Here is part 6! Thanks so much for sticking around to hear Kyra's and Scarlet's story. I hope you enjoy it, and, as always, let me know what you think of the story so far. Constructive criticism very welcome.
Chapter 10. The curious account of a warrior princess
Captain Percival Sterling had been at sea for thirty-five years. Starting as a wee midshipman, he rose through the ranks through a combination of hard work, persistence, and many very good family connections. He contained the qualities most sought after in the typical naval commander in the modern royal Portoan Navy: he was risk averse.
Though he did not expect to ever reach the lofty position of admiral (not having all the necessary connections), he was fine with that. He now commanded his own small corvette in the Kelthala fleet, and he enjoyed it thoroughly. It was an easy command in pleasant wind-and-sun-kissed waters during a long era of relative peace. Most days, the life of command of a small corvette was a breezy life. But today, nice weather notwithstanding, was not like most days. Today Captain Sterling along with his longtime friend and always dependable right-hand man, Lieutenant Blackwood, stood in the hallway right outside the fleet admiral's office in the Portoan embassy awaiting the grilling by the fleet admiral for not meeting a certain expectation. Averting risk, that is.
Outside the window, Sterling spotted the forty-four-gun frigate Galatea among the forest of masts and shrouds of the naval yard, the golden ensign of Portoa luffing proudly in the breeze from her stern staff. Today was the first day in a very long time that the Portoan flag flew on the Galatea, and, as the man responsible for returning her to her rightful berth alongside the other Portoan men-of-war, the captain had every right to be blushing with pride. The reason for the meeting this afternoon, in fact, was to give the admiral a full accounting of the action that resulted in him, Captain Sterling, the commander of the tiny corvette Annaliese, winning the Galatea from the hands of the notorious Seawraith pirates who had kept her in their possession for the better part of a decade.
"Don't be nervous, my dear Max," the captain said to his man, not because his lieutenant appeared nervous at all - Lieutenant Blackwood was hardly bothered by anything at all, and he was, as usual, as calm as a morning pond -- Captain Sterling spoke those words as a means of calming his own nerves. He was nervous because he was the captain, and as such, would have to answer to the hard-nosed razorback, how exactly it was that a humble corvette managed to go toe-to-toe with a frigate carrying nearly four times the weight in guns and three times the crew size and come out on top, and, more importantly, what could have possibly motivated him to attack a vastly superior ship when naval orders explicitly instructed that no ship of the Royal Portoan Navy engage in combat with pirates except in extremis, particularly with very important passengers aboard.
It occurred to the captain shortly after his victory that to sail the Galatea into port flying Portoan colors could possibly be an embarrassing sleight to the war-storied admiral, who, for the better part of the decade, had been trying his best to win her back after she was stolen right from under his nose.
Understanding the point of his beloved captain's words, Lieutenant Blackwood gave his captain a cheery smile and as a matter of reassuring him, replied,
"Of course, sir. Nothing to be nervous about."
Blackwood, without fail, always had his captain's back. Sterling couldn't ever hope to show this man enough appreciation.
The admiral swung his door open. Captain Sterling and his lieutenant straightened their spines in tandem. The admiral stared at one, then the other, then looked out the hallway window to see the Galatea there, disbelief etched into his hardboiled face. He stuffed his pipe into his mouth, lit it with a match, and with the pipe bit between his teeth, he gruffly bellowed,
"Come in!"
The admiral strode back into his office and eased himself into his chair.
"Sit," he growled, puffing out a plume of pipe smoke. They sat in the two small chairs to the front of the admiral's expansive, busy desk. He glared at the two of them as he puffed a giant smoke ring. The smoke ring vanished as it floated into the ceiling before he said,
"Go on, Captain, let's hear your account."
Captain Sterling cleared his throat and edged himself to the front of his chair.
"Admiral, I've taken the Galatea as a prize."
"I can see that captain," the admiral drawled, a twitch forming beneath one of his eyes. He continued, "What I would very much like to know is exactly why it is and how it came to be that one of my twelve-gun corvettes tasked with escorting a royal princess to a festival managed to engage a forty-four-gun frigate in a naval duel and -- notwithstanding the royal decree prohibiting such mindlessly suicidal action -- come out victorious?"
The volume of the admiral's voice and the speed with which he spoke rose with every enunciated syllable. Veins appeared in his forehead, and his jaw muscles flexed as he bit down on the pipe.
"As it happened, technically, we did not engage in a naval duel by the, ehm, by the strictest definition of the term. We could not have, as we had jettisoned all our artillery beforehand," Sterling replied nervously.
The admiral shut his eyes and let out a deep, agitated sigh as he rubbed his temples.
Sterling explain, "I-I had given the orders to jettison to gain speed as soon as we spotted the Galatea's sails on the horizon. To make our escape in accordance with the royal orders, sir."
"Yet somehow a corvette lightened of all her artillery failed to escape a fully laden frigate."
The captain sank into his chair as he fished for the right words in his head, tightening his white-knuckled clutch of his feathered bicorn cap, realizing that what he was about to say would never endear the enraged admiral to his cause.
"The princess..."
"Yes, captain, the young princess you were tasked to escort, at the very least unharmed, to Talishpur in time for the festival of Aersus. What about the princess?"
"She demanded that I turn and fight the pirates."
"For Tomuun's sake, captain, are you a dolt? Are you so easily swayed? You would listen to a romanticizing princess, who, in all likelihood, knows the sea as much as a dormouse over your own instinct as a naval commander?"
"It wasn't clear we would have outrun the Galatea as she was on a beam run, and we were beating windward."
"So, you're saying you had no choice."
The captain glanced uncomfortably at his lieutenant. He was tempted to simply say that was the case. That despite their best effort to gain as much speed as possible they would not have been able to avoid the intercept. But alas, it would not have been the truth. As anyone who had been in the navy for any amount of time would know, the truth always makes its rounds eventually. To be dishonest now would only serve to delay his day of reckoning. So, he told the truth.
"Like I said, it was never clear that we would have outrun the Galatea. But that was because we were still heavily laden with the princess's gold. She refused to allow us to jettison it," replied Sterling.
"She's a royal princess, captain! The gold is insured!" the admiral hollered.
"And I had explained to her as much. She still refused."
"If you had a spine, Captain, you would have clapped her in irons and heaved her precious gold over the side!"
The admiral's condescension struck a deep nerve in Sterling. To suggest that he, a corvette captain that had just this morning taken on a frigate full of dreaded Seawraiths, perhaps as the first naval commander in a decade to do so, was spineless? The admiral had crossed a line. Sterling steadied his gaze on the bulldog. He sat taller. His chest began to burn with a white-hot rage.
"After she had called on my men to fight, I had the mind to order the master-at-arms to detain her. But then I looked into my sailors eyes. Do you know what I saw in those eyes, admiral?"
Sterling stood abruptly. The chair he sat in scraped across the floor with a cold screech and nearly fell over from the force of him standing. His voice grew loud and gained a cold, golden clarity.
"I saw that my sailors are fighters, who have been told by every admiral who visits my ship, including yourself, that each of their lives are worth three pirates and that they will have their day of glory at sea. Yet day after day, year after year, they are instructed not to fight but to serve as mere couriers to avaricious merchants and ferrymen to spoiled-rotten royals. Day after day. Year after year. They do so obediently. All the while the wolves are free to roam the Kelthala sea, our grand fleet, once sheepdogs have been reduced to mere leashed lapdogs! Indeed, after the princess urged my sailors to fight, I saw in their eyes ignited, for the first time in a very, very long time, a fire that once made our fleet the great pride of Portoa. I knew then that she was right. I knew that despite the odds, we had to turn and fight, and make this day the day we gain not glory but dignity."
The admiral sat with a stunned shade upon his face. The pipe between his teeth had lilted. A tepid smoke rose from its bowl. Having received no response from him otherwise, Sterling continued,
"So, I gave the orders to beat to quarters, and lieutenant Blackwood and I, along with the other officers, devised a plan to even our odds against the pirates. Their greed would be their downfall, we believed. So, that was the basis to our plan. We hoisted the white flag and straightened our run to signal our preparation to be boarded. I maintained the sails sheeted to a beam-run, so as to force them to grapple. Keep 'em close, and fight like dogs in a cage: That was how we would win the day.
"It was only a matter of time before they were alongside. They fired a few de-masting shots to put us dead in the water. Had they succeeded, then we would have been lost. But the rolls were heavy, and pirates, as you very well know, do not have any skill whatsoever in gunnery. To avoid an accidental sinking, they ceased their cannon fire and closed to within grappling range, according to our plan. My sharpshooters were hidden on the quarterdeck, concealed beneath tarps with ready muskets. My pikemen were just below deck.
"Grappled they did and swarmed the Annaliese. Outnumbered were we, at least three-to-one. But that mattered none. As we've always been told, one of ours was worth three of theirs. It would be the day to test that theory, anyways.
