//------------------------------// // A short escort. // Story: Chaos Rising. // by Totito30 //------------------------------// The wooden boards of the Princessa's deck slowly and almost impercebtibly swayed below J´zar's feet. His eyes were fixed above the banks of mist in the shores of Chesapeake Bay and his hands were firmly gripping around the gunwale of the frigate's main deck. "¿What are you looking at, my lord?" Zephir asked him. "It is always wise to scrutinize the battlefield before bloodshed" J´zar answered, taking the hands off the gunwale and turning around to look at Zephir. The sound of the ship's sails catching the afternoon's wind was now quite familiar to J´zar. The trip from Europe to America had taken him six months due to pirates, privateers, trading complications and bad weather. J´zar believed in God, but he also believed in fate, and it seemed as if fate was trying to tell him not to go there "¿How many of us are in this ship?". "Five or six, I think, my lord" Zephir answered, counting with the fingers "Enough if they try to board us" J´zar didn't answer and walked through the deck, accidentaly trampling a man in his way to the opposite gunwale. He stopped and looked over the edge again, watching with hate the french ships stationed between him and the traitor's lands. The Princessa's captain, a man who's name J´zar didn't know approached him. "The Intrepid has just opened fire and we will do so too soon" he warned. "¿And you tell me this because...?" J´zar inquired. "I know we aren't nearly in the same side..." the captain said, reaching for his pocket. "We both fight for our nation and our king ¿isn't it?" J´zar cut him off. "...but you have accompanied this ship since we left England, and if this battle goes as bad as I think, I want you to keep this" the captain ignored J´zar's words and pulled out a spyglass from his coat's pocket, then handled it to J´zar. J´zar looked at the captain and saved the spyglass. "The Réfléchi is closing on us. I must leave" the seaman finished. His coat made a rustling sound as he ascended to the forecastle. J´zar looked at the ship the captain had mentioned and noticed it was indeed close to them. "¡Load the cannons!" the captain yelled from above J´zar. His order echoed in the voice of other sailors as the rumble of metal against metal filled the ship. "¡Prepare!" the captain ordered yet again "¡On my mark, unleash hell!" The french warship was now exposing its broadside at the Princessa. "¡Fire!" J´zar heard before the entire upper deck exploded with the sounds of the cannons. "¡My lord!" Zephir's voice called "¡Wake up!" "¿W-wha-what?" J´zar mumbled. "Good to see you up again, my lord" Zephir greeted him back to the conscious world "Sp´hre needs escorting to her meeting ¿remember?" "Yes, of course" J´zar moved his lower half away from the bunk he was laying on and into the floor to stand up, using his knees more than his legs. J´zar walked with Zephir through a very small and simple kitchen and into a long tight hallway. The walls were painted a yellowy white which remembered of unwashed teeth grinning at the armour-clad men which walked between them. J´zar's right pauldron constantly rubbed against the wall due to a light limp. J´zar looked down at his ankle and remembered he had earned that wound in a different dimension. A nostalgic needle pierced his nerves. The warriors crossed an arabic arch to get to the dimly illuminated street on which another masked warrior waited them. "Hello J´zar" the man said. "Hello Lethe" J´zar coldly answered. Lethe opened the door of a black limousine and got inside. J´zar had to walk all around the car to open the other door and enter the car as well. On the back seath there were Lethe, against the left door, and the Commander Sp´hre in the middle. She was wearing her full battle armor, unlike J´zar who only had a chainmail robe and hardened leather boots and gloves. But they both donned hefty black iron masks with silver filigrees, except Sp´hre's mask had six horns and J´zar's had only two, a symbol of rank. "Good night, Commander" J´zar said bowing his head. "The same goes for you, Principal" Sp´hre answered. Though they had a friendly relationship (J´zar had been there when she was named Commander), they didn't had the confidence to show it in public. Especially with a public like Lethe. Zephir got in the driver's seat. "No bombs in the car" he announced, turning on the engine and accelerating towards the corner of the street. "We must be very careful" Sp´hre said "This deal will provide us with enough surgical quality steel how to arm an entire generation of warriors" J´zar realized the might of such a thing. A generation was the word the Order used to describe the full ammount of men the twenty-two Brotherhoods had. "But if something goes wrong, Commander" Lethe said with his raspy voice "I always have Wail with me" J´zar knew he was meaning his flail. It was a tradition for the members of the Order to name their weapons. Sometimes two different weapons had the same name due to an Aspirant's lack of creativity. In the hundreds of years he had fought for the Order, J´zar hadn't named his swords yet. J´zar looked through the window at the passing stores and kiosks, which were invariably locked with chains, metal curtains or other devices. It was 2:00 AM and in Jerusalem few people were up. "It is curious" J´zar thought for himself "That I saw this city under siege and now I walk through it freely". They had decided that place to conduct the transaction because it was a very important stronghold for the Order and would give them ample opportunities if things didn't go as expected. J´zar's reveries were stopped when the car suddenly halted. In front of them there was the metal curtain of a warehouse. Two floodlights provided illumination for the door and a small zone of the sidewalk. J´zar, Sp´hre, Zephir and Lethe all got out of the car walked up to the door. Sp´hre pulled a keycard out of her leather pant's pocket. It took her some time to find the hidden pocket between the armour plates, but finally she managed to pass the magnetized stripe through a reader at the side of the door. With a metallic creak, the curtain rolled up, revealing a storage room with a single hanging light which birghtly illuminated the center of the room where four large metal containers layed. A man with a business suit waited them in the center of the light. "¡Hello!" he said "As you can see, here is my part of the deal. Two hundred and fifty tons of the best steel my company can provide. Now, your part of the deal" As only answer, Lethe pulled out a briefcase from a puch he had tied around his waist and threw it at the man, who catched it and opened it greedily. Whatever he had looked at, he was very pleased by it. The man closed the briefcase. "It's a pleasure doing business with..." he started saying. A strong boom was heard as the businessman's chest was pierced by a bullet fired from an unknown direction.