Sparrow on a Plank Chapter 19: Of Sparrows, Pirates, and...Vikings?

Back on Cyrill, Prince Ta was smiling to himself. He had long ago realized that Lord Ashigaru would be his opponent on this, and so had started a dossier on him. It was easy for him to keep a step ahead of the reptilian lord; Prince Ta didn't limit his thinking to what he thought his role was, and therefore was open to ideas that he would otherwise reject. He also treated his operatives with respect, and allowed that failure was an option. After all, if you send someone on a difficult assignment then it was likely that at sometime that someone would need to fail; it was just a matter of odds, and the odds didn't play favorites. He smiled, just a little thing on his lips, as he wondered how Lord Ashigaru would feel if Bubastos' high lord ever realized that his waffles were his weakness; without his daily waffles, his entire day was shot. They were part of his daily ritual, and something that needed to be changed.

In the meantime, he needed to keep his head in the game. He needed to deal with the guardian of the Stygian Edge, and do so without his main operatives. He had assassins in his employ, and hoped that they would do against what was no doubt a very powerful beast; he had quite a bit of information on the beast, and didn't like what he did know so far. The creature would be difficult to slay, for sure, but he would also need to hope it wasn't of the load-bearing sort. His eyes rolled as he thought about how many old sites had fallen because the place had traps whose very existence depended on the guardian; kill the guardian, trigger the trap, and the entire place would fall down. Bloody intelligent trap-makers. He wiped the sweat of his brow as he dove into his intelligence reports, wondering when Lord Ashigaru would mount a reasonable attack, when it would be, and hoping he wouldn't.

He yet again debated whether mounting a direct attack on the island would be worth it, and decided yet again that it wouldn't be worth the trouble or expense. Bubastos had the advantage in that it was where most of Jezreel's steel came from; if it was engaged in war, it would be able to turn that to a major advantage, and the rest of the world would suffer for as long as Bubastos was under siege. After all, Bubastos would be able to forge new weapons, but the attacker would be limited to stockpiled weapons. Worse, because of it's geography, a quick attack would be next to impossible to mount and properly execute; invisibility did have its limits, and teleportation was too costly. If there were only a way, someone would have thought of it by now. Assassination was a possibility, but had its own risks given the vagueness of Bubastan heredity law; there was just no way to determine accurately who would be in charge if there was a death on the throne. Nonetheless, dealing with the Edge should suffice. That's what he hoped, at any rate.

* * * * *

The Hell's Wrath was on its way. The wind was in its sails, no obstacles were in its path, and there was no bad weather keeping it from its destination. The ship was cheerfully avoiding monsters in the sea, mostly due to sharp eyes in the crow's nest, and partially due to the speed of the ship. Of course, it helped that the true monsters were nowhere the surface, and rarely ventured to where sea met sky, but that was a minor blessing considering what did make it to the surface. Most ships saw one, maybe two such creatures in their lifetime, which was usually cut short when the ship met a monster, as the ship had recently found out through bitter experience.

The crew was going along its normal duties, with the deck being swabbed, sails being repaired, and weapons being cleaned. Because of the sea, the cleaning was needed on a regular basis. The salt in the sea air could quickly corrode metal in short order, and which included all of a ship's main weapons, from the smallest knife to the largest cannons. If a weapon corroded, it was of no use in a fight, and if you lost a fight (or even won it poorly) you were likely not going to be among the living much longer, and most preferred to be among the living.

The ship's crew was enjoying a certain halcyon voyage. The maintenance was being done quickly. Hajime's transformation from landlubber to sailor was almost complete, as he was learning how to use the rigging in a fight, both to help him thrust harder and to dodge faster. Combined with his acrobatic talent learned from his carnival friends, he was quickly learning some interesting new tricks, including how some common shipboard items made for some devastating weapons, such as the belaying pins used to keep the rigging in place. The crew was also making sure to not neglect his education in firearms; he would never be a pistoleer, but he could at least shoot a round without burning himself. They just had to eliminate the clean smell he had and replace it with the smell of the sea, and he would be one of the crew.

The sea would never be Sal’s home; the waves would never stop and she felt each and every one. She knew her body would eventually build up a resistance and then immunity to whatever drug she used to quell the nausea welling up inside her, and she would be back to the railing, helping to feed the surface fish in the least pleasurable way possible. She liked being in the arms of Rick, as he smelled like a man from the sea should, not like they did; he smelled not of fish and sweat but of sea salts and long afternoon sun. He had just enough body hair to scratch, but not scratch her back, and his muscles were thick but not bulky, making her feel secure for the first time in her life.

When they made love it was like a dance, but more intense; there was no leader, and each reacted to the other's moves, with each reaction building on the last, and the next building on that, eventually building to a moment of pure bliss when time stopped, until the next heartbeat reminded the clock to start up again. They were beyond animalistic urges; it was good, but adding the ritual of civilization prolonged the passion just a little further and made it that much better. There were days when they just lay together, enjoying the heat of their bodies and the beating of two hearts seeking to be one. She drew security from feeling his breathing, his chest going up and down. They had experimented numerous times with binding each other, with their expert knowledge of knots and ropes helping the experiments.

They both knew that it couldn't last, because if they had to deal with each other over the long term, as their mutual passion for what they did would burn the other out and render them mere shells of who they were, and neither wanted to see that happen. She loved the challenge of being an operative too much, where her physical and mental agility were challenged. By the same measure, he may act like the hedonistic playboy to his crew, but he was a man of action when action called; he lived to duel man and storm, and those duels made life interesting for him. Without their respective challenges, they would die in short order, becoming shells of who they were, bitter and hollow. So they enjoyed the moments that they had together, love in the brightness of the sun and silhouetted in the moonlight.

“PIRATES!” The scream from the crow's nest instantly changed the crew. Captain Taylor came out on deck with his spyglass. He saw the skull and bones on the flag, and the scurvy dogs on the boat's deck, clothes torn by battle, and a ship in disrepair. He sighed; he hoped that the Hell's Wrath would be able to outspeed the ship, whichever ship it happened to be.

He started giving the orders, which he knew were more for psychological benefit than anything else. The man at the wheel had already turned 45 to starboard, which was away from the pirates; he hoped to make the point where the courses of the two ships converge where the Hell's Wrath would be and the pirate ship wouldn't. The crew was already in action; everything was being secured so it wouldn't get in the way. The cannons were being readied as much as they could be; they wouldn't be actually loaded until the last possible moment. Weapons were appearing all over the ship, with each crew member having a ranged and melee weapon of choice, ranging from bows to crossbows to long-arm rifles in the former, and daggers to longswords to cutlasses in the latter. In a few moments, Rick and Sal appeared from below decks, dressed and ready to go. Hajime was already looking at his inventory for things that would would be fun to use; every so often he would fondle his ring on its thong.

The problem with dealing with a pirate ship was patience. Seeing a pirate ship get closer and closer and hoping that the two of you would come close before you pulled away was never good for the human psyche. The pirate ship knew that they were in a battle of steering; they needed to pull faster to the ship than it pulled faster away from them. If the other ship pulled faster, then it would reach the estimated point of convergence faster than the pirate ship and would likely escape. If the pirate ship pulled faster, it would be just a matter of time before they pulled close enough to the other ship to unload on it.

The tension became thick enough that Harald was debating serving it for dinner. It got worse with every minute as the pirate ship got closer and closer. Nerves were fraying with every minute, and both sides were unsure who had the bigger guns, and thus the end was in doubt. The pirates had the edge here, simply because their setup was unknown to the Hell's Wrath, and so they couldn't formulate a proper strategy, and that annoyed the crew. Even with the wildcard of magic involved, it came down to range; the cannonballs flew further than the spells, but that was a minor mercy.

Hajime slowly began to grin, and then, in a burst of energy, ran to the mages. After a few moments of consultation, the mages were grinning as well. One of the mages started making his way to the forecastle.

Hajime swung up to the forecastle. “I have an idea, if it's okay.”

Captain Taylor turned to him, more curious than annoyed. “What is it?”

He pulled out some canisters. “These cannisters can be rigged to explode if something big hits them, releasing whatever is inside, such as more gunpowder. Between us, there's still some birds skimming the top; I think if we had another bird drop canisters ahead of the pirate ship, it could slow them down a bit.” Hajime gave him one of the cannisters.

At that moment, the mage finally managed to reach the forecastle.

Captain Taylor inspected the canister. “But where are we going to get a bird that well trained?”

Hajime rubbed his ring. “I can arrange that easily enough, but you'll need to wait for the bird to catch up with you.”

Captain Taylor smiled. “I think that can be arranged. If the ship is slowed enough.”

Hajime jumped down. “No problem.”

Within moments he had a dozen cannisters ready to go. The canister held just enough gunpowder on the outside to explode the canister, which would cause the gunpowder inside to explode in turn. He tied them together, then ran to the prow of the ship, where he laid the cannisters down, and then stopped. To someone not really watching, it appeared as if his clothes dropped and a sparrow walked out. At that moment, the mage said a few words and the sparrow was covered in a blue glow that soon dissipated. When the glow dispersed, the sparrow was the size of an eagle.

Hajime flew to the canisters and picked them up. He flew off, and quickly dropped as his sparrow form struggled with the weight for a moment, and then flew straight to the pirate ship.

As Hajime flew off, there was another yell from the crow's nest: “VIKINGS!”

Captain Taylor’s eyes rolled. “Are you bloody kidding me?”