Begrudgingly, Harpis lay awake in the hold of the Sea Goat as his hammock rocked gently with the movement of the waves. Each swing sloshed his innards around, and it was all he could do to keep the contents of his stomach in place. His headache had faded sometime around dinner, thanks in no small part to finally consuming something other than rum.

His clothes were stiff and uncomfortable from being dried in the sun. Crouched in a huddle on the ship’s deck in the late morning, he was awakened by the crew dumping buckets of seawater on him. They said he smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a week.

Though he wanted to argue the point, his patchwork of sober memories did not afford him proof of recent hygiene. His first clear memory of the day was clutching his chest in a panic that the necklace was gone. After that, rage at potential thieves on the boat taking advantage of a poor drunk gave way to a piecemeal recollection of last night’s events.

In vain, he tried to overcome the personal disappointment of trading it away. Maybe the necklace depicting The Siren was bad luck. Maybe she did want him dead. Maybe it was for the best he let go of everything from his past. Maybe he was just a miserable drunk.

The drones of several sleeping sailors had already interrupted his attempts at slumber. They were now actively interfering with his contemplation. He considered drinking some of the overly spiced rum but reconsidered when the mere sight of the bottle caused his mouth to water and stomach to convulse.

It took biting hard on his tongue and focusing on that pain to stave off losing his meager dinner. Lethargically, he returned to his inner debate regarding the reasons for his current lot in life.

Homeless, out of money, and with no living family, he wondered which of The Five he had so offended as to deserve his current position.

Given everything that had transpired over the past year or so, The Siren was a likely suspect. Perhaps the goddess of storms, wind, and seas found his continued existence an annoyance.

Certainly, Konflict was not angry with him. On the contrary, the fiery god of battle would laud the employment he currently pursued as a militiaman.

It was probably not The Wild. Harpis had been sailing this and other forsaken ships too long to draw the ire of the nature-friendly goddess.

Had it been Daybreak or The Sleeper that he had offended, he doubted the goddesses of life and death would suffer him to remain alive, pondering which of The Five was responsible for his fortunes. Therefore, it must be The Siren.

With the question of godly aggression settled, he stared intently at the beam above him. Countless previous passengers of the Sea Goat had defaced it with names, sayings, and crude carvings. Who names a ship the Sea Goat anyway? Perhaps they had run out of more regal sea creatures.

Given the state of its slumbering crew around him, the rum probably had more to do with the vessel’s naming than anything else. Abandoning unassisted sleep and internal debate, he swung out of his hammock to escape the wheezing snores. Perhaps he would find peace while taking in the sky outside.

Before heading out of the ship’s belly, he gave the rope belt around his waist a tug. Earlier in the afternoon, one of the crew had asked him about it. So, he showed the man how to tie some rope to the broken-off head of one of the boat hooks used to pull the ship in to dock, noose it around his waist and then wrap it until it was slightly snug.

Placing the boat hook in the noose would hold the belt in place. Harpis’ father had always said it was helpful when falling overboard, pulling in nets, coming into a dock, and other things.

*****

The Sea Goat contained four cabins in its half-deck, which sat on the main deck above the hold with the helm atop it. Two of the cabins were for the captain and first mate and the other two for high-paying passengers.

One such passenger was Wren. The gnome was a comical sight, sitting atop pillows on the human-sized chair so that he could more easily reach the top of the small desk on which he was writing.

Squinting by candlelight at the parchment before him, each stroke of the pen caused the wide cuffs of his deep purple, almost black robe to nearly brush the wet ink. He lamented the clotting nature of the ink, the blotting tendency of the pen, and other sources of smudges and stains covering the embroidery on his sleeve.

Symbols of The Sleeper shone in silver thread across the purple hood hanging off his shoulders as it did on the cuffs. The embroidery identified him as a death speaker, second only to the Death Herald herself.

Pausing his writing, he took a sip of the rum he had requisitioned from some of the crew and pulled a face as the overly spicy fire hit his mouth and then belly. At least it did its job, he thought, as his nerves and emotions dulled.

The report was due to The Syndicate upon landing in Ravnice. The writing was draining work. He left out his unprofessional questioning of being sent to do tasks usually assigned to the Hand and Eye stationed in Kalt. Finally, he confirmed the delivery of the forgery.

After finishing the rest of the rum, he sighed and documented the death of his Eye. Guilt and frustration ran their course across his face as he wrote. Such a tragedy would not have happened back at their posting in familiar Ravnice.

Leaning against the chair back, Wren rolled the parchment and used candle drippings to seal it. He poured a small amount of wax, letting it cool halfway. The gnome then made a well with his thumb and dribbled some ink into the cavity before sealing it in with more wax. Then, slipping the letter into his robe, he decided to get what rest he could before the Sea Goat sailed into the port at Ravnice the early morning.

*****

Harpis was halfway up the ladder when he paused, straining to hear the growing commotion above. Suddenly, the impact of something slamming into the side of the Sea Goat threw him off the rungs and into the bulkhead.

Blinking stars out of his eyes, he heard the ship’s whistle sound the alarm frantically over men shouting. He bounded up the ladder and burst through the hatch to the grim scene unfolding on the ship’s deck.

The full moon and clear skies bathed everything in a macabre pale light. A slightly larger vessel was alongside the Sea Goat and well over thirty armed men poured over the rails.

Harpis spotted the stoic Captain Fynhar. The captain was the embodiment of a grizzled and salty sailing man, fending off several attackers with broad sweeps of his cutlass. Thankful that no arrows flew overhead, Harpis rushed towards the man, but was cut off by the slashes of a nearby attacker. Then, as the pirate confidently stalked in, Harpis watched in dismay as the captain was run through by a sword, and his slumped dying form fell into the sea.

His focus turned to the pirate in front of him, Harpis stumbled over a corpse as he backed away before frantically searching for a weapon. He snatched the dead man’s sabre up just in time to block the heavy cutlass coming down again and again in overhead chops. Harpis’ hands vibrated as the other man’s sword repeatedly rang off his feeble blocks. Fear began to overwhelm him as the screams of men dying, and shouts of battle surrounded him.

*****

Wren awoke in mid-flight as the collision jolted him out of bed and onto the floor. He quickly got to his feet and put his robe on amongst the alarms and shouts. Making his way up the stairs to the helm, he grumbled about the inconvenience of being so abruptly roused from a rum-induced sleep.

He casually climbed the last few steps, noted the dead first mate’s corpse still clutching a pike pole, and stepped over the body to survey the scene below.

At once, he noticed the members of the Sea Goat were hard-pressed and sorely outnumbered. Worse still, they appeared to be much less adept at combat than their enemy. Nearly half of the twenty-odd crew and passengers were already dead or dying, while only a handful of the enemy had suffered similar fates.

Alone on the steering deck stood the helmsman. Struggling to peel his eyes off an approaching knot of men from the other ship, he glanced perplexed at the robe-wearing gnome.

Wren winked at him. “Try to be useful and keep trying to steer this flotsam away from them, won’t you?”

Not waiting for a reply, the gnome calmly turned to face the group of assailants almost upon them and drew his scythe and called upon his goddess-endowed gift. Concentrating on the corpse before him, he murmured a request to borrow the bodies of the recently deceased, reanimating them to his will for a time. Rising to his commands, the headless corpse of the first mate ascended from the steering deck, still clutching the pike pole in its hand.

At his instruction, the corpse stepped in front of him and promptly impaled the two lead assailants as they reached the top of the stairs.

The other two immediate enemies hacked the headless corpse to pieces. As they stepped over it to attack him and the helmsman, the bodies of their two compatriots rose from the bloodstained planks.

Still connected by the pike pole, the reanimated corpses slashed at the backs of the two living assailants before clearing a few more of the pirates away from the base of the stairs. As Wren’s words to his goddess ended, they fell to the deck in a lifeless heap. He nodded thanks to The Sleeper’s handmaidens as the wispy feminine creatures performed their ritual of taking souls to The Great Dream.

With the immediate threat to his own livelihood dealt with, Wren unhurriedly looked over the ongoing struggle. Letting out a long sigh he glanced back at the helmsmen, who promptly vomited his dinner across the deck.

“Away from the other ship,” Wren reminded him with a finger held up in reprimand.

With a thoughtful look, the gnome returned his scythe to the air. The visage of the handmaidens bent over corpses disappeared with it. No longer needing to borrow the bodies of the dead from his goddess, he walked to the railing of the steering deck to observe the battle below.

*****

Harpis was not weak by any standards, and his recently acquired saber was a decent enough weapon despite its rust. He did, however, regret a lack of formal training.

The much larger man kept swiping away at his head without relenting. It was all he could do to keep stepping backward and block the heavy blows. In his heart, he knew he was likely to die. Another step back brought him into the bait cleaning table, which he promptly fell backward on.

Lying back on the table, he blocked one last blow before the pirate pinned the saber to his chest and leaned in with a near toothless grin.

For a moment, Harpis considered the irony of being gutted on the bait table. Besides the stench of dead fish, he also noticed a filet knife on the table. Grabbing it with his free hand, he slammed it, handle deep, into the side of the pirate’s neck. In a silent surprise, the man stood up and fell lifelessly backward.

Standing up and gripping his saber with white knuckles, Harpis was terrified by what he saw before him. Maybe ten others of the Sea Goat remained, and double that was attacking them.

His legs were already rubbery, and his breath was coming in gulps. Harpis thoughtlessly responded to the fatigue in his muscles the same way he had when pulling in long fishing nets with his father, by chanting the words of a fisherman’s work song.

The notes dictated the rhythm of his movements and the melody seemed to take over his weary arms. When he faced the nearest enemy, he thought not of dying or fighting with his saber only of the rhythm of hauling ropes. As he sang the song, his blade danced with the pirate’s own, and he drove the man back. He could feel a strange swelling in his pulse that grew with each note and cadence.

From deep within him, the unknown emanation flowed. Another note, another lyric from his gravelly voice and another sword stroke possessed of unbound fury, this one through the pirate’s heart.

*****

Wren felt an unbounded surge of some other being’s gift that sent a chill down his back. He worriedly canvassed the fray for an enemy mage or some other magical doom that might have been about to assail them. Finding no such threat, he instead noticed the change taking place below him.

All the remaining fighters from the Sea Goat seemed to now fight as one. Almost tirelessly and together in unison, they beat back the enemy’s advance.

It was a dance of melee and death choreographed to the rise and fall of one man’s voice. They seemed to strike faster, in time with each other and without tiring.

Two more fell, but so too did nine of their enemies. The unity of the attacks had the pirates wholly taken aback. As one sword thrust, another fell behind it with seemingly inhuman, relentless speed, synchronized with the ebb and flow of the song.

It had been ages since he had seen a bard weave magic into and through song and never with such effect. He was shocked that it seemed the man below had done it as an afterthought and with a significant effect on both himself and the others. Even more surprising was the man’s ability to maintain the magic of the song while fighting for his life.

He pensively rubbed his short white beard stubble while considering the black and white-haired young man on the lower deck.

The odds a of human being born magically gifted were worse than one in a thousand, and most of those were elementalists, not bards. Wren knew of only one other being alive that could weave the gift of magic into song. However, unlike what he had just witnessed, when the Impresario, head of The Bard’s Hall, did so, it was more a paltry trick than a magically gifted spell.

*****

The last of the pirates leaped back to their ship and began hacking at the lines mooring the two vessels together. His song and the battle concluded, Harpis felt the intensity of his pulse ease. Clenching his hands and flexing his arms for a moment before releasing them, he was in awe at the fading vigor. After months spent turning hours into flashes of consciousness with rum, for once he wished the lingering moments of his performance could last an age. For the first time since his father died, he yearned to remain possessed by the present.

Around him, the other Sea Goat warriors shared confused glances at still being alive. The helmsman above, following Wren’s advice, was turning them away from their attacker, and the ships were soon separated.

Harpis’ gaze fell to the filet knife handle sticking out of the neck of the first pirate he had killed. He decided he should keep the weapon. Even if it was an odd choice, it had been a thing of luck lying there on the gutting table. After all, it saved his life.

The ornate carving of The Siren in the whalebone handle was undoubtedly beautiful. An omen perhaps that she was no longer so mad with him. Smiling at that thought, he yanked the blade free. He wiped it clean and sheathed it in his boot before pausing to take in the confusing reality of what had just come to pass.

The realization that he had just killed this man and several others washed over him in a cold sweat followed by vomiting all over the deck.

“Tisk, tisk,” a voice said from above. “You humans just can’t hold your innards when there is death about, can you?”

Harpis looked up at the stairs to the steering deck with confusion, not just for the gnome atop them chastising him, but the pile of corpses at their bottom.

“Quite the performance, lad, I am Wren, and you have my thanks,” he said. “Let me buy you a drink or three when we arrive in Ravnice for saving our asses.”

“The name is Harpis Akkeri. Did you kill all those men?” Harpis asked dumbly after stating his own name.

“The first mate had lost his head before I arrived, sadly. However, his corpse proved useful in dealing with the first two, and theirs were useful in finishing the task,” Wren answered.

Behind the gnome, the helmsman stood staring down at the corpses, pale and shaking.

Wren peered up at the stars and then at the helmsmen. “Mind the wheel now, just as you were. Ravnice is that way,” he said while pointing to the left. “We ought to be there in the next hour or so and arrive at dawn.”

The gnome then turned to face Harpis Again. “It gets easier, you know.”

Harpis stared back blankly.

“Not the vomiting, though maybe that too.” Wren shrugged. “But the killing, that gets easier.”

Harpis nodded back at the gnome.