Episode LIII - Wrecks and Reconnaissance

            They had sustained more injuries and damage than Ellis had realised.  As he went around the makeshift camp, watching it form, seemingly out of nothing, around him, he saw a great many gunshot wounds, a couple of crew members peppered with splinter shrapnel and at least one person with major burns after a narrow escape from the mechanical dragon figurehead's attack.  There was very little he could do for them and initially he wasn’t sure why Siren had asked for his help, but he stayed by their side and chatted whilst the Former Baron treated them with hypostatick equations, being careful to drain some of the patient’s hypostatick energy as well as his own and Siren's.  Once he began to get too tired, however, Von Spektr turned to Ellis and suddenly he remembered how he could be useful.  The Medallion!

With the power of that mysterious artefact Ellis was able to dramatically speed up the healing process, without feeling the least bit drained himself.  Within half an hour they had seen to everyone who needed help and the Former Baron departed to begin looking at the damage to the vessels.

Siren looked even more exhausted after the ordeal of healing than she had before and so, as Von Spektr headed to the shore, she flopped down beside one of the small hypostatick stoves Miss Barkcastle had cleverly thought to provision them with, lay back on the sand and closed her eyes.

"You did well today," Ellis said into the ensuing silence.

"Yeah," she replied bitterly, "we lost seventeen crew members in total this evening and six Shoalstrike boats, that sounds like a really good job to me."

"That wasn't your fault and I'm pretty sure your leadership kept those numbers as small as possible."

She opened one eye and stared up at him, "Thank you," she said in a soft voice, almost a whisper, then she closed her eye again and it was clear the conversation was over, so Ellis picked himself up off the sand and went to find Gulliver and Toby and to see if they needed any more help setting up camp.

He found them sitting beneath a hollow stone shell which had once been the bow of some great ship.  It stood vertical, bowsprit serving as spire, and unlike many of the other wrecks, it still had stone between some of its ribs, helping it to serve quite effectively as a windbreak and shelter.

"'Ow's this for luxury, eh?" Gulliver asked as he approached, "Ol' Tobe 'ere certainly knows 'ow to pick a campsite!"

"It's a bit out of the way," Toby mumbled.

"Don't talk rubbish, Tobe.  It's perfect.  We'll get a good night's sleep 'ere!"

Ellis thought of Gulliver's snoring and wasn't so sure, but he nodded enthusiastically all the same.

Settling down beside the hypostatick stove, Ellis received a bowl of some kind of stew from Gulliver and began to eat it hurriedly.  It was fairly tasteless, being made from some kind of dried meat and seasoned, rather unfortunately, with brine, but he found that he was a lot more hungry than he had expected and so he gulped it down within moments.  The use of sea water in the recipe made Ellis wonder even more at the strange black liquid which filled Shadow's oceans, but he put the question to one side of his mind for later, when they weren't trying just to survive.

Once all the food had been eaten and bedrolls had been spread out around the stove, Ellis slipped into his and, despite the chill in the air, the strange evening he had had and their eerie surroundings, fell asleep almost immediately.

Morning came with a jolt.  Ellis’ eyelids shot open like a pair of blinds on a spring release and revealed the familiar, if not always welcome visage of Gulliver staring down at him.

"You might want to wake up, mate," he was saying in his usual, slightly gloomy tones, "or you'd be apt to miss breakfast."

Ellis did not need any more convincing than that so, moments later, he was sitting up, his hair finger-combed into some sort of shape (he wasn't sure what sort), and another, smaller bowl of stew in his hands.

Once this hearty breakfast was over he, Gulliver and Toby, rolled up their beds, packed away their rations and their stove into the knapsack in which they had been found and went to join the rest of the crew, who were gathered at the centre of the camp, waiting patiently for latecomers and then for Siren to begin with the days objectives.

Siren herself was looking a bit better that morning, Ellis was relieved to notice.  She still showed some signs of the previous night's exhaustion, but there was a gleam in her eyes which suggested she had a plan and she held herself in such a way as to emphasise what energy and vigour she did have.  The Former Baron stood beside her, looking very much as usual, i.e. tall, thin and mad.  He was carefully ignoring everyone as he examined a scrap of paper clutched in his bony fingers.

Once everyone was gathered, and very much to Ellis' surprise, given the deposed noble's silence throughout much of the previous evening, it was the Former Baron who spoke first.

"Ahem," he began, partly to clear his throat, partly as a deliberate call for attention and partly because, Ellis realised, he was actually quite nervous.  "Siren has asked me to speak to you this morning, before we begin scouting this region of the ocean for that blasted galleon, the Dusk Raider, to make sure you are aware of the some of the perils present in and around the Stonerib Shoals.

"I am sure many of you know the tales about this place and have already marvelled at the wrecks, if you haven't seen them before, but very few have opportunities to venture into the depths of the Shoals, so let me say just this one thing:  On no occasion, not once, not ever, should you attempt to head into the depths of the Shoals.” He glanced down at the scrap of paper in his hands again, as if checking he’d said everything he needed to, then he finished with a rather peremptory, “That is all."

The Former Baron took a step backwards and Siren gave him a puzzled expression which dragged on perhaps a second or two longer than it should have, then she turned back to the crew assembled before her and was once again the hardened sea captain.

"Yes, well, thank you Franck.  It's unlikely we will have to venture any further into the Shoals themselves and so you may want to be on the lookout for more ocean-bound dangers, like velocignaths and the like, which have occasionally been sighted circling the Shoals despite the waters around here being cooler than they usually prefer, so do be on your guard.

"The plan of action today is to split into scouting groups and then for each group to do a patrol of a specific sector of the surrounding waters and to report back with any findings within the next two hours.  Your groups will mostly be the same as last night, but with a few small changes to balance out the numbers a bit after yesterdays... casualties.  Franck and I will assign groups and reconnaissance sectors in a few moments and then you can all be one your way.  Remember, the aim is to sight the enemy, not to be sighted and especially not to engage.  Thank you."

Ellis was one of those who were reassigned, so he said a quick goodbye to Toby and Gulliver, who were to remain as a somewhat unusual duo, and made his way to the two members of Siren's former crew with whom he would be spending the rest of the morning: Luke and Greta.  Luke must have been about eighteen, although his youth was concealed slightly behind a scruffy beard and tired eyes.  He looked like he had experienced a great deal in a very short space of time and it seemed to wear heavily on him.  Greta was in her middle years, with blonde hair speckled with grey and more than her fair share of laughter lines.  Ironically she looked the more energetic and enthusiastic of the two and whilst Luke greeted Ellis warmly enough, Greta enveloped him in a brief hug.  "Glad to have you aboard, Ellis,"  she said as she released him, adding  "any friend of Siren's is a friend of mine."

It didn't take too long to make sure that all the Shoalstrike vessels were fully kitted out for the reconnaissance trip and after Franck had given them all a very quick once-over to be sure of their sea-worthiness, each team set out to their assigned sectors.

Ellis, Greta and Luke were assigned a region of water which encompassed the open sea between the Shoals and the island of Wraithrock to the North, including a series of inlets within the Shoals themselves.  Luke handled the engines and the tiller in the stern whilst Greta navigated from the bow.  Once again Ellis was on emergency rowing duty, with what he still thought of as a hypostatick rifle resting across his lap.  Its weight was uncomfortable and disturbing, but he was glad to have it nonetheless.  He was pretty sure that he would need it a lot more the next time they faced off against the Dusk Raider.

            As the little boat chugged out of their makeshift harbour and through the channels between the sandbanks leading out to the open sea, Ellis made an effort to get to know his new crewmates.  Greta was more than happy to talk about herself, explaining how she had first joined Siren’s crew when her youngest son, Hardin, had left home to be apprenticed to one of the master blacksmiths of Heronsforge, about a hundred miles inland from Saltmarsh, where she had raised her whole family.  She hadn’t wanted to stay at home on her own all day so she had decided to find herself an occupation.

The Ebon Crest had sailed into the Saltmarsh delta that very day, sheltering from a storm which threatened to roll in from the Thundersea, and Greta had found herself staring at it from the shore, wondering where it would take her if she could just get on board.  She’d stolen an old rowing boat from a fisherman who had been her first boyfriend and in the middle of the night had sailed out to the galleon, climbed on deck as quietly as she could and hidden in the hold until they were back out at sea.  She hadn’t realised she had been stowing away on a Pirate vessel, but when Siren offered her a place on the crew or a drop off the next time they made port, she happily accepted the new role.

Ellis was impressed by how natural Greta seemed to find the pirate life, even when things got pretty scary.  She told him a number of tales from her voyages which made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Luke was less forthcoming.  He was very quiet during their journey, sullen even and Ellis found him hard to like, sitting as he did, hunched up in the back of the boat, glaring at the water.  When Ellis had asked him how he had joined Siren’s crew he had just mumbled that he didn’t really want to talk about it, so Ellis ended up telling his story instead.  Greta listened to the tale of how he first came to Shadow and all that had happened since with her mouth hanging open.

“You have an interesting life, my lad,” she said when he had finished, I’d love to know what happens next.”

“So would I,” he replied with a sigh, “so would I.”

Eventually they reached the northernmost point of their patrol, sailing into the shadow of the ominously named and equally ominous-looking Wraithrock Island.  It was a small, dark, rocky isle with a tall, jagged tower sticking up out of its heart like a broken spear.  Before Ellis could even ask what that had been Greta had already begun to explain.

“That tower was once part of a network of lighthouses which sat on islands all around the Stonerib Shoals, warning ships from all directions that they must stay away, but none of them work any more and most have fallen into ruin.”

“Why would anyone let that happen?”  Ellis asked, only just realising the danger to shipping that the Shoals must represent.

“Oh, no one let it happen.  Not at all.  They began to malfunction and stop one by one about a hundred years ago.  Any attempts to contact the lighthouse keepers failed.  Expeditions were sent to each island to restart the lighthouses several times and not a single one succeeded.”

“They couldn’t turn them back on?”

“They never returned.  Eventually people gave up.  The Shoals and the islands are now ringed by lhypostatickally lit buoys instead.  Much more effective and no one has to bother the denizens of the lighthouses anymore.”

Ellis looked up at the ruined lighthouse tower and shuddered, glad when they finished that portion of their patrol and left Wraithrock Island alone.

The sun was rising high on its journey through the emerald sky towards noon when they began to explore the first of the inlets they had been assigned.  Unlike the channels they had traversed earlier these were much larger bodies of water, big enough for a ship like the Raider to sail into and some of them went very deep into the interior of the Shoals.  Ellis was fascinated by each of the stone wrecks they passed.  He realised, as they drifted by more and more vessels which were still at least partially intact, that the stone ships had not been entirely uniform, with a number of design philosophies represented within the fleet and some of the ships being much larger than others.  They passed one which was almost completely whole except for a large gash near the bow and which was, in fact, so huge that Ellis could only compare it in his mind to depictions of Noah’s Ark.

As they approached the far end of the inlet, Greta suddenly let out a gasp.

“Look,” she called out in a shout that was almost a whisper, “the Dusk Raider!”

Sure enough, as Ellis looked over her shoulder he could see the four-masted galleon berthed at the end of the inlet, a gangplank stretching down onto the deck of an ancient ship which sat half in, half out of the water.

“Where’s that spyglass,” Greta asked, turning to Ellis who had their pack at his feet.  After a quick rummage he managed to find the instrument and hand it over to her, though he was eager to take a look himself.  After a moment of scanning the glass back and forth across the scene, Greta let out a soft, “Oh”, of confusion.  “There’s no one on board.”

“No one?”

“Here,” she handed him the spyglass, “have a look for yourself.”

Ellis squeezed his left eye shut and peered through the spyglass at the distant galleon.  Greta was indeed correct, for there were no sailors visible on deck, nor any sign of movement below, or on land.

“It’s like they’ve just abandoned it,” he said.

“They’re probably marching across the shoals to strike at our camp,” Luke said from the stern, surprising Ellis so much that he almost jumped.  “That’s what I’d do.”

“How long would it take to get there from here on foot, do you think?”

“About two hours, maybe three?”

“Then we’d best hurry back to warn the others, or there’ll be a very nasty surprise for anyone who returns from their patrol.”

“Who’s to say there hasn’t been already.”

Ellis felt a sudden jolt of panic, worrying about the Former Baron and Gulliver and Toby and the others, but most of all worried – no – terrified that something might have happened to Siren.

“We have to get back there,” he said, his tone becoming forceful, “now!”

“Yes, sir,” Luke replied sarcastically, but he still turned the tiller hard to port and set the engines to full power, making the little boat circle round the inlet and head back out to sea.  Stone wrecks sped past, but this time Ellis’ mind was elsewhere, filled with terrible possibilities.

Please be safe, Siren.  Please be safe!

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