Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Six - Picking Up Strays

It had been a while since I’d gone swimming. Last time, I had been at a lake wearing a very sensible swimsuit, not a gambeson with a steel plate around my chest and an armoured skirt.

I beat my legs to keep afloat in the choppy waters, my hat only hanging on because it was caught in my ears. My hair was wet and plastered to my face, and the soreness of running around and fighting a bunch was catching up to me.

Also, salt water was seeping into the cut on my back which really wasn’t great.

“Broccoli!” Bastion called out.

The paladin, if anything, looked worse off than I did, with his wings all sticky and his skin looking rather pale in the water. “Hey,” I said. I was waving my arms from side to side to push myself up. However, at the rate we were going, I wouldn’t be able to keep that up forever.

“Look!” he called out, one arm rising to point above.

I blinked water out of my eyes, then saw the darkening form of something dropping closer and closer to us from above. Soon enough, I could make out Awen’s face hanging off one side. She was saying something, but it was lost in the heaving water.

“Hey! We’re here!” I shouted.

Awen called something out and pointed our way.

The Manatee dropped down a few more meters until it was hovering just over the water, the occasional wave kissing the keel and making the little skiff shudder. I swam towards it and came to a stop as close to its side as I could manage with Bastion coming up behind me.

“Broccoli!” Awen said. Her eyes were wet, and I wasn’t sure if it was from all the sea spray or not. “Grab my hand!”

Getting aboard was a bit of a hassle. Awen wasn’t strong enough to just lift me up, not when I was soaking wet, and I didn’t feel like I was in tip-top shape either. Oda ended up grabbing my other arm and yanking me aboard so hard and fast that I flopped to the bottom of the boat and became one with the deck.

“Hi,” I said between pants. My everything was sore, and I suddenly found myself without the least bit of energy to spare.

Awen crashed onto my chest and hugged me to within an inch of my life, which was very nice, but I couldn’t properly appreciate it.

Bastion barely needed any help getting aboard, he just needed a hand on the edge to pull himself up. “We should get moving,” he said. “That ship is coming closer.”

I blinked and stretched my head up to see past Awen’s head and to the big blue sky above. The Golden Grove’s Revenge was indeed, growing bigger bit by bit. It was trailing a lot of smoke too.

“Awen destroyed their gravity engine,” I said. “And I set their balloon on fire.”

“A ship of that size will have an auxiliary engine,” Bastion said. “And if they’re pirates, then they’ll know how to patch their balloon in a hurry. They might be listing now, but it won’t last forever.”

Amaryllis came over and stood over me with talons on hips. “You’re an idiot,” she said. “And we need to get going.”

“I’ll get on the pedals,” I said as I tried to push myself up.

Awen shoved me back down with just one hand. “You’re injured,” she said. “Does anyone have any bandages?”

“It’s just a scratch,” I said.

“Awen, take care of Broccoli,” Amaryllis said with a snap. “Bastion, you good to pedal still?”

“I’m fine. I had a bit of a rest in the water there. I’m nice and fresh for more action.”

“Joe, get on the other pedals, Sally, help me with the sails. Oda, check our fuel, we’ve been burning a lot hovering here. Come on people, we need to outpace these idiots back to Needleford.”

“What are we going to do once we’re back there?” I asked.

Awen moved to kneel by my side, and lacking any bandages, tore off a strip from her shirt before anyone could protest and started applying pressure to the cut over my neck.”Once we’re back, then we’ll be safe,” Awen said.

I grinned and patted her on the knee. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“We shouldn’t stay in Needleford,” Amaryllis said. “We seem to be a bit faster than the Golden, especially in the state it’s in, but I wouldn’t want to fight that entire crew aboard the Beaver. We land, we jump aboard the Beaver, we make sure we have enough fuel, then we leave. Even if it means slipping out of the port without clearance.”

“And what about us?” Joe asked.

The boy had been pretty quiet for a bit, obeying Amaryllis’ barked orders without much hesitation, but I think that now that we were out of the worse danger his patience was coming to an end.

Amaryllis eyed him for a bit. “We can give you a bit of gold for the help you’ve done us,” she said.

“Gold is nice, but it won’t save our hides when Rogers comes back.”

“Can’t we report him for piracy?” I asked. “And for kidnapping Awen?”

“We’re the ones that attacked his ship in this case, and I suspect that Miss Bristlecone’s... bounty... is entirely real,” Bastion said. “For that matter, if he’s using a port so brazenly he’s either strong enough that it doesn’t matter, or he has some political backing.”

I groaned a bit and used what little strength I had left to sit up. My whole body felt really noodly, like I hadn’t eaten anything in a long time, then went for a jog. Awen helped me up a little so that I sat with my back pressed to the side of the Manatee. “Hey, Joe,” I said. “I’m sorry that you got dragged into all of this. You too, Sally, and Oda.”

“It’s alright?” Oda said.

I shook my head. “It really isn’t. But maybe we can make the best of it? You guys wanted to travel a bit, right? Become proper pirates? You could hop aboard the Beaver. We’re going to Sylphfree, but we’ll probably be making a few stops along the way.”

“I’d strongly advise finding somewhere other than Sylphfree to practice any sort of piracy,” Bastion said. “Else you might find yourselves on the wrong side of my blade.”

I blinked. “That sounded really cool. Do they like, teach you how to sound intimidating in Paladin school?”

Bastion chuckled. “We do have lessons on speech and mannerisms. But not on how to threaten youngsters who want to become pirates.”

“We’re not youngsters,” Joe said. “And we don’t need your help.”

Sally shifted away from the sails to look back to her friend. “Joe...” she began.

“You can’t seriously want to go with them?”

Sally looked away. “I don’t know. It’s away from Needleford. And it’s aboard a ship. We could bring the Manatee. And our things. It wouldn’t be a loss, we’d just be starting somewhere else.”

“I think our next stop is meant to be near the Hoofbreaker woods,” I said. “Um, near the cervid place, but not actually there since people tell me that they’re trouble.”

“The only time you ever met any, as far as I know, they tried to kill you,” Amaryllis said.

Sally bit her cheek, then turned to face me. “You, ah, live a very exciting life. And I think we want that, but I’m not sure if we’re ready for it.”

“You could always stay at Needleford, we wouldn’t stop you,” I said.

“We can’t,” Oda said. “We were last seen in your company, then a short while later, a small ship took off after Golden Rogers. Everyone will know that the small ship must be ours.”

“You think Rogers would go after you?” I asked. I didn’t need to ask, the answer was obvious. If he could hold a grudge against Abraham after so long, I didn’t doubt he’d be angry at the scallywags too. “Ah, darn, he would.”

“So, we have to go,” Joe said.

“You could take off in another direction,” I offered. “We have a bit of gold and stuff we could give you. Just fly due north. We can point you to a mining camp, or you could go to Port Royal.”

Joe closed his eyes, feet still pedalling as he sank into his own thoughts. Oda and Sally kept eying him. He was their leader, I supposed, or at the very least one of their friends and one who sorta led them. I looked past him and into the sky where Golden Roger’s ship was slowly regaining altitude even as it sank back in the distance.

It was turning around, but at a snail’s pace. By the time it was back to the height it had been before we’d be halfway to Needleford already.

“Fine,” Joe said. “We’ll join your ship, and bring the Manatee and as much of our gear as we can manage. But we’re not staying with you. The first port we hit, we’re off.”

“Brilliant!” I said. “We’ll be sure to pay you as if you were part of the crew, right Amaryllis?”

“Obviously,” she said. “Besides, three more sailors would bring the Beaver’s compliment to full. We’ve been flying with half the crew we ought to have for a while now.”

“We’ve been doing alright,” I said.

“We have,” Amaryllis agreed. “But one sick crewmate or two and we’d be anchored and unable to move on.”

I nodded. “Yeah. It’ll be nice to have some help. Not that you guys need to help. If all you need is a ride, then we can certainly give you that much. We owe you. You helped us save Awen.”

Awen blushed and tried a smile on. “I... I was really afraid.”

“How did they grab you anyway?” I asked. “One moment you were there, the next you weren’t.”

She shuffled over to the opposite side of the boat. It was small enough that our legs still tangled in the middle. “I... awa, I don’t know. I was following you, and then everything went dark. I tried to scream, but something hit my chest.” She pressed a hand a little over her tummy. “I couldn’t breath for a bit.”

“What nasty people,” I said.

“Awa! I knew you’d come, so I tried to stay calm, and then I wondered what you would do.”

“Oh?” I said.

She nodded. “But I can’t make friends like you can, so I tried to think of what Amaryllis would do.”

Amaryllis snorted. “So you did something smart.”

“Um,” Awen said. “Well, they had my hands and legs tied, so I made a glass knife and cut myself free, then I escaped and found their gravity engine and switched some of the tubing around, and I filled the fuel bunker with glass shards.”

“The tank should have a sock to prevent that,” Oda said.

Awen nodded. “I tore it off. It was an older Hazel model. With the reservoir on the side. Only one filter. Um. The glass would just clog things up. Leading to more heat, and maybe some misfires. They’ll need to flush the system to remove it all.”

I gave her a thumb’s up. “You did super.”

Awen grinned. “I don’t think I would have done anything at all even just a month ago.”

“Bah, that’s silly. You’re one of my friends, that means you’re totally awesome,” I said.

She seemed cheered up, which was more than I could say about all of the scallywags. I’d have to see if we could give them a proper welcome once we were aboard the Beaver.

***