Golden Sails, Part 3

This is the third part of a five-part story. The first part is here, the second part is here, the fourth part is here, and the fifth part is coming soon!

This is one of a set of stories exploring the fictional world of Quenaunor. The previous story is here, and the first story is here.

Stanor ran to the side of the ship, the way he had been far too often over the past few days. He retched over the side, silently hating Gasord for forcing him to come. He had protested, but Gasord had practically dragged him onto his new flagship, ignoring every one of his well-reasoned arguments. It was the simple truth that he was needed back in Kaegharm and that he would be useless here, and, as likely as not, he would get himself killed. Gasord had simply kept walking. So now he was here, giving what was left of his breakfast to the sea, as the sailors and soldiers tried to hide their laughter at the sight of the great lord of Kaegharm, retching over the side of the deck.

He finished, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and spit into the water below. From his uncomfortable position, he could see his entire fleet stretching beside him. His flagship, the Nortrad¹, which he was on, was in the lead. Behind it stretched an arrowhead of warships, inside of which were the lumbering traders, their holds filled with seasick dwarven soldiers and their weapons and equipment. The plan called for the entire convoy to sneak around the elven navy by sailing as far away from the coast as their food supplies allowed, and then coming back to shore on the elven side of the border, near Kalmorn, to allow the troops, and Stanor, to disembark. Stanor stood up, lurching backward from the rail as the ship hit an unusually large wave and almost falling over. Gasord looked over at him and smiled. To Stanor, the smile seemed sadistic. Despite being more than eighty years old, the dwarf was enjoying the sea breeze, pacing the deck energetically. Just the sight of him made Stanor want to spill anything left in him over the side again. He moaned and staggered across the deck to his cabin.

1: Nortrad means “one who has killed a formbeast”, but a more idiomatic translation, in this case, might be “Slayer” or “Killer”.

Vanor stood tall at the prow of the Daveen², her long, golden hair whipping back in the breeze. She was the captain of the ship, and proud of her position, having been promoted just as the ship was finished. The Daveen was a new ship, launched a mere forty-two days ago, and Vanor was proud to captain him. The ship was experimental, with abilities that no elven ship had ever possessed in the past. He was small for an elven battleship, but his range was unmatched by all but the largest dwarven battleships, and his speed was incredible for a warship. His firepower was devastating as well, although the nature of the ship’s largest weapon made it slow to reload, and meant that the Daveen had little ammunition for it. Although Vanor was proud of her new command, she was also angry at those in the elven navy who had assigned her new ship to patrol the area she had been assigned. There would be no dwarven ships, no battles, and no glory to be found this far from the shore.

2: Daveen roughly means “bright” in Elvish. The Daveen was given his name because he was intended to be the shining beacon of a new era, the light to destroy the darkness of the elves, and because it sounds impressive and the name would sound good in elven propaganda (mostly the last).

Galanor hauled in his net, dumping a meager pair of fish into the bottom of the small fishing boat. He sighed glumly at the few dozen fish that flopped weakly in the bottom, and then stowed the net in its compartment. He angled the tiller, directing the boat back towards shore, where his family was waiting for him, hungry. He sighed again, knowing that they would still be hungry when they went to bed. About thirty fish seemed like enough to feed his family of nine easily, but that was before one factored in the rent on the house, the dock where he kept his boat, the taxes he had to pay to Kalmorn’s officials, and the wood required to heat his house. His family was poor, and the drought of fish that had recently afflicted the waters around the city had affected them worse than most.

Stanor lay miserably in his bed, feeling the ship rock beneath him. He had only had a few hours of sleep each night since he came on board. He hated the way the ship rocked, feeling like it was trying to intentionally roll him out of his bed. When he had finally grown desperate enough to try to sleep in one of the hammocks, like the crew did, he had found it uncomfortable, moving under him with the motion of the ship. So he lay in his bed and suffered. He was hungry, sick, tired, and thirsty, and he hated the sight of the ship. He could not wait to disembark, even though that was still a week away.

Vanor sat in her cabin, contemplating the way the elven commanders were wasting the capabilities of her vessel. The Daveen could do so much to help in the destruction of the weak and aging dwarven fleet, and yet she was sitting on a useless patrol that would never help anyone. A sudden knock on the door rang through the cabin, and Vanor immediately stood, moved to the center of the room, and called “Enter.” The boy at the door immediately did so. He bowed, as was proper, and she acknowledged it by a slight tilt of the head. When the boy straightened, Vanor recognized him as one of the three elves who operated the clicker.

He said: “Captain, we have picked up a large body, that appears to have a high likelihood of being dwarven in nature. From the profile, it appears to be a convoy, as it is far too large to be a single ship.”

She smiled immediately. “Very well then, we sail shoreward. Inform the crew to prepare to attack.”

“Shoreward, Captain?” responded the boy. “But the signal is coming from seaward.”

“Seaward?” She said it as a question. When the boy nodded, she said: “Then it cannot be dwarven. We’re as far out as it’s possible for anyone to reasonably be. It must be some kind of derelict, floating along uncrewed.”

“We thought it must be too, but it’s going far too fast for that. And it’s far too large to be a single derelict. It’s bigger than three dwarven battleships, whatever it is.”

“Very well then, we shall go investigate it. Tell the navigator to set a course directly for its projected path, assuming it continues in the same direction.”

“Yes, captain.” replied the boy.

Vanor contemplated this new development. It was just possible that a dwarven flotilla had decided to try to circumvent the elven fleet by going far to sea. Unlikely, but possible. She could get her battles and her glory after all.

Gallanor and his wife had had nine children together, and they thanked Nadia³ for it, as well as for the survival of eight of the children, the oldest of whom was now married, with a child blooming in her womb. Despite their poverty, and the fact that they had more than enough work to occupy their days, the two prayed daily, giving the customary hour to the gods and goddesses that governed every aspect of their life. Gallanor detested dwarves and their evil technology, as all pious elves did, and he loved formbeasts, especially the gigantic warships that came to and left the harbor. He could not read the great letters on their sides, but he knew every one by name, and he believed they knew him. They certainly looked at him when he stroked their massive sides, and the Vordatee⁴ always smashed his great fin into the water when Gallanor approached, soaking him. Gallanor did not mind. He loved every one of the massive formbeasts and considered the soaking an honor.

3: Nadia is the elven goddess of the home, birth, fertility, and the bonds between family. She is often prayed to for fertility and thanked when the prayers are answered.

4: Vordatee means “enforcer” in Elvish. Elves like to give their ships names that will sound impressive if heard in a story.

Vanor stood in the clicker room, where the formbeast, which had some technical name but was never called anything but a “clicker”, was kept and used from. The specially adapted tail of the beast quickly drew another perfect circle, added dozens of dots and lines in various places, which seemed random to Vanor, but apparently made sense to the elves who worked the thing. “Sadasha”⁵, she swore. Can you see whether they are dwarves or not?”

5: Sadasha translates roughly to “technology”, but is also often used as a curse among elves, due to their hate for what they see as a sacrilegious use of mythril.

“They are almost certainly dwarves.” responded the elf who was the most senior operator of the device. “They’re in a regular formation, so they can’t be natural, and no elven ships would ever make a formation like that, it would interfere with the tails of half the vessels. It can’t be anything else.” She pointed to the drawing the clicker had just made, her finger circling a cluster of dots.

“That’s a regular formation? It looks like a target with a dozen arrows in it, and not from very good archers either.”

“When you correct for distortions, it’s almost exactly regular, and any differences from the regular pattern are easily explained by the ships getting knocked around a bit by waves. I’d wager quite a bit on this being between thirty and thirty-five dwarven ships. The ships in the center get a bit confused, so I can’t tell you more exactly than that.”

“Very well. Keep me updated if you find anything else as we get closer.”

Stanor and his fleet sailed on, blissfully unaware that they had been detected by, and were being followed by, an elven warship. The fleet was conserving their power, traveling mostly on sail power, using only a small amount of the full capability of their propellers. The massive springs deep inside their bulk would still be almost fully wound, prepared to begin capturing fishing ships when the flotilla made land.

Vanor caught up with them in the early morning. He was going significantly faster than they were and had been moving on an intercept path. The flotilla was less than a day into the journey back to shore, near their farthest point. He had ordered a constant watch, and, as when the enemy was sighted, he immediately ordered a halt. When the enemy flotilla, which numbered a total of thirty-four ships, had drawn back out of sight, he gave orders to sail a roundabout path to end up in front of them.

Three hours later, after having traced a route that would keep the Daveen out of sight of the dwarven fleet and place him directly in the route of that fleet, Vanor ordered a halt. The crew began preparing their enormous primary weapon for firing, the first real firing of any elven ship of this class upon an actual enemy. This would go down in the history books.

Stanor woke up, realizing that he was about to be sick once again. He leaped from his bed, robes flapping, flung open his cabin door, sprinted onto the deck, and ran to the side of the ship. He made it just in time, the water receiving yet another load of stomach contents.

Vanor watched, waiting for the dwarven flotilla to come into view. His weapon outranged theirs, and his ship was almost certainly faster. He would be able to escape easily. The enemy, however, would not escape so unscathed.

Stanor watched as the rim of the sun cleared the horizon. It had been a long, miserable night.

Vanor continued to scan the horizon as the rim of the sun cleared it. He saw them, coming straight towards him, just tiny sails, barely noticeable in the stark vastness of the ocean. He gave the order to begin the last preparations for firing.

Stanor watched the sun raise itself from the watery depths where it resided during the night. He blinked suddenly, noticing a small shape off to the side of the sun. It was barely noticeable, just a blip on the horizon.

Vanor gave the order to fire just as the bottom of the sun cleared the horizon. Every elf on the ship immediately grabbed something secure. They knew what effects the firing of such a weapon would cause. Vanor did too. He dreamed of them, but the effects he thought of were those that would take place on the enemy ships. He smiled a little, imagining the reaction of the dwarves, who would be sleeping peacefully when what they would think was a bolt from the gods crashed into their ship. He grabbed the railing and held on.

Stanor blinked again, but the small shape refused to leave his vision. Whatever it was, it lay directly in their line of travel.

Just above the base of the Daveen’s tail, the old chief gunner finished strapping himself to his chair. He tapped out a sequence at the extremely sensitive area where the tail of the ship met his body. The Daveen responded immediately, doing exactly what he had been trained to. The beast, which the gunner had been preparing for this ever since he arrived at this spot, reared his head from the water. His eyes, which had incredible depth perception modeled off that of tree-dwelling creatures, sent images to his brain, which interpreted them, deciding the exact relative position of the target, the large ship that led the dwarven flotilla. Finished with his calculations, the beast reared up, almost leaping from the water as he opened his cavernous mouth. A flap at the back of the beast’s throat opened, revealing a specially designed channel that ran nearly the length of his body and which was modeled off of the digestive system of a normal cetacean opened, the immense muscles that ringed it suddenly expanding. The expansion forced him to contract his lungs far more than he usually would, expelling massive amounts of air, and to shrink his digestive system drastically, expelling large amounts of not fully digested food in the process. The gunner grimaced at the smell, but only momentarily. A massive sphere, made of a combination of salt strained from the beast’s marine habitat and the shells of small animals compressed together and sealed with a biological glue, which had been stored in the fatty layer on the back of the beast, was deposited inside the newly created channel, which rapidly contracted behind the projectile, resulting in an acceleration equal to almost sixty times the planet’s gravity. The projectile exited the channel at nearly half the speed of sound and was launched out through the mouth. The formbeast’s jump had provided an angle that the best dwarven gunners would have been hard-pressed to replicate. The ejection of the projectile was accompanied by a loud, booming noise, as the air that had been trapped alongside the projectile and compressed to hundreds of times its normal density was released and expanded back to its normal volume.

The sound reached Stanor’s ears a few moments later, much softer than it had been on the Daveen, where it had temporarily deafened much of the crew, but still a fairly loud sound. Stanor only had moments to wonder what the sound was before the projectile struck. It ripped through the starboard side of the deck, shattering into several thousand pieces as it did so. The expanding cloud of debris made a still larger hole in the next deck, ripping more than a dozen dwarves to shreds in the process. When the cloud of debris, still traveling at an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound, reached the ironclad hull of the ship, it had expanded to the point where the network of holes it created was entirely impossible to patch.