“Ready the forward ballista!” the captain ordered. A squad of men on the forecastle began to crank a small capstan, which ratcheted the massive bowstring into firing position. They lighted another brazier in advance of the stanchion as an incendiary bolt was loaded. Then they waited, once more watching the ships sail closer.
Everything about the Dacca ship was exotic. Made of dark wood, the vessel glittered with gold swirls artfully painted along the hull. It bore long decorative pendants of garish colors. A stylized image of a black dragon in flight adorned the scarlet mainsail, and on the bowsprit was the head of a ghoulish beast with bright emerald eyes. The sailors appeared as foreign as the ship. They were dark-skinned, powerful brutes wearing only bits of red cloth wrapped around their waists.
Poorly handled, the Bright Star lost the wind and its momentum. Behind it, the tartane descended. Another volley of arrows from the Dacca smoked through the air. This time several struck the Bright Star in the stern, but one lucky shot made it to the mainsail, setting it aflame.
Although victorious over the lugger, the tartane chose to flee before the approaching Emerald Storm. It came about and Hadrian watched Captain Seward ticking off the distance as the Storm inched toward it. Even after the time lost during the turn, the Dacca ship was still out of ballista range.
“Helm alee. Bring her over!” the captain shouted. “Tacks and sheets!”
The Emerald Storm swung round to the same tack as the tartane, but the Storm did not have the momentum under it, nor the nimbleness of the smaller ship. The tartane was the faster vessel, and all the crew of the Emerald Storm could do was watch as the Dacca sailed out of reach.
Seeing the opportunity lost, Captain Seward ordered the Storm heaved to and the longboats launched. The Bright Star’s mainsail and mast burned like a giant torch. Stays and braces snapped and the screams of men announced the fall of the flaming canvas to the deck. Still, the ship’s momentum carried it astern of the Storm. As it passed, they could see the terrified sailors struggling hopelessly to put out the flames that enveloped the deck. Before the longboats were in the water, the Bright Star was an inferno, and most of the crew were already in the sea.
The boats returned laden with frantic men. Nearly all were tawny-skinned, dark-eyed sailors dressed in whites and grays. They lay across the deck coughing, spitting water, and thanking Maribor, as well as any nearby crew member.
The Bright Star was an independent Wesbaden trader from Dagastan heading home to western Calis with a load of coffee, cane, and indigo. Despite the Storm’s timely intervention, more than a third of the small crew perished. Some passed out in the smoke while fighting the flames, and others remained trapped below deck. The captain of the Bright Star perished, struck by one of the fiery arrows the Dacca had rained on his vessel. This left only twelve men, five of whom lay in Dr. Levy’s care with burns.
Mr. Temple sized up the able-bodied survivors and added them to the ship’s complement. Royce was back at work aloft as Hadrian finished serving dinner to the crew. Hadrian’s easygoing attitude and generosity with the galley grease had won him several friends. There had been no more attempts on Royce’s life, but they still did not know why Royce had been targeted, or by whom. For the moment, it was enough that Bernie, Derning, and Staul remained at a safe distance.
“Aye, this is Calis, not Avryn,” Hadrian heard one of the new seamen say in a harsh, gravelly voice, as he brought down the last messkid. “The light of civilization grows weak like a candle in a high easterly wind. The farther east you go, the stronger the wind blows, till out she goes, and in the darkness ye stand!”
A large number of the off-watch clustered around an aft table, where three of the new sailors sat.
“Then there you are in the world of the savage,” the Calian sailor went on. “A strange place, me lads, a strange place indeed. Harsh, violent seas and jagged inlets of black-toothed rock, gripped tight by dense jungle. The netherworld of the Ba Ran Ghazel, the heart of darkness is a place of misery and despair, the prison where Novron drove the beasties to their eternal punishment. They can’t help but try to get out. They look at the coasts of Calis with hungry eyes and they find footholds. Like lichen, they slip in and grow everywhere. The Calians try to push them back, but it be like trying to swat a sky of flies or hold water in yer hands.” He cupped his palms, pretending to lose something between his fingers.
“Goblin and man living so close together ain’t natural,” another said.
The first sailor nodded gravely. “But nothing in them jungles be natural. They have been linked for too long. The sons of Maribor and the spawn of Uberlin be warring one moment, then trading the next. Just to survive, the Calian warlords took to the ways of the goblins and spread the cursed practices of the Ba Ran to their own kin. Some of them are more goblin now than men. They even worship the dark god, burning tulan leaves and making sacrifices. They live like beasts. At night, the moon makes them wild, and in the darkness their eyes glow red!”