Chapter Twenty: Warchief Anhchoi
Anhchoi caught himself, one hand on the railing by the steersman, the other on the hilt of his shortsword. He saw the wave rising, and thought Makani would do something about it. She seemed to be focusing her will against it, her dance and the sea wind turning her cloak of ribbons into a swirling rainbow. It was for nought, as the wave kept rising and rising. By the time he was certain Makani had failed to contain it, it was too late. He ordered Kwandok to break hard for starboard. The wave crashed anyway.
The water thundered into him, but Anhchoi kept his feet out of sheer willpower. Kwandok stumbled, but kept hold of the wheel. The shuddered, her boards uttering a pained moan.
“Damage!” he called. He barked for Fuandai out of habit, but the bosun was back on land.
“The bandage is free, warchief!” called Wudoi, one of the carpenters, after leaning over the side. A cut on his forehead bled nastily, but the sailor clung to his duties, unaware or uncaring of the injury.
“The sea is hungry!” shouted Jinkao from the rigging.
Anhchoi didn’t need the warning. but appreciated it all the same. He had shed enough blood on the planks of the to make her of his own flesh. He could feel her listing, the telltale signs of taking on water. She was sinking, or would unless something could be done.
“Makani!” The quartermaster turned, face unreadable under her wooden mask, her eyes wild. “Bail the water!”
She nodded assent and switched her stance.
“Everyone not on the catapults, wheels, or sails, get below and start bailing!”
The crew obeyed, scuttling as fast as they could to the ladders below. When one of the hatches into the lower decks was thrown wide, Anhchoi saw sunlight. He mentally cursed. This wasn’t supposed to be this way. He was going to crush the invading fleet, turn them back, and keep hold of this island. He had found the artifact of the skyborn. He was given the mandate. But with the tribals closing in and the heeding the call into the deep, even his bronze-hard faith was shaken.
“Load and fire!” he called to the catapultmen.
The starboard side catapults were broken, a few of the crews rigging repairs after what the boarding party of tribals had done. The port side crews glanced downward, as though they could see through the deck’s planks to the hole underneath, threatening to gobble them up. They obeyed the order anyway, taking their pots from the racks, putting them in the cradles and loosing them as soon as they were ready. The fire from the island had stopped—Anhchoi wasn’t certain when—and now the fire from the ship was sporadic and staggered.
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Anhchoi looked to the shore. He could break hard for open water, and pray the tribals wouldn’t follow. They’d have what they wanted. None of the slaves from that village had been transferred to the pens on the . The tribals would have their victory. In the open water, he would be in almost as much danger, but perhaps they could make it to an uninhabited island and work on repairs from there.
Through the smoke and spray, he glimpsed a glimmer of gold from the island. Just the barest slice of his prize, the skyborn object. He couldn’t leave it. Even with it denying him time and again, he couldn’t go back out to sea with its secrets still locked up inside. He would fight for it. He would stay, no matter the cost.
The priest-witches birthed another unnatural wave from the surf. It rose like one of their savage gods, ready to rain death and destruction on the warjunk. It readied itself to smash into the side, drag it under as sure as if it were really attached to the glabrous body of some pelagic abomination. The sea boiled and tossed. Sections still blazed with rafts of sea fire. Burned wreckage from broken boats and the warjunk itself rose and fell on the brutal swells. Then, another volley of pots whistled overhead, smashing against the once-blue water, flowers of fire blooming along the frothing waves.
It was beautiful. Anhchoi’s heart was lighter than air. If there was a final sight before dying, he prayed to the gods of the skyborn that this was it. Even staring at the rising wave, like the tentacle of a great leviathan, he was happy to know that he would die in thunder.
The wave hammered into the warjunk. This time, Anhchoi lost his feet for a moment. before grabbing the rigging by the edge. He reached out instinctively, and his fingers clamped around a leather-sheathed wrist. It was Kwandok, clinging, nearly thrown from the ship entirely. The steersman’s face was a mask of terror, but when his eyes met Anhchoi’s, relief washed through his expression. The pilot could not imagine his warchief failing him. Anhchoi took his man’s confidence for his own, righting the both of them on the deck.
Through his sandaled feet on the planks, he felt the listing further. It was falling to the sea, but it didn’t want to. No, she was too good a ship for that. She wanted to stay afloat. She wanted to remain a floating haven for her men. She was a warjunk of Zhao-Chi, the finest vessel in the sea. She would be felled by primitive magic.
Kwandok sprinted to take the wheel, and Anhchoi turned to the rest of his crew, to see how many had saved themselves from being washed over the side. Some of his men had tangled themselves expertly in the rigging or clung to railings. Others bobbed in the water. It wasn’t far to shore, or even to the shallows, but with the fury unleashed on the ocean, they were gone as soon as they hit the salt. Anhchoi would mourn them later.
“Load and fire!” he called to the catapultmen. They rushed to obey. Even now, they never doubted an order from the warchief.
“Kwandok! Hard o’ starboard!”
The ship leaned into the turn. Anhchoi wanted to pull the tribals across the landbound catapults, through a trail of fire. It would be time before they could muster another wave, and Makani and his men would be bailing the whole time. Anhchoi wasn’t certain the would stay afloat, but he would give her every chance.
As the ship swung around, Anhchoi spotted something on the horizon he didn’t believe possible. Behind him, past the tribal fleet, out where the water was still blue and nothing was on fire. He saw sails.
Red sails, webbed, like the fins of fish.
The sails of warjunks.
“shouted the boy in the crow’s nest.
Anhchoi’s heart lifted. Even with confirmation from the lookout, it didn’t seem possible. Three warjunks coming in from the north. Too far to see which they were, but three warjunks, side by side could be nothing else. They had received the summons. They had come. The loyalists of Chuichan had been driven apart by wind, tides, and terrible fortune, but they were still brothers.
A bruised cheer went up from the few men remaining on the deck.
The tribal fleet saw the warjunks as well, but it was too late. The huge ships and their skiffs smashed into the back of the tribals, and the battle was as good as over.