The captain stared at Adarin. “I have to turn the ship around first, sir.”

  Adarin looked over the deck and cursed. I should have taken the time to figure out how these fucking boats—no, carracks, that is the correct term—work.

  He scanned the vessel—twenty-five meters long, one mast, with a lower deck and hindcastle. On the foredeck three heavy culverins were tied down, with five lighter sakers on each side of the lower deck. Two sakers sat on the hindcastle, and the same setup repeated on the gundeck below.

  The roar of the oars filled the air as Adarin took a deep breath. “Captain, how long until we can support our people?”

  On the island, orcs panicked and rushed toward their ships with axes and swords. Duchess Viola sat stoically in the boat, the sailors hesitating mid-approach, uncertain what to do. Adarin observed the mate in command of the boat arguing with her.

  Don’t tell me she still wants to go.

  Devin and Gavin were rushing across the deck, and Adarin dimly noticed the captain shouting at them that they couldn’t just fire a cannon on the ship’s deck. They yelled something back about compensating runes and it not being his “shitty naval artillery” but an artificer cannon.

  Count Marquardt stepped up beside Adarin. “Sir Adarin, what do you intend to do?”

  Adarin let out a long breath as he looked over the vessel. “We’re sitting on thirty-six cannons. I’d like to find a way to put them into battle against that.”

  The mass of living wood was closing in—the lumbering shrads built around hearts of thorn and tree trunks, the spriggans moving with their strange dancer-like grace. The first wave crashed into the orcs who hadn’t yet made it back onto their ships. Orc and goblin alike were cut down in eruptions of blood.

  Adarin muttered, They’re just running. No one is taking command over there. If this continues they are all dead.

  Then came the rhythmic splash-splash-splash of the oars—one side rowing forward, the other backward—as the ship began turning. Sailors rushed to man the cannons.

  That was when Gisela fired—three cracks in quick succession, her steel barrels spitting fire. Adarin didn’t ask what they had loaded. He didn’t need to. Orange streaks of flame arced across the sky and impacted where three shrads moved close together amid a crowd of dryads.

  Where moments ago nature’s beauty had moved with eerie grace, now there was an inferno—shrads and dryads alike wreathed in fire, still advancing on the orcs.

  Liora stepped up to Adarin. “I can get close enough. Maybe a necromantic blast will do something.”

  “Sure, do it,” Adarin ordered. She scurried to the castle’s side, sat down, and began focusing.

  He turned to the captain. “You have a powerful mage on board. Can we get closer?”

  The captain shook his head. “Safety. We stop here.” He pointed ahead. “That’s a sandbank not thirty meters in front of us. We’d have to sail around and cut them off.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Good. Continue what you’re doing. How long till the cannons can fire?”

  “All the cannons are ready—just need a little longer till we’ve got her turned.”

  Adarin grinned at the man’s professional calm. Seems I’ve finally found my match in imperturbability.

  He noted with satisfaction that the Duchess had finally decided caution was the better part of valor. Her boat was rowing back, though it would still take minutes to arrive back at their ships.

  With splashes of furious rowing, the first carrack finished its turn, and the vessel’s side erupted in cracking thunder and steaming smoke. The back of the dryad formation was torn open as solid shot tore into them, ripping up forest soil. Unlike the incendiary rounds, the iron balls shredded dryads like a rootcutter’s axe.

  Adarin surveyed the battlefield: the desperate struggle on the decks of the beached ships, one crew being cut down as they tried to push their vessel back into the water, another already lost as dryads swarmed the deck—helped by sheer weight of numbers.

  Adarin cursed himself, his thoughts faltering—right as Count Marquardt grabbed his arm. “Sir, let my men take the boats. We can support them. We can hold back the dryads a little longer.”

  Adarin looked at Liora. “Only land when it’s safe to do so. We are not here to get you killed. But take her—take Liora closer.”

  Count Marquardt made an agreeable noise and began bellowing orders across all three ships. Liora was picked up by several soldiers and climbed into a boat. It and other boats were lowered into the water as more volleys of cannon fire erupted. The third volley of incendiaries from their ship finally took a toll; the movements of dryads and shrads grew sluggish.

  Then the inevitable went wrong. A full salvo from one of the ships tore into one of the remaining orcish riverboats and the last shrad pounced. Thorny tendrils erupted, engulfing orcs, coming down like whips and tentacles, and with the might of a falling tree they reaped a terrible toll.

  Adarin watched with the same helplessness he’d felt reading after-action reports of space battles, his mind frozen in pre-combat stasis. The captain fought his ship hard, giving orders, spinning it so each side could fire while the other reloaded. Devin and Gavin kept Gisela spinning and firing at an incredible rate—one shot every fifteen seconds. Slowly, the woodland assault turned into a spread-out bonfire.

  Adarin waited for something grand to happen, some chance to jump in and save the day—but it was just a grinding bombardment, ugly and costly.

  The end came as a wave of green and purple washed out as Liora finally unleashed her spell. She was surrounded by light, standing at the bow of one of the rowboats. The final shrad froze mid-strike at the last ship. Yet the defenders were far from safe. The last few dozen orcs had been pushed onto the hind deck, fighting a desperate defense against the claws and horns of the humanoid tree spirits. One by one, they fell.

  Adarin glanced at Duchess Viola’s boat, still waiting mid-river. “Let’s hope we get a survivor who’s actually capable of diplomacy this time.”

  Marquardt’s men jumped into the shallows as their craft grounded, joining the fight and trying to encircle the dryads.

  That was when Adarin frowned. Where are they getting their energy… their magic?

  He noticed the forest beyond—shaking constantly, alive with movement.

  “Captain! Devin, Gavin! Target the forest—burn it down!”

  The captain met his eye. “But without our support—”

  “Burn the forest down!” Adarin barked.

  New thundering volleys erupted. Over the next minute, the defense of the last vessel grew ever more desperate. The shrads were all gone—thankfully, or it would have been over long ago—but the spriggans took a long time to kill. Swords were nearly useless; axes had to sever limbs and heads one by one. Those missing only two limbs would still keep fighting.

  Then the shells struck the forest. The winter-dry fir trees accepted the fire like an old friend. The dryads began collapsing and screaming; the green light animating the spriggans turned orange, then red, as fire danced over their bodies.

  Adarin heard cheers erupt as the defenders and Marquardt’s men pushed forward, cutting down the remnants.

  I might as well have not been here at all.

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