Chapter 61: Fighting Justice (1/2)

The Laya was gone. A Madu ship had snuck up on them in the darkness and quickly incapacitated the already crippled ship. The Carpathia wasn’t in a position to help, having pulled farther forward. Graves had the soldiers readying to fight and the ballistae and onagers manned while he decided the best option to take.

There was a now-visible ship firing on the sinking Laya. It was possible it was a single hunter taking the opportunity to finish off a wounded ship, but there was also the possibility there were more ships hiding in the night. The moons and stars were cloaked by overcast clouds, making the sea a dark, void-looking place. A ship wouldn’t even need a stealth field on a night like this.

Going to help the Laya could be falling right into a trap. Running could mean the loss of our best chance to destroy our enemy before they did the same thing to us.

I know what I’d do: slip beneath the waves, go right underneath the Laya to rescue any I could, then hunt about for the attackers, destroying them from below. Of course, the Carpathia didn’t have the same abilities as the Death’s Consort.

Graves gave the order to raise sails, and when I went to help the petty officers Siebert bade me to stay. It seemed that having an amateur war mage on the quarterdeck was more important than having a high level seaman aloft.

“Mr. Frederick, you currently have control of the flood barrier, correct?” Graves asked quietly.

“Correct.”

“Pass it off to Mr. Dom. What’s your mana sitting at?”

Frederick gave Graves an inquiring look. “I’d need a potion to be at full strength, but I’ve still got over 300. Why?”

“Can you pull off that lightning storm?”

Frederick pursed his lips, glancing at where we’d last glimpsed the Laya’s attacker and the cloud coverage above. “Yes, but I’d be nearly useless to you for the next hour.”

Graves nodded. “There’s two ships out here. They sunk the Laya because they can’t take her home, but they want to capture ships and the Carpathia will do. We’re being baited. I expect a ship to show itself before we reach the Laya, trying to distract us from rescuing any survivors. When it does, I want you to take it out. The soldiers will prepare to repel boarders from the other vessel that will be sneaking up on us.”

I raised an eyebrow at Graves’ assumptions and directions, but he had the tactician levels, not me. He’d also fought the Madu specifically, and no doubt been briefed on their tactics. This very well could play out as he expected.

“Dom,” Graves continued. “If Mr. Frederick is able, he will retake control of the flood barrier after his attack. You will provide support and oversight for the combatants. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said. This was exactly the scenario he’d predicted when writing up our contract, and I wasn't about to object to the experience coming my way. I had a profession to develop.

“Good. Prepare yourselves, gentlemen. Lieutenant, I have the helm, see to the soldiers …”

Graves gave out more directions, moving off to find his other officers and give them their own orders. Frederick and I stood waiting at the prow. I was using my domain to make sure no ships snuck up within my sphere, though I wasn’t sure if a sufficiently powerful stealth field would be able to hide from me.

“Did you ever think you were going to be a combatant?” Frederick asked suddenly. “I mean, in battles and all? I never did. Even as a boy, I thought I could get all my XP through grand quests.” He chuckled ruefully. “My focus was always on learning and mastering magic. If I hadn’t been traded to the navy by my society I’d never have even seen a battlefield.”

“Really?” I said, surprised. “How’d you get your levels without it?”

“A handful of minor quests,” he said. “but really it was through cooperation with the adventuring guild. Those chaps will do escorts for a reasonable fee, letting mages build up their levels. I also had tutors to guide me through naturally advancing my intelligence and wisdom as far as possible before investing attribute points.”

“Nice gig. No, I used to actively run from battles.”

“Run from them?” Frederick said with an incredulous laugh. “How’d you go from that to being a mercenary?”

“Didn’t run fast enough.” I japed, prompting more laughter from him. He was keyed up, looking to deal with the jitters of pre-battle stress. How was I so calm? I didn’t really know. Maybe it was my backdoor option of simply disappearing into the sea if things got too dangerous.

Graves had us raise the sails and turn the ship so we moved with the current. We could have made better time by using some wind to rush to the Laya, but rushing was foolishness. We knew we were being baited.

It was over an hour before we got close enough to the Laya to hear the stranded men clinging to her hull, the ship holding out on the surface as long as she could to give the last of her crew a chance at life. As our men were shouting back to theirs, incoming fire peppered our starboard side, a ship dropping out of stealth illuminated by a few lanterns. They were at extreme range, the attack designed to expose themselves and challenge us rather than cripple us with a surprise strike. So far, Graves was right.

“Nice of them to illuminate themselves,” Frederick said, readying himself.

“Wait …” I started to say, but Frederick was already casting. He’d been given his orders, and was eager to fulfill them and have his role in this battle finished.

We’d talked a bit about the theory of lightning, though he’d forbade me from practicing while on the Carpathia. I’d actually grasped the principles of the flow while with the storm dragon, leading to my shocking touch spell, but missed a critical perspective switch; the mage was not ‘creating’ the lightning. The mage was opening the path for flow between two points. Once opened, lightning came. My mistake back then had been opening a path heedless of the direction of flow. Rather than shooting lighting from my hands, I’d invited it to strike me.

Frederick was not casting a simple lightning spell. He was casting a lightning storm.

I watched in awe as he used his mana to create matrixes in the clouds above, then connected focal points from the matrixes and a path for the lightning to follow – a path linked to the ship that had exposed itself.

A ship that to me, looked heavily damaged already and too much of an obvious target.

When Frederick finished his casting, there wasn’t anything at first. He sighed and sagged to the deck, his mana in the single digits. I thought perhaps he’d messed up and miscast something.

Then the lightshow started.

A crack of thunder boomed as a light arced from the clouds above to the lantern ship, striking its mast and causing fire and destruction. The bolt was just the first of many, three more following it in quick succession. Five, seven, ten … the ship was broken and burning as it was pounded mercilessly. At its peak, the spell fueled 4 different strikes simultaneously!

The spell started slow and wound up to its peak before slipping back down again, the last bolt of lightning striking the burning ship nearly a minute after the previous one. As a side effect of the matrixes Frederick had seeded in the clouds, a light rain began to fall.

Many of the crew had looked on in awe of the spell until their superiors yelled at them they had people to save. The operation to recuse the crew of the Laya continued.

I waited for the shoe to drop. If Graves plan went as predicted, another ship was still out there and looking to board us, overwhelming our defenders and taking the Carpathia as a prize. The only battles I’d been in that didn’t offer some sort of surprise, though, were ones where I’d dominated unprepared enemies from below. Maybe it was the quickness which Graves had deduced the enemies’ plan that had me paranoid, but I thought it was too easy for strategy to be unfurled just like that. That ship had looked broken before Frederick’s spell had gotten it. Graves had been expecting bait, and bait had obligingly appeared. If Graves was operating off previous encounters and the Madu knew it … well, what better time to subvert expectations?

I was right, and I was wrong. The other shoe didn’t drop until we had all the survivors we could find pulled from the Laya’s wreckage and we turned to leave. There were two ships, though.

I spotted them first. Rather, I sensed them with my domain and pointed them out. There was some doubt over my claim I could see into the darkness better than any other lookout, but I passed it off as experience at sea and Graves overrode any objections, taking me at my word. A minute later, the two ships were in sight.

Nilfheim names its ships after ideals or concepts. It’s been a running joke among many sailors about how the less-reputable Madu name their ships, but no one was laughing to see the Vengeance and the Justice drop their cloaking field and open fire.

The bolts they fired were unenchanted munitions, still deadly if directly hit but hardly doing anything to reduce the ships’ durability. If you wanted to claim the ship you were attacking, you had to have a care what you threw at it. Poison probably would have been a better option for them, but if they had been having the same logistical trouble outfitting their ships that Graves had been complaining about, regular bolts might have been their only option.

The Carpathia wasn’t constrained by trying to save its munitions, only by the resources they had on hand. Our best supply had been transferred over to the more combat-ready ships of the fleet before we’d headed back to Antarus. So, aside from a few explosive bolts that Graves’ head artillerist ‘happened’ to still have, our retaliation wasn’t much more impressive.

Graves was cursing as he ordered Polis to arm any combat-capable survivors from the Laya. “We can’t outpace them – not on our best day and not with the flooding we have – so they’ll get to board us as they wish. We can make them bleed for it, but if they board us from each side …”

He trailed off, leaving it unsaid that we were facing a losing fight. Boarders tended to lose more bodies than defenders, but the Carpathia’s crew wasn’t exceptional enough to fight off numbers from two directions.

I privately wondered if I wouldn’t be trying to make a similar deal with the Madu that I’d just scored with Graves. Would it be better to just disappear? Or show a bit more of my abilities than I’d wanted to?

Siebert was the one to notice my musings and muttered something to Graves about ‘stone-cold’ while nodding in my direction.

“Mr. Dom, any insights?” Graves asked.

“Can your crew hold off one boarding party?”

He puffed up. “You’ve seen the men fight, every one of them is …”

“I have seen the men fight, Captain, and I have to say I’m not exactly impressed. Honest assessment as a tactician: could your men hold off one of those boarding parties?”

Graves’ eyes narrowed but he considered his response long enough that I knew he wouldn’t be grandstanding. “Yes. Better to fight the Vengeance, as far as I can tell, but I believe we could repel either of them if they tried us one at a time.”

“They’re not, though.” Polis reminded us.

“When they get close enough, tack right into the Vengeance. I’ll hop over to the Justice and cause some chaos. I’m confident I can delay them and keep them from boarding you on the port side. You deal with Vengeance, I stall the Justice, you turn around when you have the chance and fight her.”

“You’d love to find your way back to your friends, now wouldn’t …” Polis said, interrupted by Graves’ raised hand.

“You’re really arrogant enough to think you could last a minute alone on the enemies’ ship?” the Captain asked.

I shrugged. “I am. If I’m wrong, you still have a distraction on the Justice. If I’m right, I expect a bonus out of this.”

Graves scoffed, but didn’t object any further. “The Carpathia can’t sink both ships, but we can cripple their ability to take us on. If we make it too costly for them, they’ll leave and count sinking the Laya as their victory. That’s the best we can hope for.”

“You’re the tactician.”

“Yes, which makes me question why I’d agree to what you’re saying. How will you get back to the Carpathia if the Justice pulls away?”

“I’ll swim. Between my lifesaving achievements and swimming level, I should be able to catch up.”

Polis scoffed. “No way.”

“Then leave a line trailing behind the ship. I’ll just need to catch up to that.”

They seemed incredulous, but in the end if I failed to catch up it was still a better outcome than losing everything. They could give me a medal posthumously, assuming it didn’t get tied up in litigation and theories of how I’d just defected back to the Madu.

Graves continued to push the ship for all the speed he could milk out of her, hoping that the Vengeance would lead the Justice just a little bit in the chase. Our pursuit remained in lockstep behind us, however, gaining at a steady pace.

Frederick had the flood barrier and with a fortifying potion would provide magical support for the crew. He was exhausted and drained, though, and any higher-tier spells were more likely to backlash than succeed.

I waited crouched by the gunwale, avoiding any stray bolts sent our way. The artillery crews were still firing back and forth and occasionally causing injury, but the ships weathered the pinpricks easily. Without any enchantments, bolts were anti-personnel weapons and the people were mostly trying to stay in cover.

The Madu ships pulled abreast the Carpathia then closed the distance. 100 yards … 70 … 50 …

I summoned a pair of water whips, got a running start and leaped, diving over the side into the black waters that held no secrets from me within the range of my domain. I hadn’t overstated my swimming capabilities. I burned a bit of stamina and shot across the distance between ships. When I breached the surface my momentum carried me completely clear of the water.

My whips lashed to the gunwale and yanked me upwards, over the side of the Justice. A cast of feather fall and a bit of stamina gave me time to lash myself to the crosstrees and pull myself there, to shouts of alarm below.

I pulled out a bow and a handful of arrows, some judicious use of my 4 levels in archery at the quarterdeck – I was no eagle eye but I could hit a Madu-sized target – and the boarding team was rousted to try and take care of me quickly. I refused to let things be quick.

I cast several air blades to slice strategic lines, then cast a water shield as some below tried to shoot back at me. My shield was weak to penetrating attacks, but it slowed and redirected shots well enough to keep me from immediate harm while I tried to return fire from within. My attacks were less encumbered by my spell, but my accuracy still went down the drain. I got my desired effect though. Having scored a hit on whoever was in charge on the quarterdeck before casting my shield, my continued harrying arrows convinced them to pull the ship away from the Carpathia while they dealt with me.

It was a sound strategy – if they left me here I could shoot their boarding party in the back right before they established their foothold, making their effort moot. Alternatively, they could let the Vengeance hold its own for a few minutes, finish me off and rejoin the party.

I was so glad they made the logical decision.

Having achieved my initial goal, I added a layer to my water shield and froze it. Arrows were suddenly skittering off a hard, clear shell of ice or else breaking on impact. A few stuck, but none poked through.

Warriors scrambled up the rigging to the crosstrees. They were faster than human soldiers would be, but they also suffered from their strongest fighters lacking the seamanship skills to be adroit in this environment.

Five minutes down, Captain Graves, and I haven’t lost a single HP yet.

When the warriors started cutting at my shield, they didn’t hold anything back. A swordsman started hacking first, but was quickly joined by an axe wielder that was much more effective, causing gouges and spiderweb cracking through the ice. When his – actually her – axe broke through, it was with a smile of triumph. That smile disappeared as my harpoon jabbed her face.