Chapter 56 James
James
How Ahnna had known what was coming, James couldn’t have said, because the skies seemed clear and the seas obliging. The perfect sailing conditions.
Right up until the moment they weren’t.
As dusk fell, the skies blackened with something far more ominous than the loss of the sun. The brisk breeze shifted into violent gusts, and the swells deepened as lightning danced across the swirling clouds.
“The Amaridians will have to fight this storm too,” he shouted over the noise. “With luck, the storm will sink them.”
“They are big ships, and the Amaridians are excellent sailors,” Ahnna shouted back, her hair whipping across her face. “Whereas this is a fucking pleasure craft and my only sailor is you.”
She wasn’t the only one who regretted that fact—James knew nothing about sailing a ship like this. “Can we go wide?”
She shook her head. “This storm will blow us straight out into the open seas if we let it, and we don’t have any supplies. If we cut east, we’ll run afoul of the Harendellian navy. The Amaridians are going straight through it, so we will as well.”
“How…” He trailed off, catching sight of flickers of specks of lantern light in the distance.
It should have been impossible to catch up to the three-masted ships, but somehow, Ahnna had done it.
And from the fierce determination on her face, James knew she intended to attack them the moment they got close enough to do so.
“If we can catch them in the night, we can get aboard and kill the sailors,” she shouted, validating his thought. “Sink at least one of them.”
Or the storm will smash our tiny craft to pieces, and we’ll both drown.
James’s lips parted to tell her to ease off and get out of the path of the tempest, but he bit down on his words.
She’d fought too hard to give up now, and James knew that was how she’d see it.
Because if that vessel beat them to Ithicana by even half a day, people would die.
Ithicana was too starved for grain to hold back on opening a sack or two, and so instead he tightened his grip on the rail.
The tempest worsened, waves washing over the deck and the single mast groaning from the strain of the vicious wind in the sails. He lost his footing over and over, only the ropes securing them to the helm keeping them both from going overboard, but Ahnna remained on the wake of the Amaridian ship.
Thunder crashed overhead, punctuated by waves swamping the deck, and James struggled to get a breath in the deluge of rain.
Ahnna had her shoulder wedged beneath a wheel spoke, face twisted with strain as she fought against the pull of the water.
How he heard it over the noise, James didn’t know, but the sound of ripping fabric filled his ears.
“The sail,” he screamed in her ear. “It’s tearing! We need to lower it now!”
Because if they lost the sail, they’d be lost at sea. Either to die from starvation or dehydration, or to be picked off by one of their endless enemies.
Ahnna didn’t react for what felt like a lifetime, and then she gave a wordless scream and turned the wheel. The ship turned, the sails flapping as they lost the full weight of the wind, and then she was forcing his hands onto the helm. “Keep it here.”
James did as she ordered as she scrambled forward, clinging to what she could when a wave rolled over the deck.
For a nightmarish heartbeat, he was certain the seas had taken her.
But the sails ceased their flapping as they were lowered, and in a brilliant flash of lightning he saw Ahnna’s silhouette as she tied them down.
She stumbled back and clung to him, shoulders shaking as she sobbed. James held her through it as the storm and the sea took them where they willed, the lights on the Amaridian ships fading into blackness.