Chapter Eighty-eight

Captain Fenirig Arla rushed out of her cabin to the quarterdeck, and all hell broke loose. For a few minutes at least. She barked orders at her subordinates on her way to the stairs to the forecastle, and the Furious Fist suddenly looked like someone had just kicked a large hornets’ nest. Elves sprung up from everywhere as the officers scattered yelling orders, sailors rushing up the rigging, adjusting the sails and other things, the marines taking their preassigned positions, while all the rangers just stood around like idiots, scratching their heads as it was all unfolding.

After that, the reality of a ship-chase began to divert from my imagination; once every crew member was where they were supposed to be, everything calmed down and returned to business as usual. I should have expected this; the ork ship was some thirty miles away, and to think this was going to be as intense as something like a car chase in a Hollywood action flick from start to finish, was foolish.

‘Is this it?’ Hank asked as Krissy and Kiwa followed the captain, the marine in charge and Master Fenar up the stairs to the forecastle.

I didn’t say anything. He’d figure it out.

Then, we all came to a stop at the edge of the platform. The captain and one of her officers both produced spyglasses to take a closer look at our opponent. I stretched a few of my tentacles out to do the same, but I couldn’t see anything except the horizon where the sea met the sky, a few clouds, and nothing else.

‘There you are,’ Captain Fenirig Arla muttered, then turned to the officer standing next to her. ‘About twenty-five miles, not thirty.’

I shouldn’t have been surprised she could see it — elven eyesight was something else — but I still wondered how the hell they could even tell it was an ork ship. I mean, twenty-five miles was twenty-five miles, almost forty kilometres if I calculated that correctly. I didn’t think a human could even notice a ship at a distance longer than ten kilometres, even in the clearest, most beautiful weather, and even if the ship was as large as a tanker or a container ship.

‘I don’t think they have noticed us yet,’ the officer said to the captain, still looking through his spyglass.

Another two sailors jogged up the stairs to join us: one of them an officer, maybe, the other carrying a bunch of small flags. They walked to the port-side of the platform and after ten seconds of peering through his spyglass, the officer reported his findings.

‘Signals from the Righteous Wrath. Chase. We’re going to chase them down.’

‘Makes sense,’ Captain Fenar hummed, sounding pleased, then she ordered the man, ‘Signal acknowledged!’

The guy with the flags quickly selected two of them, one blue one orange, and he waved them around for a while, repeating a simple pattern I deduced meant “acknowledged”.

Of the other three elven ships, the Righteous Wrath was the closest to us, less than a kilometre by my estimate, and I could see its shape clearly. I could even see people, but at this distance they looked like ants crawling up and down a piece of wood. I was sure our signal-guy’s counterparts on the other ships were waving their flags, too, but to see that kind of detail would have required me to have elven eyes and a spyglass instead of tentacles.

‘Captain, the barbarian ship’s turning,’ the officer who had been watching the enemy all this time reported.

The captain looked through her spyglass again and verified the report.

‘They must have noticed us,’ she said calmly, then checked a pocket compass I hadn’t noticed she had, then kept observing the enemy ship for a few more minutes, then stated, ‘They’re heading back. Wind’s good, we’ll catch the fuckers, before they’re even halfway to their port.’

She then issued a number of orders only her officers and crew understood — the nautical terms in Elvish were still foreign to me — and the sailors went about their business to ready to Furious Fist for the chase, the intercept and probably a fight. For the rest of us spirits and landlubbers, the whole thing devolved into a waiting game.

***

Krissy and Kiwa followed Master Fenar as he climbed down the stairs from the forecastle’s platform to join the rest of the rangers, who had assembled on the deck, fully armed and ready, doing their best to keep out of the way of the crew. They seemed to be on edge, even Toven and the other scout-masters. I figured seafaring and naval engagements were way out of their comfort zones, and if you were a ranger, what you expected was to die on land at the invisible hands of wild spirits, not on a sinking ship.

‘What’s happening?’ Toven stepped up to Master Fenar as he arrived with us in tow.

‘Ork ship, that’s what’s happening,’ he grumbled, his scarred face scrunching up. ‘We’re chasing it down. Once we catch them, I don’t know. It’s up to the captain. We’ll fight if it comes to that.’

That seemed to loosen up the seventy or so rangers bunched up near the mizzenmast — all they needed to hear was the word “fight”, and all was well with the world. Unfortunately for them, I had a feeling it would be the marines of the Furious Fist in the spotlight if it came to that, not the rangers, and I was sure they knew it too. But, at times of uncertainty, people tended to believe what they wanted to believe, and elves didn’t seem to be exceptions. I wasn’t quite sure about rangers in a ship-to-ship engagement; in my humble opinion, this sort of thing was better left to professionals who had actually trained for this; the marines in this case. Even I had no desire to set tentacles on an ork galley again. They were horrid, and filled to the brim with vicious, green idiots and their slaves, and … hold on. They were filled with vicious, green idiots with souls that tasted like mushrooms, and chained down rowers who were all fair meals … I mean fair game as far as I was concerned.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

‘Krissy, we need to get on that ship,’ I said to her, trying to keep calm as the memories of my most recent and so far most impressive level-ups came to my mind.

I’m not setting foot on an ork ship ever again. She shot me down immediately. Those things are horrid.

As much as I agreed with her statement, I wasn’t going to let this opportunity just pass. Levels were levels, however you got the EXP for them. I imagined if we ever made it to the Fentys Alliance — primarily human occupied lands in my understanding — we wouldn’t be able to just go around eating everyone like we could on an enemy ship.

‘No, no, no, we need to get on the galley. My levels are at stake, so please? Pretty please?’ I asked as nicely as I could. No wonder people thought I was a pushover.

Come on, boss, it will be fun. Kiwa chimed in, sounding excited by the prospect of a fight. I had expected nothing less from her.

‘It will be good for us,’ Hank put in his tuppence, then added, ‘I’m Hank, by the way.’

Krissy furrowed her brows, and her face darkened as if we were a jury that had just handed her a death sentence. After ten seconds of heavy silence she said,

It’s not even up to me. This isn’t my ship, I can’t give orders here. Take it up with the captain!

I was sure she thought I would give up at this point, considering Captain Fenar had a very similar personality to Master Fenar, and asking either of them for anything was a dubious proposition at best. I considered the option of just jumping over to the ork ship once we were close enough, but doing that without warning or permission would go down like a lead balloon, and we’d have to face the wrath of not one but two Fenars. That was to be avoided at all cost, and I was left with no other option than to go the first route: try to convince the captain of the Furious Fist that my idea was a good one.

I informed Krissy of my decision and of her task of presenting my idea.

Well, I’m not doing that. Krissy refused me at point blank range. If you want to get us all killed, at least do it yourself.

How uncooperative. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand her reluctance, but if she thought it would deter me, she was in for a surprise.

‘Alright, leave it with me.’

What? Are you serious? Are we seriously doing this? She protested immediately.

‘Well, you can sit this one out if you want. I can just grab onto an ork and pull myself onto the ship. Done it before, remember?’

Yeah, I remember. Her unhappy groan echoed in the voice-chat. Well, if you can get the Fenars to agree to it, then I’ll go.

Okay, that was good, phase one of the plan complete. Now I needed a strategy to convince the captain. And I had an idea, thanks to Krissy. The Fenars. We had two of them on this ship, and on the basis of “better the devil you know”, I believed I should start with daddy Fenar — if I managed to convince him, then he could help me convince her daughter. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but we had some time before catching up to the ork galley.

Need any help? Kiwa offered.

I wasn’t sure if she could help — she hadn’t spent much time talking to Fenar, apart from the initial questionings after the wild-spirit-incident in Gal-Themar. I hadn’t spoken to the man much either, but having observed him during his interactions with Krissy, I thought I had the measure of the man, and I thought I knew how to talk to him. This was going to be a difficult test, but if I passed, I could graduate from being a pushover and advance to the next level in more than one way.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said to Kiwa, and I set out to achieve the impossible.

***

Krissy was standing only a few paces behind Master Fenirig Arte, giving the man some space. He was in a discussion with his officers — the scout-masters — and a couple of marines, trying to come up with ways in which the rangers could or would assist in different scenarios, such as boarding the enemy ship, or the enemy boarding our ship, or having to fight orks while swimming. I was having second thoughts about disturbing him — an act that would no doubt result in a hailstorm of verbal abuse coming my way. But I gritted my metaphorical teeth, repeating a mantra in my mind: “you’re not a pushover, you got this”. Well, at least I could test our new and improved comm-thread, and I got to it.

I stuck a tentacle into Fenar’s soul. The man shuddered as I attached the thread to the appropriate node in there. He knew exactly what was happening; he spun around and glared at Krissy, and he opened his mouth to unleash some unpleasantness on us, but I beat him to it.

‘Hey, Master Fenar, how are you on this fine day?’

And I wanted to facepalm. “How are you on this fine day?” I knew I could have come up with a better opening line. Maybe I was more nervous than I thought or wanted to admit.

Oh gods, it’s the invisible shit-puppet. The Master of Third Rangers growled like an angry wolf through the voice-chat. Trust a former spiritualist to be able to do that perfectly. Listen you fuck, you call me Fenar one more time and I’ll peel off your invisible hide. In fact, you try talking to me without my permission again and I’ll kick you back to Hell and beyond.

‘Uhm … sorry about that, Master Fenirig Arte, but I have something to discuss with you,’ I informed him.

What do you want and it had better be good or you’ll be swimming the rest of the way. His thought-voice thundered like a storm in full swing.

Yep, as pleasant as always. Regardless, I did have to make this good.

‘Well, do you consider thinning the herd on that galley and capturing the captain for interrogation good? Without having to risk your men? Or the marines for that matter?’

Hm. I’m listening, but you’re not out of the shitpool yet. He said, his tone all the warning I needed to know he was serious. Then again, when wasn’t he serious?

He took a step towards us, and Krissy held her ground admirably, her flinching almost imperceptible. The rangers and the few marines, on the other hand, had no idea why the famous — or infamous — Master Fenirig Arte was suddenly glaring at the lone human on the ship without saying anything, and if looking puzzled had been a competitive sport, all of them would have got gold.

I’d had a feeling that the prospect of gaining more intelligence for our mission would be the right thing to say, and it seemed to have worked — he was at least willing to hear me out, and if I could convince him it would work, he could in turn convince his daughter to let us get on the ship and feast on the souls of the enemy. Win-win. Or two birds with one stone. Whichever applied. So, I braced myself for the uphill battle that had taken the shape of a scarfaced elf.