Vulcan's Fury: The Dark Lands (36 page)

“As you say, centurion.” Those were the only words Marcus had ever heard Haakon speak in a serious tone of voice. “But don’t throw your life away for the dead,” the big man told him. “Remember your vow to the living.”

Then Haakon followed after Valeria, his huge strides quickly eating up the distance.

Waiting until he was sure Haakon was well on his way, Marcus turned to the neatly organized stores piled up on one side of the pier. Sheathing his sword and ignoring the pain from his savaged hand, he picked up a pair of large amphorae filled with pitch and set about preparing a special welcome for the approaching legionaries and the enemy fleet.

***

“I don’t know anything about boats…” Septimus began as he helped Pelonius up the gangway.

“Then hold your tongue.” Pelonius shrugged free of his helpers and stepped into what might be described as a vestibule in the oil-soaked waterproof canvas cabin that completely enclosed the boat’s deck.
 

In truth, it was more a small ship than a boat, not nearly so large as a war galley, but far larger than the simple but sturdy craft favored by the fishermen brave enough to make a living from the bounty of the Haunted Sea. She had a slender, streamlined hull like a galley, with four ports on each side for oars that were mounted in their stowed position. But the oars did not simply protrude from the rowing ports as they might on a normal vessel: each had a leather fairing around the oar, joined to the large tent-like structure made of waterproof, oil-soaked canvas that completely enclosed the main deck. The canvas was firmly sealed to the deck along the outer edges and supported by lightweight wooden ribs on the inside that formed the shape of a house with a pitched roof. The main mast protruded from the canvas cabin’s peak, and at the bow was a small bowsprit with a furled sail. Through an ingenious system of ropes, pulleys, and small capstans (the latter of which were located inside the cabin), rudimentary control could be exercised over both sails from within the cabin, with the ropes passing through tight baffles that Pelonius hoped would keep out the evil humors of the Haunted Sea. At the fore and aft ends of the cabin, and spaced evenly along the sides, were small view ports, not much larger than the palm of one’s hand, made of thin glass that allowed a view, if quite distorted, of what lay outside. At the stern was the rudder, also enclosed by the canvas cabin.
 

With practiced motions, Pelonius undid the clasps that held the flap of the entry door closed. “We can thank the gods that we were about to take her out on trials,” he rasped as Paulus held the door open for him. As he slipped into the darkened interior, he added, “We have food, water, and the other things we may need already aboard. But I confess I never expected her first voyage to begin in darkness.” He groped around blindly while Paulus stood in the doorway, Septimus standing behind him, uncertain.

A moment later, Karan gently shouldered the two men aside, a thin strand of hemp that he had rubbed in some fresh pitch in the boat’s hull seams held in his hands, flickering with fire light.

“Where the devil did you come up with that?” Septimus demanded.

“All Swords are taught early on to master the making of fire,” Karan said.

“Probably pissed it right out, you did,” Septimus grumped.

“Be careful!” Pelonius warned as Karan came into the cabin. “If you start a fire aboard, we’re all done for.” With the aid of the uneven light, he snatched up a candle ensconced in a special metal container that provided light through many small holes, but contained the dangerous flame. Holding the wick to the hemp’s flame, the paraffin soaked string flickered then caught. “Good, now get that out of here, and send in Valeria as soon as she arrives.”

With a nod, Karan did as he was told, quickly retreating outside.

Pelonius quickly lit another candle, then handed it to Paulus. “Light the others. When you’re done, get to the line at the fore end and be ready to cast off. Septimus, you take the stern line.”

Back on the pier, Karan set his small, fiery burden on top of one of the pilings, then began to wind another thin strand of hemp tightly about the shaft of one of his arrows, just behind the metal tip. Binding it off tightly, he rubbed some excess pitch from the hull onto it, ensuring that it would burn easily and stay lit when he sent the arrow on its way.

He looked up as Valeria approached, out of breath, with Hercules right behind, looming above her. Their eyes met, but he did not trust his tongue to speak. Fortunately, words had already been chosen for him. “Pelonius wants you.”

With a nod and a smile, Valeria jogged up the gangplank, touching him on the shoulder as she went. Even through the clothing he wore, he could feel his skin burning.
 

Hercules looked at Karan with his huge round eyes, and Karan bowed his head, a confusing mix of emotions roiling in his heart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Pelonius?” Valeria called as she entered the boat.

“Here,” he said from the rudder’s tiller near the stern. “Quickly, we’ve got to get Hercules inside.”

Stifling a guffaw of incredulity, she turned back to the doorway through which she’d just come. “He’s not going to fit through
that
.”

“He will, and he must,” Pelonius said grimly. “We cannot cut the canvas or we won’t survive.” He looked up as Haakon poked his head in. “Ah, good! Just the man we need.” Coming over to where the barbarian stood near the entryway, a confused look on his face, Pelonius pointed to the vertical supports on either side of the doorway. “Break these here, here, and here.”

Haakon looked even more confused. “You want me to destroy your little boat?”

“Only these pieces,” Pelonius said, grimacing from the pain. “Hercules won’t fit through a rectangular doorway, but he will through something closer to a circle. Barely, but he will.”

“As you say.” With a shrug, Haakon took the first support in his hands and snapped it like a twig at the first spot Pelonius had indicated. As he did the same to the others, the stiff canvas around the doorway sagged. “Princess, it’s up to you. Get him in here. Haakon, help however you can,
but don’t rip the canvas or tear it from the deck
.”

Stepping back to the doorway, Valeria called, “Hercules, come!”

The boat tilted as the beast stepped onto the gangway, which sagged and creaked alarmingly under the hexatiger’s weight.

Hercules poked his head in, his furry face filling the roundish opening, and Valeria nearly laughed, despite the peril of their situation. “He’ll never fit!”

“This might help.” With a groan, Pelonius stepped down into the vessel’s small hold and returned with an impressively sized dry fish.
 

Hercules’s ears perked up and his eyes focused on the treat. He stepped forward until his shoulders began to bulge the canvas inward.
 

“Down, Hercules,” Valeria commanded, and the hexatiger grudgingly sank to his belly. Haakon took the broken bits of door frame, which were still secured to the canvas, and began to peel them back over Hercules’s fur and work them around his paws. Thinking it some sort of game, his gaze still on the prize, Hercules began to wriggle forward on his belly. Valeria was absolutely positive the opening of the canvas would burst from the deck and rip, but — just as Pelonius had predicted — the huge cat somehow wriggled through without destroying it.
 

“Have him lay down here,” Pelonius said, indicating a spot just behind the mast as he handed Hercules his reward. The big cat daintily took the offered fish, then swallowed it whole before sniffing at Valeria, hoping for more. “He can move back and forth a bit, but whatever you do, never let him stray all the way to either side of the boat or we might capsize. Try to keep him near the keel line, here in the center.”

“He’s not going to like being penned in,” Valeria told him as she beckoned Hercules toward her and got him to settle down.

“We don’t have a choice.” Pelonius looked at Haakon. “Where’s Marcus? Every moment we delay increases the chances the fleet will catch us.”

The big man’s face fell, and he fumbled for an answer. Then he said, “Marcus said that you were to cast off as soon as I got here, but I could not bring myself to say it.”

“He’s not coming, is he?” Valeria’s voice sounded like that of a little girl in her own ears.

“Damn him,” Pelonius cursed.
 

They all looked up with relief as Septimus, still standing by the stern line outside, cried, “Marcus! It’s about bloody time!”

***

After commanding Hercules to stay, Valeria dashed outside and gave Marcus a fierce hug. He threw down the amphora he was carrying, which shattered on the hard wood of the pier behind him, and returned her embrace with equal intensity.

“Come on,” Pelonius called from the entryway. “We don’t have time to waste!”

He was right. Their pursuers were now moving at double time, their footsteps thundering on the pier, and the approaching ships were close enough now to see their spectral outlines against the star-studded horizon.
 

Somewhere near the rear of the approaching formation of soldiers, they heard a centurion bellow, “
Archers…
”

Marcus whirled to Karan, who stood by, the flaming arrow nocked in his bow. “Karan, now!”

Karan pulled back the bow string, aimed, and loosed his arrow in the time that it took Marcus to speak those two words.
 

The flame soared through the night sky in a graceful, deadly arc, plunging into the pier right where Marcus had earlier asked him to aim. Enemy soldiers dodged out of the way, realizing only too late that the pier, along with their sandals and feet, was coated in pitch.

The enemy archers never received the command to loose their own arrows as the pier blossomed into flame, which rushed toward the boat following the trail of pitch Marcus had poured behind him.

“Get aboard and cast off!” Pelonius shouted.
 

As Marcus rushed Valeria aboard, Septimus cast off the rear line and Paulus tried to cast off the bow line. Unfortunately, it was bound too tight, and he couldn’t free it from the post to which it was bound.

Hissing through the air, Karan’s sword severed the rope.
 

“I wish I could have a sword like that,” Paulus said with a smile as he followed Karan, the two of them running after Septimus up the boarding ramp.

“Do not wish for such a thing,” Karan told him. “The sword is a terrible burden.”

As they rushed through the entryway, Haakon lifted the gangway and, using his tremendous strength, pushed the boat away from the pier as the fire reached the spot where Marcus had dropped the amphora of pitch. The flames whooshed higher and greedily began to consume the pier and the men trapped on it. Hundreds of soldiers, many of them aflame, hurled themselves into the water. “Go meet your gods,” Haakon shouted. Then, spitting after the burning men, he let go of the gangway, which fell into the waves.

“Haakon, Karan!” Pelonius called, “Take the first two rowing positions on the left side! Each of the rest of you, take a bench on the right! Hurry!”

With Hercules looking on with guarded curiosity, they did as Pelonius ordered, as he himself took the rudder. With a quick look through the entryway, he said, “Unship the oars, and stroke when I tell you! Ready…stroke! Again, stroke!”

Cursing as they fought to work the unfamiliar oars and not collide with one another, the rowers did as they were commanded.
 

“Stroke…stroke…stroke…”

Soon enough their efforts began to bear sweeter fruit as they learned to row as a team, not as individuals. The fleet vessel quickly pulled away from the flaming pier, and Pelonius breathed an audible sigh of relief when they reached a distance he judged safe from any flaming embers from the conflagration on the pier.

But another, greater threat remained: the enemy fleet.

“Have they seen us, do you think?” Marcus called when Pelonius gave them a short break.

“I’m not sure,” the older man answered after securing the rudder while he took a quick look out the ruined entryway. “I put us on the far side of the flames in hopes of blinding them to our escape, but the effect works both ways, of course. We won’t be able to see them unless they come close enough to the flames to…yes, there they are!” He peered more closely. “Some of the ships are taking men from the water. And others…” He paused, then sighed. “Others are swinging around the pier toward us.”

“Balls,” Septimus cursed under his breath.

Limping back to his post, Pelonius worked one of the capstans, which were much smaller versions of the one that had injured him, then another. The boat creaked and leaned slightly to port before he went around and snuffed out the candles, all but one. “I’ve let out the sails, for the wind is with us for now. But that won’t be enough.” He looked at Valeria in the dim light of the last candle before covering it with a cloth, plunging the cabin into complete darkness. “It’s going to be a very long night, I’m afraid.”
 

Once again taking the rudder, he called for them to stroke.

***

Pelonius drove them relentlessly through what little remained of the night, giving them only one lengthy break during which he and Septimus made hasty repairs to the broken frame around the entryway before sealing closed the canvas door. Handing Paulus the candle, the old scribe sent him down into the hold to retrieve a pair of small birds, each locked in a cage. Pelonius had him open a small flap at the fore end of the cabin and hang one cage on a hook outside, just in front of the forward glass viewport, before resealing the flap. The other cage he hung inside, on a similar hook that protruded from the main mast. “I hope they may tell us if the Haunted Sea turns deadly,” Pelonius explained. The inside bird, which after an initial flurry of chirps was content to sit quietly, became the focus of Hercules’s undivided attention.

Then it was back to rowing. To her shame, Valeria had to stow her oar, for her muscles could no longer lift it from the water and all it was doing was slowing them down. Her palms and fingers were raw and bloody from blisters, which would have been even worse had her hands not already bore some calluses from training with a sword. But she was not content to simply sit there. Getting up on shaking legs, she moved back to sit beside Paulus, putting her screaming muscles to work helping him row as best she could.