Chapter 53: DD2 Chapter 047 – Epilogue

The sound of fast approaching wheels bouncing over uneven cobblestones was the only warning Andaigh got before a horse-drawn cart very nearly ended his life. He flung himself to the side of the road—his knees complaining loudly at the sudden motion—and landed in a large puddle that splashed muddy water up to his thighs. He knew instantly that his imported trousers were ruined, and for some reason this aggravated him far more than the fact that he had almost died. In his fury, Andaigh forgot his station and unleashed a litany of curses at the back of the driver’s fast retreating head. 

His chest heaving; he burned the image of those auburn locks into his memory. Andaigh may have been but a humble merchant, but he was also a proud Aberian, and he would have his revenge on the youthful driver, even if it took him years. 

An Aberian always gets their due.

Sighing, he tried to wipe the worst of the filth from his legs and winced as the foul smelling mud left pronounced stains behind on the expensively dyed fabric. Ignoring a fresh bucket of night-soil that was thrown out of a nearby window and into a very similar looking puddle to the one he was standing in, Andaigh moved on. His eyes scanned the distant horizon while he walked—an old habit from his misspent youth which served him well in his current trade—and he frowned at the quiet seas that mirrored the lack of activity on the waterfront. 

He allowed his expression of anger to melt into one of concern. If things didn’t improve quickly then it was possible there would be no more imported dyes in his future at all.

The Durum docks were surprisingly sparse given the time of year, and while he wanted to dwell on his near death experience, he had far bigger problems than one youth’s staggering incompetence.

No ships that hailed from the east had come to Durum in weeks.

While it was possible that bad weather could have assaulted Aber’s south-eastern coast, there should still have been some ships to have made their way to the port. Even if the seas were all but impassible, people would make the attempt, and some would succeed. For an experienced captain could make a killing providing goods where there would be a guaranteed shortage, and the allure of all that money up for grabs would be impossible for a merchant captain to resist.

But there had been nothing. Not a whisper of verifiable news from the eastern cities by land or sea for weeks. The few merchant ships that now populated the capital city’s harbour, had all crossed the narrow channel of turbulent water that separated the Kingdom of Aber from Padia and Argrovia to the west. Most of those boats now sat half-empty, waiting to stock up on goods from Aber’s eastern coast that had yet to arrive. More concerningly, some were in the process of stocking up for return voyages back to their home ports before the channel’s currents grew any worse. 

A potentially catastrophic turn of events for a merchant like Andaigh.

It took him several minutes to complete his walk and arrive at the squat little building where the harbourmaster resided. Once he was through the creaking door, his eyes immediately registered that the man in question was soundly asleep at his desk. The harbourmaster was a slimy, middle-aged man by the name of Boles, utterly useless at his job, but more than happy to take a bribe, so Andaigh had always made a point of keeping their professional relationship amicable.

The merchant straightened out his jerkin, noticing a fresh spot of mud in the process, and watched Boles snooze with naked contempt. How he wished he had the time to sleep through the day. 

“Ahem!” Andaigh barked, taking pains to clear his throat as loudly as possible. Boles, the professional layabout that he was, sat bolt upright in his chair with unintelligible words now decorating his right cheek. The writing from the still-wet paperwork littering his desk had transferred onto his skin, giving the man an even more dishevelled appearance than usual. 

“Oh, Master Andaigh—Gods you smell terrible—I mean, I didn’t see you there. ” Boles said before he could stop himself. “What can I do for you?”

“Is there any word from the Everforward?” he asked calmly instead of screaming obscenities at the man who was supposed to be working around the clock to rectify the issue of the missing ships.

“The what?” Boles asked.

“The Everforward. The scout ship we sent east? It was due back days ago, but you have yet to relay any word to my offices,” Andaigh said through gritted teeth, while the dolt of a man facing him only blinked slowly while a look of comprehension gradually made its way across his face.

“Oh, that Everforward,” Boles answered. “I’m afraid that ship hasn’t returned yet to report in, nor have any other ships due from the east for that matter.” 

“I know that part, it's why we sent the scout ship in the first place. Have you got nothing else to add?”

“Well, no—”

“Well then what am I paying you for?!” Andaigh raged, finally allowing his temper to slip. “If the Everforward hasn’t reported back, then send another ship! You’re the harbourmaster for fuck’s sake! Don't just sit there sleeping in the middle of the day when boats are missing from more than half the country!”

“Andaigh, I understand that you’re upset, but there’s really nothing I can do. I can’t move ships east without the King's orders, or at the very least the chancellors if he’s indisposed. They’re for the ports defence, should pirates or—”

“Boles, you’ve been taking bribes from every merchant house since before you came to your post. Don’t forget I know how much money you have squirrelled away—at least, what you haven’t squandered on whores and flake. So don’t tell me you can’t do anything! Charter a bigger ship to investigate—get a bloody warship if you have to, but find out what’s going on before I find someone more competent to do your job!”

“Chartering a… warship would be quite expensive,” Boles said before licking his lips. “If I were to do such a thing, I’d need contributions from concerned citizens like yourself...”

“You greedy little shit,” Andaigh muttered before he lunged for Boles. The harbourmaster’s eyes bulged in a panic as he was dragged over his cluttered desk and hauled up to his feet by the merchant's strong hands. “Listen to me Boles, your incompetence has cost me money. Your laziness and lack of initiative even more so. You’re rapidly approaching the line when my interests would be better served by a new harbourmaster taking your position. Do you understand what that would entail?” he threatened.

Dong-Dong! Dong-Dong! Dong-Dong! Dong-Dong!

“Saved by the bell, you should thank the Gods that someone around here knows how to do their damned job,” Andaigh grunted before he unceremoniously dropped the harbourmaster onto the floor and stepped out of the cramped office.

Fresh, salty air filled his lungs replacing the staleness of the office as he strode out towards the pier. The familiar sound of gulls cawing and the smell of the ocean reassured Andaigh that everything was going to be alright, and he allowed his pace to slow. His eyes scanned the horizon out of habit, but thanks to the incessant bells, this time he knew there was actually something to see. Looking out over the water, it didn’t take him too long to spot it—a narrow speck of white that could just about be seen between all that blue. 

A sail.

He knew there was no guarantee the ship headed to harbour was one of his, but it was coming in from the east and it would at least have news on whatever catastrophe was holding up his cargo. Still, Andaigh couldn’t help but hope. He had invested a lot—too much—of his wealth in a large galley bringing Aberian whisky and mana-rich lumber, harvested somewhat illegally, to Durum where it would then be sold across the channel. If he was caught, the fines would be ruinous, but he’d made all the correct bribes and only had to wait on his ship, the Fortuitous Wind, to arrive in port. 

But it was now more than two weeks late, and like countless other merchants in the city, he was feeling the strain of his unserved debts.

Andaigh was scared. Scared of destitution, scared of the blow to his reputation, and scared that his supple-thighed-wife would find another rich old man to support her. She was more than twenty years his junior, and he wasn’t delusional enough to think that she had married him for anything else other than his money. Money which he might not have for much longer if the Fortuitous Wind didn’t arrive before the bank's next demand for repayment.

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He stood out at the very edge of the pier where the stiff winds from the east whipped at his face. Cautiously, he raised his spyglass up to his eye, and noted that Boles beside him was raising his own in a transparent attempt at pretending to do his job.

With mirrored glass and arcane runes, Andaigh looked out across the miles of open ocean at the approaching ship and felt first his heart fall, and then his confusion rising up to meet it.

It wasn't the Fortuitous Wind, neither was it the Everforward. In Andaigh’s long life as both a merchant and a sailor, he had thought he’d seen every hull shape of every vessel to ever sail the seas around Astresia, but this was something new.

The ship was sleek, too narrow he would have thought to sail without risking capsizing in even a mild crosswind. The sails were far too large for their slender masts, so much so that they should have snapped right off with the amount of wind filling them. The wood, if that’s what the ship was made out of was utterly unrecognisable, it was so bright that it looked more like some kind of glassy white crystal than anything that came from a tree. And despite all these incongruencies, two of which should have made the ship unseaworthy, it was racing through the water faster than any ship he had ever seen before with a spray of foam on either side of its carved prow.

“Do you recognise that kind of ship?” Andaigh asked Boles with a raised brow.

The harbourmaster merely shook his head.

Dong-Dong! Dong-Dong! Dong-Dong! Dong-Dong!

“What in the Gods’ name are they playing at? They’ve already told us there’s a ship coming!” the merchant complained.

“There’s more than one…” the harbourmaster said, trailing off with an arm raised towards the horizon.

“What?”

He turned to see where Boles was pointing, sweeping over the area with his spyglass as he began counting the sails of the exotically shaped ships. 

He lost count at 30 with more than half the vessels uncounted and more still appearing over the horizon. The thin ships were simply moving too fast for him to be confident in his estimations so he quickly gave up, and tried to instead guess when they’d make landfall. Depths take him, the ships were moving too fast even with the wind at their backs which could only really mean one of two things.

“Classers…” he mumbled. Each of the ships approaching either had a classer at the helm, likely a windmage or some sort of captain, or the ship itself was skill-crafted. Made by one of the handful of high-level shipwrights on Creation. Neither option would be that unusual for a single expensive ship, but for a fleet of that size the cost would be astronomical. 

The fleet kept accelerating to port, the individual ships abandoning formation in what looked like a race to be the first to reach the harbour. Soon enough Andaigh could make out what looked like armoured figures manning the foreign ships. A truly bizarre detail in of itself as any kind of armour would swiftly kill a sailor should they ever be knocked overboard.

He missed it at first, because he wasn’t expecting it. But once he knew what to look for Andaigh knew fear on a wholly different level from that of losing his wife’s affections along with his fortune.

[Elf ???]

Everywhere he looked he saw the same tag. The entire ship, the entire fleet was crewed with classers, who possessed a tag he had never seen nor heard of before.

“What in the Gods’ names is an ‘Elf’?!” Andaigh asked, staring down the lens of his spyglass at an elf that appeared to be looking back at him. An impossibility given the extreme distances involved.

“It must be some kind of sailor class,” Boles offered, while the smiling elf in Andaigh’s vision appeared to string and then notch an oversized bow that was made from the same type of mysterious wood as the ship they were standing on.

“I don’t know…” the merchant trailed off, well aware that this many classers in one place only ever meant one thing.

War.

Feeling fear churn in his stomach, Andaigh watched on as the distant elf drew back the bowstring and released. The arrow flew far faster and further than he could have ever imagined. It trailed a long streak of brilliant white light that lingered in his vision even after he closed his eyes to shield them from the brightness. He heard, rather than saw, the arrow strike Boles, and when he opened his eyes the harbourmaster was sprawled out on the cobbles beside him with pieces of his skull and brains, arrayed around his head like a halo.

Predictably, Andaigh screamed, and in his panic he added more mud to his fine trousers.

A rain of arrows started to fall from the sky, each one striking true.

Within the hour, elven boots disembarked their ships and human blood flowed through the streets of Durum, and by the end of the day the Kingdom of Aber was no more.

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