The frigid water finally forced her to risk making a larger shape of herself. No hue and cry went up, the ship didn’t come to a stop, no one put a dinghy into the sea to come after her. Then she prayed to the Viper that no one would notice debris floating in the ship’s wake or that the princess had suddenly disappeared from the aftcastle. She kicked towards the bobbing cask and spear, reaching them before the current pulled them out of her reach.
Then she slipped into the sea and stifled the sudden urge to cry out. She scrambled down the rope one-handed, the small chest tucked under an arm, using her legs to control her descent. When the first officer moved forward to bid the captain a good morning, she dropped the empty cask and spear overboard and swung over the rail. Shortly thereafter, she used the commotion of the change in watches to tie her makeshift rope to a post on the aft rail. She took her gear out on deck, plonking the sea chest down at the stern behind the ship’s first officer as a princess, the man – a rare specimen in Mytilan’s military – didn’t question why she decided to sit on the aftcastle with her cask of sherry and her sparring spear. That now helped her recognize Cape Ligatos as it hove into view. She had been on deck of The Menace, Horatio Thordwall’s ship, when the Militantes first travelled to Halos. She was as ready as she could be by the time dawn turned the horizon golden. Then she had spent much of the night unmaking the hammock in her cabin and re-jigging its cords into a rope. So, by playing the part of the dutiful princess the previous day, she had managed to earn some privileges: a spear and a pair of dirks for sparring with the ship’s first officer (that she had kept), a cask of sherry for her enjoyment (that she had covertly emptied out her cabin’s porthole), a basket of fruit, cheese and bread (that she had wrapped in a waxed cloth and stowed in a sea chest alongside the dirks). After all, taking a chance didn’t mean she had to be unprepared. Even so, she had wanted better odds than a mere tenable plan might permit. What made it tenable was that the flagship brought up the rear of the convoy whilst the rest of the fleet sailed on ahead. She didn’t like the option but it was the only one available to her. She’d have gotten nabbed for certain.īut waiting until the fleet passed Oscurisla had given her an option. Jacyntha hadn’t liked the odds of hiding out in the city and then somehow making it through the bowels of the Eztadio de Sanger into the Militantes’ changing room before the wild card game. Or, had that failed and Jacyntha somehow made shore, Queen Beatriz would have turned her ships around had taken them back to port. She hadn’t jumped overboard whilst the fleet left Guayamartí because her mother would have ordered a dinghy put in the water to fish her out. When at all possible, the fleet kept close to shore, meaning the trip from Guayamartí to Mytilan saw them skirting the island. Her mother’s flagship could, but most of the ships were more akin to Nordmen longships than big, High Elf ships of the line. Mytilan’s navy wasn’t really a blue-water fleet, able to sail far from shore for long periods of time without resupply. Saying it out loud, even if only to herself alone in her darkened cabin, helped. She could finally see the shadowed shore off to starboard and now she needed courage. The events in this episode come to pass concurrently with those in Episode 32 … “Viper-bitten Dark Elves!”Īs unappealing as the thought was, Jacyntha realized it was her only chance: striking out for Oscurisla, the island of the Dark Elves and its city of Halos, where the Militantes had recently passed a month. Jacyntha learns she’s caught in two traps: not only can she not escape her mother’s cabin, she is to marry the deposed king of Chivalria and nephew to Duc Tancred de Baston, Carles the Voracious. Jacyntha protests but Beatriz brooks no dissent. Beatriz declares that Jacyntha’s days as a footy player are over and it’s time to come home and do her duty. Mytilan’s Queen Beatriz, Jacyntha’s mother, meets with her daughter on board her flagship sitting at anchor in Guayamartí’s harbour. The Militantes’ time in the disturbing city was marked by the murder of Jacyntha’s close friend Occlo during the game against the local team, the Duskdaggers, which led to a gut-wrenching reckoning as a footy team and then a come from behind victory over the Mongrels that restored confidence in the hearts of the players. Dark Elves enslave foreign races and sacrifice slaves in their horrific rituals, but they begrudgingly allow other races who need to come to their city to have their own walled neighbourhood, the Foreigners’ Quarter, where foreign laws prevail.
The Mytilan Militantes’ schedule had earlier taken the team to the second host-city of the Sommer Sea Football League, Halos, the capital city of the Dark Elf nation on Oscurisla.
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