Moving gently to the left and then to the right on the gentle breezes as it fell toward the great, black, salty abyss below, the single crimson droplet of blood glinted and shined, and occasionally morphed its shape through a variety of oblong spheroid forms as wind resistance and terminal velocity played with the liquid life in the smoke tinged sunlight of the early afternoon. This elegant study in scarlet was joined in its dance with gravity and wind pressure by several other gory droplets, several blood tinged droplets of saliva, a confused clump of curly, dark hair also wet with blood, and the tip of a tooth.

Meanwhile, ten short paces distance above these plummeting treasures, Captain Erminea Galatea Kleinhoff, sometimes called the Swan of Swords, howled in rage as she lunged at the raider who had the bald-faced audacity to not surrender his ship to her when they had come upon the vessel in the early hours of the morning.

Three weeks past, the crew of the Gryphon’s Wings had sailed into the giant harbor that made up the southern wall of the city of Ghlow, after spending nearly a month and a half fighting ill winds, and rough currents to make their way around the western mass of the Kingdom of Rhiada. She had missed her planned meeting with the prince, Myrl. And so they had sailed for the capitol.

En route, Erm had contacted her father, the Admiral of their independent fleet, via a scrying basin. Using a basin onboard a rolling ship under sail was challenging, and as a result, only sporadically would the magic work. The Gryphon’s Wings had two officers, not including Erm herself, with the Talent. She suspected there might be another one or two Talents amongst the crew, but had yet to be able to prove it. Merrows like herself and her father made up a minority of the fleet's crew. Her people tended to not enjoy having a huge wooden construct between themselves and the sea.

Erm had worked at recruiting more Talents, but Talents were rare. And, just like all of the other, average, land-rats, not many of them wanted to go to sea for some reason.

Her father had told her, in a very garbled message, that he was pulling into the harbor at Ghlow to attend the coronation, and that she should make haste.

And so, all due haste she and her crew had made. Tides and storms, and one ill advised pirate encounter later, and they had belled their way into the harbor. Much too late for the royal event. Much too late to advise her father in his dealings with the newly Kinged Myrl.

Her big, beautiful Gryphon’s Wings had just snugged up to a pier, and was being tied off, when one of her father’s other captains, a huge humanish man named Corda, came to her with new orders to sail. He had the blue skin of the Ghorma people, though he had never spoken a lick of that tongue that Erm had ever heard.

She had been calmly, courteously, furious. Her crew needed rest, and time in a port. Time to lose their pay to gambling, drinks, and varied entertainments. Time to realize they wanted back onboard, and back to the sea.

Having sailed hard for Jibiril’s Teeth, then turning around and sailing for Ghlow, her crew needed leave. She had been able to catch her father aboard his own ship, the Kraken’s Tail, to make her case. More importantly, she had been able to, if only barely, conceal her anger with her father’s irrational orders.

He had considered her words carefully, and then he had acquiesced to her request for moving the Gryphon’s Wings to a later deployment. They would then sail three weeks later, escorting a selection of five wallowing merchant tubs to the Island Kingdom of Lornholdt.

Stolen story; please report.

She wasn’t completely certain as to the why’s and wherefores of her current mission. When asked for clarification, her father, Admiral Galler Earstov Ekino Kleinhoff, had just smiled at her and told her to be the prettiest bait she could be, hiding amongst the trading ships of Rhiada, and if they were set upon, to do her best to bring her father, and King Myrl, a new ship or two.

And damn my hide if that hadn’t worked, she thought, driving the feather tipped motif of her falchion’s handguard into the face of the pirate she now faced, sending the man screaming down to the deck of the sloop below.

With a dancing, double-step to the left along the spar on which she had been dueling, Erm then thrust down with the marlinspike in her left hand, nailing the hand of another pirate to the main mast of his ugly little ship.

Three racing sloops and a clipper, all rigged for war, had slid out of the light of the rising sun on the eastern horizon hours earlier, making a coordinated attack run at her “bait” and hoping to take the six slowly sailing “merchant” ships as they made for Lornholdt’s major port, Graike’s End, still a day over the horizon.

The crew of the Gryphon’s Wings had sunk the first ship to reach them via the simple expedient of ramming the clipper as it had tried to attach itself to one of the actual merchant ships. Her crew would mourn those poor souls who drowned and now lie at the bottom of the sea later.

The three sloops had immediately tried to turn, began to tack hard to port, and then they made a run for open waters. Erm had run the first two down, using her Talented officers to destroy their rigging, dropping their sails to their decks, and stilling them. This third vessel, she assumed, contained what Talents these pirates had.

Their archers had raked her decks from farther away than any archers she knew of could ever draw a bow with any accuracy. And they had used her crew’s fears of dying by arrows to pull away from the Gryph.

And then Erm had called for full sail. Every fiber of sail they had.

All of the cloth the crew could hoist up was brought out, aired, rigged and tied. Being a Great Barque, the Gryphon’s Wings even had two extra masts that were set loose, and cranked mechanically into place from starboard and port. She loved seeing her Gryphon spread her lovely Wings. It made Erminea’s heart sing to see it. With the two extra masts, it added hundreds of square paces of canvas to the sails.

She had hoped her Talented officers could ruin their rigging, as they had done to the other two,

They had overtaken the war-rigged sloop, and then it came down to fighting, as they refused to drop their colors.

Erminea, captain or not, took great pleasure in being able to run the spars with the best of her topsail crew, and in boarding engagements, she let herself indulge in letting all of her frustrations out on the unsuspecting crews of enemy vessels.

Below her, on the deck of this final sloop, she could see the raiders that still stood dropping their weapons, and calling for quarter. Beside her, the young man she had just nailed to the mast by the hand with her marlinspike dropped his own sword, and whimpered at her. She noticed now that his mouth was bleeding freely, and several teeth were missing.

She wanted to yell at him that he should have made better choices. She wanted to hit him with her hilt again.

But he had surrendered.

…Damnitall…

Erm pulled the spike from his hand, and the solid wood beneath it, and winced as the man almost passed out.

Turning to her crew below, she yelled “GRYPHON” to them.

They chanted ”WINGS!”

Some of them chanted “THE SWAN! THE SWAN! THE SWAN!”

Erminea smiled broadly at her crew. Her family.

She had needed this.