Chapter 10; Red Sails;
Characters of the Chapter
Yara Greyjoy Master of ships on the small council of the south kingdom, commander of the royal navy, Queen of the Iron Islands
Isabela Sailor on the Seadancer, former Captain of the Siren'sCall II, admiral of the Felicisima armada (self-appointed)
"I must say I like this ship you have." Isabela said to Yara, her tone light and chatty.
It was early morning near Bear Island, a heavy fog obscuring vision. The winds weren't as strong as they could have been. Even so they were making good progress as the Seadancer was making its way to the Iron Islands.
The Queen of the Iron Islands smiled at the comment the pirate had made. "I'm rather proud of her myself. It's built around the design of my late uncle's ship, the Silence."
"Late uncle? What happened to him?" Isabela asked.
"He died, during the capture of King's Landing years ago." Yara said nonchalantly.
"It wasn't too great a loss. My uncle was the biggest ass ever to live, and would've gladly murdered me if it meant more power for him. I know it, because he did try it several times. So it was a relationship of mutual hatred, and I've never lost a night's sleep over the whole affair." She added.
"Sounds like you have a very complicated family." Isabela said.
"Oh, you have no idea." Yara said, rolling her eyes.
"Makes me happy I don't have one. The friends I have made over the years are family enough for me. When they don't stab me in the back that is." Isabela said.
"And when they do?" Yara asked.
"Then I deal with it, like I'm going to do with Harwyn. I think I have indulged you in enough elaborate revenge fantasies for you to know what that means." Isabela said.
"Indeed. But it may take some time before you get a chance to act on that, and I can't promise we'll run across him at all." Yara commented.
"I'll wait. For a time at least. If we haven't found him by the end of the war I may wish to strike out on my own to seek him out. But until then I'll remain here." Isabela said.
"That surprises me. You really don't strike me as the type who would stick around in the middle of a war." Yara said.
"Ordinarily I wouldn't go within a hundred miles of a mess like this. But because of the unfortunate influence of one Serah Hawke these days I have something approximating a sense of responsibility. It's quite a burden to have, gets me into all kinds of shenanigans I end up regretting. I'm still pissed at Hawke sometimes for that." Isabela quipped, making Yara laugh.
"Besides, where else would I go? I don't have a ship, and without one there is very little chance of me finding Harwyn or doing anything else for that matter. I was stranded in Kirkwall for several years once before. It's not an experience I'm looking forward to repeating." She added.
"So… you're an admiral but you only have one ship?" Yara asked, confused.
"Well… it happens that that was just a title I fancied having. It doesn't actually mean anything, at least not in my case. We raiders aren't all that organized, remember? Anyone who wishes can call themselves an admiral, provided the others don't yell loud enough to shout you down." Isablela admitted with some embarrassment.
"Seriously? Talk about misleading description. "Yara scoffed. "So do you have any actual pull amongst the raiders?" She asked.
"Some. I'm one of their more experienced captains, so they tend to take it seriously when tell them something. I don't do that often, mind you. I'm not interested politics and such."
"Some admiral you are. Unbelievable…" Yara said, chuckling.
"It isn't that funny!" The pirate protested. "Your own title isn't all that different. You're a Queen but you answer to another one. What kind of Queen does that?"
"How did that happen by the way? How did you go from being a leader of raiders to hunting them down in service to the Dragon Queen?" She asked.
"That was the price she demanded in exchange for her support of my claim to rule the Iron Islands. At the time it seemed like a fair trade." Yara replied. "That doesn't mean that it has been easy convincing the rest of my people of the same. Anything but. We have long traditions around raiding and it has been a bitch to eradicate those traditions. But I finally managed to sell them the angle that we were paying the Iron Price by killing the Dragon Queen's enemies. Doing that we have earned the one thing we never earned from the mainlanders in all our raids: Respect. It used to be that people were filled with fear when they saw our sails. Now they revere us as heroes. The things we used to take from others by force they now give us willingly, without us even having to ask for them."
"Do you ever think of going back to the way things used to be?" Isabela asked.
"There are days. I'm sure there are still those among my people who wish for that as well." She admitted. "But that would not be the right thing to do, I see that now. And so I expect that I will be fighting my worst impulses for the rest of my life, as well as those of my people. I can only hope my people won't slide back to old habits once I'm gone."
"That sounds like a very nasty way to live, constantly denying yourself things you want. Don't know if I could live like that." Isabela commented.
"No, you don't seem the type to deny yourself anything." Yara joked, making the pirate laugh aloud.
"So, one we get to the Iron Islands, what's our plan?" Isabela asked then, changing the subject.
"That depends entirely on the Dragon Queen." Yara answered. "The documents you provided make it clear than an invasion is coming. If she doesn't yet know that then we have to warn her. And if she does know then doubtless she has new commands for us. A raven can't find a moving ship, so the Iron Islands is where she will have sent them. After that there will be a lot of work for us getting the Iron Fleet ready for war."
"I see. Well, I certainly look forward to seeing the place you come from. Maybe you could give me a tour while we're at it? I…" Isabela said before the smile on her face suddenly froze. "Whoa…" She breathed placing her hands on the railing, peering at something over the water.
"What is it?" Yara asked, frowning.
"About two points off our bow, in the fog… I thought I saw a shape... something big." Isabela said uncertainly, pointing in the direction."
"A ship?" Yara asked, looking in the direction Isabela had pointed.
"I don't… I don't know. It was just there for a second." Isabela said, shaking her head, hesitantly pointing in the direction again.
Yara bit her lip, then turned to one of her nearby crewmen. "Did you see it?"
"No. But I wasn't looking either." The crewman said with a shake of his head before returning to work.
Yara nodded slowly. "Very well. It's good to be alert. You did the right thing. Carry on." She said to Isabela.
The pirate nodded and walked to the other side of the deck, returning to her duties. Yara was about to turn away when some sailor's instinct made her take one last look. That turned out to be a very good thing yo do, for in that instance there were a series of orange flashes deep within the fog.
"DOWN! ALL HANDS DOWN!" She yelled, throwing herself onto the deck as a rumbling sound carried over the water.
Moments later a cloud of fast moving object tore at their ship, sundering the railing, smashing the stairs that led to the aft castle and blasting several holes in their hull. Most of those not embracing the floor boards at that moment were slain, blasted apart by the deadly storm. Next to Isabela a man went down, a large wooden splinter impaled through his thigh.
After a while the deafening clamor quieted around them and the crew uncertainly got on their feet, fearful of another volley. Yara peered in the direction the shots had come from, seeing the monster that had assailed them, quietly sliding out of the mist:
It was an enormous ship, easily three times the size of the Seadancer. It's sails were blood red.
"A Qunari dreadnought? Here?" Isablela breathed with a startled voice.
"Looks that way. You've faced them before?" Yara said.
"Ran away more like. I think we are well and truly screwed." Isabela said.
"Fuckers aimed too high. Any lower and our hull would have been torn wide open." Yara noted.
"Still managed to trash us pretty good." Isabela said.
"Give me a damage report!" Yara told her crew.
"The rudder's shot up! The steering won't answer Ma'am!" One crewman reported moments later, looking over the ship's side.
"Our catapult is destroyed! We cannot fire!" Another reported.
"Damn. We're a fish in the barrel." Yara cursed.
"Arm yourselves! Prepare to repel boarders!" She shouted.
"Wait up. What are you doing?" Isabela said, taking Yara's arm.
"I'm not going down without a fight." Yara explained. "When they try to board us…"
"They won't." Isabela said. "They have cannons, and they are not after prisoners of cargo. They'll just sit at a comfortable range and blast us into toothpicks."
"Then what the fuck do you suggest we do instead?" Yara asked, angry.
"We run." Isabela said. "We run and find help, ships that are intact enough to take that thing on."
"Run? What, did you miss the part about our rudder? We can't go anywhere!" Yara said.
"We have boats. The one I brought and the one you have already. We can use them to turn us to the wind and tow us. We don't have to get far, just deep enough into the fog so they can't see us. The Qunari have drifted out of range, it'll take them a minute to bring themselves back around, which gives us a chance, but we have to act now." Isabela said.
"Please. I know what those ships can do. We can't win this, not alone, not in this state." Isabela pleaded when Yara hesitated.
"If this is some trick of yours to avoid getting into combat…" Yara warned, pointing a finger at the other woman.
"It's not, I promise. Wait around a few more minutes and you'll see for yourself, except I won't be here to say I told you so." Isabela said.
Yara hesitated only a while longer, staring at the Qunari warship. "Braedon… get our strongest lads on the boats. Put us into the fog. Oden, get a team working on the ropes. Once we have the wind, give me full sails. We need to harness every shred of wind we can get. Everyone else, start bailing out water and throw everything we can afford to lose overboard! We need to stay afloat at any cost."
"MOVE IT. MOVE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT!" She bellowed as her crew jumped into action. "It does…" She added under her breath.
As the Seadancer was turned around, the Qunari followed them. But even in its damaged state the Iron Islander ship was smaller and faster, beginning to outpace the Dreadnought.
"They're falling behind…" Isabela said with a hopeful smile.
"Were not out of this yet." Yara warned.
Near the prow of the enemy ship a pair of cannons spoke, putting holes through their sails. Seeing this, Yara hurried to the bow of her ship.
"Row! Row you bastards! Row like you're pulling someone off your sweetheart!" She shouted at the boats, the rowers doubling their efforts.
"Just a little longer…" She said as the fog bank grew ever closer. When the fog finally began to envelop them the crew started cheering.
"Quiet! Quiet down! No shouts, no calls!" Yara ordered sharply, and the cheering quieted. Seeing them about to slip away the Qunari ship executed a quick turn to port, unleashing a final blind salvo after them, filling the air with the thrum of passing cannonballs. A tense silence followed, the crew afraid to speak too loudly for fear of attracting the enemy ship that they knew was still out there. The crew on the boats kept on rowing until they were exhausted, while the rest fought to keep the ship from sinking. After a long while one of Yara's crewmen came to inform her that the leaking had been brought under control and that the ship was no longer in imminent danger. Tired but relieved that they were now safe, Yara sat down on the deck, leaning her back against the railing.
Sometime later Isabela came to her, sitting down beside Yara. "So…I've… done a check on our casualties." Isabela said.
"So, what's the butcher's bill?" Yara asked.
"Nine dead, about two dozen wounded." Isabela said.
"Incredible." Yara said, quiet admiration in her voice. "One volley, and they took out our rudder and almost a third of our crew. Damn fine gunnery."
"You made a good call today. Retreating was the right thing to do. My crew and I are alive because of you. Thank you." She said to Isabela, who smiled and nodded at the compliment.
"…Months at sea, and they happen on our exact position?" Yara said after a moment of contemplation.
"They have the means do that, believe me. The way I hear it, their spies are even more impressive than their cannons." Isabela said. "Though just as well this might have been coincidence, us being in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Still doesn't explain why they fired on us in the first place. Last I checked they weren't our enemies. Used to be when we saw Qunari ships we didn't pay any mind to each other." Yara said.
Isabela scoffed. "I wouldn't waste too much time trying to figure out how the oxmen think. Their Qun makes them almost impossible to understand, not to mention boring. You never know what might tick them off. I once stole a book form them and they haven't stopped chasing me since, not even after I gave the damn thing back to them."
"Well I have to think on it at least a little. I have to figure out whether this was some weird one time incident or if this was part of something bigger." Yara said. "Wait a minute. You're saying they might have been after you? That you might have been the reason this happened?"
"No! I mean, I don't see how." Isabela protested quickly. "No one knows I'm here except you and your crew. And not too long ago I could not have imagined being here myself. Qunari might have good spies but they're not bloody clairvoyant. Plus I didn't have a clue there were Qunari in the area. I would have warned you otherwise, because I don't fancy getting blown to bits."
"I'll admit put like that it doesn't seem too likely a reason." Yara admitted. "Ok, you're off the hook on that. Still, I think I'd like to hear the full story about this book you stole from them. Sounds like it might be a rather interesting tale."
"Oh boy…" Isabela said with a sigh. "Okay. Now that I've said as much as I did you might as well know the rest of it. But if you have no problem with it then I'd like to get myself a strong drink first. I has been that kind of day…"
"No problem. Bring some for me too while you're at it." Yara said.
"You got it. I'll be back in a minute." Isabela said, standing up. "I just hope your boys didn't dump it all overboard in their haste."
"Are you kidding? If one of my men threw a keg of drink over the side I'd throw him right after it to bring it back. The Ironborn know not to pass up a good thing, and we definitely don't throw them away." Yara said.
"I knew there was some reason I liked you lot." Isabela quipped before disappearing below deck.
Based this sea battle on the opening scene from the film "Master and Commander: On the far side of the world." A very nice film that. I hope you're all enjoying yourselves!