The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (18 page)

They grinned, as much at his unaffected camaraderie as his words.  In a perfectly normal voice, he said,
“I’ve no doubt you got a good sampling of their tall tales…I wonder if you’d like to see what they’re really famous for?” 

They looked their puzzlement as he turned to stare
magisterially out to sea.  Around him, the small army of his coterie closed in expectantly.  Tension mounted in the still air.

“
Captain Kilchern,” he said quietly.

“
Yes, Sir,” a shorter (everyone except Banion was shorter) Merranic said promptly.  He, too, was wearing a beard, short and brown and so neatly trimmed it looked like it was etched onto his face.  A seafoam-green sash encircled his waist, and his broadsword, less ornate than the Commodore’s, hung underneath it.

“
Beat to quarters,” the Commodore said.

The captain quietly repeated this to a man with a drum strapped to his torso, sticks held poised and ready over its stretched hide.  Instantly, deep, booming drumbeats reverberated through the morning.  Gulls flew up, startled
, from the booms and jars overhead, men leaped into action on deck and suddenly the sound of pounding feet and shouts were everywhere.  Fleetmen poured out of the hatches, some wiping sleep out of their eyes, some with breakfast protruding from their mouths.  Jaegor sprung out of the closest hatch like he’d been released from a spring, eyes wide and intent.

They
’d seen him briefly last night at dinner.  He’d eaten six steaks and a loaf of bread and retired with the other Seawolves.  Now, he was dressed in the Fleetman’s uniform of billowing blue trousers and every hair on his head was gone.

“
FIRESHIP!” the lookout cried from far overhead, screaming it like a tomcat was climbing up his bloomers.

Loren jumped, spilling his coffee.  He and Ari shared a look of startled terror before Selah shouted
laughingly over the commotion, “It’s a drill!”

The captain was
bellowing out a steady stream of gibberish that had Fleetmen tearing up the rigging and shimmying back down in a dizzying wave.  The booms crawled with sprinting men, ship rocking thirty yards below them as they unloosed acres of sail. The Mermaidon leapt forward as every piece of canvas on the ship seemed to catch air, the deck suddenly composed of leagues of billowing white sheeting and skirling men.

“
Watch your head,” the Commodore yelled calmly, expertly ducking the big aft sail boom as it floated by.  That would have decapitated us, Ari thought with admirable clarity, and then his attention was caught by another shouting, pounding rush of men.

“
Come along?” the Commodore invited them, as if they were strolling through a particularly interesting bit of rose garden.  Ari noticed that even in the frantic, yelling chaos, men moved almost unconsciously out of his way.

At the bow rail, several of the senior crew were pointing to the source of all the excitement.  The
‘fireship’ had been sighted.  It was the Seamoon, of course; Ari could see the light blue banner floating from her stern.  The uproar on the Mermaidon swelled like a living thing, men’s voices raised in outcry, feet doubling their pounding all over the ship.

Then, the drums started again, deep and strangely ominous, thundering bassly under the s
houting crew.  There was a roar from the stern that could be heard over all the other noise, and then one of the officers shouted, “Wolves in the sea, Captain!”

Ari, leaning over the rail with everyone else not
otherwise occupied, spotted one of the two little boats that had been in the stern.  It was coming up alongside, and fast as the Mermaidon was going, the little rowboat was lunging past her.  The drums were beating briskly now, an even, quick tempo, and amazingly, the oarstrokes in the little boat were keeping time to it.  As it passed beneath him, he could see the huge shoulder muscles of the rowers bunching and jumping as they strained to keep pace.

Ahead of them, the
‘Enemy’ ship had pulled to a course straight on to them.  They were close enough that Ari could see an enormous slab of wood being lowered over each side, held out from the ship by an ingenious system of bars and pulleys.

The little boats
from the Mermaidon were angling now, adjusting their course to come at the fireship’s sides.  Another moment and it all came together.  The rowboats turned and swept right at the lowered planks of thick wood.  At some point, metal prows had been attached to the rowboats—you could see them clearly as they made the turn—and now they hurled right at the Enemy ship, aiming for the faux sides.

  
              Impossibly, the decibel level on the Mermaidon had climbed, men shouting out things like, “Git ‘em, Wolves!” and “Torchin’ punch her through!” and other unprintable expressions of encouragement.  Abruptly, there was contact, the Wolves gathering themselves for one tremendous last burst of speed and plunging their deadly steel right into the planks.  The Mermaidon crew went wild, exploding with thunderous shouts and screams and roars, and Ari laughed just for the pure adrenaline rush.

             
But it wasn’t over.  Deftly, the bow Wolf brought his legs up, pushing with all their tremendous coiled strength so that the little rowboat popped free of the thick planking it had impaled.  It left a gaping, ragged hole that obviously simulated a breeched hull.  The boat spun agilely, whirling back to the stern of the Seamoon, which was obligingly turning broadside so the Mermaidon had a perfect view of what was happening.  Again the bow Wolf moved swiftly, securing the little boat to the side of the ship with a few quick coils of rope—Ari couldn’t see around what—and almost throwing himself up against the side of the ship.  As the other two Wolves followed, it became obvious from the way they climbed that they held stout knives or spikes or something.  They scaled the side of that ship in less time than it took to describe it, all the while the crew of the Seamoon pretending they had no idea what was going on at their stern.  What the goal was, Ari couldn’t even imagine, but the Wolves were barely on deck an instant before they were discovered and engaged, disappearing under a press of Merranic bodies.

             
The Mermaidon crew had finally quieted down, chuckling and talking and going back to their routine as if the fun was over.  A group of them stayed close, some of them tablemates from dinner last night, and Ari asked them, “What were they trying to do?”

             
He was answered readily—he didn’t think he’d ever get used to Northern aloofness again.  “Those fireship decks are packed with pots of oil and open flame, lad.  They’re lobbing fire missiles at us the whole time we’re closing, and us, well, we’re lobbing iron back at them.  Keeping ’em busy-like ’til the Wolves can cripple their ship and hopefully sneak up on deck and overturn an oil pot or two.”  He winked, baring his teeth in a ferocious grin.  “Have us a nice fireworks display, we would, then.”

             
“Or, in this case,” another added dryly, “we’ll get to board her—”

             
“And that’s good, too!” a bunch of Fleetmen joined in, in what was obviously a cherished communal goal.

             
The boys looked at each other.  “Do the Wolves usually survive this?” Loren asked doubtfully.

             
“Not usually,” about five of them said in unison.  “Wartime, we run through a powerful lot of Wolves.”

             
It was several minutes before the rowboats returned and the Wolves climbed back over the stern rail, making their glum way to the bow.  The Commodore, Captain, Master-at-arms, and a few others stood waiting for them, and the boys and Selah backed off a couple of yards.  Jaegor looked mad.

             
The Master-at-arms didn’t waste time discussing the weather. “Is this the best the quals have to offer any more?!” he bellowed at them.  He let his displeasure sink in for a second, then demanded, “Who’s chiefing the starboard boat?”

             
“I.”  Jaegor stepped forward, eyes snapping, mouth tight.

“
Did they not teach you to wait until we’re straight on to jump to?  Don’t have the discipline to wait?  Just thinking with your brawn?” the Master shouted.  “Not only do you waste your energy trying to make up that extra distance, you run the risk of giving the Enemy plenty of time to deal with two SEPARATE targets!”  He paced in front of them, throwing his arms around with enough energy to brain a horse if they were ever to connect.  He had a huge, impressive voice, even for a Merranic.

             
“Your ramming was good enough, I s’pose, if that’s as much speed as you can muster!  You’d have probably been fire-lobbed out of the water at that rate, but your technique was all right—’course you had plenty of time to perfect it, at that speed!  But, really, the worst of it all was your ship-top performance.  They call it ‘dash-and-burn,’ lads, for a reason.  You’re supposed to
dash.
Then
burn.
”

             
“He called ‘dead’ arbitrarily!” Jaegor burst out as if he could no longer control himself.  “I was winning that knife fight!”

             
“YOU”RE LISTENING!” the Master thundered, looming over him instantly, in his face.  “I’m talking!  Keefas marked you dead because there were three others at your back that would’ve had you!   You’re not there to engage a ship full of Enemy—you’re there to destroy her!  Maybe you need a little fresh air to clear your empty heads, you brainless sheep!  TO THE ROPES!”

             
Instantly, sullenness forgotten, the six made a wild dash for the nearest rigging.  Several encouraging cheers went up from various corners of the ship.  The Wolves leaped for the network of ropes, lunging desperately upwards, shoulders and chests bulging, legs and feet hanging free.  In an unbelievable amount of time, they were far overhead, then coming in almost a free-fall back down.  They leaped off and stood panting, faces red, staring at the Master warily. 

             
“Well, Chief,” he half-sneered, “since you’re bent on engaging the Enemy instead of doing your job, you’re going to need some practice—” and with no more warning than that, he lunged as Jaegor’s bare belly, knife drawn.

             
Ari and Loren both sucked in their breath, stepping back instinctively, but the Wolf Chief was obviously in a mental place they were not.  His long knife was in his hands in time to meet the Master’s, even as he leapt back.  The sound of steel rang out across the deck, and the Northerners leaned forward in fascination as the two commenced a circling, fast-paced knife fight.  The knives were so long they were almost shortswords, but balanced different, more agile.  It was close work, the two combatants throwing punches, even grappling, while their steel flashed in the sun.

             
“Different, eh?” a voice rumbled in their ears.  It was Banion. 

             
“Faster-paced,” they agreed, then turned to lean companionably on the rail with him as the two abruptly broke off their skirmish, the Master sending the Wolves racing down the deck.

             
“I can’t believe this training,” Loren breathed.  “Ari and I have rowed all over the lake near my place, and we never came close to those speeds—and then to climb the side of the ship, and come back here and climb rigging…”  Ari’s shoulders burned just thinking of it.

             
“They did well for their first time,” Banion said approvingly.  “As long as they can improve, though, Torfanal will stay right up on ’em.”  He chuckled.  Good times, good times.

             
They talked casually awhile, told him about some of the tales they’d heard last night—to which he grunted.  They’d sort of hoped he’d wave them off as exaggeration, but he looked rather disturbingly disturbed and said, “It’s a shame those stories aren’t heard in the North.  It’d be easier for them to believe the Enemy is real—flesh and blood, terror and pillage real—if they remembered them.”

             
They stood quietly for a few minutes, full of rather dark ponderings.  Ari had to admit, the whole Ages of War thing seemed a lot less like a fairytale since he’d left Archemounte.  If war had once been, was it so impossible that it could come again?

             
“But,” Banion boomed out irrepressibly, “You’ve got a brave little Queen, wise for being so young and a Northerner to boot.  The Archemounte Council is about as skeptical a cynical body as you can get, too, and I’ll bet she’s having to fight every one of them to get this Kingsmeet to happen.”

             
“Yeah,” Loren said, just as Ari opened his mouth to ask the same thing.  “What’s a Kingsmeet?”

             
“An old, old ceremony,” Banion rumbled, settling his beefy arms comfortably onto the Mermaidon’s railing.  “Not long after Rach Kyle dug in at the Sheel, King Kendrick realized the Realms needed better contact than the short-lived human messengers or homing pigeons, or even the royal raptors, could provide.  He called the first meeting, in a fairly central location so no one King would have to be longer from his Realm than another.  He and Kyle were killed shortly after, and part of the ceremony that developed had to do with the bonding between constantly changing monarchs.  The whole world moved at a faster pace back then, and they just needed some better way to compare notes, plan world-wide strategies, gauge the strength of the Enemy. Once the Peace came, the practice died out, of course, and the most recent ’Meets, almost two centuries ago, were mostly for nostalgia’s sake.”                                                                                                     “So now is a perfect time for Her Majesty to call another one…” Ari observed slowly.  Selah, so adept at remaining inconspicuous that he’d almost forgotten she was there, stirred next to him on the rail.