The Butcher of Gadobhra - Chapter 243: Rendering Aid

Chapter 243: Rendering Aid

It was another evening of celebration aboard the Splinter. The ship had survived an encounter with an angry Thunderhead and a Leviathan from the deep, and their Captain had earned a promotion. Any of these was a reason to break out the rum, but they also had a feast unlike any other to attend. Butterbelly began weeping fiery tears when he saw the Kraken tentacle. “I get to cook this?! I am going to brag about this for all my years.” He laughed as the tears ran down his face, and he got to work.

The chunk of meat he cut off of the tentacle was just a tiny fraction of its length and the size of a large barrel. He marinaded the chunk and rubbed the sauce onto every surface before stuffing it into the oven. For hours the firewalker cooked the slab of meat, taking it out to peel off the cooked outer layer and slather on more sauce before returning it to the heat. The savory smell of baked Kraken flowed out behind the Splinter, attracting a giant razor-finned trout. The sharp-edged predators were known for following ships in packs hoping for a man overboard.

Not one to let fresh fish get away, Woodrat slowed the ship to let the fish catch up, and Ozzy put a harpoon into it. He fought with the trout for ten minutes before he could reel in his chain and drag it up. The trout looked small compared to the Kraken tentacle at only ten feet long and a thousand pounds. Ozzy wrapped it in layers of smoke and put it in the hold for Butterbelly to cook when he had time.

After several hours the ship’s cook was satisfied with his meal. The Kraken meat was tender and rich, providing a large amount of smoke and fuel. The crew sat and, for the second time that week, had a party as the ship sped in the direction of the flare. A double watch was kept all night with two crew and a navigator on duty. The rest of the crew slept soundly in their hammocks.

As Skye’s morning light came down, every hand was awake and on deck, with several in the rigging. In every direction, they could see white plumes of steam moving upward as a circle of Thunderheads moved toward the eruption. It was midmorning when Derek spotted the Dauntless. “Captain, set course for five degrees to starboard. I can see her. She has two small sails lit and is moving slowly.”

Woodrat adjusted course, and it was only a short time before they were coming up on Dauntless. The ship was nearly as big as The Conquest. She was hurt, missing most of her sails and chains, but she wasn’t dead yet. The crew was working on the deck and in the rigging.

Even damaged, she was magnificent. She had made it through the eruption and now was threatened by the rain and Thunderheads. She wasn’t his ship, but Woodrat knew he had to help save her if that was even possible.

As Splinter moved toward the larger ship, Captain Cavendish brought the Dauntless to a standstill, slowing the immense ship with the small amount of sail she was flying. Splinter came up on her fast. Far faster than Cavendish had ever seen a ship move. Her auric hull was pulling heat from the waves, and there was an inexhaustible supply. Splinter’s sails were at full power with deeply layered flames. Despite the ship’s speed, its captain had no trouble turning and racing around Dauntless twice as she slowly came to a halt. Captain Woodrat was showing off and living up to his legend as ‘The Captain that rode a Whale.’

The disparity between the two ships was apparent to all. Dauntless could barely make way, and the crew was exhausted and thin. The crew of the Splinter were all fit and healthy, scrambling through the chains and adjusting the sails as the Captain bellowed orders. Cavendish waited at the rail as the Splinter came beside Dauntless. Captain Woodrat saluted, and Cavendish returned it.

Captain Woodrat spoke politely,” Can we render you aid, sir? There’s a nasty bit of rain coming.” If it might seem odd that such a small ship was coming to the aid of a larger one, Cavendish was well aware of how much his ship needed the offered help.

“Dauntless is happy to accept aid from Splinter, and any debts will be repaid double by the Queens’ Navy and in any port where our two crews drink together. In the essence of haste, I would like to ask that we dispense with formalities. My men are starving, and worse, we are out of rum. I have crewmen below who suffer from overheating, and as you can see, we lack sail and chain to gain speed. We request any and all help that you can give.”

Woodrat smiled and relaxed a bit. This wasn’t a captain to fiddle in the crow’s nest as his ship went down. He doffed his hat and laughed. “Good enough. Let’s get to work, and my crew will earn those drinks.” He turned and bellowed out orders.

“Mr. Butterbelly and Mr. Ozzy, get a cargo net slung, and let’s load up a dozen barrels of sausage and two barrels of rum. Then take the rest of our recent dinner to the Dauntless and get it cooked up. I won’t see good Kraken turned into sausage when we have starving sailors to feed.”

He turned to the Butcher. “They’ve got men down to heat. Do what you can. We’ll save who can be saved and mourn those we can’t.”

A boom was swung over the Splinter, and a chain lowered to hoist the cargo. Then Ozzy ran up the ladder and waved off the men rigging block and tackle. “No need; I can lift this little bit before I get started below.” Cavendish nodded to his first mate, who waved the men back. The Captain of the Dauntless recognized the large first mate from their first encounter.He couldn’t tell how strong he was by looking at him but was getting an odd feeling from him. If he said he could lift a dozen barrels, he believed him. That strength was proven as Ozzy effortlessly pulled up the cargo net containing barrels of food and grog. After the boom was swung around and the net was lowered to the deck, he grabbed a barrel and ripped the lid off.

The wonderful smell of smoked meat filled the air. Cavendish yelled down. “Don’t stand on ceremony. Get something to eat and renew your smoke and fuel; we have much work to do.” A midshipman ran down and brought back a dozen sausages for the captain and navigator. Cavendish was determined to find where Captain Woodrat found supplies for his ship. Or were these delicacies meant for sale on some island? Cavendish shrugged and grabbed another sausage. The navy would pay either way. And right now, they needed the food.

His first mate approached him. “Begging the Captain’s pardon, but the men are asking about a bit of rum to go with the meal. I want to request a quarter flagon for each.”

Cavendish nodded. “Reasonable, since many have had to go without. I would have thought you’d ask for more.”

The mate shook his head. “Not this rum, sir. I don’t know who aged it and for how many decades, but it’s old, strong, and burns like a demon in your stomach. Their mate said it was salvaged from an old wreck, and I believe him. Anyone that drinks a full flagon isn’t going to be fit to work for the rest of the day. We can give them a bit now and a bit at nightfall. Their chef says he’ll cook up a feast for us.”

Cavendish smiled. The sausage felt like a feast today, and regular ships fair was salted fish, hard-tack bread, and maybe some fresh fish. “That sounds fine. What is their chef cooking up for us?”

The mate hesitated. “He says Captain Woodrat went fishing and caught a Deep Kraken. I’d call the man a liar, except he’s twelve foot tall and showed me a cuttlefish tentacle as long as the two of us put together. They will transfer it to Dauntless and cook it on the main deck.”

Cavendish kept his face impassive. “Carry on then, and give the crew of Splinter what help they need. I’m looking forward to dinner.”

Ozzy went below to the hold where he’d been told there were overheated sailors. He had a small cask of rum on his shoulder that he’d been brewing for some time. The alcohol was mixed with ground salad berries, and he’d imbued as much of his smoke into it as it would take. Just a shot glass of the stuff should help anyone belch out their excess heat and start their healing.

He was unprepared for what he saw. The injured sailors lay everywhere, on the deck, and in hammocks strung everywhere to hold them. The room reeked of death and char. He could see the heat in them. Everyman was on the edge of dying. Behind a makeshift wall in another section of the hold, he could hear charred sailors moaning and screaming, not quite accepting their fate.

“Not a pretty sight, is it.” The ship’s doctor looked like he hadn’t slept in a week and probably hadn’t. “But it will be all over soon. One way or another. Tell the Captain I’m not leaving them. I’ll stay and share their fate. And my apologies, sailor, I should know your name, but I’m just too tired to recall it.”

“No reason you should, sir. I’m the first mate on the Splinter. We just came alongside, and I came down to help. But there are so many of them.”

He sat down the barrel, tapped it, and poured a shot of alcohol. The doctor sniffed it. “This is a medicine?”

Ozzy smiled a bit. “Depends on what ails you. Let’s call it Strawberry Surprise for now.” He went to the nearest man, carefully put a large hand on his brow, and pulled heat from him while the doctor watched with suspicion. He wasn’t sure what the average sailor had for heat, but some might only have a couple hundred. “Doc? How much heat can a man take before his furnace bursts? How much over are they?”

“An odd question. But most medical journals agree that at an extra 200 heat, a sailor will burst his furnace, release his heat, and join the charred. More for a mate, closer to 500. And captains have been known in some extremes to take on as much as a thousand extra heat, most often in an attempt to light a sail that is normally beyond them.”

Ozzy nodded. “Makes sense. So taking a couple hundred should safely cool them off.” He pulled two hundred heat from the man and into his furnace. Then as the stricken sailor stirred, he put the rum to his lips. No sailor in the smoke refused rum, and these men were thirsty. The sailor gulped it down, choked, and opened his eyes wide. Ozzy aimed him away from other people as he belched out fire and smoke. The doctor was next to them immediately. “He’s better. Much better! How did you do that?”

“I stole his heat. Not sure how you feel about that, but it’s all that will save them.”

The doctor nodded numbly. “I’ll think about it later. Let me get more men down here to help.”

Minutes later, Ozzy was walking from sailor to sailor, pulling heat from each one. Behind him came the doctor and other men giving each their ‘medicine’ to purge them of the excess heat. After sixty men, Ozzy paused. He was pushing too much heat into his furnace. He could go over that limit, but it started affecting him. Too much and he’d be on his back like those he was trying to help. “I’ll be back. I need to dump some heat, and I notice you lack a lot of sails.”

Climbing up from the hold, Ozzy looked for someone who might know something about the ship’s sails. He walked unsteadily up to younger man in a Captain’s coat and hat. He was chewing on a sausage as he directed several sailors making chains to replace what had broken during the eruption. “Pardon me, sir, is there a sail you need lit? I need to dump some heat.”

A few sailors laughed at the question, and some rolled their eyes. Captain Shively glared at them. He’d heard that this was the man who made the sausage, and for that alone, he would get a polite answer to his question. “Thank you for the help. If you have extra heat, use it to reinforce the staysail we have alight. The top sail would do as well, but that’s quite a climb.”

Ozzy shook his head. “I need to pull heat from all of the men below. And to do that I need to make some room in my furnace. How much does it take to light that big one? Sorry, we only have seven sails on the Splinter, and I still get those confused.”

Again there was laughter, and again Captain Shively glared at the men, and this time pushed his aura towards them, indicating his displeasure. “Captain Woodrat and Splinter have come to help. You will be polite, or you’ll be scrubbing barnacles off of the hull.” He turned to the big first mate from the Splinter with a smile. He’d have to ask Captain Woodrat if an injury had caused his…confusion. Many of his own crew were somewhat delusional at the moment, not entirely incapacitated by heat but not right in their heads. “That’s the main sail and takes over 50,000 heat to create it. We managed to light it once after it was blown out during the eruption, but that was with four Captains working together. It’s far beyond us now.”

Shively humored the big man and gave a small tour of the ship, pointing out where different sails should go and how much heat they would take to create. Woodrat noticed and broke off the conversation with Cavendish, saying, “We should go watch this. He’s got that look again.”

“I think the main sail will do. Could you tell everyone to stay clear of it? I don’t want to roast anyone.” Ozzy stepped forward and made sure that no one was in the way.

Cavendish looked questioningly at Woodrat, who just smiled and said. “Wait for it…”

Everyone on board felt the change in the air as the big first mate from the Splinter inhaled. It was as if he was pulling the heat from the air. That was followed by a plume of fire from his mouth as he exhaled, the heat flowing from him for several seconds, followed by the main sail bursting into flame as it was created. There was a pause, and then the crew began cheering. Captain Cavendish clapped loudly. “Well done, Mr. Ozzy. Well done. And thank you for assisting him, Captain Shively. May I ask how many ranks you have in creating sails? It’s unusual for a mate to have so many.”

Ozzy read his latest notification. “I just made it to rank 6. You’ll have to excuse me. I need to help the doctor with some of the sailors below. I’ll be back up to do some of the others. The lads below have a lot of heat to bleed off.” Without waiting for an answer or permission he leaped back into the hold.

Captain Shively and Cavendish converged on Captain Woodrat who was enjoying the spectacle of a hundred sailors with their mouths open like fishies. “How the devil does that man have a furnace so huge?! He’s a mate yet has more than three times my heat!”

Shively looked at the sail again. And six times my own. Gods help me, I thought I was humoring a half-wit when he asked to light a sail. I’m glad I didn’t say something to anger him.”

Woodrat said in a calm voice. “No, you really don’t want to do that. The last time I saw him angry was when he was breaking apart the Conquest while I was dueling with Lord Peerson. He’s something to behold when he’s upset.”

Shively went pale, and Cavendish blinked twice. Both glanced to the Splinter, the recently lit sail, and then Captain Woodrat. Cavendish recovered his aplomb. “I believe I have a bottle of wine in my cabin. Perhaps the three of us can retire there for half a bell and drink it. And I would love to hear your advice on where we go from here, Captain Woodrat.”