Commodore Ashfield spun around with a curse on his lips, and Adarin saw what had happened. One of the merchantmen in the group behind their carrack had accidentally fired a cannon. More explosions came from the same ship.
For some fucking reason, the gunners had fired from both broadsides at once.
Francesco stormed to the railing and screamed across the water. “What are those buffoons doing?!”
Adarin studied Ashfield. The commodore didn’t seem to care. Then a staff officer cut in with a sharp report:
“Seeing activity—oars extended, sails cut loose!”
Adarin considered the cutters’ options. Yes, they had been warned. But there was still a gunnery line coming towards them. It instantly clicked what was about to happen. But before he could spell it out, Commodore Ashfield was already giving orders.
“Carracks close in! Merchantmen scatter—towards the center of the river!” He addressed the captain of the final carrack in the line. “Corral the fucking merchantmen. Get them out of that clusterfuck!”
He leaned over the front of the command castle.
“Master of cannons—load grapeshot. Load grapeshot now!”
He turned to Adarin.
“Sir Adarin, may I impose on you the counterboarding operation? I believe they will—”
Adarin cut him off.
“Yes, they’ll go for a weaker ship, trying to close in where our firepower is useless.”
Commodore Ashfield merely nodded grimly. Adarin scurried down to the lower deck. For a second he considered: do we have Devon and Gavin try to take a shot, snipe one of the vessels? No. They are Commodore Ashfield’s strategic reserve—and he hadn’t yet used them. I made myself a sub-commander here—so I’ll work with what I’m given.
He ran and began organizing the musketeers.
“Grenades. Get the grenades out, as many as we can.”
He compared the heights. The merchantman decks were maybe three meters up, the carracks too. Yet the cutters had only one meter—decks barely above the water. Built for speed, not cargo capacity. Unless they had invocation mages, they would have a hard time boarding.
Musketeers scurried over the deck, and Adarin connected to all the sergeants one by one using his noospheric link. Elation ran through his body as the chaos mounted. Predictably, the cutters targeted the three ships ahead.
And then the next fuck-up happened. One of the merchantmen turned into the river to the side, trying to run downstream. The next ship had to veer hard to avoid a collision. Adarin heard cursing from the bridge. “What is that idiot—”
Ashfield ordered a staff officer curtly to get that captain back under control, and soon a screaming match erupted over the magical radios. Yet it was too late. The first carrack hesitated for a second between staying with the vessel that held the course or protecting the runner. In that hesitation, they missed the chance to fire a broadside into the oncoming cutters.
The cutters separated at the last moment and shot by both sides of the carrack. The carrack fired two broadsides, yet the cannoneers had been prepared for a long-distance shot, not one at close quarters. The shots went high, ripping through sails. On one cutter, the master taklash sail and the upper mast came down onto the deck, and Adarin was satisfied to hear screaming and panic as the vessel drifted off.
The other, carrying the dragon-blooded knights, unerringly made for the merchantman and even got off a blast at the carrack. Adarin saw white plumes of water erupt where the cutter had passed and focused his vision. Yes—two holes, one exactly at the waterline. The carrack was taking on water.
Fuck. I should have never agreed to this—to Francesco’s nonsense plan. Simple as taking candy from a kid. Fuck me.
Then the dragon-blooded cutter came by the merchantman and hooked lines were thrown. The vessels spun in the middle of the river as the superhuman knights began pulling their catch in.
Adarin contacted the captain in charge of the musketeer company on board that vessel. ‘What are your plans?’
‘Hold them down until help arrives, or do you have other orders, sir?’
‘No. Watch out for those knights. They have invocation and healing magics at the very least. You can’t fight them. Do you have grenades?’
He chuckled bitterly. ‘Not enough for it to be worth it. Fought ’em once before. They can take too much.’
Adarin noticed the cannoneers running around, changing ball for canister shot. He judged the distances—thirty seconds at least. One of the dragon-blooded knights crossed his view and jumped onto the merchantman. Yet two dozen pikes suddenly raised, and the draken knight was impaled—held in the air like a grotesque trophy. The pikes fell to the side, and the knight, trying to scramble off his dying mount, went into the river only to be swallowed by the dark waters.
A cheer went up from the merchantman, quickly drowned out by musket fire from both vessels.
The other knights were significantly more cautious, and that was their undoing. Captain Ashfield steered straight for the spinning ships, ordering a faster pace on the oars. At the last second he turned the rudder, and the Magnolia hit the cutter at a shallow angle.
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The sound of splintering wood and something that was never supposed to be compressed into a smaller volume being crunched could be heard.
Then Adarin heard the expected words.
“Cannoneers—fire! Canister, down!”
Adarin hissed at the same second to the captain of the defenders. ‘Take cover!’
A few colonists were gawking overboard, still high on their victory over the knight, when the canister was unleashed. A shrapnel-filled inferno flooded the deck of the cutter, and where once there had been knights and sailors preparing for a boarding operation, nothing but sharp metal fragments and slick viscera remained.
Dread settled in his stomach as he looked up. Did they get the colonists? Can we already be losing men? But he met only the surprised eyes of men and women alive. Then he saw the cannoneers removing the wooden angling pieces. They angled the cannons downward.
Adarin let out a long breath and let himself slump down. This crew is good, Ashfield. I owe you one.
More screams and shouts erupted as Adarin noticed the Sun Banner knights’ vessel trying to make a run. But an infernal screech split the night as Liora stepped into the middle of the ship’s combat formation. A blast of rotten green energy shot out, and as if in accelerated time, ropes and sails decomposed on the vessel one after another.
The merchantman and then a carrack unleashed a broadside onto the cutter, but no good hits were scored, though a nasty cut was torn into the deck. The vessel was yawing, taking on water, but its rowers were still active. It pulled towards the sandbank, towards the beach.
Captain Ashfield stood at the command castle, his staff relaying orders to his officers.
Adarin reached out to Liora, who was kneeling against the mast, panting.
“Can you hit them again? Are they dying? Are they rotting alive?”
Francesco stepped forward, stretching out a hand to stop Adarin.
“She’s out. At this distance, it took a lot out of her.”
Adarin felt a wave of anger boiling up in his stomach. This idiotic, ambitious young mage. If he hadn’t suggested this, we could have just snuck by. But he caught himself before he said anything. This is not the moment for recriminations, Adarin.
Adarin looked at Francesco, and an idea hit him.
“You’re an illusionist, right? Can you light it up?”
“Light up what?”
“The fucking sky,” Adarin hissed.
Realization hit Francesco’s face, and he gently pulled Liora by the hand out of the formation. Adarin reconnected to all the musketeers, to the gunnery crews.
“We’ll have daylight in ten seconds,” he said, for Francesco was already chanting and held up two fingers.
“Two minutes?” Adarin asked.
Francesco nodded but kept chanting, kept making the gestures of the spell.
“Two minutes. Close your eyes. The enemy is likely running. Get them all. They can’t escape.”
Acknowledgments came back up the line as the orders were passed down. Painfully slowly, the spell gestures and words were formed. Musketeers lined up on the deck, pressed their eyes shut. Cannoneers did the same.
The cutter crashed into the riverbed and was slowly spun around by the current. The jumping silhouettes of men could barely be discerned in the darkness.
Then, with a flash so bright it should have been accompanied by an explosion, the sky was split by a long line of burning, brilliant light.
Running men froze on the riverbank. At least two of them were stark naked, only carrying elaborately decorated swords.
“Fire!” Adarin ordered, and thunder reverberated from all the ships. To a man, the enemy went down.
Down. Adarin grit his teeth together. Were they smart enough to get down on the ground, or did we shoot all of them again? He reached out over the link.
“As you can see, anyone—even if you think he’s dead—shoot him again.”
Another two waves of thunder followed, and to Adarin’s grim satisfaction, several corpses on the ground twitched—more than could be explained by repeated hits.
The light began to flicker out, and soon the river’s current pulled them back downstream, leaving one vessel ahead of them sinking, spinning gently in the middle of the river—its remaining rowers caught in a turkey shoot for the musketeers on the merchantman. The other was a burning wreck surrounded by corpses.
Adarin studied the side of the river where forest met sandbank. Was there movement? I don’t fucking know. He ground his teeth. Well, they already want my head because I’m still the City Lord of Northguard. This probably won’t change their opinion of me much. He walked back up to the hind deck, Commodore Ashfield and Francesco in tow. Before Adarin could even speak, Francesco hissed:
“I want that idiot punished. He ruined everything.”
The commodore just shrugged.
“Shit happens. Unlucky. But they are all dead and tinders. I believe that was the commander’s second objective? Kill them all.”
Francesco made a cutting gesture and stepped too close to the Commodore. “But we could have—”
Adarin rolled his eyes, bit his tongue, and swallowed the first three things he wanted to say. Then he wrapped the manipulator around Francesco’s wrist.
“Francesco, the enemy gets a vote in war. And luck is always a factor. This is a victory. Take it. We denied the enemy intelligence, and even if someone made it back on shore…”
Adarin smiled viciously. “Didn’t you notice? It’s the wrong shore. They’ll have to find a way to cross the river, and both sides are swarming with greenskins.”
Adarin amplified his voice and spoke aloud.
“Well done, everyone. This was the first victory of our expedition. There will be double rations of beer tomorrow evening. Be proud of what you did, soldiers. For the Order!”
“For the Order!” cries responded from all the vessels.
While Adarin watched, Commodore Ashfield set to the unenviable task of disentangling the clusterfuck his formation had become, ordering repairs, and setting the ships back into position to go upriver.
Adarin noted the Commodore and Francesco studying their tattoos. Only then did he notice his own one was blinking.
You have defeated two elite scout cutters!
Normalized strength difference 25%
Number of Levels gained: 0
He grimaced but as he saw Liora smiling over an additional level, he nodded in satisfaction. At least one good thing to come out of this.
Soon, peace returned to the broad river, the night and the burning wreckage on the shore remaining as a distant reminder. Already, Adarin’s mind was drifting—to experimenting with his body’s morphs, to planning the nights ahead.
