Deathless

Deathless Chapter Fifteen: Mortar

Chapter Fifteen: Mortar

A fire broke out on the ship’s port side. Men bristled around the wound, where wooden debris was scattered everywhere. The impact had rocked the ship, but it was still sailing. Apart from the colossal fire, of course.

“You three, get the barrels from the store room!” Adelca barked out her commands with an aura of authority. She would not let her determination waver. “Two of you, keep the flames from spreading. The rest, prepare for battle!”

And so they did. For as they glanced into the horizon of the scattered patches of rock and earth that were the Archipel Islands, they saw two warships in the distance, both flying the rebels’ torch flag.

Sirya glanced up into the heavens, and she saw the rain of mortar shots falling from the sky. There were simply too many. At this point, they were just tiny dots of orange in the sky. But she knew how powerful and destructive the rebel mortars could be. She had seen them first hand.

“Archers, at the ready!” Adelca called. “If we can penetrate the mortar’s outer shell while it’s still in mid air, they’ll explode! Take down those shells, men! Gardon, Rahlay, keep on the rudder! Be ready to dodge ‘em.”

And then she turned to Lindale and Sirya. “I need your help. Try as we might, we won’t get those mortars down in time. I need you two to navigate through the rain. Find a path the ship can go through, like you did in the storm.”

Ah, the storm. They had just passed out from underneath the clouds but moments ago, but even now, it seemed like it had been weeks.

“Douse the flames, men!” Adelca ordered, spotting the two men coming up from belowdecks with barrels of water in tow. “Don’t let them spread farther than they already have!”

For the flames were getting severe indeed, and they had created a crater in the deck nearly ten feet in diameter, by Lindale’s reckoning.

Vanya and Risselyn had taken up crossbows as well, and were firing along with the other men for a volley.

“We should turn back!” Sirya declared, scanning the rain of fire descending upon them, growing closer by the second. They didn’t have long now, even as the crewmen fired volley after volley at the approaching shells, exploding them in midair. !

She heard a deafening boom as a mortar exploded, not twenty feet from the ship’s stern. She felt the rush of wind and heat as the blast reached her, even at the ship’s helm. Her ears rang.

The blast had been near enough that the stern had caught fire, but the men rushed to put it out, but not before it had seeped across the front end of the ship and eaten out a good deal of it.

“We’re going to need more barrels!” Adelca commanded. “Move your asses, we’re in a battle here!”

“They’re getting closer,” Sirya noted. “Soon we’ll be blown to bits. We need to go back. Find another way.”

“There is no other way!” Adelca concluded, glancing about them. “We can’t turn back into the storm, not in this condition. And with only a single sail, we have no chance of outrunning them. Our only choice is to face them in open combat.”

“We’ll get annihalated!” Sirya assured her. “This is a caravel, not a warship. We’ll get blown to bits, or else burn to death.”

“It’s a price I’m willing to pay,” Adelca said in a low voice. “I am a soldier of the Imperial Battalion. I will gladly sacrifice myself in glorious battle in service of my emperor.”

“That’s no reason to go throwing away your life!” Sirya argued. “We can still do something. We can’t go giving up just yet.”

“And what do you propose?” Adelca snapped, angry now. “We’re surrounded on one side by the enemy, another by the hurricane, and two more by water.”