Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty-Eight - Abandoned Ship

After grabbing a few supplies from the Remiges Crown, we got back onto the ponies and headed out. Calamity pointed us towards a hill to the south of our position. It looked almost like a shelf of earth that jutted out of the ground with a sharp edge. The space beneath it had a small forest’s worth of trees growing where the wind couldn’t reach them.

We switched things up, Amaryllis rode with Awen, so I had Shanks all to myself as we rode across the plains. I kind of wished that I was riding with one of my friends, sharing a saddle was a great excuse to get my daily dose of cuddles in.

The hillside wasn’t too far away, but it still took an hour to get to it. The ground being so muddy didn’t help any. The poor ponies had splashes of mud all the way up to their tummies, and my shoes were caked in it by the time we reached the hill. A bit of Cleaning magic worked it off, but it was still kind of annoying.

Calamity found a switch-back path dug into the side of the hill. “Is this a natural path?” Amaryllis asked.

“Hmm? Oh, nya, this is ancient. I don’t know who dug this out, but it’s been here forever. There’s a wider, newer way down further south, with some railings and all, but it’s a bit far to travel for us when all we want’s a spot to see from. I heard that these were made by an earth mage a long while back. Some folk say that a magic cockatrice that could move earth made them, but I don’t rightly believe those tall tales.”

Once we were at the top of the hill, I took in the great vista below us. It was, for the most part, just grass. Lots and lots of grass, as far as my bun eyes could see. Some places had muddy pools of water where there was a dip in the land, but even those had grass pushing through the mud, and I didn’t doubt that by mid-afternoon it would all dry up and be absorbed by the thirsty ground.

Calamity had mentioned, in passing, that it only rained once every couple of weeks, but when it did, it was always strong.

“That’s the Hunter’s Eye,” Awen said as she pointed. I followed her gaze to the distant form of the ship’s keel. “And that over there’s the other half of the Eye and the Remiges Crown.”

The other ship wasn’t too hard to spot, being a bit bigger. Though the way it was resting against a hill meant that it would probably be much harder to find for anyone coming from the other direction. Once the grass straightened up post-storm and the ship sank into the ground a little more, it might actually be hard to find.

I didn’t doubt that the wind would toss some dirt onto the deck and then grass would grow from that, until it melded into the verdancy. But that hadn’t happened just yet and wouldn’t happen for a while.

“So, that’s two ships in three parts,” Amaryllis said. She scanned the horizon. “I don’t see any others. I wish we had a spyglass.”

“Oh!” Awen said. She brought her hands up, as if holding an invisible tube, then frowned. Glass formed between her hands with a faint crackle, like crystals growing but a thousand times faster. She focused harder, then squinted as her creation took form. It was a telescope! A single piece of glass forming lenses with bars to hold them in place. “I’m going to need to fiddle with this, and I don’t think anyone else will be able to adjust the focus, but...” she looked through it at the distant form of the Remiges Crown.

“What can you see?” I asked.

“The... ship I’m looking at?” she answered, a bit confused. “There’s nothing really new. Uh, having this only helps me see, it doesn’t really help me find new things to look at.”

“Oh, right,” I said.

We squinted out into the distance, looking for anything that stood out. Unsurprisingly, it was Calamity who spotted something strange first. “That way,” he said. “Along the ridge we’re on, about two hours ride south and east.” He was pointing a bit behind us.

I spotted what he was talking about. It was maybe two kilometres away from the crash site for the Hunter’s Eye’s fore-section, just a little bit behind the ridge we were standing on. Or maybe it was another ridge? It was hard to tell, but I suspected we were on the lip of a very big, very old crater.

“I see it,” Awen said. The telescope clinked and cracked, like someone stepping on a wineglass with heavy boots and shifting their foot around. The lenses twisted a bit, and the telescope adjusted itself minutely. “Got it.”

“So, what do you see?” Amaryllis asked. “It looks like a dark lump to me.”

That was a pretty accurate description for me too, there was something black in the distance, but because it was barely peeking out of grass, I had no way to get a sense of scale. I had probably looked right past it a couple of times already.

“I think it’s a ship,” Awen said. “No, it’s definitely a ship. There’s a balloon, I think that’s the black part. It’s a bit behind the curve of the hill so I can’t see much of it.” She passed her telescope to Amaryllis who plucked it and stared into the distance as well.

“That does look like it might be a vessel of some sort. A smaller one. Could be one of the lifeboats. No, no it couldn’t be.”

“It couldn’t?” I asked.

“Harpy lifeboats don’t have their own balloons. That looks more like a skiff, like the Shady Lady.”

Abraham’s little ship? Flying on the Shady Lady had been a blast! Though it was also kind of terrifying. That ship had been held together with tape and happy thoughts.

“Do you think it was part of the delegation or the pirates?” I asked.

“Hard to tell,” Amaryllis said. She passed me the telescope while Awen made another in about half the time it took her to make the one I now had. I squeezed one eye shut and looked through to search for the ship.

It really was hard to spot, even with a zoomed-in view. The craft looked like it was pretty even with the ground, but its balloon was draped across the hill as if it was ripped, which was probably exactly what had happened.

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“It doesn’t look like it crashed,” I said. “It looks like it’s mostly in one piece.”

“We’ll see once we get closer,” Amaryllis said.

That kind of decided our next destination for us, though only after looking around for more points of interest. We patted down the ponies, I cleaned off the mud from their shoes and flanks, then we headed out once more. Calamity had us walking a little ways away from the cliff-edge. He said that while it was great for keeping track of where you were going, he’d also seen the cliff fall apart a few times and we didn’t want to trigger a landslide.

Calamity’s guess about the distance was spot-on. It took a bit over an hour to get close enough to the ship to see it without Awen’s telescope, and another half hour before we were basically right on top of it.

“That’s not a harpy design,” Amaryllis said as we got closer.

The ship was long and narrow, maybe a third as long as the Beaver Cleaver but thin enough that it could easily fit between the Beaver’s two hulls. Its hull was shaped a bit like a teardrop, with the rear section being larger and the front tapering to a curved point.

It wasn’t made of wood the way harpy ships were, or flat metal panels like the sylph preferred. This was all sleek, curved metal, carefully shaped and riveted together.

“That’s a Snowlander ship,” Awen said with obvious glee. “Oh, these are super uncommon outside of the Snowlands. They’re the best airships, period.”

I could see why Awen was excited. The ship reminded me a bit of pictures of old World War Two aircraft. Compared to this, every other airship I’d seen had more in common with a Blériot or a Wright Brothers’ aircraft.

The front of the ship lacked a figurehead, instead, the metal wrapped around to a semi-enclosed turret with a fixed crossbow mounted on a ring. It looked as if someone could stand inside and turn all the way around while aiming the bow. The crossbow was also... high-tech wasn’t the right word for it, but I couldn’t think of anything better. It had big metal bars and a box under it, with a large, visible spring and a chain with linked-together bolts dangling from the side.

Behind that, the ship was mostly enclosed until the larger section at the rear where a wheel sat in a tiny booth with glass around it and there was some walking space to access the posts and winches the ship likely needed to tie itself at dock.

The rear of the ship contained a mostly-enclosed propeller. There were openings around it to suck air out from the front and all the way to the propeller itself.

“Oh, look at that!” Awen cooed as she rode closer. She jumped off her pony, leaving Amaryllis to catch the reins. “The air is pulled through those vents on the underside, see, and I bet they’ll pass next to the engine. Not only pulling air through, but using it for cooling! It’s so simple, but so clever!”

I dismounted my pony, then gave its reins to Amaryllis, who stared at them, and the other reins, then huffed a very clear “Why am I taking care of these?” huff.

“What kind of metal is this?” Awen asked as she tapped the skin of the ship with a knuckle to produce a hollow clunk. “Even tin would make this way too heavy.”

“Aluminium?” I asked. “It’s very light and pretty strong. They use it for airplanes where I’m from, I think.”

“Oh... but how did they shape it like this? Is every single part cast individually? Unless they have a whole factory making just this kind of skiff, that’s a lot of work. It doesn’t look hammered.”

I watched Awen go. It was cute how enthusiastic she was about the mysterious Snowlander ship.

While she poked and prodded at it, I walked around the ship and took in its position. There were three large landing gear deployed below and sunk into the mud a little. One looked a bit bent, as if the landing was rougher than ideal, but they weren’t broken, I didn’t think. So the ship didn’t crash.

“Is there anyone in there?!” I called out, hands around my mouth.

My friends paused. I don’t think they’d considered that possibility.

Noone made a sound, so if someone was hiding in the ship, well, then they were hiding, not just waiting onboard.

“There’s a ladder here!” Awen said.

She’d found a panel on the side of the ship which could be opened. It revealed two ladders, one mounted to the hull, and another on rails which dropped with a clack and stopped half a metre off the ground.

Awen was the first to climb aboard, but the rest of us followed soon after, with Amaryllis taking up the rear since she had to tie the ponies to a stake.

The ship’s interior was a lot sleeker than any ship I’d seen, with wooden floors and walls that were padded with leather. Some of the walls had little cabinets built into them for tools and supplies. The ship was too small to have any more than the top deck, but there was a set of trapdoors that Awen pulled open to access the engine below the command console.

The console, with the wheel at the back of it, was in the centre. There was a whole heap of levers and gauges within easy reach. It looked like the sails could all be controlled from that one place by a single pilot.

In front of it was the covered section of the hull, which looked like a tight tunnel all the way to the crossbow emplacement at the very front. I poked my head in. There were bunks along the sides, and a tiny compact kitchen and sitting area.

Something felt off about the ship but I didn’t figure out what until I came to stand behind the wheel. This was a ship designed for someone taller than I was. The bunks below were like that too. About as wide as a normal one-person bunk, but longer.

Whomever had built this thing knew how to pack every necessity in tightly.

“Pirates,” Calamity said, pulling me out of my reverie. He was looking up, towards a flag hooked to a ladder that would have reached the balloon if it hadn't collapsed. The flag was black, with a grinning skull.

***