The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  Lightning shot from the Firefish to the bowsprit, exploding the wooden beam under the admiral’s feet. The spar cracked, split—and the carved figurehead fell away into the ocean. At the same time, the beam itself broke, snapping just under the admiral’s feet. The severed spar flew upward, the pressure from the taught guy lines slinging it toward the sky. The crewmen holding their admiral pulled him back now into the ship, back to the safety of the forecastle deck. There they all went down, falling backward in a heap.

  Above them the foremast creaked and groaned. Two thirds of the bowsprit now dangled from slack guy lines above them, gyrating like some crazed puppet.

  “Uh oh,” Andrew Haas managed, clambering back to his feet.

  “The devil’s in it now,” Mutter Cabe said, looking down at the same sight from his perch on the mainsail footlines. “Never shoulda kilt that one.”

  Delaney said nothing, but once again he was prone to agree. “Gotta strike the foresail, or the mast’s a goner.” He said it as he navigated the standing rigging, forward toward the creaking, cracking mast.

  “You’ll just go down with ’er!” Cabe called after him.

  But Delaney had made up his mind. He would try to save the mast. All the sailors on the foremast were scrambling down, or across lines to the mainmast, anxious to get away from the danger. All but one. One man who had been stationed on the foremast now clung to the yard of the foretopgallant, fear clawing away inside his chest like a small, frightened animal.

  Marcus Pile.

  Haas rose to his feet, peering only above him. He could see clearly now that the foremast was bent backward, like a bow. Creaking and cracking sounds came from up and down its length. Without the tension provided by the forestays, and with all the pressure from the sails in the wind, it was just a question of where it would snap, and when. The other sailors on deck stood now as well, looking upward. Most of them had seen a mast go before. This mast, like the others, was fashioned from three separate timbers in rough thirds, joined with an open mortise and tenon drilled through with two-inch dowels. One of the two joints would give. They cursed and prayed, watching Delaney climb out to Marcus Pile while all the others escaped with their lives. If the mast snapped low, the two men would plummet into the sea. If it snapped high, it would flick them like spitballs far into the ocean.

  The explosion came with precise timing. It came from port side aft of the ship, raising the water in a rounded white bubble twenty yards across as the Chase sailed away. Lund Lander would have been proud.

  Delaney flew across the foremast yard, sword in hand, hacking away the tie lines that held the sail fast. With each cut the tension eased, but with each easement the mast gave another agonizing groan, until the foresail was gone, and the foretop sail, and only the foretopgallant was left. Delaney cut the ties, working his way across the yard high up in the rigging, until only one corner remained attached.

  At the end of the foretopgallant yard he reached Marcus Pile, holding the spar with both hands, hugging it tightly to his chest. Under him was the nock, and the last tie line left unsevered. It was the one that would set the foresail free. The great sheet of canvas snapped and whipped below them, a huge banner snapping in the wind, shaking the yard and the mast and the two men, like a shark tearing at a hunk of flesh.

  Marcus’s eyes were wide, and the shock of wheat that was his hair blew crazily as the yard whipsawed. He looked at Delaney.

  “You have to let me cut it!” Delaney told him, firm but gentle.

  Marcus Pile did not move. His eyes were open and focused, but he saw nothing.

  “The boy’s clutched again, Admiral,” Andrew Haas said, still looking up, a deep sadness in his baritone. “Clutched again.”

  But John Hand did not hear.

  When the first mate finally looked for his captain, the Admiral of the Fleet, he found him still lying on the deck. He saw the bloodless gash, the indentation in the forehead, just above his right eye. John Hand’s eyes were open, but he too saw nothing.

  “Stitch!” Haas screamed out, his voice little more than a yelp as he knelt by the pale body. Tears stung his eyes. “Stitch, ye blaggard, where are ye?” That blow, that dent—Haas knew it; he recognized it. It was a crushed skull. Between pirate battles and Firefish fights, he had seen it too many times before.

  But once again Stitch was already there. He knelt beside the admiral, saying nothing. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his own shoulder, then pressed his fingers against the clammy skin of John Hand’s neck. Stitch shook his head. He put his cheek near to the admiral’s mouth. Then he sat up, and gently closed the captain’s eyes. “He’s gone, Mr. Haas. Admiral’s gone.”

  “No!” Haas breathed out. “It can’t be.” The other men stared in shock, uncomprehending. They all had precisely the same thought. It couldn’t be. John Hand was the admiral. He knew everything a whole navy or a single sailor ever needed to know. He always knew. He was unconscious, that was all. He’d come around in a moment.

  But John Hand would not come around.

  The last thing he had seen on earth was the splintered bowsprit, this broken bone of the Trophy Chase as it rushed up to meet him, and the severed figurehead of the lioness falling away, as though her spirit fled downward into the sea.

  “You gotta let me, Marcus!” Delaney shouted. “You gotta let me cut the line!”

  But Marcus didn’t budge. The yardarm blew this way and that as the sail strained for its freedom in the wind. The mast creaked and groaned like the grating of an enormous rusty hinge on some monstrous iron door.

  “All right, you just hold tight,” Delaney said, resignation in his voice. He never should have let Marcus come up here. The boy was a carpenter’s mate. He was in the rigging because he had to take his turn. But he didn’t need to have taken it now, not when the ship was running hard, looking for a fight. The boy wanted to prove himself. Delaney took his knife’s edge to the white canvas and sliced at the hem itself, rather than at the tie line that ran through the grommet. He was cutting the sail around Marcus. He had barely ticked the bolt-rope that was sewn into the tabling when the whole of the sail ripped away. It went so quickly and with such force it sounded, and felt, more like a gunshot than a tear. The yard ceased its crazy gyrations almost instantly. Calm suddenly descended on them both.

  “There. Not so bad, eh?” Delaney asked.

  Marcus looked around him. He had good footlines under him, a firm yardarm in his hands, and a friend beside him. The sun was shining. A light breeze blew. They sailed past silent ships, sailors watching the Trophy Chase glide by. All seemed well.

  “You see?” Delaney said, sadness pouring through his bright eyes, “It all goes easy if you just do what you need to do.”

  And now Marcus understood what had just happened. He had not done what he needed to do. His heart sank. “I clutched again.” He said it softly, searching Delaney, looking for a denial he knew would not come.

  Delaney nodded, gentle. “You did.” And the old sailor and the boy both knew what it meant. Marcus had now had two chances. He had clutched twice. Marcus Pile would never sail on a tall ship’s crew again, not on any vessel in Nearing Vast.

  “I’m sorry, Delaney. I don’t know why…” but his voice trailed off.

  “None of us hardly ever do know,” Delaney picked up for him. “Like you say. We don’t never know what God’s doin’. Ain’t that so?”

  “Aye,” Marcus admitted, grateful for his good friend’s kindness. “I guess…we hardly ever do.”

  The two Drammune officers honored John Hand. They removed their helmets as the crewmen approached, carrying the body of their admiral, taking him to his quarters.

  “Is he dead?” one asked the other in Drammune.

  “They carry him, and themselves, as though he is,” the other observed.

  And as the body passed them by, the strangers saw it for themselves.

  Ugly glances and grimaces were directed at the Drammune, these whom the Vast sailors believed wer
e, somehow, to blame. If not directly, then certainly indirectly. This war, that was reason enough to blame the Drammune. And if not the war, then the truce.

  But the enemy officers ignored all these looks. They understood them. Instead, the pair saluted in the Vast tradition, as the Vast admiral was carried by them.

  “He is one of the bravest men I have ever seen,” the first offered.

  “He commanded the Devilfish. And he destroyed the Devilfish. Such deeds…”

  The second man said no more, but the words that came to his mind, words heard clearly in the silence, were these: Such deeds are Worthy.

  The men of the Trophy Chase did not understand Drammune. But they understood a salute, and they understood the respect behind the gesture. And because the Drammune gave it, the crew of the Trophy Chase returned it. They had lost their captain and their admiral, but the Drammune had lost a whole ship. And yet they saluted their enemies. These were men of honor.

  There would be no animosity on the Chase’s sad, slow return journey to the Port of Mann.

  Before they sailed, the Drammune and Vast together fished sailors from the sea. They took up the Vast who had abandoned ship, those who lately had crewed the Forcible, the Gant Marie, and the Wellspring—two ships already sunk and the other fully aflame, pouring black smoke into the sky and sizzling embers into the sea. They took up the sobered and chastened Drammune who had survived the destruction of the Karda Zolt. The truce held. The ships were made ready, and all turned for the Vast harbor.

  Cheers rose as the Chase drew near to her slip, but they petered out amid whispers. The last time she had come to port, shot up and splintered, trailing grappling lines and lost lives, she had looked somehow regal. It wasn’t just her pristine hull but her posture, the pouncing cat at her prow, the pride with which she had carried herself. This time, even though she had seen no battles and lost but one life, she looked beaten. Her nose was broken. Her foremast was bowed backward and bare of sailcloth. All the damage still unrepaired from her last trip was weathered now, and it made her look old and in disrepair. And her figurehead, that lioness in full pursuit, clawing her prey at the moment of triumph…was just gone. The crowd sensed it. She was wounded.

  And then as she docked, even before her mooring lines had her tied tightly to the pier, word came down from the decks that Admiral John Hand was dead. Killed by a Firefish, they said, one that first took off his right arm. He had killed it right back, though, all were assured. And yes, in answer to the next question, it was that same beast Packer Throme had tamed, the one that had attacked the Nochto Vare, winning the war for the Vast. All were sure of it.

  The feeling of gloom deepened. Something was deeply wrong. All this was not just bad news, but a portent, somehow. The crew of the Chase looked hollowed out, tired, as though they had been gone for months. And then the crowd saw the two Drammune officers standing proudly aboard her, as though they belonged. As though she belonged to them.

  And they would take her away.

  The mood in the crowd, already dark, started to turn ugly. But no one spoke a word to address the crowd’s grumblings—no officer, no sailor, no Vast prince or Drammune conqueror stepped forward to explain, to give them words either to fire their anger or assuage their sense of loss. The king and queen had not come to the docks, and no one knew why. But they all knew the royal pair would be here soon enough. One would sail away with the Drammune, and one would stay.

  Then the body of Admiral John Hand was removed. The anger melted back into dread, and sorrow. Four sailors carried a simple stretcher down the gangway, the admiral’s remains covered with the flag of Nearing Vast. With respect but no ceremony, the body was loaded silently into the back of a military wagon and driven off to the Old City.

  So the great ship was back. Repairs began immediately. Within a week at most, as soon as her mast could be repaired and her bowsprit replaced, she’d sail again. After a while when nothing more happened, just seagulls squabbling and waves slapping, when it began to dawn on the crowds that they were watching the ordinary activities of a ship at port, longshoremen loading and unloading, ship’s carpenters hammering and sawing, common sailors cleaning and polishing, the conversations died away. The crowds thinned, fading to nothing.

  Packer and Panna stood hand in hand beside a fresh mound of earth in a little clearing in the woods atop the Hangman’s Cliffs. The stone marker there was a beautiful piece of white granite, polished and carved with a relief image of a cross, sun streaming from behind it. On the stone were engraved the words:

  Will Seline

  Husband

  Father

  Pastor

  Friend

  Beside the brown earth were a manicured patch of lawn and a matching polished marble stone, this one with the image of a descending dove, brought here from Mann to replace the roughhewn wooden cross that had weathered here for almost a decade as Tamma had awaited her husband. It read:

  Tamma Seline

  Wife

  Mother

  Daughter

  Friend

  The service ended, all the townspeople, Cap and Hen among them, paid their respects and left the couple here alone. Panna’s tears had been flowing freely, in both joy and sorrow, but now she stood looking at the two plots thoughtfully, damp handkerchief in one hand, Packer’s scarred right hand in the other.

  “I can’t help but think of all they’ve missed here, and all they will miss.”

  Packer thought a long while and then said, “I pray…I pray that what we do will honor them. They were all that men and women should be on this earth.”

  Panna thought of her mother, who had been orphaned young and raised by an aunt. She thought of Tamma’s dark moods, her introspection—her great spirit that overcame all in ceaseless work and bottomless generosity. She thought of her father, who had lost his wife and then had almost lost his daughter. She thought of how he had lived his whole life for God and for others. And she could not disagree with her husband.

  As they departed from the graves, they stopped at the marble memorial to all those Taken by the Sea. Packer ran his finger across the name of his father, Dayton Throme. Here, too, was a good man gone too soon. “I wish he could know how everything he started has turned out. He never saw any of it amount to anything.” Then he swallowed as a tear stung his eye. “He never saw me amount to anything.”

  Panna looked at her husband, the king. “He always knew who you were.”

  Packer saw the utter confidence in her eyes.

  The two walked, hand in hand, back to the little village high on the cliff. This voyage would be different, and they both knew it. Neither was quite sure that Packer would return this time. But neither had the heart to confess that doubt to the other.

  The Chase, refitted and repaired, would sail for Drammun within the week. Her bowsprit would be rebuilt. Her foremast would be tested and found fit and stable. It would not need to be replaced. “That’s western hardwood,” a grandfather would be overheard telling his grandson as they looked up from the docks at the great mast. “From the Farther Forest. You can bend it, but you can’t hardly break it.” And this time, he would be right.

  Cabinetry would be repaired or replaced. The best craftsmen in the kingdom would work day and night to restore her to her glory. “Can’t have the king sailing off in anything but the best,” the workers told one another. “This here’s for Packer Throme.” And, “We’ll show the Drammune what a real ship is all about.”

  But the mood remained somber around and aboard the Trophy Chase. She had no figurehead. She had now killed off two captains. One of them—Scat Wilkins—had conceived her, the other—John Hand—had designed her. And the man who built her, Lund Lander, the engineer who oversaw every timber, all the deadwood and the decking and the pine deals as each piece was laid and hammered and fit into place, he had died aboard this ship, too.

  Now Andrew Haas would take his turn at the helm. If he worried about these things, he didn’t show it. This was h
is first voyage as a captain. He didn’t focus on the darkness of the night just past, but on the light of dawn ahead. Packer Throme, the stowaway king, would be aboard. So she’d had a difficult voyage. If anyone could recapture her spirit, if anyone could voyage out to sea and return in honor, it was King Packer of the Vast. And it couldn’t hurt that Father Bran Mooring was aboard. God would surely have the keenest of interest in protecting this voyage…or so the people prayed.

  As the hour of departure neared, the darkness of the parting cast a deep shadow, until at last it was a palpable pall even Andrew Haas couldn’t shake. Everyone knew what this voyage meant to the kingdom, and yet no one could guess the result. Would the Drammune turn and be converted, as the king hoped, or would they turn and destroy the king, as many feared? Would they take the hand of friendship, or would they take the Trophy Chase by force and then come back for the rest of the Vast? Would any Firefish obey the king’s command again, or would one kill him, as had happened to John Hand?

  But with stark inevitability, the king took his leave of the queen, and the greatest ship ever built sailed from the Port of Mann late in the afternoon of a late spring day, out into the bay under a setting sun, and on into the dark Vast Sea. Every man, woman, and child knew that the future of the kingdom, of the world they knew, hung on this voyage.

  The people watched in silence, wanting more, knowing there would be no more. They drifted off, and the crowd thinned. Words were few, and voices were low. And then, here and there, groups gathered and bowed their heads. Then men and women sank together to their knees. Without fanfare, without the leading of any single person, without being organized or preached at or shamed, the people of Nearing Vast prayed. They prayed for Packer and Panna and the kingdom and themselves. They confessed their fears. They asked for hope they did not feel, and they asked for faith they could not summon. None of them knew what the Drammune would do. No one knew what the Firefish would do. Not one man or one woman on the shores of Nearing Vast could predict either victory or defeat. But they could kneel and pray, as their king had done, as their army had done.