Armadas in the Mist by Christian Klaver

Author:Christian Klaver [Klaver, Christian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CamCat Publishing

15

JOSHUA

TRAPS AND SURPRISES

Of the Seven Sins, only the Black Shuck and Widdershins could navigate the mist easily, so it was their ship, the Descending Shadow, that led the other three ships. Mother, Lady Westerly, and John Brown all had the barest feel for traveling through it, but it was easy enough to follow the ship ahead of them. It was very early in the morning, when everything was still gray and the white cliffs of Dover were a vague paleness behind them and the churning foam glowed in the darkness. Past the breakers, all the water was the deepest black.

The Emerald Demise was Mother’s command, though, as she had on land, she gave orders to Joshua and relied on him to actually carry them out.

With Urguag had come the Windshrikes. Huge, avian demon-men, wailing as Urguag had them dragged aboard in silvery silk nets. Now one of those nets was stretched out between the mainmast and the bowsprit, and the Windshrike writhed, trapped like an insect. The thrashing creature had killed two Goblins and even one of the cadaverous Hanged Dogs before the Faerie learned to give that part of the deck a wide berth. Now, in the near darkness, Joshua couldn’t make out anything but the flailing net, which seemed like it surely must tear and give, only it never did. Two dwarves, assigned by Urguag for just this purpose, each holding a silvery silk whip, now flicked the ends of these at the creature, very low and lazily, near what might have passed for heels on another creature. This was all happening near the forecastle and mainmast, with another Windshrike and two dwarves with whips at the mizzenmast. The pace and energy of the whipping escalated now as the Dwarves really got going, working themselves into a lather.

The Windshrikes moaned low and pulled even harder at the nets.

With a long, creaking groan that might have been the ship or might have been the Windshrikes, the ship began to move.

Joshua walked past the mizzenmast group, giving them a wide berth, and up onto the quarterdeck. He leaned over the rear railing and looked at the water behind them. His posture was even more hunched than normal. Mother’s treatments were doing something to his back now. He felt as if a tumor large enough to become another full person, a particularly painful and evil one, was growing there. The burning sensation was unbearable, but as with all of Mother’s decisions and “gifts,” he had no choice but to put up with it. For now.

The ship wasn’t moving that quickly yet, only fifty yards from the docks, and already the water was a long churn of white foam. The Faerie, even Lughus, Master of the Twenty Crafts, the Faerie god that Urguag got his magic from, didn’t seem to know or care about jibs or spanker sails. Urguag had found the rudder a novel, quaint, and unnecessary component to a fighting ship, and had an entirely different solution to keeping the ship upright.

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