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Fourteen menfolk covered in dawn’s dark cloak
Carried forty tons of the King’s gold,
Out of the Mighty Saracen’s cargo hold
Lo ‘n behold they reached the Siren’s lair,
Gory skull carried out by its maiden long hair,
The count on the return givin’ eleven,
Ol’ ‘Scalpel Fingers’ amidst ‘em havin’ only seven,
Fourteen menfolk knew the way to ol' Captain’s treasure
Accursed be all those that seek to find its measure
Popular Pirate song of the south coast
Circa 193 NC and beyond
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Leona ‘Foxy’ Vale
‘Scalpel-Fingers’
‘Scourge of the Scalding Seas’
Forty tons of gold
Part V
-The Siren of Lyari-
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[https://i.postimg.cc/CxqvJVHR/Lyari.jpg]
“SHIP LIGHTS! THREE POINTS OFF PORT QUARTER!” Troy yelled from the main mast’s crow’s nest, the loose topsail flapping dangerously near him. The night had come swiftly, the Ocean’s Harpy still drifting at wind’s whim.
Leona who could barely move without wincing in pain, rolled down the stairs leaving a desperately fighting with the helm Kidd behind. She paused to stare at the covered in white sailcloth bodies of Wil and Clark, until Hook put his hand between her shoulder blades, his voice urging her forward.
“That’s a lot of lights Leo,” Hook told her.
Leona nodded.
“What kind of ship it is?” she asked. They had some lights on, but just the minimum required to tend to the wounded and make repairs. Both tasks very difficult.
“Look mighty similar to dis one.”
Great.
“What is it looking for?”
“Probably us,” Hook replied. “But either they don’t look this way, or we look like a smaller boat in the dark.
“There’s a lot of night still ahead of us,” Leona murmured. “But if they stay near they’ll figure out what happened and spot us for sure.”
She would pray for a worsening of the weather, but it was rough seas still and didn’t believe their ship could handle it. Not with so few capable crew aboard.
“Not the way we’re going me thinks,” Hook argued sadly.
A waterspout popped out of the waves, water spinning in a screaming buzz that raised your hairs and the vortex sucked them again out of course for a while. Course used loosely here as she couldn’t tell where they were heading.
Leona would have given an eye for that guidance box aboard the Marquette, but Abrakas had claimed that.
“Fix the topgallant sail first, then open a trysail at the stern to help Kidd steer us,” Leona ordered hoarsely. “Use the moonlight when it’s available, don’t light any more lamps and keep these concealed if possible.”
“We need the whole main mast repaired,” Hook grunted. The Galleass had lost her foremast to a wayward catapult shot that had cracked it initially, to topple later. The first hour after being left on their own, the crew had spent freeing the ship from the destroyed mast’s rigging and cleaning the deck from debris and mercenary corpses.
Ocean Harpy being as big as she was and as heavily loaded, they needed all her of sails to journey properly against the wind, or at least the main mast’s to at least steer back to land, if it wasn’t already too late.
“If we don’t find land in the next couple of hours then we are shooting straight for Abrakas Gullet,” Leona countered. “I don’t think we are, since we’d have spotted Dawson by now if the winds had stayed the same.”
“Dawson hav’ gone under me thinks, all tangled up, smaller ships…” Hook said and grimaced. “Be talking wit Troy about sending people up them ladders. Rest a bit Leo, ye look half-dead.”
Eh, Leona scowled and glanced at her mangled still bandaged and hastily stitched left hand. She could feel the fingers, but moving them was a different beast, fit for braver women than her.
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“Didn’t think you’d stay Mister Doubloon,” Leona murmured half an hour later, the mystery ship that had appeared hours after the battle, now lost in the night and probably still searching the waters for survivors retracing the original route of the convoy.
The leader of the raiders sighed and stared at the cluster of injured men left behind. Ten of them had managed to stand on their feet sporting lesser injuries, five they had to toss overboard after they succumbed to theirs and a group of about fifteen of them they were still trying to patch up. The latter having serious, but not as life-threatening wounds like missing limbs, ears, or eyes, though given time and a good fever these also could take a turn for the worse.
“I sent ‘Confident’ Bolton with the others, but it didn’t look right to abandon them Captain,” Harrold replied. “I’m also hoping you have a plan.”
“No full plan, but I have a couple of half-plans in the works,” Leona assured him trying to appear nonchalant but her grin resembled a snarl more, seeing as a jolt of pain from the loose rib run through her mid-sentence.
“Umm,” Harrold nodded and glanced at the sailors helping a tied up Troy perilously stretch out of the crow’s nest, three-meter long hooked staff in hand, to reach the flapping large sail.
The young lanky sailor tried once and failed the moon ducking behind clouds making his effort even more difficult.
“Bring an oil lamp up here!” One of those helping him called.
“Do it,” Leona hissed to a raider watching at the base of the mast. He nodded and looked to find one, Hook grabbing her elbow to turn her around.
“You can’t risk it,” he grunted and pointed an arm at the distance, far beyond their starboard side, where the outline of a black mass could be seen contrasting with the pale moon’s illumination.
“What am I looking at?” Leona snapped.
“That’s Crab’s Talons,” Hook expounded gravely.
Ah.
“Which one?”
“The way it’s curving, I reckon it be the south one Leo,” Hook replied.
The winds had blown them way out of course, but also towards land.
“Can we bring the ship closer?”
“That’s over a hundred meters of sheer cliff, a granite wall, there’s no mooring there, but plenty of smashing against it,” Hook grunted.
“We’ll swing around it, turn the ship enough—”
“You’ll run in them reefs.”
“Archibald Tidus did it aboard the Fat Libby no less!” Leona hissed.
“Damn it Leo! ‘Birdeye’ hugged the shores, retraced the Fingers never venturing out more than a mile, on a good ship and during the plaguin’ day!”
Leona stood back and eyed him breathing heavy after his outburst.
“I won’t be cowered by the supernatural Mister Hook,” she cautioned him.
Hook shook his head. “Ain’t about that, them reefs will crack our hull before those mermaids get us.”
“I need two good sails and I’ll steer it,” Leona insisted.
“Turn yes, there’s no steering through there in the blind,” Hook argued. “Many have attempted it, few returned.”
“What stopped them?”
“There’s a heavy mist coming out of the waters,” Hook replied. “It comes and everything is hidden. The reefs moving in the night and land that looks fine from afar turns sinister after you approach.”
“This sounds like fear,” Leona retorted. “GET THEM A LIGHT!” She barked and turned around to hobble away, managing to stay upright despite the ship rocking on the waves.
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Troy managed to take hold of the wayward sail at the clew with the hook, brought it closer heaving hard and getting pulled in turn by the sailors holding on to his rope. His hands got cut through the leather workgloves, but they retied it to a stayrope and yelled for those watching underneath with batted breath to try it.
Leona standing next to a nervous Kidd, the experienced navigator pale-faced and looking sick from lack of sleep, placed a hand on his shoulder and said in as calm a voice as she could.
“You turn us starboard now Mister Kidd, as soon as the Spanker opens.”
“Aye Captain,” he replied.
“BRACE YERSELVES!” Leona barked and climbed down the long narrow aftcastle staircase. “GIVE ME THE DARN TOPGALLANT MISTER WEISS!” she yelled next and grabbed a ratline, she looped around her injured arm above the elbow. “UNFURL THE MAIN’S! BEAM REACH STARBOARD!” Leona turned to Hook and nodded.
“SPANGER’S OPEN AFT!” Hook boomed and Leona barked for Kidd to turn them against the wind.
“NOW MISTER KIDD!”
The Ocean’s Harpy creaked and groaned, a side of the deck rising, the incline steep enough for one injured raider to topple overboard, loose barrels tumbling from one side to the other, broken beams crackling and banging on rails and the moonlit horizon giving way to the rising black sea.
“ARGRH!” Leona snarled, teeth clenched tight, drenched in frothy brines feeling the large ship rocking and the wind ripping through the deck, blowing on her tearing bloodshot eyes.
The Ocean’s Harpy bobbed and danced over the angry sea, but turned west she did towards the Talons, although they hadn’t seen them for a while now.
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“LAND AHOY!” A worn out Troy yelled two hours later, both hands bandaged and taut face making him look older than his not even twenty years.
Leona cracked her eyes open, head heavy and body hurting from resting on the stairs to keep an eye on the deck.
“What manner?” She croaked and got up with a groan.
“REEFS!” Another one on the crow’s nest warned them and she grimaced.
“Cut the sails,” Leona told the approaching Hook. “Where have ye been?”
“Found three sailors in the cargo hold,” the man explained.
“I want no one down there Bristol!” Leona snarled angry. “Were they armed?”
“Young sailors. Joined in Cediorum for a taste of adventure,” Hook explained. “Have them tied to the mast.”
“Will they join our cause?” Leona asked and stooped over the port side deck rails to gauge the approaching reefs.
“Not likely Leo,” Hook commented gruffly.
“Damn ye Bristol,” she hissed for bringing it to her.
“Yer call captain,” the man countered. “Ye wish no witnesses, only one way to do it.”
“Mister Doubloon!” Leona barked with a glare at the aging seadog. “I want raiders to man the oars!”
They had to approach this carefully, she thought licking her salty lips, mouth numb and throat thirsty for a pint of grog.
At least.
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“Give us a bit more light here!” Leona yelled, the bell ringing warningly at the sight of more sharp rocks sprouting out of the hazy waters. “Keep it slow!”
She glanced over the side at the black basalt, gleaming like crystal doused in their lights, the Ocean’s Harpy lumping through the treacherous waters and the forest of boulders, some as tall as towers, others barely visible under the thankfully short waves. The breeze had lessened as well, but vapors hugged the reefs and the only thing Leona knew for certain was that they were heading westwards, but needed to turn to the North at some point.
“Keep it steady Mister Kidd!” Leona yelled and limped up the staircase to enter the spacious captain’s quarters. A divan inside, large as a bed. A cupboard with bottles of liquor, maps on a large round table and even a weapons stand. Nothing fancy about it. Sturdily built though.
“Anything on the maps Mits?” She asked a literate Issir pirate from Colle.
“Nothing about these waters captain,” he replied tensely.
“Let me see,” Leona murmured wiping her hands and face with a towel. “I remember some of my father’s papers.”
All lost now with the Marquette. She sighed and stared at the drawing, her eyes smarting, but she refused to let the tears flow. A captain is a rock rooted in ‘em deeps, her father had told her. Unmovable.
“Anything?” Mits Corn asked.
“There’s land at Oyster Anchorage, across it and across the Third Finger,” she croaked, paused to clear her throat and tried again. “But we are further in I think.”
Deeper in the Reefs was her meaning.
“It’ll be day soon captain,” Mits pointed out.
“Aye,” Leona agreed. “But we need to rest the men. We need sixty to row us forward and we barely have twenty.”
The raiders were exhausted and the crew was without sleep for a second night in a row, after heavy fighting and sailing in a storm for the duration. Leona knew she could lose control soon, the only thing helping being the abundance of supplies the large warship was carrying.
Along a treasure in gold coins.
“LAND!” someone yelled from outside. “Directly ahead!”
“Guard the door,” Leona ordered Mits and grabbed another shortsword from the weapons stand, she slotted on her waistband.
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The coming misty shores appeared dreamy in the morning fog, a touch of white sandstone and grey gravel, a flat elongated piece of land amidst the sprouting black basalt rocks. The approaching route curving and at one point narrow enough a gnarly rock came as close as one meter from Ocean’s sides.
A nimbler ship could clear this though, she thought.
Leona a permanent snarly grimace on her satin-cream colored face, touches of white on her cheeks and mouth corners from dried up seawater, watched tensely their ship’s slow progress. The rising sun sneaking its rays from the clouds, illuminating the fog even more and giving it a a strange glow.
The bell ringing and the oars coming out again once they cleared the last of the reefs fifty meters from the island, six per side barely giving enough thrust for the cumbersome warship to slog its way to the slanted shore. Rougher looking the more they approached it.
“That the island?” Hook queried out of the side of his mouth standing next to her near the bow.
“TWELVE METERS!” The leadsman hanging from the main mast shrouds outside the rails yelled and started gathering the sounding line again lifting the plummet up, or lead.
“I’ve no idea,” Leona whispered tiredly.
“Good call keeping it to yerself,” Hook agreed.
“NINE METERS AN’ RISING SHARP!” the leadsman cried out warningly.
“Anchor it here. We’ll use the boat to land,” she told the wary pirate.
“DROP ANCHOR! REVERSE!” Hook boomed and grimaced. “Prep the boat Weiss!”
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“Alright gents,” Leona addressed the weary, dark-faced crew and raiders gathered on the deck of the Ocean’s Harpy. The familiar ship’s creaking and clinging sounds, along the sound of soft waves splashing, now joined by new sounds coming from the interior of the island they had anchored near. Mainly birds chirping and sea lions dissonant barking creating most of the ruckus. “A small group shall accompany me to ascertain our whereabouts. It may take us as far inland as we can venture. Our main priority remains to repair the ship and make sure our wounded recover enough to help us get off this place.”
“Pretty eloquent captain,” Weiss commented.
“I strive to be Mister Weiss,” Leona retorted.
“Twas one of yer better efforts,” the ship’s carpenter agreed.
“Anyone wants to join me ashore?” Leona grunted. “I need six to man the oars and a helmsman. Mits Corn will come wit me as well.”
Hook went to volunteer, but she stopped him. “Mister Hook shall stay to oversee the repairs. Also make a list of things we will need, mainly timber. Abrakas be willing, there is some good wood beyond the gravel.”
“I can bring six raiders along,” Doubloon offered.
“Ye better stay as well Harrold,” Leona said. “But I’ll take two of your raiders, along with…” she stared at her remaining crew. Lord’s Burrow natives and Eikenport’s recruits. “Dasten, ‘Riot’ Merton, ‘Beard’ Savant, Kendal and ‘Three Teeth’ Gloom.”
“Son of a biscuit eater!” Gloom cursed looking unhappy.
“You’ll steer Mister Gloom,” Leona assured him and the short wiry man offered her one of his infamous smiles.
“Me hearties,” he said leering to the others eyeing him. “Ye heard the captain. Put those muscles to good use now, eh?”
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Leona jumped from the boat, boots splashing in the brackish water and the terrain hard when she stepped ashore. The gentle slope of the beach leading to thick green forest up ahead, sharper cliffs to their south and a misty swampy area of sorts to their north.
“There’s a whiff of tar in the air mister Corn?” Leona asked trying to orientate herself with the sun.
“Seems like it captain,” Mits replied and fixed the washed-out top hat on his head. Leona had lost hers and the bandana needed cleaning as she had used it to dress her wound initially, the red cloth now around her neck. “I can check on its source.”
“Start wit the swamp, it reeks from there is me guess,” Leona said and stared at the men pulling the boat out. “Dasten, Kendal hop in it again and return to the ship. Tell them to bring the other boat here as well and all able-bodied crew.”
The reason for changing her strategy so soon obvious to them, but she pointed it out just the same.
“That’s a lot of timber up there needin’ cutting,” Leona said with a smirk.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
“What do we do?” Merton asked. A Northman living in Burrow since he was a teen. How he’d gotten there a story that varied depending on the season and the company.
“You stay with Corn. See to keep him breathing me lovelies,” Leona cautioned them and watched both groups move away, Corn slow walking towards the reed infested swamp and the boat returning to the massive ship moored twenty meters away from the beach.
“You don’t trust the lads from Eikenport captain?” Gloom asked, carved ebony teeth in his mouth, but for three made out of alabaster that had a creamy natural color, the denture work costly as much as weirdly colored. The alabaster was too much for his purse, Gloom always said. Only had enough coin to make three teeth out of it, but the Dottore did have a piece of solid ebony wood that the toothless pirate swore was almost as costly as the alabaster.
“Did you know my father Mister Gloom?” Leona asked and started walking following the edge of the noisy hardwood forest, the black trunk almost a meter thick and close to thirty meters tall. Weird yellow fruit dropped on the ground, astringent in taste and uneatable.
“As a teen aye, I’ve seen him a bit,” Gloom replied and sniffed at the fruit she had cut in half to check. “Dis looks like Pale Moon Ebony,” he told her and to be certain he cracked a low branch, then cut it again with a small axe. “Sink me! Look Captain!” he cried excited and showed her the black enlarged black heart of the hardwood.
There was a lot of teeth to be made out of this forest, she mused.
“Can we use it Mister Gloom?” Leona grunted standing up.
“No, but it worth a fortune,” the pirate said.
“Eh, I see some redwood over there that’s more valuable to me,” Leona retorted. “Pray there’s enough of it around.”
“Uhm,” Gloom murmured and followed after her towards the gentle crag of limestone. “So why then?” he asked going back to his previous query.
“Easier to find acceptance among people that knew him,” Leona admitted and paused to listen for water coming down. Some of the sea lions moving from them and towards the beach with irritated barks.
“Yer a good captain,” Gloom assured her. “That yer a lass don’t matter so much in the Brotherhood.”
Eh, not exactly accurate.
“Is that the general opinion?”
“For now yes,” the wiry man replied, dark face difficult to read.
“What about the raiders?” Leona asked and checked a crack on the rock, the chasm a meter wide and three tall, the ground polished from the trickling fresh water coming out and spilling down towards the shores, now more than three hundred meters away and unseen. The forest was spread around the rocky rise, the spring almost hidden.
“Landlubbers pretending to be pirates,” Gloom replied. “Dreaming of courts and fortune near Anne.”
“You don’t think she’ll deliver?” Leona asked but didn’t hear his reply, as she had entered the narrow corridor to check how far inside the mountain it went. Her voice echoing in the dark interior, the cave much larger than what it appeared initially. “Damn.”
“Ye need a torch captain?” Gloom asked.
“I’m fine,” Leona replied and reached for a lightstone she’d bought in Goras. “Alert the others that I found us clean water.”
“Aye Captain,” Gloom replied, his voice multiplying inside the empty cavern and Leona hanged the lightstone on her neck, her eyes on the gleam of the small stream running all the way to the exit and pouring out.
The lightstone came alive suddenly, pure white light spreading out hurting her eyes, the cavern turning into a gigantic hollow structure cut inside the limestone mountain, its walls polished and covered in thick black moss, stalagmites coming down from the ceiling like ancient roots and half the at least a kilometer long cave a silent underground lake. The rest flattened ground for the most part.
“Damn,” Leona said again and turned to examine the serene lake, a strange naked woman standing not a foot from her. Breathtakingly alluring, but it was an exotic, if not spine-chilling attractiveness this. Eyes black as the waters and unnaturally large. Her hair long, the round mounds of her chest prominent, a flat stomach and a hairless crotch. She’d a big rock in her hand seemingly out of place. “Hey,” a stunned Leona said, the woman smiled a gnarly smile, swung the rock and smacked the head of the slow to react pirate captain once.
Everything fading to black.
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Leona came around with a groan, her injured and bleeding head hurting her less than the hand she’d bandaged the previous day. She opened her blurry eyes, saw the creature gnawing at her fingers, the sound of bone crunching and flesh getting mauled too traumatizing to comprehend. The pain enough to snap her out of her dazed state.
“ARRRGH!” She cried out and tried to get her hand out of the cavernous mouth, blood covering the female’s chin and neck. The grip on it steely. Leona reached for her shortsword with her right hand and the mermaid raised that bloody rock again to whack her across the face. Good grief!
“Stop!” she croaked, teeth rattling, the feeling of flesh getting torn off her fingers and splintering small bones uprooted turning her stomach, her pulse thundering at her temples like a sledgehammer. “Please… don’t!”
The beautiful cannibal paused mid chomp, but kept the large rock near her head.
“Why?” The mermaid queried with a singing metallic voice, after swallowing. Leona was on the brink of fainting again.
“I’m… friendly,” she pleaded, tears running down her soot-covered face. “Please stop.”
“Blade is unfriendly,” the Ticu noticed.
Leona raised her good hand, shivering all over and the pain blinding. “There…” she grunted, her teeth rattling.
“Only a couple of fingers left,” the creature told her. “Make even?”
“No,” Leona groaned and tried to get up, a bout of dizziness almost sending her flat on her back again, the ground hard and unforgiving. “I need them.”
“I don’t need you,” the Ticu said and dropped her mangled bleeding hand. “But I’ll take a male and bring him here,” she chuckled, the smile a bloody horror splitting her comely face in two.
Abrakas severed cock rots in a jar, Leona thought looking at her gnawed missing fingers. The image so shocking it seemed unreal. The shaken captain had no idea what she was talking about, but tried to keep her talking while attempting to stop the bleeding.
“I can… help,” she croaked panicking. “I’m the captain.”
“Hmm.”
“The leader—”
“I know what it is,” the Ticu cut her off. “Why come here? You break the deal once, you’ll do it again. Sneaky creature.”
“I be… fainting,” Leona gasped, breathing hard. “Need… to stop…”
“Sshh,” the Ticu hissed and used a bony protrusion that came out of her right hand knuckles to open the palm of her left hand. Thick black blood pooled there. She hunched over her abruptly next and snatched Leona’s injured arm.
“Why?” An almost passed out pirate captain groaned.
The creature smeared her blood over the open wound, the substance burning like acid, Leona shuddered violently, almost biting her own tongue off and lost consciousness again.
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Tick.
Tack.
Water dripping.
Leona cracked her eyes open, the lightstone's luminance hurting her, but she almost wished the soft pain back, when feeling returned to her battered body. Grinding her teeth not wanting to pass out again, she rolled to her right side, keeping her injured hand away from the ground. No bleeding on it, but the flesh still mangled and only index and thumb remaining there. The bandage from her previous wound, a deep crusty red and soaked in her blood.
She groaned -an animalistic guttural sound and the female half inside the still lake’s water turned around to look at her. The light from Leona’s pendant touching the lithe drenched body as it walked outside making little noise, but a soft tap-tap from the thin blue membranes that were connecting her naked toes. The skin turning from white to an alien dark green and back to white in a brief second.
“What… are you?” Leona croaked hoarsely. The blatant nakedness of the creature disturbing, but it was difficult to take her eyes away.
The creature clicked her tongue.
“Ticu,” she said in that strange voice and it came out a hum that reverberated inside the emptiness of the cave, afore silence returned again. “Vivirah.”
“I’m not… yer enemy,” Leona assured her, voice coming through clenched teeth and eyes looking about to orientate herself. Vivirah had dragged her further inside the cave.
“You came to the ruins and killed many,” Vivirah argued serenely and kneeled next to her. Her crotch at full display. Leona looked away frustrated with herself. “Now you return. Perhaps you wish to kill again?”
“I fear ye have us mistaken… for someone else,” she moaned and stood on a knee, a bout of dizziness turning her stomach.
“Hmm.”
“We’re here for repairs,” Leona explained quickly. “Soon as we finish we’ll leave.”
“Maybe you will,” Vivirah replied. “I had a lover once. He left to bring me treats, but never returned. A killer got to him.”
“I’m sorry…” Leona croaked and wondered if she could slash at her with the blade. But she couldn’t trust her shaky hand for the task.
“We don’t need females,” Vivirah explained. “But we can’t have male Ticu as well.”
“Who says that?” Leona groaned and wondered what was in the creature’s blood to stop the hemorrhage so fast.
“Depth’s Ruler,” Vivirah replied.
“Abrakas is a cunt,” Leona spat and the Ticu opened those huge eyes and chuckled throaty.
Oh, for fuck’s sake girl, Leona admonished herself for feeling aroused by the creepy flesh-eating monster. Is it the lack of alcohol? Yer brains?
“Not all listen, so we hide our secrets,” Vivirah explained and looked about, her eyes blinking rapidly like an insect.
“Will ye let me go?”
“Why? You’ll return again,” Vivirah noted.
“I won’t,” Leona assured her pleadingly.
“You’re interested,” the Ticu noticed and reached to touch her feverish face. The skin slimy and cool, fish like. “Foul, greed-soaked, depravity. Abrakas will love you.”
Leona put her hand over it, felt the scaly protrusions and its slow serene pulse.
“I be willing to indulge in a round of depravity,” she murmured and Vivirah blinked, symmetrical face showing her surprise.
“A Ticu can mate to procreate,” she explained to the injured, but also mesmerized captain. “But only loves Abrakas, or has its face eaten by her sisters.”
“It’s a bullshit rule,” Leona croaked half disappointed, half relieved and Vivirah pulled away with a frown.
“Your life for a new mate,” she haggled.
Leona licked her lips. “What if he doesn’t want to come?”
The Ticu chuckled and hummed from her long throat, the vibration tingling all Leona’s soft bits not hurting too much.
And even some of those badly injured.
It reached her core and for a brief moment, the pain was gone.
The scars though remained.
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“Captain!” Gloom gasped seeing her coming down the slope limping and holding her left hand. “We were about to come up there again!”
“How long have I been missing?” Leona grunted and plopped down on a stool Weiss had brought ashore. A part of the gravel beach cleared, several trees cut down and dragged there to be turned into planks and beams.
“Nine hours,” Hook replied eyeing her. “What is it Leo?”
“Can I talk with you?”
“The men were thinking perhaps you were gone,” Hook replied. “We sent a party to the cave, but there was no one there.”
“It’s a big cave, I wandered about,” Leona retorted.
Hook came near her and put a hand on her right shoulder. “What happened to the hand Leo?”
Leona pushed his hand away. “They wanted to put someone else in charge?” she whispered looking at the crew and raiders working in shifts to gather materials. Corn having barrels filled with tar and brought near the beach.
“Bard ‘Brass’ Godfrey,” Hook whispered.
“The Eikenport crew?” Leona whispered. Nine of them had gathered around the man himself, the burly Lorian with the shorn hair eyeing her with a leer.
“Aye.”
“What of the raiders?”
“They fight for Anne Leo,” Hook said keeping his voice low. Gloom coming to stand near them with a yawn.
“Wish we had a bottle of rum,” he said aloud with a wink at them. “Right captain?”
“There is liquor gents,” Leona replied loud enough to be heard. “Not a lot, but enough to make the night pleasant after all we’ve been through.”
“Ay! For captain Vale!” One of them hollered.
“Arr!” Came most of the others response.
“HO!” Merton cried out and even Godfrey’s group nodded.
“So what’s the plan?” Gloom asked them.
“We’ve even numbers, but Corn is no fighter,” Leona whispered waving at the cheering crew and the smiling raiders. “Neither is Kidd and he is on the aftcastle all the time,” she added.
“We might lose the ship,” Hook agreed. “Can you fight with that hand?”
“I’ll fight with the other,” Leona hissed. “But the thing is I found a Ticu in the cave,” she showed them her mauled hand. Gloom ogled his eyes freaked out and even Hook shivered all over.
“How does that help us?” Hook said carefully.
“If we are to turn towards the Third Finger and follow Archibald’s path to Hardir’s Port, we need to lighten the ship. The depth is uneven and treacherous near the Reefs and we might not make it. A scraping an empty ship can handle, but them rocks could crack her keel if she is so loaded.”
“Unload the gold,” Hook murmured and glanced about them.
“Aye. Make the journey without it, on a faster ship,” Leona replied. “Even a different one of sorts.”
An idea forming in her head.
“What are you saying captain?” Gloom asked keeping his voice low. “What about the Ticu?”
“Listen to me. Forget about that for a moment. It’s difficult to give us the drop on land. Much easier on the ship. We have more weapons here and they have mostly tools at the near,” Leona explained. “If raiders keep out of it, then it isn’t as daunting an advantage and we can make it better.”
“How?” Hook queried.
“Who knows about the cave?” Leona asked.
“Gloom, Merton, Savant and meself,” Hook replied.
Burrows crew. ‘Three Teeth’ had remembered her words, she thought a little relieved.
“Can we carry the gold there?”
“You’ll need more people for that,” Gloom protested.
“Troy, Weiss, You,” Leona told Hook. “Corn, Merton, Savant, Dasten, Kendal, Gloom and Kidd,” she counted, recognizing her fingers only went up to seven. The realization a punch to the gut.
“You’ll need more men,” Hook grunted nervously seeing her stalling.
“Godfrey and his two buddies. Voss and that creepy Wemu guy.”
The most dangerous ones.
“The Cofol?” Gloom asked unsure. “That nutcase is always armed captain.”
“I don’t care,” Leona retorted. “Will that number be sufficient mister Hook?”
“It shall,” Hook replied. “What will you tell the others? People be wanting to know wher’ the gold be going Leo.”
“What would me father have done?”
Hook scrunched his face in a grimace of despair. “Ye don’t want to go down that road me good lass.”
“I’ll make a map for it,” Leona decided with a pained grin, the jolt coming from her hurt rib this time. Half the pain though was for the girl Bristol remembered that had died in the cave. “Split it evenly among the crew. Twenty pieces,” she muttered, the grimace on her face turning right vicious, fueled by her mutilations and desperation. “Right it down Mister Gloom, so I don’t forget it.”
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Weiss built two large narrow carts that could handle a strongbox, or two of the medium ones. It needed six to eight men to slowly push the carts up the gentle slope and near the cave. Ropes to drag them through the opening on iron sleds and another round of pushing the four-wheeled carts inside the cave itself near the west wall, behind one the great stalagmites. Leona counted two hundred steps from the opening walking parallel to the small lake. A turn there to your left shoulder and another one hundred and eighty long strides to the wall of stalagmites. She shoved a long iron deck nail to the correct one, tied a rope to it, but kept it low on the ground, without a light impossible to spot from ten feet away.
The cave silent after nine days and nights of hard work and the men finally bringing the last couple of chests inside the haphazardly packed with strongboxes hiding place.
But for two.
She’d emptied half of the smaller one at the beach and paid the crew with it, even the raiders. Forty gold pieces per raider, fifty for the crew. Barely scrapped the surface of the box, so they brought it to the cave as well and she split it evenly amongst those that knew of the spot. Fourteen pirates gathered around the piled fortune and gotten a share of over a thousand gold coins for each. One thousand, four hundred, ninety nine to be exact. They used crude, but strongly built small wooden boxes to put them in, each pirate having his own padlock and key. Some wanted to take the fortune back to the ship, but a few opted to hide it inside the cave, near the entrance. Everyone had kept away from the lake and its eerie waters, though they used it to refill their water flasks and on the final day Leona gathered everyone near the entrance for a last time.
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“We keep our mouths shut me mates,” she told them, face gaunt and heavy dark circles under her emerald eyes making the young captain looking much older than her age. “We finish painting the ship and sails, its repairs and then we attempt to head north towards the Fingers and Goras. Archibald did it and we shall do it as well.”
“What happens when we sail in Hardir’s Port?” Godfrey asked her, shirt open on his muscular chest, thick white hair prominent there. “People might talk.”
“They got paid, why risk Garth’s wrath?” Leona asked. “We tossed the gold overboard to save the ship. Garth shall receive… how much is it?” she asked Corn, who had the patience to count the coins in one of the larger boxes.
“Around forty thousand,” Corn replied without batting an eyelash.
“Anne got more, I think,” Wemu hissed, silver loop on his right ear gleaming. “You might want to throw a couple of more boxes at him.”
“We bring more gold back, people might get nervous,” Leona warned them.
“How much was the cargo?” Godfrey asked with a leer.
“Over a million gold Eagles,” Corn replied vaguely. It was way more than that actually.
“Another box might placate Garth’s greed,” Hook suggested looking at her.
“Fine. It’s important we keep our lips sealed gents,” Leona warned them.
“Why go back?” Voss the other Issir asked her, pursing his mouth.
“I need to touch known land, afore I do anything else,” Leona argued. “Where do you want me to go Voss? How about we head for the Turtle Isles afterwards. Crew properly there and then come back… what to get the rest? Is that a better plan? Can you survive, a year, a bit more on yer cut?” She taunted and the pirate chuckled.
“I could Miss Vale,” he replied.
Fuck your shithole.
“Want to help me with the box?” Leona asked him instead and he nodded. “Hook, wait outside with the others.”
“Sure Leo,” the aging seadog replied looking at her worried.
“Ye be needing more hands for it,” Godfrey said with a smirk. “How about I stay as well captain? Wemu as well. The more the merrier, the quicker to finish.”
“I’ll stay as well,” Troy offered, but Leona glanced at him.
“Yer insulting me boy,” she told him. “I can carry me share of loot,” Leona added tensely and the men chuckled. Godfrey stopping next to her and whispering in her ear after the large group had left them alone.
“Lead the way Vale. I would but ye kept us at the entrance, so I may take a while to find the boxes on me own.”
“I was always going to show ye wher’ it is ‘Brass’,” Leona teased with an inviting smile and Godfrey raised a thick white brow surprised.
“What in allhells is that thing Voss?” Wemu asked in his exotic accent pointing with a dagger he’d gotten out to the dark.
Godfrey turned his head around and glanced at the approaching Vivirah. The naked ashen-skinned Ticu’s figure illuminated by their torches looking almost ethereal.
“Shiver me timbers,” Voss cursed with a grunt dumbfounded. “Them dairies on her!”
Vivirah hummed, the sweet inviting notes tingling Leona’s skin. Her eyes turning hazy.
“Shite,” Voss gasped a moment later, seeing the alluring creature inches from his face and then felt sharp bony fins penetrating his sternum and ripping his heart out. The blood spraying everyone close in a gory gush and the Ticu hurling the still beating heart back towards the black lake. Voss collapsed on his knees, crooked mouth gaping and something like a hissing groan coming out.
Wemu moved to attack Vivirah somehow unaffected, but she stepped away from his blade, twirled on her feet lithely and ended up on the cursing Cofol’s back somehow. Wemu slashed violently with his dagger trying to get her off, but she kept dodging until she sunk her needle-like teeth on his neck, bit down hard to pierce skin and then ripped it all out, the torn veins squirting blood two meters high.
The Cofol pirate growled irate and dived backwards to pin her down, but Vivirah rolled away faster than him and kicked the dagger out of his hand. Wemu put a hand on his neck to stop the bleeding, but a breath later his eyes rolled to the white and collapsed on his back in utter silence.
Godfrey hadn’t moved, Leona noticed and took a step back, just as Vivirah turned around with a bloody pleased smile. “No sex glans,” she explained pointing at the corpse of Wemu and then turned her alien black eyes on the unmoving Godfrey. There was enough lust in Vivirah’s eyes to make Leona a little jealous, considering what she’d given up to her.
But it was just a drop, drown in a bottomless sea of bile.
“He’s mine,” the Ticu elucidated further and approached the sweaty Issir. She reached with a gore-covered hand, fins retracting with a sucking sound and run those very long fingers on his hairy chest, clacking her teeth excited. “Make me another yes?” She asked the braindead Godfrey, the pirate completely consumed by the Ticu’s song.
Leona licked her dry lips, made a forward step on shaky legs, right hand clenching tight at her shortsword’s handle and stopped right behind the preoccupied Ticu.
“Mmm,” Vivirah purred, scaly tongue lapping Godfrey’s muscular neck, the pirate’s face relaxed, but his eyes haunted. The Ticu paused its ministrations sensing something was amiss. “Sneaky—”
Leona’s blade had gone through the base of its neck and had come out of its mouth severing that scaly tongue. She’d used so much force in the plunge, a gurgling in her own blood Vivirah collided with the paralyzed Godfrey, their foreheads banging hard and the pirate was shoved backwards with a nasty cut and a groan.
A scowling Leona let go of her shortsword, reached for the blade she had taken from the captain’s cabin and used its sharp tip to open the Ticu’s throat diagonally. Vivirah dropped to her scaly knees, black blood covering her neck, chest and belly. Her hair more dark blue than black under her light and that gnarly frothy mouth opening and closing, but only a bubbling hissing sound coming out.
“Mess wit a Vale at yer own peril,” she spat angry, Godfrey’s struggled voice interrupting her tirade, just when it was to become interesting.
“Blimey! Whatever…? What in Abrakas tail happened here Vale?”
Leona turned around and stepped away from the faltering Ticu. Godfrey recoiled seeing it and made to reach for his cutlass, but stopped with a violent shudder realizing he’d half a foot of blade sticking out of his sides and his burst spleen leaking. “What… curse ye…” he croaked hoarsely and turned to glare at Leona furious.
“Eh,” Leona griped with a grimace, smacked his hand away from the grip of his sword, reached and unsheathed it for herself. “Yer fired Mister Godfrey,” she spat and cut him once more across the face, the heavy blade caving the gawking mutineer’s skull in afore cracking it alike an egg and a small piece of bone hurled away from the top, bloody scalp sounding like a pregnant butterfly flying away inside the silent cave.
Leona stumbled back, her strength drained from the effort to pull it through and dropped to her smarting knees near the dead Vivirah. The Ticu’s right arm stretched out as she had tried to cut Leona from behind earlier, but failed to reach her. Abrakas wants this, she thought. The bony fins extended out of the knuckles sharp as razors. The pirate captain reached, a determined look on her gaunt face and hacked at them trying to find the joint. When she did, Leona gathered the scalpel like claws and slotted them in her waistband. Then she chopped off Vivirah’s head with two savage blows.
Covered in gore, severed Ticu head in hand held by the long caked in blood hair, she turned around to exit the cave, but paused seeing a small-bodied figure, child’s face and mouth caked in blood, looking at her with black soulless eyes. There was grief in there aplenty though, she realized and a silent humming, much different in tone. Leona pursed her lips, mouth numb and gums hurting among all her other ailments and stared at the small Ticu in contemplating silence. Then her eyes lowered down its belly and spotted the small cock sprouting between his legs. She blinked not expecting it, but then nodded with her head remembering the freshly orphaned male Ticu mother’s words.
The fact she was carrying Vivirah’s severed head in her hand not escaping her.
“Ye look after me treasure now kid,” Leona told him gravely. “Whence I return, we’ll solve dis proper.”
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“Leona,” Hook gasped seeing her returning to the beach hours later. “Allgods me lass! What happened?”
She hurled Vivirah’s head on the gravel and it bounced once, then rolled under the men’s shocked murmurs until it came to a stop near the rest of Eikenport’s crew, those black eyes still open and staring at each one of them in unnerving silence.
“A vile Ticu fell on us out of the blue,” Leona rustled eyeing them one by one in her turn. “Brought a spring upon their cable and cut them down in a gory manner, but I stopped her dead. Avenged ‘em afore their bodies turned cold, but her accursed black eyes witnessed all who know and shall cut down those that speak of it in their sleep.”
The pirates and raiders staring at her ghostly, bloody visage unsure, not answering.
“All hail captain Leo Vale,” Gloom cried out, squeaky voice ringing down the desolate beach, his call answered by the sea lions watching from afar first and then one by one from the remaining crew.
“ARR!”
“HAIL VALE!”
“CHEERS TO THE CAPTAIN!”
“The Scourge of the Scalding Seas!” Bristol Hook boomed joining the cheers, a proud glint in his eye.
“THAT’S RIGHT!” Weiss thundered from amidst the small crowd. The men from Eikenport joining in the cheering as well and the black ominous figure of the repaired ship casting its long shade over them as the red sun started setting.
Black were its sails and its keel. Tarred its deckboards and a polished ebony its two towers. The black skull and bones flag flapping in the dusk’s soft breeze in a silent salute.
“What should we call the ship?” Corn asked her later that night, while Leona was fitting the sharp talons on her maimed hand with leather strips and a repurposed glove.
“The Mighty Saracen,” she had replied after a moment’s thought. The name meaning nomad in the old pirate jargon. “For we roam the open seas and our home exists not in any of the Realm’s ports, but within our bond and in this very ship.”
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read it at Royalroad : https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/46739/touch-o-luck-the-old-realms
& https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/47919/lure-o-war-the-old-realms
Scribblehub https://www.scribblehub.com/series/542002/touch-o-luck-the-old-realms/
& https://www.scribblehub.com/series/547709/the-old-realms/