“He upset me, Mr. Newman,” the king said frostily. “Pray that you don’t do the same.”
Newman shut up quickly and nodded meekly.
“Two ships by the end of the month,” the king declared. He glanced to Tirpin. “That won’t be a problem, will it, mage?”
“I’ll need supplies, sire,” Tirpin said, carefully keeping his fears to himself, alarmed by the king’s reaction to Newman the engineer.
“You’ll get them,” the king said, glancing to Mannevy who nodded.
“And ships?” Newman asked. “I’ll need access to them, to fit them out.”
“I have two in mind,” the king said. Dryly he added, “They need some slight repairs but most of their damage was to their rigging.”
“That won’t bother us,” Tirpin assured him, “as we’ll be removing masts and sails.”
“No,” the king said, “leave enough of the main mast to allow for a lookout.”
Tirpin’s brows rose but he nodded in acceptance.
“Warrior and Parvour are your first ships, Mr. Newman,” the king said. “Have them ready by the end of the month.” He rose from his chair and nodded as the others rose with him. “I’ll have need for them.”
#
“Prepare to throw the log,” Ford said to Knox three days later.
“Aye sir,” Knox said. “Jens, prepare to throw the log.”
Jens, the ex-lieutenant, gave Knox an evil look but nodded in acceptance, pulling the strange assortment of wood and canvas from the locker near the helm. He assembled the pieces into a serviceable kite, attached the log line and walked to the stern.
“Turn!” he called as he released the kite held onto the line. Knox turned the timer and eyed it critically even as Jens kept an eye on the line playing out behind them. In five minutes, Knox called out, “Time!”
Jens tightened his finger on the line to stop it playing out, bent down to look at the markings hanging from it and called out, “Seven knots!”
“Secure the log,” Knox ordered, moving to the log book to mark the speed.
“Mr. Knox,” Ford called out.
“Sir?”
“Add this to your readings,” Ford said, “355.”
“Aye sir,” Knox said. “I’ll be certain to add it.”
“I’ll be in my quarters,” Ford said. “Have Mr. Franck report to me.”
“Aye sir,” Knox called. “Shall I have some food sent your way?”
Ford considered it and shook his head. “See to the crew first, if you would.”
“Aye sir,” Knox called after the departing captain. A moment later he crossed the ship to find the prince looking over the railings. “Rare sight, isn’t it, your highness?”
“I never knew there was so much sea,” the prince said weakly.
“Shall I fetch you some food?” Knox asked with malice carefully hidden in a cheerful demeanor.
The prince turned to him, turned green and threw his guts up once more over the side of the ship and into the air below.
“Maybe later, then,” Knox allowed affably, sauntering back over to the helm.
#
Down below in his cabin, Ford reviewed his charts with cold satisfaction. Spite was making a solid steady seven knots even against a breeze. In three days, she’d covered over four hundred knots. In another half day, she would have covered the whole length of the kingdom of Soria — all five hundred miles of it.
Soria was a good solid kingdom which had been led peaceably by their king for over forty years. That was in the past. Something had happened three years ago and King Sorgal had been deposed. The new king had come from one of the bordering duchies — independent dukedoms — to the west. The new King, Wendel, had consolidated his position quickly by marrying the queen and accepting her son — and the late king’s — as his heir.
The relations between King Markel and King Wendel had seemed good enough to Ford… until now.
Even with good relations, Ford could see why Markel wanted to keep news of his airship a secret. What he couldn’t understand was why Markel planned a war with Wendel — and how he could possibly hope to prevail.
Of course, Ford thought, he couldn’t understand how Wendel had overcome Sorgal with such ease. Probably he had help.
A knock on his door brought him out of his reverie. “Enter.”
Angus Franck marched in and saluted. Ford nodded back to him and gestured to the chair. “Sit.”
“Sir,” Angus said. Three days at sea had done the young man much good. His sense of ease and authority had grown steadily as he handled the duties of engineer and kept his stokers and propeller-men on task and properly motivated.
“All well?” Ford said.
Angus nodded. “All’s well,” he agreed. “I was just checking on our coal.”
“And?”
“We’ve enough for three more days,” Angus told him.
“And then we’re out?” Ford asked. The young man nodded. “So where should we stop to get more?”
“There’s the coal mines of Magiron,” Angus said. Ford nodded, peering down to his map.
Magiron was one of the northern towns of Soria, just at the edge of the border between it and the colder, sparsely populated, Issia.
“Hmm,” Ford said. “How much will we have to pay?”
“I don’t know,” Angus confessed, “I’ve never bought coal before.” He frowned. “Especially this much.”
“How much?”
“Three tons, at least,” Angus said.
“How will we get that aboard?” Ford wondered.
“The mage?” Angus guessed.
“Strictly hot and cold,” Ford said, shaking his head. “We’ll have to hoist it aboard.”
“Or haul it in sacks,” Angus said. “At a hundredweight a sack, that’d be… six hundred sacks.”
“Mmm,” Ford said. He gestured at the table, saying, “Excuse me.”
Angus glanced down and saw that the captain wanted to roll out a chart. He moved himself away from the table. Ford rolled out the chart, grabbing a pencil and a ruler.
“What do you know of triangulation?” he said to Angus.
Angus shook his head.
“We use it a lot in finding distances, and measuring courses,” Ford said, quickly pointing at a point on the chart and reaching for a compass. “We first took a bearing on the wyvern when we were here —” he tapped the point “— and the bearing was just one degree east of north.”
Angus tried to look like he understood what that meant.
Ford drew another point from a bearing on the compass and joined it to the original point on the map. He used the ruler to extend the line.
“So we know that three days ago she was somewhere on this line,” Ford said, tapping the chart. The line went through Soria, through Issia to the north and further on. “I don’t think she’s in Soria and I don’t she’s in Issia,” Ford said, drawing a line straight up from the original dot. He measured it carefully and pointed to it. “For the past three days we’ve travelled this far — five hundred miles.” He glanced at Angus who showed no signs of enlightenment. “And now our reading is just five degrees east of north —” again Ford used the compass and drew a line from it, continuing on until it intersected the first line. He leaned back and shot a smile at Angus. “And there is where your friend will be found.” He picked up a pair of dividers and set them to the distance they’d travelled — 500 miles. He used the width of the dividers to snap back and forth along the new line until he’d measured four widths. “Which means she is about two thousand miles away from us still.”
“That’s got to be at the top of the world!” Angus exclaimed. He glanced at the chart. “Are you sure you’ve got it right?”
Ford nodded. “I’ve done this before, many times.”
“But
that means —” Angus gestured for the dividers and Ford handed them over. The young man used the dividers to divide up the distance on the first line — the line from their start to Krea’s current position. “— if I did this right, it means that she traveled —”
“Flew, surely,” Ford observed mildly. Angus shot him a glance, then nodded.
“She traveled two thousand five hundred miles in a day!”
“As a wyvern? Quite possibly?” Ford agreed. “Although it’s possible that it took more time than that.”
“It’s been — what — six days?” Angus asked. Ford nodded. “So even if it took her the full six days to get there, she’d still be traveling at…” he scrunched his eyes shut, doing the calculations, “...four hundred miles a day or roughly fifty miles every hour if she only flew for eight hours a day.”
“And if she made it in just one day, she’d cover at least a hundred miles in an hour, more if she didn’t fly non-stop,” Ford agreed. He shrugged. “From what I recall, the speed is handily within her abilities.”
“How do we know she’ll still be there?” Angus asked. “And if it’s taken us three days to get this far, will she still be there in the twelve extra days we’ll need?”
“If she’s not, we’ll see it on our fork compass,” Ford said, nodding to his pocket. “My question to you is: how much coal will we need?”
“Four times what we have, at a guess,” Angus said, confirming Ford’s fears. “And don’t forget the water for the boiler.”
“So how much coal? How much water?” Ford asked.
“How much food?” Angus added, nodding thoughtfully.
“It’s going to get colder,” Ford said in agreement. He looked over to Angus. “How much coal have we used?”
“We’ve gone through a ton — twenty hundredweight,” Angus said quickly. “And about five hundredweight of water.”
“We brought twice that aboard,” Ford said. “So we know that we have enough for another three days.”
“Twice that if we can refuel,” Angus allowed.
“I’ll check with Knox but I don’t think we can load more,” Ford said.
“Even if the mage could lift the extra weight, the propellers would push us slower,” Angus said in a agreement.
“So we need to resupply our coal twice before we reach our destination,” Ford said.
“And then we’d need to find coal wherever we end up,” Angus said dubiously. “Do they have coal up in the bitter north?”
Ford shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Unless we find the coal…”
“What else can we burn?” Ford asked. “Wood?”
“Certainly,” Angus agreed. “I’m not sure how much we’d need or how well it will heat the boiler.”
Ford nodded, stood back from the table and said to the young man, “It’s enough to be going on. You’ve done well. I’ll let you get back to your duties.”
Angus stood back from the table, gave captain Ford his best effort at a salute and walked briskly out of the cabin.
#
“...so that’s where we’re at,” Ford concluded later that evening to his gathering of officers: Knox, Reedis, Angus, and Annabelle.
“We know that there’s coal at Magiron, inland at the north of Soria,” Knox said, pointing to the chart.
“And there’s another spot at the top of Issia, in the village of Snowden,” Reedis said.
Ford gave the mage a look. “You’ve been there?”
“I’ve heard tell of it,” Reedis said. He frowned in thought. “In fact, I think I heard it when we first started on the airship project.” He paused. “One of the king’s mages, I think.”
“Hmm,” Ford said. “The king has been thinking about this for a long time, it seems.”
“Clearly,” Knox agreed.
“The only question is how do we get the supplies,” Annabelle noted.
“Do you have any suggestions?” Knox asked challengingly.
“Do you have any gold?” she shot back.
Knox gasped breath for an angry retort but Ford waved him to silence.
“In fact, we do,” Ford said. “Not as much as you’d doubtless like, but not a small amount, either.”
“I heard about the prizes,” Annabelle said.
“We won’t need that much,” Reedis said.
“The big problem is how are we going to get it aboard?” Ford said.
“We can’t just land!” Knox said in agreement.
“And we couldn’t disguise our ship, there’s no river that goes up that far in Magiron,” Annabelle said.
“How far can a ship go?” Reedis wondered. “Could we land there and disguise ourselves?”
“We’ve got no masts, no sails, and ten great big colored balloons,” Annabelle said, “that’s pretty hard to disguise!”
“No one ever suggested we’d need a disguise!” Reedis said in protest.
“No one said a lot of things,” Ford said soothingly. “Our mission, now is to find the wyvern. For that we need to get coal. And we need water and food.” He turned to the others. “So how do we get it aboard?”
“Steal it,” a voice spoke from the hallway.
Ford suppressed a groan and nodded decisively to Annabelle who turned on her heels, slammed open the door and hauled the outsider in before he could react.
“Ah, Sykes!” Ford said without surprise. “So glad you could join us!”
“I thought the captain would never ask,” Sykes replied with equal aplomb, going so far as to give the captain a half-bow.
“You’ve a suggestion to help us overcome our current issue?” Ford said.
“I said steal it,” Sykes replied.
“How?”
“There’s only one way to steal it,” Annabelle said. The others looked at her. “You make people believe you’re supposed to have it.”
Ford nodded quickly, his eyes glowing. Knox was a bit slower on the uptake but he chortled when he got it.
“Thinking of brewing up a special tea, cookie?” Knox said to the witch.
“I’m sure I could think of something,” Annabelle agreed with a sly smile. She glanced toward Sykes. “Do you think you’d do as a tea-seller?”
“Perhaps I could,” Sykes agreed.
“Then it’s settled then,” Ford said.
“One thing,” Sykes said raising a hand. Ford raised an eyebrow. “I’ll want rank.”
“Master’s mate,” Ford said. “And you’ll have to earn it by doing more than this.”
“I can do that,” Sykes said. “That comes with more prize money, right?”
“From the date of your rank,” Ford agreed. “Which is today.”
Sykes spat on his hand and held it out to Ford. Ford gave him a look.
“You have my word,” Ford said. “I’ll not shake a slimy hand.”
Sykes wiped his hand on his trousers. “Suit yourself.”
“Can he keep a watch?” Ford asked Knox.
“I’ll want to see how he does, first,” Knox said giving Sykes a hard look. “You do your work and we’ll see.”
“Fair enough,” Sykes said. “So when do I get to deliver this tea?”
“Tomorrow,” Ford said. “We’re a bit over a hundred miles away from Magiron.” He gestured them toward the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“What about the prince?” Sykes asked.
“Do you want to bring him along?” Knox offered.
Sykes gave him a leer then his expression changed. “Actually, he could be quite useful.”
“He could at that,” Ford allowed. “I’ll tell him in the morning.” He gestured toward the door again. “Good night, gentlemen,” he nodded toward Annabelle, “lady.”
Annabelle snorted at the appellation, bobbed her head and
left, followed by the rest — all except Reedis.
Ford waited while Reedis turned and shut the door, pressed his ear to it for a moment to be certain that they wouldn’t be overheard, then turned back to Ford.
“Are you sure this is wise?”
“I think wisdom has long since left us,” Ford said. “But if we’re to complete our mission, we have to have the coal.”
“Perhaps we could ask the gods,” Reedis suggested.
“Really?” Ford replied. “And which god helps us steal coal?”
#
When he was finally alone, Ford paused to listen at the door. Then he walked back to his bed, a standard ship’s bunk bed sturdily contained by high wood sides. He lifted up the mattress and slid open the wooden door cleverly hidden underneath it. He smiled as he pulled out the well-polished wooden box.
He placed it reverently on his table and opened it slowly.
Inside were small carved wooden figures of the gods. Gently he laid out the soft velvet liner. He moved it so that it was on top of his compass card and carefully aligned. He frowned as he spied Ametza. Next to her was a god with a stern but benevolent gaze. He smiled at the figurine and reverently pulled it out of the box, to place it on the carefully aligned liner.
“Arolan, hear my plea,” he said. “Show me where you are. Let me aid you.”
Ford stared for a long time he stared at the figure of the god. Then slowly, the god’s head turned over his left shoulder. His grave, clean-shaven face turned haggard and lined, a beard sprouted from it and, even more slowly, what seemed like frost formed over his head. Ford let out a gasp of amazement then bowed low. He followed the line of the figure’s head and marked its position on his compass card.
Arolan’s head was pointing five degrees east of north — the same as Annabelle’s fork.
“I see, my most awesome god,” Ford said. “I shall seek you out.” He gently picked up the figurine which glowed with a godly light. “I shall give you all my aid.”
The light of the figurine dimmed then went out and the figure of the sea god was once again nothing more than a figure.
Chapter Nine: O
phidian’s Coal
The lookout spotted Magiron by the roads leading towards it; the village itself was covered in snow. One road traced the south side of the hills to the north from the coastline which they had followed for the past day; another road lead south from the center of the town. There were several thinner lines of pure white indicating the presence of snow-buried cart tracks and lesser roads. The buildings in the village were mostly obscured by the snow. Where the two roads met in the center of the village there was a dirty spot where carts and foot traffic had churned through the snow to the dirt below.
Twin Soul Series Omnibus 1: Books 1-5 (Twin Soul Series Book Sets) Page 18