We were finally headed to the island to try to rescue more of my kind, but I didn’t have any real idea about what we would do when we reached it. We would need to improvise, adapt, play it by ear. There were so many competing factions. Two governments and at least one army were making a play to control the place. Numerous adventuring companies were throwing everything they had at the island, trying to make one last big score before the government that prevailed took control. Then there were the three of us, Aleyda, Bowen and yours truly. How were we going to compete against all that might deployed against as? Could I even trust Caider, my company’s commander, to honor the deal he made with me? Would greed overcome his sense of honor? Would an unfortunate “accident” be arranged before we left the island. After all, everyone else in the company had known each other for a long time and we were the newcomers, the outsiders. Would a desire to maximize profit mean more to him than his word?
Yes, my friends, I had a lot on my mind as we sailed away from Shroud Hallow port. So many times before I had thought I was quite clever only to find out that instead I was in way over my head. Would this be another of those times, or would the experience I gained and the support of my stalwart companions allow me to rise to the occasion? As some people are wont to say, time would tell.
Since I had never been out on a boat in the open ocean before, I had wondered whether I would become seasick. My stomach didn’t have any problem coping with the gentle seas of the bay as we made our way into deeper water to rendezvous with the convoy we would be traveling with. There were many ships in the convoy and a number of them belonged to Clan Galwick’s navy. I studied them, their predatory lines and decks full of soldiers and anti-ship weaponry filling me with a sense of misgiving. Additionally, we joined ships that had been chartered by various companies as transport. All together, there were perhaps thirty ships in the convoy and we were dwarfed by all of them. Yes, we were in the smallest craft in the fleet. Unconsciously, I started humming the theme song to Gilligan’s Island, getting stuck for a bit on the three hour tour part.
Sailors bustled on the deck around us. I made certain to keep us out of their way. I wasn’t a strong swimmer and I wasn’t confident in my ability to reach land safely, even at this point. And as Captain Clemenzio pointed out, he was judge, jury and executioner on this ship. I didn’t want to piss him off on the first day. The rest of our company appeared to be doing likewise. They were split up topside in pairs or small groups and stepped lively to avoid angering the sailors. I noticed that Tikter, our expedition’s second in command, heading in our direction. When he reached us, he immediately started speaking.
“Hello. We didn’t get much of a chance to talk before we set sail. Caider must have seen something in you to invite you along. I thought I’d head over and introduce myself and see what skills you bring to the expedition.”
“I’m glad you did,” I said. “We’re after the same thing as everyone else. We want to get rich and this seems like the quickest way to get that done. My companions and I are decent fighters. We work well as a team and have a little experience fighting for our lives. We can follow orders and aren’t looking for trouble. We just want to make it to the island and back in one piece. The deal I have with Caider allows me to take my payment in slaves, with you all receiving a third of those that we capture. We’re not afraid to pitch in if you need us to but probably will do a lot of our hunting on our own unless that causes a problem.”
“Yeah, Caider told me about your deal,” he replied. “It seems fair to me. I hope you are successful. We’ll all profit from it. I also wanted to let you know that we will be having a company meeting later this afternoon, mandatory attendance.”
“We’ll be there,” I said.
Nodding to me, he walked off to talk to another group of our people who were standing a couple of dozen feet away.
“A company meeting,” I muttered. “I hate meetings. What do we have to talk about when we’re still weeks away from the island.”
It looked like the ships were communicating with each other with flags of some sort. Eventually, the captain of the lead ship, which was the military’s flagship, must have gotten tired of waiting for stragglers and a set of flags were raised. First Mate Serxio immediately started bellowing orders and just like the ships around us we turned and started sailing towards the open sea. It took as at least an hour to clear the bay, but as we did the placid nature of the water started to change. Instead of bobbing around in light chop, a series of rolling waves began sending the prow of our ship up and down, bouncing between the peaks and the troughs. Also, because we were tacking, there was some side to side movement as well. Surprisingly, I felt fine, almost exhilarated. Glancing to my left at Bowen, I could see a smile on his face.
“I’ve sailed before, but it was always on a lake,” he said with a grin. “This is a completely different experience, but I think I really like it. Maybe in my past life, I was a sailor. Hell, maybe I was a pirate captain.”
Turning around to look at Aleyda, I could see that she was not enjoying the experience half as much. Her knuckles were white as they firmly gripped the ship’s railing.
“Are you not enjoying this?” I asked her.
“Not really,” she replied.
“You’ll get used to it,” I said. I hoped she would get used to it, or it was going to be a long and painful trip for her. “Can you swim?”
“Yes, I can swim but I have never been out of sight of land before.”
“Me neither,” I replied. She didn’t seem to register my response, her eyes staring out to sea as she tried to anticipate which way the ship would move next.
Around sundown, Caider wandered by and let us know the company meeting was about to start. We had to meet on deck as there was no place in the hold large enough to contain our entire group. We wandered over and had a seat on the deck, but I could see Aleyda furtively glancing around looking for a handhold of some sort. I guess we all have our fears. Previous to this, she had always seemed so undaunted, like nothing could faze her. But there is nothing like an uncaring expanse of the open ocean to let us know our place in the world. How small we are, how weak, how insignificant.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Once everyone was gathered, Caider started to speak.
“We will be on the island for about two months,” he said, his eyes sweeping the assemblage. “That seems like a lot of time but it really isn’t. If we are going to recover the expenses for this trip we need to work hard. All day every day. I know many of you have pitched in all your savings to help make this happen. If we all pull together and work as a team, I think we can realize our dreams. But unless you and sick or injured, there are no days off. This is the only chance we have to make our dream happen and we all need to make the most of it.”
If he was trying to inspire us, he wasn’t really doing that well. All I heard was coach-speak. I wondered if he was going to ever arrive at something of substance.
“During our voyage I want you all to become well-acquainted with our new people,” he continued, gesturing towards my group. “There may come a time when we have to work together to defend what’s ours. It’s not unheard of for some of the larger companies to try to bully or even steal from ones like us, especially if the smaller group seems to be doing a little too well. If that happens, we will all need to work together to hold on to our profit. When we reach the island, I want you all to go out of your way not to provoke anyone. We can’t afford to spend our whole time there looking over our shoulders. We won’t ever get anything done.”
“Yahg,” one of the orcs butted in. “He is talking to you.”
“I’m not that bad,” angrily replied another orc, who I assumed to be Yahg.
His response was met by quite a bit of laughter.
“Prove it with actions and not with words,” Caider shot back in his direction. “In the past, you have always been pretty quick to brawl. We can’t afford that on this trip. Anyway, get to know each other, keep your skills sharp and your gear maintained, and we will have another meeting just before we make landfall. Thanks for listening.”
“Is he really that bad?” I asked one of the orcs who was sitting nearby in a low voice.
“He rarely resorts to words when a punch will do,” the orc replied.
Great, I thought. Impulse control issues. Those won’t cause us trouble. Nope, not at all. Did these people seriously think that one little speech was going to break a lifetime of conditioned response? I could hope for the best, but I also intended to plan for the worst.
The meeting broke up just in time for everyone to watch the sun get swallowed up by the ocean. Surprising to me was how quickly it happened. One moment, there was an orb of burning light hovering just above the ocean, but within a few moments it was gone, slipping below the horizon. Solidly built hooded lanterns were lit throughout the ship to provide a small degree of illumination.
A couple of our company had started laying out our dinner – dried meat and hard tack served with water that tasted of the oaken barrels it was drawn from. I already missed Jahhaf’s cooking, but if this is what we could expect for the whole trip I was going to kiss him the next time I saw him.
Even though they were under orders to get to know us, nobody approached us that evening. The whole group seemed a little factional. It probably had something to do with people who were used to working together but it seemed to me like we weren’t really one company. Instead, we were several small groups that had banded together out of common interest. I wasn’t certain that was a recipe for success, but since we were as guilty as anyone else I didn’t have much room to complain about it. I did wonder, though, if push came to shove whether everyone would follow Caider’s lead. I knew we would. He was the person we had a deal with. We couldn’t afford to renegotiate our deal with a bunch of mutineers. If things started going badly, though, I wondered if someone else would make a play for leadership. I decided to ask Bowen to keep his eyes open. His former life had prepared him for this sort of situation, if only he could understand more than ten percent of what he was hearing.
It was dark that night. The scant illumination from the stars and the waxing crescent moon made it tough to see more than a few dozen feet out from the ship. Sure, we could see the twinkling lights from the ships around us bobbing up and down but the convoy had spread out quite a bit as night was falling. Apparently, nobody wanted to risk a midnight collision. It’s not like the helmsman could just step on the brake pedal after all. Because we couldn’t see very far out from the vessel, waves became a lot harder to anticipate and for those of us used to living on land, moving about the ship became a lot more chaotic. Finally we gave up and retreated to our quarters.
Even though the slave pen was roomier than most of the other areas in the hold that people had claimed, Caider was correct. Nobody seemed the least bit interested in sharing it with us. That gave us quite a bit of room to spread out. If the pen was actually full of slaves, however, they would be living in ridiculously cramped conditions, painful and miserable squalor.
I had brought some dice with me from home as a means to pass the time, and Bowen and I played a version of Yahtzee for an hour or two. Aleyda didn’t participate. She told me that she didn’t feel like playing. I say a version of Yahtzee because I didn’t remember all of the rules and had to make some new ones up to fill in the blanks. Since we had no paper to keep score on, half the time was spent arguing about what the score actually was. It was fun, though. A couple of the orcs wandered by, saw what we were doing, and asked if they could play, too. Since we had already been introduced, I was too embarrassed to ask them for their names again. They seemed to like the game, though, and soon they were vigorously arguing about the score just like Bowen and I were. The score seemed more important to them because they made side bets against each other. Eventually, one of them left and came back with a small sack of beans from our food supply. We used them as chits and both the speed of our game and the accuracy of the score keeping rapidly improved.
“Can we do this again tomorrow night,” one of them asked as the game was drawing to a close. “We can bring more people.”
“Why not?” I replied affably. And that’s how our quarters became the company’s nightly gambling den and Yahtzee became a blood sport. By the time our trip was over, some of the off-duty sailors had heard about it and stopped by to play. I hope we never ran so short of provisions that we had to eat those dried beans. Each of them had passed through many hands.
Once the orcs had left, we bedded down for the night. I was lulled to sleep by the movement of the ship. It was almost like being rocked in a cradle and I found it soothing. But my sleep was soon interrupted by the sound of a deep, guttural retching. I sat bolt upright, not initially understanding what I was hearing. I quickly realized what was going on, though.
Although I was not prone to seasickness, Aleyda certainly was. Bowen and I didn’t get much sleep that night.