96.

96.

In stories, when people became allies they were able to trust each other. Maybe my problem was that I wasn’t quite an ‘ally’ to Antarus and more like a ‘mercenary’ so far, and all stories portrayed them as having dubious loyalty at best.

I tried thinking of myself as the main protagonist of the story securing the alliance of Antarus … but that just didn’t work. Royalty was always center-stage.

In any case, I encountered the very awkward problem of determining what was meant by an ‘appropriate bodyguard’ to join me. On one hand, I wanted to take a full squad to extract me in case of any double-cross. On the other hand, I was a competent mage and fighter and should be able to pull myself out of trouble.

Unless it was all a trap, or unless I caused an issue in the first place by bringing too many, yada yada. It turned into a surprisingly conflicted debate with my officers. In the end we went for minimally numbered specialists. Gnar stayed behind – he was strong but many of his abilities revolved around boosting forces we wouldn’t have. Mirash came instead – the darker skinned orc had a high leveled small blades skill and an eye for disruption. One of the chortin duelist brothers who had signed on from the Internment would come as well, and Drese rounded us out with his life magic mastery. Three guards for Hali and I shouldn’t be either tantalizingly weak or an impolitic insult.

How did nobility live like this? I was just grateful that I had my one Captain’s outfit fit for the occasion. I didn’t need to fret over what type of boots I ought to wear.

I should have kept those musings to myself. I saw Hali scribble ‘clothes’ on a notepad when she heard.

After all that nonsense I squashed the question of how we ought to show up before it had a chance to evolve too. We rowed, and along the surface too. It was good enough for kings and every navy Captain on these seas. No need to entertain dramatics by rowing just under the surface. Of course, Will had taken our last boat so we had to use one of the Raven’s…

“You know,” Hali whispered to me as I waited for everything to be prepared for our departure. “You look rather commanding with that smoldering glare you’ve got going on, but remember we’re going to be politicking and rubbing shoulders this morning, so take it easy.”

I rubbed my face with my hands, wishing we were submerged so I could feel the saltwater. “This is going to be a long morning,”

By the time we stepped aboard the flagship HMS Margrave I was worried we were offering insult by being late, but if it was taken that way no one said anything about it. We were welcomed aboard by an executive officer flanked by two junior officers and given a tour of the ship’s main deck. I stifled the urge to tell the man that I knew more about his ship than he did before I even stepped on board and instead politely nodded, expression neutral and saying nothing. Either they gave up on the tour or they’d just been stalling because a noble came from below decks to invite me to a council meeting with the king.

That alone was expected, I could see through my Domain where they’d all gathered. What was unexpected was that I’d failed to realize I knew one of these nobles.

Old Man Marston – better known as Baron Marston – was the current head of the Marston noble house based out of their estate on the perimeter of the port of Pristav. His son had been the one to nearly make an honest woman out of my mother before he’d died. The rest of the family had pounced on her like jackals to preserve their family name, tying her up in litigation and debt to their family. I’d grown up in their shadow.

Marston’s dearly departed son had been close companions with both Captain Michaels and my real father.

“Well, Dommy!” Old Marston said with false cheer considering he’d never called me ‘dommy’ before in my life. “You’ve changed quite a bit since you were just a wee lad!”

I stopped, my entourage similarly stopping behind me. You didn’t need a leadership profession to recognize what was happening; any child from the docks could recognize the attempt to undermine credibility. The politics games were proceeding apace, it seemed.

I bloody hated politics.

Not saying anything gave Marston the opportunity to control the conversation, which he gladly did, drawing attention to the varied races backing me. “I see that you’ve made friends since you grew up! It makes me happy to see you so well established and protected – it truly does.”

I wish Hali would do her thing and make him go away, but she was just standing by my side as though waiting. The trouble was I didn’t have any words for this man either. I’d once dreamed of mouthing off to him, but now we were so far removed there was nothing for us to communicate.

“Your mother sends her greetings, you know. She moved from my employ to the capitol once news of your association broke, but she’s been a delightful guest there – her husband even relocated to join her you know! She sends her love and her wishes for you to be safe …”

The baron prattled on while I developed a mantra: ‘don’t strike at him, don’t hit him with magic.’ I did wish I knew a spell for muting sound.

Not engaging may have given him free reign to talk familiarly and paint a narrative of me still being a little boy out of his depth, but continually refusing to engage left him alone in a one-sided conversation. My companions refused to bail him out each time he tried to engage them as well, and it became obvious to all that he was running his mouth. He finally turned to asking me a direct question. I assumed that if I refused to answer he’d spin that too. I also knew that answering would validate some of his nonsense, so I ignored his question and acted like everything he’d said up until that point was irrelevant.

Because it was.

“Take me to your king before the tides shift again,” I said in a cold tone with dead eyes. He smiled at my reply and right as he opened his mouth for a condescending correction on my tone I continued. “And it’s Captain Seaborn, Baron Marston. I daresay every man in this fleet knows my name well enough.”

He didn’t take umbrage, and he didn’t continue to run his mouth. He was a politician who’d taken a few minutes of effort for something that doubtless had more meanings than just trying to take me down a notch. “Who could forget the Son of the Sea?” he asked and turned to lead the way.

That shook me. With his last breath my father had cried out “Beware the Son of the Sea!” using his specialty magic to broadcast his words to the other mages of the fleet. Marston rubbed at my Patricide title, whether out of bitterness or a last-ditch effort to unnerve me I couldn’t say.

But it got under my skin and pissed me off more than all the other stuff he said.

I failed to understand why these games were necessary, why they sought to break down the person that was trying to help them rather than building rapport. Hali had spoken of it being a negotiating tactic but I hardly felt graceful towards them now, so how was that tactically sound?

Whatever. I’d play their game, save their hides and move along.

I stepped into a varnished and richly decorated council chambers, complete with a table where the king sat at the head.

“Announcing Captain Seaborn of Antarus!” Marston said from just beside the entry, like this was some ballroom.

“Formerly of Antarus,” Hali interjected cheerfully, finally stepping forward. “Now steward of the ocean’s surface and master trainer of Seamanship!”

“What lovely new titles,” one of the seated advisors remarked drolly.

My eyes weren’t on the council members, or even the king. They were on a certain blond-haired female wearing a tricorne in the corner. She noticed my attention and smiled languidly, showing fangs. I wanted to repeat our last engagement under the morning sun, but I’d promised to put grudges behind us.

But forget about playing their games.

There were a pair of chairs at the end of the table, ostensibly for Hali and me. I didn’t sit, instead casting water whip and hooking my chair’s leg to spin it around. I stomped on the seat just before it clattered over. Everyone present tensed at my casting and I noticed more than one enchanted item brandished and several spellcasters stepped forward.

“You have a kraken problem.” I stated simply.

It was several seconds before one of the men present spoke for the king. “A kraken?”

“Yes. We spotted it last night while we cleared out those other beasties.”

“And why didn’t you do anything about it?” said the same droll man who’d mocked my titles – I decided he’d be Droll.

“It fled,” I said. “Seems it was smart enough to have a self-preservation instinct.” There was a quiet gasp from someone smart enough to realize I was indeed being threatening but not controlled enough to manage their poker faces like most the other nobility present. “Do you expect me to linger and play bodyguard indefinitely?”

“Our fleet,” king Jovan interposed grandly before anyone else could stoop to my level of conversation. “Is ready to sail, we merely wait on the exchange of goods that you insisted upon as payment.”

“You’re not ready to sail,” I called him out, pointing to a man with an admiral’s uniform. “If he says all these ships can be underway in less than four hours you need to replace him, because he’s incompetent.”

“Four hours,” Jovan rebutted firmly in defense of his navy man. “Is considered a reasonable time for ‘ready to sail’.”

“With such standards,” I said. “It’s less surprising that half your fleet is gone.”

That wasn’t fair; I knew plenty of merchants that considered ‘ready to sail’ as within half a day, and vernacular wasn’t the reason for lost ships. If they were going to play hardball, though, then they better well be willing to wipe their lip when the other guy comes back at you.

Ignoring the angry looks of every man in the room, Hali plopped down in her chair and propped her feet up. Where I radiated defiance, she radiated cheerful insolence. Her gaze had more than a touch of spite in it as she smiled at the king.

“Highness, how are you doing? Haven’t seen you since the sentencing!”

It briefly crossed my mind that we two were terrible choices for diplomats to Antarus.

Somehow, Hali managed to bring the conversation back on track – with the help of some of the king’s advisors who seemed to have as little stomach for stupid games as I did. That’s not to say she didn’t drop plenty of barbed comments along the way. King Jovan played the bigger man by ignoring most of them. He could afford to after setting up this whole circus show.

They had the supplies we’d demanded as payment for this escort ready, mixed between stuff on shore and stuff already on various ships here. Hali also negotiated the mail and gold my crew wished to have sent through Antarus – she picked up on distribution scheme that would have let the authorities lift anything they wished for themselves much easier. With what we demanded it would at least be an inconvenience for them, and more people would have visibility on it to recognize that it had happened.

Besides the transfer of gold and letters, we were getting stocked with miscellaneous equipment (like spare rafts), foodstuffs, alchemy supplies for Mouse, enchanting materials for Jorgagu, runestones …

It was during these discussions that I was struck by enlightenment. Some bureaucrats were dragging their feet on these details but there wasn’t a single person there who wanted to be talking about how we were going to preserve some Wort during the transit from the shore to the Raven. We all wanted to discuss the meat and potatoes of this escort: when we were leaving, where we were going, and how we were going to defend ourselves. All this minutiae might be a necessary political pregame, but I wasn’t the only one tired of playing it.

Somehow that made me feel better.

I expected that we’d plug away at all this dross until it was done, but after we’d been talking for nearly two hours the king switched things up by calling for a break. Then I was invited into a private conference with him, along with Drese.

Ah ha. Here we really go. Hali threw a wink my way as I followed the king aft to a much smaller parlor. There were defenders and a spellcaster nearby, but they looked ready to respond to an assassination attempt by me rather than carry one out. Inviting Drese was another reassurance that foul play wasn’t an intention – they knew what his discipline could manage.

“All monarchs make mistakes,” Jovan started. “If I could fix one mistake in the last five years it would be letting you go and not scooping you up and grooming you to be an admiral. Not only are you terribly competent you have absolutely no head for politics, and I wouldn’t have to worry about you scheming behind my back.”

“You don’t trust your inner circle?” I asked, mildly interested.

“Our existence as a nation is threatened!” he exclaimed. “There’s not a decision I make that my own father wouldn’t critique! But enough of that, you’re not here for such discussions. Tell me plainly what it would take to carry out this escort with your full cooperation.”

“Cut all these games,” I said, a bit confused. “Tell me where we sail and make your ships ready – I am waiting on you.”

“You truly don’t wish to renegotiate?”

“At the risk of sounding narcissistic, there’s not anything else I’d want that you can offer. I am already doing this because I want to stop the war and redirect naval interest, not because you’re offering me something special.”

“You have an entire country ready to haggle with you,” the king said in apparent disbelief. “And you can’t think of anything you want?”

I shrugged. “Not that I have the patience to wait for – or the trust you wouldn’t poison it. I’m not trying to be argumentative, but we haven’t exactly gotten along at any point.”

He stared at me for a moment. Then he smiled, then began laughing merrily. I glanced at Drese who just shook his head slightly. Finally king Jovan wiped a tear away and said: “if you’d like to return to your ship, I believe we can expedite the discussions here.”

“I will remain with Hali until we’re through, but expediting matters would be appreciated.”

Ten minutes. Ten bloody minutes after my talk with Jovan we had things squared away. The man gave some unseen signal and suddenly all the hangups disappeared and everyone became agreeable and accommodating. We were back on the rowboat while I shook my head and the others smirked at me, anticipating my words …

“Bloody politics.”

My crew first thought that things had gone wrong when we returned. That was probably because of my expression, but I was happy to inform them otherwise and lads were quickly stacking parcels heavy with gold and silver on the deck, with notes and letters in waxed parchment. There were other odds and ends but coin and words seemed to be the main things.

The transfer of goods took time by necessity, but it went smoothly. I lowered the ship to where the gunwales were nearly level with the surface and spared everyone the trouble of hoisting cargo.

A naval officer joined the communications mage on my ship with charts showing the proposed meeting grounds with Nilfheim. Apparently one of the fleet’s ships had successfully made contact with some Madu and passed the word but they couldn’t confirm that the matriarchs had gotten the message and would be there – or wished to negotiate at all. If they weren’t, there was a proposal to sail all the way to their coasts, but no one really wished to do that.

I accepted the two navy men on my ship as liaisons after confirming that they had a Wisdom score high enough the Raven’snightmare field shouldn’t affect them. The risk of them seeing our tactics and using them against us was balanced against the need for proper communication – as well as the desire to show off our monster-fighting abilities. Since fighting other ships was only a remote possibility and Antarus had already been testing our capabilities since the Death’s Consort, there really wasn’t a good reason to deny them.

I was ready before sunset, and after a quick discussion through intermediaries we set sail as darkness hit. I may or may not have said something along the lines of “pansies wanting to be rocked to sleep in the bay rather than sail in the dark.” The mage might have been using a spell that let everything I said echo with the other specialties, rather than tactfully rephrasing and speaking himself.

Probably didn’t make friends, but we got underway.

I had a better reason than impatience for it: the fleet had gathered and been sitting for several days. Smaller monsters had been fought off, but bigger predators were circling. The kraken was only one, I felt a Domain skill brush against mine twice. Curiosity or hunger would soon draw creatures I wasn’t confident in handling. Getting underway might mean encountering new dangers, but it was more likely to be of the manageable variety.

The fleet moved with their best monster-ships at the flanks, I took point with the Tempest and Jack followed the formation with the Raven. The navy ships used colored lanterns to coordinate, visibility was thankfully good enough to allow for that. The kraken followed us – attempting to sneak up behind but Jack dropped back to face it. It tried to avoid him and circumnavigate the fleet, but when I dropped back as well in a pincer it fled once again.

While we weren’t able to get close enough to analyze it, I did see enough of it to answer my question on whether it was young and nervous or old and wise.

Definitely old. If it didn’t commit to an attack soon I might ask Jovan if they had another item like the vamps used to attract the kraken on the Internment. Drawing monsters close to the fleet was a risk, but at this rate the kraken would eventually hit a weak spot and take a ship before Jack and I could intercept.

On the second day of sailing I brought this up with Commander Nichols, the liaison officer who ran it through his superiors but expected they’d want to wait on such action. He was right. The somewhat reserved commander then asked me how we would deal with a kraken, which prompted a summary of our past fights as well as our current battle-plan – the trickiest part of which was getting the beast to engage on our terms.

It turned out that the commander had been in charge of a sloop patrolling the Antaran shores and lost his ship when it was rammed by a megalithic shark. While it sank he’d ordered every man with a swimming skill over 5 to set out for shore, and for everyone without that skill level they fashioned flotation for them to try and do the same. Only two of the swimmers made it, reporting that the shark had pursued and picked the others off at its leisure. Those floating drifted with the current along the shore and were spread out, fighting to push the miles towards home. Four of them made it, including the commander.

Returning with only a fraction of his crew from a routine patrol had killed his promotion chances, but I found him to be an eager student of everything I knew about monsters and these waters. So, I showed him what I’d been writing on the subject. I hesitated to call it a ‘book’ because that seemed pretentious but he thoroughly praised it and my endeavor, even offering to take it and have it published when we returned. Surprised that avenue for spreading knowledge opened up so easily, I loaned it to him to copy while we were underway.

On the third day I looked at the far horizon and felt my seamanship skill start warning me. Recognizing the feeling, I immediately turned the ship hard to starboard and dropped all sails while yelling for the communications mage to tell every other ship to do the same immediately. I even had my deck hands start visually signaling the message on the chance someone’s mage was out of commission.

I wasn’t the only levelled seaman present, even if I was probably the best. Others knew something was up, and most readily followed my guidance. Then came the knock-down wind, the unexplained and mighty gust rolling contrary to the pervading weather, suddenly appearing only a few miles away through a mirage or illusion that hid its buildup and approach. Some time back I’d assisted a whaling ship that had been caught broadside in one. I’d wound up having to bring its surviving crew to shore because their ship was dead.

Most ships today followed my example and faced the wind, letting it luff their sails. One schooner had already sensed the wind and turned the other way before getting my message and instead ran with it, which they accomplished safely but it sent them far away from the armada. Three weren’t in the right position when they were hit. Two were only slightly off and righted themselves with no major damage and a list that could be fixed by redistributing their ballast. The last had suffered from indecision or incompetence. They had been knocked down squarely on their side, their masts and sails slapping the water.

My first action was to turn about and signal Jack to have the Raven pursue the schooner that ran with the wind. I didn’t doubt our trailing kraken was moving to take advantage of this situation as we reacted. I gave my communications mage a philter of water breathing – courtesy of Mouse’s alchemy – and submerged the ship. I passed messages to the admirals while I took up a position directly below the main group, keeping my eye out.

They took my advice – assuming we hadn’t just been thinking the same thing – and all ships converged into a defensive mass around the knock-down victim while I defended from below. Either through luck or our proactive defense, we went unchallenged while they helped the ship get righted properly. Some spars had broken, but the masts were still sound and between all the ships here they had timber to spare.

We were all in contact with each other through the mages, which was a blessing I could easily be spoiled by. All except for Jack, but the mage from the running ship reported that they had run out a few mile south and were turning about, though with no sign of the submerged Raven.

The navy had this thing they’d established when they weren’t in line of sight called a communications schedule, birthed by attacks like mine which could suddenly overwhelm a ship. Every quarter- to half-hour they would spend the mana to check in, just to reassure themselves that they were still alive.

The schooner didn’t respond to their first scheduled check-in.

The communications mages tried for five minutes, by which point I had an admiral asking me to verify their safety. I gave him the calculus – send me off to check and leave a potentially major threat to the remaining armada, or let Jack do his job and take care of the schooner. I could tell the direction and approximate distance of my crew and that they were all still alive. The admiral was nothing if not pragmatically minded, and I stayed where I was.

I didn’t mention that the Raven’s durability had taken a sudden dip, and that I was watching closely whether I needed to spend my XP to increase its durability.

It was an hour later the schooner was reported sighted along the horizon. Before they returned, we got a brief report from them with the mana their mage had managed to recover: they’d been set upon by the kraken. They’d expended most of their enchanted weaponry immediately – and the mage his mana and emergency potions – to try and deter it to no avail. The Raven arrived before the ship could be crushed and more hands lost; though the kraken had attempted to take out the Ravens well while it was distanced from me.

Jack and my crew had held their own; between the attacks of the two ships the kraken had once again fled, severely injured.

The explanation sufficed for me until Jack debriefed me himself, our two ships deep below the fleet. He mentioned something that the schooner hadn’t noticed, or at least had failed to mention to me: the kraken was indeed old and well-leveled, sitting at level 79. Apart from Jones’ pet, it was the strongest kraken I’d ever heard tell of.

Jack had adopted the same strategy the schooner had, throwing as much as possible at it to deter it before it crushed the Raven. Their damage output had done it, but my chortin captain expressed doubt on truly handling it alone. The Raven could have survived, but it would have eaten through my XP savings to keep her durability up. Without me around to activate the ship’s abilities, she was fighting with a hand tied behind her back, too.

I’d have to re-evaluate sending Jack off on his own like that. It worked out this time, but it could have just as easily become an unsalvageable situation.