Chapter 42: Shark Bait (1/2)

I came to slowly, drifting out of my haze like a ship slipping free of a thick fog. The turbulent motion that had been the last movements the ship was making were gone. I felt like I was suspended in the deep, which made the cabin furnishings surrounding me confusing.

I realized there were two eyes peering at me intently, and my brain stuttered and flashed into cognition as a response. Sadeo nodded from his perch on the chair by my bedside.

“’Bout time you came around.”

I swallowed. It seemed the only reason my throat wasn’t parched was because of how my body was hydrated in the sea. “I was out a long time?”

“The rest of the storm.”

As his words sank in, I cursed. Not finding a single expletive to be satisfactory, I subjected Sadeo’s ears to the profanity that only an experienced sailor can produce.

“What’s the status of the crew and ship?” I almost got up to see for myself, but the difficulty I had in moving my arms convinced me to listen to a report first. Passively, I started my healing spell.

“Well, when you got hit by those honking big lighting bolts you were thrown clear of the mast! We wouldn’t have been able to do a thing for you, except the ship submerged to match whatever depth you were at. Soon as you sunk deep enough we were able to get the ship around to pick you up.”

He gestured to my bandaged arms. “Those probably don’t need to be on, they haven’t needed changing in a while.”

Stiffly, I started to unwrap my arms. I hissed quietly through my teeth at what I saw.

Starting from the tips of my fingers, around my hands and up my arms were ugly purple and black bruising surrounding branching figures like a fern. The design looked like it had blistered and was nearing the last stage of recovery, the bruises much worse looking but concerned me less.

I could see how the lighting had flowed through my skin! “You said there was more than one lightning bolt?”

“Yes, a pair of them. One from in front of you and the other from the side.”

It seemed that a bolt had struck each of my hands and traveled up my arms. I could see where some lighting had crawled down over the right side of my chest, but no matter how I craned my neck around I couldn’t see its effect on my back.

Sadeo watched me for a minute before asking, “You sure you want to see?”

If someone asks me that of course I’m going to want to see it! Sadeo used a hand mirror to help me see the spot I couldn’t feel. At the base of my neck the two fern-like designs lanced together in an angry circle that was numb to my touch. “How …”

Sadeo shrugged. “Ask a lightning wizard, maybe they know. Maybe they canceled each other out?”

“Doesn’t work that way,” I muttered. “They must’ve both left my body together …”

“What are the odds of you getting struck by two lighting bolts at once?”

I didn’t mentioned that I’d been messing with magic, or that I suspected the dragon of playing with me. Maybe it had struck me as it saw me fiddling with its light show. Maybe something about how I created the lightning flow made two. Maybe there weren’t really two, and a single bolt had passed through my body like I’d seen it pass around the dragon. I’d ask someone who had enough expertise to guide me.

If I ever felt up to admitting how foolish I’d been.

I had a prompt waiting for me, and I accepted it.

Congratulations! You have learned the spell Shocking Touch!

I hadn’t learned to cast lightning, but my foolhardy experiment had netted me something. I would experiment with this spell – when I wasn’t so jumpy at the thought. And not in water.

“Burdette took over while you were recuperating,” Sadeo said. “He directed us around to pick you up.”

As if mentioning him had summoned him, Burdette stepped into the cabin. He didn’t knock, but given that I’d been unconscious for his other visits and he’d never needed to knock on that door before, I ignored that.

“Captain,” the man nodded. “I thought I heard voices.”

“Report, Mr. Burdette.”

Burdette glanced at Sadeo before taking the other chair in the cabin and pulling it to my bed. I had yet to even stand and didn’t feel like attempting it with Burdette in the room.

“After your accident, the Death’s Consort submerged. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was matching your depth. It turns out none of the crew has control over the ship’s depth, for all that we control the sails.”

I nodded. “It is one of my professional abilities.”

“Figured as much. Anyhow, once below the storm we managed the ship easily enough. We turned it around and found you. Again, it wouldn’t have been possible if the ship didn’t match your depth. We got you aboard and the ship has stayed the same level since.” My first mate met my eyes levelly. “There was talk amongst some of leaving you. That or killing you and seeing if your curse lifted. We pounded it into the fools heads that anything bad happening to you – even if it lifted the curse – meant we were released below the surface on a ship that would never sail again. We kept it in hand. That and ...” he looked a bit uncomfortable. “It seemed like anyone who actually made up his mind to hurt you froze up and couldn’t do it.”

I wanted to get a more detailed report on that later. For now, I waved him on.

“We rode the currents south to the point you’d indicated to me. I …” he faltered for a moment. “I made level 25. Just like you promised. I didn’t expect to for two years or more but … well I did. That sailing we did, stars, it was something else!” He glanced at me again and shifted in his seat. “Anyway. When I hit level 25 I developed new skills. I’ve been able to read shoal waters for years, but now … now I can read the topography of the ocean like I put it there, and see how it affects water pressure, temperature, how that makes currents … so yeah. We didn’t make as good of time as we might have on the surface, but we still made it faster than I ever imagined. I made sure to run the crew through their paces like you wanted, and they’ve come along admirably. We’re just off the Falai Cliffs now – about two days of travel. We can’t get closer at our current depth.”

I nodded and with a mental flex the ship started surfacing slowly. “Let’s go up top then.”

I thanked the stars that when I pushed myself to my feet they didn’t betray me. Burdette stopped me before I went out.

“There’s just one more thing Captain,” he said. “Day before last we encountered a pod of Liopleuros. We passed them and thought that was it. It wasn’t. They were stalking us. They took one of the men straight from the rigging – Billy. We’ve been playing turtle ever since. They’re still stalking us. With a minimum crew above decks – ready to dash for the nearest hatch – we’ve avoided any other casualties, but I recommend surfacing before you go out there.”

I stopped, and I stopped the ship’s ascent with me. I didn’t immediately follow through with the rash decision I wanted to do. I carefully considered my rash decision, then did it.

“Mr. Burdette, Sadeo, I recommend you stay here.” And then I went out.

I looked about carefully. The sails were stowed, the ship’s wheel secured in place. We were drifting slowly with the currents but had no other movement. A glance showed that Sadeo was hugging the bulkhead and gunwale but following me. Burdette stood just outside my cabin door, neither flagrantly following nor staying back. Smart.

Burdette was just too bloody capable.

I hated that I’d put control of the ship back into his hands after establishing myself as the new Captain. Not only that, I’d needed him to take command after I’d publicly humiliated him.

What bothered me most was that if I’d told him to do it, then what he did was perfect. He did everything exactly as I’d wanted him to. My only problem was that I had been the idiot to play with magic and get myself laid up. I had been the one to foist control back into his hands.

Maybe I was worrying for naught. Maybe I was seeing seeds that weren’t there. Burdette didn’t seem like he was trying to resume control. He’d gotten his next level – proof of what I promised sailing under me would provide. He was struggling, but he seemed to be trying to find his place under me.

I just wanted to blame someone besides myself.

I was a capable sailor. I couldn’t even begin to doubt that about myself. But a capable Captain? I wanted to cut myself some slack, make excuses for my mistakes, but I was not in any sort of position to be making mistakes. I needed to be more than competent as a Captain – I needed to be bloody exceptional at it.

And I didn’t really know how.

My musing did not interfere with my awareness. I was looking for predators, and predators I found – in the form of a blur streaking towards me. The huge, streamlined creature just brushed against the gunwale and cracked it, its maw opening wide. Even with all my movement capabilities, I barely avoided its snapping teeth as it adjusted its strike almost as quickly as I moved. It brushed some rigging as its massive body sailed across the ships beam.

This specimen was about 35 feet long. If my time whaling and hunting had taught me anything, it was an older adult, evidenced by the handful of teeth it was missing. It still had plenty to tear me apart in its maw that was one-fifth its body length. Its rear paddle-like fins were about twice the size of its two front ones. It wasn’t an endurance beast, as evidenced by its relatively low stamina, but they were speed hunters.

I’d seen them hunt whales – and we hadn’t contested their chosen meal. They would strike as they blazed by, then once the whale was nearly dead, they latched on to a mouthful and rolled, tearing the mouthful of flesh away like a crocodile. With something as small as a humanoid, a large beast might swallow us whole. If they were feeling generous, they might let a pod-mate take half.

The predator swam alongside the ship at a distance, watching me. It seemed like it was curious, wondering who walked the deck alone and didn’t flee.

“Starboard side!” Sadeo called.

I spun and immediately hit the deck, rolling as another strike narrowly missed. This time the jaw of the creature hit the deck with a crack. The wood cracked, anyway. I think the Liopleuro was fine.

The second beast was slow to get out of range, lackadaisical even. It saw everyone on board as easy prey. I pulled out a bow. The prick of an arrow forced it to reconsider its opinion, even if it wasn’t particularly effective.

I looked from one side of the ship to the other. The first beast had disappeared.

I snarled. Pack tactics. That creature had played me. It distracted me, kept my focus, while its buddy had lined up their own strike. I trotted back to my cabin. Burdette was giving me a look that didn’t quite say “you’re an idiot” but it came close.

“Well?” Sadeo said. “I’d love to pick ‘em off for you but you don’t have anything on board that will do the job.”

“We could pick up this stash of yours, Captain.” Burdette suggested. “Get some artillery on board and let the kitsune have his way.”

“No,” I said. “They’ll have left us by then – unless they pick off a few more of us to stay interested, and I refuse to let that happen!”

“You want to fight them.” Burdette said flatly. “Alone or with the crew?”

I shook my head. “Not a straight open fight. I’m the fastest on board and I couldn’t keep pace with them long enough to whittle them down.”

“Curse them?” Sadeo suggested. At my look he shrugged. “What? It’s a cursed ship, we’re your cursed crew, can’t you just curse them? Make them rot away or something? Or better yet, tame them into your pets?”

“I wish,” I said. “But taming things was a different profession, and I didn’t have any luck when I had the time to experiment. I don’t have curses, they’re just … a side effect of my nature. The nature of my profession.”

Sadeo lifted his paws. “Can’t say I understand the ins and outs of it, but ok.”

“Can your magic make you faster?” Burdette asked.

“That was my magic making me faster.”

He nodded. “It was pretty fast. I thought you were done for.”

“I can’t get any faster, but that’s not the point. I can slow them down a bit with one of my water spells if they stay in range long enough. I normally use that to make the difference in speed between me and my opponents even greater.”

“Take away their mobility.” Sadeo said. “I like it. Makes the targets easy.”

“My spell can’t do that much. Although …”

There could be a non-magical way of doing it. My traps skill was underutilized, having not been part of my training regimen in Tulisang. I liked traps though. How to adapt my 10 levels in traps to stop a large predator in its tracks, perhaps utilize my knowledge of the magical components I’d gained on hitting level 10?

I was thinking magic again. It was hard not to, but by thinking too creatively I missed the simple answer right in front of me.

“Burdette, here’s what’s going to happen. I want you to prepare the crew.”

It only took me an hour to set my trap. I’d surfaced until the tips of my masts were poking through the surface – which was still filled with heavy swells in the wake of the storm. I wanted to be able to swim about, so I didn’t surface completely. I had a few people keep watch for anything that thought I’d make an easy meal.

In the end I rigged a simple snare – just supersized. I just needed to take away the Liopleuro’s mobility. The snare was half of that. If it worked, the other half would fall into place too.