10

Prisoners

Tory fought with all of his might. The first elf that came at him had an eye patch over one eye and a scar across his left cheek. Tory gave him another that he wouldn't soon forget and shoved him overboard.

Urt was dancing across the deck, wielding his Skirlx blade with skill and dexterity. He leapt over one pirate, relieving him of his head and gave another a hole in his chest. The two fell to the deck of the ship, dead before they hit the wood.

Jurrin was not so clean or well put together.

His best defense was that the elf fighting him seemed put off to have a target so low to the ground. He kept bringing his sword down onto the deck time and time again, only to hit solid wood instead of the small halfling.

Jurrin finally dove between the elf's legs when his sword became lodged into the deck. With a swift jump from the railing, Jurrin grabbed hold of the pirate's neck and began to squeeze.

Tory had just kicked another elf who would have boarded the ship into the water before looking back to see the elf topple over on top of Jurrin, his face red.

Before he could do much about it, another three elves came over the sides of the boat and made for the captain's wheel. Felicia was not going to go down easily. While one tried to chop off her hand, she kicked the other square in the mouth. The elf flew backwards off the stairs and hit the bottom deck hard. The other, seeing his comrade fall so hard, hesitated.

That split second saw him crumple to the ground, Felicia's sword still stuck into his gut.

“Got any more!?” Felicia yelled to the ship, defiantly.

A blast of cannon fire was her answer.

Timber and fire surrounded Tory. He thought for a moment he was going to die and that the world had ended. His eyes were blurred with smoke and a ringing filled his ears.

Then everything came back into focus. The blast had blown a section of the main mast to dust and it fell, hard, onto the opposite side of the deck and into the water. An eerie silence followed after the great crash.

Tory got up and looked around the deck, his sword still clutched firmly in his hand. He didn't see any more pirates from the other ship coming to attack. Looking over the mast to the other vessel, he didn't notice any others over on the ship walking the deck either.

It was quiet.

“Hey!” Tory shouted, trying to make out anyone still with him on the boat.

“Murph!” came a muffled voice.

Tory ran to the sound and, under a pile of sails and a timber or two, he found Jurrin still laying underneath an unconscious elf.

“Grab hold!” Tory said, as he extended a hand and pulled Jurrin from the pile. The little halfling came up coughing and flinging bits of wood out of his hair.

“Thank you, sir,” he said as he stepped out onto a clear space of the deck. “Where's everyone else?”

Tory looked around.

Up on the deck he saw Urt helping Felicia wrap up her forearm, which appeared to be bleeding from a cut. Other than the bloodied bandage, they both looked no worse for the wear.

“Gorplin?” Tory called out, expecting to find the dwarf still hacking away at anything that was moving.

“Over here, loudmouth!” came a voice from what sounded like further off than it should be.

Tory and Jurrin came to railing and looked over to see Gorplin standing on the deck of the other ship. His axe was bloody and his smile was wide.

“Just finishing up over here,” he said, cleaning his blade with a rag. “Looks like we've got ourselves a replacement boat if we're in the market!”

The other boat was also elvish and definitely owned by pirates.

What was more, all three masts were actually intact, unlike their own boat. After a few hours of carrying over supplies and finding a place for the two pirate elves who still lived to be locked up, the crew decided they were at the very least going to be able to make do in the new boat.

“Those black sails unnerve me a bit,” Jurrin said after most everything had been cleared away. They put all the bodies from their fight onto the old boat, The Willow's Flight and set it on fire.

“No sense in leaving any replacement parts for the other pirates,” Tory offered.

“Bah,” said Gorplin as he watched the flames take hold of the boat. “It was a good ship.”

"Getting sentimental?" Tory chided as he poked the dwarf.

He suffered another blow to his gut.

“What do you reckon the elves we've captured will think of us taking their boat?” Jurrin asked after Tory had finished coughing and regained his breath. “I'd be mighty irritated to be locked up on my own ship.”

Gorplin chuckled at the thought

“They've got more than being locked up on their minds,” he said. “I doubt either of them will want to stick around after Urt's gotten to them.”

“Urt?” Jurrin asked.

“Aye,” Felicia said, her arm in a sling and looking wistfully at the old boat go up in flames. “He's got questions for them and I've told him not to come back until he's got answers.”

Tory shuddered a bit. The Skirlx was bigger and stronger than any other person on this boat. He made another note of why it would be best to stay on Urt's good side.

Felicia ordered them to give full sail and to make their way back to Lone Peak. Tory, for once, was not going to argue with going back.

It had been a very long day.

Tory woke up in his hammock to the sound of seagulls cawing and the sun poking through a cannonball-sized hole in the ship's side.

The new ship was only slightly better sleeping than the old one.

Black sails, red flag, and dragon carved into the bow of the boat made for a pretty intimidating ship to sail on. The pirates who had been the masters of the boat until yesterday seemed more concerned about scaring off potential enemies than the amount of supplies on board.

“The Sword's Edge doesn't have a single barrel of food!” Felicia lamented. “What were they thinking?”

“What's The Sword's Edge?” Tory asked.

Felicia gave him an irritated look.

“Every ship needs a name, Master Tory,” Jurrin answered for her.

Tory shook his head.

Captains and their ships were something he didn't quite understand.

“Probably that they were about to fill their ship to the brim with whatever they could find at Bestone,” Gorplin offered through a mouthful of bread. They had brought over several supplies from their former ship to help them return with enough to eat.

Tory agreed with the dwarf, but still had lots of questions.

How did the elves know the city was going to be attacked? Why come out of hiding if they didn't know? Were they planning on looting the city anyways and just happened to find a great deal of luck? Or was their arrival and the destruction of Bestone somehow related?

Urt had not yet gotten out enough information from the elf captives to satisfactorily answer any of those questions.

“I heard lots of growling last night,” Jurrin observed as he rolled out of his hammock and onto the ship's floor. “I feel bad for those elves having to be given such a rough time by Mister Urt.”

Tory shook his head.

“Leave it to Jurrin to feel bad for someone who just tried to kill him,” he said to Gorplin.

The two had been almost polite to one another since the pirate's attacked. Tory was still thinking about what Gorplin had said.

Maybe soon they'd start finding out some answers as to what was going on around them and be off on more adventures.