Grime coated the troop of three, thick muddy sludge up to their waists, they’d positioned themselves underneath the nearby runoff of a alley of fishmongers, a glistening school of slightly opalescent fish heads passed under their noses, the sensation of scraped off scales brushed across their stomachs a moment later, combined with a stench only the most experienced were used too, it was hard to focus on the task at hand.
Taking a deep breath Balsam glanced at Hercule and Y'vette, positioned to his side they’d all three of them bought a handful of large climbing hooks. Nasty looking things, the deep serrations in the metal made a perfect ripping implement to climb onto the boat with.
And it was a near guarantee that they’d be able to get on to it too, the way the outwards peer curved formed a pincer, and along the other side a wayward tendril of hovels built on top of the water, it all funnelled everything very neatly towards them.
They bent into half crouches now, wading in deeper between the struts that supported the hovels above them, thick blooming barnacle curtains crawled up each thin piling fattening and obscuring the wood in sections, Y'vette let out a groan as a washing heap of fish guts was dumped nearby.
Further out, Balsam knew was positioned the rest of his crew, hidden between bales of hay, crab pots, and several wooden bridge segments, they had a hand cannon staff musket placed there. Solidly aimed between the gap where the pier met the hovels, and the bridge segments they were planning on laying out once the boat had been captured, now two men each held onto the massive wooden constructions, fencing the twenty or so men in.
“The ship hasn’t moved boss” a low voice, one belonging to a man of his, it barely reached him, the figure’s face appearing between the broken ink stained boarding as Balsam looked up.
“Has anyone left?” Hercule asked, his voice thick and tired. “No” the answer came slowly, after a few moments the face reappeared again.
“Are we going to have to wait here all day, maybe somewhere the drier would do?” Y'vette asked, hope in her voice.
“Hold on!, someone else has joined them” Balsam's man, his voice strained with suppressed excitement, shudders down through the woodwork.
“How many bloody witchfolk are we going to have to deal with” Balsam cursed, adjusting his fingers over the climbing hook in his hands, he stabbed one into a piling, spearing the barnacles there. The meal from earlier in the morning was threatening to present itself again, a vicious headache from the ambient cloud of fermentation.
“Boss, Boss! they’ve started moving too” his man finally saying what they’d been all waiting for.
They waited there a few moments more, tense minutes passing as the slow shadow of the encroaching ship ponderously slicked itself over the pier's painted aquamarine concrete, Yvette retched into the stinking water while they waited, Hercule patting her back sympathetically.
“Go.”
With the order uttered, Hercule waded forward first, eager to get it over with. Y’vette close behind him. He swung the heavy metal hook around his shoulder in a loop, aiming for the just under the metal roof, he struck, the climbing hook jumped forward angrily, biting into the bottle green flank of the vessel.
Balsams hook arced over the top, seeking purchase on the other side, clanging on the metal roof it couldn’t find any. Sliding limply back into the grimey dead water. Y’vette’s found a lip of metal grinding into it and holding fast.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Hercule handed off his rope to Y’vette, grabbing her’s and wrapping the thick winding of wax fed rope around the post Balsam had cut into, sliding the rope between the split barnacles. Y’vette had made it halfway up the Ship's side, turning to grab Balsams hand at the top and dragging him up onto the roof, as he climbed aboard a large flat disk of metal rose up from the centre of the Ships cap, rough metal hinges clanged, a face appearing from the hole.
Balsam kicked, booting the man's head into the metal hinge of the porthole. Blood coated the hinge as he dropped, traces of an ear between the close knit metal.
The head of the man Balsam knew, Jerico, popped up through the left of the porthole as the other man fell, his gaze locking on the pair, peering menacingly down from above him, blood drained from his ruddy face.
“You?” he said disbelievingly, ducking away from the responding kick and scrabbling downwards. He slipped though, as the whole vessel tipped to the side, the sound of crunching, ripping as wood bent, fell. The ship was being pulled in an arc barreling towards where a large section of the hovels now sagged, the beam that served to pin it up now being dragged through the dark water into a cluster of connecting woodwork.
Balsam grabbed the top of the porthole hatch, forcing it all the way open a gust of hot metallic air met him, then a burst of black ink-pot smoke smashed into him, Yvette watched as it formed an arc around his body, the waves of smoke outlining his body in an aerodynamic visualisation.
A fist appeared, slightly pallid, the thumbnail having a sunken grey hue to it, Balsam blinked as he processed the information, ‘thumbnail?’ his head rattling as the fist flew backwards. ‘Oh, no that’s me… I’m flying backwards’ he thought, his head hitting the metal roof of the boat with the uncomfortable sensation of a scalp cracking, he blacked out.
Yvette watched fearfully as Balsam hit the deck turning back the the spouting blackness, she watched as a tall grey nightmare emerged from the splashing bank of black fog that now engulfed the upper deck of the ship, the figure stood there for a moment and then arched, a theatrical ballet dancers arch that curved inwards, spilling smoke as the figure lurched and elongated. Yvette blanched and started shuffling backwards along the roof, she crouched running her fingers along where she remembered Balsam dropping, steadily keeping her eyes on the creature all the while.
Hercule couldn’t see anything; he'd ran forwards to avoid the falling rubble, and now the hovels were fully compacted in front of the ship. That and the mix of smoke running down the sides of the ship's roof in rivulets. He shaded his eyes in an attempt to see something, anything. A scream came from above, he paced along the side of the ship, trying to find the rope that Yvette had climbed up with, any sort of hand hold.
He found the rope, it was wet. The wax red with what might have been blood, he pulled in it anyway, clambering upwards hand over hand until he was face first with the red lip of the ships roof, ‘Definitely blood’ he thought as he pushed himself up the last few inches.
It was impossible to see up there, he kept his head close to the ground, tracing a path across the metal expanse with his fingers, never straying from the warm wetness of the blood trail. It led him inch by inch over the swaying mass, the nose of the ship being lifted up onto the gathered detritus blocking the piers exit, he heard the cracking of wood from the front of the ship, a strange distorted figure whipping towards the bow.
The whistling spark of an iron shod fireworks slug separating from it’s barrel assaulted his fear heightened senses and he followed the arc in his mind, but the explosion he expected from the posting of men Balsam had issued didn’t come, his fingers felt cold now, the faint heat of the blood gone it all congealing and pushing under his fingernails.
A gusting break in the black mist showed the figure again, fist clenched around a sparking bubbling mass, ‘the fireworks slug’ Hercule realised belatedly, shocked he tried to get to his feet, slipping on the blood and resorting to crawling away from the figure he whimpered as the blood caked into his shirt, lining his arms.
The explosion finally came, and with it bits of singed charcoal and hot spikes of wood sprayed out in a shower of pain, littering Hercules broad back as the smoke was blown away by the shockwave, he covered his head, his cheek now damp and sticky too. When he looked up a man crouched before him, a jittery hand clutching the side of his head, where blood dripped freely from a wounded ear.