บท 106: Servant of the Axe, 6 - Sea Witch

Servant of the Axe

Chapter 6

Sea-Witch

"So. Tell me, where is the nearest storm?"

"How would I know? I've just barely learned the basics of sensing magic."

"Feel the air." Jeanne said.

I tried to feel the air. It is an odd thing to be attuned to storms yet not to the patterns of air itself.

For a hermetic, or one who uses the four elements mandala, it is an unforgiveable lapse. That said, they normally had an eight-year training program, which for obvious reasons I had not gone through.

When I made Arcane mana, I made it using the five elements mandala: Wood feeds Fire, Fire produces Earth, Earth becomes Metal, Metal guides Water, Water feeds Wood.

So, as is in theme with my life, Jeanne was taught and was trying to teach me by the Four Elements. Sooner or later, I'd understand wind, as ephemeral a force as it seems.

I closed my eyes, and focused. Without opening them, I raised my left arm and pointed.

"Open your eyes."

I was pointing to the left of a very tiny dark cloud, which was headed away from, rather than towards, us.

"That's closer than I gauged my first storm." Jeanne said. "Now, Move Water, Part Wave. At least five successes."

She knew it was impossible, she was just tricking me into performing my Mystic Regimen.

Supposedly, the spell was capable of parting larger waves during a storm, or at least lowering the wave enough that the ship could navigate them.

Jeanne had a Water attunement of five, granting her twelve mana, versus the four that I had. But then, her very Lore statistic was a three.

I was nowhere near gaining Lore two. From watching my development, sub-skills came easiest and most frequently, then the skills containing them.

It didn't always happen. Witness I had a Shield Block of 5, but Block, Melee Defense, and Valor were all at three.

Anyway, if my theory was right, then enough Skills would help to increase a sub-stat, which in turn contributed a small amount toward increasing the statistic itself.

Lore was a statistic; I should have been happy to have a rating of one in it. Some people had to make due with zero, or even an inability to use actual magic.

It's not as major as I make it sound. My System tells me I'm a level six magical creature, but I hardly ever have useful magic. Honestly, the ability to wander the Dreamtime and put people to sleep are my most used magics.

Oh, and magic is a living force that tries to kill you if you lose control of it.

So, the ability to break a wave of three inches? Easy. A forty foot wave? It's the difference between throwing a frog back into a pond, and tossing an ogre the same distance.

So, however Jeanne felt about it, she was just massively more capable than I was, taint or no taint.

The biscuit bounced off my forehead.

[You have taken 2 points of Blunt damage. After armor, 0 points of damage have been received.]

"Forget this hardtack nonsense! I want bread!"

"There is no bread." I explained. "If there were, it would be worse for you now than the hardtack is."

"Fine, then I want shark! I know that you cooks are hiding some for the captaine."

"Clemson, nobody is HIDING anything. The captaine gets her share of the haul from the nets. Everyone in the crew knows that."

"There IS meat! There IS more fish than this!"

I sighed. "It's called rations. We're all on them."

"I'm level four now! I need more food!"

"Four times your might of four times three for your size is forty-eight nutrition. Your rations provide you that!"

Actually, his rations provided him 72 nutrition that I knew of. He should have more than enough, even counting the multiple for hard labor.

"I need double rations!"

"Then just get the quartermaster to sign off on that."

Macrosti rumbled, "What do I need to sign, now?"

"Clemson says he needs double rations, quartermaster."

"YOU get double rations when you reach level five, same as everyone else. And YOU," he said pointing at me, "I hear you eat garbage, like a curly-tailed little pig."

"Guilty, quartermaster. I eat food that would otherwise be thrown overboard, such as these crusty potato peels."

"Do you want your ration of potato peels, Clemson?"

"No, quartermaster."

"Well, step off, then! Some of us actually appreciate our rations." He squinted at his hardtack. "Have we got any bread left?"

I mean, I was happy for Clemson. Going up a level is actually a pretty major deal. I didn't know his class, but I'm sure it came with all kinds of improvement options, the way most classes did.

And they were right; getting forty extra biomass a day because I could eat things the rest of the crew couldn't was, well, cheating.

If I could manage that every day of the voyage, that was 1200 or so extra biomass. Now, that was going to go into my next set of evolutions, and I hadn't managed it every single day, so that estimate was high.

But that couldn't be the way they were thinking; they didn't have my Omnivore method and evolutions. Whatever was wrong with the crew, they weren't starving, and shouldn't be hungry.

So what WAS it about?

It clearly wasn't me; I was onshore as soon as we landed.

Or could it be me? I didn't think so.

So Clemson knew he wasn't getting extra food. What was he up to?

After dinner, I asked Kismet.

"Oh, tensions are just high because of the recent funerals. I mean seven deaths is a lot for all at once, Rhishi. Just let it blow over, and it'll be gone."

"Like the wind?"

"Like the wind."

"Here's some wind for you, kiddos!" said one of the crew.

"Don't you dare!" Kismet said.

But he did dare, and we fled and laughed about it later.

"There. That ship, what does the ocean tell you about it?"

I closed my eyes, blinked, and then closed again. "It's trailing sharks. Blood. The ship smells like blood."

"Which tells you?"

"Well, the ship is coming from the other way, so there may be something dangerous up ahead."

"Okay, now open your eyes. What do you see?"

"It's about two third our size, but faster, sleeker."

"That might just be the wind, blowing against us."

"It has a higher portion of draft than we do."

"Oh. Let the captaine know that, then."

"Bosun Smythe!"

"Captaine?"

"If they raise a black flag, we raise the blue and yellow."

"As the captaine orders. Be ready to raise the blue and yellow!"

Black, of course, are pirate colors. The blue and yellow would mark the Wanton Sharkbite as doubling down on the colors of Furdia. I'm not sure what that was supposed to communicate back to the pirates, but it seemed like a challenge of some kind.

But that vessel passed us, bearing the red on brown of the Norvik tribes.

"I didn't know the Norvik sailed ships that big."

"Oh, the Norvik capture plenty of ships." Jeanne said. "That one just seems to have more common sense than most."

"How so?"

"The Furdish, Manoran, and Daurian all have larger vessels than most pirates. Even without being equipped for war, the sheer number of crew makes this ship difficult to take. See, pirates tend to pick their targets carefully. One bad pick, and the entire crew is executed."

"So they pick only fights they know they can win?"

She shrugged. "Some don't. Sometimes a pirate gets a decent crew, is able to tackle larger targets than normal. They spread fear and terror, and some live for a while, others die quick. See, most pirates are or were other things. One nation's pirate can become another nation's privateer, after all."

"I don't understand." I said.

"A privateer is like a pirate, but they only take on prey from nations named by the country employing them."

"Sounds a lot like just sanctioning pirates who don't attack your ships."

"Some privateers hold to their code better than others. And different nations have different codes."

"And the Furdian code?"

"Oh, at sea, Furdians are known bullies. It helps keep other nations from trying to land troops on our shores and rivers, and attempting to conquer us."

"I was unaware this was ever tried."

"One hundred twenty years ago. It's why Malosia is no longer a major naval power today."

"Good to know."

"Just in case your nation is trying to make a huge navy."

I shrugged. "Not that I know of. I know they're planning on a new port village or town, but I think there's a shortage of lumber to build the docks. Doesn't sound like a formula for competing with the current seafaring nations."

"As long as your government understands that."

"I'll add that to my diplomatic parcel."

"Okay. Good talk. So – Move Water, Split Wave. Five successes."