Dragonfire

by Charles Jackson

  Well… that would just about sum up my week… she grumped silently, also turning toward the call and immediately feeling impressed in spite of herself. …My entire life…!

  “By the Crystal, it’s amazing…!” The queen gushed, overwhelmed with her own excitement as she joined them at the railing and watched in awe as the beast came crashing back into the water with a huge spray. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  “Why don’t you take one of those pictures of yours…?” Godfrey suggested, completely oblivious to her inner frustration, and instantly making it all better in any case by slipping his arm about her waist and drawing her in close against him, side-by-side. “What did you call them: ‘selfies’…?”

  “Okay…” she laughed out loud as she followed suit by sliding her own arm about his waist in return, finding the experience new and very pleasant. “I think you’re missing the point of it being called a ‘selfie’, but that’s actually still a really good idea! Your Majesty…!” She added, turning to the queen as her hand withdrew her phone so quickly from inside her tightly-laced bodice that Godfrey was left none the wiser as to where it’d actually been hidden. “Come and take a picture with us… take a picture with the whale!”

  “A ‘picture’…?” Charleroi asked quizzically as she moved across from her position at the rail a few metres away, the two guards hovering imposingly in the background. “Are you going to draw something?”

  “Don’t worry, Your Majesty: it’s that phone of hers… she swears it’s not majik – just a machine where she comes from…” Godfrey assured with a wry smile as they separated once more to allow Nev the use of both hands to ready a phone that she’d almost forgotten over the last few days: something that would’ve been completely unheard of back in her world.

  “I see…” Charleroi frowned dubiously, the guards taking a precautionary step or two closer before Farouk, watching like a hawk from the quarterdeck still, barked a single order directing them to stand down.

  “Okay…” Nev began, extending one arm as a signal for the queen to come on in beside them (as if embracing a monarch was a completely normal thing to do) and holding her other hand high with the phone turned to landscape mode and the screen switched to front camera. “Get in here nice and close and we can hopefully catch the show in the background…”

  “That… that’s me…! And you…!” Charli exclaimed, stunned completely by the spectacle as she realised the tiny screen, assisted by its own backlight, showed all three of them staring back.

  “Right… you need to stay very still and smile for a moment, Your Highness…” Nev explained through a tight-lipped grin of her own, concentrating on taking the shot as her free hand now hovered over the shoot button. “That’s it: nice and bright…!”

  The humpback broke the surface again a moment later, tiny in the background at such a distance but visible nevertheless, and Nev was quick enough to catch it almost at the apex of its leap with three would-be whale watchers grinning like fools in the foreground.

  “There we go!” She declared proudly, bring the phone back down and opening up the gallery to inspect the good work. A bit dark now… and the sun’s too close to the horizon on this side…” Nev muttered critically as she offered the phone over for the queen to get a closer look “…but still pretty good if I do say so myself…!”

  “This is me…!” Charli repeated, completely unable to get her head around the whole process and at the same time – rather inexplicably – finding something about it very familiar that she couldn’t lay a finger on. “This is me…!”

  “I think its brilliant… just like the person who took it …” Godfrey grinned, slipping his arm about Nev’s waist once more and giving a surreptitious hug that she returned without hesitation.

  “Always knew you’d be a smooth one…” Nev shot back with a genuine smile, then faltered for a moment as something else occurred to her. “Oh… oh…! After all we just said, I went and asked someone else to be in our first photo together… oh…!” She exclaimed again, suddenly, foolishly embarrassed that the thought hadn’t occurred to her earlier and not hiding her disappointment at all.

  “Plenty of time for that…” he smiled back, not in the slightest concerned as he hugged her even tighter. “All the time in the world…!”

  “I think I like the sound of that,” Nev decided, and as they turned back to the railing as one and she hugged him tightly in return.

  The docks at Arthur’s Port were filled with frenetic activity two days later as Randwick and William stood at the gangway leading up to the deck of a two-masted caravel, a far larger and faster vessel than the average cog that was well-suited to both long-distance trade and exploration. The pair were surrounded by a small cohort of military and civilian personnel, dressed respectively in either their smartest dress uniforms or finest ceremonial robes. Every one of the soldiers present stood waiting and ready with a small but well-packed rucksack at their feet as they all awaited orders to board.

  “I wish you luck, colonel…” Randwick offered with a grim smile, using the younger man’s newly-promoted rank as he extended his hand in farewell.

  “Thank you, general,” William nodded in return, accepting the hand firmly before offering a more formal salute. “I’ll do my best…”

  “The fate of Huon itself may rest on your shoulders now and I’ve no doubt you’ll see us proud, boy,” Randwick smiled, matching the salute with one of his own. “Bevan and the rest of the diplomatic team will have their work cut out for them, but you know the truth of what’s happening here as well as any and we need the Kings’ Council to know it also. Barnabas was a soldier, and he was a friend of mine also, once… put your case to him and the rest of the council, fair and square, and you’ll see us right, laddie.”

  “I wish you were coming with us.”

  “Aye, so do I, lad, but there’s naught for it but to stay here and lead the troops, takin’ the fight to the Blackwatch as best we can. The more territory we lose, the easier it’ll be for Baal to stake his claim for the throne. Any other time, I’d say ‘Shard go with you’ in parting…” he added ruefully “but perhaps that ain’t as appropriate now, with all that’s happened. May good fortune smile on y’, lad… do your duty, and you won’t go wrong…”

  There was another short round of salutes before William and the rest of the officers and men with him all shouldered their packs, the entire delegation then turning and making their way up the gangway, single file.

  “Delegate Norris…” Randwick called softly, addressing the last of the civilians in line as he was about to take his turn heading up to the main deck.

  “General…” Norris nodded evenly, making no show of emotion whatsoever. Small of frame and looking to be in his early thirties, he was a man of hawkish, almost pinched features with a pair of tiny spectacles perched precariously across the bridge of his long, narrow nose.

  “Young William…” The old man murmured softly, drawing in quite close to ensure his words weren’t overheard. “Keep an eye on him for me, would you…?”

  “You have concerns, general…?” Came a single question with arched eyebrow.

  “Not… concerns…” Randwick replied evasively, unwilling to be more specific. “Only the recognition that colonel is a very dutiful and a very pious man, if you get my meaning…?” He added, receiving a knowing nod in return. “Just… let me know if you see or hear anything out of the ordinary… understood…?”

  “Completely, general…”

  All sign of land had disappeared from the horizon by dawn of the next morning, and Ocean Breeze had continued on its north-westerly heading, blessed by a steady tail wind that kept both captain and crew happy as the cog sailed on at a steady six or eight knots for another three days. Farouk would regularly take readings from a large and well-polished brass sextant and although Nev never saw or felt the ship change course, it was nevertheless clear by the third evening that they were now on a more northerly course, the sunset now much
further back off their port side than had previously been the case. By the fourth morning, the faint but unmistakeable shimmer of land could once more be seen stretching right across the northern horizon.

  In Nev’s opinion, one thing that hadn’t progressed anywhere near as much as their journey was the new and rather perplexing concept of being (in theory, at least) in a relationship. It wasn’t that there was no free time to be found; there was actually plenty of that, with neither of them able to help much with the day-to-day duties of sailing a ship. They actually spent pretty much every moment of their spare time together… the main problem was that on a so small a ship with just one private cabin (currently occupied by the queen, with Nev sharing), there was absolutely no place they could go that was actually private.

  In the days since that first abortive, whale-interrupted ‘almost-kiss’ moment at the outset, there’d not been a single moment that followed in which either of them, surrounded as they were by dozens of crew, had felt comfortable enough to show any greater display of affection than hand-holding and the occasional embrace. Nev, who’d have been the first to admit her experience of relationships and the opposite sex in general was limited to the point of non-existence, didn’t entirely see it a bad thing that she was being provided a little breathing space to ‘ease’ her mind into the concept.

  As wonderful as Godfrey was, and as deeply as she cared for him, the thought of ‘things’ going much further at that moment than they already had was something that Nev found very frightening… and her instincts, inexperienced as they were, were nevertheless telling her loud and clear that if that was how she was feeling, rushing things would definitely not be the right thing to do. Still, that left her not knowing how Godfrey felt about the whole thing… he’d made no indication of how he was feeling about it – or whether he was even at all bothered – and as a result, her ever-prepared speed of doubt was racing at full throttle by the time they’d sighted land on that fourth morning.

  The pair of them stood up on the foredeck, Nev making sure they stayed just far enough away from the beakhead and the toilets that waited there to ensure nothing untoward came their way with regard to smell or sound. Most of that morning and a substantial part of the afternoon was spent making difficult headway against a blustery north-easterly wind that slowed progress to barely three or four knots during that part of the journey. The whole time, the dark shadow of land on the horizon continued to grow until the ship was finally close enough to pick out the detail of scattered trees and waves breaking against distant cliffs.

  A faint drizzle had arrived with the wind change: it was light enough that the cloak was sufficient to keep any moisture from soaking through the rest of her clothing (now her usual brown skirt, jacket, leggings and boots) but it nevertheless left Nev feeling chilled and decidedly ill at ease.

  “You’re all right?” Godfrey asked immediately, drawing her in a little closer with the arm about her waist as he felt a faint shudder ripple through her body. “Cold…? …Or is something bothering you…?”

  “Oh… a bit of both, I guess,” she admitted, snuggling her body in tight against his and laying her head against his shoulder. “Now we’re so close to wherever it is we’ve been heading, I’m starting to feel more anxious about it all.” She signed softly, lifting her head once more and turning to stare up into his eyes. “I don’t know… maybe after a week of action with almost no let up, the last four days of doing nothing have made me feel a bit paranoid that something bad’s about to happen…”

  “That happens a lot with our veterans,” Godfrey acknowledged with a rueful smile. “Seen it a few times with some o’ the older Ostermen: they’re so used to fightin’ and watchin’ theirs and their mates’ backs every waking moment that they get a bit… edgy… when things are quiet. Hard for ‘em – the old blokes… lot of ‘em don’t have family to fall back on if they’re crippled or just too past it to fight any more. The Oster does what it can to keep ‘em around, though: there’s always odd jobs that need doing; sword sharpening, carrying messages… the odd bit of surveillance work here or there when its mostly just sittin’ around, keepin’ an eye out…”

  “You are just full of surprises, aren’t you…!” Nev exclaimed softly, unable to keep what she suspected was an almost idiotic smile off her face.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “That was such a clever, intelligent thing to say…”

  “And that’s a surprise, is it?” He shot back, trying to sound offended, but Nev was learning how to pick the inflection in his voice when he was joking around and wasn’t buying it.

  “You know what I mean!” She replied as he grinned broadly and gave an ‘it-was-worth-a-try’ shrug. “How many people in this world even know a word like ‘surveillance’? You put on this air of being a simple soldier, but underneath that incredibly gorgeous exterior lies a lot of smarts… a lot…”

  “No gold or spare time for schoolin’ in The Oster, but we make do well enough. There’s plenty of those old veterans about to mentor and to lecture, and it pays a young fella to know his letters and how to write ‘em down well enough to send a message or decode some orders.” He shrugged again. “Guess learnin’ just came easy to me… I was always lucky that way…” There was silence for a moment as he considered his next line, actually gave himself a faint nod of approval as he squeezed Nev in another hug, then added: “Still pretty lucky, I reckon…”

  “You, sir, are a very smooth character…” She replied, feigning mild suspicion as they both stared out over the railing at the land drawing ever-nearer in the distance. “But you also have exceptional taste: that’s probably one of the reasons I lo– like you so much…”

  “You were going to say something else…!” Godfrey pointed out, imagining a memory of having said those words before and trying to sound scandalised.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nev replied airily, knowing she sounded ridiculous and desperately trying to stop herself from bursting into laughter as she discovered that for once, she didn’t care in the slightest.

  “Is that so…?” He shot back with a dry grin, moving until he was standing behind her and able to wrap both arms around her waist. Hugging her tight, he then leaned down to place a momentary kiss on the top of her head that only sent her into a mild swoon. “Well… I hereby declare it to the world that I like Nevaeh Anderson…” he continued, the grin widening. “I like her with all my heart and soul!”

  “Hey…!” She protested, struggling to keep the laughter out of her own voice as she gave the hand attached to one of those arms a playful smack.

  “Well… I’m sure you know what I mean…” Godfrey ventured, resting his chin lightly where he’d just delivered the kiss.

  “I can see this is going to take some getting used to…” Nev muttered, not at all ready to show she was enjoying every moment but well aware that he knew anyway.

  “Like, like, like…”

  As Ocean Breeze continued its northward journey amid a huge expanse of ocean filled with a billion specks of life, two of those specks hugged each other tight and allowed themselves to become lost in the enjoyment of the moment itself. For the first time in over a week and in her entire life, Nevaeh Anderson had begun to hope that maybe – just maybe – things might actually work out for the best, moving forward.