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11 - The Sky's A Big Place

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Theo

On sailing ships there was always something to do. Tighten a line, adjust the sails, swab the deck, even. But this wasn’t a sailing ship. This was a skyship and, aside from a helmsman, when underway it didn’t need much of a crew. A few lookouts and maybe an engineer to check everything was running normally. And the deck still needed swabbing, but far less often considering there wasn’t a constant salt spray raining down on it. There wasn’t much work to be done and that made crews lazy. My crew wasn’t going to get lazy.

“Parry!” I swung an overhand blow at Aristos. “Come on, sword up!” I wasn’t going to follow through with the blow but if I had I would’ve cleaved his head in half. He was off balance, feet set all wrong, and by the time he got his blade up he was dead—or would have been if this fight had been anything more than a training bout.

I stopped my blade short of his face.

“We fight like we practice, Aristos,” I said, stepping back and wiping the sweat from my brow with a rag. “You have to take this seriously.”

“Theo... you know we’re... not at war, yeah?” he asked, hands on his knees as he huffed and puffed to catch his breath. He really needed more conditioning training. As corporal, that was my job now.

“You’re doing a finer job of killing our soldiers than Bospur ever has,” Leda said with a laugh as she stepped into the sun. The crew had stretched a tarp from the rail of the quarterdeck, creating a shady lounging spot that’d only encouraged more laziness. A trait it seemed Leda was all too happy to indulge. No doubt because she’d been passed over for promotion.

“Might not be at war right now, but if it happens we need to be ready.”

“This is a search and rescue mission at best, Theo.” Leda clapped Aristos on the back and sent him off toward the shade with a light shove. “We don’t need people passing out from heatstroke.”

I grabbed the waterskin Aristos had left behind and tossed it to him. “Drills again first thing in the morning. Until then, stay hydrated and try to keep in the shade, eh?” I nodded to Leda. “You too. Sun’s fierce out here.”

“That an order?”

I shrugged. “It’ll be a right pain to wear armor when sunburned. But your choice, I suppose.”

Leda huffed, but headed back to the shade of the lounge. A warm breeze swept across the deck and caught in her hair, which was frivolously long for a soldier’s cut. It’d be easy for an enemy to grab a handful of it. Would’ve been one of my opening moves if the sergeant had accepted her request to duel me for the promotion. A dirty move, maybe, but an effective one.

My arms and legs throbbed from training with Aristos. He was slow, which meant I’d been able to dance around him, but he was also big. The few attacks I’d been forced to parry had taken concerted effort, which was good strength training. There was no better feeling than sore muscles. Meant you’d done something worth doing.

I took a lap around the deck, shaking out my muscles and letting the warm breeze wick the sweat away. I was acutely aware of the sun eating at my skin with its sizzling heat. A burn would form soon. I’d need shade myself in a moment, but first there were rounds to complete.

I came across Demetrias at the bow. The engineer was leaning over the front rail, checking on the forward port engine. He was a nervous man, always chewing at his lip with a distant, frantic look on his face. Now, however, he was grounded in the moment. Tended to be the case when he was working on the ship. He claimed to have near built every bit of the Stormcrow, having worked on it since it’d been nothing more than a wood frame at the capital’s airfield.

Whatever he was doing now, I left him to it.

Beside him, though, was Gabar. The big man was a fine soldier. All muscle and reliability. He was standing lookout in the sweltering heat at the bow, his shirt thoroughly soaked through with sweat.

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“No sign of them, then?” I said, then offered up my own waterskin.

“Thank the ancestors.” He took the thing and drank deep, spilling a bit of the water down his chin and into his thick, black beard. Several long gulps later and he handed the waterskin back. “No sign of anything out here but trees, trees, and more trees.”

“Keep an eye on them, too. Could be Kamil and his bunch are landed. The schedule had them passing over this area in favor of heading due south for the first few days, but you never know with these naturalist types. Could’ve landed to draw a picture of a flower or something.”

“Heh.” Gabar’s laugh was somewhere between a chuckle and a grunt. “Waste of time if ever I’ve heard it.”

“Couldn’t agree more. Anyway, keep your eyes open a bit longer. I’ll send Aristos over to relieve you in a bit.”

“Wonder what I’ll see. Oh, look. Another tree. Imagine that.”

I left the big man and followed the ship’s portside rail back while shaking out my shoulders. The muscles were still bunched tight. Probably I needed to get some stretches in.

The Far Wild slipped past below us, impossible not to see, just beyond the ship’s rail. Trees, trees, and more trees, just like Gabar’d said. Seemed that was pretty much all there was out here, aside from the occasional winding river or swampy plain. Terrible land for marching and even worse for fighting. Skyships might’ve been too easy on their crews, but say one thing for them, they beat walking.

“Seeing anything out there?” a gruff voice asked. Elpida, the guidemaster from Lekarsos. She hadn’t paused to chat, but had asked the question while still keeping a brisk pace toward the bow.

“Nothing out there yet,” I shouted to her back. “But we’re staying vigilant.”

“Good.”

She headed on, eyes squinted toward the horizon. In the light of the noonday sun the scars all across her body were impossible not to notice. She was a hard woman. Had clearly been through hell and back. The guide corps was lucky to have her. She’d have made an excellent soldier if she’d gone that route when younger. Having her on the expedition was some comfort, though. If half of the stories I’d heard about the Far Wild were true, then—well, we were safer in the air. Swords and arrows were fine and good at killing people, but the beasts of this continent were another matter entirely.

I reached the edge of the tarp and paused. Another step and I’d be in the shade with Leda, Aristos, and that blabbering fool, Senesio. He was busy spinning another of his stories, bragging about some victory he’d won. No doubt it was made up, like everything else about him. Probably he couldn’t even use the sword at his hip. The thing was more ornate than it was practical, what with its overdone basket hilt and freshly wrapped grip.

I turned from the shade of the tarp and took the stairs two at a time up to the quarterdeck. The wind was better up here, cooler, and less full of the stink of everyone’s sweating bodies. Nonetheless, it was something of a full house.

The old sailor-turned-helmswoman, Maritza, was at the wheel, as usual, and Captain Barba was beside her. Looked like they were discussing the route, both of them shooting glances down to a map in the captain’s hands. Sailor talk, and not something I was qualified for. I left them to it. The captain had a reputation as a fierce and proud leader. Her exploits were legendary, but you impressed your superiors with hard work and results, not by butting into conversations you knew nothing about.

The other three occupants of the quarterdeck filled out the rest of the crew. Sergeant Kyriakos was posted for watch at the aft. On the other side of the quarterdeck, the deadweight naturalist’s apprentice, Suni, and the excitable, if not still useful guide, Oz, were huddled off in one corner. They were leaning so far over the rail it looked like a stiff breeze would send them tumbling down. They’d been that way basically the entire trip so far. The only thing the ship had been passing over was trees. The only thing it was passing over now was trees. And yet, these two acted like it was the most incredible thing they’d ever seen. Didn’t make much sense, but then again I didn’t waste much time trying to understand idealists.

“Remind me why we brought the girl again?” I said to Sergeant Kyriakos as I stepped up beside him.

“Can’t argue with the law,” he said.

“Right, but what’s her purpose?” She had a journal out now and was sketching something in it while Oz pointed and gestured down to the trees.

“Well, I suppose she’ll fulfill the duties of a naturalist, if we have need of one. But, considering this is a search and rescue mission, she’ll probably just stay out of the way. Not like she’s hurting anything, I suppose.”

Well, he’d a point there.

“Guess you’re right, sarge.” I chewed at my lip for a moment. “So the other expedition’s got a day’s lead on us, but we know their general course. Considering the visibility out here, it shouldn’t be hard to spot them.” The Far Wild was scorching hot and prone to brief, violent thunderstorms, but most of the time it was just cloudless blue skies. “How long do you think until we’ve found them and turned toward home?”

Sergeant Kyriakos rubbed his clean-shaven chin and frowned slightly. “Hard to say. We’re traveling lighter, so we’ll make up time on them. But still, the sky’s a big place. And the course was a general one. The expedition had autonomy to divert as needed.”

“But we know they were scheduled to be at Clearwater Outpost in three weeks for water.”

“That’s true. Worst case scenario, we’ll catch them there.”

“Well, then.” I leaned a hip against the rail and stared out to the sky behind us. “Three weeks of training on deck’s not too bad for a worst-case scenario.”

“Theo,” the sergeant said, and leaned over toward me. “Don’t push ’em too hard.”

“We have to be ready for anything.”

“We’ve been training twice a day.”

“And lounging around the rest of the time. With all due respect, sergeant, this isn’t a vacation.”

He laughed at that, then wiped sweat from his eyes. “No, that it is not.”