Kyra and the Swordstress Pt. 06

Here is part 6! Thanks so much for sticking around to hear Kyra's and Scarlet's story. I hope you enjoy it, and, as always, let me know what you think of the story so far. Constructive criticism very welcome.

Captain Percival Sterling had been at sea for thirty-five years. Starting as a wee midshipman, he rose through the ranks through a combination of hard work, persistence, and many very good family connections. He contained the qualities most sought after in the typical naval commander in the modern royal Portoan Navy: he was risk averse.

Though he did not expect to ever reach the lofty position of admiral (not having all the necessary connections), he was fine with that. He now commanded his own small corvette in the Kelthala fleet, and he enjoyed it thoroughly. It was an easy command in pleasant wind-and-sun-kissed waters during a long era of relative peace. Most days, the life of command of a small corvette was a breezy life. But today, nice weather notwithstanding, was not like most days. Today Captain Sterling along with his longtime friend and always dependable right-hand man, Lieutenant Blackwood, stood in the hallway right outside the fleet admiral's office in the Portoan embassy awaiting the grilling by the fleet admiral for not meeting a certain expectation. Averting risk, that is.

Outside the window, Sterling spotted the forty-four-gun frigate Galatea among the forest of masts and shrouds of the naval yard, the golden ensign of Portoa luffing proudly in the breeze from her stern staff. Today was the first day in a very long time that the Portoan flag flew on the Galatea, and, as the man responsible for returning her to her rightful berth alongside the other Portoan men-of-war, the captain had every right to be blushing with pride. The reason for the meeting this afternoon, in fact, was to give the admiral a full accounting of the action that resulted in him, Captain Sterling, the commander of the tiny corvette Annaliese, winning the Galatea from the hands of the notorious Seawraith pirates who had kept her in their possession for the better part of a decade.

"Don't be nervous, my dear Max," the captain said to his man, not because his lieutenant appeared nervous at all - Lieutenant Blackwood was hardly bothered by anything at all, and he was, as usual, as calm as a morning pond -- Captain Sterling spoke those words as a means of calming his own nerves. He was nervous because he was the captain, and as such, would have to answer to the hard-nosed razorback, how exactly it was that a humble corvette managed to go toe-to-toe with a frigate carrying nearly four times the weight in guns and three times the crew size and come out on top, and, more importantly, what could have possibly motivated him to attack a vastly superior ship when naval orders explicitly instructed that no ship of the Royal Portoan Navy engage in combat with pirates except in extremis, particularly with very important passengers aboard.

It occurred to the captain shortly after his victory that to sail the Galatea into port flying Portoan colors could possibly be an embarrassing sleight to the war-storied admiral, who, for the better part of the decade, had been trying his best to win her back after she was stolen right from under his nose.

Understanding the point of his beloved captain's words, Lieutenant Blackwood gave his captain a cheery smile and as a matter of reassuring him, replied,

"Of course, sir. Nothing to be nervous about."

Blackwood, without fail, always had his captain's back. Sterling couldn't ever hope to show this man enough appreciation.

The admiral swung his door open. Captain Sterling and his lieutenant straightened their spines in tandem. The admiral stared at one, then the other, then looked out the hallway window to see the Galatea there, disbelief etched into his hardboiled face. He stuffed his pipe into his mouth, lit it with a match, and with the pipe bit between his teeth, he gruffly bellowed,

"Come in!"

The admiral strode back into his office and eased himself into his chair.

"Sit," he growled, puffing out a plume of pipe smoke. They sat in the two small chairs to the front of the admiral's expansive, busy desk. He glared at the two of them as he puffed a giant smoke ring. The smoke ring vanished as it floated into the ceiling before he said,

"Go on, Captain, let's hear your account."

Captain Sterling cleared his throat and edged himself to the front of his chair.

"Admiral, I've taken the Galatea as a prize."

"I can see that captain," the admiral drawled, a twitch forming beneath one of his eyes. He continued, "What I would very much like to know is exactly why it is and how it came to be that one of my twelve-gun corvettes tasked with escorting a royal princess to a festival managed to engage a forty-four-gun frigate in a naval duel and -- notwithstanding the royal decree prohibiting such mindlessly suicidal action -- come out victorious?"

The volume of the admiral's voice and the speed with which he spoke rose with every enunciated syllable. Veins appeared in his forehead, and his jaw muscles flexed as he bit down on the pipe.

"As it happened, technically, we did not engage in a naval duel by the, ehm, by the strictest definition of the term. We could not have, as we had jettisoned all our artillery beforehand," Sterling replied nervously.

The admiral shut his eyes and let out a deep, agitated sigh as he rubbed his temples.

Sterling explain, "I-I had given the orders to jettison to gain speed as soon as we spotted the Galatea's sails on the horizon. To make our escape in accordance with the royal orders, sir."

"Yet somehow a corvette lightened of all her artillery failed to escape a fully laden frigate."

The captain sank into his chair as he fished for the right words in his head, tightening his white-knuckled clutch of his feathered bicorn cap, realizing that what he was about to say would never endear the enraged admiral to his cause.

"The princess..."

"Yes, captain, the young princess you were tasked to escort, at the very least unharmed, to Talishpur in time for the festival of Aersus. What about the princess?"

"She demanded that I turn and fight the pirates."

"For Tomuun's sake, captain, are you a dolt? Are you so easily swayed? You would listen to a romanticizing princess, who, in all likelihood, knows the sea as much as a dormouse over your own instinct as a naval commander?"

"It wasn't clear we would have outrun the Galatea as she was on a beam run, and we were beating windward."

"So, you're saying you had no choice."

The captain glanced uncomfortably at his lieutenant. He was tempted to simply say that was the case. That despite their best effort to gain as much speed as possible they would not have been able to avoid the intercept. But alas, it would not have been the truth. As anyone who had been in the navy for any amount of time would know, the truth always makes its rounds eventually. To be dishonest now would only serve to delay his day of reckoning. So, he told the truth.

"Like I said, it was never clear that we would have outrun the Galatea. But that was because we were still heavily laden with the princess's gold. She refused to allow us to jettison it," replied Sterling.

"She's a royal princess, captain! The gold is insured!" the admiral hollered.

"And I had explained to her as much. She still refused."

"If you had a spine, Captain, you would have clapped her in irons and heaved her precious gold over the side!"

The admiral's condescension struck a deep nerve in Sterling. To suggest that he, a corvette captain that had just this morning taken on a frigate full of dreaded Seawraiths, perhaps as the first naval commander in a decade to do so, was spineless? The admiral had crossed a line. Sterling steadied his gaze on the bulldog. He sat taller. His chest began to burn with a white-hot rage.

"After she had called on my men to fight, I had the mind to order the master-at-arms to detain her. But then I looked into my sailors eyes. Do you know what I saw in those eyes, admiral?"

Sterling stood abruptly. The chair he sat in scraped across the floor with a cold screech and nearly fell over from the force of him standing. His voice grew loud and gained a cold, golden clarity.

"I saw that my sailors are fighters, who have been told by every admiral who visits my ship, including yourself, that each of their lives are worth three pirates and that they will have their day of glory at sea. Yet day after day, year after year, they are instructed not to fight but to serve as mere couriers to avaricious merchants and ferrymen to spoiled-rotten royals. Day after day. Year after year. They do so obediently. All the while the wolves are free to roam the Kelthala sea, our grand fleet, once sheepdogs have been reduced to mere leashed lapdogs! Indeed, after the princess urged my sailors to fight, I saw in their eyes ignited, for the first time in a very, very long time, a fire that once made our fleet the great pride of Portoa. I knew then that she was right. I knew that despite the odds, we had to turn and fight, and make this day the day we gain not glory but dignity."

The admiral sat with a stunned shade upon his face. The pipe between his teeth had lilted. A tepid smoke rose from its bowl. Having received no response from him otherwise, Sterling continued,

"So, I gave the orders to beat to quarters, and lieutenant Blackwood and I, along with the other officers, devised a plan to even our odds against the pirates. Their greed would be their downfall, we believed. So, that was the basis to our plan. We hoisted the white flag and straightened our run to signal our preparation to be boarded. I maintained the sails sheeted to a beam-run, so as to force them to grapple. Keep 'em close, and fight like dogs in a cage: That was how we would win the day.

"It was only a matter of time before they were alongside. They fired a few de-masting shots to put us dead in the water. Had they succeeded, then we would have been lost. But the rolls were heavy, and pirates, as you very well know, do not have any skill whatsoever in gunnery. To avoid an accidental sinking, they ceased their cannon fire and closed to within grappling range, according to our plan. My sharpshooters were hidden on the quarterdeck, concealed beneath tarps with ready muskets. My pikemen were just below deck.

"Grappled they did and swarmed the Annaliese. Outnumbered were we, at least three-to-one. But that mattered none. As we've always been told, one of ours was worth three of theirs. It would be the day to test that theory, anyways.

"When an ample of their number were already over the planks I gave the order to attack. And my, what an attack! You would have been proud to see what our sailors are made of, admiral. Valiantly, they fought, each and every one!"

The admiral listened eagerly to this story, his face now fully acquitted of rage, replaced by a childlike wonderment. Sterling paused to give the admiral a chance to comment and so that he could catch his own breath. His chest was heaving with adrenaline now.

"Well, go on, captain," the admiral urged impatiently.

"Yes, sir. Well, I'd certainly like to finish by saying it was a well-executed skirmish, but that would not be the full story. This is where I must sheepishly admit to you that we were nearly lost."

Sterling clutched his feathered cap more tightly. "For what came at us over the side were not only men but also berserker orcs."

"By Tomuun's breasts," the admiral muttered. "They have berserkers among them?"

"Yes, sir. And quick work did they make of our pikes. I must confess that as those orcs crashed through our phalanx, I believed the battle lost. I was near ready to strike our colors. But then the most miraculous thing happened, which, if not for the testimony of my crew, then you would certainly not believe me. I hardly believed my own eyes."

"Well, what happened? Spit it out, man!"

"The Meliman Princess appeared from out her position of safety in my cabin, saber in hand."

"The elf-princess joined in the fight?" The admiral chuckled, appearing more amused than impressed.

"To say the least," Sterling responded, turning the admiral's face to a frown.

"What do you mean by that?"

Sterling rubbed the nape of his neck shyly, for what he was about to say held such astonishing quality as to be discomfiting, akin to an exaggerated tale a child might share with a grown-up in an attempt to appear impressive.

"She not only joined the fight, she flew into the fray like furious quicksilver through the maze of orcs. Her saber sang sharply, felling the oak-like berserkers as if they were reeds. As shocking as it was to all that witnessed, her deft skill with the blade renewed strength in my faltering men and sowed fear into the ranks of the seawraiths alike, turning the tide of battle. My men rallied to her singing saber, pressed the attack, and we were aboard the Galatea before the pirates could cut their grappling lines loose. Shortly thereafter, the seawraith captain acquiesced and presented me his sword."

The admiral sat in stunned silence, his eyes darting back and forth across the ceiling as if in review of every detail of the absurd story in his mind. His brow furrowed deeply, and he turned his eyes to Lieutenant Blackwood.

"So, if I understand your captain correctly, an elvish princess on a youth pilgrimage to the Festival of Aersus singlehandedly took down a score of berserker orc pirate brutes to win the day?"

"Exactly as I remembered it, sir," replied the lieutenant.

The admiral gave a single laugh, then took a long draught of his pipe and let the smoke fill the room. He coughed, then stood from his seat to crack his window open to let in the freshness and out the smoke that thickened the air in his office. The smell of the sea rushed in with the Talian breeze. Outside, there was lively yelling between longshoremen on the sunny wharf, golden tolls of ship bells, and cheery cawing of gulls. The Galatea sat majestically framed by the window. The full view of her brought Sterling near to tears.

"And this princess, where is she now? If all that you say is true, then I, no, the Queen of Portoa, if I am perfectly frank, owe her a debt of gratitude and all the honors merited by such valiant yet unexpected action."

"I conveyed as much to the princess," Sterling replied. "But..."

"But?"

"She expressly rejects any reward or honors we wish to bestow upon her and would much rather focus her attention on the purpose of her journey to Talishpur, which is the enjoyment of the festival. In fact, she requested that we remain fully discrete about her valiant act."

The admiral coughed. Smoke came out from his mouth and nose in curt clouds.

"She what!? If anyone understands grace, surely, it is a princess from Vela Toré! Who does she think she is?"

The admiral's vexed grumbling paused with another long draught of his pipe. The smoke calmed his nerves, so he tacked course.

"Well, if discretion is her only wish then I'm afraid that is a wish we must abide. I doubt the men would respect her wish in the taverns, but that is neither here nor there. Sterling, you did indeed violate Her Majesty's royal injunction by engaging a pirate ship in naval combat, but the way I see it, you were right to do so. You did what was in your blood as a naval officer of the line to do, and you came out gloriously for it."

He walked over to Sterling and stuck out his hand for a shake. A smile curled the edges of the admiral's stout lips. "My only regret is that I could not have been there to see you give it to them, Rear Admiral."

Sterling's heart stopped as he took the admiral's hand. "R-rear A-Admiral...?" he choked.

"Indeed, sir! You were the one to have wrested the Galatea from the grips of those damn pirates. No one deserves to command her more than you, and, with Captain Blackwood as our new commander of the Annaliese, her majesty suddenly finds herself in possession of a new squadron in need of a commodore."

"Sir, I do not know what to say."

"You usually don't, Sterling. But against all expectations, you gave quite a stirring speech this afternoon! Of course, the Council will demand an answer as to why an inviolate decree had been so impunitively violated...But leave that to me," the admiral said smacking Sterling's back heartily. "I will gladly answer those old hacks! Gentlemen, this calls for a celebration!"

The admiral ambled over to his liquor cabinet and browsed it for his favorite rare Talian brandy. When he found it, he pulled it out and poured three glasses.

As he poured, he shook his head in disbelief, and, chuckling, exclaimed, "I simply cannot keep this extraordinary warrior princess out of my head! How remarkable! Yet how so very impetuous! How is it that she would deign to not receive our honor?"

"Truly, I do not know, sir," answered Sterling.

"Well then, let us just be grateful that she is on our side. What is our princess up to now?"

"She and her small retinue took a berth aboard the Rose Narcissa for the festival. Their plan is, as she so plainly put it: 'to go on a wicked tear.'"

"To go on a wicked... Weeping mother, what a curious creature. Alas, let us allow the princess do as young princesses do while in Talishpur, and let us drink to her health and to the glory of the new royal squadron of Portoa!"

He handed the glasses, containing a healthy dose of brandy, to Rear Admiral Sterling, the newly minted commander of the forty-four-gun frigate Galatea, and Captain Blackwood, now commander of the intrepid corvette Annaliese. As they drank, they steered their minds away from the curious account of S'Rala of Vela Toré, warrior princess, to the business of outfitting the Galatea with a crew.

Aersus had not always been a major god. In the bleak age before the rise of the Ancients, he was a humble satyr, who served the Prime Ancients by tending to their golden grove. But he was also a compassionate soul. He took pity on the mortals of Leinyere, who did not know pleasures as the gods did. Seeking to give a little light to their lamentable lives, he took it upon himself to show the mortals those pleasures. He taught them about wine, about music, and poetry, and of bodily pleasures. For what the gods considered a tremendous misdeed, they condemned him to an eternity to slog through the forlorn ravine, deep in the shadows of the mournful mountains.

Kyra felt like how she imagined Aersus must have felt. A week on board the Rose Narcissa was a ceaseless slog that seemed to last an eternity, at the behest of people who fancy themselves gods. Never enough sleep, and each day melting into the last, her feet thrumming with pain, and her mind buzzing like a constant flurry of drunken bees. Time folded into itself. An hour was a stretch in which a mountain grows, a day spanning the time it takes for lightning to strike. She had not realized she was at sea for a week on the Rose until the glittering towers of Talishpur came into view.

It was both a relief for her to see the city, but also frightful, because though she had her freedom within sight, there was no way she would leave without her wand, and she was certain that Lady Bellona would not let her have her wand back freely. She had committed to stealing it, as she was sure it was the only way she'd get it, but she didn't have any time to hatch a plan. She had been too busy, being made to work even in her off-hours by that intolerable Rikan. Only hours from port, she still had no idea how she was going to get her wand back.

Talishpur was, if not as vast or prominent as Galtin's Port, an elegant and colorful city. Its beauty was an old beauty, as Talishpur was an old city, aged into a graceful twilight, having traded in its naval supremacy for cultural richness. The only military might the city still possesses is all contained in the twelve grand marble towers that jut out from the sea in a vast ring around the city's perimeter -- magic-imbued towers that have for centuries, protected the city from seaward attacks. These days, Talishpur only needs these magical defenses to keep at bay the many pirates that sailed the veridian Sea of Kelthala. Otherwise, the city had not have been at war for nearly a century. Conviviality had long been at the heart of the Talishpurian way of life. The only invaders now were the many who make the pilgrimage to its legendary festivals, particularly the greatest festival of them all -- the festival of Aersus.