Happy Holidays from all of us here at The Workbench!

Here's a little 'holiday treat' from "To Serve The Petal Throne", from our first voyage with Harchar and his crew...

(And, of course, a little music to listen to while you read of action and adventure on the high seas:



Have fun, and a great holiday!)

Chapter the Eighth:
Concerning Not-So-Epic Voyages Towards Livyanu, And The Curious Adventures Occurring Along The Way

The Open Sea, South of The City of Jakalla; Late Fall, 2358 A. S.


It was the noise that alerted him; the low-pitched humming that was more felt than heard. Captain Harchar and his crew had been too busy resetting the yards and sails to notice, but Chirine had had very little to occupy his time since they had set sail. He was bemused by the crew’s activity; there was no compelling nautical reason to convert the ship’s rigging from that of a modern square-rigger to that of an older lateen-rigged ship, and Chirine suspected that more subtle reasons were the cause. Harchar and his three ‘officers’ had waited until they were well outside the sight of land, and well out of the normal shipping lanes, before they had begun to send down the sails and yards to reset them. They were also on a southerly course from Jakalla; Chirine, who had had some experience in these matters in the past, knew that their course should have taken them to the west along the coast and most assuredly not to the south.

The humming came on the wind, from astern of them, and Chirine lifted his head as if sniffing the wind that came over the rail in fits and starts. Vrisa came up to the rail next to him, and asked what had piqued his curiosity.

“I think we’re going to have visitors,” Chirine told her, “and sooner rather then later. I also think we’d better think about getting into armor, as I doubt they’ll be at all friendly.”

“Oh?” she said curiously, “what could be out here on the open ocean? I haven’t seen another ship since early yesterday, not even a fishing boat.”

“Out here in the deeps, there’s only one kind of ship, and only one that makes that kind of low humming; I think we’ll be seeing some Hlyss, before the day is out.”

“Hlyss?” she said, “Hlyss?” and muttered a curse as she ran for the companionway that led below.

Chirine managed to get Harchar’s attention, interrupting the captain’s bellowing of orders to his crew, and told him of his suspicions. Harchar was not very interested, until Chirine steered him to the after part of the deck and told him to listen. After a moment, Harchar heard the sound as well, and turned to roar orders at his crew with a new urgency.

Most of the deckhands kept setting the rigging, but Chirine noticed that several began setting up what looked like small bolt-throwers on the after-deck and on the forecastle. For an “honest sea-faring merchant”, Harchar seemed to be very well-armed and his crew very well-drilled.

Chirine viewed the preparations for battle with a certain professional interest, especially the bolt-throwers that Harchar had failed to mention in his glowing account of his ship’s luxuries and appointments. Harchar hadn’t come particularly recommended by the harbor authorities in Jakálla, really, but he did seem to have a reputation on the waterfront of being able to deliver the goods. Just what goods were always left unspecified, with many sideways glances and all-too-casual indifference to the questioner’s antecedents. Harchar’s continuing protestations that he and his crew were just “…honest seafaring merchants…” were slightly at odds with all of this, but Chirine had seen less well-maintained fittings and less disciplined crew on a few warships in his varied career.

Which, he mused, would be all to the good in the very near future; the low squat shape of the Hlyss ship was now visible on the distant horizon. It was still too far away to make out what weapons it carried, but Chirine was reasonably sure that those weapons would both out-range and out-throw Harchar’s bolt-throwers. However, the Hlyss labored under the tactical handicap that their goal was not to sink the humans’ ship; not initially, anyway, not until the valuable humans themselves were captured and sent below decks to the Hlyss nest-mother. Captain, crew, Chirine, and his fellow passengers were all fated to become living incubators for the Hlyss larvae that would be implanted into them unless they could fight off the nest-ship and it’s crew of insectoid warriors.

Harchar and his three officers seemed to have their preparations well in hand; they had full sail cracked onto the yards and were running as fast as they could with the wind. It was not going to be fast enough for them to run away from their enemy, but it would buy them all time to prepare. Vidlakte had the marines in their armor, and formed up out of the crew’s way in the well deck; the sailors on the bolt throwers had the torsion skeins on their weapons all wound to the maximum. There seemed to be very little for Chirine to do, for now anyway, so he got Harchar’s attention to see if there was any way he could be of use.

Harchar, though, was not interested in interruptions from the paying passengers, even those who had chartered himself and his crew on Imperial business. All Chirine got for his trouble was a snarled command to go below and stay out of the way; the maritime professionals would handle this crisis, for victory or naught.

The rest of the passengers, the priests and scholars who had been sent on this mission by Lord Gamalu and the Seal Imperium, were already in their cabins. Chirine, who shared the large great cabin at the ship’s stern with Vrisa, thought that it might be high time to ‘lay below’, as the sailors called it, and get into his own armor.

Vrisa, anticipating his thoughts, had already laid out his armor for him to put on.
She was already in her mail hauberk and scale plates, but hadn’t put her helmet on yet in order to help him with the straps and buckles of his shoulder plates and cuirass. He normally wore his armor’s padded tunic and leather jerkin as his shipboard wear, so it was the matter of a moment to pull his own mail over his head and belt it at the waist. The cuirass came next, with Vrisa making sure the straps were tight, and then finally the shoulder plates with their Classical Tsolyani glyphs and the Kolumel, the Seal of the Seal Imperium engraved on them.

Vrisa started to hand him his flame-crested helmet, but he waved it away. Instead, he gestured at the door of their cabin.

“Lock it, and throw the bolts, if you please,” he said quietly, “we will need to be undisturbed for a while.”

The mercenary woman looked at him oddly, as he went over to the shutters that covered the windows of their cabin; these were normally closed, as the sea life of Tékumel was often both inquisitive and hungry. The shutters usually kept them out, but would serve very little purpose in the coming fight.

Chirine very carefully and very cautiously peered through a narrow gap in the shutters’ latticework; he could see the Hlyss ship quite clearly now, and it was easily out-running their own ship despite Harchar’s strident commands to his crew to make yet more sail. The nest-ship’s low shape was broken by a series of bastions or barbettes, with the two set to port and starboard of their enemy each with a large and powerful bolt thrower. Smaller turrets on each side held bolt-throwers similar to the ones Harchar had, but they would play but a small role in the coming fight; the real work would be done by the forward-firing weapons of the Hlyss. He could also see that the higher, central artillery position had something else mounted in it, where it could fire at will over the large boarding ramp that would shortly discharge the Hlyss warriors.

“It looks like our uninvited friends might have a Lightning-bringer,” he observed to Vrisa.

She greeted this observation with a considerable lack of enthusiasm, and wryly said “Wonderful! Can we renegotiate my contract as your bodyguard, before it’s too late?”

“Of course we can,” he replied, still peering out at the oncoming enemy, “better travel stipend, better rates of daily pay, an increase in your rations and equipment allowances?”

“I was thinking a clause about ‘no sea travel with reputed smugglers’ would be in order,” she answered. She started to say something else, but broke off; “What are you doing?”

Chirine was making small gestures in the air, and muttering arcane words under his breath. “I thought that it would be just too bad for our pursuers if their energy weapon misfired and caused them some damage…”

“You can do that with your sorcery?” Vrisa was impressed; she knew little of sorcery, aside from the kind of spells temple priests used for minor things, and didn’t know what sort of sorcery her employer had been trained in.

“No,” he absently replied, “but we won’t tell anyone that. When I command, throw open the shutters and fall as flat on the deck as you can.”

She saw now that he was forming a sphere of energy between his cupped hands. She tore her eyes away from the red-orange glow and glanced out the gap in the shutters just in time to see the Hlyss begin firing at them. The missiles were all aimed high, at their rigging, and it was obvious that the intent was to cripple them and slow down their flight. She could also see the Hlyss warriors gathering on the deck; she shuddered, and looked back at Chirine. He seemed frozen in time, concentrating on keeping control of the energies he’d summoned forth from the Planes Beyond.

She looked away from him, and back at their pursuers. The Hlyss were even closer now, and Harchar’s men were firing back trying to kill as many of the warriors as possible. Vrisa could see their bolts strike home, but there always seemed to be more of the insectoid warriors ready to take the place of the dead being unceremoniously thrown over the low parapets of the nest-ship. The spectacle of battle was enthralling, but she tore gaze away from the carnage to look back again at Chirine.

A moment later, he curtly nodded and mouthed the single word “NOW!” She threw the shutters open and threw herself to the deck; she felt a scorching hot something pass over her for the briefest of instants, and felt Chirine flattening himself on the deck as well as a well-timed bolt from the Hlyss ship passed over them both to imbed itself in their cabin’s door. She had to look; she had to see what Chirine had unleashed, and her quick reflexes brought her head up just in time to see the sphere of energy impact the Hlyss ship.

Her mouth opened to tell him he’d missed; the sphere hit the bow of the ship, and not amongst the crowded warriors who were massing to board them. The words never came; there was a brilliant flash of light, followed an instant later by a sharp crack, and a huge hole opened up in the bow of the nest-ship. The speed of their pursuers forced the sea into the hole in an unstoppable torrent, and she saw the hull of the nest-ship begin to fracture like an egg on a cook’s frying pan. The bow began to settle lower and lower into the sea, as more and more water was forced into the gaping hole; she saw, her mouth still open, the deck of the nest-ship begin to rise towards her and the massed warriors begin to tumble helplessly off the tilting decks.

Before two dozen of her heartbeats had passed, the nest-ship had reared up in the water like a huge ovoid platter; the Hlyss on the decks were scrambling to find something to grasp, when the nest-ship’s hull finally gave way under the intolerable stresses that it had never been designed to cope with. As the ship came to an almost vertical slope, the hull cracked right across and the stern fell back down onto the sea with a tremendous spray of water. Vrisa saw, for one heart-stopping instant that would haunt her nightmares, the bloated and grotesque form of the ship’s nest-mother and her attendants before the onrushing sea blotted them from her sight. The thought that she could have been that creature’s prey sickened her; the window railing was close and for which, at that moment, she was most grateful.

She rolled back on her haunches to face Chirine, who handed her a cloth for her face and armor. He had also rolled upright, and had also been able to see the results of his incantations. He looked past her, out the open window, with another cloth in his hands.

“You knew that would happen,” she coughed, “you could have warned me!”

Abstractedly, he looked down at the cloth in his hands and then over to the now-stained one in hers.

“Not that! The spell!” As he was her employer, she bit back several choice words as it seemed politic not to curse at him under the circumstances.

“Ah! Sorry!” he said as he looked past her at the wreckage in the water that marked the nest-ship’s grave, and which was getting farther and farther astern with each moment. There was, for a number of obvious reasons, no attempt to rescue any possible survivors; they would be left for Tékumel’s hungry sea life to dispose of. “I did not want to alarm you if the spell had miscarried; such powerful spells don’t always have their intended effect.”

“Like what,” she asked as she took the second cloth from him, “you might have missed them or something?”

“Ah, no; I might have caused us to explode, instead; there’s always a chance of that happening, which is why such spells are used with care and forethought.” He had the grace to look somewhat embarrassed. “I thought that under the circumstances, the risk of being killed in the spell’s blast was a better option then becoming an unwilling incubator for the Hlyss’ larvae…”

“Oh, well! La! Indeed! Next time, and I hope that there won’t be a ‘next time’, you might take a moment to give me some little warning about what’s going to happen. Or might happen. Oh, you know what I mean!”

A sharp rap on their door interrupted their conversation. The M’morchan priest shouted in at them to see if they were all right, and nearly got the end of the Hlyss bolt across his face when they opened the door into the passageway. The priest looked at the bolt with wide eyes, and then past them to the open window. He started to ask an obvious question, thought better of it, and took the bolt Chirine handed him after he’d removed it from the door. Chirine asked him to let the purser know that there was a hole in the door that needed to be mended when there was time, and that he and Vrisa would clean up the mess in the cabin. The priest closed his open mouth, bowed, and went off to find the ship’s carpenter.

By the time Chirine had closed the door, Vrisa had gotten the window’s shutters closed and latched. They helped each other out of their armor, and packed each set away after the usual checks for damage and loose fittings. They sat back against the cushions Chirine had bribed the purser to provide, and sipped some of the wine that Chirine had stocked for them. Above them, they could hear the tread of Vidlakte’s marines as they went below to their own quarters, and Harchar roaring orders at the crew to clean up the decks and mend any damage from the running fight.

After a while, which was filled by a companionable silence, Vrisa asked Chirine “Will you tell them?”

He looked up at the overhead deck planks for a moment. “No, I think not. I think it would be useful to us to keep this little secret between the two of us; I do not entirely trust our good captain and his loyal crew of ‘honest merchant seafarers’, and I think it might be good to have a few more strings to our bow - as the saying goes.”

“And our fellow passengers? What to tell them?”

“I think a discreet silence; they may suspect what really happened, of course, as I am a Priest of Lord Vimuhla, but I think we should be cautious. If the subject arises, I’ll let them know, but in the meantime we’ll keep silent.”

She considered her next words carefully. “So, then, may I guess that there are Temple politics involved? I do not wish to offend, of course…”

“No offense taken; your assumption is quite accurate!” Chirine laughed, in his short sardonic way. “Lord Gamalu, the High Princeps of the Temple of Thumis, hatched this idea of a mission to deliver aid to his noble Livyani friends after they’d gotten themselves mired down in their invasion of the Tsolei Isles…”

It was Vrisa’s turn to laugh; the hierophants of Livyanu were famous at their skill in sorcery, but just as equally famous for not having the best military forces of the Five Empires. The Livyani had mounted a sea-borne campaign to chastise the pirates and buccaneers of the remote Isles, and the invasion had not gone at all well for them.

“… and since Lord Gamalu is a bit of an ‘adventurist’, and popular in certain Imperial circles as a counterbalance to the Military Party, his wish to aid the Livyani was approved,” he continued, “but with more then just his collection of priests and scholars to be sent on the trip; hence my humble presence, and yours as I would prefer to return from this particular trip!”

They both laughed at that; it had been what she was thinking all along.

“And just what kind of priest do I serve? You seem to lack some of the spells I’ve seen other priests and sorcerers use, but you’ve displayed a mastery of the energies of the Planes Beyond that I have never seen…” She almost finished the sentence, but stopped suddenly as she realized that she was showing more knowledge then might be usual for a common mercenary.

Chirine offered her a small toast; and replied “You have a good education, and a good question that I really should have answered before this. I am of the branch of the Temple that specializes in military magic, and not that to which you might be accustomed. I specialize in the more recondite spells of the battlefield, which are perhaps not the most useful in normal times but do come into play in situations like today’s.”

“You understate what you did this day, you know.”

“Perhaps, but I would prefer to be prudent. I think we’ll both enjoy the trip more, and live to tell about it…”

Thank you so much for sharing this story excerpt Chirine!

I love hearing abour Harchar, Chirine's and the others. It was interesting to see how Chirine didn't really trust Harchar at first. I wonder if this was to change through their adventures together? I liked reading the exchanges between Chirine and Vrisa. Tekumel sometimes seems like it is all about social hierarchy and exotic forms of etiquette, so I like seeing these friendly and sometimes even humours dialogues between them.

I didn't realize Chirine was able to pull of such powerful magics. Are there stats available for any of these characters anywhere?

Looking forward to reading To Serve The Petal Throne when it comes out! :)


-Havard

PS: Happy New Year! :)