Red Tsonia & the Jungles Of Madness

Author’s Note: This story is a joint collaboration between myself and Blind_Justice. We wanted to write a grim, brutal sword-and-sandal adventure in the style of Robert E. Howard, creator of characters like Conan the Barbarian, Soloman Kane, and Red Sonya (whom we pay homage to in this tale). We both took it in turns to develop the plot and characters and passed the story back and forth as we saw fit. The section breaks do not necessarily indicate a change of author. The full story is published here under Blind_Justice's name, but you can read the first section below.

Gods willing, the Tyrant's Blade, would finally overtake Kelgore the Despoiler today, putting an end to the pirate king's bloody rampage and filling Ambrose's purse with coin. The dreaded pirate had pillaged his way along the Xhastrian coast, uncannily avoiding his pursuers through guile, bribery and masterful seamanship. The merchants and nobles of Xhastria called out for the God-King to put an end to Kelgore's atrocities. Despite unleashing the considerable naval might of Xhastria upon him, Kelgore still evaded justice.

And so the heavy bounty levied on Kelgore's head was enough to pique the interest of every mercenary who could stomach a rolling deck beneath their feet.

Ambrose counted himself lucky to have cut a deal and joined forces with a warrior-witch whose renown, if not already legendary, was certain to become so. He had once seen Red Tsonia's prowess in battle for himself and it made his heart glad that she sailed under his banner, and not Kelgore's.

Tsonia, flame-haired, long-limbed and clad in a woolen cloak against the stinging wind and spray, shot him a fierce glare. “The storm draws closer, Captain,” she stated flatly. In any other, Ambrose would have expected at least a note of worry in the statement.

“Aye, and Kelgore sails into its teeth!” he replied.

Leaden clouds hung but a hand's breadth above the slate-gray, foam-crested waves and the sky between was hidden behind a curtain of distant rain. Less than a scant league ahead of them the silhouette of Kelgore's ship drew low in the water, over-burdened by its plundered cargo. A lance of lightning bisected the sky to the west but still Kelgore's crew pulled hard for the rain shroud.

“He means to lose us in the maelstrom,” Ambrose continued, barely audible over the groan of the oars, the howl of the wind and the roar of the waves around them. “But Tyrant's Blade is lighter. Faster. We'll be on him before he's swallowed by the storm.”

“We'll both be in the gullet of that storm if the winds change,” Tsonia observed, bracing a hand against the rail as a heavy swell rolled the deck beneath her feet. “But I'd rather die than let the last fortnight's hunt go to waste. Kelgore the Despoiler dies today, come hell or high water.”

Ambrose, steady as always, leaned against the rudder to climb the steep swell and keep Kelgore in sight. “You might have both if that storm catches us,” he replied. Then to his crew he shouted “Make ready to cut away the sail lines! We'll not waste time furling if the winds shift!'

The bireme pitched up another undulating hillock of water, smashed across its foamy crest, and plunged down the far side towards a deep valley. For the moment, Kelgore was lost to sight in the sea's rolling hills. Tsonia cursed and clambered snarling up the aft castle but Ambrose merely grinned. A great warrior she might be, he thought to himself, but she cannot brook losing sight of her quarry because she cannot read the ocean.

Down and down the Tyrant's Blade dove, gaining speed as the oarsmen pulled and the sail snapped. Down, until the valley floor rose to meet them, as Ambrose knew it would. The deck yawed hard and pitched up suddenly. Above him, Ambrose heard Tsonia curse again. The rising swell had caught the ship on its back and bore her aloft towards the iron clouds above.

As the turbulent waves fell away on either side, a great shout went up from the crew, for dead ahead was Kelgore's ship, her sail fallen slack, as the wind had turned.

“Cleave the lines!” shouted Ambrose, though he needn't have bothered. His crew knew their jobs and let heavy axes fall across the hempen cables at the first sign that the sail might falter and drag. The heavy canvass flapped away in the headwind, an expensive sacrifice, but dreams of wealth beyond counting had made Ambrose and his crew reckless in their thirst for Kelgore's blood.

“He turns!” shouted Tsonia from the aft castle. “Kelgore means to fight!”

Thunder exploded and another fork of lightning stabbed at the sea, as if to portend the inevitable battle to come. Ahead, Ambrose could see the broadside of Kelgore's ship turning towards them, two banks of oars dragging in the water on her port side. Kelgore's limp sail suddenly snapped taut as it caught hold of the shifted headwind.

“Ramming speed!” Ambrose bellowed. The tempo of the drum quickened and the oars beat a staccato rhythm through the violent sea. Tyrant's Blade lurched forward into the wind like a mad dog broken free of its lead.

“To the bow Tsonia, and ready your blade!” he shouted up to the top of the castle.

She leapt down from the roof and threw off her spray-sparkled cloak. In nothing more than a cropped halter of tarnished chainmail and a kilt of the same, Tsonia sprinted towards the front of the ship. Her sandaled step held her balance on the capricious deck and she drew a wickedly curved scimitar from its scabbard as she ran, the perfect weapon to maul unprotected flesh with quick, wide slashes.

From the tiller, Ambrose couldn't help but admire Red Tsonia's shapely figure as she stood at the head of the mercenary crew, one hand braced against the ship's high prow, the other idly testing the weight of her sword, her crimson locks tossed behind by the shrieking gale. Once again, lightning split the sky and thunder rolled a warning omen as the ship bore heedlessly down on its prey.

“There's a sight to daunt a man's soul,” Ambrose said to the figure in the bright tangerine cloak who emerged from the castle. “Two fell goddesses bearing down on you with murder in their eyes. By the gods man, that's a scene you ought to paint!”

“Yes,” agreed Joras, taking in the volatile chaos unfolding before him and clinging tightly to a rail. “But to capture the proper perspective, I'd need to be on Kelgore's ship.”

***

Even amidst the roar of the waves and the booming thunderclaps, the impact of Tyrant’s Blade against Kelgore’s galley was ear-shattering. The heavy bronze-clad ram that the war goddess figurehead sat astride pierced the side of Kelgore’s ship in a cacophony of bursting planks, splintering oars, and wailing men as wood and flesh were torn asunder.

Tsonia, nimble like a prowling cougar, used the force of the impact to propel herself onto the other ship’s deck feet first, toppling a bleeding sailor feebly clutching at half an oar sticking from his gut. She hoisted his mangled body up by an arm and tossed it towards a cluster of dumbfounded pirates stumbling in from the wounded ship’s prow, creating a gap big enough to allow Ambrose’s men to follow her onto the deck.

And follow her they did, using a precariously placed boarding plank, hacking and stabbing at everything their short blades and heavy bludgeons could reach.

“Keep them off me while I fetch Kelgore’s head!” she bellowed over the chaos just as sheets of rain began to pour from the roiling clouds above. Another peal of thunder rolled above the din, the deck heaved erratically beneath her feet, and Tsonia charged blindly into the deluge with no doubt she would find Kelgore at the helm, wrangling the ship and his men both.