The Warden
Prologue
The Duty of the Warden
Chapter start:
Once upon a time in the land that was called the Elemental Nations these things happened. A spark in the whipping whirlwind, raged out into an inferno and covered the whole forest in its brilliance. But before that spark did turn into the wildfire it was, spreading its message and strength to all. Letting all burn in the same brilliance as him for the briefest movement if at all possible, he was battered mercilessly. Utterly and without reason crushed. This is the tale of a war-bred barbarian who turned into the exemplary paragon of the Order of Wardens.
It began as these things do, with a mighty uncontrollable storm.
The gale tore at his haunches, he felt its bite deep within and he knew it in his heart that if they didn't make landfall within three days they would all be dead. 'Too many deaths for gold has already been bled', he thought, 'I am the captain of a dead ship.'
One ship left out of twenty five- seven and forty left out of a crew of a one hundred and seven. Out of which, only twenty can walk and the rest near death, the Supreme Leader one of them. The sails had been beaten down by the merciless winds, the hull been battered ruthlessly by the waves. No food left, almost no water left too and what there is brackish and foul.
"Who the fuck told you to abandon your post, Jounichi?" He shouted at his lookout, Jounichi the old mute. The wizened mute man scowled down at him, probably cursing the whippersnapper as he undoubtedly knew he was regarded as in the old man's mind.
He was Naruto Namikaze, the captain of the ill-fated ship and he alone was on the deck but for the old Jounichi who was on the bowsprit lookout-who huddled in his blankets and searched the sea ahead with a sunken scowl permanently etched on to his face.
The ship squeaked in a sudden squall and Namikaze held onto the arm of the seachair, that was lashed near the wheel on the quarterdeck until she righted, timbers squealing. She was the Kunoichi, a tonne of the best oaken wood in Uzu, a three-masted warship out of Totomi port, sole survivor of the expeditionary force set out to Spring country by the Uzumaki King. The first Uzumaki ship to cross the port of Otafaku Gai in Fire country and breach the secrets of the Iron straits. A hundred and seven volunteers had signed up on this adventure which would shape the future of the Whirlpool nation. Their orders: to discover new lands to plunder or trade, whatever worked to throw off the yoke of the Konohan Empire. Claim the lands for the Uzumaki crown if possible and within three years, come home again. Of them only a thirty were still among the living.
The chains that the Konohan Empire had forged, with the help of its greatest leader the old Saru, was chafing irritably, allies and foes alike. After the defeat of Kumo in the last war, there was no one left that could possibly challenge the Konohan Empire.
But the inhabitants of the tiny island nation of Whirlpool were never known for their common sense. What they were known for rather, was their stubbornness, rebellious nature and utter contempt they held for fear. So well-known was their stupid bravery that Hashirama once said about his whirlpool wife, 'I think perhaps fear is afraid of her.'
The wind freshened even more, a new gale blew and the ship lurched again. The ship was now riding under bare poles but for the storm topsails. Even so the strong tide and the relentless wind bore down on her, taking her to the darkening horizon.
'There is only more storms there.' Namikaze mused. 'More reefs, more broken coasts, more rocky beaches and more shoals. An unknown sea. the All-Father I have pitched my entire life against the sea. I have always won and I will again.'
First Whirlpooler to go past the Konohan blockade. The first non-Uzumaki to ever head a Whirlpool expeditionary force. The first Namikaze to ever raise above captain. There was a lot of firsts here. And there were many deaths to win them.
He tasted the wind but there was no hint of land in it. He searched the ocean and all he saw was the raging water, dull gray and angry. Not a fleck of seaweed or splash of color to relay there was a sanding shelf nearby. He saw the spire of a green reef starboard but that told him nothing. For months, they had been threatened by vibrant outcrops, impossibly colossal fish and even more threatening octopii that his men had started to call the Kraken. He was the first to spot them all, but never did he spot even the hint of land.
'This sea is endless', moaned the Whirlpool sailor. 'Good, because that's what you were trained to do, Namikaze. To sail the unknown sea, fight on unknown horizons and come back home. How many days was it now from home? One hundred days and two hours if his sailor's crystal was right.
Naruto Namikaze was famished and his body broken. His mouth ached from the scurvy, he was sure of it. The citrus fruits had been exhausted a few weeks ago. But he forced himself to look at the sun with the white Sailor's crystal. It turned purple in the morning and pink in the evening, if the sun is facing the longest side of it. He forced his eyes to check the crystal and his brains to calculate an approximate position. Once he wrote it down in his rutter-the mariner's manual, he would be safe in this ocean. And if he was safe the ship was safe and then together they might find the new lands of Spring country, maybe even the nations where it was believed that the natives controlled the elements still.
The cut of the wind stopped him however from straying too far with his thoughts and kept him awake. To sleep now would be foolish. He would never wake up from that sleep. He stretched his arms to relieve the cramped muscles there and on his back, popped a few fingers and pulled his cloak together. Then patiently he prayed for land to the All-Father, the patron God of his mother's people and the one in charge of storms.
"Go below captain. I take this watch if it pleases you." Uzumaki Kenshin, the one in charge of the land troops was pulling himself up the gangway. His eyes sunken, face grey with fatigue, skin botched with scurvy and his once glorious red hair now ending in matted cords of coarse hair. He leaned heavily against the gangway, the trip through the cold northern sea had been arduous for all Uzumakis who were more familiar with the tropical climate of their homeland. "the All-Father curse the day I left Totomi."
Naruto's birth had originally been in the Fire nation and so was a little more familiar with these conditions, but he too was hard-pressed.
"Where's the sailmaker, Kenshin? Many of the cross-sails are at its last threads?"
"In his bunk, captain. I don't think he will get out of it only after Ragnarok."
"And the General?"
Uzumaki Shinno was an uncle of the King. Advanced in age, he was capable and knowledgeable in the ways of the sea as well as the sword. Naruto was proud to call him his teacher. But he was concerned for him now. Age had not been kind to his teacher. And the voyage was far than gentle. He expected his old sensei to die moaning in his bed if he didn't find land in a couple of days.
"Moaning in his bed for food and water." Kenshin suddenly regained the vigour that had been his before the start of the voyage. "I tell him I would cook him the rats that have eaten our sales biscuits, but he refused. That pompous royalist!"
"Hold your tongue!" Naruto yelled clearly enraged about the insult to the man who had taught him seamanship. The bread and butter of his life.
"But he is a maggot-eaten fool and we'll die because of him. Has Shinno ever won a war? We both know that he is just a politician that has worked to the top by arranging the marriage of our King and various other nobles." The young Uzumaki brought his hand to his chest, retched, bleched and brought up a phlegmatic cough. "Oh All-Father in the heavens, Save me!
The religion of the Whirlpool nation was another thorn that prevented it from recognizing any power from the mainland.
"Go below, Major. Come back tomorrow when we are closer to land. Your domain."
Kenshin painfully looked at the Namikaze's azure blue eyes with his violet eyes. "There's reek of death below, Captain. Please don't let me go down below. If it pleases you I'll take this shift. What's the course?"
Naruto softened his glare on his fellow islander when he talked about the situation below. "Just against the wind. Night is nigh, the land sea breeze blow from land to the sea."
"But where is the land?" Kenshin exploded from hearing the word 'land'. "Where's the landfall you promised yesterday? Where is the Land of spring, the land of milk and honey that was promised to us? Where is it I ask?"
"Ahead."
"Oh Gods in heaven! Ahead! It is always ahead. Ahead straight into storms, doldrums, Krakens, but no land nowhere. We should be in a port by now, singing and bedding whors with the riches that we may have made. Not chasing non-existent lands that will only kill us. We should have just alighted at the Wave country."
"Go below or hold your tongue?" The flaxen haired Namikaze snapped. "I am from the Order of Wardens that has been tasked with breaking the Konohan yoke from our backs. Do you really doubt our intentions?"
Sullenly, the pure-bred Uzumaki looked away from the tall, bearded man. Naruto had braided his hair in the Uzumaki fashion which irked him all the more. What gave this mongrel the right to have his hair in the true Uzumaki fashion? And where had this mongrel taken him and his men to? Where were they? Why couldn't he just look at the maritime rutter? All these questions swirled in his mind like the deadly whirlpools that protected his home from the major wrath of the Konohan Empire.
Alas, he knew that you simply didn't look into the rutter of a warden. And particularly, not this warden. 'I wish I was as strong and healthy as I was in Uzu. Then I wouldn't tarry. I would smash your ridiculously azure blue eyes on the bowsprit that you love so much and stamp that maddening half-smile back into your mongrel face. I'd send you to the hell that you deserve. You and that Shinno of yours together, tied back to back with seaman's rope just for the irony. Then I'd be Captain of this ship, a true Uzumaki, a whirlpool man. Not a foreigner like you and the secrets would be safe to us.'
In a last ditch attempt, Kenshin revealed the thing that was niggling his conscience ever since he had started this journey. "Perhaps there is no Spring country. A land where Spring exists forever! I think it's just seaman' s tales."
"It exists. Between the latitudes seventy and eighty north. Now either hold your tongue or go below."
"There's death below, Namikaze." Kenshin grimaced as he said it.
Namikaze softened his gaze as he looked at Kenshin and thought that this was a man smarter than most. He had hoarded his fruits, while the others consumed theirs carelessly. Against your orders. So now Kenshin's scurvy was only mild and his teeth still in his Jaws. While the others are haemorrhaging, their bowels diarrhetic, their eyes rheuy and their teeth loose or not in their heads. You have been lucky, Kenshin.
He knew they were all afraid of him, even Shino and that mist hated him. The big scary warden, who alone in this ship knew the secrets of the sea and how to tame her uncontrollable anger. The blonde foreigner, mongrel at best commanding their proud souls out to the unknown. He understood why they feared him and at the same time reviled him. But that was normal, even if they hated him it was he who set the course of the ship and ran it. He brought them from one land to another, laden with riches and bounty.
But today, he couldn't set the course. The sky was overcast. The wind haphazard and stormy. The tides too were more because of the moon than the currents which were extremely directional. Moreover he had no navigational chart to guide him nor anything with which he could fix the longitude.
"Find out how to fix a longitude and you shall be the richest man in the world." Shinno used to say to him. "Those blasted Konohans will give you ten thousand Ryo for the answer to the riddle. The dung-eating Sand-cunts will give you twenty. The fatherless Kumo will give you a thirty and and private lands. Out of sight of land, you're always lost unless..."
"You have a rutter!" Namikaze had happily started then. He was ten then and had already spent two years in the household of Shinno, who had become the father he had lost. Shinno was some kind of an uncle to his mother, who had been disowned by her family for eloping with his father. Shinno had encouraged his mother to elope with his father, promising to calm down her family in case of any fallout. He had obviously failed and Naruto was still to see the rest of his family.
Inspite of failing his favourite niece at her time of need, in teaching Naruto Shinno had never failed. He learned the intimate ways of the sea. The currents and its benefits over the tides. The land sea breeze and how to predict by it if land was nearby. What to smell in the air or know if land was nearby. How to tie the sails and use them in all kinds of winds. The Anchor and its uses. Naruto learned the art of shipbuilding as well as the way of the sailor under the gentle yet strict tutelage of Shinno.
A rutter was a book containing the detailed observation of the captain of the ship who had been there before. It recorded the distances between ports, headlands, channels and capes alike. It noted the coloring and the depth of the sea, as well as the nature of the seabed. It set down the answers to the two main questions of 'how we got there' and 'how we got back'. As well as the other questions of How many days; what ways were the winds blowing and for how long; what currents to expect and from where; the time of storms and of fair winds; where to careen the ship and where to water; where they were reefs, shoals, trenches, shoals. At best, everything necessary for a safe voyage.
However the Rutter was only as good as the sailor. So Naruto took special care of his own. He took painstaking care that anyone who came and read his rutter after him, wouldn't curse Naruto Namikaze, whilst lost at sea. 'I will sleep tomorrow.' solemnly decided the young Namikaze expedition captain. Taking out a clean quill, he started noting down all that he had done and seen,
'October 9th, 945 years after the death of the Second son. 6th hour. Dusk. I just have upended the hourglass. 169 days from Totomi. On the 78th degree latitude. Longitude I can't fix due to the cloudy skies, relentless storms. The sea is high as ever, no land in sight. We are still running ahead at a degree to the storm winds hoping that it is blowing from the land. We are veering a little off North West. Large reefs and outcrops, were spotted, at a league behind at half an hour ago North by North West, then before at five leagues. Could be an indication of land ahead. We are still running at a speed of four the knots. Any faster and the sails would have to be manned. Men which I don't have now.'
Naruto stopped and proceeded to lee the quill back in its inkpot. But at the lost moment he stopped for there was more to be written. Something that anyone who cane after him shouldn't face.
"We lost three people today and it's not even night yet. We lost the sailmaker yesterday. Which means now we can't sail for more than two days, surely by which time all the sails would be no more usable. In fact I did not even have anyone to make shrouds for them when I threw them into the sea. The General is beyond sickness now and so was not in a position to override my decision."
"Today I old not make out the declension of the sun at noon, due to overcast. But I estimate that landfall in Spring country would be soon any moment."
'But how soon?' he asked himself and the sea lantern that hung beside himself a the bowsprit swung in affirmation with him. How to make a chart and set the longitude? There must be a way. How to keep vegetables fresh. What is scurvy?
The dreaded disease brought him back to the issue at hand. He had no able bodied men left. All were sick in some way or the other. Shinno had once told him that scurvy was nothing but the man's body yearning for the land again.
"Man is born on land and shall die on it. Anything else is a perverseness of the natural order. Due you understand my boy?" He had screamed into my ears, hoping that the fear of scurvy would be hard brained into me. "Man's body misses the land when he is out at sea and rebels against him. That's why body parts go out one by one. First the non-essential like teeth and hair and then eyes and finally vital organs."
Young Naruto had his eyes bulged out when he listened to the stories, Shinno had for him.
The adult Naruto just smiled nostalgically remembering his formative years. He had hated Shinno then. For acting as a check weight to his fool's dreams, when it was merely looking out for him. Now it was his time to look after the old man.
"Kenshin!" He yelled at the top of his voice, hoping to the Lords above that Kenshin hadn't died at the short time he had been down.
"Yes Captain." Kenshin shouted back.
"Be here on the bow lookout. We would be approaching landfall any moment now. I don't want to hit any iceberg. Make sure stay in the wind and not in the lee. That will keep you fresh and awake."
"You can trust me to stay awake, Captain." Kenshin announced much to his relief, anything to get away from the stench of death below.
Satisfied, that the lookout was in good hands Naruto set out to the Captain-General's cabin. Shinno's health had confoundingly deteriorated rapidly ever since the commencement of the journey. The sailors whispered amongst them the rumours increasing with incredulity every next ear, that it was some religious act. Some sacrifice to the gods for safe passage it was being said.
Naruto ambled on to the Captain-General's bunk, wherein Shinno lay moaning on his deathbed. Naruto looked on gingerly at the man who was almost like a father to him after his real one had died.
"I want to go on Yahiko Fuma's expedition. He is gonna discover the passage to the Steel country." Young Naruto, aged thirteen had thrown a tantrum. "He's gonna discover all the new lands and there will be no glory left for me. How am I going to be the Admiral of the Uzumakis if I have no glory?"
"By surviving. The young get the worst of food and the worst of living conditions. You won't survive with Yahiko." The man now lying motionless before him had advice ced him.
"But I am strong," Naruto chuckled inwardly as he remembered the childish whine he had let out then. "I have strong legs and long legs. I am taller than most of my friends. I can survive."
"If you go now, I will see to it that Yahiko recognizes you and debars you. Then you would never get the license from the King. Then you will never captain a ship. Do you understand me!" Shino had roared out in fury at him. The young flaxen Namikaze diminished in fright and looked away. Shinno had contritely tousled his hair to get his attention.
"I only say it to protect you child. What you don't know Naruto will never hurt you. Our King is but a naive fool. To think you could take on the whole world just because you think you're a God doesn't prove a logical point."
Naruto sighed. Shinno wasn't very approving of their King then, or even now. He cut open the apple that he had hoarded secretly for Shinno. Knowing the old man would just give away his own to the sailors. It had dried up, gnarled away into blue reduced husk of the apple that it was before. There was a maggot inside. Naruto smacked the maggot on his hand and ate it. It was believed in the seafaring circles that the apple maggots were equally effective in fighting scurvy as the fruit itself. But he didn't want to try it on a dying man like Shinno. Satisfied in cutting the apple to his requirements, Naruto placed the apple on a platter to Shinno.
"Where's land?" the feeble voice of Shinno reached his ears.
"Ahead." Naruto repeated the words that he had been telling everyone since the past few days. Only icebergs, shoals and outcrops were found but. He no longer believed the word anymore. He just had a hope. Hope that the old seer woman's words had been true.
'You will die accomplished in the arms of your beloved.' was what she had said to him over the bones of the pig that she used for foretelling the future.
"Where's land?" Shinno repeated his diatribe, "Where's the promised land, my son?"
"Ahead." Naruto repeated his lie.
"Don't lie to me, Naruto. What do you smell from the air?"
Reluctantly, Naruto revealed his horrendous findings, "The air is still salty. I don't think the land is in a day's journey. Nearby yes, but not near. Wherever we are going its not the Spring country. The land is still frigid and wrought with ice. Perhaps the rumours were just that. Rumours."
Shinno released a heavy phlegm filled cough that threatened to set his appointment with the Shinigami. The older Uzumaki took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth on it, the cloth already starchy due to previous coughs.
"There is a reason why the Uzumakis should be here first." Shinno tried his level best to speak as if what he was about to say was even more important than his own life. "The everlasting spring in spring country is probably due to fuuinjutsu."
"But how can it sustain without Chakra?" Naruto remarked as if upfront Rd by the very remark. Ever since Madara's Blunder more than a century ago, Chakra had disappeared from the world, never to be seen again.
"You forget Chakra can be stored in a seal. An Uzumaki seal has always been a self-sustaining one. I have seen seals made which would theoretically be possible to hold a bijuu within for eternity."
The blonde captain did some thinking. 'If what Shinno-San saying is true then, I guess the time for Chakra to be brought back into the world is near.'
"What if we release this Chakra?" Naruto wondered aloud.
"Chakra would again take a breath in this world." Shinno remarked with a smile. "And with this feat, I wilm petition our Highness to formally declare you as an Uzumaki."
"What!", Naruto was taken aback by that statement. Yes he had been tempted many a times to try for it. His paternal family were his nation's enemies. His mother's side had but excommunicated so he had kept quite.
"And as for the salt still in the air. Perhaps we are approaching a swampland. You didn't count that, did you?" Shinno amusingly chuckled at his student's shortsightedness. "The old dog still has a few tricks to teach, aye?"
The young captain, son of the Renegade, Victor of the Battle off the coast of Longhorn where he had defeated a fleet of 35 later-sailed carracks, three galleons and hundreds of vicious fireships just wordlessly mumbled,
"I am stupid."
Meanwhile, on the bow lookout Kenshin started to scream at the top of his voice, "My goodness! Reef ahead! Reef ahead!"
Naruto at first felt the cry more than he heard it. Then mixed with the screaming gale, he inevitably heard the cry well and true.
'Reef ahead.'
Land ahead. They were finally going ashore.
Naruto Namikaze left the ailing Shinno and ran to the quarterdeck, where the wheel lay. He was out of the cabin and on to the companionway which led to the quarterdeck. He had entrusted it to Motoyasu, the giant in his absence. And Motoyasu was now simply hugging the wheel. His heart was pounding, his throat was parched and his mind... Totally out of control.
"Move it bastard. Move it, you son of a pot-bellied whore. You are asleep now! Do you want us to die?" Naruto shouted in rage and leapt to the bulky man. Pushing him aside, Naruto found that Motoyasu had been dead for some time now.
'I am the captain of a dead ship.', thought the only Namikaze in Uzu. 'But you are not gonna die here. Remember you still have accomplishments in front of me. And you don't have a beloved to treasure. If you were ashore, you would have divorced your raggedy arsed bitch of a wife. Until then you are safe.'
"You all are safe under me!" yelled the young Namikaze with fill bluster at the top of his voice. Perhaps everybody heard me. Perhaps the dead heard him and didn't mind. And the living simply didn't care anymore.
It was dark now and the rain still pouring. Namikaze tasted the almost horizontal rain and realized that it was sweet. It was not marshy lands ahead. It was dry land.
The Spring Country did exist.
Momentarily exulting in disbelief at his good fortune, he turned his back to the ship and started turning the wheel.
He saw that Kenshin was paralyzed with terror at the lookout. He was cowering near the prow, shouting incoherently and pointing towards something beyond the ship.
Naruto already knew the reason for Kenshin's discomfort.
The reef was a monster. Barely two hundred yards ahead, great black claws of rocks pounded by the hungry sea. And in turn salivating to pound on them. A foaming line of wave formed and broke intermittently on the beach stretchinv both Port and starboard. Which meant the entire beach was rocky. No safe landing was possible in such a weather. The gale was also blowing, shifting huge plumes of water and hurling them at the inky night blackness.
The foremast broke away and was carried by the gale to perhaps its summer home. Even the first mast was now shaking in tremors. Kenshin on the lookout shouting out incomprehensible for his life from atop the lookout. Luckily the mast held on, but the storm inexorably bore the shop to its death.
"All hands on deck!"Namikaze shouted and rang the bell violently. He saw Hiromatsu Fuma and Jirobo Mura run out of the gangway. And he lost his temper violently.
"How dare you? You have both been asleep!" Momentarily leaving the wheel alone he kicked the both of them out to the remaining masts. The ship lurched on the waves and all three lost their footing. Naruto held on to the wheel and tried his level best to steer the ship aport. Still holding onto the wheel, he removed the protective lashings from around the wheel from around the spokes, braced himself and swung the wheel for all he was worth.
He noticed that both Hiromatsu and Jirobo were alive. And that the storm lateen sails, the new invention borrowed from the Kiri ships were fluttering away. The ropes tensed to their limit, howling in the wind. The following wave towered over them and they were making way parallel to the reef. A one way ticket to heaven. Or hell.
The Namikaze seeing the great wave, shouted a warning and held on for his dear life. He dismissed a sigh of relief when Kenshin regaining his wits started tying up the sail ropes which had come loose. Seeing him, Hiromatsu and Jirobo too followed suit.
Another great wave came on to the ship, ship heeled and Naruto hung on for his life. He was sure the ship would flounder in this one. But it didn't but rather she shook herself like a tiger out of the water and swung out of the trough of the wave. Water speed through the scuppers and the quarterdeck.
"Kenshin!" Naruto heard the cry of Hiromatsu's agony. He saw Kenshin being taken away the next crest of the wave. Along with it, swirling was the dead corpse of Motoyasu.
The wave stronger than the last one, took Kenshin over the side and out to sea. Another wave roared across the ship and Naruto held on, putting his arms inside the spoke of the captain's wheel. Naruto locked his arms into the wheel and the water passed him by. Relatively harmless.
But Kenshin was not so lucky. The next trough took him surely and sucked him onto the shore, fifty yards or so. Then the next crest surely came and threw him high above the ship. Leaving him there for awhile shrieking and frantically trying to swim towards the ship before smashing him onto the reef. Onto a jutting rock spine that rose high and consumed him.
The ship nosed into the sea and tried to make way to the port. Another man came in and tried to help the blonde captain steer themselves to safety. But he knew there would be gaps in them. Outcrops of jutting rocks which would surely cause the ship to crash. So seeing the only alternative in hand, he screamed to Hiromatsu for help.
Hiromatsu risking his life once more, climbed onto the lookout and gave directions.
"Watch out! Naruto shouted as the rain, snow and hail relentless and lookingno worse for wear continued to rain down on them. And what he thought to be outcrops in the inky blackness turned out to frozen water. Icebergs!
But he held on and swerved, such that only the back of the ship collided with the iceberg. The ship was harder now and the sea more furious. The ship swerved with a gust and he along with two more lent hands set it acourse. He noticed that Motoyasu's corpse was back on the quarterdeck. Nature's fury indeed.
The hail was now slashing his face and he squinted to reduce the pain. The lights aboard the deck had all been long extinguished. Another gust of the storm came and shoved the ship of course. One of his helpers slipped and again the wheel spun. The man shrieked as a particular spoke of the wave took him out to mercy of the sea. But Naruto pulled him up and held him until the frothing freezing wave passed by. But then he saw that he was dead and the young Namikaze regrettably let him loose. The ever hungry sea then cleared him off the deck.
There was a wailing tormented shriek as the keel scraped across the spines of the reef. The frozen ice, the jagged rocks and the frothing waves all threatening to burst open the timbers of the ship. The ship reeled ahead and lost control.
Namikaze spouted for help but no one answered. He saw that Hiromatsu and Jirobo were already tugging at the sail ropes making sure they didn't go slack and the sails torn. He had to do this himself.
With a mighty cry, he roared, "Turn! Turn you pissant ship!" What the crew didn't hear was the following cry, "Help me live."
The crew saw the captain marvellously fighting off the storm and the hail all by himself. Defying the forces of nature like a madman. Once again, the Captain was flung aside but he groped back and held on again. The remaining crew wondered if the rudder was still holding on. 'Surely the wheel is now a lost cause and the captain is just tugging at straws. The rudder must have surely been damaged by the storm by now.' they thought.
"Curse on you storm!" Naruto continued to ferally rage on the storm. "Take your filthy hands off my ship!"
In the neck of the pass, that Naruto had steered the ship into by Hiromatsu' s help the sea became a maelstrom. Much like his own name. Driven by the tempest and the hail and hemmed in by the rocks at the shore. Huge waves smashed at the reef, then reeled ba k to fight the incoming ship. It was so until the waves fought amongst themselves and the ship was sucked into the vortex, broadside and helpless.
The men aboard the deck fell upon the masts with their axes, hoping to cut it adrift while the ship was floundering. The mast was hacked free and went over the side. The ship was now free of the entangled masts. The crew then doubled their prayers as the ship was now entirely at the mercy of the captain. Having lost hope with the sea long since.
The ship straightened for a moment and even slowed down, but the rocks ahead l{med like a ominous demon over them. And the demons seemed to grow, tower over them even. A current ricocheted against a spire and hit the ship, flinging it to its doom again.
Namikaze stopped cursing and swung the wheel, hoping to the Kami above like the rest of the crew that the rudder was still in one piece. His muscles knotted against the strain, screaming against the malnutrition that it had been subject to recently. But he hung there. Like an impassive stone angel on the wheel.
The sea race quickened and Namikaze felt his heart near bursting but he pressed against the merciless press of the sea. He tried to keep his eyes open but it was failing him. His vision was reeling and the colors all wrong. The ship was in the neck and it scraped a frozen rock. The shock of it turned her and the rudder finally broke.
He tried to fight the rapid loss of consciousness until he heard Jirobo say,
"Captain we are safe."
Then he closed his eyes and let sleep take him. The calmness of it more beguiling than the ferocity of the storm.
The rudder of the ship was now broken. Then the wind and the sea and the freeze took hold of the ship and spun her. She sped through safety.
Into the bay beyond.
The Duty of the Warden complete, he rested. Until Duty called him again.
***The End***
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Mushy, out!
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