Cold Snap should have been asleep hours ago. Nebula was. The crew was.
Snap mentally corrected himself. The crew was nowhere on deck except for the ship pilot peering out of the enclosed wheelhouse and a spotter watching the sea from his perch in the ship’s towering crow’s nest.
After the day he’d somehow survived, he should have been exhausted, and while he was, sleep eluded him. He’d tossed and turned on his shipboard bed until the wee hours of the morning. Finally, he’d given up any notions of a good night’s rest and wandered the corridors until he finally found his way topside.
This captain and his crew had a peculiar vocabulary. The “outside” was “topside”. Doors became “bulkheads” while walls were also coincidentally “bulkheads”. The thing he walked on was the deck, but he knew that already. They used more technical jargon, but that was all he could understand.
Snap leaned against the rail near the bow. If he looked over the edge, he could see the ship’s dark anchor kiss the foamy water, and he could trace its massive chain to a large capstan in the middle of the deck. Only a few clouds broke the empty night sky, and a full moon turned the smooth waters into rolling glass.
It was quiet out here. Perhaps it wasn’t as quiet as on the Golden Hound, but it was close. The water peeled from the bow in a permanent roar while the wind whispered through the ship’s many crevices. A gentle rumble also made the ship’s plank vibrate under his hooves and fill the night air with a soft chugging sound.
Far off the ship’s bow, he could see sails of a ship under all the canvas it could bear. As far off as it might be, Captain Gideon gained on his prey with every hour.
None of his world made sense. Days ago, he’d been happily sailing away on his first real responsibility. Making a sale was supposed to be his first real accomplishment as an adult. Instead, he rode on a death ship chasing a mysterious prize. Her hard captain nursed a painful grudge against a third party in this fight for the box, and now he wanted dealt in to this game.
Cold Snap, Nebula, and, most of all, Mr. Horn all suffered under his claw until he got his way or decided to let them off at a friendly port to work their way home. Given how things were going, he doubted they would get off this ship for a very long time.
Escape would prove their only chance. Snap’s eyes lingered on the ship’s rowboat lashed to the deck. It was there, ready for the taking. If only they weren’t exhausted. If only the boat was already provisioned for them. If only they weren’t untold miles from any inhabited land. If only. If only.
Hooves thudded behind him. Snap perked to see what the sailor would order him to do. Instead, it was a familiar voice. “So, you couldn’t sleep either.”
Mr. Horn leaned against the ship’s winch. He looked better than when he’d been unceremoniously hauled into Captain Gideon’s quarters. A good night of sleep would work a miracle or two, though.
“That wasn’t a question, eh?”
The hippogriff gave a pained laugh. “No. No, I suppose not.”
He silently studied the fleeing ship. “That brig makes good time. She’s got a nice hull and a good hand on the helm.”
Mr. Horn glanced at the stars. “We’ll probably catch her before dawn, maybe a little afterward.
“Brig?” Snap asked.
The hippogriff nodded. He pointed at the ship. “It’s arrangement of the sails.” he sighed and continued. “It’s easier to focus on that tub than to think about the one I’m on.”
Snap studied the way the moonlight glinted off their wake. He breathed deeply, catching a whiff of something burning on the breeze.
“You can tell it, can’t you?” Mr. Horn asked.
Cold Snap’s silence must have given the hippogriff his answer.
“This ship is impossible.”
Mr. Horn stated it as a matter of fact. Snap didn’t quite figure out his reasoning, and he expressed all his curiosity, disbelief, and grogginess in a flat: “Is it?”
“Of course it is. Look at what you’re standing on, mate.”
Snap finally tore his eyes off the water and stared at the deck beneath his hooves. “It looks possible to me. You know, since it’s here.”
His response was a grunt. “It’s a ship without sails. No. Sails! And here it is, puttering along as pretty as you please. And have you given a single thought to how it’s built? Iron! Iron all over it!”
To prove his point, the hippogriff fluttered from his seat to rap on the hull. Instead of the deep thump of wood, Snap only heard the heavy slap of flesh on metal.
“It’s a miracle she doesn’t sink. But you do smell that infernal smoke, right? I admit,” Mr. Horn said as he held up a defensive claw, “I was wrong about this being a demon crew. They’re normal folks like you and I, but demons surely sold them the ship.”
“And yet here it is and we are on it,” Snap said, his tiredness making him far more accepting of the situation than he normally would have been.
Mr. Horn apparently did not have a good comeback for that aside from a grunt and settling back on the capstan. While he wouldn’t admit it to the slightly superstitious and ornery hippogriff, Snap preferred it that way. Instead, he found himself a nice seat on a loose rope coil and watched the sea. A cool wind brushed his fur. Clouds rolled in from the north, hiding the moon and shrouding the sea in blackness. He could barely make out a ship-like shape on the horizon.
“I-” Snap yawned. “I wonder what they’re thinking on there.”
From the corner of his drooping eyes, he could see Mr. Horn rubbing his jaw. “Probably cautious, but truth be told, I don’t think they can see us. It’s the paint. And we have no lights burning either.”
He emphasized his words with a rap on something iron. Snap had never paid enough attention to tell what he hit, and he could barely focus anymore. All he felt was the cool wind and the gentle swaying beneath him. He heard hooves thump the deck and fade away, and then he remembered no more.
*****************************************************************************************************
Something wet slapped Cold Snap in the face. He jolted and gagged at the hot, rancid smell of whatever hit him. He tried scrambling away, but heavy weights snagged his struggling legs and threatened to drag him down under their relentless pull.
Then, someone barked in his ear. He jolted ramrod straight and gasped as his stiff back roared in agony. The world came into enough focus to see this wasn’t another monster from Mr. Horn’s tall tales.
Ropes tangled his hooves in impossible knots while a brown collie took advantage of his misfortune to get in licks wherever it could. He finally managed to free one hoof enough to rub the dog’s ears, partially to scratch the cute animal and partially to keep it away.
“Sucat, come!” someone shouted from across the ship.
The collie froze mid lick and bounded out of sight. Snap wiped off his wet face and began pulling himself out of the ropes. A few crew members passed him, but they seemed more interested in the tangled ropes than the pony stuck in them. Snap didn’t particularly mind since it gave him time to work out the days aches and pains.
He would need them for a day like today. The pre-dawn sun didn’t shine so much as diffuse through the thick overcast, and the air held a tiny nip that it hadn’t yesterday. The entire world hung in a gloom, and somewhere out there was a ship.
Snap gave one final yawn and hauled himself up, straightening the ropes as best he could as he did. He looked up just in time to see Sucat round the corner and Captain Gideon close behind.
The captain paid him no mind. Instead, he walked to the bow, looked up at the glowing sky, and then down to the dark waters crashing against his ship’s bow. For minutes, he stood absolutely motionless.
Snap didn’t know the captain well at all, and their introductions were hardly cordial. He didn’t know what Captain Gideon was doing. Perhaps it was some kind of morning ritual, a greeting of the dawn as some did.
He could see the ship beyond. It was so close. Their sails were out, but they hung slack in the still dawn. Theship didn’t seem to be in any particular panic. Mr. Horn must have been right. They hadn’t seen the Yellow Rose in the dark night and assumed they’d lost her.
Snap took a few steps closer to the captain to ask something, but that something was forgotten as he heard the griffon’s low voice. “And today, I bring them to the doorstep of battle. If I am the one wrong, then let all the judgment fall on me. Spare those this ship carries, but if we are to fight, if we are to pick up the sword, then let us wield it boldly and with all joy.”
The strange words washed over Snap and left him confused. What was this? Nevertheless, he knew he had somehow intruded on a very private moment for the captain. He turned to leave.
“And grant clarity in the coming days. My instinct says that this battle will be only a beginning, but to what, I cannot say. By your will,” the griffon sighed and turned, only to catch Cold Snap in the act of retreating.
Instantly, his expression flattened. “So, did you need something?”
Snap gulped, and it felt like someone glued his hooves to the deck. Anything he thought to say died in his throat. Sucat didn’t make matters easier when she saw him struggling for a single word and barked happily.
“Well?” the captain asked.
“Nothing, sir, sir?” Snap asked hesitantly.
“I believe either ‘sir’ or ‘Captain’ will be equally acceptable.”
Captain Gideon turned and studied the rapidly growing ship. Cold Snap thought this was probably his excuse to leave, find Nebula, or just find anything better to do than be here.
Yet, he couldn’t tear himself from his spot. The griffon seemed to not notice him at all. Actually, he seemed not to concern himself with many things. By his own admission, he’d said that there would be battle before the sun sank. He’d delivered that news with all the fervor of someone telling him that it would rain later.
The griffon pulled a brass tube from his jacket, extended it, and peered at his prey. Snap finally worked up the nerve to leave.
“She’s nearly two miles off. Her colors still fly, but I doubt they would fly under their own flag. There does not appear to be any crew on deck. She appears to be unaware of us.”
So the captain was still watching him. “Our surprise will not last past dawn. So, pony, what do you think my course is?”
What kind of question was that? Snap didn’t know the first thing about ships! He scraped a hoof against the deck. “Captain, I think there might be more qualified folks around to answer.”
“Maybe there are, but you’re here. I know you and your friend are greenhorns to ships, but that’s what I want. You know nothing about a ‘real’ ship. Thus, you have no idiotic preconceptions I must beat out of you. You also come up with the unorthodox ideas.”
He pointed the still-extended spyglass to the armored ship. “Look at the Rose. She’s not anything like another ship on these seas. Her crew needed to be that too. Every soul on board started as a landlubber like you. I need no carpenters. I need no riggers. I have no use for sails. It takes blacksmiths and technicians to run this ship. Our skill with sailing her came from painful mistakes as we learned a new trade.”
So, he meant that the demon ship, the terror of the Abyssinian Sea and a dozen more beyond, was an impossible ship crewed by self-taught sailors? It seemed absurd, but after what little he’d seen of the ship, he’d believe the captain if he said a cockroach could pull a wagon.
“My question still stands. We are losing our darkness. We are gaining on them, but if they mount a defense, then we will have a much harder fight. This also isn’t a defenseless merchant plying molasses and rum. These are crack fighters that bloodied our noses before. They might try some novel tactic. Given that, what do you think the course is?”
Snap thought carefully. This was some kind of test. How the captain tolerated them might hinge on his answer. He took a deep breath. “When you attacked the Hound, you shot the steery-thing”-
“Rudder,” Captain Gideon said.
“Rudder. Can you hit them, but, no. That will wake them like a shook beehive. I don’t even think you could hit them from here. I’ve never heard of a cannon shooting that far. Well, shoot that far and hit.”
This might be a slightly harder question than he thought, but it quickly came to Snap. “We need to get close as possible, right?”
The captain nodded. “Correct. Once we close the distance, we engage and dictate the fight. I have no doubt we would win, but I would rather not do it over a pile of my crew. Depending on their orders and attachment for my prize, they might see fit to destroy it. I cannot risk that.”
Something thudded behind Snap, and he whirled. A brown griffon clambered over an iron railing high above the deck. He laid his musket against the metal and focused on the closing ship. Another crewmate joined the griffon and held his own weapon in a tight grip.
An earsplitting metal groan sent Snap’s heart pounding, and he spun to see the latest culprit. The large slab of metal behind him, the one he had seen just before being tossed in for a swim, moved. He could just barely see the titular yellow rose painted on its studded surface.
The bulge could easily fit a dozen griffons inside, and as it rotated, two long cannon barrels silhouetted themselves against the lightening sky. It looked like a cheese wheel had been dropped flat on the deck, and then someone started carving random hunks off the sides, vaguely circular, but still angular plates held on by massive rivets.
“Turret Number One. Fires a sixty-pound projectile nearly four miles. Its front armor is seven inches thick at a sixty degree angle. It will withstand any cannonball a ship may throw at it. This ship is an engineering marvel, but I do not have time to be a hospitable host and show her to you. You need to get below. We will be engaging them within the hour.”
Snap gawked at the mechanical marvel before him before remembering that his temporary captain and captor had given him an order. He finally found his hooves and trotted back to the main hatch.
Inside, he found members of the crew checking their muskets, tightening armor, and putting the last touches on their heinous makeup. They paid him little mind until he got near the stairwell where one of the last in line jabbed a striped hoof up the stairs, not down.
“Captain gave orders. You must go up. Midshipmare Blue will watch you,” the zebra said in slightly stilted words and a most peculiar, almost guttural accent.
Snap left the zebra to finish his own ghastly makeup of painted bones. Up the stairs, he found a turn to the right, and then a familiar hallway. Without a doubt, that zebra did not mean for him to intrude on the captain’s quarters. Instead, he found another stairwell with plenty of voices echoing through the bulkheads.
As soon as he left the stairwell, he stumbled into the hornet’s nest. Creatures of all kinds hovered over tables, demanded updates and shot back orders, or stood staring grimly out the narrow viewing glass. Only a few even noticed him, and most of them barely paid him a glance.
One familiar face did not. “I must get it back. Don’t you understand?”
Perhaps he should not have been surprised to see Mr. Horn in an important-looking place like this. He was Captain Gideon’s source of information regarding this contested box. Keep friends close and enemies closer, as the saying went.
That only puzzled Snap. He was neither friend nor enemy to the dour griffon. If anything, he was a tolerated stowaway. So, why was he here?
“I can’t lose it now,” Mr. Horn muttered to seemingly thin air.
“That’s enough mumble-mumble. We’ll get it back. I have no doubt of that,” Midshipmare Deep Blue said as she parted the chaos and joined them.
“Er, Midshipmare?” Snap hazarded.
The azure mare stared. “Deep Blue is fine. Heck. Blue is fine as long as we’re not in the wheelhouse.”
Snap snorted. “Thanks. I prefer to go by ‘Snap’ myself. Feels too formal otherwise.”
“Then I think we’ll get along. Get a seat. Show’s about to start.”
He followed her pointing hoof to a lumpy looking cushion shoved against the wall. It must have been a well-loved piece of furniture based on the countless stains that turned the thing into a mottled green-brown. There was no telling what color it was originally.
Midshipmare Blue trotted to a raised, metal table bolted to the floor. Her eyes roved over whatever lay on its thick surface before sparing a glance at the brig. As if someone kicked her, she jerked her focus back to Snap as if she only then remembered he was in the room. “I probably don’t need to tell you this, but stay put. Both of you. Look, but don’t touch. Things get crazy enough in here.”
She said those words like he was expected to understand the importance of whatever “in here” was. All he saw were a half-dozen sailors hovering around their tables. Some furiously jotted on bits of paper while others watched whatever lay on the table like their lives hung in the balance. Every one of them stole a moment to stare at their approaching victim.
As he studied, he recognized other things. Midshipmare Blue wore a coat similar to Captain Gideon’s; though hers was plainer, a little more disheveled, and probably worn only for the pockets all over it. The others wore similar attire, but each had a different pattern of gold, stars, and a variety of basic symbols from starbursts to arrows to fire to knives. This obviously reflected a rank system, but he didn’t know enough to translate it.
Brass pipes lined the wall. They ran across the ceiling where they descended a pillar in a central area of the room, forming a cluster of tubes like an obscure musical instrument above a wide table. This table was thick, with magical disks and arms spinning and waving in a pattern lost to the Snap. A single brass stalk like the one in the captain’s cabin rose over a black fabric box. Whatever the place was, it was important. That only brought up one pressing question.
“Why are we here?” he asked Midshipmare Blue bluntly.
The junior officer glanced at him, an answer ready to spill out when she looked to one side, stiffened, and barked: “Captain on deck!”
Some of the crew mimicked her while others sat too engrossed in their duties to see Captain Gideon. The captain wore his jacket and had donned his brace of pistols. A saber lightly tapped his side as he walked. His golden eyes fixed on Snap, and the pony found himself feeling very small.
“Because I have allowed it. We are about to engage. If you do not wish to see, then now is your time to leave. As for the hippogriff, I know enough about him not to trust him. Hence, I will keep him where I can keep one eye on him. I will not suffer losing this prize a second time,” the griffon said as he walked to the table with all the brass tubes.
He gestured to a second griffon, this one wearing no uniform at all aside from a belted pouch and knife at his shoulders and carrying a musket oiled to perfection. “Take the balcony. I want no surprises.”
“Aye, sir,” the brown griffon tipped the musket barrel to his head and exited through a sturdy looking door. Snap could just barely see his head through a square of glass embedded in the metal.
“We will be engaging in moments, and I want this battle over quickly. Pilot, set a course for boarding. I will manage the rest.”
The captain stepped close to the brass tubes, but the mare on the helm piped up. “Captain, they’ve seen us!”
Sure enough. Figures raced around the brig’s deck. Fliers were already pouring from the rigging. Some pulled massive ropes and brought the stalled ship to deliver a broadside at the Yellow Rose. Others readied smaller weapons and waited. No one fired.
“Hold your fire. Save your life.”
The griffon captain said it with such calm conviction that Snap felt a chill rush his spine. He had been on the other end not two days earlier. He’d felt the fear of the terrible demon ship bearing down on them. He remembered that sickening feeling of the deck leaving his hooves. How could anyone hope to stand against that?
A white puff erupted from the sailing ship’s deck. An instant later, a loud clang reverberated through the ship. More cannon fire and small arms fire joined the fray. A swivel gun fired, sending chainshot clattering across the Rose’s tower and barely missing the glass windows.
In an instant, the entire attitude in the room changed. Any nervous jitters vanished, and everyone focused completely on their duties. Midshipmare Deep Blue rushed from station to station gathering reports and dumping them on other desks, mostly Captain Gideon’s. The griffon himself was an island in the storm. It seemed so incredible to Snap that someone so young could maintain such control in the situation, yet here was the proof.
The slate-colored griffon leaned over the brass tube. “Yellow Rose. They’ve given us their answer. Show them ours.”