy metalhuggers!” Altan screamed from the bow, before laughing boisterously and turning back to his crew. “Let's have some music, boys!”
The harsh beats of a drum echoed through the air from the first Sentinel's ship, pumping up the soldiers for the nearing battle. A few of them started singing a rough sea shanty, though I couldn't ascertain the lyrics from our distance.
BOOM!
One of the dwarven galleons to the right of their defensive line-up swayed in the ocean as its cannons released a row of ammo with expulsions of smoke. The cannonballs raced through the air toward our own ship, and as I watched them approach with fascination, I gave myself a shield.
“Kai!” Cyrus yelled behind me. “Back from the bow!”
I backed away from the bow of the ship, the war horn still in my hand. The soldiers on board ducked to the ground as the cannonballs flew overhead, and I followed suit, dropping to the deck. Our ship had no shields, so we relied only on protection for individuals. One cannonball crashed into the iron-side of the battleship with an ear-piercing clink, and another flew through the top of one of our ship's masts, breaking the thick wood in two and causing the top section of it to fall heavily to the blackened deck below. The soldiers scattered to let it drop.
“That was a good hit!” Cyrus mused aloud, taking the war horn back when I gave it to him.
“Good thing we don't need the masts on this beaut,” Maggie spoke up from behind the wheel.
BOOM!
All at once, three of the dwarven warships ahead released cannon fire into our front line. The cannonballs flew toward our ships, causing life magic to flicker and water to explode upward. We were now close enough to the other ships that I could hear the dwarves screaming orders and obscenities. Along the right coast, civilians were rushing outside of homes and fishing shacks alike in panic. Some of them decided to go back inside and wait out the attack, while others fled south, seeking to put as much distance between their families and us as possible.
A battleship went from a standstill to slowly maneuvering around the defensive line of galleons before it. On the deck, the dwarves appeared to be preparing for melee battle. Given that the huge ship was coming toward us, I figured their plan was the same as ours. They sought to remove the largest ship from the battle to give them an advantage over the smaller ones.
“We got battleship movement, Cyrus!” I shouted back to the Sentinel.
“I see it!” He yelled in reply. “Maggie, intercept!”
“Aye!” The engineer pulled the wheel to the right, and our ship slowly angled toward the other. When the enemy vessel made no move to change its course, I knew it meant to meet us in combat. Because the ship was now between us and the defensive line, we were no longer targeted by cannon fire. The dwarves would not risk hitting their own.
I turned from the railing to see Cyrus at the back of the ship, directing the small navy behind us to both sides. Once we came to a stop to battle, they would file around us to attack the defensive line from two spots.
I searched for Altan's ship. The Sentinel was so excited for the battle that it must have affected his men, because the galleon had sailed faster toward the enemy than the rest of the vessels, leaving a small gap between his ship and the others under his command. The leader's ship slowly turned in the water ahead, the first to engage. Soldiers on the dwarven warship prepared grappling hooks, and Altan stood at the bow with both hands in the air, building a spell. The skies above the two hostile ships darkened until they were nearly black, thick tumultuous clouds forming where there had previously been none. Whistling pierced through the air as fire fell from the skies, crashing into the dwarven ship and ocean alike.
I moved to the right railing of the quarterdeck. Maggie was preparing to pull up beside the other battleship, and I wanted to be ready to meet our foes in battle. A few spells whizzed through the air from our mages, elements crashing into flesh and defensive shields alike. The dwarves retaliated with siege weapons, angling them forward to aim at our soldiers before either side was close enough to board. A ballista was fired toward our deck, and the giant dart crashed into the life shield before a soldier's chest. The protection had mostly protected him from the initial damage of the hit itself, but the dart's momentum was so great that the pressure forced the soldier through the air, using his own body to break through the opposite railing of the ship. The soldier screamed as he flew through the air, gravity pulling him to the merciless waters below.
Cerin rushed up beside me, already holding a building necromantic spell. From its intensity, I immediately knew what it was. He forced the energy over the railing and to the enemy ship's deck. The magic flew through the air between battleships in a blur of black and into a group of waiting dwarves. Many of them had wooden or steel shields held before them to block spells, and many were already dotted with evidence of having defended successfully, with ice shards stick
ing out of broken wood and black scorch marks from fireballs. The shields could not protect them from the death magic, however, for as the spell exploded against them, the fog seeped above and below their protections, sizzling as it crawled over and into their bodies. A group of the soldiers fell dead, and thick black energy rose from their corpses, racing back into Cerin's chest. The necromancer immediately started to tremble with the immense power of a leeching high, and he rolled his neck noisily with impatience as he pulled his scythe from his belt.
The battleships pulled up beside one another at last, and soldiers on both vessels were so revved for the fight that they were jumping over the gap between ships even before they came to a complete stop. Cerin's abundance of energy granted him even more battle prowess than usual, and after only one swing of his scythe two dwarves were decapitated and another was caught on the end of the weapon, slowly dying from a punctured spine. My lover kicked the man off of the blade with a boot, leaving him to die on the deck of the ship as he came to meet more victims in battle.
Both sides knew our close proximity would not allow us to use the cannons, so it turned into a chaotic brawl that spread over the two decks like a claustrophobic land battle. There was hardly room to breathe let alone swing a weapon, so Cerin, Anto, and Maggie all found themselves at a severe disadvantage when it came to melee.
“Somebody should clear the deck!” I heard Jakan yell, just to turn and see him grinning beside me. Two orbs of purple energy grew in his palms. I recognized the spell, but I couldn't remember what it was. Since the thief's focus was on his magic he was targeted, and four different dwarves crashed weapons into his shield. I regenerated it as he forced the spells toward two separate foes. As soon as the purple energy sunk into their heads, the two soldiers started screaming in fear. Both of them scrambled between their comrades, rushing immediately to the railing of their own ship and jumping overboard.
“Show-off!” I teased him. Two dwarves before me fell in clumps on the deck, at the mercy of death magic. I didn't raise the dead yet because the quarterdeck was cluttered as it was.
The flickering of life magic brought my attention to the bow of the enemy ship, where Azazel's shield was weakening. The archer had no vantage points, so he was utilizing his karambits. He was in the midst of fending off three separate dwarves, dodging hits more than he could block them. As one of the dwarves swung a massive ax toward his gut, Azazel paralyzed one of the foe's friends, catching the man's body as he fell. The archer held the body before him, and when the ax completed its arc, the dwarf's own friend was nearly split in half at the chest.
“Fuckin' tunnel rat!” The dwarf with the ax screamed, using a racist epithet against the Alderi I hadn't heard in quite some time. As Azazel dodged the next blow, the other foe managed to land another hit into his shield, and it disappeared.
I was already on my way to him, leeching from each dwarf that rushed to intercept me. I was used to Azazel having terrible luck when it came to being hurt, and I didn't want something like that to happen again. As the dwarf with the ax threw the weapon into another swing, my heart lurched into my chest. Azazel would have to dodge it, and there was another foe right at his back, preventing him from doing so.
Azazel thrust an arm out, targeting the ax with telekinesis. The ax was forced back into the dwarf's chest mid-swing, stunning the man and forcing him to fall back to the deck, the large weapon clattering on the wood beside him. The archer immediately turned, swiftly dodging a swing of the other foe's sword. As the opponent tried to regain himself, Azazel lurched forward, the hook of his karambit sinking deep into the man's throat and pointing inward. With a mighty tug, cartilage and muscle alike were separated from the throat, and the man died with the sound of hollow wheezing from a severed larynx.
I regenerated Azazel's shield when I finally was at his side, even as he forced a paralyze spell toward the man with the ax who was scrambling to get off the deck. When the dwarf fell back from the spell, Azazel grabbed his body, pulling it to the edge of the ship and hoisting the man up onto the railing with a grunt of effort. He held the paralyzed dwarf up with one hand as he prepared the burden spell with the other. When he pushed the dwarf's body to get it to fall overboard, he directed the dark alteration energy toward his falling foe, imbuing the paralyzed man's flesh with excess weight. Between the two spells, I couldn't imagine the dwarf's death in the deep waters would be pleasant.
“That was overkill,” I commented to my friend, finally raising the dead as we made progress through the ship's numbers.
“He called me a tunnel rat,” Azazel reasoned nonchalantly.
I couldn't help but chuckle breathlessly at his response as I drained the life from more victims. “Would you mind not getting yourself cornered? I was having flashbacks to the tower in Hazarmaveth.”
Azazel shot another paralyze spell toward a foe in the midst of fighting Nyx, and the assassin went to work on gouging out the woman's throat after she fell. “I'm trying not to be by your side at all times, Kai. I was trying to fight on my own.”
I frowned over at him. “Why?”
“I heard two of the soldiers talking a few days ago,” the archer replied, “whispering about me when they didn't think I could hear. They were arguing over why I'm always next to you. One claimed I was trying to steal you from Cerin, and another called me a puppy. I don't know what a puppy is, but it didn't sound like the best comparison.” Azazel took a moment to switch his karambits out for his bow since the deck was starting to clear. “You get annoyed with my attempts to protect you sometimes, so I thought maybe that was why. I thought giving you space would be best.”
Anger swelled in my chest at the two gossiping soldiers. It was little wonder why Azazel had been spending more time alone the past few days of travel. “Perhaps next time you could ask me how I feel, first.”
Azazel glanced over, looking troubled. “How do you feel?”
“I feel immensely protective of you,” I replied, transferring some of the energy I'd leeched to him. “And I know you feel the same of me. Perhaps those two assholes were just envious of our friendship.”
When I caught the archer's eyes again, they were nostalgic in mine. My words mimicked his own the first time he'd ever opened up to me. “You want me to fight beside you, then?” He asked as if to make sure.
“Yes, Azazel,” I blurted before I laughed dryly. “It's charming how clueless you can be when it comes to friendship.”
“I never had anyone before you,” he replied, his tone low and introspective. “I'm terrified of doing something wrong and messing everything up with you.”
My heart warmed at his honesty. “Then take my advice and talk to me next time you're uncertain. Friends should be able to be open and honest with one another.”
“Okay.” Azazel hesitated, pulling back the string of his bow until it was taut, and releasing it. The ammo flew over the deck of the ship and pierced the trachea of a woman in the midst of fighting Jakan. The thief glanced up and nodded his thanks before rushing to another foe. “I'm sorry, Kai,” he said softly, as he grabbed another arrow.
I smiled at Azazel's humility. “Don't be.”
“Help! They're boarding the sh—” The scream was cut short by the sound of metal swishing through the air. My eyes frantically searched for the voice, moving over the two decks to the opposite side of our own battleship. The first thing I saw was the upward spurting of thick blood, exploding like a fountain from the severed neck of a Vhiri mage. The dwarf beside him held a two-handed ax which was covered in blood, and the short man reached down to grab the head of our comrade, before roughly throwing it into the crowd of our soldiers in a movement that was meant to intimidate and let us know we were surrounded.
There was no ship on that side that I could see. Instead, the dwarves had sent multiple boarding boats to our own battleship, and their soldiers were climbing to the deck using many grappling hooks and thrown rope ladders. The boats were so tiny we hadn't noticed their approach. In the o
cean between our battleship and the fight raging closer to the shore, the waters were dotted with drowning dwarves and broken wood. The allied ships had sunk a few of the boats on their way to us, but they hadn't reached everyone.
The dwarves were piling onto the deck of our ship like a spreading virus, and their presence boosted the morale of their comrades. We'd made significant progress against our foes on the first warship, but now we'd have to get through their reinforcements.
The mages were running low on energy since the weather was so dry and windless, and the only environmental energy we could pull from came from body heat and battle. I'd been doing nothing but leeching so far, and my brain tingled with a high. The decks were even more crowded now that the dwarves swarmed over them, so I sought to help the others in the only way I could.
Generat le shouer del mana. Both of my hands lifted to the sky, using the energy of my high to funnel into a spell I'd never yet had the chance to use. A combination of life and water swirled over both hands in a beautiful shade of turquoise, the water clearer than it had any right to be. I forced the spells to the sky, and like most magic which called forth the weather, I expected the skies to darken.
The skies stayed a light, clear blue as the energy rains began to fall, the water glistening in streaks of white from the bright High Star sun. As the rains pelted our mages below, the life magic within them refreshed their energies. Many of the mages looked confused because the spell was rare, but they were also relieved to get the aid. Only a few seconds after the rains started falling, the combination of the precipitation and the sunlight in the sky formed a beautiful rainbow over our battleship, casting the deck and our soldiers in strips of bright color.