By Blood Hunted: Kingsblood Chronicles Part Two (The Kingsblood Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  Although the ship’s company had filled in well, Captain Cedrick had kept Alan on as second mate as well as chief of the ship’s siege engines. It was well understood by both captains that the yeoman warrior was looking for another billet, just as much as they’d both realized Alan was on the run from something. He hoped that their guesses as to what that something was were well off the mark. Nonetheless, Alan had demonstrated a command presence that the two captains had begun to rely upon, and his confirmation as the second officer had filled Alan with mixed feelings. Their respect and trust in his judgment and abilities meant a lot to him, and the guilt at concealing his true identity from them weighed on him.

  But so it was that Alan was in charge of the watch as Arden approached. He didn’t have any illusions that Cedrick wasn’t awake and ready to take command, but for now, the ship was his.

  “We put out immediately, Alan,” Arden shouted back, his stride deliberately relaxed despite the intensity of his words. “His Majesty said he would give me time to get back to Searcher, and he’s a man of his word.” The sarcasm in Arden’s tone made Alan’s eyes snap toward the fortress that overlooked the harbor and then to the warships that were tied up ahead of them, across the protected bay. No new signal fires or flags were evident, but Alan turned to his gunner’s mate anyhow.

  “Stand ready, Mr. Kess,” he said to the young sailor, who nodded his enthusiastic assent. Ever since the battle three and a half months ago that had nearly killed him, Kess had idolized Alan, for the officer had demonstrated his bravery and skill in battle, not to mention having saved Kess’ life.

  “Bosun!” he yelled, getting an immediate response from Garvel, the bald, burly man who’d replaced his unfortunate predecessor. “Prepare to cast off and rouse the Captain and Reidar!”

  Seeing his orders being followed and listening to the orders the bosun issued in turn, Alan turned his attention to the ballista nearest him. Kess did the same with the starboard weapon, ensuring it was ready for action without loading it or showing their “hosts” any hostile intent. Alan glanced aft, smiling briefly as he saw the diminutive form of the goblin scout making his own checks while the sailor who was his loader stood by. Snog had proven himself worthy to the ship’s company, not only for his sharp eye as one of the vessel’s gunners, but because of his post as the healer’s mate.

  Thank the gods the wind’s afore us and from the landward side, Alan thought, then suppressed a chuckle at his use of nautical parlance, even in his thoughts. Before signing on to Searcher, he’d only been aboard a ship a handful of times, and sometimes he was amazed at how comfortable he was in the role of a sailor.

  Keeping an eye on the riggers’ progress in raising the jib sail, he matched glances with Garvel, and the two nodded at each other, pleased with the progress. The jib was nearly completely reefed, or tied back with horizontal lines, so it wasn’t gathering wind as it was raised. This was important to keep Searcher from hauling on the heavy lines that tied her to the dockside cleats any more than she already was with the wind blowing from the port forequarter.

  Arden and his companions strode up the gangplank, and as soon as the last man’s feet touched the deck, the bosun gave a signal to hoist the plank off the quayside. The light blocks for this task hung from the pendant suspended from the ratlines fore and aft of the gangway. Using short ropes threaded around the loops of the mainlines, other crewmen hauled hard on the fore and aft shorelines—Garvel had already cast off and stowed the other lines—to give them slack, then expertly levered them over the ship’s own cleats. This was a job for the experienced hands because the loops of thick hemp would mercilessly sweep a sailor over the side if he was standing in the wrong place.

  At a shouted command from Alan, the jib was unreefed and trimmed to catch the wind and to haul Searcher’s head around slowly from the dockside. As the ship turned, it gained forward momentum, allowing the rudder some control, but most of the steerage was from the angle of the jib sail itself. Alan signaled to Garvel to take the watch on the sails and turned his attention to the kingdom’s warships tied up across the bay. The bosun watched closely as the ship began to cut a course across the harbor and, when the jib was fully secured, directed the riggers to raise the flying jib above it.

  Searcher made only a few knots as she crossed the harbor, but she’d pulled away from the quay in minutes, far faster than any of the warships could have made ready. Alan could see signal flags going up from the keep to the harbor and back, but he didn’t see any sign that the Varshan warships’ riggers were climbing aloft to ready their own sails. The Varshan fleet was made up of three- and four-masted, square-rigged ships that required a much larger crew than the mercenary ship’s fore-and-aft-rigged sails, and to put out of the harbor, especially with the wind pushing them into their own quay, would be an all-hands proposition.

  “Well done, Alan,” Captain Cedrick said from behind him. “You and Garvel make a good team.” Gem, of course, had noted the sea captain’s approach but hadn’t bothered to warn her charge. She suspected Alan was aware of it, as well, for Elowyn had trained the young prince well.

  Alan turned and replied, “The praise is all Garvel’s, Captain. He makes my job easy.”

  Cedrick’s manner was uncommonly direct, and it didn’t surprise the erstwhile prince when he agreed with Alan’s self-deprecating comment. “Of course—that’s what a good sailing master does,” Cedrick said. “But it’s your job to make sure he doesn’t miss something, and I watched you transfer command to him so you could see to your post.”

  Cedrick was a lot older than Arden, his hair long gone to gray, and he walked with a limp from an old wound. Despite that, he was still a strong man, and his sky blue eyes missed little that happened on the ship. He wore a short-sleeve tunic, and the intricate tattoo work that adorned both of his arms was visible. Mermaids and dolphins cavorted on his arms, along with sea monsters and other things. Alan had considered getting tattooed himself until Gem reminded him that she’d have to drop the illusion for him to do so.

  Searcher’s mainsail was now being raised only partly reefed, and the ship groaned as the mast and mainstay lines took on the added load of the brisk winds. The mains’l boom was already belayed against the expected course, and as the sail was secured at its full height, the bosun began overseeing the men as they released the tension on the ship’s lazyjacks. As the reef was let out of the mains’l, the ship picked up more speed.

  I don’t think Cedrick’s as calm as he appears, Alan said to Gem as he kept his eye on the large Varshan warships.

  The prince’s suspicion was confirmed when Cedrick revealed his desire for more speed. The captain shouted aft, “Rig afters’l!”

  Alo, the bosun’s mate, leapt to that task, bringing some of the line handlers into the rigging work. Although the mains’l delivered much of Searcher’s speed, the mizzenmast’s sail was a lot of her sail area, and the freer motion of the boom allowed a lot more flexibility when heeling over to the opposite tack. Garvel noted the activity, and as soon as some of the riggers were done with the tasks he’d set for them, he had them shift to raising the gallant jib, the topmost—and largest—of the jib sails.

  As the ship moved across the harbor, Alan and Cedrick crossed the ship to stand on the poop deck next to the helm. With a nod, Alan sent Snog forward to keep an eye on the excitable Kess.

  “Make your course twenty degrees port as soon as we clear the breakwater,” Cedrick said to the helmsman, a dark-skinned former slave named Trevally, who answered Cedrick’s order in the affirmative, repeating the orders.

  By altering course, Searcher’s sails would be at right angles to the wind, her most efficient course for speed. It was also a course the big square-masted Varshan ships could not easily follow because their sails were most efficient when running directly before the wind. They could make way by angling their main sails slightly and running up their own fore-and-aft-rigged jib and staysails to catch the wind as efficiently as possible, but the main motiv
e power of their largest sails would be reduced.

  “Do you think they’ll be coming after us, Captain?” Alan asked, considering which courses the enemy was most likely to approach from.

  Cedrick shook his head. “Arden’s got a good way with words, unlike me. I doubt he offended His Majesty enough to bring down their navy on us, but I’ll still feel better putting a hundred leagues between us and this island.”

  “Unless, of course, Her Majesty’s correspondence offended him and he’s decided to take it out on us,” Arden himself stated as he joined them on the poop deck, his long hair whipping behind him in the wind. “I didn’t get that impression—those two have been at each other’s throats for a long time, after all. However, he’s got to be wondering why Marshelle hired us to deliver her demands instead of her regular couriers and go-betweens.

  “If he realizes it’s because she might have paid us to do something else and takes to wondering what that might be, all bets are off,” Arden finished somberly. Since Princess Marshelle had hired them to do “something else,” the Varshan navy was eventually going to be after them in force, at least so long as they remained in the Island Kingdoms’ seas.

  “That means we’ll definitely be facing an opposed landing,” Alan observed, well aware of the details of the attack that Marshelle had ordered if King Givern hadn’t acquiesced to all of her demands.

  Arden nodded. “I thought that probable anyhow, given that the Varshans protect the island in general, but you’re right. They’re no doubt sending messages to all of their naval stations that Searcher is in Marshelle’s pay and, at best, if they find us anywhere near one of their sensitive areas we’re to be boarded and interned until the current situation is resolved.

  “Until we pull off our little part of this plan,” he continued, “I don’t see them firing on us on sight, but Givern’s got to be pretty mad right now and itching to take it out on someone Rivan won’t punish him for attacking.” High King Rivan’s hold on the various island kings was still surprisingly strong given their fractious and independent nature, coupled with the recent events in Dunshor. Only his effectively unassailable position at Seagate and the size of his personal navy made that possible.

  While Rivan’s Hyriel navy couldn’t defeat the combined fleets of the other Island Kingdoms, it could defeat any one of them, and the others would probably allow the High King’s ships to do so unopposed if the target had broken his edicts against direct warfare between the kingdoms. In older times the Island Kingdoms had been far more barbarous, and although their ships were numerous and powerful, the continental navies of Dunshor, the Southron Empire, and other nations had once attacked most of them on sight.

  Although Hyriel’s capital was effectively safe from a sea assault, the other kingdoms weren’t as invulnerable, and some of the present-day kingdoms were built on the ruins of former ones. Further, while Seagate could sustain itself almost indefinitely on its highland farms, the other cities of Hyriel relied upon imported foodstuffs from the other islands and various Sharan mainland kingdoms. This made a unified and strong set of Islander nations strategically important to the High King; any threat to the various kings was eventually a threat to King Rivan’s own lands.

  Alan rather thought that the High King would be quite unhappy with the actions Arden’s Company were about to take, and Searcher’s presence in Islander waters was about to become a lot more dangerous. Although he was worried about the effect that might have on his comrades-in-arms’ futures—the Islanders’ reach was a long one—he and his three companions would reap the benefit of that danger. Searcher would be forced southward to avoid Islander warships until the uproar created by their raid died down, and that suited the prince’s purposes perfectly.

  During his escape from the demon-haunted Tower of Firavon in Dunshor City, Alan had been severely injured by a guardian wraith’s soul-chilling touch and had fallen unconscious while Gem struggled to protect him from the Undead monstrosity. During the time Alan was comatose, he experienced a vision of a distant southern land called Fulnor, and there had met a being who called herself Dalgarin, the goddess of vengeance worshipped in the Southron Empire. Although Gem wasn’t sure whether the goddess herself had visited him or if he’d come into contact with something else, Alan was certain it had been K’Vas, as she was known in Dunshor. Not only because of the physical proof—two Fulnorian copper coins he’d later found in his money pouch—but because it had simply felt true to him. The goddess had offered him a position as one of her agents, which would have placed him under the protection of her small religion and given him access to divine powers to augment his own abilities. Being an agent of Dalgarin would have required giving up his aspirations of restoring the Dunshor throne to his control, and for that reason and others he’d turned down the offer, half-expecting her to smite him for the audacity of his refusal.

  Her reaction had surprised him; instead of smiting him she wished him good fortune in his journey and, moreover, provided him with the coins. Alan believed she was directing him toward the distant, unknown land of Fulnor. He didn’t know why she wanted him to go there, but as his goblinish henchman Snog had told him once, when the gods give you a hint, you’d better be willing to consider the consequences of ignoring it.

  Snog’s turn of phrase had baffled Alan until the goblin had explained, “The gods, milord, they gave all us mortals free will. We dinnae have t’a listen to ‘em, but we’ll suffer if we don’.”

  He’d grinned widely then, showing all of his sharply pointed teeth. “O’course, we’ll oftimes suffer if we do.” That was true enough, for tales abounded of the misery that divine involvement in mere mortals’ lives could bring.

  In response to Arden’s comment about being the logical scapegoats, Alan nodded to the mercenary captain that was the owner and ultimate leader of the ship and its band. Although Captain Cedrick commanded the ship, it belonged to Arden, and the westerner decided what contracts they would take and where they would go.

  “I still say a stealthy incursion’s the most likely to succeed,” Cedrick said. “True, you might get cut off if they discover Searcher and drive me off the coast, but it’s got the best chance of stealing away unopposed.”

  If Arden was annoyed that Cedrick was questioning his decision, he didn’t show it. Alan had discovered that the mercenary was always willing to accept counsel, so long as it was respectfully delivered and that Arden’s final decision was accepted and his orders followed. The mercenary hadn’t yet made his final decision about how the raid was going to be conducted, so Cedrick was well within his rights to argue what he felt was the best course. As he was the most experienced member of the company, Arden included, Alan was pleased to see his advice was being noted.

  “If we could be certain there’s not a sorcerer in residence there, I’d agree with you,” Arden replied, leaning against the helm post as the ship began to reach the deeper swells on the edge of the breakwater. Even Snog had gotten used to the pitching and rolling of the deeps; Arden was a veteran sailor and paid it no conscious notice at all.

  “But they probably do have a sorcerer or two there,” he continued. “We have to draw the wizard out and neutralize him or Reidar won’t be able to spare attention to the shrine’s wards. We won’t be able to stop the wizard from summoning aid, either, so we can’t afford to have the picket ships, whatever they are, still seaworthy when reinforcements start arriving.”

  Alan swallowed hard despite himself because Arden was calmly discussing opening fire upon and sinking Island Kingdom—specifically, Varshan—warships as part of the operation. He knew that was part of the plan, but he still didn’t like to think of the possible consequences of an effective declaration of war between Varsha and Pellorn. Givern knew they were in Marshelle’s pay, and Alan doubted he’d fail to blame their actions on the Princess of Pellorn.

  Although he was quite familiar with the capabilities of the three heavily enchanted ballistae with which he was entrusted, Alan had never seen na
val action and was well aware of how green he was in ship-to-ship combat. He wasn’t a completely green recruit, of course, having seen battle both with his father’s forces and on his own during and after the assassination attempt. Although he hadn’t joined Arden’s men in action during their last commission—Searcher had merely been the ferry to deliver the troops to their objective—he’d faced supernatural foes and spellcasters, and though battle frightened him as much as any other sane man, he did not dread it. He did find that he dreaded letting down his shipmates and the two captains, and he felt that his ignorance of naval battle tactics and circumstances, beyond the descriptions he’d gleaned from the other sailors, was a dangerous weakness for the ship’s chief engineer.

  As the three officers spoke next to the helm, Alan noted that they’d reached the turning point Cedrick had set for Trevally. “Prepare to come about, helm,” he said, touching the sailor’s shoulder and noting the man’s response almost without consciously hearing it. Catching Garvel’s eye and looking at the riggers’ ready positions, he called out, “Come port twenty degrees, helm!”

  Garvel’s response was immediate, and he ordered the riggers to haul back on the hawsers connecting to the standing rigging and tightened the lines on the mains’l boom against the greater force on the yard as the ship bore up into the wind. Searcher heeled over harder to starboard, but the helmsman compensated by setting the rudder properly, and once the mains’l was properly trimmed, she settled into the waves. Spray flew over the bow as the ship slipped along the waves coming in from the port bow and then slid down into the trough between them.

  “How’s she running?” Alan asked Trevally once the maneuver was completed and the bosun and his crew were working on properly trimming the mizzen sail.