Forlorn Voyage

“Ahoy, welcome to the Drakon!”

Jabari flinched against the harsh, evening light as he rose by swinging ladder onto the deck of the Wolfish Drake. The sunset poured down on him, burning red-pink bands into his squinting eyes.

“It’s so bright today…” The young man mumbled as he reached up and a rough, sandblasted hand caught him with a effortless tug. The man who plucked him from below was massive with leathery palms and pale-gray skin. He stood two heads over Jabari, but his face… The sunlight hid him like a blinding shroud.

“He-hello?” Jabari tried, for a moment forgetting his professional midshipmen etiquette. "Ensign Lemme..."

“What's that, Boy? Speak up.” The giant growled out.

Jabari squinted deeper just to see below and passed the giant, like the dark wood planks of the deck beneath his webbed boots. The ensign looked up. Wait, of course, a navy uniform. The white collared cotton tunic, loose pants and a leather belt or two holding everything up and together. Comfortable but functional, unless one thought to stain it or set it ablaze. Both were insane extremes but were as much a naval concern as changing, angry sea states.

An emblem stuck out on the man’s shoulder, a seagull crest and two swords. Three bands and a sewn star. The giant was a Senior Deck Officer. Structure fell back into place. Jabari reminded himself that a few days ago, he was a Rigging Apprentice in the Midshipmen Corps. Today, he became a Mission Ensign… Everyone aboard reported to him now. It would be his first, and last ship after all...

“Did you call me 'Boy'?” Jabari called back, his eyes strained up to try and meet the veteran's silhouetted face. He only made it to the giant's warbling throat, another ancient artifact with years-old scarring he would rather not see again. At least he confirmed the man had a long, pyramid beard.

"I did. What of it?" The giant growled.

"I should be asking you that. I'm this vessel's new ensign, requesting to come aboard."

"And?"

A brief silence filled the ship's spacious deck area. Two marine guards crawled up the rope ladder, seeming unfazed by the exchange between teenager and giant. Maybe this was a regular hazing ritual.

Jabari shook his head, mulling how to respond next. He had his orders. The envelope with authorization, and verbal marching orders from the Naval Registry and Doctrine Headquarters. His rank alone should command authority over the crew. Respect was not necessary, but appreciated nonetheless. He instead received neither.

"I am authorized by Naval Commission Mandate to take immediate charge of the Wolfish Drake." Jabari went to pull the letter from his side pouch pocket but the giant grabbed his wrist, paralyzing it.

Between leathery skin and beady eyes, the giant finally leaned down to reveal his full face. He wasn't an ogre, but an old man with eyelid wrinkles and laugh lines from a seemingly different life. In his younger years, the master of the ship might have matched Jabari's youthful charm.

"Oh, how noble! They sent a child to babysit my ship." The master of the ship smirked but it did not reach his eyes. "My crew follows me. You'll have to earn that command."

Jabari hissed back, a surprising fire lit within him. "Like Hell, you have the same orders! You know this is a condemning operation..."

The giant brought up his other palm and held it out to freeze the boy's words. He clamped down on his left shoulder, hard. "No, you listen. We're here because you're the main patsy. Our fates are tied, but I won't sacrifice my crew for your inexperience. If you think you can lead, earn it."

The ensign wanted to shout again, but the glare forced him back. The older wanted something out of Jabari. He raised an eyebrow, and the giant's frowning, beady eyes darted to the side twice, gesturing to something behind him and too the left. A barrel, a pile of training sabres. A small crowd forming a gaggle on the deck at their commotion.

"Duel you?" Jabari hissed in confusion.

"Yes, Boy. Show me your ability, because right now you're dead weight. You want to lead? You got to prove your salt..." The master of the ship lowered his voice below a hitched breath. "And your orders must remain among senior crew, or you'll start a mutiny."

Jabari finally nodded, a lump formed in his throat. He whispered back, "Is this all necessary?"

The giant nodded once without another word. His grip slackened but held a second longer as a warning. It remained unclear why this was the welcome ceremony. A midshipman never faced this reception, and there weren't any special ship-side ceremony for a recipient to the Day of Joyous Lances. However, the deck officer transitioned quick, shouting at his crew in some warped manner of the Common Speech.

Scampering like roaches, the crew vanished to the edges of the deck. Some climbed the rigging, others gave side glares but descended below, and a few retreated to the wheel house but still within eyesight. Something flashed, dark and long through the air. With outstretched arms, Jabari caught it. A training saber. He looked up, the giant was already moving with his own sword in hand.

Jabari yelped in surprise, and leaped back as opponent's wooden tip zipped through the air with a small, precise arc where his throat once was.

"You trying to kill me?"

"Fight, Boy!" The giant crowed. A echo of chirps and hollers carried from above and below the main deck.Crew members watched and jeered as their leader prompted a child into a mock death match. Jabari cleared two more strides in retreat from the master of the ship.

The ensign wanted to collect his thoughts. When was the last time Jabari picked up a dueling blade? He barely remembered. Beginning of his midshipman career? His youth was defined by navigating  with an astrolabe, and thousands of sail and knot types favored by twenty navies on the high seas. His swordplay was rusty, dried like his stumbling training saber.

Jabari's flat-end caught the sharp end of the giant's saber. "Is this right?"

"Do you not know how to handle your blade?" The giant's saber broke away and clashed again, hitting in two swifts strikes when Jabari could only match with a experimental, missed swing.

"I'm rusty!"

"An excuse, like leaving clam and sea musk on the side of the hull! Would you let your ship spring a leak, what about your blade? Your footwork?" The giant declared, crashing down with a top-down then a bottom-up strike. He seem to draw out Jabari's defense and response, avoiding a killing blow.

"Of course not!"

"Show me!" The blades crackled against one another and Jabari squeezed more power to match the cross-block.

"Don't commit to what you cannot match," the giant swept aside Jabari with a wide swing, leaving the boy's abdomen unguarded. With a T-shaped feint, the giant tapped Jabari's shoulder and knocked his saber free, three yards to the right.

"Better dive for that sword, Boy!"

"Stop calling me 'Boy'!"

Jabari dove as ordered, grabbing his blade by the flat-face and handle. He nursed the blade in his scramble, narrowly dodging the butt-slash by his pursuer.

"Up! Up! Put yourself back in form, you prance like a maiden!"

"You dance like a drunken camel!" Jabari retorted, unable to find a harsher insult between another glancing clash of saber.

"Really? Have you ever seen one?"

"No!" Jabari roared, and planted his boot onto the giant's flat blade when he cut low. The next cut should have found the deck officer's forehead, but it relied on the giant to retreat. He missed.

The giant bolted forward, closing distance with Jabari's short stature against commoner logic. His extended palm found Jabari's hand guard and pushed it up and away. The giant's saber fell to the side, with purpose, as the boy found himself in a sudden grapple match.

"You going to fight with everything you have, Boy?"

Jabari squelched, hacking and coughing as the giant's shoulder planted into his chest and a hand clamped over his mouth. He tried to speak, but stricken saliva sputtered up instead.

"Try to speak up, fight with all you have!"

He tried his hardest. Jabari growled against the man's hand and almost bit into the callouses. His muscles strained, kicking at the giant's knees with very little give, and to no avail. Everything grayed, smothered, and faded. Blurry, white, darkness...

A moment passed, then another. Awake, Jabari jolted up. He almost puked on the spot when the weight of the hand, shoulder, and training blade vanished from his chest and abdomen. He was no longer suffocating, he was...

The ensign rolled over his medical cot and expelled his stomach contents as old breakfast and lunch find his throat. He gurgled, choking to battle it back down. Low-hanging planks and fixtures groaned above him as someone wandered by. The lower deck then, not a ceiling. He was in the tween deck. He... How did he get here? Jabari couldn't process anything more than a blistering tornado of increasingly strange questions about odd sensations, motion, the color of skin, the color of stomach acid, of puke...

"Hurragh-Ack!"

Jabari keeled over upon the floor, suddenly sensitive to the see-saw rocking of the Drake. More green chunks, saliva, and brown rice dribbled from his mouth to the floor. After four minutes of hacking, the puking urge finally calmed.

"Awake now, are we?"

Blinking out his tire and delirium, Jabari turned to the beady eyes of  his senior deck officer. He spun away in fright, rolling over his medical cot and slipped into his soupy splotch of vomit.

"Eh. You're going to have to clean that one up." The giant groaned, pinching his nose and glanced to a corner pile of rags within the narrow, closet-sized room.

Jabari grumbled, "You choked me out."

The giant nodded. "Hm. Yeah, name's Claret Ponce, Chief Deck Officer. I suppose I owe you a formal introduction." He walked over to the porthole window and pulled back a couple shades, revealing the blinding, blue sea outside under a new day sun.

"I was out... How long?" Jabari groaned, noting his barefoot dribbled with a sticky film.

"All night. It's morning now, probably slept off the bruises. You're shoddy for a midshipman. When was your last dueling lesson?"

Jabari twitched, eyes half-glaring at Chief Ponce. "Maybe two, three years ago? At least formally."

"We'll need to work on you. We got three months, maybe less."

"Because we're going to Kobaru?"

"That," Ponce nodded. "But you know our stakes. None of us are coming back. We won't make stops in friendly ports. What you think, or I think is irrelevant in the eyes of the Greater Houses."

Jabari blinked. "Why do you speak with such ill for the Orthodoxy?"

"Why don't you?" Ponce looked back with a mirthful curiosity. Jabari saw something in his eyes. Fear, excitement, acceptance. A man ready to die...

"The Gods have given me a mission to bring the Kobaru into the Orthodox. Their people expect us too, the mission is to decapitate their leadership."

Chief Ponce nodded. "Yes, but you're missing a detail. Your name is now Commitius, a minor Prince of the Great Houses. Jabari Lemme is your pseudonym. The last direct heir to the Kobaru Iron Throne belongs to a princess, a Miss Cydonia. Envoys know she seeks a political marriage, someone from a Greater House and one who can guarantee her a place in our empire."

Jabari shrugged. "I... I know that. I can deal with her."

The giant grabbed Jabari's shoulder and dragged him to the window. "Maybe you can," Ponce agreed, but pointed to the open sea. "But she'll never believe us with your shit confidence and skills now. So, we will train you. And then we can die."

The young ensign looked at the sea and saw the same terrible wonder of his younger years. The uncaring, relentless ocean and its vast depths. This was familiar, his home. 'The Tengu people rise and return to the sea, as the tidal waves will: for Life, unto Death.'

Jabari whispered a prayer, "Tengu serves as Tengu wills."

Ponce shrugged after a moment. "Humph. Spoken like a true patriot."

Jabari eyed his strange compatriot again. "Are you not one?"

Ponce was silent, stuck to the ocean. A minute passed.

The giant spoke, after a long pause with eyes downcast. "I'm a condemned man. I have a duty to return honor to my family and our patron god before I die. The least I, or my sailors can do, is make sure you don't get us killed before we make landfall to spread the Dusk."