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**Chapter 10
Chaos…then Peace….Damn it!**
The leading warships stormed into the bay in a long line of black sails and the sooty smoke of black gunpowder. The small guns that each cutter had mounted on it’s foredeck were not particularly powerful and damage to the defending ships was light, but the screen of thick smoke and the hulls of the ships themselves served to screen the larger ships behind them as they maneuvered into position to bring their full broadside gun decks to bear. The first wave took heavy damage from the dockside guns and many of them had already started to sink, filling the churning waters with burning wrecks, like so many fiery water lilies. Obviously, part of the plan of the ruthless attackers was to make flight or a counter attack as difficult as possible and they were not at all afraid to do so on the dying backs of what were likely slave crews in the leading ships.
She squinted her hazel eyes and quickly but calmly scanned the battle while her crew raced around her, jumping from deck to railing to rigging like human-size cats with the zoomies. They all knew their jobs and did them well without her micromanaging them. In fact, she counted it as a point of pride that she could let others accomplish tasks in the way most natural for them without losing mental bandwidth listening to orders they didn’t really need. Cesar on the other hand apparently hadn’t gotten that memo or else completely lacked that gene in his makeup and was stalking the deck shouting orders to her sailors. Luckily, it seemed that most of the men were nodding and smiling at him and then going about their business like they had intended in the first place. She even saw a salute or two that didn’t look too obviously patronizing. Her crew was the best of the best and even though it was a dicey bet giving orders to pirates in the best of times, the bilge rats of the Syren could play nice and go with the flow when they had to. They instinctively recognized that their ship and their captain, if not their whole way of life, needed them to swallow their pride and fierce independence and just get things done.
In the midst of the controlled chaos swirling around her, she found her gaze drawn to a small zone of calm at the base of the midship mast. The blind sailor was still coiling and stowing the lengths of extra rope that every ship kept on hand to tie the sails when they were furled. His hands moved in a way that spoke of long practice and that didn’t have to move quickly since they wasted no energy in unnecessary motion. She wondered if anyone had thought to explain to him the crisis that was developing in the Bay. Her steps had just started in his direction when she heard a questioning curse from the other side of the deck.
Maybe sensing that he was having little real impact on the way things were unfolding around him, Cesar spun around on his heel to face Sarah and found her making her way midship. His face creased in puzzlement and then anger when he saw the object of her trajectory.
“You there! Cripple!” he yelled, “Did no one tell you we are seconds from the battle of our lives? How did you get on board anyway? Who authorized the hiring of a useless, blind sailor? We need every soul on this ship to give 110 percent today, no one has the time to babysit a man that can’t fight. Get off the ship,NOW!, before we throw off lines or I will throw you off myself.”
“Mr. Embustante!” Sarah raised her voice in irritation about to explain in no uncertain terms that nobody threw anybody off her ship, without her say so. Certainly not someone who was expertly doing a job that no one else had time to do at the moment. But just as she was getting worked up to make her point, a loud quarrel broke through the tense moment and forced everyone’s attention on the plank that gave access to the ship from the dock.
“Now what?” she thought and tried with only partial success to process the scene. A tall, well dressed man with empty eyes, a cruel face, and an oily smile stood next to an equally attired woman who, to all appearances, were trying go get on board the ship just as her men were preparing to cast off into the mayhem of the fight the other captains had already joined with the Noxians. Two of the beefier deck hands were blocking their way at the top of the gangplank but, by their stances, neither of the two newcomers looked to have any intention of backing down.
“What in all the hells could you two want?” she asked. Just looking at the man in the eyes gave her a headache. Now here were two people that she would be happy to give Cesar permission to boot off the Syren.
“Captain Fortune, you must allow us to sail with you. I have information that will be crucial to your success in this struggle,” the man said with all the sincerity of a spider inviting a fly into his home, “Allow me to introduce myself, I am Master Erlok and this is my companion, Lady Dania.”
The lady in question subtly raised one eyebrow and cast a sidelong glance at Master Erlok when he referred to her as his “companion” but quickly hid the expression and said nothing.
“We believe you have in your possession three objects of power that you recently acquired which could have a significant role in repulsing the Noxian threat. You must allow us to accompany you and show you how to use them to the best effect.”
Her mouth gaped open involuntarily for the briefest instant before she shrugged and answered, “Whoever you are and how you got your information, I don’t have time to put you back ashore. For good or evil, it looks like you are sailing with the Syren into what could be her last fight.” She turned to the two burly deck hands and ordered, “Cast off the lines! Get us under sail!”
They vaulted the railing and dropped agilely to the dock below and in an instant had the thick ropes holding the ship loosened and pushed her away from the pier with long poles. The sails unfurled as the men untied the lashings and the wind instantly caught the heavy fabric and stretched it taut.
The Bay was a large, open expanse of water, sheltered by several islands at its mouth. Her trained eye and familiarity with the harbor told her that it would take 10 to 15 minutes to close with the battle from the Syren’s berth. There was maybe just enough time to puzzle out the claims Master Erlok had made about the items that were still sitting, untouched, on her desk.
“Erlok! Dania! Cesar!” she barked, “My quarters, now!”
She turned her back on them without looking at their expressions or waiting to see if they were following and strutted back across the desk to her quarters and blew through the door.
Although the stateroom was darker than the deck and her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted, she could clearly see the three items in question on her desk.
One was a gold crown, set with blue stones but of a size to be worn on a finger rather than on the brow. The other two were figurines of small trees, planted in pots. They were made of some unknown material, rigid and unmoving. One was the image of a tree in full bloom, with tiny silver fruits hanging from its bows. The other looked like it lived in a perpetual wintertime, with bony, bare branches reaching up to a gray sky.
She reached out one hand toward the figure of the living tree, intending on beginning the interrogation of her strange guests with it. Her hand fell on it just as she was opening her mouth and turning to the strangely empty doorway.
*Damn it, where are they?*
Suddenly, the world around her froze then twisted 180 degrees When it returned to normal… instead of the bright rectangle of the doorway leading to the deck of her ship… she was alone, in a forest of lush green fruit trees!
She looked down at the figurine in her hand that mimicked the trees that were suddenly all around her and dropped it in shock. Her cabin didn’t reappear. The sounds of wind through the leaves and the calls of the birds flitting from one branch to the next didn’t fade back into the roar of cannons and men crying out in anger, pain, and fear.
She ran first in one direction past a dozen trees and then returned to the statuette still lying on the ground and ran the other way but saw no sign of the wharfs and warehouses of Bilgewater Bay, only a never-ending, solitary orchard in every direction. Most people would have found her current setting idyllic, and much preferred to be there than in an uncertain deadly struggle with Noxian raiders.
But her ship? Her men? The Bay that had become her home? She had to find a way back!
**Chapter 11
What a Croc!**
She ran with no goal between the trees, desperate to find some way back to her ship, to her embattled crew. One gnarled trunk blended into the next, one leafy canopy indistinguishable from the next. Every second, every step seemed an eternity that separated her from the battle she needed to get back to. She refused to stop, refused to give in to despair. She would run until her legs could give no more. There had to be an end to this endless orchard of trees and she was determined to find it.
A sound began to intrude on her consciousness as she ran aimlessly. It slowly grew from a whisper until it was a rush of sound that could not be ignored. The rush of water, rising and retreating, gradually became the focal point of her experience. Something novel in the unending march of identical trees. The mistress of the Syren thought herself an expert on the sound of flowing water, but with each step, she became less and less sure of its origin or, really, its meaning. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.
She stopped for a moment and focused. Aimless effort rarely yielded fruit, she knew this. There must be a goal, a purpose to her exertion, if she hoped to see results. She stopped and leaned against one of the ubiquitous trunks and closed her eyes, attempting to make sense of what she was hearing. If she closed her eyes, the seemingly constant, steady crash of water started to coalesce into a pattern. Waves! She heard waves. Waves meant there was an ocean. An ocean could be navigated. She had to be on one of the countless islands that peppered the waters around Bilgewater. That was close to home, close to rejoining her ship and the men who counted on her to get them safely through the smoke, flame and whistling death that had fallen on them like a late summer hurricane.
A few more seconds of deep breathing and her senses locked in on the direction she was sure held the exit to her leafy prison. She took off at a run, dodging the soldiers of her forest jailors and suddenly broke through the cover of the interlocked branches overhead and on to a white sand beach and skidded to a stop when she realized she wasn’t alone anymore.
Halfway down the pristine, porcelain strand was an elevated chair about the height of two tall men with an oversized red and white umbrella extending out from the top. Standing in its shade was a small group of women, talking and laughing, some drinking out of coconuts through brightly colored tubes stuck into them. Further down the beach and into the water she could make out more female figures of all body shapes and skin tones, blondes and brunettes.
But what grabbed the eye and held it was the toothy, green-skinned terror in the chair, holding court over the scene. Even at this distance she could hear it laugh and call to one of the girls. Instead of crying out in fear, the woman smiled and saluted the man shaped thing on the chair with her drink. He flexed one of his heavily muscled biceps and la ughed again, sounding like several tons of gravel cascading down a stone slope.
The bizarre sight held her attention so firmly that she never noticed another group approaching quietly from behind her until a tall blonde and a shorter, muscular brunette caught her arms in tight grips. Various others she couldn’t see pressed up against her back and propelled her toward the center of the gathering ahead of them.
“Ton-Ton!” the brunette called out with a sweet voice that belied the ironlike grip she had on Sarah’s upper arm. “Babe! I think we found a new guest for the beach party!”
The veteran captain and pirate gasped in horror as the crocodilian head rotated around to fix her gaze. Two and a half feet of closely spaced bony knives parted in amused surprise and the rattling rocks voice sounded again.
“A red head! We don’t have one of those! What are you waiting for? Someone get her a drink.”
Several girls ran off quickly back to the tree line, presumably to find a fresh coconut and fill it with God knows what concoction.
“Welcome to the party, my dear! Please be at ease, I may have been known in a former life as the Butcher of the Sands, but I find this vocation much more appealing.”
He stood up and spread his arms to the crowd below. “Let’s make our new friend welcome and see that she never wants to leave!”
The return calls of approval caused Sarah’s heart to sink and the distance back to her ship stretched out to the unseen horizon.
**Chapter 12
Behind the Lines
**
The being known to the mortal world as Master Erlok stood on the deck of the Syren seemingly unaffected by the havoc around him, Men called to each other as they desperately tried to get the heavily armed schooner prepared for battle while it was already under way toward the enemy lines. Fires and explosions, some distant and others not so distant, made communication with the other pirate captains that were rallying to the defense of the Bay all but impossible. Communication onboard was almost as difficult. None of the three that the captain had summoned to follow her had heard. Cesar had returned to barking futile orders and the two most recent passengers remained where she had left them.
Thresh, the being that only a few suspected was his true identity, had sensed immediately when one of the objects he had come here looking for vanished from his perception. Two people noted the subtle difference in his stance and recognized his sudden vigilance, but only the handsome, well-dressed woman with the mostly dead eyes at his side had an idea what had caused the shift. The other observant soul was a blind seaman, seated at the base of the main mast, busily coiling a heavy length of rope. Nobody paid him any attention, but in spite of his supposed disability, he was aware of more than anyone would have thought.
Dania looked up at her partner with a smidge of life in her eyes. “Something has happened with the artifacts we came looking for?”
“One of them, yes. I’m not sure which one, but the other two are still in the Captain’s quarters. Shall we take advantage of this confrontation to search them out?” His eyes swam with a turbid green shimmer as he spoke.
“The puffed up, loud gentleman that thinks he is in charge is currently giving orders that no one is listening to. He is in over his head. He won’t be paying attention to us at all. “Fortune…” she accentuated intentionally, “ has given us a private audience with our mark. Lead the way.” She gestured toward the aft cabin while continuously scanning the activities of the crew. The man Cesar might not be paying attention, but that didn’t mean nobody was.
The blind sailor sat coiling his rope, barely more than an arm’s span away. He had only been inhabiting his blindness for a couple of weeks but he found the brain was a marvelously adaptable organ. He caught all but a handful of the words that passed between the pair. He knew the man, he hated him. The woman was a mystery. There was a strange timbre to her voice that set the teeth on edge. Her collaboration with Thresh was all the reason he needed to oppose whatever the two were scheming. When they moved off in a feigned casual manner, he dropped the rope and prepared to follow them. Another thing he had found in his new incarnation of sightlessness was the irony that he couldn’t see and other people rarely saw him unless he drew attention to himself.
His ears became his eyes. In the current urgent state of battle, no one was completely silent. Those who weren’t calling out orders or screaming for assistance were scrambling about, each labored breath alerting him to their location and relative direction. The two he was shadowing sat at the center of an eerie sphere of near silence which should have stood out like a pair of wolves in a flock of sheep. No one had time or temper to spare though.
He almost tailed them too closely in his thirst to foil Thresh. They had stopped just in front of the door. Will had passed through that door countless times in better days and knew by heart the unmistakable sound it made as it swung inward. He stopped by a brace of barrels that had been lashed to the deck and hoped the anonymity of his “handicap” would hold.
Apparently it did. The unique squeal of the door’s hinges that no amount of oil seemed to entirely erase told him that the couple had decided it was safe to intrude on the most private area of the ship, reserved only for her captain and those she might invite in.
This was the moment. He hesitated slightly. There was no fear of death or torture, he had faced that already. The question was, what could he do? Sarah was a formidable fighter on her own ground. But Will knew Thresh was powerful beyond mortal weapons. The Lady Dania was a wild card of unknown quantity.
Blind or not, Sarah Fortune was his friend as well as his Captain. Whatever aid he could bring to bear would be her’s. He crossed the empty space and felt for the door latch. He drew a breath, knowing that if he opened the door there was no hope he would remain undetected.