“Did anybody remember to tell Lady Zelana that those two are going along with Skell?”
“Why don’t we let Veltan take care of that?” Sorgan suggested with a sly smirk.
“What a wonderful idea, Sorgan,” Narasan replied with no hint of a smile.
“What do you think, Narasan? Do we want to take those farmers with us? They’re not really very good, you know.”
“Maybe we should,” Narasan replied. “I’m fairly sure that Veltan wants us to get them involved, and he’s the one who’s paying us. Keselo’s been training them, and he tells me that they’re getting better. They were a bit awkward right at first, but they seem to be improving. This is their homeland, after all, and they won’t really inconvenience us too much.”
“I hate fighting alongside amateurs,” Sorgan complained. “You never know when they’re going to just jump up and run away.”
Narasan shrugged. “We can keep them sort of off to one side until we’re certain that they’ll do what they’re supposed to do. Then we can gradually move them into the main action. Nobody’s really all that great during his first war, but we all got better at it as time went by, didn’t we?”
“You’re probably right, Narasan. I guess there’s really no such thing as a natural-born warrior—except for maybe Longbow. I think that one may have cut his teeth on arrowheads when he was just a baby.”
“How’s our supply of venom holding out? That definitely gave us an advantage in the last war.”
“We’ve got enough to get us by until we kill more snake-men.”
“That took a bit of getting used to, didn’t it? You almost never come up against an enemy that supplies what you’ll need to defeat him.”
“Not an intelligent enemy, that’s for sure,” Sorgan agreed, “but the snake-men wouldn’t recognize intelligence if it walked up and bit them on the nose.”
All in all, Narasan was satisfied with their rather rudimentary plan. The war in Lady Zelana’s Domain had taught him that setting anything in stone in a war with the creatures of the Wasteland could have disastrous results. As individuals, their enemies were stupid beyond belief, but Narasan had come to realize that their real enemy here in the Land of Dhrall was not a single individual. The concept of a group awareness was alien—even absurd—but Narasan had come to realize that dismissing things on the basis of absurdity could also have disastrous consequences.
Fortunately, they had help, but once again, Narasan was somewhat uncertain about just exactly who was helping them. The spring flood that had purged the ravine above Lattash of enemy invaders had seemed to be a natural event that occurred every year, but would the natives of Chief White-Braid’s tribe have built the village of Lattash right in the path of a natural disaster of those proportions if they’d been aware that its occurrence was inevitable? Narasan was very dubious about that.
Veltan and his family definitely had abilities that no human could possibly possess, but when the twin volcanos at the head of the ravine had suddenly exploded, Veltan quite obviously hadn’t known that it was going to happen. His shrill warning that had sent them all scrambling up the sides of the ravine had been filled with a kind of panic-stricken astonishment. Something was helping them in this war, but for the life of him, Narasan couldn’t identify it. He was grateful for the help of this unknown friend, but he’d feel much more at ease if he knew just exactly who—or what—the friend was.
SKELL JODANSON OF KORMO
1
Skell and his younger brother Torl had been born in the port city of Kormo on the west coast of the Land of Maag, and they were the sons of the famous Captain Jodan of Kormo. Captain Jodan’s longship was the Shark, a name that struck terror into the heart of every Trogite who sailed the western sea. There had never been any doubt that Skell and Torl would grow up to be sailors, and their childhood was a time of impatience and yearning. As they grew older, it became common practice in the port of Kormo for every sea captain to order a thorough search of his ship before leaving the harbor, since there was a distinct possibility that one of Jodan’s boys was hiding somewhere on board.
Skell and Torl became very good swimmers during that stage of their boyhood, largely because they’d been thrown over the side of at least two or three longships a week.
The complaints Captain Jodan kept receiving from other ship captains finally irritated him enough that he decided it was time for his boys to go to sea. Skell and Torl had always assumed that when their father finally relented and let them go to sea, they’d be sailing aboard his ship, the Shark, but Captain Jodan didn’t see it that way. During his younger years, he’d occasionally had shipmates who were the sons of the captain, and he’d found them to be lazy, incompetent, and generally despised by the rest of the crew. He’d long promised himself that when his sons went to sea, they’d have to work their way up from the bottom and earn every promotion in the same way that other sailors were obliged to do.
As it happened, Captain Jodan had sailed with the now- famous Dalto Big-Nose when they were both young, and the two shipmates had become lifelong friends. And so it was that when Captain Jodan decided that it was time for his boys to go to sea, he contacted his friend and handed the boys over to serve as deckhands on board Dalto’s ship, the Swordfish.
Skell and Torl were very excited as the Swordfish sailed out from the harbor at Kormo on a fine spring day, and they were standing at the bow looking out to sea in boyish anticipation when Captain Big-Nose found them.
It was at that point that the boys learned the first rule of seamanship: “Always look busy when the captain’s on deck.”
They spent the next three days on their knees scrubbing the deck of the Swordfish, and things definitely went downhill from there. Any time that a task was difficult or unpleasant, Dalto automatically called for Skell and Torl. The boys soon agreed that they’d jump ship at their first opportunity, but the Swordfish had plenty of food and water on board, so she stayed out at sea for months on end, leaving Skell and Torl on their knees, scrubbing the deck.
In their spare moments—which were few and far between—they came to love the sea. She was forever changing, and at times she was so fair that the boys were almost stunned by the play of light and darkness sweeping majestically across the waves. It was usually at that point that Captain Big-Nose caught them idling and gave them a blistering reprimand.
Later—much later, actually—Skell reflected back on that first voyage, and he began to see the logic behind the captain’s behavior. He had set out from the start to persuade the boys that their father’s fame had nothing to do with their status. Big-Nose started them at the bottom because every apprentice seaman started there. After that it was up to them to prove that they were worthy of any task other than scrubbing the Swordfish’s deck or carrying buckets of rancid bilgewater up out of the hold.
By the time that the Swordfish returned to the port of Kormo, Skell and Torl had graduated to the post of oarsmen, and they were beginning to feel like real sailors.
The Swordfish laid over in the port of Kormo, and before she went out to sea again, the boys’ cousin Sorgan signed on as a top-man. Sorgan had sailed aboard a couple of other Maag longships, and he was a few years older than his cousins. He tended to take a superior attitude toward his younger relatives, and Skell decided at that stage of the relationship that it might be proper to point out that he and Torl were the real superiors in the family, since they were the sons of Captain Jodan, while Sorgan was merely the son of their father’s sister.
That mightily offended Sorgan, so he “whomped” on Skell for quite some time—to the vast amusement of the other crewmen. Skell did manage to give his cousin one good solid punch, however, and it was that single punch that gave Sorgan Hook-Beak his name.
The Swordfish continued to savage the wallowing Trogite ships in the waters off the coast of the Land of Maag, although she occasionally sailed off along the south coast, and then went as far as the coast of the Land of Shaan, where Dalto’s crew
raided Trogite encampments in search of gold. So it was that Skell, Torl, and Sorgan learned the rudiments of land warfare.
The gathering of gold was, of course, the main reason that Maag longships went out to sea, but as the years went by, Skell came to realize that it was the sea herself that had captured him. Gold was nice enough, but it could never match the beauty of the sea when columns of sunlight came down through the clouds to march across her glittering surface or when the moon rose to bathe her in pale light. She was forever changing, and, like every other Maag who chose a life at sea, Skell came to love her. Like every sailor, he enjoyed himself enormously when the Swordfish made port, but he knew that the sea was his real home.
After Skell had been at sea for about ten years, the Swordfish hauled into the port of Weros, and the crew went ashore in search of entertainment after Captain Big-Nose had sternly advised them that the Swordfish would be sailing out again in three days, and that he wouldn’t wait for any of them who happened to be late. Skell and Torl returned just in time, but Sorgan didn’t, so the Swordfish sailed off, leaving him behind. Skell and Sorgan had settled their differences by then, and Skell actually missed his cousin.
Then, on a rainy afternoon just after Skell had turned twenty-seven, the Swordfish hauled into the harbor of Kormo, and the Shark was anchored there. Captain Jodan rowed his skiff over, conferred briefly with Captain Big-Nose, and then he came back out on deck to advise his sons that they’d just been transferred to the Shark—as first and second mates. Their predecessors, it seemed, had been killed in a tavern brawl in the port of Gaiso a few weeks earlier.
Their father obviously wasn’t happy about the situation, but he didn’t really have much choice. When they were about halfway to the Shark, he stopped rowing and gave them a stern lecture on “proper behavior.” They were now officers, so the other members of the Shark’s crew would not be their close friends. “Always be serious” had been at the core of his lecture. Laughing and grinning weren’t permitted. He closed his lecture with, “Don’t ever call me ‘papa.’ I’m ‘Captain,’ and don’t you forget it.”
The Shark, like the Swordfish and most other Maag vessels of that era, had preyed on the wallowing tubs of the Trogite Empire, although Captain Jodan, so far as Skell could remember, had never once used the word “Trogite,” preferring instead the word “Trog.” Skell always had to cover his mouth when his father said that. For some reason, the word “Trog” always struck him as hilarious.
After Captain Jodan’s sons had served as officers on the Shark for a few years, the ship had hauled into the port of Weros to lay in a supply of fresh beans in the galley. Mildewed beans don’t really taste very good, and the crew had been growing increasingly grouchy.
Skell cleverly foisted the task of buying fresh beans off on Torl, and then he went off along the scabby-looking waterfront for a tankard or six of strong ale. He was more than a little startled when he saw cousin Sorgan working on a battered-looking old ship tied up against one of the long wharves jutting out into the bay. “Ho, Sorgan!” he called out, “have you decided to build them instead of sailing them now?”
“Very funny, Skell,” Sorgan growled, dropping the hammer he’d been using to pound caulking in between the obviously new boards that formed the deck. “This ship will be the Seagull—if Ox, Ham-Hand, and I can plug up all the leaks in her hull. She doesn’t look too good yet, but give us a bit more time, and she’ll be mine.” There was a definite note of pride in cousin Sorgan’s voice.
“You actually broke down and bought your own ship, Sorgan?” Skell asked, walking out on the dock.
“I surely did, cousin,” Sorgan replied. “From here on out, I’m going to be getting the captain’s share of the loot when we rob a Trogite ship.”
Skell looked the tired old ship over. “You’ve got quite a long way to go, cousin,” he said skeptically. “Fixing her up is going to cost you a lot of money.”
Sorgan gave him a sly wink. “Money’s easy to come by here in Weros, Skell. A sailor who’s been out at sea for six months works up quite a thirst, and by midnight, he’s usually so far gone that he couldn’t see lightning or hear thunder if his life depended on it. When we start running short of money, I just send Ox and Ham-Hand out along the waterfront to troll for sailors who still have money in their purses.”
“You’re a thief, Sorgan,” Skell accused his cousin.
“All Maags are thieves, Skell. The Trogites don’t just hand over their gold because they like our looks, you know. We have to threaten them to get what we want. Say hello to Torl and your papa for me, all right?”
“First chance I get, cousin,” Skell replied, giving Sorgan a brisk salute.
Sorgan thumbed his nose in reply, and they both laughed.
Business on board the Shark was very good for the next few years, and Skell observed that Captain Jodan was putting away sizeable chunks of his share of the booty. Then, shortly after Skell’s thirty-first birthday, Captain Jodan abruptly called his sons into his cabin.
“I’ve had enough,” he announced. “I’ve spent most of my life at sea, and I’m tired of it. I’m going to live on dry land, and that means that the Shark is yours now, Skell.”
Skell resisted a sudden impulse to jump up and dance on his father’s tired-looking old table.
“There’s one stipulation, Skell,” Captain Jodan advised his eldest son. “From now on, I get one-fifth of everything you steal, and don’t try to cheat me. The first time you try something like that, I’ll sell the Shark right out from under you, and you’ll go back to being a common sailor.”
That soured Skell’s sense of jubilation quite noticeably.
The crew of the Shark relaxed more than a little after Captain Jodan’s retirement, and Skell soon realized that he was going to have to quite firmly establish a few facts. First off, despite his youth, he was the captain of the Shark, and the crew would obey his orders. For some reason, the crew of the Shark didn’t seem to take him seriously, and that soured Skell even more.
Finally, Skell’s blond-haired brother Torl came into Skell’s cluttered cabin late one evening. “You’re not doing it right, big brother,” Torl advised, seating himself at Skell’s dirty table. “You smile too much. The crew won’t take you seriously as long as you’ve got that silly grin on your face. If you want the crew to pay any attention to you, you’re going to have to try to look more like papa. He never smiled. Try to look grim and sour on the outside—even when you’re laughing on the inside.”
“If I tried something like that, I’d explode, Torl.”
“I don’t think you really will,” Torl disagreed. “Just keep telling yourself that you’re hiding your real feelings from the crew. Then you can sneak back to your cabin here and laugh all you want to.” Torl looked around the cabin. “It’ll give you something to do when you’re cleaning this mess up. If papa happened to stop by and see what you’ve done to his cabin, he’d skin you alive.”
“I’ve been sort of busy here lately, Torl.”
“Trying to find a clean shirt, maybe? Now, then, don’t you think it’s just about time for us to get me a ship?”
“What do you need a ship for?”
“Let me put it to you in a different sort of way, big brother. Did you really want me to stay here on board the Shark? When you get right down to the bottom of things, I’m at least as ambitious and greedy as you are, and if you keep me here on the Shark, I might just start getting certain ideas that won’t make you the least bit happy. Do you get my drift?”
“That’s mutiny, Torl!”
“I think that’s the word people use sometimes, yes.”
“How can I possibly buy you a ship, Torl? Papa’s taking one-fifth of everything we steal right off the top.”
Torl shrugged. “We’ll have to steal my ship, then. Papa only wants gold. He wouldn’t have much use for one-fifth of a ship—even if we could find a saw big enough to cut off part of it.”
Skell scratched his chin, squinting thr
ough one of the portholes in his cabin. “Gaiso, I think.”
“I didn’t quite follow that.”
“The crew of every ship that sails into Gaiso goes directly to the taverns—probably because the tavern-keepers of Gaiso don’t water down their grog like the keepers in other towns do. The few sailors who stay on board to guard the ship have barrels of that Gaiso grog on board to keep them pretty drunk as well. If we slip into the harbor of Gaiso along about midnight, you’ll be able to pick which ship you want, and we’ll steal it. If we put different colored sails on it and change a few other things as well, nobody’ll ever know that we stole it, will they?”
“That’s an awfully good idea, Skell.”
“Naturally,” Skell replied with a broad smirk. “My ideas are always the best. I’ll be able to give you a few men, but you’ll have to hire more to fill out your crew. Don’t start throwing your money away, though, because you’ll be paying me a fifth of everything your ship brings in.”
“A fifth?” Torl protested.
“You get to help me support Papa. We wouldn’t want him to starve, now would we?”
“That’s not fair at all, Skell!”
“Fair doesn’t have anything to do with it, baby brother. If you don’t agree, you don’t get a ship—and don’t start waving ‘mutiny’ in my face again—not unless you’re ready to give up grog and ale. If you won’t agree to help support Papa, I’ll sail off and leave you behind the first time you get drunk. Then what are you going to do?”
“You’re a cruel and hard man, Skell.”
“Naturally. I’m the Captain of the Shark. I’m supposed to be cruel and hard. Are we agreed, then?”
“What choice do I have?”
“None, little brother. I never give people choices.”
And so it was that the Shark sailed unobserved into the harbor of Gaiso in the middle of one dark, gloomy night, and Torl selected a ship that suited him. The Shark eased up beside that ship, and Torl led the boarding party that threw the few crewmen who’d remained on board over the side. Then Torl and his men hauled anchor and sailed along behind the Shark out of the harbor.
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