by Ree Soesbee
Tosh howled, screaming and kicking, but Cobiah was relentless. Cobiah released his bite and hit him with a double strike of his fists. One of the other sailors tried to pull him back, lifting Cobiah bodily away from his foe. Cobiah pulled free and leapt back into the fray, going for the wounded ear again. “Help!” Tosh screamed. “He’s gone mad-dog crazy! Get him off me!” Tosh rolled back and forth, trying desperately to throw Cobiah. At last, Cobiah let go of his opponent’s ear and punched Tosh dead in the face. Blood spurted from Tosh’s nose as Cobiah followed up by driving a knee into his groin.
Suddenly, hands grasped Cobiah’s shoulders and jerked him away. Three brawny sailors held on to him, their faces pale. Eye swollen shut, lip split, and spitting blood out of his mouth, Cobiah twisted and nearly broke free again. “Let me go!” he snarled. “I’m not done!”
“To the Mists with you!” Tosh skittered backward across the floor in terror. Blood dripped from his broken nose as he gasped, “Keep that madman away from me!”
“Back away, you lot!” Bosun Vost shoved through the knot of sailors. He scowled in rage and put his hands on his hips. “What’s going on here?” Glaring, he took in Tosh’s hunched posture and torn cheeks as well as the rapidly growing bruise swelling on Cobiah’s jaw. “You know the rules. No fighting aboard ship! Am I going to have to flog the both of you?”
Sethus, standing at Vost’s side, was the first to speak up. “I told you, Bosun. Tosh tripped, and, um, Cobiah tried to catch him, then they both got tangled . . .” The crowd began to scatter and duck back to their own bunks, each sailor afraid of the bosun’s wrath.
“Tripped?” Vost’s eyes darkened. “Cobiah, is this true?”
“Yes, sir.” Cobiah gulped, glancing from Sethus back to the injured Tosh.
Vost’s withering glare turned colder. “Tosh?”
It felt like the pause lasted for hours, but eventually Tosh managed to say, “It’s true.”
The bosun looked back and forth between them with a grim nod. “You ‘tripped’ and broke your nose.” Vost crossed his arms and fumed. “Fine. You two ‘trippers’ get swabbing duty tonight instead of dinner.”
“But, sir—” Sethus began, and Vost rounded on him. “You, too, for bringing me down here over nothing.” Sethus quailed and fell silent. The bosun looked between the three youths and scowled. “I’ll let it slide this time, your ‘tripping,’ but the next time I catch any of you at it—or fibbing about it!—you’ll be tripping at the end of my whip. Am I clear, you dogs?”
“Yes, sir!” all three chorused at once.
Vost grumbled and spun on one heel, pointing at Cobiah. “You and Sethus go up on deck. I want you to polish the brass up there until I can see Elona in it.
“As for you, Tosh . . .” The bosun leveled a stern glare at the other boy. “You head belowdecks to the bilge pumps. You’ll check every pump for air holes, even if you have to drown yourself doing it. With the whole ship between you, you should have plenty of space to cool down.
“Do I make myself clear, gentlemen?” Vost shouted bracingly.
It wasn’t a question. Stiffening his back, Cobiah bellowed, “Yes, sir!” with the rest.
“Now get going,” Vost growled.
Cobiah and Sethus raced upstairs as Tosh slunk toward the ladder that led to the lower hold. Nearly tripping over their feet, the two youths clambered out of the berth and hurried through the press of sailors at work on the deck. Grateful to feel warm wind on his face even if his stomach was growling, Cobiah retrieved the brass polish from a small storage hold. Sethus grabbed a small pile of rags. With an overdramatic sigh, he said, “Let’s start with the figurehead. The rest of the brass is on the forecastle, and I’d rather stay out of the bosun’s way for a while.”
The figurehead of the Indomitable hung at the fore of the ship just beneath the bowsprit. Masterfully formed and easily recognizable, the brass woman’s glorious figure curved against the keel of the ship as if her back were arched in flight. Six arms rose from her curving torso: two reaching up to the sky, two more spread back against the ship in mute protection, and a third and lowest pair curled down like the graceful limbs of a belly dancer enticing her audience. She was beautiful but hellaciously difficult to keep from turning green.
Once they were polishing her, Sethus whispered, “Where did you learn to fight like that?”
Cobiah ran a hand through his hair, feeling the bruises where Tosh had knocked him around. “When you grow up on the streets of Lion’s Arch, you learn to fight.”
“So, you’re a thief?”
Scowling, Cobiah retorted, “I don’t steal things. I just learned how to take care of myself.”
Sethus nodded, taking that in. After a moment, he blurted out, “You didn’t have to fight Tosh. You could have walked away from the fight. We’d have gotten your old doll back sooner or later.”
“What, have Vost step in on my account?” Cobiah snorted. “That would have only made it worse. In a week? Three weeks? Everyone would be helping Tosh pick on me. I’d be scum.” He smeared polish roughly on one of the rags. “Terrible idea.”
“I guess.” Sethus paused. “Is that why you went crazy down there? You looked feral.” Sethus shook his head in amazement. “You looked like a charr. You know, big teeth, claws, four ears, fuzzy killing machine?”
“I know what a charr is, Sethus.”
“Seriously. I thought you were going to start foaming at the mouth. You were a wild thing!” He made snarling noises and sank his fingers like claws into the brass polish.
Cobiah chuckled. “I wasn’t acting like a charr. I’ve just seen plenty of bullies in my time. I know what happens if they think they’re in charge.” Despite his sore jaw, it was nice to laugh again. He wiped the brass forehead with the rag, rubbing the polish in circles. “If you ignore a bully, he just gets worse. Soon everyone else joins in, and before long, you’re in a hole you can’t get out of.
“I could beat Tosh. But I knew I couldn’t beat Tosh and his friends if they all attacked me together. A bully is one thing. A crowd . . .” His smile faded. “Anyway, I wasn’t trying to win. I was trying to scare him. I wanted to show him—and everyone else—that picking a fight with me wasn’t worth the cost of winning.”
Sethus settled down on the other side of the figurehead and wrapped his rag around one of the woman’s elegant arms. “Isn’t that a little extreme?”
“Exactly.” Cobiah nodded grimly. “It’s all in the attitude. See, if you think a bully can beat you, then he’ll know he can beat you. You have to make them think you’re a difficult target, too dangerous to provoke.” Frowning, he scrubbed at the brass. “If you want to stop a battle from turning into a war, you have to scare the other guy as fast and as hard as you can.”
“Who taught you that?”
Cobiah paused. “My father. He was a soldier in Kryta before he came to Lion’s Arch. He retired from duty after the war and became a sailor.”
Perhaps hearing some sadness in Cobiah’s tone, Sethus asked, “What happened to him?”
Shrugging, Cobiah answered, “He went out to sea . . . and didn’t come back.”
For a moment Sethus thought about that, rubbing the polish from the metal with the dry side of his rag. When it was bright and shining, he asked, “Cobiah? What would you have done if Tosh won?”
“Then at least it’d be over. Either way, he wouldn’t pick on me anymore.”
He studied the brass and worked to make it shine as brightly as it could, letting the conversation fall into silence.
“You’re crazy, Coby,” Sethus sighed at last, buffing the maiden’s elegant shoulder.
“Maybe so.” Cobiah grinned. “But now the bullies know it, too.”
A fter ten months on board, Cobiah began to realize why sailors tended to look alike. The blazing sun and fierce winds of the sea weathered his skin, tanning it to a deep brown even as the labor tightened his muscles into cordwood. The food aboard the Indomitable was rough fare,
mostly: hot coffee in the morning with oatmeal, and salted meat, boiled potatoes, or fish in the evening. It wasn’t much, but it was more than Cobiah had gotten in his mother’s house, and he never complained.
Tosh, for the most part, kept away from him. Even after the long marks on his cheeks healed, they left thin white lines from forehead to cheek, missing the curve of his eye socket by only a hair. Cobiah hadn’t made any friends with the fight, but the toughs left him alone. More than once, he heard Tosh muttering curses while he played cards with the other men. Cobiah was never asked to join the poker game. He didn’t mind.
They’d been twice to massive Kaineng City in Cantha, each time carrying a heavy cargo of cotton and returning with a load of silk and other goods. Cobiah loved exploring the twisted labyrinth of Kaineng City’s streets and trying the strange Canthan food, but best of all was the pure freedom of being out to sea. Travel was glorious, opening his horizons to different cultures and perspectives. He relished life aboard the ship and being part of the Indomitable’s crew, despite the adversity of sailing and the difficult labor. He wanted to see the world.
But he never got off the ship when they docked in Lion’s Arch.
Cobiah spent the better part of each day chatting with Sethus and the older sailors aboard the ship. If he saved part of his morning ration for them, the old-timers would share stories in exchange, and Cobiah loved their tales. They talked about heroes, like those who fought to save Kryta from the White Mantle as his grandfather had done, and about the men and women of Ascalon who struggled against the ferocious, man-eating charr. They told him about the wild plains of Kryta, the sunlit hills of Ascalon, the ghost tales of the Maguuma Jungle, and the soaring, snow-covered Shiverpeaks. But best of all, Cobiah loved when they told stories of the lost cities of ancient Orr.
“Why do you like Orr so much?” Sethus asked him one night when they were lying in their hammocks. He bunked below Cobiah, occasionally reaching up to poke him with one foot when he couldn’t sleep . . . which was all the time. “Orr’s boring, Cobiah. It’s all sunk underwater now. There’s nothing to see! It’s not like you can ever go there, so what’s the point? I’d rather hear about the heroes of the Searing in Ascalon. Taking out the charr.” Sethus punched at the air as if fighting an enemy. “Winning the hand of the fair maiden Gwen! Those are good stories.”
“Charr are just mindless monsters, Sethus.” Cobiah yawned. “There’s nothing interesting about a mindless eating machine. You might as well be scared of the dolyak that pull carts in the city. Orr is where magic comes from. The gods themselves lived there once. And now it’s vanished beneath the ocean, never to be seen again. Think of all the riches it must contain—the wealth and ancient secrets! I’d take that over monsters any day.”
“Orr sank because of the charr,” Sethus said smugly. “They marched across Ascalon and then went to Orr next. And the wizards of Orr—”
“Viziers,” Cobiah said, correcting him.
“Whatever. A vizier tried to use magic to stop the charr army but ended up sinking the whole peninsula. The gods themselves punished him; he got turned into a lich in penance for what he’d done. You know what a lich is? It’s an undead creature, risen from the grave!” Sethus grinned ghoulishly. “He got punished, Orr was destroyed, and the charr conquered Ascalon instead. That means the charr won. See? Charr beats Orr.” Sethus crossed his arms and swung back and forth in his hammock. Even though it was dark, Cobiah could hear the grin on his face.
Cobiah rolled his eyes and let the subject drop.
The next morning, Vost woke them up with his usual blustery yelling, rolling sailors out of their hammocks if they were slow to rouse. The ship’s bell rang loudly. “What’s going on?” Cobiah rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Corsairs on the horizon?”
“Captain’s inspection,” Vost grumbled as he stomped past. “Get on deck!”
Sethus punched Cobiah in the arm and raced toward the stairs. Not nearly as quick as the smaller boy, Cobiah called after him jovially as he trundled along with the press of sailors climbing up the ladders from the berth to the main deck.
The sailors arranged themselves in their rows. Some tugged their shirts down or straightened the bandannas at their necks in case Captain Whiting took notice. Most of them didn’t bother, eyes wandering to ropes that needed to be coiled or sails that had mending to be done. An extra inspection was unusual, but it wasn’t enough to cause concern. Most likely, the captain just wanted to double-check the ship’s count before they reached port.
Heavy sighs and mutters escaped the bravest as the captain and his officers came out of the quarterdeck cabins. “Gah, get it over with,” Cobiah grumped under his breath. Daylight was wasting. He saw Vost standing on tiptoe at the banister, speaking in low tones to Damran, the pilot. The conversation seemed sober, their voices grim, and a tension spread through the crowd. This was unusual. Even the cold sea wind felt somehow wrong.
“Can you hear what they’re saying?” Cobiah whispered to Sethus, who was closer to the front ranks.
Sethus squinted and tried to put together the bits he could hear. “Sounds like a ship was sighted last night. The men on watch late said they saw something signaling. Flashing lights at us.”
“A message? What did it say?” He got no answer. One of the older sailors in the front row hushed them with a hiss and a glare.
As Vost stepped back, Captain Whiting moved gingerly toward the banister. His emerald baldric shifted about his tubby belly, the medals of honor twinkling and clanking with each uncertain step. The captain paused to exchange a few words with his first mate and the old navigator, then ran one lace-cuffed hand through the sparse hair atop his forehead with a gesture that spoke volumes. Cobiah watched him interestedly, wondering what had the officers in such a strange state. Usually they spent only a few minutes on the quarterdeck, the thick brass banister separating the crew’s world from the high heaven of the pampered officers.
But today, instead of tossing a glance over the crew and heading back inside, Captain Whiting sidled to the railing with obvious discomfort. He gripped the brass rail with both hands, cleared his throat, and began—hesitantly—to speak.
“Gentlemen and ladies,” he said to the crew, staring out over their heads in awkward formality. Cobiah blinked. The captain’s voice was thin, nasal, not at all what he’d have expected to come from the man’s barrel chest. He’d thought it would have more gravity. Instead, the master of the Indomitable sounded like a sheepish schoolboy addressing the class. “King Baede has given us new orders. A creature has been sighted in these waters. It’s wreaked havoc on two of his vessels, and now we’re tasked with tracking down the monster and destroying it. Therefore, our normal voyage has been postponed.
“We are the only ship of the line in the area.” Whiting shifted from foot to foot, gauging his words—or possibly, Cobiah guessed, trying to remember how he’d rehearsed them. “We’re well armed and well crewed. Nothing will deter us from the king’s duty.” Captain Whiting lifted his hat and ran a hand through his thinning shock of hair. “Once we have ascertained the issue, we will return to Lion’s Arch and bring word to the king at his palace. Only then will we resume our voyage to Cantha and deliver our cargo.” He coughed. Lowering his eyes to stare down at his polished boots, Whiting finished lamely, “That is all.”
Battle! Cobiah’s heart leapt in his chest. He’d never seen a ship-to-ship fight, but he’d often imagined the Indomitable’s cannons thundering over the waves as the galleon nimbly danced through currents. He dreamed of sails stretched to their capacity, boards creaking with the force of a sudden turn. What an adventure!
Vost stepped in front of the ranks, shooting a concerned glance over his shoulder at the three officers on the quarterdeck. With a roar, he called out, “You louts heard the captain! Back to work, and twice as hard, or I’ll flog your hides myself! Tack her rudder north by northwest, back toward Kryta, and make it fast!”
The sailors scrambled to obey,
running for the sail ropes and the ship’s rudder. Cobiah scrambled up the netting beside the galleon’s mainsail, Sethus racing him to the top. “Vost’s kidding, right?” Cobiah gasped, swinging aloft on a knotted rope. “We’re halfway to Cantha on the Sea of Sorrows. The only thing north of us is—”
“The wreckage of Orr.” Sethus looked distinctly less pleased. He pulled himself up onto the high yard, the upper crossbar of the main topsail.
“Why us? Sethus, why are we headed to Orr?”
Sethus shrugged. “Everyone knows our captain’s a special favorite of King Baede; he’s dining at the palace most of the time we’re docked in Lion’s Arch. My guess is that Cap’n Whiting talked up the Indomitable, and now that there’s a problem, he’s going to have to live up to his bragging.”
“Well, we’re on a good ship. We’ve got a lot of firepower and a full load of munitions. This’ll be a breeze!” Cobiah swung out on the spar, tying a rope around his waist before he crawled out to cut free the sail. “The Indomitable can handle anything.”
“Cobiah, we’re talking about Orr. Those are dangerous waters. We’ll be sailing through sharp corals and rock pillars. There are broken stone ruins under the sea capable of tearing open our hull if the tide’s too shallow—and the tide there is completely unpredictable.” Sethus looked pale. “I don’t care what the tales say. No sane captain sails there. It’s like asking to have your keel ripped open and your belly eaten by krait.”
“Come on, Sethus. You’re just angry we aren’t sailing to Ascalon,” Cobiah teased, pulling up the free-hanging ropes as he sat balanced on the crossbar.
“Ascalon doesn’t have a coastline, you nitwit. It’s landlocked.” Sethus coiled the netting slowly in his hands. His dark hair fluffed out with the rippling breeze, brushing away from worried features. The ship was turning her bowsprit into the wind, and below them the ship rocked lightly to the side, altering her course with the movement of the rudder and recalibration of the galleon’s tremendous white sails. “Nobody goes to Orr, Cobiah. It’s a cursed land. A dead land. A drowned country that the gods themselves abandoned,” Sethus murmured over the rush of the wind. “I don’t care what the king thinks is important. We shouldn’t be going there. If we get too close, that land will curse our ship, too.”