Guild Wars: Sea of Sorrows (11 page)

“If that happens, our ship won’t dock, and as we can’t make it to another port without repairs, the
Havoc
sinks. We drown.” Harrow narrowed his eyes like a feral creature, his sharp claw raking through his rough whiskers. “In this scenario, everybody dies.
Including you
. Understood, soldier?”

“Agreed,” Cobiah pledged. “I’d say that’s a fair trade for my life.”

“Understood, Engineer?” Centurion Harrow rounded on Sykox, his voice taking on a bellow of command.

“Yes, sir!” Sykox’s yell rang out on instinct. Realizing what he’d agreed to, the rust-furred charr nodded as well,
all four ears drooping in worry beneath his heavy horns. He managed a salute, eyes forward, back stiff, tail up. Cobiah did his best to imitate Sykox’s gesture, but without a tail, it fell a little flat.

“Until then, you work in the engine with Sykox.
Dismissed
.” Centurion Harrow bit out the word between gleaming fangs.

Sykox and Cobiah backed away cautiously. When they reached the edge of the forecastle and jumped down onto the main deck, Sykox sighed. “Not what you expected, I gather?” Cobiah muttered.

“Well, er, not exactly. I was expecting the part about murdering
you
.”

“Nice. Glad to know something went the way you planned.” Cobiah met the eye of the black-furred charr sailor, and a chill went down his spine. Despite the centurion’s orders, the soldier looked as if he’d rather have been gutting Cobiah than working with him. Cobiah murmured, “They’ll kill me, won’t they, if they catch me alone?”

“Yeah. Probably. The hatred of humans is part of our blood. You worship false gods, you betray your promises, and you smell kind of like a wallowing murellow. There are old wounds. Deep ones that go back generations, like the war in Ascalon.”

“What about the humans? The charr stole our homeland.” Stung, Cobiah nevertheless was careful to keep his voice down. “If your people hadn’t tried to conquer Ascalon, King Adelbern wouldn’t have cursed the kingdom, and humans would still live there.”

“I say ‘forecastle,’ you say ‘fo’c’sle.’ If the humans hadn’t stolen Ascalon from us a few hundred years before, we wouldn’t have had to fight to get it back,” Sykox retorted. “At least the charr had the good grace not to shatter a city
and enslave the souls of the populace as a fare-thee-well. Your King Adelbern, whoo, howdy. He was a stinker.”

Cobiah steamed a bit, at a loss for words. “I can already tell I’m going to hate arguing with you.”

“Arguments are like battles. If you don’t have superior firepower, don’t engage.” Sykox grinned.

“How about you? Why don’t you hate humans as much as they do?”

Sykox looked down at him appraisingly. With a shrug, he said, “I recognized what was left of the pennon tangled up with you and that mast. See, I was raised in a fahrar—that’s like a cub training school—near the border of Kryta. We spent a lot of time studying the people who lived in Lion’s Arch. Guess I always wanted to meet one.” He lifted one paw and licked it, rubbing the damp pads over his tangled mane to smooth the fur. “Don’t worry about the other sailors, mouse. You’ll be working in the engine room, and I’ll be there with you. After the wave hit us, the bellows blew, and most of the charr who worked down there with me died in the explosion. I managed to save the ship, but I couldn’t save them.” Sykox turned his head and pretended to smooth down another patch of fur, but Cobiah could see pain echoed in the bestial soldier’s eyes.

“Your crew means that much to you?” he asked more gently.

“They’re my warband. I grew up with some of these lowlifes. That’s what ‘warband’ means to a charr. ‘Family.’ It’s the only family a charr ever knows. Only family they ever need.”

Cobiah had never thought he’d have a meaningful conversation with a charr. If anyone had asked, he’d have said the murderous, bestial charr couldn’t even string sentences together, much less express the kind of regret
and pain he heard in Sykox’s tone. Shaking his head, the rust-furred charr growled deep within his throat and changed the subject. “Follow me, human. I’ll take you down to the bellows and let you see our ship’s beating heart.” Cobiah grinned and followed his strange companion toward the lower hold.

The
Havoc
had a strange quality to it, a sort of stilted chugging that Cobiah’d never felt aboard any other ship. As they walked down a curled stairwell, he could feel the air growing heavier, thicker with the stench of acrid smoke. On the
Indomitable
, the rear quarterdeck had housed the captain and his officers. Here, the
Havoc
’s quarterdeck had been entirely opened up from the keel to the roof of the highest deck, so that the room itself was twice as high. Instead of stained-glass windows and polished candelabra, the room was dark and muggy, as hot as hell and twice as cavernous.

A strange contraption made of steel and bronze had been built at the rear of the
Havoc
. It looked like a squatting toad with a flickering tongue of orange flame that darted out between its iron teeth. Piles of coal lay in a massive metal bin to one side, with two large shovels sticking out of the top like headstones in a graveyard. To each side of the engine was a great circular crank, ticking in unison with some inner working of the engine. Chains clanked and shivered, leashing the contraption to a massive cog at the rear. As it clicked in circles, the motion turned a rotary paddle wheel beneath the ship’s hull and propelled the
Havoc
forward.

“You built this?” Cobiah stared in amazement.

“I built it, and I run it.” Sykox grabbed one of the shovels and yanked it out of the coal bin. Shoving the handle against Cobiah’s chest, Sykox added, “Now you run it, too.”

“How does this thing work?” Cobiah rolled up his sleeves, struggling to hold the shovel in one hand and wipe the smoke from his face with the other.

“The ‘how’ isn’t your concern, mouse.” Sykox smiled. “Just keep shoveling coal ’til we make port.”

“And when we make port, what then?” a new voice cut in. It had a nasal tone, and condescension hung on every syllable. “We get blown out of the water by the Lionguard? You’re an optimistic fur bucket, Sykox. Making for Lion’s Arch is a stupid plan.”

“I thought you said there weren’t any other charr down here, Sykox,” Cobiah said. A shadow stepped out of the smoke near the engine’s main cog. It was small, topping out barely higher than Cobiah’s waist, and it definitely didn’t move like a charr.

“How did you know we were making for Lion’s Arch?” Sykox blurted challengingly, shaking a clawed paw. “I talked Centurion Harrow into that plan only yesterday!”

“I hear everything that happens aboard this blasted ship, you loudmouthed blunderbuss. So, tell me, when we reach this aforementioned port, what do we do then?” The figure walked into the light of the engine fire, and Cobiah could finally see it clearly. It was a woman—well, at least it was female, as far as he could tell. She marched forward and stuck her hands on her hips with a ferocious attitude and a toss of her head, making her long ears flap against her shoulders. A thickly braided loop of leather on the top of her head held back dyed braids that cascaded down her back and over one shoulder in a cacophony of rampant color—none of which looked the least bit natural. Orange, green, blue, and pink vied for dominance against the little creature’s pale skin. Wide eyes glinted like obsidian chips, and her bowed mouth was set in a frown of disapproval.

She wore an embroidered blue smock with a magical-looking bird’s-eye pattern stitched on the chest, and blue-black feathers hung from gold cuffs above her elbows. As she talked, her hands flapped, and the motion reminded Cobiah of a bird struggling to fly. Although Cobiah was already sweating, and poor Sykox looked to be broiling under his thick coat of fur, the interloper seemed perfectly comfortable despite the engine’s intense heat.

Sykox jerked a thumb toward Cobiah with a rough chuckle. “Cobiah, meet Macha, our asuran stowaway. Macha, this is Cobiah, the mouse I netted out of the sea.”

“Stowaway?” The creature’s eyes flashed. “Slanderous, libelous, extraplunderous accusations, Steamshroud! How dare you show such tooth to me!” Macha stomped forward and shook an accusatory finger at Sykox’s belly, pointing up toward the big charr’s nose. “I was invited to be part of this crew, fuzz wad! Invited, I say!”

“ ‘Invited.’ ” Sykox snorted, amused. “ ‘Blackmailed your way aboard’ is more like it, Macha.”

“You say ‘firefly,’ I say ‘bioelectric pharmaceutical neonyte.’ ” The asura brushed imaginary dust motes from her ornamented robe. “A few of my harsher critics may have discovered certain anatomical difficulties upon rising one morning, yes, and perhaps those issues caused me to seek a vacation outside the camp, I suppose, yes, but to be quite honest, your ship has more than benefited from my presence. I consider the utilization of my genius to be more than repayment for a meager berth.”

“What’s she talking about?” Cobiah asked in a whisper.

“Some of the other asura said Macha’s latest experiment was too dangerous,” Sykox murmured. “They woke up dead.”

“If they’d altered their tangents to the proper coefficient and redone the math like I told them to, they’d
never have experienced that particular side effect.” Macha lifted her nose imperiously. “I left their successors to deal with the ramifications of their unfortunate lack of forethought.”

“Meaning,” Sykox said, rolling his eyes, “she stowed aboard the
Havoc
to escape a lynch mob.”

“Oversimplified. Distinctly distorted. A multifarious misstatement.” Macha sniffed and crossed her feather-ornamented arms. “The truth is that I negotiated a profitable exchange: my security aboard this ship in return for an investment of my brilliance during the voyage.”

“Negotiated
after
we put to sea, but she’ll say that’s ‘equally irrelevant.’ In any case, Macha’s been tinkering with the engines since we left shore.”

“What . . . is she?” Cobiah managed to ask, trying not to move or get the little creature’s attention.

“ ‘What is she?’ ” Macha turned her waggling finger on him. “She is an asura! What are you, you ignoramus, that you don’t know an asura when you see one?”

“Asura?” Cobiah knew the word, but he’d never seen one. All he knew about asura was that they were odd, underground creatures that lived in the deep Maguuma Jungle.

“Yes, asura. Not very good with words, is he?” Macha raised an eyebrow.

“Doesn’t have to be, so long as he can shovel coal.” Sykox thumped Cobiah on the back of his shoulder, shoving him forward. “Say hello, Cobiah.”

Cobiah grinned sheepishly. “I’ve never met an asura. It’s a pleasure.” He held out his hand, unsure if asura greeted one another like humans did. To his relief, Macha took it.

“I’d say ‘it’s a pleasure’ back, but I have met humans.” The diminutive woman tossed her head, ears flapping to
either side, and fixed him with an appraising stare. “So, Cobiah. Can you do anything useful?”

With a smile, Cobiah answered, “I can read an astrolabe.” He pulled the brass device out of his vest and saw the asura’s eyes light up like furnace flames.

“Well, well, well!” Macha grinned, rubbing her hands together. “An educated human. How abnormal. How unexpected. Between that device and this engine, we might just make it to Lion’s Arch after all.”

Sykox smiled. “I told you, Macha. Everything will work out just fine.” With a bark of laughter, the charr shoved them both toward the coal pile. “With the three of us working together, nothing could
possibly
go wrong. You’ll see!”

C
obiah had sailed for nearly a year with the
Indomitable
, and he knew every rock formation and major island in the northern bay of the Sea of Sorrows—yet not one of them broke the horizon, even after six days of sail. No seagulls hovered beneath the low-hanging, dark clouds, and the sea was littered with wreckage. Severed masts and shattered keels tossed on the waves, and fouled white sails clung to rolling waves like funeral cloths. Thick kelp floated in massive drifts, and even the roll and swell of the waves seemed labored. The sea itself was filthy with sand and churned grit, and—horribly—here and there Cobiah could see something floating that may have once been part of a house.

“We should have seen
something
by now,” he muttered to Sykox as they leaned out over the
Havoc
’s rail. “You can spy the lighthouse at Lion’s Gate a day before you see the port.” But there’d been no lighthouse. No Lion’s Gate. Most sickeningly, there’d been no sign that any other ship had survived the wave. As they followed in the wake of the catastrophe, even the bullying charr were quiet and subdued. The
Havoc
felt like a funeral.

From the crow’s nest came the sound of a signal
whistle. Sykox perked up, his four ears shifting forward with interest. “The scout’s spotted land!”

“Claw Island, maybe,” Cobiah guessed. “Or the harbor cliffs?”

“We’ll see for ourselves soon enough.” Macha looked up from scribbling sketches of the astrolabe onto a dirty scrap of torn canvas. She handed the brass disc back to Cobiah, stuffing her designs into a hidden pocket of her blue robe. “I just hope the modifications we made to the rudder won’t flummox the whole thing and run the ship aground.”