The great storm of 1481 came raging out of the Grey Sea with the violent speed of an ocean god. For weeks, the typhoon had warned of its arrival with thunderstorms and flooding rains, but when he spotted the worst of the hurricane to the west, Captain Guthon of the Boundless Star hurriedly ordered the galley to put in towards shore. The storm gained on the vessel and the passenger ship that was its charge, eager to rake at the terrified crew with its windy claws, or drown them with its oppressive downpour.
Tieko’s Deep had a low north-east coast—tepid salt-water bogs that mingled with dark, lightning-illuminated rocks. The Councillor’s ship, the Crown Traveller, narrowly cut between windswept islands, seeking whatever shelter the listless mounds of land could provide. In their wake came the Boundless, water sloshing over its top deck like a floodplain.
Talina, a recruit of some 8 months, couldn’t comprehend how some of the more bovine mercenaries maintained their footing as they sloshed through ankle-deep water to secure the rigging or to check their distance from rocks, according to the Captain’s instruction. When tasked with advising the forward spotters to get ready for anchor drop, Tali found herself torn at by the warm wind. She was glad she had trimmed her brown hair down to fit in, now. Its shaved sides and short length couldn’t get in her eyes as it was twisted and convalesced by the dark, soaking gale.
Then, without warning, a crash louder than the thunder heaved the ship to the side. Tali slid into the water, smashing her buttocks along the deck until finding purchase with one hand on an errant rope. A spry crewman named Quarit helped her to her feet and she splashed onward, while numerous voices, half-drowned out by the roar of the mighty onslaught, shouted toward the aft—“Where did we hit?!”
Tali reached one of the crewmen at the bow—a man with a drenched ponytail splayed out over his bare shoulder. “Watch for the signal!” Tali cried at him, her youthful voice screeching against the howl of the hurricane. “Captain wants the anchor dropped soon!”
“What?” the man hollered back. He only looked away from the rail long enough for his words to cut through to the young woman. “We’re not sheltered enough!”
“Captain said watch for his signal!” Tali returned, not knowing what else to say.
The man sloshed through the flooded deck to look back at the helm. Tali followed his squinting eyes to Captain Guthon’s waving arms. He was waving right at them, trying to give the signal.
“Damn!” blurted the crewman. Tali didn’t even recognize him like this, soaked and shadowed by the raging storm. “Anchor down!” he roared. Two others abandoned their posts as spotters and came over to heave up the Boundless Star’s anchor. The pronged metal weight was attached to a crank, but its end still needed to be fed through a hole in the hull. Soon enough, its chain was sloshing through the water as they fed it down.
They watched as the Crown Traveller sailed deeper into the bog eddies and lagoons, half disappearing behind dark lumps of land where splashing white-caps could not be seen.
There was an echoing clang somewhere amid the noise of the storm and shouting. It took Tali a moment to even realize she was hearing it. That was the helm bell, another signal to the crew. For a moment, as she peered through the curtains of rain, Tali thought that the Captain thought they still had not dropped the anchor, and was desperately trying to get the attention of the men at the front of the ship. But then she saw that the deck hatch had been thrown open and that the number of men and women above deck was rapidly dwindling.
“Let’s go,” urged the mercenary she had spoken to earlier, who was already heading toward the centre of the deck where the stairs below had been revealed.
The crew of the Boundless spent the night soaked and seasick, huddled below deck between the rowing benches. The ship sloshed around, pulling at its sunken tether, as the storms continued to scour the sky and sea. Thunder and creaking timber kept Tali from getting much sleep—and she had only just learned how to sleep with the rocking and lulling of the waves. In the morning, First Mate Valim roused them with a loud, “Rouse yer asses!”
The Captain led the way above deck, letting fly a flurry of curses before anyone could see the deck. It wasn’t good. One of the sail spars had snapped in the storm, tearing the sail asunder; both now hung from the mast, dripping water onto the rope and wood-littered deck. The sky was dotted with rain-drizzling clouds, though the worst of the storm seemed to have passed.
“Valim, get me some able bodies to help with the sail. And figure out what, by the seas, happened to the rudder!” Captain Guthon barked. Unlike Valim—whose general saltiness was unaffected by the smoothness of ship operations and could generally be received in jest—Guthon was a mercenary of ambition. Each obstacle to his rise through the ranks of the East Storm Company was an affront—one he would rage against.
The First Mate called the able-bodied sailors to himself, including Tali. A few of the mercenaries on board—those who did not also double as crewmembers—joined the crowd to see how they could help. “We’re dead in the water, folks. I need someone to get extra oars out of cargo and a handful of you to start cutting down the sail. We can’t run the rocks with every breeze pulling us off-course. Another of you is with me—we’re going to lower down behind the hull and see what state the rudder’s in after we hit that rock last night. Any volunteers?”
“I’ll work on the sails,” someone blurted. A couple of the other crewmen chipped in.
Tali, who had spent the last few months climbing rigging, knew she would be able to help with the sails, but she had grown up in the water, not in the air. “I’ll go over the hull with you, sir, if you’d have me,” she said. “Only seen small ones up close, but I can still help. Probably.”
Valim grinned at her uncertainty, but said, “Good; Tali with me, as well a couple of you to help with belaying. Quarit, take a couple of the fighters below deck and bring up the oars. The rest of you—cut those sails down!”
“Aye, sir!” barked Quarit.
The rudder was a large rectangle that extended from the raised aft hull of the galley down into the dark seawater. Half of the rectangle had splintered away, with wooden planks jutting out left and right now. The belayers lowered Tali over the side, and Valim pointed out a hole in the hull, where the pole the rudder was affixed to disappeared into the ship itself. A contraption inside would allow the helm wheel to turn the rudder. The First Mate was disappointed by the state of the rudder itself, which would require extensive repairs, but he had told Tali he expected as much when Captain Guthon reported that he could no longer adjust the rudder. Together, Valim and Tali braced against the hull and their chafing harnesses in order to put their weight and muscle against the rudder. It barely budged.
“Check if it’s obstructed under the water,” Valim instructed. “Just in case.”
Tali tossed him her shoes and tugged on her rope to signal her descent. The water was warmer than she had expected, but it took her a few moments for her eyes to stop stinging from the salt. She was getting better at it. To Valim’s chagrin, she discovered no obstacles for the rudder under the water. “There’s nothing,” she said, once she was pulled out of the water. “Must be the contraption.”
Valim nodded gravely. “Captain won’t be happy,” he said.
Indeed, Guthon was not. He cursed loudly and ordered their ship’s chief carpenter, Olim, to disassemble the interior hull below deck and assess the damage to the tiller. Guthon was never abusive, but he was temperamental. With broad shoulders, a handful of nasty scars, and an enormous nose, Guthon cut an imposing figure when he set his eyes a-simmering. He ordered the crew to continue clean-up and repair as best they could, saying that they would likely be rowing to shore that afternoon. Then he put Valim in charge and, by rowboat, set off toward the Crown Traveller.
His return, a couple hours later, affirmed the earlier order. Most of the able-bodied men and women were tasked with oar duty in the rowing galleys. Tali soon sat beside one of her better friends aboard, a young man named Rel. Rel actually served as a mercenary most times, and not as a sailor. Nonetheless, when the soldiers were tasked with “boat duty,” the younger members of their ranks got the order.
“Wasn’t that quite the storm?” Rel asked, as they pulled the same oar.
Tali grunted as they pulled it through the water, then inhaled as they pushed it forward. “Sure was, and with us so close to shore?” she asked. She had learned better than to look to the side while she oared. They spoke looking straight ahead. “Lucky, that was, but odd that the wind would be so strong. You get a peek at the rudder? Thing’s snapped like a dry twig.”
“I thought we were going to flood when we felt it break. I thought the rocks would go right through the hull and we’d all drown….” His heaving-interrupted words trailed off. After a few more pulls of their oar, the look-outs above shouted for starboard oars to be pulled in as they passed a rock. Sitting with the oar across their knees was a moment of relief. Rel rubbed his dark forehead; he was half-grimy, but was always of a darker complexion than Tali. “We’re not home, so we’re not safe—not yet. This could get a lot worse before it gets better. The Councillor isn’t happy, from what I hear.”
Tali laughed. “Is she ever? Probably mad because she’s running out of tea or something.” Tali had heard the combatant mercenaries talking like that, with jaded cynicism. As for his comment that they weren’t home yet, Tali couldn’t help but feel that the Boundless was her home. “It’ll be fine though. We bring a woodworker along for a reason, and once we get ashore, it’ll be like a tiny vacation. One with lots of work… but still.”
“I hope so,” Rel muttered. “Did I ever tell you the tale of the galley that was wrecked north of the Bay of Nordos?”
The order was bellowed down to resume rowing on the starboard side. They grunted and pulled at their oarport again.
Tali could only roll her eyes at his remark. It was a classic seafaring horror story, complete with sailors killed by cannibal tribes in the jungle. “That and ten others. You know, it never made sense to me… if the sailors were all eaten, who told that story first?” she smirked. “Least that’s what Ma said my father always asked when she told him she’d heard some sordid tale. He sailed all over the place, and never told tales about cannibals.”
Her friend shook his head in her peripheral. “Tali, you’re too clever for your own good. Promise me you won’t force me to kiss your boots when you make Captain?”
Tali puffed up and grinned. “’Course not, you’d make a real poor First Mate crawling around kissing boots.” She leaned a little closer on the push of the oar. “That’ll be Vaniya’s job.”
The quartermaster of the Boundless, a lanky Ketho man named Aylod, stepped into the opening of their rowing bench. He must have been walking by and heard the topic of their conversation. “Only the two lovebirds could be laughing while they row in the wind. Stop throwing off the rhythm….” He leaned closer to whisper, “And, a word of advice: careful with talk of becoming Captain. Out here in the wilderness, that’s too close to mutinous talk.”
Tali pulled at the oar again, supressing a beleaguered sigh. “Aye, right, sir.” Once Aylod had sauntered away, she angled her head and gave Rel an exaggerated eye roll. She hated the nickname, “love birds,” as Rel and she were only peers in the Company, nothing more. Still, there was little she could do about it.
They rowed in silence for a few moments more, before the orders came down to slow the pace. Soon after, the ship shook and groaned as it ran aground on soft shore—carefully controlled by the Captain, no doubt. The Boundless Star was now bound to the land, in the middle of some saltwater swamp, on the storm-torn shore of Tieko’s Deep. Tali wondered how many ships had been sunken during the storm and counted herself lucky. These were troubled days on the Grey Sea—and certainly not an ideal time for a typhoon.