The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  As signal flags flashed and word passed from ship to ship down the line and around the horn, Davies considered his options. Finally he decided on the only prudent course of action. He would collapse the U, and order all the ships in the right-hand arm, the entire right flank, to turn and run to the west. Let the Drammune give chase until the sides were more equally matched. Once the fleeing ships passed those waiting to fight, they could turn and fight also.

  Davies prepared to give orders. But he paused. It was a complex set of instructions for this lot, and he needed to get the wording right. If he began with “Flee…” they might not wait for the rest of the message. “Front line ships sail to the rear,” was obvious and simple, but he was not sure his captains would know whether they were, in fact, front line or rear. At the moment they all faced away from their attackers. So he decided he’d better order them by name.

  He began the message, his flagman’s arms spelling it out as quickly as possible: “Gant Marie, Forcible, Blunderbuss…” fate would have it that his slowest ship was among these, he thought, “…Wellspring, Windward…” and here he wondered, not for the first time, what idiot ship owner would name a vessel after a common sailing term, begging for a lifetime of confusion, “…Gasparella…” he felt himself starting to sweat; this was a long message already, and no orders had yet been conveyed, “sail west past the far line of our ships, then come about. All others, stand and fight!”

  But his message was sent to no avail.

  The orders were indeed a long time getting to the point, but even had they been concise, they would have been useless. The final phrase of Davies’ very first message, given upon sighting the Drammune, had been dropped by Gant Marie, just one ship away. What she passed down the line left an ellipsis where “Stand by for orders” should have been. The result was that bold sea captains did what bold sea captains do. They analyzed the situation and took decisive action.

  Anticipating orders, or courageously acting in a warlike response or, in the case of Blunderbuss, simply maneuvering for a better view, all the ships on the eastern perimeter began turning toward their attackers. This motion not only broke ranks, it focused them on the fight, and not on their commander. Davies’ second communication did not make a clean hop from ship to ship to ship. It did not make it around the horn. In fact, it did not make it past the gunwales of the Marchessa.

  Unheeding of anything but the fight at hand, Vast sailors went scurrying to battle stations. They manned cannon, measured and poured powder, loaded and tamped cannonballs. They locked in headings and freed yard upon yard of sailcloth. All the ships in the Fleet, not just those on the right flank but the entire formation, now either sailed toward the point of attack, or turned slowly, coming about, intending to do the same.

  As the formation dissolved, Moore Davies stood in awe. He shook his head, wafted on tidal waves of sheer, stupefied disbelief. Every captain of every ship, the entire Vast Navy, such as it was, had just reacted to its commander’s direct orders by doing precisely the opposite.

  “What now, Captain?” his first mate asked.

  Davies pulled absently at his beard as he scanned the seas. The set of the impending battle was wholly against him, and wholly out of his control. The Marchessa was flying west, away from the attackers, but she was the only one. Just south of him the Gant Marie had turned almost ninety degrees clockwise already so her prow faced north-northwest. Forcible was almost all the way about, the needle of her bowsprit now pointing due north. Blunderbuss had, for reasons known but to God, turned counterclockwise, into the wind rather than away from it. She was now facing south, the wind at her prow. She was in irons. Dead in the water.

  Davies estimated that with the speed at which the Drammune were closing, they would be firing on Gant Marie within five minutes, Blunderbuss in no more than ten. He shook his head once more. If he repeated his orders, requiring yet another maneuver, the Drammune would certainly run up on them all mid-turn. They might yet anyway. But who was he kidding, thinking they’d bother to obey orders now?

  Moore Davies was not a man prone to mood swings. He swore seldom, and was known to keep his head in the highest seas, the heaviest weather, the fiercest fight. But right now he hovered on the edge of an angry outburst. He mastered that urge, took a deep breath, exhaled through his nose. And then he said, reluctantly but resolutely, “Come about, boys. We’ll be needing battle stations.”

  The Drammune warships approached like a jagged row of bloody teeth. Their triangular red sails were full, their heading direct and unswerving. Their military precision alone was enough to intimidate the Vast Fleet seamen, who now saw, and with utter clarity, what John Hand had tried to teach them. Sailing side by side in a straight line was not silly at all. Not the way the Drammune did it.

  Pulses raced. Palms sweated. Knees wobbled.

  But resolve did not. Fifteen ships of widely varying sizes, shapes, speeds, and capabilities, similar only in that their square sails were as white as their crews’ knuckles, now sailed or attempted to sail directly into the blood-red maw of highly regimented destruction.

  “Hold steady, men,” or similar orders, were given by every Vast captain. Oaths were sworn. Prayers were prayed. Muskets and cannons were inspected. Stomachs were emptied. Breeches were filled.

  And then, much too early, shots were fired. The Vast crews, too raw and too undisciplined and ultimately too afraid to await their orders, opened up with all they had.

  “We should see them by now,” John Hand told his gruff new Drammune allies.

  He stood on the quarterdeck of the Chase, telescope scanning the horizon ahead. He was being watched by two Drammune naval officers in full-dress uniforms flanking him, behind. Neither man so much as grunted. One turned, using his own telescope to confirm that the Hezza Charn was still in sight. It was, just as Admiral Hand had promised. It was far back in the haze of the horizon, but it was visible.

  Under their captain’s orders, the crew of the Trophy Chase now held the great ship in check, tightly reined. But she longed to run ahead, more restless than ever. The parley had been a study in frustration. The Charn’s captain, Tchorga Den, had been tight-lipped even by Drammune standards. He had showed Hand his orders, and a hastily scrawled parchment with the Vast royal seal, confirming the end of hostilities and the requirement for the Trophy Chase to return to Mann immediately. If the Drammune captain knew more details, he wasn’t telling.

  John Hand studied the parchment carefully, looking for any trace of forgery or deception. He could find none. And the message was signed by General Mack Millian. It got tense for a moment when the Vast admiral refused to return to Mann without his flotilla, but it was Tchorga Den who offered this compromise: The Chase and the Hezza Charn would together sail back for the Vast flotilla. These two armed Drammune officers would be welcomed aboard the Chase as guests. Friendly reminders to the admiral of his promises.

  But to the Chase’s commander, every minute now felt like an hour, and every hour like an open grave. Tchorga Den had alluded to another flotilla, this one of Drammune ships, that had set sail on a heading that would lead them straight to the Vast. The disaster that loomed should those two squadrons meet…the military machine against merchant mariners with no Drammune language skills, no understanding of battle. He worried that none but Moore Davies would even recognize a Drammune flag of truce.

  And sailing with the Drammune had slowed the Chase dramatically. Hand could have sailed directly to them, or nearly so, some twenty-five degrees from the headwind. But that angle could not be matched by the Hezza Charn. It would put the Drammune ship in irons. So the admiral needed to sail south, and then turn eastward across the wind, at an angle the Charn could handle. It seemed to the admiral that time itself was becalmed.

  Right now John Hand longed to raise his confused little fleet on the horizon; he would be delighted to find them in disarray. He wanted more than anything to see the chaos of his captains striving for some modicum of competence…just so long as
all fifteen ships were afloat and no Drammune were near. But it was hard to hope. Too much had gone wrong already. He had tried to attack a Drammune warship only to be brought into parley. And then that parley had thoroughly thwarted him. Now his own crewmen’s resentment was palpable. They felt hobbled, as if they had been manacled, and all because two Drammune guards held them prisoner. Or so they saw it. The pair certainly strutted and posed as if they were prison guards.

  But there was a deeper fear that gnawed him. He seemed to have lost his feel for riding the current of time and human activity. He felt like he had no control. Every stride was a limp, every limb was out of joint. Every decision led to a dead end. The men knew it, they sensed it. And they believed the voyage was snakebit because Packer Throme was not aboard. They thought him a talisman, a charm that could keep disaster at bay and order all things for good.

  Though the admiral rejected that belief out of hand, nothing he did or said seemed to penetrate it. If he addressed it directly, as he did once in frustration, he built walls between himself and his men, walls he would later need to break down with an apology. As he had in fact done. The reality was, they believed more in Packer Throme than they did in John Hand.

  The Firefish sensed, before it saw, the approach of the pack. The docile storm creatures began moving, the circle breaking up as each creature turned toward the intruders. And then, amazingly, their aura changed. The beast felt a charge to these creatures now. There was ferocity here. These were predators after all.

  And then the storm began.

  It was unclear who fired the first shot. Some would say it was a cannon on the Gant Marie that let loose the first volley, but others would swear that it started with small arms from Forcible. But wherever it started, it was not to be stopped. Inexperienced Vast captains ordered inexperienced crews to open up on their trained and battle-hardened Drammune foes. The Vast fleet fired at will. Abandoning small arms quickly, they blazed away almost exclusively with cannon, the armament with which they were least familiar. Black smoke choked the decks as blast after blast cracked, splitting the air, rocking the ships. They learned as they went, but this did not slow their efforts. No power on earth was going to separate these men from their powder, their shot, their appointed martial duty, their inevitable eternal glory, now that the battle was joined.

  Cannonballs splashed into the sea, struck hulls, ripped through sails. Splinters flew. Men fell. The Vast sailors, fired upon for the first time in their lives, redoubled their efforts, fearlessly reloading and firing with abandon, burning themselves on hot muzzles, scrimping too much on powder here, watching cannonballs flop pitifully into the sea a few feet from the hull, or overdoing it there, shattering a breech with disastrous effect to their own life and limb. But they were focused on the three square feet of deck before them, the single piece of real estate within their control. They fought. And they believed…no, they knew for certain their own lives and the lives of their families and the future of their nation depended on the speed and sureness of their hands at this moment—delivering this shot into this cannon, and then moving it quickly out again with a yellow flame and an ear-ringing explosion.

  Though he wasn’t present to see it begin, John Hand’s sense of foreboding proved accurate. Their inexperience with these weapons led the Vast crews to begin firing far too soon. The cannonballs they launched flew at targets far out of range. The Fleet of Nearing Vast came under fire, yes. But unfortunately not from the Drammune.

  “What are they doing?” a puzzled first mate asked his equally puzzled Drammune captain, the commander of this squadron.

  The commander shrugged. “They seem to be shooting at one another.”

  And indeed they were. It occurred to very few Vast sailors on the six lead ships now engaged in battle that the cannonballs whizzing overhead or splashing short or occasionally crashing into their own ship’s timbers represented friendly fire. Those who did notice made little headway getting anyone else to notice.

  The Drammune captain watched, perplexed, trying to find a military reason for such strange behavior. He had passed the Drammune leadership tests and survived Drammune training regimens. Whether he understood the activity before him or not, once the Vast were within five hundred yards the mystery became a menace. He had a duty to perform.

  “Ahn skova, Hezz Zaya?” asked his first mate. What orders, Captain Zaya?

  The commander of the Drammune squadron gave the order, and up went the flags of parley, seven gray pennants streaming from atop seven mainmasts, so obvious as to be impossible to miss, impossible to ignore.

  Or so he thought.

  The mind of Captain Zaya’s opposite, Moore Davies, marveled at this breathtaking display of nautical ineptitude. His resignation sunk into despair. This was his, his alone as commander, to claim forever. He ordered his flagman to signal the cease-fire, utterly confident that not one of his captains would pay the least bit of mind. He ordered all his men to the ship’s rails, and then into the rigging, with whatever white or nearly white cloth they could find. They all went and waved their towels and rags and shirts frantically, not at the Drammune, but at their fellow Vast ships.

  But the fierce Vast ships sailed on, firing as they went. Moore Davies’ men might as well have been signaling the cannonballs as they flew past.

  The Drammune commander pondered this silently. Commander Zerka Zaya had fought the Vast before, and recently. His ship was the Karda Zolt. He had given chase to the Marchessa, and had steered clear of the flying spectacle that was the Trophy Chase as she passed by with sails alight, accompanied by the glowing sea beast, the one that had destroyed the Rahk Thanu and the Nochto Vare. The Vast were better than this.

  But as Zaya watched through his telescope, a cannon placement of the Gant Marie exploded, bodies and body parts flying as it was struck by a projectile from Forcible. The Drammune commander could now draw but one conclusion. He shook his head. No matter, in another moment they would be firing on Drammune vessels sailing under a flag of truce. If the Trophy Chase was not among them, and that certainly appeared to be the case, Zerka Zaya would destroy them all.

  The Vast ships did reach the Drammune, and pass in and among them. The aggressors did not slow the pace of their cannonade, but almost to a ship, increased it. They fired on clearly flagged Drammune vessels seeking parley. And the result was an order from the Drammune commander that was obeyed instantly.

  Disciplined, precise, and deadly Drammune cannon answered the wild Vast barrage.

  CHAPTER 9

  Disaster

  “Ship ahead!” came the call from the crow’s nest of the Trophy Chase. “Ten points off the port bow!”

  “Finally,” Admiral Hand said aloud, searching the horizon.

  But before he could find them, the lookout called again. “Fully engaged!”

  “Ahhh!” Hand seethed, teeth bared. He lowered his telescope, squinted with naked eye at the horizon, then raised the scope again. Now he saw the tiny vessels, looking semitransparent, like ghost ships, in the haze. He saw a flash, and then another. Then ten more, and then twenty.

  He turned angrily to the Drammune behind him. “There’s a fight underway, and I’m going to stop it,” he told them in Drammune.

  The admiral looked up at the set of his own ship’s sails. “Mr. Haas! Main, maintop, maintopgallant, full!” he ordered, shouting it out in a rhythmic cadence so every syllable was clear and audible all the way to the crow’s nest. “Mizzen, mizzentop, full! Foresail, drop three points! I want the port gunn’l in the water! Let’s fly, gentlemen!”

  Sailors did not need to clamber anywhere to obey. They were already positioned across the yardarms in the rigging, awaiting just these orders. They loosed canvas almost simultaneously. The great cat leaped, the breeze from starboard just afore the beam snapping the canvas full instantly. Both of the Drammune officers on the quarterdeck stumbled, then regained their balance and put hands to pistol grips, fearing attack.

  But no Vast sailor seemed th
e least bit concerned. The snap of canvas had done it all. Now the deck pitched, the port rail descended lower, and then lower, and then lower still as the Chase pulled away from the Hezza Charn, until it seemed a certainty the ship would capsize. The two officers reached for the rail of the quarterdeck simultaneously, steadying themselves. But again, not a single Vast sailor blinked. The ship now raced through the water, deck splashed lightly by crested waves whose spray overtopped the port side gunwale. The Drammune looked at one another in astonishment. Then they grinned, unable to contain the energy they felt pulsing through the ship, through the decks, and through themselves.

  Surely, the Trophy Chase was a new and glorious thing in the world.

  The Drammune cannoneers fired cautiously and aimed carefully. Self-defense was hardly needed. The Vast projectiles were not aimed well, most in fact not aimed at all, and therefore most flew harmlessly overhead or splashed equally harmlessly into the sea. The Drammune were able, at an almost leisurely pace, to shatter Vast rudders, cripple and then sever Vast masts, puncture exposed expanses of Vast hulls, and blast Vast cannon placements. It wasn’t much more dangerous for the Drammune than being on maneuvers, taking target practice on decrepit vessels destined to be scuttled.

  For the Vast, however, casualties mounted. Earnest men devoted to king and country were blown down by explosions, lacerated by splintered rails and decking, cut deep by shrapnel. Fear filled every corner of their beings, numbing fingers and loosening joints, pouring cold sweat out every pore. But pain and anger fired this fear, heating it into a desperate, combustible emotion, fueling bloody hands and aching arms and straining backs as these men loaded, and fired, and reloaded, and fired again. Sweat ran in rivulets from faces, down necks, down backs, combining now with blood that poured from wounds of every description, red and slick onto the decks.