Chapter 22
A Dread Tide Rising by Walt Shuler
It’s Monday once more, and here’s your weekly dose of ADTR! This week’s chapter is a little shorter than most, but the next needs to stand on its own, so I chose not to combine them.
Previously: Mac found a way to free himself and the other slaves, but disaster struck at the end.
Currently: Mac learns that freedom isn’t so easily earned.
A Dread Tide Rising is a serialized, pulp-flavored, epic fantasy novel that follows the Talon, a group of mercenaries, thieves, and smugglers, as they come face-to-face with an ancient enemy intent on the destruction of the Rakkian Empire.
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Chapter 22
Panicked shouts filled the air. It took Mac and Da’alo precious minutes to reach the source of the smoke, fighting the entire time against the press of bodies surging toward the upper deck and perceived safety. That safety was illusory, Mac knew. They were stuck in the middle of the ocean with no idea where land might lie, and someone had set fire to the damn ship.
“Little fish, quick! The hold below contains blankets. We can use them to smother the flames,” Da’alo said.
Mac wasted no time in locating the hatch and dropping down the ladder into the darkness below as Da’alo tried to find anything nearer at hand to fight the growing conflagration. If they acted quickly, they might yet save the ship and have some hope of reaching land. The flames crackled gleefully, belying that slim hope.
In the gloom of the hold, Mac groped around for anything that resembled a blanket. Nothing. He stumbled, cracked a shin against the ballast stones, and then stumbled again. More time passed, and Mac’s imagination ran wild. The fire was now engulfing the entire rowing deck, and Da’alo was pressed back against the wall, hemmed in by the conflagration. They were all going to die, either burned to a crisp or bloated by water as they tried to swim the endless miles of water to land.
“Get a damn hold of yourself, man,” he grunted to himself. The deck might be afire, but he had a job to do. Mac pushed into the dark, dank hold and, more by luck than anything else, soon encountered damp cloth. The blankets. He heaved an armload of them over his shoulder and retreated to the oar deck. Above, the flames had almost become a blaze.
“Here!” Mac shouted to Da’alo. When the Sanean turned, Mac tossed him his load of blankets. “I’m going back for more.” He turned without waiting to see if the other man had heard him. Spotting another hulking former slave, Mac grabbed his arm. “Come with me!” he ordered. Whether surprised or too used to taking orders to think of refusing, the man complied, and both went back to the lower deck.
A few moments later, both men reemerged laden down with not just blankets, but sailcloth, and other oddments the slavers had kept stored below. Roping other slaves standing nearby, they eventually suffocated the flames. In the end, the damage was mostly relegated to rower benches, although a few oars had also been charred.
Mac wiped sweat from his brow, leaving a long trail of black ash in its place. “Well, at least the damn fire’s out.”
Da’alo coughed. “None too soon. A few more minutes and we would all have been swimming. Come, little fish. Let’s get some air topside.”
Mac did not feel like arguing. His lungs burned from the smoke he had inhaled, and his hands and arms were painfully blistered. The wound in his side ached abysmally, too, but the stitches seemed to be holding. Praise Mali for small favors, he thought.
Mac greedily sucked in air as his feet hit the deck. The wind was cold, and he wore little more than burned rags, but the air tasted as fresh as a spring day. Then something caught his eye.
“Da’alo, are those what I think they are?” he asked, pointing out into the darkness. With the sun set and the moon yet to rise, the sea was black.
Da’alo looked where Mac pointed and cursed. “We’ve got company.”
Mac joined his companion in cursing their fate. Not so far off, lights bobbed on the surface of the sea. As one wave sank and another rose, more lights could be seen.
“It’s a blasted slavers’ six,” Mac muttered. The Estari were noted for their willingness to take on the sea on their own, but sometimes several ships would band together, particularly when there was a large load of slaves to be taken to the auction block. The slavers never put too many ships together at a time, though, perhaps fearing that some in the Empire would take advantage of the opportunity to sink most of the nation’s fleet. Six was the magic number; enough cargo capacity to turn a tidy profit, and strong enough to ward off attacks from pirates and sorties from most Great Houses, but not sufficient to deplete their strength should they be destroyed.
Out there in the distance, five other Estari slave ships floated. Even now, they searched for Mac’s ship in the dark.
“We need to get those torches lit,” he said.
Da’alo was silent for a moment as he stared out into the night. Then, “No, leave them.”
Mac cocked an eyebrow. “No? You realize that without them lit, they’ll try to find us, right?”
A leer spread over the man’s blue lips. “I do realize that.”
Mac stared at the Sanean for a moment. “You’re an evil, evil man,” he said after a moment.
Da’alo threw back his head in laughter. “I try, my friend. Now come. Let us prepare for our visitors.”
***
The only sound was the slap of waves against the hull and the creak of timbers as the ship rose and fell on the swells.
“Ho! Something ahead, just off the bow!” came a call from the surrounding darkness.
“Where away?” a fainter voice called.
“Broad on the starboard bow!” was the reply.
Now the churn of oars carried over the water, the deeper grunts of the slaves manning those oars underneath.
“Slow oars!” The command was loud in the silence.
“Reverse stroke!” The pattern changed as the slaves hurried to obey the order and reverse their oar strokes.
“Ship oars!” came the call. A collective grinding sound punctuated the night as the slaves pulled their oars out of the water and into the oar ports. Then a thump as the ship gently bumped into Mac’s, easily sliding alongside.
“There’s no one there,” a hushed voice carried over the dark.
“We’ll find ‘em and those what done for ‘em,” another voice said with a tone of command.
“Lash us tight, we’re going over!” the same voice ordered. Immediately, grapnels thudded into the deck and then scraped across, most catching on the gunwales. A wrenching sound came, and then a thud as the two ships were drawn tighter together.
“Right, let’s make haste,” the commander ordered, although his voice was quieter now. The crew moved to the side and began climbing across to the disabled ship. Boots thunked onto the deck as the slavers began to explore, seeking signs of their fallen brethren.
“No one here!” a voice called out.
“Blast it, man, they’re here somewhere. Light the damn torches so we can see what’s what in this cursed dark!”
Several slavers set down their weapons and opened bundles wrapped in canvas to protect against moisture. As the torches began to flare to life, Mac, Da’alo, and the other freed slaves acted.
With a huge collective roar, they rose from their hiding places beneath mounds of rope, fallen rigging, and concealing shadows. Their eyes half-blinded by the glare of the torches, the boarders frantically sought to retrieve their weapons. It did them little good, though. Within mere moments, the freed slaves had killed or incapacitated most of the boarding party. A few had escaped back to the other ship and were hurriedly trying to cut the ropes that bound the two craft together.
“Little fish, we must capture the other ship. We cannot let them get away!” Da’alo shouted.
“Why not? Seems easy enough to do,” Mac muttered to himself, running his sword through a slaver who had just managed to grasp his cutlass. Da’alo was too far away to hear his words, and Mac watched the former slave leap the slowly widening gap between the two ships, followed closely by Edwin.
Seeing that there were only a few other freed slaves who made it to the other deck, Mac realized he had little choice but to go, if only to protect his friend. He made a running leap and just managed to clear the gunwale on the other ship as she slid away into the night. Mac landed with a thump in a pool of blood. His left foot slid, and the leg went out from under him, sending him crashing to the deck.
That proved to be a blessing in disguise. No sooner had he fallen to the deck than a slaver’s blade whistled through the air where he had been. Mac took advantage of his opponent’s surprise and thrust upward with his sword. The slaver clutched his gut and fell backward, almost wrenching the sword from Mac’s hand.
“Quite the welcoming committee,” Mac grunted, leveraging himself to his feet. His knee twinged, but he ignored it. Another slaver came his way, this one sporting what could only have been half of one of the oars, like it was a staff. The man brought the oar around, aiming for Mac’s midsection. It would have easily broken every rib he had, but Mac sidestepped the attack. As the slaver tried to recover, Mac slipped his sword point between the man’s ribs and into his heart, and the slaver collapsed to the deck. Mac wiped the blood from his blade on the slaver’s clothing, then paused to take stock.
By this point, most of the fighting had died out. Here and there, pockets of resistance held, but by and large, the ship was theirs. It took him a moment to realize that most of the fighters on the upper deck were slaves, but none that he knew. Then he saw Edwin emerge from belowdecks, and he realized what had happened. While the slavers had been occupied with Mac, Da’alo, and the others, Edwin had snuck down to the oar deck and freed the slaves. It was their strength and anger that had captured the ship.
“Good fight!” Da’alo said, striding over from where he had been in deep discussion with a group of former slaves.
“Any fight you can walk away from…” Mac replied.
Da’alo laughed and clapped Mac on the back. “Do not speak too soon, my friend.” He gestured into the darkness. Mac peered into the gloom and thought he could make out the lines of another ship. Then the sound of oars came clear across the water, and he knew.
“Damn, another one?” He barely had time to catch his breath before grapnels flew through the night again. And this time, the slaves did not have the element of surprise. Mac said a silent prayer to Mali that the remaining three ships would not chance upon them all at once, and then he was swept up in the surge of battle.
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Mac has signed up for way too much adventure haha. I love it. Winning Edwin over has been a major high point as well.