by James Somers
Apart from the constant up and down and the fierce wind, all was well aboard Bonifast’s ship. The same could not be said for the slaver ship. Bonifast kept a careful eye on the enemy vessel as he maneuvered the Maelstrom ever closer. The rain had not started…yet.
Gideon staggered across the deck trying to get to the helm and Bonifast. Ethan watched him, but he did not follow. He had enough trouble just trying to keep his lunch down. Gideon reached the helm as Bonifast sent the ship hard to port in anticipation of a coming wave. The captain’s expression grew intense. He stood at the helm in tune with the wind, the waves, and his ship.
“Even if we catch the ship, how can we board it during a storm?” Gideon shouted over the din. It was a fair question. There would be no way possible to do such a thing without being able to line the ships up in parallel and keep them still.
“We’re not going to board it!” Bonifast said, his expression suddenly turning grim.
“But what about the slaves they have onboard?” Gideon asked.
“We don’t know that they have any slaves on that ship, lad!”
“But if they’re headed back to Emmanuel…they wouldn’t go empty-handed!” Gideon reasoned.
The sea started to give Bonifast more trouble now. The questioning did nothing to help his concentration either. The captain’s face grew hard as he watched his target.
“You can’t just kill the innocent with the guilty!” Gideon pleaded.
Bonifast’s anger got the better of him at that point. He grabbed Gideon’s robe—big mistake. Gideon intercepted the intruding hand at the wrist. His index and middle finger on his other hand landed precisely on the captain’s left carotid artery.
Gideon heard the hammer-cock of a musket behind him. Turning, he found Anthony holding a long rifle on him just beyond arms reach. The Azure Sea rolled, boiling in its anger behind him. “Release the captain, NOW!” Anthony shouted.
“Why are you doing this?” Gideon asked Bonifast as he relinquished his grip.
“Have you ever seen what happens to the slaves of Mordred, priest?” Bonifast said getting back to the wheel to make course corrections again.
“They let demons have their way with them. They destroy their hope and their will. They drive them crazy, kill them, or possess them! My orders are very clear from King Stephen, Gideon. I’m instructed to sink anything I can’t take. And just like you pointed out, I can’t hope to board them in this weather. They know that too. And if they manage to use this storm to get back to the mainland, then the captives will be lost anyway. I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone. This is the way it has to be.”
Gideon stepped away from the captain. Anthony lowered his weapon, staring at the young priest as he staggered back to where Ethan stood on the deck. The boy hoped to find his sister among the slaves. He was not going to like this.
SEA SHIFTING
“He’s going to do what?” Ethan shouted.
Gideon tried to calm him down, but it was impossible.
“But my sister could be onboard that ship!”
Sea spray peppered the two young men as they talked. Ethan glared at Captain Bonifast as he operated the helm. Anthony stood near, watching them with his musket in hand. Gideon put his hand on Ethan’s shoulder and said, “There’s a reason for it, Ethan.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Bonifast knows about the demons that are working with Mordred. He said his orders from King Stephen are to sink any slaver that can’t be captured. He said the slaves are given to the demons to possess them, if they can. The rest are driven mad by the experience, or killed.”
They both looked out over the sea between the Maelstrom and the slaver ship. The storm intensified. “Ethan, you know there’s no way we can board that ship in this weather. If we don’t sink the ship then we risk losing it and condemning those people to a fate worse than death.”
To anyone else such statements might have sounded like the ranting assumptions of a lunatic, but Ethan knew all too well that demons were real, that they conspired with Mordred in this war. Subjection to them was something he could not bear to think of happening to his sister.
He slumped down on the deck, completely broken by the turn of events. Ethan watched the slaver, a mere three hundred yards away from them now, as it rose and fell with the raging sea. Had he come so far only to see his sister destroyed by this accursed war right before his eyes? Unable to bear it, he began to weep.
A thought hit Gideon like a thunderbolt. There might not be anything Bonifast can do, but Ethan is an entirely different matter. Gideon dropped down in front of Ethan and took the fourteen-year-old by the shoulders. “Ethan! You could save her!”
Ethan looked up at the priest, bewildered. “What are you talking about?”
A cross wave smashed into the bow causing the ship to shudder under the impact.
“Of all of the people onboard this ship, you are the only one who isn’t constrained completely by this physical world. Use your gift, Ethan! Find out if she is onboard before Bonifast closes the gap between us!”
Ethan jumped to his feet and ran to the rail, his lifeline tether trailing behind him. “But Gideon, what do I do if she is onboard? How can I get her off of the ship?”
Gideon stammered for an answer. “I don’t know…but I do know Shaddai is with you.”
That was all the encouragement Ethan needed. He concentrated on what he wanted, whispering a prayer to the Almighty. “Oh, Lord, help me to know how to use these gifts you’ve given. I don’t know why you would use me, but I beg you for guidance and the ability to save my sister.”
Gideon watched his friend as he snapped out of the physical world. The lifeline rope fell to the ground. Ethan had disappeared.
Ethan stood on the railing of the Maelstrom. Gideon picked up Ethan’s lifeline, which fell to the deck when he entered the spiritual plane. Ethan saw Gideon, but the warrior-priest of Shaddai no longer saw him.
The world around him took on a different feel. No longer did the wind beat upon Ethan, or the sea pelt him with salty drops of water. He saw the blue Azure through preternatural eyes and felt the world with new senses. He sensed enemies onboard the ship across the raging ocean—demons were on that ship.
Even from this distance, Ethan saw the activity onboard the slaver vessel. Crew members tried to keep the ship afloat as they ran from the Maelstrom. But these men did not have the sort of well-oiled-machine approach to their duties like Captain Bonifast’s nimble crew. These men, dressed in the crimson and black apparel of Mordred’s army, were not storm riders like Bonifast.
Ethan scanned the rest of the vessel and found someone watching him. A demon was clinging to the mizzenmast. At least this was what Ethan supposed on first inspection. But a closer look revealed the creature actually standing upon the face of the vertical beam. Gravity held no sway over him.
Without hesitation, the demon let out a war cry, charging across the expanse between the two ships. Ethan had forgotten these beings could simply move about at will through the air. It was not exactly what he would term flying, as much as a gigantic leap from one ship to the other.
On pure instinct, Ethan’s blade found its way to his waiting hand. He bolted backward, his feet up on the face of the mainmast, as the creature touched down on the railing in exactly the place where Ethan had just been standing. Ethan somersaulted from the mainmast of the Maelstrom back at the demon with his heavenly blade in hand. The metal gleamed even in the dense shadow of partial night caused by the storm cell overhead.
The demon charged forward with his weapon. Their weapons crashed into one another, flashing like lightning. The demon fought in the appearance of a man. He was terrible to look upon and yet strangely beautiful at the same time. His skin was pale gray. And what appeared to be bluish capillaries pressed to the surface of his complexion. His eyes were feral and fierce, irises of yellow ringing wide black pupils.
Somehow, Ethan did not fear him. The image of this once heaven
ly being only angered him more as his thoughts flashed with visions of a rebellion older than time. These were not the monsters of so many children’s stories. They were betrayers of Shaddai, pure and simple.
Ethan struck at the demon again. It countered as the battle raged across the deck of the Maelstrom. The crew continued with their duties as Bonifast chased after the slaver. They were oblivious to the struggle among them on the spiritual plane.
Ethan hammered away at the demon with his sword. The demon gave ground, but then took it back from the boy each time. A burst of light flashed each time the supernatural blades struck together, sounding like a thunderclap.
“So this is the Deliverer of God?” the demon taunted. “I would have expected more than a mere boy from the Almighty.”
Ethan wasn’t sure what to say, so he said nothing, but his anger caused him to press the fight even harder.
“Tell me, son of man, how did you find your parents after we destroyed Salem?”
Ethan grew enraged, striking with all the fury he could manage. It was a foolish move. His wrath did nothing but hinder Shaddai using him. The precision he had known seconds before faded as quickly. Ethan faltered, trusting in his own anger to fight.
The demon batted Ethan’s strike away, kicked him in the head, and then kicked him again in the chest. The boy flew backward across the deck, landing in a crumpled heap near the mainmast. The demon ran toward Ethan, raising his sword for the final blow. “It happens every time you pitiful men think you have the power to defeat us!”
“Help me, Shaddai,” Ethan said as the demon’s blade dropped toward him.
Ethan regained strength. He felt power fill him to the brim. In a movement faster than the demon could compensate for, Ethan rolled out of range and to his feet. He met the blade mid-strike, countering with an elbow and fist combo to the face of the demon. The demon’s smile vanished as he staggered backward.
But the creature recovered fast, swinging a massive stroke with his sword that would have taken Ethan’s head had he not anticipated and ducked beneath it. Ethan struck the body of his opponent. His blade penetrated the demon’s abdomen. A flash of light burst through Ethan’s blade into the demon. The demon reeled backward, falling to the deck of the Maelstrom. His blade fell away from his hand as he clutched his wound.
Ethan noticed there was no blood—not a drop. Still, Ethan’s weapon had done damage. To his knowledge, an angel could not die, but something was happening. The demon reeled from some form of pain inflicted by the wound. He sneered at Ethan saying, “This is not over, Deliverer!”
The body of the demon began to vaporize like smoke on the wind. His weapon faded with him until there was nothing left of the creature. Ethan watched in amazement. Would the creature be back? He did not even know what had happened to it. Whatever the case, the demon seemed to believe that this was not his end. Ethan kept that knowledge tucked away in his mind. If he could wound them, then at least for a while, he could dispatch them from a fight. The demon he had wounded while inside of the old woman had been thrust from her body by his strikes. There were rules of engagement here he needed to learn quickly. I wonder what would happen to me if they wounded me in this way. If they kill me in this realm, will I die physically? The thought was too awful to contemplate. Just don’t get hit, he told himself.
BOOM!
The railing in front of Ethan exploded. Wood splinters sprayed outward and upward as Ethan watched the cannonball pass right through his body. The projectile from the enemy ship continued unabated across the surface of the deck and disappeared into the roiling Azure Sea on the other side of the Maelstrom.
Ethan clutched his chest checking for injury. He didn’t have a scratch on him. The liquid metal armor he wore had not repelled the shot. Instead, the shell had passed through him as if he wasn’t there. Then it occurred to him. He wasn’t there, at least not in the physical realm where the cannonball was. That could be useful, he thought.
Then he remembered the enemy had fired upon the Maelstrom. Bonifast’s crew scrambled back and forth, preparing to retaliate. Ethan found Gideon among the frantic crew. The priest stood at Bonifast’s side again, watching the enemy vessel. The captain sounded the order. “FIRE!”
A terrible volley of cannon fire erupted from the port side of Bonifast’s ship. Ethan watched as iron cannonballs flew through the air toward the enemy vessel still bobbing with the ocean swells. Ethan tracked each one of the shots.
Several of the heavy balls struck the slaver in the aft end at different heights, as the vessel lifted up on the storm surge. Most of them splashed into the side of a blue wave, scattering plumes of sea spray into the air before disappearing. The gap had not been closed with the slaver. Bonifast had intended to do so before starting his attack. But the other ship had fired first and he would return their fire in even greater amounts.
I’ve got to get over there before Bonifast blows it out of the water! An urgency to save his sister boiled inside of him. But how can I get over to the slaver? Lightning struck in the distance ahead of them. They were sailing into the worst part of the storm. Ethan had to act now.
The demon had leaped from ship to ship in order to attack him moments ago. He had seen them float through the trees as a child while he and Elspeth were escaping the massacre at Salem. There was no reason to suppose his abilities to operate contrary to the physical laws were any different. If I’m really this Deliverer everyone keeps talking about then Lord Shaddai please help me to know what to do.
Ethan ran to the railing and jumped up on it. The crew still buzzed about like bees as cannon fire erupted between the ships. Fortunately, the storm surge caused a great deal of inaccuracy on the part of both crews, giving him more time to act.
Ethan noticed, as he stood on the railing of the tossed vessel, his body did not sway back and forth. He might as well have been a statue fastened to the wood with nails. As he watched the slaver in the distance, Ethan caught sight of movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked to his right and found a gull sitting on the railing looking directly at him. The bird seemed to be gauging the boy’s intentions.
“I’m going,” Ethan said, although he was not sure why he talked to the bird.
The bird cocked its head sideways, regarding him. “I’m just not quite sure how to go about it is all,” he said.
The bird, as if in response to his query, lifted its wings and then stood there looking at him. Ethan watched the bird. Then the gull hopped up into the wind and sailed across the expanse toward the slaver ship. For some reason, Ethan felt like he was being told what to do.
Cannonballs pounded into the rolling waves just beneath the hull of the ship, sending spray into the air. Ethan hunched down like a spring, then released. His body rocketed away from the railing of the Maelstrom. He felt like a bird in flight, careening through the air toward his target. The slaver ship surged upward on a wave, coming to meet him as he landed safely on the deck.
When Ethan turned to look back, Ethan saw the gull perched upon the railing next to him. It regarded him once more, seeming to nod its approval before taking flight again. Ethan turned his eye to the heavens and whispered, “Thank you,” unto the Almighty.
SECRET IN THE HOLD
The crew onboard the slaver ship desperately tried to get away from the larger vessel pursuing them. Cannon fire continued to erupt from both ships. Everyone on deck threw themselves to the ground as another volley smashed through equipment and rigging, sending showers of splintered wood through the air.
Ethan flinched as things popped and smashed around him. He knew the physical dangers could not harm him. Still, it took getting used to. He’d already seen one demon, but Ethan sensed, somehow, it had not been the only one.
The slaves must be kept in the cargo hold down below, Ethan supposed. He walked across the deck as the men onboard passed through him, trying to keep the ship elusive and remain alive at the same time. It was a curious thing to Ethan. He walked upon the physical deck just
as he would in his natural state, but the men passed right through him—even the cannonballs, the ocean spray, and the wind itself simply passed through.
Then Ethan thought about what he had already seen. He remembered the demon, who had appeared in the rented room at the Weary Traveler Inn. The demon had come right through the floor and then stood upon it. Maybe that’s all there is to it, he thought. If I think about what I want to do then perhaps that changes what I can do. If I think I want to pass through this deck then—
Instantly the deck gave way and Ethan descended. He quickly stopped himself, landing below the upper deck of the slaver in a dark hallway. Well it’s down, he reasoned, so I’m going in the right direction.
Men appeared in the hallway, startling Ethan. They ran right through him in the dark without the slightest notion that a fourteen-year-old boy was there. He shook his head at his reaction. It was going to take time to adjust.
Ethan continued down the hallway slowly. He did not have to be concerned with men, but demons were another matter. And they were present somewhere onboard. Ethan felt them like a fog in the air. His body tingled with pricks of darkness in their presence. He wondered if he produced the same sensation in them.
He came to a door. Even in the dark, Ethan’s preternatural eyes saw well. The door was locked with an iron bolt at the top and bottom. He started to gauge its strength. Then he remembered he was in the spiritual. But what if—
Ethan concentrated on what he wanted and reached out for one of the bolts. To his joy, he grabbed it and was able to apply pressure to it. The bolt was stiff, but it slid back out of the doorframe. He had touched the physical world from the spiritual realm. He was so excited about the discovery he almost forgot why he was there. Elspeth.
He left the other bolt alone and fastened the one he had undone. Ethan did not want someone to discover anything amiss, if they happened to come this way.