The Scarlet Shore

“Captain,” the first mate said, trembling slightly as he did so. “We’re lost.”

Captain Vhim sighed heavily. “I am aware, Mr. Ssorik. Next time you report in, bring me some worthwhile news.”

The first mate nodded without a word and stepped away, leaving the captain standing at the prow, scanning the horizon futilely with his brass telescope. After several more minutes of fruitless searching, he put his spyglass in his jacket’s pocket with another heavy sigh. A short, bulky man with a long white beard and a face wrinkled from long exposure to the sea and sun, his deep-set, tiny eyes blazed with a constant nervous fire. He kept perpetual, ever-shifting watch over his men and his ship. Even at that moment, his gaze darted about restlessly, quickly taking in his crew, every aspect of the ship itself, and the strange sea they sailed upon.

“Blasted storm,” Captain Vhim said quietly. “Where in all the seas have you swept us to?”

The voyage had started normally enough for the Gwynta, a routine trip from their home kingdom of Tsskiir to the island of Myl to pick up a cargo of spices which they could then sell back in Tsskiir for a hefty profit. It had been on the return part of that voyage when they had been struck by the worst storm that Captain Vhim had ever witnessed in his thirty years of seafaring. For two weeks they spotted no sign of the sun, perpetually obscured beneath a heavy blanket of black clouds as they battled against the winds and rains.

When the storm had cleared, things had only gotten worse. The sun, now red and bloated like an overripe fruit, hung just above the horizon, never moving an iota up or down, no matter how much time passed. The perpetual ruby twilight had quickly destroyed any sense of time the crew possessed. Combining this with the fact that their compasses no longer worked left them stranded without any way to orient themselves.

A light wind perpetually blew behind their vessel, no matter which direction they faced, never varying in its strength. Even the ocean around them struck the captain as odd; when he looked overboard, he noted the water’s shallowness, barely deep enough to go up to his knees. Despite this, they never ran aground or had any trouble sailing whatsoever. The muddy floor of the sea was utterly still, save for the occasional flurry of movement from some slimy, featureless things that oozed its way through the muck. Whenever he saw one of those creatures, Captain Vhim couldn’t help but shudder in disgust.

“We have to get out of here soon,” he muttered grimly to himself. “Or we will run out of food and fresh water.” He looked across the deck at his crew, who silently went about their tasks, making as little noise as possible, afraid to disturb the supernatural stillness. Captain Vhim empathized with his men’s near despair, although he hadn’t yet told them the full truth of his fears: that they were lost in the legendary Mystic Sea, from which no ship was ever said to return. That, I cannot let them know, Captain Vhim thought. My crew would give up, stop fighting, and then any chance we might have had of getting through this nightmare alive would be lost.

“Captain!” the lookout shouted down from the crow’s nest, enthusiasm evident in his voice. “Shore! I see a shore!”

Captain Vhim’s head snapped upwards as he bellowed back, “Are you sure?”

“Affirmative!” the sailor cheered. “It’s land!”

Cries of celebration rang out from the whole crew at that. Captain Vhim smiled as well. Regardless, deep down he still felt a lingering sense of unease, although why he couldn’t have said. He briskly gave the commands for the Gwynta to start sailing in the direction of the located land and watched eagerly with the rest of the crew as they drew closer and closer.

It hardly qualified as even an island, little more than a shoal jutting out of the sea, and barely large enough for that. The sand of the shoal shimmered a bright red hue, the exact same shade as blood, mirroring that of the bloated sun overhead. Another vessel, an ancient barque of the type that the Illmurian pirates who had preyed upon the ships of Tsskiir in centuries past used, was beached along the opposite side of the shoal. Drawing ever closer, they could now see a group of individuals sitting or standing across the shoal in small bunches. Even as they drew up along the shoal, the people on the beach did not react to them in the slightest.

“Should we go see who that is?” First Mate Ssorik suggested. “Perhaps they can tell us how to escape from this accursed sea.”

“Perhaps,” Captain Vhim said doubtfully. If they could do that, he thought, they no doubt would have left already themselves.

He and the rest of the crew disembarked, splashing through the last few feet of shallows until they reached the crimson sands, then walked up into the center of the shoal, where the largest group sat.

The shoal’s residents looked like creatures out of a story made to frighten young children, gaunt, skeletal individuals wearing the ragged remains of what Captain Vhim assumed at one point must have been clothing. They had the eyes of haunted, broken men, and they seemed universally mute. One of the individuals, with a long shock of bone-white hair running down his back, sat in the center of the group, a somehow perfectly preserved tri-corner hat perched askew on his head. Alone among the group, he reacted to Captain Vhim and the others’ arrival, looking up at them and smiling with a toothless, rotted grin.

“Greetings, Gents,” he said in a voice hoarse from disuse. “Welcome to yer new home.”

Captain Vhim stopped, narrowing his eyes. “And who might you be, Sir?”

The specter laughed. “Former Captain Charl, if ye will, of the good ship Maelstrom, a privateer in the Royal Illmurian Navy.”

Captain Vhim tilted his head to the side. “The Maelstrom? You should work on your lies, Former Captain Charl. The exploits of that ship are legendary, but the Maelstrom vanished well over a century ago.”

“Think me a liar, do ye?” the former captain said with a bitter grin. “Think again, lad. Me crew and I have been here for about a century or so, feels like at times.”

First Mate Ssorik licked his dry lips, then said in a dry whisper, “How?”

“Welcome, Gents, to the Isle of Life-in-Death,” the former captain said, spreading his hands to indicate the entire shoal. “Leastways, that’s what me crew called it, afore they stopped talking.”

“The Isle of Life-in-Death? What nonsense is this?” Captain Vhim snapped.

“Aye, nonsense, that’s what we thought to, when we met the last crew marooned here,” Charl said sagely, tapping a withered finger to his empty gums. “But believe me, this place be among the strangest in all the Mystic Sea.”

A nervous murmur went up from all the Gwynta’s crew at that. Captain Vhim shot his crew a look to silence them, then turned his attention back to the specter. “What exactly does staying on this isle entail, then?”

Former Captain Charl laughed. “I would have thought the name would tell ye. Here, ye cannot die. Not of age, not of hunger or thirst, although ye certainly feel those still, and not from the rays of the sun. Why, ye cannot even die of unnatural causes, like drowning or getting shot.” He paused for a moment. “We tried.” He pointed to a hole in his side, which upon closer inspection Captain Vhim realized was a bullet wound, as open and fresh as if the specter before them had been shot a mere moment before.

First Mate Ssorik shuddered in disgust. “What a horrid place. So, you have not eaten or drunk in a century?”

The former captain smiled his toothless smile again. “I did not say that. Sometimes, the worms come close enough to shore that we can catch them. Then, we feast.”

Captain Vhim didn’t know whether to believe the specter’s outlandish story or not, but his ghoulish appearance and unhealed injury certainly lent it an air of credibility. “If this isle is so horrible, why have you not tried to leave before?”

The man threw back his head and laughed at that. “Oh, we’ve certainly tried, Gents. That we have. But ye cannot. Any time we tried escaping, the currents and tides would push us back here, and if ye increase yer efforts, they only increase theirs in turn. It be hopeless.”

“So, we are trapped here as well,” Captain Vhim said flatly.

“Not necessarily,” Charl said, and a sudden craftiness came into his eyes and voice. “Ye see, the rules of this isle are simple, although the last crew here didn’t bother explaining till they had already sailed safely away: a ship, and a crew, must stay on the scarlet shore at all times.” His eyes narrowed. “Just one. Ye see?”

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“I…do,” Captain Vhim said, nodding his head slowly, suddenly very wary. “Unfortunately for you, it appears that your own ship is in such a poor state that we will have to leave you here once more.”

“Not,” former Captain Charl said, emphasizing the word. “If we take yer vessel from ye, first.”

As one, every member of the former captain’s crew stood up and turned to face Captain Vhim and his companions, a desperate, hungry look in their eyes. In response, the Gwynta’s crew drew their weapons, spreading out in a rough line across the sands between the specters and the Gwynta as they did so. The two crews appeared roughly matched in terms of numbers, and while Captain Vhim and his crew carried weapons, and fared far better in terms of health, there was a frenzied eagerness about their opponents that worried Captain Vhim. Before things escalated into a fight, he stepped forward and shouted, “Wait!”

Charl held up his hand and his crew reluctantly halted their advance. “What be it?”

“If we fight, all we will accomplish is a useless wasting of each other’s energies,” Captain Vhim said. “If what you say about this isle is true, then we could well end up with all of us trapped here, too injured to pilot the Gwynta and leave but unable to die. That would make this isle’s miseries only worse.”

Charl tilted his withered head to the side. “An excellent point. What do ye suggest, then?”

Captain Vhim thought frantically, trying to come up with a solution to their problem that would avoid bloodshed. Then, he got an idea. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll play a game, just you and me. The wager will be my ship. The winner, and their crew, gets to leave in it.”

Charl thought this over for a moment, then nodded. “Aye, that suits me fine. What be the game?”

Captain Vhim smiled. “Hangman’s Wager.”

Charl’s eyes glittered. “I know that game. I accept.”

“Captain,” Ssorik whispered urgently. “Are you sure this is wise?”

“No,” Captain Vhim responded. “But I like our chances with this plan better than risking the lives of the crew in a pitched battle. Besides, have you ever seen me lose a game of Hangman’s Wager?”

Ssorik frowned. “No.”

“Exactly,” Captain Vhim said. “Fetch me my deck from my cabin.”

First Mate Ssorik ran off and brought the deck of cards, which he sat on the sand between the two captains.

“We shall both inspect it, to prevent any tampering,” Captain Vhim said. Charl nodded mutely, and they both quickly checked it over. Neither tampered with the deck; they both would hold to a code of honor for this duel. Even the respective crews of either side drew back a distance, so they could not spy on the opposing captain’s hand.

Picking up the deck as he sat cross-legged on the sand, Captain Vhim quickly shuffled it and dealt three cards to each of them. Captain Vhim knew the rules to Hangman’s Wager by heart: one player would state a card or pair of cards in their hand, and then the other would either announce a stronger card or pair or concede the game. Both players could lie. If neither conceded, then the two players would each draw one card, then discard another. At any time, one player could call another’s bluff. If they did so, and the player they had accused was lying, than the accused lost the game automatically. However, if the bluff was called, and it turned out their opponent had told the truth, then the caller lost the game instead.

Captain Vhim looked at his hand, stroking his beard as he did so. The Six of Nooses, the Knight of Wheels, and the Four of Shells. Of each of the four suits, there were twelve cards, plus three face cards: a Knight, a Queen, and a King. In addition to the suits, there was a single wild card, the Pretender, who could become any card of a type not already declared. Not the most atrocious of starting hands, he thought. “Knight of Wheels,” he announced. Start with the lowest suite; it will give me plenty of room for future bids.

Captain Charl considered that, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side as he did so. “Hmm, King of Wheels,” he responded.

Captain Vhim gritted his teeth. It’s too early to call him out. No sane player would lie in the first round. Then again, my opponent is clearly not a sane man.

Captain Vhim passed both Charl and himself a new card. His new card was the six of shells. Not an improvement at all, he thought bitterly. He discarded his Knight of Wheels. Charl discarded a King of Wheels, smiling his toothless grin at Captain Vhim as he did so. “Yer bid,” he said.

“Eight of Shells,” Captain Vhim said. Hopefully, a low enough bid that he will not call it as a lie. I must win this, for my crew. I will not leave them to rot on this isle.

Captain Charl thought it over for a moment, then said, “Two of Blades.”

The second strongest suite. We’re already past all shells and wheels. You’re an aggressive player, Captain Vhim thought as he discarded his Six of Shells. Charl discarded a Four of Wheels. Captain Vhim drew a new card, letting out a slight sigh of relief as he did so. It was a Twelve of Blades. Not the greatest of bids, but it will keep me in the game. If I last long enough, wear down his patience sooner or later Captain Charl will make a mistake, bid too highly, and then I can destroy him.

“Twelve of Blades,” he called, keeping an observant eye on Captain Charl’s reaction. Unperturbed, his opponent responded by saying, “Three of Nooses.”

Neither of us is willing to call the other’s bluffs. Too much is staked on this game, Captain Vhim thought, sweating heavily now. We’ve reached the suite of Nooses, and from here the only thing to do is either start bidding a pair of cards or call each other’s bluff. His hand shook slightly as he discarded his Twelve of Blades, drawing a new card and trying his hardest to keep a smile of triumph off his face at what he saw: The King of Nooses. The strongest card. I can declare this and unless he has been keeping the Knight and Queen of Nooses up his sleeve this entire time, I win.

“Well?” Captain Charl said, having discarded a lowly Queen of Wheels. “It’s yer bid.”

“I know,” Captain Vhim said, openly smiling now. “The King of Nooses. Top that.”

“Oh, I will,” Captain Charl said with a slight smile. “Two Queens of Nooses.”

Captain Vhim blinked incredulously. “That’s impossible!” he snapped. “There is only one Queen of Nooses. I call your bluff.”

Captain Charl smiled again, and, with a dry, brittle laugh, revealed his hand: a Seven of Wheels, the Queen of Nooses, and the Pretender.

“No Queens have been called yet this game,” Captain Charl said with a twisted expression of glee. “Therefore, the Pretender can assume the position of one. There’s nothing in the rules that says I cannot turn it into a copy of a card I already possess.”

Captain Vhim, stunned, let his cards fall limply from his hands onto the blood-red sand in front of him. For the first time in his life, he had lost a game, and just when he needed to win the most. “No,” he said weakly.

“Yes,” Captain Charl said, cackling to himself as he stood up and strode past the captain towards the waiting vessel. “Enjoy yer stay on the Isle of Life-In-Death. Who knows the next time someone will stop by? For yer sake, and the sake of yer crew, I hope it be soon. I really do.”

Captain Vhim stood up, looking at his bewildered and betrayed crew. He hung his head in shame. My men were counting on me, and I let them down. I lost a fair game, and to attack Captain Charl and his crew now would be to go against my honor. No, I must find some other way to save my crew…

As Charl and his men started to wade through the water towards the ship, Captain Vhim bolted after them with a sudden burst of speed, shouting, “Wait! Wait!” as he did so.

Captain Charl paused, twisting his withered body to look back at Captain Vhim as he did so. “What do ye want? I won yer ship.”

“I know,” Captain Vhim said pleadingly. “But consider this: this ship was built many years after your time, and you and your crew have no idea how to pilot it. Besides, your crew is plainly weak and at the end of their strength. Even if you may leave by the isle’s twisted rules, who knows how far you may get?”

Captain Charl planted a gnarled fist on each hip as he looked Captain Vhim up and down. “And what are ye suggesting we do about it?”

Captain Vhim took a deep breath, then said, “Sign my crew back onto the Gwynta. Let them serve under you. They can teach your crew their way around the ship, and the extra manpower certainly cannot hurt. The Gwynta has the room if you throw the cargo of spices overboard.”

“Were ye not listening when I explained the rules of this isle earlier?” Captain Charl said with a sigh. “A ship and a crew must remain on the scarlet shore. Always.”

“I know,” Captain Vhim said. “But a crew of one is still a crew. I will stay here on the isle, alone, and you can take my crew back with you, until you reach…saner waters.”

Captain Charl considered that. “Perhaps I misjudged ye, Captain Vhim. Ye be not a bad man at all, I think.” Captain Charl stuck out his hand, and Captain Vhim took it and shook it. “I accept yer bargain. Go back and tell yer crew that they can join mine. Hopefully, the isle will still let us leave. Oh, and consider the Maelstrom my gift.”

“I thought as much,” Vhim said dryly. He returned to the shoal, where his crew watched him anxiously.

“What’s the news, Captain?” First Mate Ssorik asked, speaking for the crew.

“Captain Charl is going to let you all join his crew. He is your captain now,” Vhim emphasized. “He seems like an experienced sailor. Do as he commands you, and hopefully you will all make it back to Tsskiir alive.”

“And what about you, Captain?” a voice shouted from the back of the crew.

Vhim nodded his head slowly. “I shall…must stay here. You all must go on without me. Take care of the Gwynta. Now hurry, before Captain Charl changes his mind, and leaves you regardless.”

One by one, the crew filed away, walking across the shallow waters to where the Gwynta waited. At last, Captain Vhim stood there alone, save for his former first mate.

“We shall never forget you, Captain,” Ssorik said.

“I know,” Captain Vhim said. “But you will remember me best if you get my crew out of here alive. And once you do make it, warn every sailor you can about this place, tell them to stay as far away from it as possible. You understand?”

Ssorik nodded.

“Then go.”

As Vhim watched, Ssorik ran through the waters to the ship, boarding it just as they unfurled their sails and, slowly turning in the sluggish waters, started to sail away from the isle. No resistance arose, and the ship cut its way across the surface of the Mystic Sea without interference. Vhim stood there at the water’s edge, unmoving, as the ship grew smaller and smaller, eventually becoming little more than a blip upon the horizon, before vanishing altogether.

Vhim smiled slightly. He didn’t regret his decision. He had saved his crew, even if he now waited on the Isle of Life-in-Death alone. Someday, he thought with just a hint of melancholy. Someday, others will sail past these shores, and perhaps I will be able to leave, free to sail the seas once more. Someday. He trudged back up the shore to where his deck of cards had fallen after the game and, sitting down, carefully picked up the cards and counted to make sure he had them all. Once he had done so, he shuffled the deck and dealt out a game of solitaire onto the crimson sands before him. And, with nothing else to do and no witnesses save for the ever-present red sun hovering in the sky like an enormous, bloodshot eye, Vhim began to play.