The hero navarre book 3, p.18
The Hero (Navarre Book 3), page 18
The greatest crack of thunder he had yet generated shattered the air around him and cracked the boat beneath him. An entire rough-hewn tree-size log splintered beneath the head of his weapon and the mammoth orc ship split into two unequal parts. The larger one rocked back away from the concussive blast, while the smaller dipped down into the sea far enough that the sheriff’s bare feet got wet. Then it rocked in the other direction and overturned, spilling all of those occupying its deck into the water including the halfling who was still carrying his two weapons.
Hands immediately grabbed hold of him as the half elven illusionist hauled him to safety on Terrence’s Pride. Nearby, Sister Agnes brained a stunned orc with her mace and then struck another in the jaw, knocking him over the gunnel and into the water.
“Thank Thorne we got here in time,” the baronet prayed.
“He does deserve praise,” Navarre agreed, “but you are the one who deserves my thanks, baronet. Please take this sword as a token of my esteem.” He pulled the sheathed frost blade off of his shoulder. “I took it from the hobgoblin who commanded that battle barge we just sank. I think you will find it a suitable weapon. It has some charm on it that freezes things.”
Reginald’s mouth gaped as the halfling put the weapon in his hands
“Now, I think I’d best get back to that other battle barge,” Navarre told him, “while you continue to see what other men and women need your help.”
***
“He broke my ship,” Broken Tusk complained as if he still couldn’t believe it had happened. The tumult immediately following the halfling’s blow had knocked just about every one of his orcs and ogres off their feet, and the hobgoblin was just now picking himself up again.
“He broke my ship!” he screamed more forcefully this time. “Kill him!”
Chapter Thirty-Five: The Steadfast
“Careful, captain,” the seaman said as he hauled Dame Edith Grant out of the water. She was soaked to the skin, but had never been happier in her entire life. She and her squadron had just sunk an orc battle barge. That was the sort of thing it took elves to do in the stories, but they had not only sunk it—they were still fit to take on more.
“What’s the situation, Douglas?” she demanded, even as she reached back over the rail to help pull Sister Camille up onto the deck.
“Sea Hawk has sunk a brig and two war sloops, captain,” Douglas began.
“Three ships?” Grant repeated for clarity. “How did they manage to do that?”
“They grew towering oaks on the decks of the enemy vessels,” Douglas explained “It turns out that not even the foul magics of the Great Defile can keep a ship afloat when it’s got a one-hundred-foot oak tree towering over its mast.”
“Excellent!” Grant said with genuine enthusiasm. “What about Coventry and Dame Matilda?”
“Coventry has the crew of a war sloop fighting on their deck and Dame Matilda lost her sails and is trying to get another set raised.”
“So, Coventry’s alone?” Grant asked. She didn’t want to have to go to Coventry’s defense. It was a schooner, damn it! But she also couldn’t abandon it if her crew were overwhelmed.
“No, ma’am,” Douglas told her. “The Sea Hawk has gone to their aid and—”
He broke off pointing. “There’s another!”
Grant turned to see a truly marvelous sight. A grand oak tree—symbol of her nation of Forestria—rose up above the water greeting the sun in all its leafy glory before tipping over and toppling an orc ship of war.
“Good show!” Grant shouted as her crew cheered.
Grant got right back to business. “Did we lose any of the other frigates?”
“Not yet,” Douglas told her. “A handful of orcs got on the Sir Charles but they fought them off. Now all three frigates are maneuvering to keep from being rammed by that new battle barge.”
He pointed again and Grant saw the huge behemoth—almost a floating island—coming directly toward the sinking battle barge. For just a moment, her heart stopped beating in her chest. They had accomplished so much and yet it mattered not at all if they couldn’t take down this next vessel so they could go after the others.
Then a thing every bit as remarkable as that oak tree sprouting up above the harbor passed before her eyes. The tiny sheriff, thunder maul high over his head, leapt through the air from the sinking barge she had just escaped and came crashing down on the newcomer.
Thunder cracked the air and a blindingly bright burst of lightning leapt into the sky. Then a sizeable portion of the new barge flipped into the air spilling fifty or a hundred orcs out into the water.
The crew cheered again and Grant knew what she had to do.
“There’s our next target, Douglas!” she ordered. “Lookout, keep your eyes peeled for the halfling in case he’s still alive out there.”
“He’s alive, captain,” the lookout called down from the crow’s nest. “Terrence Pride just fished him out of the drink.”
A third round of cheers erupted on the Steadfast’s deck.
“Look!” Someone shouted. “There he goes again!”
Even as they watched, the halfling with his giant hammer leapt off the yacht back onto the battle barge.
A completely waterlogged Master Wizard Whitelock stalked past Grant toward the bow of the ship. “I’m starting to really like that halfling,” he said. “I’m going to see if I can give him a hand, even from this distance.”
Chapter Thirty-Six: The Shark
Navarre barreled into a group of orcs who had just recovered their feet after the battle barge split in two. He swung his war hammer laterally and sent two of them flying into the others. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the frigate, Sir Oswald, already coming up against one of the sides of the battle barge. Arrows rained down from the deck into the orcs who responded with a wave of deadly spears. Not to be left out, Sir Charles suddenly loomed about one hundred and fifty feet out on the halfling’s left and coming in as fast as it could. Standing at the bow of the ship, a wizard began to make magic and a portal abruptly opened almost directly beside Navarre emitting a monstrous beast the size and basic shape of a bear, but with an owl’s beak, feathers, and eyes.
The moment of distraction the emergence of the monster caused almost killed Navarre. A witchdoctor screaming incantations caused a half dozen lines of sticky white bands to form over the halfling, effectively gluing him to the deck. More bands followed, even as an ogre picked up a barrel and hurled it at the bow of the Sir Charles. It smashed into the wizard like the stone from a catapult and the monster went berserk. It charged madly across the battle barge screaming in rage, which cleared the deck immediately around Navarre, but he was still bound securely with only his mouth and the fingers of his left hand free.
A fireball plummeted toward the deck only to be swatted away by a shaman. The wizards of the Steadfast responded with half a dozen more balls of fire, trying unsuccessfully to overwhelm the orc priest’s defenses.
Navarre ran out of time. A particularly large orc with a spiked club caught sight of him and charged forward to put an end to him.
“Any ideas, people in my head?” the halfling asked.
“You might try calling that wizard’s flames,” Trblietat, God of Magic, suggested, his voice starting out in a deep gravely base.
“Calling the flames?” Navarre repeated.
Trblietat continued his instructions as if the sheriff had not spoken, his voice getting lighter with each word. “Then place your maul on the deck and get in the water really fast.”
“But I’m trapped,” Navarre pointed out as the orc stopped in front of him, howling in triumph.
“Imagine one of those fireballs turning ninety degrees to come immolate you,” the God of Magic ordered.
“You want me to set myself on fire?” Navarre asked even as he made a come-hither motion with the still free fingers of his left hand. He pictured the final ball of fire turning toward him. “I feel I’m going to regret this.”
In front of him, the orc raised his spiked club over his head to smash the halfling just as Master Wizard Whitelock’s fireball swerved off its intended course to hit the creature directly in the back.
Fire exploded in a great sphere around the two of them, but the orc’s body shielded the halfling from the initial frenzy of flames.
It did not, however, shield all the bands of white which proved to be quite flammable and immediately ignited into a miniature inferno. Suddenly, Navarre could move again, but the sticky burning bands were still attached to him. He dropped the thunder maul on the deck and backpedaled toward the water. His vest and his hair were already igniting as he threw himself off the barge and into the cold wet sea.
“There is a new problem, child,” the melodious highly-feminine voice of Laut warned him. “This area is teaming with frenzied sharks.”
Several feet under water, Navarre kept patting his hair to make certain it wasn’t still burning as he projected a question with his mind. “What do I do about that?”
“You get back out of the water,” Laut told him.
Taking her warning to heart, Navarre began to swim upwards at the same time that a humongous beast rose up beneath him. The little halfling’s kicking foot landed directly on the nose of the monster shark catching just enough traction on the creature that its ascent propelled Navarre ahead of it. The shark breached the surface, rising twelve or fourteen feet out of the water. Then it and Navarre both fell squarely on the edge of the battle barge with the halfling leaping clear of the fish at the last moment.
Navarre straightened up to face the orcs gaping at him, looking for all the world as if he had just summoned the ferocious sea creature to battle beside him. Then he darted forward, grabbed the closest orc by the belt and tossed him into the mouth of the shark.
“You’re welcome!” Navarre shouted to the fish as it chomped down firmly on the orc and retreated back into the water.
He turned back to the battle in time to see an ogre pick up his thunder maul off the deck. The weapon looked small in the monstrous creature’s hand, but that just meant that it would probably be even more deadly.
He shrugged, picked up a spear lying near the corpse of an orc, and charged back into battle.
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The New Sun
Reginald started to pull the magic blade from its scabbard when Sister Agnes yelled, “No time for that! Get us out of here before we’re crushed!”
Reginald dropped the weapon at his feet, grabbed the wheel, and immediately began calling out instructions for the sail.
The yacht slid forward just before the battle barge connected with it, and for once, possibly because the orcs were all regaining their balance after the sheriff broke a piece off of their vessel, no one tried to jump on board.
“Where to next?” he shouted.
“There’s a brig and a lot of war sloops coming in,” Gabi pointed at the enemy as she spoke. “Agnes, can you make that blessing or not?”
“I don’t know,” Agnes admitted. “I’ll try.”
“I’ll bring us toward them,” Reginald decided. “If you can’t make the blessing, maybe we can distract them and make them chase us instead of going to the aid of that battle barge.”
Sister Agnes left off helping Theodore with the sail and knelt in the front of the yacht, praying. The glow about her body intensified and moved outward again, easily extending a foot around her but no more.
Two of the war sloops adjusted course to come right at them, as if they were racing to see which could gobble up the little prize.
“Agnes, you defeated a battle barge with Thorne’s Blessing,” Gabi reminded her. “Why can’t you summon it now?”
“I don’t know!” Agnes’s answer was almost a scream of frustration. “It’s just not working. It’s like it always was before. I’m only able to help people I touch.”
“Well, something must be different!” Gabi snapped as the two war sloops drew perilously closer.
“Nothing is different!” the priestess cried. “I was bolstering the nerve of the men and women on the Sea Hawk. The bastard orcs had teleported in behind us. They had captured Elan. They knew she was Leander’s daughter and were laughing about how they would torture her.”
“What else!” Gabi demanded.
“There was nothing else. The orc stabbed me and—”
“You were stabbed?” the illusionist’s voice lost all of its fire sounding almost horrified.
“Yes!” Agnes confirmed. “I was trying so hard, and then the knife sank in and suddenly the whole world was clear to me, but I just can’t—ugh.”
To Reginald’s horror, the half elven illusionist had just sunk her thin little knife into the priestess’ stomach. “I’m sorry, Agnes. But sometimes great magic requires blood.”
Before Reginald could utter a word of protest, the warm halo surrounding the priestess expanded a thousandfold.
***
“Fabulous, Alfred, I didn’t know you could curve a ball of fire like that,” Grant complimented her master wizard.
“I can’t,” the wizard tried to tell her. “I mean, I didn’t, I mean…”
He broke off when Navarre, riding the snout of a shark, burst back out of the water and onto the battle barge. “That halfling, Edith,” he whispered. “What is he really?”
Grant must not have heard him for she had already turned away and was rallying her men for the next assault. “Get ready, everyone! This battle isn’t over yet. We’ve more orcs to send to the bottom.”
The men cheered, their spirits unbelievably high despite their terrible casualties. All across the deck, men and women readied their weapons as the Steadfast pulled up alongside the battle barge.
Out across the water, a new sun blossomed, throwing its warm orange light out across the waves to encompass two war sloops which both promptly sank to the bottom.
“That is the power of Thorne!” Sister Camille shouted with more excitement than Whitelock had ever heard from the woman. “Thorne has come to the battlefield to help us!”
The marines and sailors cheered again and then followed Captain Grant over the side and onto the battle barge.
***
The tide of battle began to turn against Meredith Braddock and her crew despite the amazing things that Grog was accomplishing with his battle axe. He whirled, he chopped, he swung, he shrugged off wounds, but the orcs were utterly ferocious and once they had recovered from the shock of the assault on their rear, they had begun to grind Braddock and her shipmates back again.
Bryce and his crew weren’t doing much better. They had given all the ground they could and now many were throwing themselves over the side to try and save themselves from the orcs.
They needed Navarre—but he was off fighting on one of the battle barges.
They needed a miracle.
Off in the distance, a new sun ignited on the water, radiating the most wonderful encouraging orange-red glow she had ever seen.
Except she had seen it before.
She knew what that glow meant.
“Sister Agnes has summoned Thorne again!” she shouted and all around her, pirates and privateers who had fought at Hidden Harbor stopped retreating.
“Thorne is back!” someone shouted.
“Sister Agnes can sink all of those orc ships!” another crowed.
“All we have to do is finish off this one crew of orcs!” Braddock encouraged them.
Battle cries erupted from dozens of throats and Meredith Braddock and her ragtag crew of privateers and pirates began to push the orcs back again.
Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Power of Thorne’s Blessing
The deep orange glow blinded Reginald for a moment, then all of his frenzied nervous fears washed away allowing him to focus on the two war sloops coming in from either side. He immediately understood that both orc ships were in trouble. The orange glow of Thorne’s blessing emanating from Sister Agnes encompassed both of them and the two ships were rapidly sinking into the water while their orc crews panicked. Even as Reginald watched, a pair of shamans grabbed an orc and attempted to sacrifice him to save their ship, but while the blade clearly hurt him—Thorne’s blessing did not extend to the orcs—it wasn't nearly enough to make up for the score of victims whose agony the orange light had brought to an end.
Reginald adjusted his course to make certain that he came within leaping range of neither vessel and passed between them. By the time that Terrence’s Pride had left the enemy ships behind, both were fully underwater.
He started to scan the horizon for their next target even as he considered how to help Sister Agnes and Gabi. “Neville, get over there and help them.”
Neville was no longer trembling, but he didn’t move to assist the woman.
“I don’t need help,” Sister Agnes insisted in a voice wrenched with pain even though she was the center of the blessing and thus, to Reginald’s mind, should be feeling nothing. “Gabi, get back to the bow and help Reginald choose our course. Thorne is with us. Let’s sink as many orc ships as we can.”
Gabi hesitated for a moment, then did as the priestess told her.
“Neville,” Reginald tried again. “If you don’t help Theodore with the sails, I swear to you that I will throw you overboard and leave you to drown.”
Neville turned to stare at Reginald with hatred in his eyes, but rather than challenge him, he stood up and began to help with the sails.
“Good,” Reginald said more to himself than to anyone else. Then he raised his voice again. “Gabi, where should we go?”
“There are three war sloops converging on Coventry, Sea Hawk, and Dame Matilda,” she announced. “It looks to me as if the crews of Coventry and Sea Hawk are fighting orcs on the deck of the schooner. Dame Matilda’s sailors are struggling to get their rigging hung again. None of those vessels are ready to take on another war sloop yet.”
