Joroboros
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[YF] Chapter 230: Isle Village
🕑 Added 2024-09-09 01:12:57 +0000 UTC“Are you certain this is what you want?” Steersman Sylvan says as we approach the sole section of land rising on the horizon. “It is a waste of time.”
His reluctance is encouragement to continue. If he has something to hide here, or doesn’t want me speaking to the locals, then it’s all the more reason to do so.
“Yes. I wish to speak with them.”
He gives me a dubious gaze, and fingers an axe at his hip; a tic I’d noticed he did whenever he felt annoyed. “Then you will see the tyranny of Jarl Anoures’ rule. Allow me to remove her warriors.”
“No,” I say. “I will deal with them.”
Steersman Sylvan’s longship alone approaches the first island we’ve come across in two days. The rest linger behind us, staying in the deep waters where they cannot be flanked. A strategy they take up when stopping to raid or resupply. The possibility is apparently so common that they can never fully dock their fleet.
The only exception, I’ve been told, is during a siege. But even then, one must watch their rear.
I’m sure we might have found another inhabited island sooner had we intentionally veered toward one, but I figured there was no need to travel off course to find a village to interrogate. An island that we have to pass directly is a different story.
When we’d first set off, the boost my flames gave each ship startled the heqet crews below. Actually, it’s more appropriate to say it was my flames themselves they focused on. We very nearly entered another one-sided battle, as the first reaction from almost all the heqet was to throw an axe into flame.
That’s also how I found out they keep spares below deck.
It took a few minutes, but a combination of the heqet’s strange coloured banner communication system and Sylvan’s direct interference had the crews settle down. I know I’d obscured us when we landed on Sylvan’s ship, but one would think the heqet wise enough to take the time after I’d left to consider how many of their own vessels had sunk because of the way they attacked.
Nope, they threw themselves into a frenzy and almost got killed because of how irritated they made me. They should all be glad I want to avoid killing so much with Leal around.
My sail-boosting infernos were eventually accepted, albeit not without having to answer concerns about burning their ships. Who knew having a ball of fire hovering over your vessel would make you worry? Well, it’s their own fault for making such flammable ships.
Our ship sails in close to the shore-side village. Trails of smoke rise into the air from fireplaces and forges that tingle at the edge of my senses. A relatively short jetty moors three longships. None large enough for more than a ten-man crew.
Off the side and up the embankment, two more ships sit atop scaffolding; inverted. These are unfinished ships. Not only are there still planks to be bent and fitted to the hull, but the timber is a light brown rather than the black of any completed ship.
“Dead oars,” Steersman Sylvan commands to the crew, and they hold their arms still and above their heads. The ship soon comes to a stop in the waters. Sylvan turns to me. “Unless you allow me to liberate the village, this is as far as my ship goes. We are near cannon range.”
I cast my sight back over the village, and as he says, there are a few large cannons built along the sea-facing side of the village. Each already has a trio of heqet manning them, ready to fire as soon as we move closer. As I watch, those three ships slowly move off from their dock and face us side-on. They don’t engage, but they place themselves in positions to fire volleys once we move.
“Why are they preparing to fight? We’re a single ship, and it’s obvious we’ve left behind the rest of the force.”
“We don’t carry Anoures’ colours, nor do we declare ourselves non-partisan. Of course they hold hostility,” he says.
“Couldn’t you do that? We only want to talk. It’s not like we’re here to take their town.” I peer beyond the docks, where the somewhat primitive housing of the heqet hide forms walking around behind them. It seems the villagers steer far from the waters while the warriors prepare for battle.
“That is not our way,” he sneers, insulted by the idea. Sylvan’s eyes close for a moment and he breathes in until his anger cools. “And if we must sail close enough, I will take the village; free it from Anoures’ control.”
Is that some form of honour? It seems so pointless with how aggressive they are. Why not lie to get the upper hand? It would be in line with what I already expect from them. Are any of their kind going to hold themselves back from fighting because of this pride? I doubt it. But maybe it has its place. Actually, it sounds like just another reason for them to start up more wars; why approach something diplomatically, when it would take away their battles?
“Alright, then,” I say. My body collapses into flame and I wrap around Leal. She doesn’t need my help to fly, but I’d rather keep a defensive layer around her in case those cannons fire with any sort of accuracy. I don’t even consider leaving her with these brutes. “We’ll be back soon.”
“We shall wait,” Sylvan says, no longer scratching at his axe.
Leal and I take to the air and cross the last stretch of ocean to reach land again. I’ve done my best to keep it hidden — especially from the heqet — but staying so long on the water with only a wooden vessel between it and myself has been rough. There’s not much I feel I need to worry about, but there is no fighting against my instincts of the danger I’m in. Each second longer has me wanting to rocket a thousand metres up.
The first round of cannonballs fire at once. Three specific types of shots: the basic steel ball, the chain linked balls, and the shrapnel shots. Of the three, only the shrapnel gives us any problem, and that’s simply because of how widespread the bits of metal spread as they soar towards us. They are the only type that comes anywhere near hitting Leal. Fortunately, their limited size makes them easy to consume.
The heqet cannons are not designed to fire upon flying creatures. They can unleash devastation upon their own ships, but they lack the accuracy to hit a rapid-moving aerial target. Even with the shrapnel-shots, I could probably ignore them and they would miss. Especially with how few cannons this village has.
That isn’t to say the village is undefended. Considering the place looks like only a hundred heqet live here, the half-dozen shore-side cannons and the fully outfitted longships are an excessive military force. Only… compared to the steel rain of the Henosis Empire, or the efforts of a full fleet, the output rising to meet us is minuscule.
As I watch them fire blindly and ineffectively, I consider my options. I want to talk to them, and entering their village with a slaughter won’t help that endeavour. Even damaging those cannons might as well declare me an enemy… more so than they’ve already decided I am.
“Any ideas?” I ask Leal.
“Bypass them?” she says. “I mean, we know the villagers are focused near their rear. The warriors are situated to defend against the ocean, not from the island's interior. We can just ignore them.”
“You don’t think that’ll take the battle to the civilians?”
Leal hesitates. “I think it’s our best option to find someone who can call off the warriors before we’re forced into a position we can’t back down from.”
While I don’t currently have a head, my flames nod anyway. This is our best option. It gives us a minute to speak before the heqet warriors can rush to the other side of the village. As far as I can see, there are no enhanced soldiers here. Or at least none that can make a difference.
We soar over the heqet defensive line without so much as a cannonball coming within a dozen metres. They scramble below to chase us, but they are far too slow.
The buildings of the village are well built, but they are still primitive compared to what I’ve seen in New Vetus or the pact nations. They are thick wooden cabins with a mixture of mud and tar soaked through the walls. The ceiling itself appears no different from the plains behind the village. Grass grows from the mud-coated sloped roofs.
Each house passes by quickly, and soon we approach the villagers who work in the fields. Despite all the noise of cannon-fire along the beach, the heqet here never stop working. Many send curious, or even envious glances down the hill, but none move from their tasks.
To one side, a row of bubbling black pits sit like a mar on the landscape. Grass leads up to the tar-pits, but dies in perfect rings around them, leaving the earth directly surrounding them lifeless. A path of well-used packed dirt leads from the pit to the longship construction site.
Covered head to toe in black tar, two dozen heqet dredge through the pits. They dive beneath the surface with buckets, and come up wheezing. They cough out foul smelling tar that gives off the slightest trail of smoke before it mixes with the surface tar and stills.
Off to the side, a single heqet — spotlessly clean — shouts at one worker who’d stopped to listen to the cannons. They pick up a stone and fling it into the head of the distracted worker. The impact knocks them into the tar, and they don’t rise for a distressing amount of time, but the clean heqet shows no remorse. The other workers simply lower their heads and get back to work.
In the fields, the picture isn’t any better. The workers aren’t as filthy as those in the tar-pits, but they tend the fields while a very few number of axe-wielding heqet stand watch over them. It is only the ones not doing any work that have axes, and yet they are the ones ordering the heqet around.
My presence lighting the sky only makes things worse.
As soon as I fly over them, all look up. The same desire to fight fills each of their eyes, but without weapons, they simply stand there, watching. The warrior commanding them steps forward to whack one worker over the head with the flat of his axe and shouts for them all to continue working before turning toward me himself, eyes blazing.
The heqet that fell into the tar still hasn’t risen.
“Leal, can you?” I ask, gesturing to the pit.
She nods, saying nothing. A gust slams down into the surface of the tar, slowly spreading it apart like clawing fingers until the drowning heqet is revealed. Her winds knock the others off their feet, and those waist-deep in tar sink to their shoulders. The wide mouths of the heqet doing them no favours as many take in mouthfuls of the black substance. But at least the drowning one is pulled free.
I would have done the same myself if the tar wasn’t so flammable. I can hold back my flames from igniting substances rather well now, but there is something about the wet, smoking tar they dive for that makes me hesitate to bring my flames near. Wouldn’t want to explode the workers while they’re in the middle of it, would we?
Leal struggles to pull the heqet from the clinging grasp of tar, but she eventually succeeds. Another element type should have been more suited, but my ursu friend is the expert, so I won’t question her judgement; it worked, after all.
The drowned heqet now lay on the grass beside the pit and I land us next to them. Him? Her? It’s hard to distinguish the difference for heqet. Their skin is equally brown and wart-like between them all. Really, it is only easy to tell Sylvan apart from the rest because of that wound across his face.
An axe crashes through the back of my newly forming body. It melts instantly. I turn to the fool who made the attempt; the same heqet that threw the stone.
I’m trying so hard to be civil, but these heqet are tempting an early cremation.
