Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Five - Full Broadside

“Hard to starboard!” I shouted.

“Hard to starboard!” Clive repeated as he sent the wheel spinning.

On the deck, the Scallywags and our harpy crewmates rushed to pull in the sails that we’d been deploying earlier.

The Beaver took a hard turn to the right, the entire deck shifting underfoot so hard that I had to shift my stance to stay standing. Our turn was probably unexpected for the pirates chasing after us. We had slowly been climbing for a while, and the Red Wings had followed suit. It meant that our speed dropped a little and it meant that they’d have an easier time catching up.

It sucked, but if we were going to fight no matter what, and if we had the choice, it was probably best that we decide when the fighting happened.

Of the three pirate ships, one was quite large, twice as long as the Beaver and just as wide, with a massive balloon above it and a dozen engines sticking out on stalks along its sides. It had metal plates bolted to its sides and seemed like it had been in plenty of scuffles. The figure head at the front was a rather undressed harpy woman, her talons wrapped around a banner with the ship’s name. The Red Scourge.

The Scourge was to the far left of the Red Wing formation, and our turn would take us away from it and closer to the other two ships.

These were a bit more reasonable in terms of size. One was half again the Beaver’s length, but was much thinner, the Firestrike.

The third, the Red Whale, was a little longer that the Beaver, a ship entirely contained within a single large balloon, with only some protruding decks on the side and a gondola on the bottom for the crew.

They had something of a naming theme going on.

“Get ready!” I shouted to the starboard deck even as I rushed over myself.

Amaryllis, Caprica and Calamity were on the deck, all three looking very serious and ready for trouble.

Then the floor shifted and Awen’s rapid-firing crossbow turret click-clicked out of the hold below and slowly turned to face our right.

“Don’t put all of your power in your first shot, use it to range,” Amaryllis suggested.

I swallowed. “Okay,” I said.

Our turn, as hard as it was, still took some time to finish. By the end of it, we were perpendicular with the Red Whale, the ship on the far right of the Red Wing formation. Our kilometre-long lead was growing shorter every second. Clive knew what he was doing, though.

I turned and looked past the other side of the ship. The Shady Lady was keeping even with us, using the Beaver’s balloon to stay out of sight.

The plan was simple, and we were all pretty sure it wouldn’t work, but we had to try something.

“Here goes nothing,” Calamity said. He nocked an arrow onto his bow, put a foot on the railing ahead of him, then grunted hard as he pulled the string way back. The entire bow creaked and bent from all the force he was putting into it.

The Red Whale came a bit closer.

Calamity loosed.

There was a loud thwack as the arrow shot away so fast that all I could see of it was a faint blur. I squinted towards the approaching ship and caught sight of the arrow arcing down before it punched into the very front of the balloon.

“Nice shot,” I said.

“Mhm,” he said as he reached into his quiver. “Now we can start making it interesting.” He held an arrow up and stared at it for a moment. Then the tip started to glow.

I looked closer, and realized that there were threads of mana wrapped around the head. A spell? But one that didn’t look entirely ready to cast. “What’s that?”

“Nothing too special,” he said. “It’s just a spell for lighting campfires. But with a trigger so that it goes off on contact.”

“Hmm, clever,” Amaryllis said. “A way to extend the range of a spell with a weak range. I wish I had time to study the trick.”

“Maybe later!” he said before he pulled the string back again. This time I had an easier time keeping track of the arrow since it glowed faintly. When it hit the balloon there was a small flash, then I noticed a small wisp of smoke rising up and away from the canvas.

“It’s probably treated to be fireproof,” Amaryllis said. “It’s an expensive treatment, and most civilian ships don’t bother with it, but since they’re pirates, it only makes sense.”

“Is there a way around it?” I asked.

“It’s an alchemical solution that’s brushed onto the canvas,” Amaryllis said. “Get it hot enough and it will burn regardless.”

“Is it worth continuing?” Calamity asked.

“Holes are holes,” Amaryllis said. “Punch enough of them into the canvas and the sacs beneath and they’ll start losing their buoyancy. Do you have other elements?”

“I can make an arrow burst as an airball after piercing into something,” Calamity said. “We used to do that to make fruit explode. You can do it to something you’re hunting too, but it’s counter-productive. If you’re hunting you want the meat intact, not spread out over a dozen paces.”

“Do that. If it goes off within the ship then the pressure may break some things,” Amaryllis said.

Calamity nodded and cast a spell on another arrow.

The Red Whale was still approaching, turning slowly as it went. It looked as if it was trying to turn hard enough that we’d be parallel when we inevitably came within closer range, but Clive was manoeuvring us so that we wouldn’t have to worry about that too much.

It’s what came after we crossed their T that I worried about.

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Calamity’s next arrow struck and there was a faint and distant ‘paff’ sound. The arrow had left a hole in the canvas large enough that I could have stuck my head in it. “Nice!” I cheered.

“It’s close enough,” Amaryllis said. She raised her dagger wand towards the ship, then started to murmur something under her breath. I felt the little hairs on my arm start to rise and took a slight step back and away from Amaryllis as her dagger wand started to glow. The air around her snapped and cracked, little flickers of static electricity going off.

Amaryllis grinned, and I felt the mana in space around us rushing in towards her. “Close your eyes!” she shouted.

I did what she said and pulled my ears down for good measure.

There was a catastrophically loud crack and my vision went white even though my eyes were closed. The air warmed up around me and I felt all of the hair that had risen fall back down a moment before a wash of cool air came in to fill the gap.

When I opened my eyes, I saw Amaryllis lowering her wand. It was smoking.

I turned towards the Red Whale and gasped.

There was a long, snaking line burned across its side, with hundreds of little capillaries moving out of it and spreading across the canvas. The thicker line eventually reached one of the long stalks sticking out of the balloon on which the ships engines were mounted.

The engine was on fire.

“The gondola acted as a lightning rod,” Amaryllis said simply. “We’ll have to keep that in mind if we try another spell like that. No sense wasting our power by hitting the same spot twice.”

I blinked a few times. There were still spots in my vision, but they were fading quickly. The flaming gondola was an impressive sight to see, but it was far enough away from the main part of the ship that it didn’t look like the fire would spread from one to the other.

“Nice hit,” Calamity said. “Think that’ll slow them down?”

Amaryllis hummed, then started to count the engines on the side of the ship. They were much smaller than our engine, of course. “Four to a side, that’s eight small engines. I don’t have the mana for eight spells like that. Though I imagine only taking out a few more would cut their manoeuvrability in half. That’s the advantage of ships with multiple engines like that, there’s a level of redundancy that we can’t afford with just one engine.”

“Right,” Calamity said.

“Three hundred metres,” Caprica said. “We’ll be within the longer range of smaller spells soon.”

“How’s your mana?” I asked Amaryllis.

“Fine. That took out about half, but I regenerate quickly,” she said. “Don’t worry about me, I can pace myself.”

I nodded. That had been an impressive spell, I was sure the pirates were rethinking how easy of a target we’d be now!

It was time for me to do my part. I moved up to be closer to the railing, then looked at the distant ship. “I don’t imagine that Cleaning magic will help much,” I said.

“It’ll save them some time cleaning the decks, maybe,” Calamity said. He nocked another arrow and let loose. He had a small stack of arrows to work through so there wasn’t any reason for him to hold back.

I frowned, then used the only other spell I knew how to use fairly well, fireball! One day I’d get proper fireballs, with the huge explosions and everything, but for now I’d just pepper the pirates with little fist-sizes bursts of flame.

I reached out towards the Red Whale and prepared my first brace of them, putting a little bit more mana than usual into the spell so that they’d cross the distance without trouble. Next to me, Caprica did the same thing.

We fired at the same time, and I looked at her firebolts with a bit of envy. They moved a lot faster and were brighter. Then again, she probably had more training and time to practice with the spell than I had.

The little balls of fire splattered against the distant ship, and it was hard to tell if they were doing anything.

“You’ll have to hit the same spot a few times to burn through the canvas,” Amaryllis said.

“That sounds hard,” I said. The airship was a big target, but it was far away, and when I’d fired my brace of fireballs half of them zipped right past the ship, missing it entirely.

“There’s a psychological effect too,” Caprica said. “Those onboard will know that we’re attacking them and that we’re not stopping.”

“Exactly,” Amaryllis said. “I’ll be at the bow, I want to see if I can’t get a better angle to the engines on the opposite side. If we dip lower, I might try to hit the forward gondola. It’ll give their crew a nice shock.”

I paused between castings to look at the other ships. The Firestrike was turning, and it looked like it was going to cut in behind the Red Whale. The Red Scourge meanwhile, was only just starting to turn. A ship that large couldn’t be all that manoeuvrable.

“Hey, what’s it doing?” Calamity asked.

I focused ahead again, then blinked. A section of the canvas at the front of the Red Whale was opening up. It looked almost as if the ship now had a mouth, which was all kinds of strange. Within the opening was a deck, with a few crewmates and... “Oh no,” I said.

A massive ballista was fixed within the ship, with the opening giving it a fairly wide arc to fire from, and it was aiming right at us.

A loud thawng sounded, and I ducked by reflex as a ballista bolt shot past.

It missed the Beaver going a little low, but it had come closer than I liked.

“Stop gawking and keep firing!” Amaryllis shouted. “We need to take that thing down!”

***