The Adventures of the HMS Harlot

Part 1: Roy Nightingale, Pilot

I am weary.

It wasn't the storm, or at least not directly. No, I like to think myself honest enough to admit simple pleasure in battling the elements in this battered vessel; wit and courage wielded like a rapier, flashing lightning in the dark. That's a war I understand. An enemy no less deadly than one of flesh and blood, but less ambiguous of purpose. Black and white, the flashing of a stormy sky. Black and white, the tasks I need perform, lest all souls on this ship are lost.

I did my duty, at least in this, and should be happy. It was no easy feat to keep a course, "a pinwheel in a hurricane," as the academy cleric taught. Illusions of control and then a sermon on piety and faith or some such thing. A man never short of wind of his own, though kind enough. Faith is gone now though. Dead and gone.

Much like one of our prisoners.

Victoria is the thunder, and Otto is the wind. As I hear it, Otto, not the wind, sent a prison laborer plunging to the broken earth for a crime much too serious for any thought or deliberation. Perhaps he took a second to catch his breath.

No matter, I am learning much in the first months of my stay on board from the fearless Captain Neckett. Like the thunder, she exists in deafening roars and forgoes subtlety in favor of blunt fear. This isn't the girl I met all those years ago; she has become something...uglier. Those times did little to brighten any lives... Gods, if anyone knows that it is I. She had to bear something darker though, and I think it broke her. The way she moves now, rolling like thunder, harbinger of death. Her own warning. I've tried to imagine what she could have been...

Too hard. And a dangerous line of thought for many reasons.

She thinks I hate her. It's useful. Less need for conversation, which is truly something I don't desire. She would kill me if she knew how I really felt. It's not in the nature of thunder to suffer pity.

I worry about Connor, and regret that he followed me here, even if his company sets my soul at ease. This is a dark ship and death here isn't a shining and noble thing. Neither he nor I are strangers to men's blood, but not all on board kill out of necessity. Storms are less precise than we were in our years of errantry. It was my own twisted conscience that led me to board this ship, though some days it feels like nothing more than a twisted sense of irony. He shouldn't have followed me; not down this road. I never could argue with him though. Almost as stubborn as I am.

It is nice having a friend on board and keeping alive our daily routines, as worn as the hilts of the weapons we carry. Sparring in the morning, he's become quite proficient with the double swords, and chess in the evening. The occasional bruises from the morning's sting much less than marks on my ego at night.

A life in the military and the less sure wider world we live in now teaches you a few things. To take rest and food wherever and however you can. To learn who to trust and how far. To take simple pleasure whenever it presents itself.

Good comes with bad every day in different proportions. Today had more bad than good, but only a fool thinks that's forever. Faith may be lost, but hope isn't quite gone. However loud the thunder that tries to scare it away. 

Roy Nightingale