Eofe wisely complied when the sailor beckoned her forward and led her up to the main deck.
“Come on, girl,” he said. “Let’s see what the captain wants to do with you.”
He brought her out into clear morning skies, where the overpowering smell and taste of the sea assaulted Eofe’s senses. The Opal Sea extended in every direction for as far as she could see. She looked back to the east and cast [Eagle Eyes], but even then, the coast of Ilthera was just a thin line on the horizon. She took a deep breath of fresh air as she realized that she had really done it. She had escaped the Green and left Ilthera behind. It was just the start of her journey, but it was a start she had feared would never come to pass.
A murmur of voices interrupted Eofe’s thoughts and she turned to find a gaggle of sailors of various races eying her curiously, mostly Human, but with some Dwarves and what Eofe assumed to either be a Halfling or a child. Towering over her at the center of the group was a figure out of Eofe’s nightmares. He was taller than almost anyone she had ever met, with bulging muscles that were certainly larger than any she had seen before, and skin a green nearly as dark as her cloak. Two short tusks jutted up from his lower lip.
If she had known the captain was an Orc, she would have picked literally any other ship to board.
“Please don't eat me!” she begged in Orithian.
The captain growled as the crew laughed.
“Aye, Cap'n. Don't eat the poor girl, she's just a child!” someone said.
“She's an Elf, you nitwit,” he said in a gravelly voice that did nothing to assuage Eofe's fears. “She's prolly old enough to be yer grandma.”
She wasn't even fifty! Eofe wanted to complain that she wasn't old enough to have children, much less grandchildren, but one look at the captain's dark expression and she smartly kept her mouth shut.
“I don't know whether to say it was fortune or misfortune that blessed you this day, seeing as I was so distracted this morning, I failed to notice an extra soul aboard my ship,” he said while grinding his teeth. “So tell me, Grandma. What are you doing on my ship?”
Eofe found the planking on the deck to be entirely too fascinating as she tried to think of a response that wouldn't get her thrown overboard, or worse, served to the captain for dinner. She ended up settling for the truth.
“I wanted to go to Orith, but the guards took most of my money so I didn't have enough to pay for a ship, and I saw your ship last night and knew it was going to Orith, and no one was really watching it, so I snuck onboard,” Eofe finished, out of breath, with her heart hammering in her chest.
“No one was watching it, eh?” The captain looked over to a pair of sailors who each turned red-faced at the accusation.
“We was watchin', captain! She must be a [Thief] or [Rogue] or sumfin, she snuck right past us!”
“What's yer class, Grandma?” the captain asked. “And don't you dare lie to me.”
Eofe didn't dare lie. “[Wildwood Scout]. And a bit of [Fletcher].”
“[Wildwood Scout], you say?” The captain looked at her more closely, only now noticing the antlers peeking out of her hair.
“So you're a Wood Elf, eh? You're lucky I know better than to dump a Wood Elf into the sea. Yer people get a right bit offended by that sorta thing. What were you doin' in a High Elf city anyways? Don't you people have your own ships?”
Eofe was greatly offended by his terminology, but once again wisely chose not to correct him. Her people did in fact have their own ships, all the way on the Coral Coast in northern Ilthera where the Green plunged into the sea to invigorate marine life with its wild nature. But she couldn't take one of their ships, because they would have just packed her up and sent her right back home.
“They wouldn’t take me,” Eofe said, which was close enough to the truth. “So I had to find another way.”
“Well, your business is your own. But we'll have you pay for passage one way or another,” he said, and Eofe gulped. “Bring out her stuff.”
Her pack and bow were brought out, the bowstring glimmering in the sunlight and catching the greedy eyes of every sailor. Eofe paled.
“Now that's something for sure,” he said, eying the bow. “But that's far too valuable and I ain't no [Thief]. What else you got?”
He opened her coin pouch and poured the coins into his hand.
“Weren't lying about being poor, it seems.”
A couple of sailors continued pulling items out of her pack, dumping spare clothing, bits of dried food, and wooden tools and utensils onto the deck. Besides the bow, all of her possessions and coin together would not have been nearly enough to pay the six gold star fee for passage. Then one of the sailors picked up her spare waterskin and opened the top. The sweet scent of the pitcher plant’s extract wafted over the deck and drew the attention of every sailor nearby. The man holding the flask seemed about to taste it before Eofe interrupted him.
“Don’t drink that!” she cried out.
“Why not?” the captain asked, taking the waterskin from the sailor and sniffing the extract. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Eofe said, before adding quickly. “I mean, I don’t know what it does.” She briefly recounted her encounter with the pitcher plant, its mysterious white fog, and the extract she gathered from its corpse.
“A bounty from the Green,” the captain said reverently. “I’m sure an alchemist will pay a pretty penny for this. You’re in luck, Grandma. You can pay for passage with whatever this is, as well as with your labor.”
“My what?”
“Bawdric!” the captain yelled, and Eofe flinched.
A gangly red-headed boy appeared, who couldn't have been more than sixteen, and who Eofe guessed might be close to fifty.
“You'll be the Elf's minder. Have her share a bunk with Lera, and teach her cleaning and maintenance and whatever else she looks like she can manage.”
“Aye, aye... Captain...”
The boy's voice trailed off as he took his first good look at Eofe, revealing an expression that could be found on just about every teenage boy's face when confronted with any girl who was even the least bit charming. The captain noticed immediately.
“Lord, have mercy,” the captain said. “She's far too old for you, boy.”
But Bawdric either didn't hear or didn't care, and continued to gawp at the young (for an Elf) girl.
“Ah, to the Hells with it. It'll be a good lesson for ya,” and the captain walked away, leaving the two alone.
“What's your name? I'm Bawdric, by the way,” the boy said as he held out his hand in Eofe's direction. Eofe looked at his hand warily before deciding to ignore it.
“I'm Eofe.”
“Eefuh? That's a beautiful name,” he said a bit shyly and with such awful pronunciation that Eofe decided it wasn't worth trying to correct him.
“Come on, I’ll show you where you’ll sleep,” Bawdric said.
Eofe stopped to gather up her things into her pack, which were still mostly scattered on the deck. Bawdric tried to help, but he turned red-faced on touching one of her spare shirts, which wasn’t even part of her underclothes, then stammered that he’d just wait for her to finish and stood awkwardly to the side. Once she was finished, she picked up her pack and bow and followed the boy below deck. The ship wasn’t terribly large and outfitted primarily for speed and cargo, housing only a couple dozen sailors in total. The crew’s quarters were small because of this, leaving most of the space for cargo. So Eofe was incredibly disappointed when Bawdric led her into a cramped bunkroom that was absolutely infested with hammocks, some of which were even occupied by sleeping sailors.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“You’ll share this one with Lera,” he said, guiding her to a hammock in the corner where a woman even shorter than her was sleeping. “She’s on night shift, so it won’t be a problem. We all sleep in here, but the girls have claimed this corner, so you won’t have to worry about being too close to anyone of… the, er… any boys, that is,” he finished dumbly.
Bawdric showed her a few ropes she could use to lash her things to the ship. Efa had noticed that all of the sailors wore light clothing, and many were barefoot, and decided that if she was going to be doing their work, she may as well dress the part. She removed her armor and boots in front of a red-faced Bawdric, who had turned away for some reason, and stashed everything in her pack before securing it with the ropes. That left her barefoot, wearing just her tunic and breeches, before a teenage boy who had never seen anything more beautiful in his life. He really was a lost cause.
He managed to regain his composure and led her back up to the deck, where he showed her what duties she would perform for the remainder of the journey. It was mainly limited to swabbing the deck and cleaning the interior. They wouldn’t let an inexperienced girl, who didn’t even have a [Sailor] class, touch any of the rigging or sails.
It would be at least three weeks sailing across the Opal Sea to reach Calan, the continent which housed the nation of Orith. The ship would dock at Tarog’s Landing, an Orithian port city that seemed just as good as any other to the girl whose plan didn’t go any further than “go to Orith to become an adventurer.”
Eofe spent her first day aboard the Penitent Scamp trailing Bawdric and following his careful instructions. They alternated back and forth between swabbing the deck and cleaning the interior, with only short breaks to eat whatever slop the [Cook] served up. Eofe’s muscles ached in places she hadn’t even known existed. She certainly wasn’t out of shape, so her stamina held up just fine, but she found that sneaking around, knife fighting, and shooting bows taxed an entirely different set of muscles than did mopping a ship’s deck or bending down to clean dirty corners. Eofe also found the mopping to be quite pointless seeing as they were already on the water. Why did they need to get the ship even more wet? Bawdric explained something about needing to keep the wood wet so water wouldn’t get in, which made even less sense to Eofe. She decided to just accept that all sailors were mad, which was still the truth even if she got there the wrong way around.
Her tasks grew more challenging as the ship hit rougher seas later in the day, and Eofe began to have trouble staying upright. It was made even worse when every time she slipped or fell, one of the sailors would shout something like, “Grandma fell down again! Someone help the old bones up,” drawing hoots from their fellows.
When the sun was finally close to setting, the crew rotated, giving Eofe a chance to bed down in her new bunk, now empty of its previous occupant. She fell asleep almost immediately. She dreamed of the ship being attacked by sea monsters and pirates, with Eofe fighting them off all on her own to save the ship, earning her the respect of the captain and crew, so that the captain forgave her debt so she could enjoy the remainder of the journey in peace.
She couldn’t help but feel disappointed when she woke the next day to find that none of that had happened.
----------------------------------------
The next several days were a monotonous repeat of the first, without the added excitement of being caught as a stowaway.
Only a couple of interesting things happened.
The first was a conversation Eofe overheard between the captain and the ship [Priest] on the second day of the journey. Eofe had used [Assess] on most of the crew by then and knew something of their levels. The captain was a level 46 [Swiftship Captain], while most of the sailors were between levels 20 and 30, having a variety of classes such as [Deckhand], [Helmsman], [Navigator], and the general-purpose [Sailor]. Only a few of the crew were above or below that range, including Bawdric who was only a level 12 [Deckhand]. The one odd exception was a level 32 [Priest of Sea and Storm], the same bearded Human man who discovered her in the hold. He dressed identically to other sailors and even seemed to perform similar duties to a [Deckhand] for most of the day.
It was as Eofe was swabbing the upper deck around the [Helmsman] that she overheard the priest muttering a prayer.
“Lord, bless the journey of this vessel dedicated in your name, that the winds may be swift and the seas calm. Amen.”
"Who are you praying to?" she asked.
The man blinked in surprise, then seemed to notice Eofe standing beside him.
“Ah, the stowaway,” he said without a hint of reproach. “I am praying to the only God who matters on the sea. The [Lord of Sea and Storm] himself.”
Efa knew a little of the [Lord of Sea and Storm], seeing as he was worshipped by the Surag along the Coral Coast (the Greenwarden was not a jealous Goddess, so long as her followers kept the bargain). He was one of the few Old Gods to have survived the Reckoning ten thousand years ago, and likely one of the highest-level Gods still around.
It was at this moment that the captain appeared and Eofe dipped her head and quietly returned to mopping. He always looked like he was ready to bite someone’s head off, and she didn’t know if that was just an Orc thing or if he was that much of a dour man. Either way, she decided it was best to avoid his attention.
“How's your allotment today, priest?” the captain asked.
“Good for a bit of wind and taming a rogue wave or two. Insufficient should we hit a real storm. Though the skies look clear, so I expect we shall be safe for the day.”
“We could use more than a bit of wind. We’re running late as is,” the Orc complained. “Too bad the Lord's a fickle master.”
“He provides as he sees fit. It is not our place to judge.”
The captain grunted in response.
Eofe had heard about godly allotments, but had never encountered its limitations before. As she understood it, most gods parceled out their power to their followers each day, providing a limited “allotment” of divine mana for those with certain classes. These faith-based classes primarily drew on this divine mana instead of their personal mana in order to perform miracles beyond their own capabilities.
The Greenwarden was not so generous, instead saving most of her strength for the Bloom. Being a [Priest] of the Greenwarden was a mostly thankless job, and it was a wonder there were actually any of them around.
Eofe returned to her duties in silence and solitude for the next few days, with the exception of Bawdric occasionally interrupting her to ask questions about her home or the Elves in general, or to talk about his own mundane life. She learned far more about the boy than she wanted to, including that he was an orphan who had never met his parents and had been handpicked by the captain to be trained as a [Sailor]. She would have found it more annoying than she did if he wasn’t the only to call her by something resembling her name. The rest of the crew continued to call her Grandma regardless of how many times she corrected them.
It was two days after her encounter with the priest that Eofe was first introduced to the concept of seasickness.
She woke in the morning to find the ship tense, with both night and day shifts active, everyone working on some preparations Eofe couldn’t discern. Only the priest seemed inactive, standing on the bow and staring ahead at the horizon while whispering a silent prayer to his God.
“What’s happening?” Eofe asked him.
“I’ve received an unusually high allotment today,” the priest said, still watching the horizon. “And there are hints of a storm ahead. I fear the Lord has blessed me with such power because we would not survive otherwise.”
Eofe’s stomach sank at the revelation, but there was nothing she could do about it. Her duties were dismissed for the day so she wouldn’t get in the way of the crowded deck, so she went back to her bunk and laid down to wait. Other sailors trickled in over the course of the morning, including Bawdric. Eofe asked him what was going on and he explained that most of the crew would remain below deck during the storm. Seeing as the storms of the Opal Sea could sometimes last for days, the crew would regularly rotate to manage the ship. The [Captain] and [Priest] had Skills that would allow them to sail into the storm, even against the wind, so everyone else would be working overtime to keep the ship intact through the storm.
Eofe waited in apprehension, unsure about what was coming, but having to trust in the competency of the captain and crew. It was just after noon when the storm finally hit.
The first sign of the storm was rougher seas. Eofe felt her stomach lurch with every dip and rise, and finally realized the breadth of difference between calm and stormy waters. The other sailors lounged casually in the room, some even playing games, while Eofe crawled onto the floor and lashed a rope around her wrist to hold tight.
The second sign was a pattering of rain that soon turned into a deluge. It wasn’t long before water poured down to the lower deck and Eofe panicked as it pooled around her feet. But the sailors ignored it, with some running past her out of the lower hold with buckets of water to dump back into the sea.
Lastly, came the thunder. Great booms shook the ship like the drumbeats of an ancient war. Flashes of lightning pierced the gaps between every plank, illuminating the weary sailors waiting below.
The dips and rises of the ship grew even steeper, spurring Eofe to grab a bucket that was fortuitously nearby and spew her breakfast into it. She finally grasped what poets meant when they described the sea in a storm as a raging beast. The ship tipped up and Eofe held tight to her rope to stop from falling back. Then it dipped down and she was pressed against the forward wall even as she felt the weightlessness of falling. The worst was when the ship heaved to either side, and Eofe feared that it would tip over and her journey would end in the middle of the Opal Sea.
What Eofe did not see, cowering below decks as she was and muttering prayers to a Goddess who had no power to help her, was the managed chaos of the crew braving the storm.
She did not hear the captain shout commands from the helm that all his crew could hear despite the roaring thunder and tempest winds. Nor did she see when a sailor lost his footing and went over the side, only for the captain to make a gesture and for the man to bounce back onto the ship as if yanked by an invisible line.
She did not see the [Priest of Sea and Storm] standing on the bow, enduring a torrent of wind and rain, pointing to waves as tall as the walls of Anar Fyndel and shouting divine incantations provided by the very God who called the storm into being. Waves that would have shattered the ship instead parted around it or collapsed into the sea. And even as the storm winds blew in every which direction, a single forward wind pierced the storm like a blade and the sails billowed to the west.
Bawdric took Eofe’s bucket at one point, which upset her at first seeing as she still needed to puke, but he brought it back in time, empty and ready to be refilled. Eofe grudgingly admitted her thanks.
The storm thrashed the ship for what Eofe felt must have been days, but was really only until the next morning. Then the thunder stopped, the downpour was reduced to a drizzle before ceasing altogether, and the waves diminished with every moment until Eofe felt nothing but the mild sways of a ship at sea.
The unconscious priest was carried to his bunk, having collapsed once the storm finally broke. The captain walked into the bunkroom, spied Eofe and the other sailors lounging around, then clapped his hands.
“Back to work,” he said.