The Gray Lady’s captain wasn’t waiting for either the galley or the bolts to arrive. Yelling his own orders, he brought the sailing ship around to port so hard that the Mechanics and Mages on the deck all staggered to the rail and held on tightly. Several crossbow bolts thudded into the deck, one striking so close to Asha that she stumbled to the side, off balance.
Before she could fall Mechanic Dav had lunged away from the rail and caught her.
Asha gazed at the Mechanic dispassionately. “You help.”
“I…I don’t want you hurt,” Mechanic Dav said. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
Alain saw one corner of Asha’s lip bend into the tiniest of smiles. “I am well. Back to your duties, Mechanic Dav.”
Alain had assumed that Mechanic Dav’s interest in Asha was all about her beauty. Certainly from his reactions that was what had first attracted him to her. But now Alain wondered if this Mechanic Dav was wise enough to see the woman within Asha’s Mage exterior. The thought cheered him even through his weariness.
Mechanic Dav went back to the rail, where Alli made a low-voiced comment that drew brief, tense laughter from Mari and Bev. Alain wondered what the women found amusing.
The ship kept turning, the spars and booms swinging overhead. The sails rumbled as they lost the breeze then caught it once more. The Gray Lady cruised into another heavy bank of fog and lost sight of the pursuing galley.
Alain heard the captain cursing as he jumped down from the quarterdeck and raced forward. Alain managed to get back to his feet and followed, wanting to know what might be needed. The captain reached the bow and grasped some rigging tightly, peering ahead. “Hide and seek, Sir Mage,” he explained in a near whisper. “And the rocks of the breakwater not far off, if I’m any judge.”
A splashing noise and the wash of water past a hull sounded clearly through the white mist enveloping them. Before anyone could do or say anything, the shape of a galley shot into sight, heading right across their path. “Hard a-starboard!” the captain yelled back to the quarterdeck. “Bring her about!”
The Gray Lady had built up enough speed that she heeled far over under the command of her rudder, port side rising up as the starboard side dipped. Her bowsprit swung past the bow of the galley, looking as if it had missed striking the other ship by a matter of a hand’s-width. Then the Gray Lady was swinging parallel to the galley as it swept past close aboard.
The oars on the near side of the galley had no time to swing up vertical and safe. Still poised out from the galley’s hull, they formed a thicket which rushed past the Gray Lady as the sailing ship bore away in the other direction. With a series of cracks, crashes, and moans of tortured wood which merged into one long roar, the oars on that side of the galley disintegrated into a flurry of splinters and broken stumps. Over the sound of rending wood, Alain could also hear the screams and yells of the oar handlers being bludgeoned by the impact of the Gray Lady against their oars.
Before Alain could grasp what was happening it was over, the two ships losing each other in the fog again, the Gray Lady wearing back to port under her captain’s commands and the crippled galley wavering as it vanished into the mist. He looked aft and saw Mari staring after the galley, her face bleak. Knowing her, Alain was certain she was tormented by the fading cries of the stricken oar handlers.
The sails rumbled again as the breeze faltered, then the wind swung around to come from another direction. The captain cursed, using a number of words that Alain had not heard before despite his time among soldiers. The meaning of the words was clear enough, however. Nursing the Gray Lady onto a new heading, the captain got her speed up again, calling nearly constant commands to the helm to adjust the course and to his crew to trim the sails to make the most of the wandering winds.
They cruised through another clear patch, then another bank of dense fog, then into another open space, this one as large as the grand coliseum in the Imperial capital of Palandur. And in a picture that could have been drawn from one of the coliseum spectacles, a second Syndari galley was angling through the same gap, so close a stone could have been thrown from the deck of the Gray Lady to that of the galley.
Mari shouted commands from amidships and the Mechanic weapons thundered. Alain saw splinters flying from the area around the galley’s tiller and wondered that none of the officers or sailors there had been hit. Syndari crewmembers dove hastily for cover, abandoning their stations for the moment. Amid the sailors, Alain caught a glimpse of a Mage’s robes.
“Niaro!” Asha called across the gap, her voice still lacking emotion but loud enough to carry easily. “Even now you lack strength and skill!” She wagged the blade of her knife derisively at the other Mage. “The Syndaris could not afford a real Mage!”
Alain stared back at Asha, wondering why she was taunting Niaro so. While the other Mage had been able to help find the Gray Lady even in the fog, with so little power in this particular spot on the ocean no Mage could hope to manage any major spells alone. But as Alain looked over at Niaro, he saw that Mage stagger toward the rail of the galley and then collapse.
A moment later, with no hand on the wheel, the Syndari galley swung away, vanishing into the mist again.
“He’ll be back,” the captain noted, his face grim.
“He will have more difficulty finding us,” Asha announced with the closest thing to a satisfied smile Alain had ever seen on her. “Their Mage tried to match you in spell work, Mage Alain, and all his strength drained to nothing. Niaro will give no more aid to the Syndari galleys for some time.”
“You mocked him,” Alain said. “Like an elder toying with a very young acolyte.”
“And Niaro responded as a very young acolyte would,” Asha said. “With anger and little control.”
Alain nodded to her. “I am fortunate to be your friend, Mage Asha.”
“Yes. You are.” She nodded back to him.
The crewmembers in the rigging had been calling out to one another now that secrecy was impossible, but the captain shouted a command. “All hands, quiet!”
The Mechanics and Mages, who would normally have ignored the command of a common person, fell silent along with the crew at Mari’s gesture. Alain, marveling at her ability to exercise control over both Mechanics and Mages, watched the captain of the Gray Lady, who was leaning slightly forward over the rail near the bow, not just staring into the mist but also listening intently. A small smile came to the captain’s lips as he heard something. “Oars are very useful, Sir Mage, for making a galley move when wind is lacking, but sails make little noise by comparison, whereas the oars of the galleys splash and creak enough to mask the sounds of other things. And a wise sailor always listens for the sound of danger.” He paused, apparently not looking at anything but listening very carefully. “Hold on,” he muttered very softly to himself.
The Gray Lady shot through a thin sheet of fog, in and out in a flash with the remnants of the mist rapidly dissipating now. Ahead, a low bank of fog still remained, obscuring the sea in their path. Glancing upward at the now-visible sun, Alain saw that the Gray Lady was going almost due north.
The third Syndari galley burst out of the fog behind them, its oars sweeping the water to either side like great white wings as the hostile ship bore down on them.. Despite its menace, Alain could not help admiring the beauty of the sight and the pounding menace of the drum. But instead of ordering another immediate course change, the Gray Lady’s captain watched calmly, still listening. Alain, concentrating, could now catch a sound ahead as well, a murmuring and soft roaring he could not identify.
The galley was closing rapidly, Mari and her fellow Mechanics preparing to open fire again with their Mechanic weapons.
The captain suddenly roared a command back to the helm. “Hard right rudder! Six points to starboard!” Under the strong rudder, the Gray Lady yawed heavily, her deck listing at a high angle as the nimble ship swung to the right with an agility the larger, fast-moving galley couldn’t match. Alain caught a glimp
They didn’t. Realizing too late the trap they had been led into, the galley tried to turn away in the Gray Lady’s wake, her banks of oars halting in the air, then frantically coming down in the opposite direction to try to check the galley’s speed. But the oars began clashing and banging against each other as panicky rowers lost discipline, and the smooth rhythm of the oars fell apart. The galley turned partway under the push of its rudder, but it was too late to avoid the rocks.
As the Gray Lady showed her stern to the galley, the Syndari ship suddenly shuddered violently. Alain could see oars on the side away from them, the side facing the rocks, bending and cracking. Distant cries of pain from battered oar handlers drifted across the water. The galley, having turned just enough to avoid running hard aground, bounced away from contact with the rocks, staggering like a drunkard from the force of the impact and the damage doubtless done to its hull. As the galley wobbled away from the rocks, Alain could see the bow dipping and guessed enough planks had been stove in by the collision to allow dangerous flooding of the ship.
His attention on the wrecked galley, Alain was shocked when Mechanic Alli slapped his shoulder.
She was laughing. “Don’t mess with momentum!”
Mari came up beside them, grinning. “Or momentum will mess with you,” she said. Both Mechanics laughed again at some shared joke that was incomprehensible to Alain. He wondered who Momentum was and what he or she had to do with what had just happened.
The laughter of the Mechanics died as another lingering fog bank shredded to reveal the first galley, looking crippled with its mast missing but pivoting nimbly under the push of its oars to charge again at the Gray Lady.
Chapter Three
“Alli,” Mari said, her angry gaze fixed on the galley, “I’m tired of watching the rowers suffer while the bosses on these galleys keep ordering them to come at us. I want whoever is giving the orders on that ship stopped.”
“You got it.” Alain watched as Mechanic Alli knelt to steady her weapon on the ship’s rail. “What about whoever is at the helm?”
“Dav, Bev, and I will target the helm. You take out the officers.”
“No problem.” Alli squinted along the barrel of her rifle. “There’s a guy with a lot of gold on him. Inlaid armor. Very pretty. Hey, tell the captain to hold this ship steady, will you?”
“Captain!” Mari called. “Hold the ship steady!”
The captain looked startled, but passed the order to the helm. The Gray Lady stopped turning, cutting smoothly through the still-placid waters of the Jules Sea. The wind had steadied as well, filling the sails and pushing the ship along at an even clip.
Asha came to stand beside Alain. “What do the Mechanics do, Mage Alain?”
“They will use their weapons to kill those in charge on that ship,” he explained. “It matters to Mari that only those shadows of the lowest status have been harmed.”
“Why?” Asha said.
“She regards each shadow as another like herself,” Alain said.
“That is very strange. Yet I recall you saying it was because Mari saw you as one like herself that she saved your life when all she knew of you was that you were a Mage. Do all Mechanics believe this?”
“Many do not,” Alain said. He noticed Mechanic Bev tossing a puzzled look at him and Asha and guessed she was baffled that he and Asha could be having such a dispassionate conversation while the enemy galley bore down on them. “But those with Mari follow her ways of thinking.”
“Like Mechanic Dav. It is useful to have such companions,” Asha concluded, “and such weapons as theirs when the power to use Mage spells is lacking. Though now I sense more power available with each moment.”
“It is because we are moving,” Alain explained. “I am still weary. Can you cast a spell?”
“It is possible. Where is it needed?”
A weak point, Mari had said. This galley had already lost its mast, and losing a single oar wouldn’t harm it much. “Do you see the large wheel that the sailors call a helm? If something were to happen to that, it would hurt the ship.”
“I will see what can be done.”
The galley was coming toward them, the drum cadence fast, the oars flashing up and down in a quick beat that drove the enemy warship closer at ever-increasing speed. Soldiers packed the forward fighting platform, swords in hand, ready to fight hand-to-hand. “He means to ram us!” the captain called from the quarterdeck, sounding very anxious.
“Hold your course!” Mari called back. She was aiming along her rifle like the other Mechanics, still looking angry. “Why do people make us do this?” she grumbled to Alain. “Why do they have to try to harm others?”
“I do not know,” Alain said.
The crash of Mechanic Alli’s weapon surprised everyone. There was a pause as Alli worked the lever to load a new bullet, then a figure in grandiose armor staggered backwards on the Syndari quarterdeck and fell.
Alli bent to aim again as chaos erupted on the galley.
“Get the helm!” Mari ordered.
The enemy ship seemed very close indeed as the three other Mechanic weapons boomed almost in unison. Two more figures fell, but the galley kept on.
“Move however you want!” Mari called to the captain of the Gray Lady, and a moment later the clipper heeled over hard as she turned away from the charging galley.
The sailors at the galley's helm began turning to stay on a collision course with the Gray Lady, but as Alain watched they suddenly staggered back, the wheel free in their hands instead of firmly attached to the post where it had been.
He felt someone slump against him, then Alain and Mage Dav were holding the limp figure of Mage Asha, who had exhausted herself with her spell.
Mechanic Alli fired again, and another grandly dressed figure dropped on the galley. The other Mechanics fired a volley, though with everyone scrambling around on the galley’s quarterdeck and falling against each other it was hard to see the effect. What Alain could tell was that the galley was swinging wildly to one side, its earlier turn becoming more and more extreme with no means of controlling the ship’s rudder. The drumbeat broke off, the oars trying to stop and instead crashing into each other.
Once again the Mechanic weapons fired, and this time everyone visible on the galley went flat or dove for cover. Its oars in a shambles and the useless wheel sliding unheeded off one side of the quarterdeck into the water, the galley glided past the stern of the Gray Lady.
“I think they’ve had enough,” Mechanic Alli commented, standing up and canting her weapon over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” Mari agreed. She turned, looking at the other galleys, now visible as the last remnants of the fog dissipated. Both were drifting and showed no signs of wanting to renew the fight. The galley that had hit the rocks had taken on so much water its bow was nearly awash, with most of the crew busy using any available container, including their helmets, to try to bail out the seawater before the galley sank.
“Mage Asha?” A stricken-looking Mechanic Dav was kneeling beside the female Mage, across from the apparently placid Mage Dav.
“She is tired,” Mage Dav explained. “Not hurt.”
“Back to work, Mechanic,” Bev said, helping Mechanic Dav stand. “The job’s not completed yet.” They walked back to the railing to help keep watch on the galleys.
“Steady!” the captain of the Gray Lady called to his helm, grinning. “Those rocks that discomfited one of our enemies are the breakwater for Julesport, Lady Mari! I knew they must be somewhere near. Oars have their place, and I know the Mechanics use their steam, but with all respect for your arts, to me sails are what a proper ship should depend upon.”
“You make a strong argument for that,” Mari said, smiling with relief. “Jules herself couldn’t have done better.”
The captain beamed at the praise comparing him to the legendary sailor. “You would know if anyone, daughter of Jules,” he declared, bowing low to Mari. “Having you aboard has no doubt brought the favor of Jules to our voyage, and if I may say so, I have never been so glad to have honored Mechanics and honored Mages as passengers!”
Mari laughed, since she knew that commons had never before been glad to have Mechanics and Mages as passengers, though it was not hard for Alain to see her embarrassment at being linked to the famous seafarer. “How far are we from Julesport?” Mari asked.
The captain pointed ahead. There the rocks of the breakwater rose higher and were capped by a stone fortification and lighthouse that seemed designed to withstand any attack and the mightiest of gales. “That marks the entrance to the harbor, Lady! Welcome to Julesport!”
* * * *
Despite the captain’s announcement of their arrival, in fact it took quite a while to first wear around the end of the breakwater and then make their way against the wind into the crowded harbor. The Gray Lady’s crew was kept busy adjusting and trimming the sails, while the captain kept his attention on the many ships and boats that the clipper had to avoid while threading her way to an anchorage.
That left Mari with nothing to do but lean on the rail and watch the slow progress of the ship into the harbor. They only needed to stay long enough to take on food and water before sailing south toward the one destination no one was likely to suspect, the Broken Kingdom of Tiae.
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