“Yes, of course.”
Rain dripped off Evere’s chin. “This is a bad idea, lass.”
She chuckled darkly. “Bad idea? I do nothing, you all die and they take me anyway. How is this a bad thing?”
“Because you’ll be killed,” Privet insisted.
Athel looked back, despair in her hollow grey eyes. “Don’t you get it? I’m already dead. My body just hasn’t stopped breathing yet.”
She turned to her handlers and held out her shackles to be removed. “There’s no need for the rest of you to die as well.”
The men looked around, unsure of what to do.
Athel turned back towards the waiting army. “I’m coming forward. I know that you are a man of your word. Please lower your weapons.”
Henen nodded. “All right.”
He signaled to his men and they lowered their arms. The elephants stirred anxiously against the reins of their drivers.
Ryin looked over at Evere. “What do we do?” he whispered.
“I…I don’t know.”
Mandi looked on cautiously, unsure how this would play out.
The soldiers shifted nervously. The slightest provocation, and this would turn into a bloodbath. Everyone knew it. Some of them near the front began edging closer to the docks.
“We have no quarrel with the rest of you,” Henen shouted, feeling the tension mount. “I give you my oath as a Sightstone of Chert, the rest may leave in peace once she turns herself over to us.”
“We shouldn’t do this,” Rachael whispered.
“What else can we do?” Albashire wondered.
“Our friends are growing impatient,” Athel cautioned, holding out her shackles further.
“Could we regroup and get her back later?” Dr. Griffin murmured.
“No way, lad. The minute she leaves here we’ll never see her again. Alive, anyway.”
Evere didn’t know what to do. He looked to Mandi, who was still in the sights of his weapon, his eyes searching for a suggestion.
“Pffft, like I know what to do,” she snickered. “I’m no hostage merchant.”
“We can’t let them take her,” Privet growled softly.
Athel’s chains fell away, and she turned slowly to the waiting army.
“All right,” she announced in an empty voice. “I’m coming over.”
Athel took half a step forward, then paused. She spoke softly, without looking back, as the rain ran down her pale face.
“Goodbye, my friends. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”
She glanced up to Mina, her eyes swimming. “Please take care of little Ash and Trillium for me. They deserve a real mother. Be the mother I couldn’t be.”
Mina’s ears drooped down in grief. “Sweetie…”
Privet slapped his hands against the arms of his chair. “Well, hammer this!”
Snatching a pistol from Talliun’s holster, he grabbed Athel and wrapped his massive arm around her neck.
“Everyone stay back!” he screamed, placing the barrel to Athel’s head.
“Wha…what are you doing?” Athel asked in shock.
“What in the world are you doing?” Captain Henen yelled.
“What’s in your head, lad?” Evere bellowed.
“I don’t know!” Privet screamed, his hands shaking as he pulled her back against his broad chest. “I don’t know. Just…just everyone stay back!”
The soldiers all looked on, befuddled. A few of them raised their weapons.
“I said, stay back!” Privet repeated, pulling back the flint hammer. His breathing was becoming labored, his face frenzied. “She’s no good to you dead. Queen Sotol’s deal only applies if you bring her in alive.”
Captain Henen could only look on in shock.
“Privet, what the trell are you doing?” Athel gasped, clawing at the arm around her neck.
“Saving your hide...I hope.”
“By blowing my head off?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!”
One of Henen’s lieutenants folded his arms confidently. “He’s bluffing, sir, he’s not going to kill her.”
“AM I?!” Privet screamed hoarsely, fighting to make his lungs work. “I lost almost everything I had trying to defeat the Stone Council. I lost my freedom, I lost my legs…and I don’t recall seeing any of you there helping us out when we fought.”
He pressed the barrel harder against her skull. “The only thing left to me is the woman I love. If you take her, she’ll be tortured and killed. So whether by my hand or someone else’s, I’ll lose her this day. Given that reality, don’t think for a second that I won’t pull this trigger just to spite all of you. You hear me! Back off or you lose your prize forever!”
For an agonizing moment, all stood frozen and silent. There was only the sound of Privet’s painful breathing, and the pattering of rain.
Captain Henen held out his hand. “All right, lower your weapons,” he ordered carefully.
Privet motioned to Talliun for help, and she began wheeling him backwards towards the cargo doors.
“Everyone get inside,” Privet ordered, pulling Athel along with him.
“Please, you know we can’t let you go,” Henen said, trying to be reasonable. “The seas advance daily, all lands are threatened. We could lose the capital at any time.”
As everyone began filtering into the black ship, Henen became more desperate. “We don’t want to spill your blood, but we must protect our people, our families. The lives of everyone in the whole world are at stake here; what is that weighted against a single person?”
“You can’t possibly believe that Queen Sotol will honor her word,” Privet shouted as Talliun carefully wheeled him backwards.
“We can’t take that chance!” Henen responded. “Please, we have no choice, we have to try appeasing her. I have a wife and child at home.”
Privet looked back, determination in his eyes. “Then you understand why I can’t give her to you.”
The cargo doors closed before him.
“Open fire!” Captain Henen shouted. “Don’t let that ship make sail!”
The soldiers surged forward; the war elephants raised their glowing trunks.
Inside the black ship, Athel squirmed free and slapped Privet square across the face. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
“Noted.”
Privet pointed to some of the men. “Tie her up, don’t let her escape through a porthole.”
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” Athel screamed as her wrists and ankles were bound.
The ship rocked as a hole was punched through the side. A wooden rib shattered as the red blast of energy passed through, setting three bunks ablaze and punching out through the opposite side.
Captain Evere grabbed Odger by the scruff of his neck. “Get in the stone core, on the double, we need altitude.”
“Yeah, I got it!”
“I got the helm,” Mina called out, scurrying up the ladder.
“Margaret, summon us up an offshore wind, strongest you can manage,” Evere ordered.
“Um…oh, okay.”
“Talliun, sow as much confusion as you can.”
Talliun spun the tumbler in her clockwork arm, locking a caster stone into place. “With pleasure.”
“The rest of you, man the cannons! We’re fighting our way out.”
Evere stopped at Mandi and Molly, who were standing amidst the scrum.
“You and I will settle our score later.”
As he ran off, Molly hid behind Mandi’s leg. “He’s scary.”
“No, that actually went better than I expected,” Mandi appraised.
Molly crinkled her nose in confusion.
Mandi looked down and patted the young girl
on the head. “He didn’t throw us out.”
Outside, the war elephants continued their barrage on the crumbling vessel. The bowsprit was cloven in twain and fell, hanging limply by the fore staysail. The quarterdeck exploded, fragments crashing down along the main deck as the men and women tried to prime the guns. Hole after hole was blown into the forecastle. The air was littered with splinters and fire as the rain and lightning poured down from above.
“Aim for the masts,” Captain Henen ordered over the shrill snap of the sorcerous blasts. “We must take the Wysterian alive!”
The Ronesian soldiers charged up the docks, flinging boarding hooks up and snagging the gunwale in dozens of places.
Fire poured out of the holes as if the ship were roasting from the inside out. Rachael and Ryin frantically cut the boarding lines as fast as they could, but three more were hooked for every one they released.
As Talliun made her way to the shredded quarterdeck, a trio of red-hot blasts struck the mizzen mast. It groaned like a dying tree and snapped, uprooting the shrouds and tearing away huge sections of the bulwark.
“She’s coming down!” Mina shouted as she jumped away. Men and women scattered in all directions as the mast and sails came crashing down, crushing the anchor windlass and punching the ship’s wheel straight through the deck and into the whipstaff below.
Talliun ran to the side and held out her brass hand, releasing a torrent of lightning, the tines arcing out amongst the soldiers at the base of the bluffs. The men and women screamed in pain, dropping their weapons and falling to the sands, their bodies convulsing as the energies washed over them.
As the elephants above them raised their trunks, Talliun spun her tumbler and fired an icy blast at two of them, clogging their trunks with a thick layer of frost.
A pair of soldiers climbed up over the deck and knocked their bows at her.
“Freeze, you clockwork freak!”
Talliun rolled beneath their shots and swept her leg, kicking the feet out from underneath one and sending her crashing down to the deck. Talliun spun her tumbler and punched upwards, releasing a concussive blast of sonic energy the struck the second one, throwing him back over the side where he came from.
As he disappeared from view, four more soldiers climbed aboard. Talliun drew her saber and cut the lines to the longboat. It fell free, crashing down on top of them, and sliding along the breadth of the vessel, scraping off soldiers and boarding ropes as it fell.
Locking in a fresh stone, Talliun punched forward and a shadowy bolt struck out, hitting the rocky bluffs beneath one of the elephants. The rock became insubstantial shadow, and the beast tumbled straight through it, careening off an outcropping, and somersaulting into the formation of soldiers below, flinging men women and equipment in all directions.
Albashire and Kummeritas helped the others load the remaining guns as best they could. A weak volley from the black ship fired at the remaining elephants on the bluff, but the shots did little more than enrage the beasts as they pelted into their meaty hides.
With a roar, they released another volley of red bolts from their trunks. Quick as thought, Talliun switched caster stones and created a shield of hard light as she placed herself before the mast. The bolts struck the transparent barrier, deflecting down and shredding the docks below. The soldiers backed off as the structure came apart beneath them, clinging to anything they could as the wooden beams and planks tumbled apart like a house of cards, crumbling into the sands. Talliun’s face went alight with red fire as she saw four more elephants fire at the mast she guarded.
The blast shattered her shield, throwing her back across the deck. For a moment, the main mast hung there in the air, as if nothing had happened. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, it began to fall. An entire section as tall as a man had been burned away. The mast collided with its own stump, the weight of tons of wood and sail punching through the hardwood as if it were no more than pottery.
The foot was pounded down, the very step of the mast itself breaking through the keel and exiting out the ruined bottom of the airship.
The mast folded in on itself and collapsed, knocking guns and debris overboard in all directions. It was like a waterfall of splintered wood was pouring over the side. Men and woman struggled to stay aboard, climbing and scrambling over the avalanche of flotsam that threatened to drag them with it.
Rachael got snagged in a tangle of shrouds, and was yanked overboard.
“Help me!” she screamed.
As she fell down, Ryin slid to the edge and caught her wrist. She swung into the side of the ship, slapping hard against the wood, but he managed to hold on.
“T-thank you,” she huffed, looking down at the debris falling into the sands.
Ryin’s arms trembled with exertion. “You are really heavy,” he puffed.
“Don’t say that!”
Captain Evere emerged from beneath a shorn yardarm, tossing the wrenched wood aside as if it were nothing. A volley of arrows rose up from the dunes below, and he slashed his cutlass, knocking away the two that would have struck him. “Time for that wind, lass.”
He pulled away a torn section of canvas, revealing Margaret cowering beneath.
“It’s not going to do any good without sails!” she fretted, pushing up her cracked glasses.
“Just do it.”
Up on the bluffs, Captain Henen held out his paw as he saw the ethereal wake begin to form around the ruined keel. “They’re waking up the stone core. Fire grapnels, don’t let them take off!”
Heavy guns were brought up, and with a snap and hiss, harpoons with heavy chains skewered the stricken vessel.
Inside the cargo bay, Athel jumped backwards in her bonds when a harpoon shattered the wall next to her and implanted itself into the bulkhead.
Mandi hid Molly behind a barrel, then picked up a chair. With all her strength, she smacked the protruding tip of the harpoon, dislodging it from the bulkhead. As she kicked it overboard, another three slammed in to take its place.
The ship began to rise, but was almost immediately restrained by the chains piercing her. It yanked back, groaning like a wounded animal on a leash.
As Margaret began chanting to the winds, Captain Evere ran over to the edge of the cluttered deck.
“You coming, lass?”
Deutzia shimmered grumpily, and uprooted herself from the sands, terrifying the Ronesians around her, who suddenly found themselves swatted about by a very large, very grumpy tree.
Deutzia grabbed onto the ship and hefted herself aboard, the damaged stone core whimpering at the excess weight. Tearing chains free as she went, she came upon the deck and plunged her roots down into the awaiting soil in the cargo hold.
A fresh volley of red energy hit the ship and the spine broke with a thunderous crack. The two halves of the ship pulled away from one another, people and cargo spilling out like a cracked egg, but Deutzia grabbed the two halves and forced them back together, her branches and roots growing and mingling with the wreckage, knitting together what was now only the general shape of a ship with her own body.
“That’s what I like to see!” Evere howled triumphantly, drinking in the chaos and carnage around him as he swatted away another volley of arrows with his cutlass. “That’s how we do things here on the Dreadnuaght!”
Mina got up and stood by her husband, cradling her injured arm. He was so thrilled, she didn’t have the heart to correct him about the ship’s name.
He thrust his blade towards the open skies. “Full speed ahead!”
Captain Henen couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The grapnel chains snapped away. Shredded, on fire, and held together by the gnarly roots and branches of a giant tree, the black ship was rising up away from them, smoke and flame pouring from hundreds of spots where fire arrows had hit her hull.
Deutzia reached down and picked up the canvas, holding th
em before herself, creating sails where none had been before. The material stretched taught under Margaret’s wind, and the ship began to pull away from the docks.
Enraged, Henen lifted up his fist.
“We can’t let them go! All war elephants, shoot the tree!”
Looking out through the hole in the hull, Athel looked on helplessly as every remaining elephant tracked its glowing trunk and prepared to fire.
“NO!”
Mandi threw herself atop Molly to protect her from the blast.
The elephants’ trunks glowed red hot, then, from behind them on the bluffs, a group of people jumped down, landing atop the animals and their riders.
Captain Henen turned around just in time to see the beasts panic as their reins were yanked by powerful men wearing bright colors.
“It’s the Tomani!”
The blasts fired up into the skies, just barely missing Deutzia as they passed over her, splitting the clouds.
Evere looked back just in time to see Koma Czamani standing atop the bluffs, ordering his men to pounce down upon the warbeasts
“Thank you, Koma.”
“May the blessings of Zelica be with you, brother,” Czamani shouted back as he and the others were swarmed with soldiers. They held up their hands in salute, even as the Ronesians forced them to the ground and bound them with strong cords.
Blood dripping down her face, Talliun managed to rise to her feet and make her way to the aft of the ship.
She held out her damaged clockwork arm, and with a creaking whimper, she released a cloud of prismatic fog, shrouding them from their attackers as they pulled away from the island.
Bolts of red fire searched for the black ship, but unable to see their target, they passed far and wide from hitting her.
Andolf chanted to himself, his clear glassy spirits swirling around him as he communed.
“There is a squadron of ships approaching from the south, and another from the east,” he warned.
“Margaret, bring us north; swing wide of the capital and take us out to sea, as far away from the shipping lanes as you can!”
“Kay,” she called back, trying to concentrate as best she could.
Isle of Wysteria: Throne of Chains Page 6