The Fifth Empire of Man (Best Laid Plans Book 2)

by Rob J. Hayes

  He drew a knife from his belt and levered the lid from the barrel, revealing the black powder inside. They’d found ten kegs of the dangerous explosive after taking the Man of War. Kebble reached into his bag and pulled out a coconut, one of the few natural food supplies on the island – but this particular coconut was just a shell split in half and held together with a thin strip of cloth. Kebble unwrapped the fabric and filled the husk with black powder before placing the two halves back together and retying the cloth. He worked at a steady pace, hurrying but not rushing, all the while aware that every moment was another in which more of New Sev’relain’s people were dying. He had eight more coconuts to fill, and then he needed to find a fuse.

  Chapter 13 - Fortune

  Drake pointed at another group of soldiers emerging from the treeline. Clearly the Five Kingdoms bastards hadn’t expected much resistance. Now they’d realised their tactic of small groups of soldiers was going to cost them greatly, and they were starting to form a more cohesive mass, no doubt under the leadership of a seasoned commander.

  “Tanner,” Drake shouted. “Over there. They need help.”

  Tanner Black looked up from the soldier he’d trapped beneath his boot and followed Drake’s finger. “Aye, we’re on it,” the big captain growled, putting his full weight on the man beneath his foot and crushing his windpipe. Tanner stormed off to rejoin the battle, leaving the soldier flailing and clawing at his own neck, trying to suck in some air. Some battles were a hopeless cause, and the man was destined to die in the mud of New Sev’relain.

  The crew of The Black Death were efficient killers – Drake had to give them that – though they also seemed to enjoy it a bit more than he was comfortable with. Tanner’s pirates were heavily armed, and even a couple of pistols. They were putting them all to good use, and many a Five Kingdoms soldier had died to their savagery. In fact, Drake was fairly certain the crew of The Black Death had done more for the people of New Sev’relain than the townsfolk had done for themselves.

  With a joyous cry and a crash, Tanner’s crew collided with a large group of soldiers and several men from both sides went down. Fresh screams filled the air, punctuated by the twang of bowstrings.

  Drake stood back from the battle, sword in hand, watching the massacre unfold. His people weren’t ready for this sort of fight, and because of that they were dying. The soldiers were better trained and better armed, and although the numbers seemed almost even, most of the fallen were his subjects. If he didn’t do something to change the course of the battle soon, Drake knew he would be the king of bones and little else.

  Something caught Drake’s eye at the treeline – a new wave of soldiers marching out from the jungle in a loose formation. His heart lurched and missed a couple of beats as he realised they were no normal soldiers, but knights dressed head to toe in metal plating – helms, breastplates, vambraces, and greaves – and wielding an assortment of sharp weaponry.

  Before Drake could formulate a plan to deal with the new threat, a screaming soldier came hurtling towards him. Some of the pirates had fallen and soldiers were moving through the gap, trying to give their comrades space to spread out while they attacked the remaining pirates from behind. Over the shoulder of the man rushing him, Drake saw his pirates beginning to break, some turning and running while others valiantly died standing their ground.

  With a surge of strength fuelled by rage, Drake stepped into the oncoming attack, brushing the soldier’s sword aside with his own and sending a thunderous fist to the side of the man’s face. Drake leapt backwards, waving his left hand in the air and wondering what had possessed him to punch the man with a closed fist. The pain was intense, but thankfully short-lived. The soldier was face down on the ground and not moving, and Drake congratulated himself on a knockout punch even as another two men came at him.

  The first of the new soldiers held a round shield and an axe, and the man behind him wielded a long spear with a metal tip stained red. They took no risks as they came at Drake, the spear-wielder doing all the work while the shield-bearer protected him. Drake found himself batting away the polearm with his sword and giving ground, falling back again and again and wondering where in all the Hells Stillwater had got to.

  Drake stepped backwards out of the spearman’s range once again and found his back against the wall of a house. Before the spear could skewer him, a man dressed in the long, faded rags of what had once been a uniform leapt onto the spearman’s back and stabbed him in the neck with a knife that looked like it belonged on a dinner table. The shield-bearer turned to help his comrade, and Drake seized the opportunity and charged. He slashed first at the man’s ankles before half separating the fool’s head from his body with a meaty swing that ended with his sword stuck in the soldier’s neck. The body collapsed into the dust, wrenching Drake’s sword from his grasp.

  “Good work, Tatters,” Drake said as he put his boot on the soldier’s corpse and pulled his blade free.

  Admiral Tatters giggled to himself and collapsed onto his knees. His eyes were wild and the smell of booze coming from him overpowered the odour of death. The admiral had once claimed Drake could never make him less than a gentleman. Drake had proven that claim wrong, and Tatters was well and truly one of them now – though judging by the yellow in his eyes he wouldn’t be one of them for much longer. There was only so much alcohol a body could take before it gave up for good, and Tatters had been pickling himself ever since the townsfolk had set him free.

  Turning his attention back to the battle at the edge of town, Drake saw the knights cutting a swathe through his people. Tanner’s black-hearted crew, always up for a fight, had moved to engage the metal-coated bastards, but even they were falling back. The knights cared little for the impotent attacks of their enemies, and though they were slow, they were backed up by soldiers carrying spears, and those did a good job of keeping the pirates at a distance to stop them aiming for the less-protected parts of the knights’ armour.

  Drake watched Tanner pull a pistol from his belt and fire it into the mass of flesh and metal. One of the knights stopped and wobbled a moment before collapsing to a cheer from Tanner’s crew, but they had precious few pistols and no time to reload. In reply to the murder of one their steel-clad heroes, the Five Kingdoms troops pushed forwards and the crew of The Black Death found themselves beating a quick retreat.

  Stillwater’s sharpshooter, Kebble Salt, appeared from an alleyway between Drake and the battle. The man was carrying a sack in one hand and his rifle in the other, and he looked sleek with sweat in the light of the lantern hanging outside a nearby building. Drake rushed over to the man.

  “Can you do something about those knights?” Drake shouted as he approached.

  Kebble Salt turned towards Drake with a start. The sharpshooter was bleeding from a wound in his side. It was hard to tell how serious the injury was, but going by the amount of blood and the man’s pale complexion, Drake was leaning towards serious.

  “Captain Morrass,” Kebble said, his voice quivering. “I will try.”

  Kebble carefully placed the sack on the ground and shouldered his rifle, aiming it towards the battle. The barrel swayed and wobbled, and Kebble winced in pain. Long moments passed without the sharpshooter taking a shot.

  “Is there anyone around here who ain’t currently useless?” Drake growled, and was greeted by a sullen giggling from Admiral Tatters, who was busy peering into the sack Kebble had been carrying.

  “Away from there, fool,” Kebble hissed, lowering his rifle and shooing Tatters away. “I may not be able to aim a rifle, Captain, but I do have these.”

  Kebble reached into the bag and pulled out a coconut.

  “Wonderful, we’re saved,” Drake said, and started towards the battle. He had no idea how he was going to turn the tide of the slaughter.

  “They are full of black powder, Captain Morrass,” Kebble shouted after him. “And I have set each one with a fuse that should last no more than five counts of one.”


  Drake stopped mid-stride and turned back to Kebble. The man was using his rifle as a crutch and holding one of the coconuts in his hand. “They’ll explode?” he said, walking back to the sharpshooter.

  “Quite violently, I believe,” Kebble said with a nod. “Just light the fuse at the top and throw them at your target.”

  Drake stormed over and looked into the sack. He counted a good number of the weapons, at least half a dozen. A grin lit his face. He picked up the sack, leaving Kebble with the one coconut still in his hand.

  “Go find Stillwater,” Drake said. If the tide of battle was to turn on the use of these new weapons, then Drake wanted the glory well and truly on his shoulders and no one else's.

  Kebble nodded. “Where?”

  “I reckon he went down to the beach. These bastards landed a ship on us and are trying to kill us from both sides.”

  Again Kebble nodded, then started limping towards the beach, still using his rifle as a crutch.

  The sounds of battle were deafening. Steel clashing against wood and metal, punctuated by the screams of the dying. The smell was even worse, almost enough to make Drake gag.

  By the time Drake reached Tanner, the crew of The Black Death were on the verge of quitting the fight altogether. They could do nothing against the knights and their spear-wielding lackeys, and had resorted to retreating while spitting insults.

  “Time ta run back to Fango, I reckon, Ya Majesty,” Tanner said with a dark sneer and a look in his eyes that convinced Drake the man was once again considering killing him.

  “Not yet,” Drake said with a manic grin. “Hold the damned line.”

  Tanner looked like he was about to argue.

  “Hand me a torch.”

  Tanner growled, but turned and pulled a torch from the hands of one of his crew.

  Drake placed the sack of coconuts behind him and pulled out one of the little weapons, grinning at the confused look on Tanner’s face. With a wink, Drake held up the fuse to the torch and the little bit of rope started fizzing.

  “What the fuck is that?” Tanner said, recoiling back from the coconut.

  “History,” Drake said. He waited another second and then rolled the coconut quickly along the ground towards the approaching knights. It bounced once, but held together and disappeared amidst the men’s steel-plated legs. Drake grinned even wider. Two more seconds passed.

  Boom!

  The explosion was loud and violent and threw knights and soldiers alike to the ground, stunning everyone in the area. A mist of blood shot up into the air before raining down along with the odd limb. Then the screaming started.

  Tanner was the quickest to recover, and he shouted at his men to push the advantage. His crew surged forwards, and as the stunned knights and soldiers struggled to recover from the blast, the pirates fell upon them, stabbing and slashing and revelling in the bloody massacre.

  Drake reached into the sack for another coconut.

  The soldiers fanned out, attempting to surround Beck. She let them. The two dead men at her feet and the three arrayed around her had proven how deadly an opponent she was, and no doubt the soldiers would now attempt to rush her all at once from all directions. Beck took the opportunity to reload one of her pistols and slotted it back into her jerkin. At most she had ten shots left, including those already loaded, and given that more soldiers were arriving to skew the numbers even further in their favour, it wouldn’t be enough to win the fight for her.

  There was fighting all along the beach as soldiers attempted to quickly best the pirates they’d found in the sand and join the fight in the town, no doubt hoping to crush the townsfolk from behind as they dealt with the force coming from the jungle. The pirates on the beach weren’t inclined to let the Five Kingdoms soldiers act on their plan, however, and there were dozens of small skirmishes taking place even as Beck now held up the largest force.

  Twenty men faced her, closing in slowly.

  She was tired. Days of hard labour and heavy use of strength-augmenting blessings had taken their toll, but she was an Arbiter, trained by the Inquisition and made into a weapon against the heresy of the world. The men facing her might not be heretics, but nor were they righteous, and that made her worth a hundred of them. She would prove it on the beach of New Sev’relain.

  Volmar’s power coursed through Beck’s body, and she began to chant the words of a sorcery. She knelt down and whispered the magic into the sand. It rippled around her like a pebble dropped into a still pool. The ripples spread quickly outwards until they reached the circle of soldiers, and the sand erupted upwards, engulfing some of the men while others stumbled backwards.

  Beck was already moving even as the first grains shot into the air. She set off at a sprint, straight ahead towards her first target, her speed enhanced by the blessing she chanted. The first soldier, a small man with a crooked nose and hairy palms, had been one of the smarter ones, stepping backwards away from the wall of sand. Beck leapt as she neared the wall and crashed through it as the grains of sand reached their zenith and began to fall. The man recoiled, but it was too late for him. Beck whispered a blessing of strength and his helmet and skull both crumpled under the force of her pistol as she brought the butt down on his forehead. Men were already shouting, and Beck caught at least one of them screaming something about a witch. It only served to enrage her further that the fools might consider she was the heretic.

  Wrenching her pistol free from the swaying corpse, Beck flipped it over, aimed at another soldier, and pulled the trigger. The noise rang loud in her ears, and before she could witness the result she was already racing towards another fight.

  Drawing a second pistol, Beck batted away a soldier’s attempt to skewer her with his sword. She thrust her first pistol into his throat and watched his eyes bulge as his windpipe collapsed. As the last of the sand fell to the ground around her, Beck launched a kick into the dying soldier’s gut and he flew away from her, rolling in the sand and thrashing like a beached fish.

  Two of the soldiers were fleeing from the fight while four more were down, choking on sand. The others looked panicked. One man shouted out to the others, getting them into order. Beck wasn’t about to let them get organised. She slid one of her pistols back into its holster on her jerkin and pulled the much larger pistol gun from her belt holster, aimed at the soldier shouting orders, and pulled the trigger. His chest erupted in pink mist and his body crashed into the sand.

  In a mixed display of cowardice and valour, some of the soldiers broke and ran while most of them charged her. Beck holstered both her pistols and whispered Volmar’s power into a sorcery, and fire burst into life in her right hand. She threw the little flame up into the air above the soldiers, already knowing it would drop down on top of her target and quickly engulf the man as he attempted to flee. Into her other hand she whispered another sorcery, and thrust it into the sand.

  Mimics of Beck’s hand shot out of the sand in front of her, clutching and grabbing hold of anything they could find. Some soldiers tripped and others crashed to the ground. Four soldiers still came at her unimpeded, and Beck just managed to draw two of her pistols before the first man was on her.

  Ducking his sword swing, Beck thrust a pistol butt into the man’s gut then whipped it up, cracking his jaw and sending him stumbling backwards with a howl of pain. She trained another pistol on the second of the oncoming soldiers and pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped through the man’s shield and he fell away, screaming.

  Holstering the empty pistol, Beck stepped into the third soldier’s attack so that it went wide, whispering a sorcery to her empty left hand while blocking the fourth soldier’s attack with the pistol in her right hand. She pressed her left hand against the chest of the third soldier and he crumpled, screaming in pain as his stomach started convulsing.

  The first soldier had recovered and was charging at her. Out of the corner of her eye, Beck saw yet more soldiers hacking at the sandy hands that held them. She disengaged from the fourth sol
dier and met the first in a blind run, and they both crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

  Beck was up first, already whispering to her hand again. As the first soldier gained his feet, she tapped her hand against his head. His expression went blank as his consciousness fled. She drew her last loaded pistol from her jerkin, pressed it against the soldier’s neck, and fired. The bullet ripped through his flesh and buried itself in the fourth soldier as he came towards them. Both men dropped to the sand, dead.

  Beck looked about for the pistol she’d dropped when she collided with the soldier, but wherever it had fallen, she couldn’t see it. Some of the men delayed by her sandy hands were now free and were busy extricating the others. Beck took the opportunity to reload her large pistol as well as four of the smaller ones. It was all she had left.

  Her head swam with exhaustion and the effort of channelling Volmar’s power, and her legs were wobbling. But there were still seven soldiers left, three of them already free from the sand. Two of them held shields, crouching behind them as the third worked to free his comrades. Beck wished she had some runes or charms, but most of those, and everything else that would be useful, were in her Arbiter coat stashed safely in her cabin aboard the Fortune.

  Four more soldiers rushed up, having finished cutting down a group of pirates, making Beck’s tally of enemies up to eleven. She quickly gave up on the idea of using her pistols – she simply didn’t have enough shots. Her sigh of pain and exhaustion turned into a manic laugh.