“Ho there, break it up!” I shouted. Saying ‘break it up’ sounded like there were two sides to a fight, but Gerald was just trying to protect his vital organs. The tarish seemed to think that if he let them get their licks in, they’d give up. Then again, this was his fourth tour aboard a navy vessel compared to my once. Maybe he knew what he was doing.

But I’d be sliced up for chum before I let the man who’d offered me some relief from my guilt be used as a punching bag.

I got some glances, and the harassers idly turned from Gerald to me with the attitude that one amusement was interrupting them from another.

“And who are you?” A nasally fellow asked.

I ignored his question, as squaring up to people and explaining who you were and why they should listen to you was something you only did with authority and the power to back it up. I had the personal power, but the authority would be a bluff. Instead, I aimed to brush right by them.

Of course, the big fellow I passed by didn’t want to be ignored and placed his hand on my chest to shove me back. I decided to use my dirty fighting skills to teach him a lesson and keep moving.

When I was looking at the sky a moment later trying to catch air in my lungs again, I realized that this was a tougher crowd than I’d given them credit for, and they had levels in dirty fighting that trumped my own brawling experience. They clustered around me in a similar way to how they’d been circled around Gerald. They didn’t start kicking yet, but it was an intimidating ring of interrogators.

Bloody stars, well they asked for it, and they were conveniently positioned. Time to practice my newest spell …

Thunderclap not only gave them a minor deafened debuff (which I was thankfully immune to) it pushed away anyone and anything within 5 feet unless they could resist or were well secured. None of these guys were prepared for it, and almost all were sent on their backsides with hands clapping over their ears. The big fellow managed to keep his feet, just staggering back a bit, but I was able to regain my feet and move over to Gerald without any other issues. Power spoke its own language.

“Why is it,” I hissed in Gerald’s ear as I dragged him to his feet. “That I have to keep rescuing you from angry mobs?”

“These fellows were just initiating me into their crew,” Gerald said, loudly for the benefit of those not caught within my deafening spell. Of course, he was trying to give them an out. Make peace with his tormentors so they’d eventually stop harassing him.

It wasn’t that I wanted to stomp on his method, but I’d seen humans look down on their own kind without mercy because they were called a slave. I wasn’t going to hold out hope that humans would give a tarish more leeway.

“You didn’t answer our question,” Nasal Voice said from where he’d gotten up. “Who are you?”

“I’m a war mage for the Isa.” I claimed. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure whether I was being positioned as an expert seaman or an amateur mage and my claim was mostly bluff. Having seen the need for magic users on the Carpathia, I was probably going with mage again. In either case, these fellows had just seen me cast a spell and weren’t in a position to question me.

“Oh really?” Said a man from the perimeter. “Then why is this the first time I’ve seen you? Lieutenant Lockwood, second mate.”

“Lieutenant,” I greeted neutrally. “Just transferred from the Carpathia, and assigned to the Isa by the colonel not an hour ago. Encountered this altercation on my way to the ship.”

“The men were just giving the tarish a lesson in self-defense, helping him get his unarmed levels up a bit. You may continue to the ship and report to the first mate now.” He said dismissively.

And leave Gerald here to have his ‘lesson’ picked up where it had left off? Shiv that.

I let Gerald stand on his own feet and squared up to the second lieutenant. “Is the command structure on the Isa really so different, or did you try to give me an order?” My voice was low and threatening. The man flushed.

“How dare you speak to me like that!”

“I’ve done a lot of daring things in my life. Speaking to you isn’t one of them.”

“You’re going to start your duties with a report on the Captain’s desk regarding your behavior!”

I took a menacing step forward and dropped my voice. “Lockwood, look me in the eyes. Then ask me whether I care about your complaints to anyone.”

The man’s expression became darker, and his voice adopted its own venom. “You watch yourself, Harter. You’ve just made an enemy of the whole fighting force aboard the Isa! A very dumb move, over a tarish.”

I didn’t see the need to respond to that and let him have the last word, escorting Gerald away. Sure, having people aboard my ship carry a vendetta was a pain, but it hardly compared to my other problems.

“You should have just let them finish with me,” Gerald grunted.

“I had a surgeon say I shouldn’t push the status quo over slaves a while back. I wasn’t any better at listening to him.”

“Yeah? How’d that situation turn out?”

With my flogging and improved treatment of the slaves for a time. Then they all became my cursed crewmen, were forced to raid the Broken Isles, and wound up cursing my very existence before mutinying.

“Ehh, hard to compare.”

He snorted, then coughed. They’d been very rough with him. I stopped long enough to give him a healing potion and had him sip it as we moved. I had spells to do direct healing, so I didn’t go through the health potions as fast as mana potions. Health potions also didn’t restore your body so much as they added HP. Sure, they’d fix your body up some and improve your rate of recovery, but if Gerald had cracked ribs now he could drink a dozen health potions and still have cracked ribs.

There were long floating docks that extended out for ship berthing. I inspected the Isa as we approached and found her unremarkable – a weathered brig that had been repaired and seen its share of storms, but hardly a derelict.

It was only the question of her Captain that made her seem to loom.

At the ramp Gerald stopped me and straightened. “Follow my lead,” he said under his breath. At the bottom of the ramp he bowed to the ship itself. Then he strode up it before stopping at the top and offering a salute to the absent flag. No one was around to watch his ceremonies or my awkward imitations – a fact that didn’t dissuade Gerald. He didn’t step onto the ship and hunt someone out like a sensible person. Instead, he bellowed as loud as he could, “Permission to come aboard!”

And we waited. Waiting …

“You sure they heard you?” I asked.

“It’s why you’re loud the first time,” Gerald said. “Repeating your request causes trouble.”

“This is silly.”

“It’s the navy.”

“No need to parrot me.”

Gerald coughed in a way that seemed to be hiding a laugh, before turning into a groan. I’d best give him an extended session of cleansing waters – the long and slow healing spell should help whatever internal damage he had.

Finally, someone came topside. That they came for us yet had taken so long spoke poorly of them. Not because I was some important visitor they were offending, but because if I’d had hostile intent I could have walked up the ramp and roamed about without any difficulty or challenge at all.

“Nem and bizness?” The man snapped.

“Gerald Varus, cook, reporting for duty!” my friend declared with a salute.

The man turned to me, and I straightened and gave my own salute. “Dom Harter, apprentice war mage, reporting for duty.”

His eyebrows rose. “War mage? Weren’t expectin’ ya. Come on.”

We finally stepped aboard the ship and my land timer stopped its slowed countdown as it recognized I was properly on board a ship again. The man on watch led us not to the Captain’s cabin, but the cabin of the first mate. He knocked loudly, announced us, and we waited for a few more minutes while whoever was inside made themselves presentable.

Really, I thought the navy placed a higher regard on efficiency?

When the first mate opened the door, I was greeted by the sight of an unshaven, scraggly-haired man with pants tucked into the tops of his once-fashionable boots, a shirt mostly tucked into his pants, and suspenders holding the outfit together. He didn’t even look at us, just opened the door and motioned us inside.

We crowded in while the first mate sate on his chair and rubbed his face, the watchman introducing us. “Misser Billings, this ‘ere is our cook, and the man says he’s a war mage.”

The man looked at us for the first time. Me, then Gerald, back to me. He didn’t seem any more surprised to see a tarish in front of him than an unexpected war mage. “Cook will report to the quartermaster. War mage will report to me.”

Mmhmm. We shifted from foot to foot. Mr. Billings looked up at us. “What?” he said with a tone that said ‘why are you here? Didn’t you hear everything you needed to know?’

“Sar,” the watchman said in his heavy accent. “The quartermaster was reassigned.”

Billings waved the matter away. “Yes, yes. Then the cook will report to the second mate in the meantime. Anything else?”

“Where’s the Captain?” I asked. “Am I the only mage? When is this ship supposed to sail?”

“The Captain,” Billings said huffily. “Is seeing to other matters and has delegated the direct operations of this ship to me. Hence you shall report to me. Yes, you are currently the only mage assigned to us. Central command is having difficulty staffing the Isa, frankly I’m amazed you found yourself here. What college do you hail from?”

“I was privately tutored.”

“Eh, that explains it. What was your last question?”

“When does this ship sail?” I asked, my voice getting slightly clipped. This place was a travesty to the nature of good seamanship and we hadn’t even left the dock!

“Estimated time is two weeks. That has now been pushed back three separate occasions, so don’t get your hopes up. Travis, see them out.”

“Yissir,” the watchman – Travis – said. “Alright, come on y’all.”

Gerald followed Travis immediately. I left as well, but lingered first, taking in the sight of the first mate sitting bleakly at his desk, eyes staring off somewhere, and the state of the cabin. It was spartan, but still somehow unkempt. I wasn’t going to judge a man on whether his rack had squared corners at all times, and many officers I’d worked with had their spaces crammed with everything from clothes and sundry items to important papers and treasured knick-knacks.

Somehow Billings’ state was wrong. More importantly, why was someone like him assigned as first mate? Why was Lockwood assigned as a second? If the navy wanted aggressive officers why not make Lockwood the first and keep Billings ashore? If Billings was supposed to temper Lockwood’s aggressiveness, then he was a poor man for the job as he was already burnt out and was delegating everything he could to his second.

Maybe I was basing too much on first impressions. For all I knew, Lockwood was a peaceful man when he didn’t have new reports riling him up in front of his men. Billings could be a hell-raiser when he wasn’t freshly pulled from bed.

But I doubted it.

Shadowing over these musings were the bigger questions: where was the Captain? Did they have a say in the roles of his officers? Did he see how poorly they ran things?

Was Darius my father?

The crew of the Isa was staying on shore with a rotating single watchman on duty. Travis told us all about how getting the men off the boat for shore liberty was necessary for the morale of any crew, and how it spoke well of the officers that they made arrangements for it to be that way. I agreed that men needed time off the ship, having seen the same story play out a hundred times, but privately held my own opinions. I knew that I was the anomaly in this.

I also doubted that getting the men shore liberty was any great insight on the officers’ part, and more a matter of standard procedure. Lockwood was in charge of the men ashore, and had apparently turned his group into what was essentially a gang. Billings stayed aboard the ship, and a single watchman would return to relieve his fellow aboard the Isa at noon each day.

The Captain didn’t return to the ship at night. It seemed that he had a place ashore and was very busy taking care of business, as he didn’t even stop in to check on things.

I couldn’t judge, not with my record, but I expected the former Captain of the Athair to have things well in hand. Stars, I was being disappointed at the way things seemed to be running! You’d think that I’d be happy to see my former/current/potential enemy was not as capable as I’d given him credit for. Instead, I found myself hoping that Captain Darius would come aboard and put things in order, that he had been given no choice in his officers or was indeed too busy taking care of other business and hadn’t realized those under him lacked what was needed to command properly.

Each time I caught myself thinking about what it took to command properly, I heard Burdette’s voice telling me how I’d lost the support of my entire crew – right down to my friends.

For a week, I became Gerald’s shadow. The new quartermaster hadn’t been assigned, so the tarish cook reported directly to the racist second mate. I had little better to do, so tagging along as a bodyguard suited me well enough. Lockwood seemed to regard it as a game, and tried to find ways to distract me away from Gerald like leaving his side meant he would suddenly be plagued by assassins.

Neither of us cared for playing that game. Gerald came up with the plan that I eventually agreed to, resulting in him getting ganged up on by a handful of masked characters. He thought that would make it go away, that they’d have done it and forgotten about the whole affair. It was a wrong assumption, as he was pulled into an alley a second time and given another, more thorough beating.

As I was healing him that night with my cleansing waters spell, he admitted to being discouraged but thought that surely his tormentors were finished now.

He was right. His tormentors didn’t bother him again. Incidentally, a handful of Lockwood’s men went AWOL, to the Lieutenant’s consternation.

The sea keeps many secrets – it would keep theirs. If their corpses were someday found in a nest of water dancers, no one would look too deeply into their circumstances. Maybe my mistakes could be accredited to violence, but some were also due to being too merciful to the wrong people. I was trying not to repeat such mistakes.

For a week I followed Gerald while he made food arrangements on behalf of the non-existent quartermaster. I did my own shopping; restocking my potions, grabbing a few discounted skill books, and picking up some added weaponry – including a new trident that didn’t have the barbs that were always getting caught in my enemies!

At the end of the week we had shocking news: our deployment wasn’t getting postponed again. We would actually get underway as scheduled.

Cue chaos as Lockwood brought his men back and Billings began crying about where his quartermaster was. Supplies and munitions were sourced and carried aboard – thankfully some paper-pusher was in charge of most the allocations and it was mostly a matter of picking our assigned supplies from the right location.

The Captain still hadn’t shown.

I threw my hand into getting things organized, but quickly found it was better for me to sit things out. No amount of skill or experience could make up for a second lieutenant that immediately contradicted your directions, no matter whether they made sense or not. If I said put something down Lockwood said pick it up. It was causing trouble and everyone was better off if I didn’t even help.

Two days until our departure, and we received a unique new crewman. Twenty well-armed soldiers, many of them professional warriors no less, escorted a very tall and well built figure down the dock. The figure had a bag over his head that concealed his features and obstructed his vision, requiring a pair of the guardsmen to escort him by the elbows. At the ramp, a handful of the warriors walked the figure up to the deck, where the group was greeted by Lockwood and Billings.

The man in charge saluted Billings, then gestured for the hood to be taken off. “Delivered safely as ordered. He’s now in your custody, and your responsibility.”

When the hood was removed, several of the crew cursed under their breath. The figure was not a man. He was an orc!

Name

Jorgagu

Age

Race

Orc

Profession

Enchanter

Level

XP

Health

Mana

Stamina

Strength

Agility

Dexterity

Constitution

Endurance

Intelligence

Wisdom

Charisma

Luck