Threshing Floor

Behind the Lines

The being known to the mortal world as Master Erlok stood on the deck of the Syren seemingly unaffected by the havok around him,  Men called to each other as they desperately tried to get the heavily armed schooner prepared for battle while it was already under way toward the enemy lines.  Fires and explosions, some distant and others not so distant, made communication onboard difficult.  Communication with the other pirate captains that were rallying to the defense of the Bay was all but impossible.

Thresh, the being that only a few suspected was his true identity, had sensed immediately when one of the objects he had come here looking for vanished from his perception.  Two people noted the subtle difference in his stance and recognized his sudden vigilance, but only the handsome, well-dressed woman with the mostly dead eyes at his side had an idea what had caused the shift.  The other observant soul was a blind seaman, seated at the base of the main mast, busily coiling a heavy length of rope.  Nobody paid him any attention, but in spite of his supposed disability, he was aware of more than anyone would have thought.

Dania looked up at her partner with a smidge of life in her eyes. “Something has happened with the artifacts we came looking for?”

“One of them, yes.  I’m not sure which one, but the other two are still in the Captain’s quarters.  Shall we take advantage of this confrontation to search them out?” His eyes swam with a turbid green shimmer as he spoke.

“The puffed up, loud gentleman that thinks he is in charge is currently giving orders that no one is listening to.  He is in over his head.  He won’t be paying attention to us at all.  Lead the way.” She gestured toward the aft cabin while continuously scanning the activities of the crew.  The man Cesar might not be paying attention, but that didn’t mean nobody was. 

The blind sailor sat coiling his rope, barely more than an arm’s span away.  He had only been inhabiting his blindness for a couple of weeks but he found the brain was a marvelously adaptable organ.  He caught all but a handful of the words that passed between the pair.  He knew the man, he hated him.  The woman was a mystery.  There was a strange timbre to her voice that set the teeth on edge.  Her collaboration with Thresh was all the reason he needed to oppose whatever the two were scheming.  When they moved off in a feigned casual manner, he dropped the rope and prepared to follow them.  Another thing he had found in his new incarnation of sightlessness was the irony that he couldn’t see and other people rarely saw him unless he drew attention to himself.

His ears became his eyes.  In the current urgent state of battle,  no one was completely silent. Those who weren’t calling out orders or screaming for assistance were scrambling about, each labored breath alerting him to their location and relative direction.  The two he was shadowing sat at the center of an eerie sphere of near silence which should have stood out like a pair of wolves in a flock of sheep.  No one had time or temper to spare though.

He almost tailed them too closely in his thirst to foil Thresh.  They had stopped just in front of the door.  Will had passed through that door countless times in better days and knew by heart the unmistakable sound it made as it swung inward. He stopped by a brace of barrels that had been lashed to the deck and hoped the anonymity of his “handicap” would hold.

Apparently it did. The unique squeal of the door’s hinges that no amount of oil seemed to entirely erase told him that the couple had decided it was safe to intrude on the most private area of the ship, reserved only for her captain and those she might invite in.

This was the moment.  He hesitated slightly.  There was no fear of death or torture, he had faced that already.  The question was, what could he do? He crossed the empty space and felt for the door latch. He drew a breath and turned it, knowing that there was no hope he would remain undetected now.