Chapter Eighteen: Warchief Anhchoi
It was defying him.
Over the past few days, his fascination had curdled into frustration. The object was the ticket to everything Warlord Chuichan had wanted. The ticket to the most sacred of prizes: Warlord Anhchoi. And yet it refused to give its secrets up to him. Instead it hung there in its cradle, taunting him with its obstinance. The previous night, he had lost his head and attempted to batter the object open. He succeeded only in shattering a bronze hatchet, leaving the idol entirely unmarred.
The cry, when it came, was nearly a relief. “Tribals!” shouted Waifun from his perch at the mouth of the bay.
Others took the cry up as discipline demanded. They didn’t have to see the attack to set the protocol in motion. A false cry would hang on Waifun and Waifun alone. He’d never yet made a mistake, and his eyes were sharper than storm wind.
The sailors carried up the cry. Most ran to the beach, their bare feet kicking up plumes of sand. The slave crew leaders rounded up the tribals reinforcing the leeward walls, to be returned to the subterranean pen in the center of the village.
Makani stopped beside Anhchoi, regarding him with a cool gaze from behind her mask.
“Master?” she asked.
Anhchoi nodded, pulling himself away from the object, and strode purposefully down to the beach. He wouldn’t betray any panic by running. He would show his men the nature of courage.
They had gathered on the beach, squinting into the rising sun. The tribal flotilla were like floating bits of flotsam. They would have been so easy to miss. The tribals had been smart; first using the sun to cover their approach, then coming in with sails struck, pulling oars instead. They had chosen to get as close as possible before revealing themselves at the cost of tiring themselves before the battle. Anhchoi vowed to make it cost them.
The crew was murmuring fearfully.
“...so many of them...”
“...coming out of nowhere...”
“...going to kill us all...”
“Men!” shouted Anhchoi. “To the ship! Fuandai, the village is yours.”
Fuandai acknowledged the order, and Anhchoi boarded a skiff, which quickly was ferrying him, Makani, and several of the crewmen toward the . Men scuttled about on the rigging, girding the warjunk for battle. The ships were so big that moving them was an undertaking. They were effectively floating villages, and often just about as fast and maneuverable.
The men aboard threw the rope ladders over the side, and Anhchoi climbed them easily, joining his men on the deck of the ship. Now he could make out the approaching fleet of boats clearly. They came in no formation, just a collection of rude outriggers, each crewed by a handful of tribals. They raced forward, and Anhchoi knew what the tribals were after: they wanted to trap the warjunk in the bay itself. Make her easier prey.
A sharp whistling heralded the first shot from the catapults on shore.
Anhchoi cursed the tribals—they couldn’t even get strategy correct. He’d prepared for them to do something clever, but they’d come from the ocean like they always did. If they wanted a battle on the waves, he would show them what a sailor from Zhao-Chi could do.
The clay pots of sea fire were blurred streaks through the air. They hit the rolling surf with a whoosh, orange balls exploding. The burning jelly floated on the water, forming mats of flame that would blaze until the ocean finally sucked it under. Though the catapults hit nothing, the tribals had to adjust their courses to avoid burning patches of sea. Skilled catapult crews were adept at herding enemy ships in this manner. And the crew of the were among the most skilled the nations had to offer.
“Kwandok!” Anhchoi called. “Head for deep water! Men! Catch the wind!”
The ship’s pilot gave an obedient nod and swung the wheel about, his eyes invisible under his hood. The crew stationed on the ship crawled over the rigging, unfurling the sails. The cloth billowed inward, plastered against mast and battens. Anhchoi cursed; the wind was blowing in his face, the tribal wizards making it dance to their whims. With that kind of power, they should have conquered the nations, yet they never did. They never even tried.
“Get the oars wet!” he shouted.
A runner took the order belowdecks. The clack of the oar compartments opening, then the splash of the oars themselves, greeted the warchief. Soon the warjunk was moving to the mouth of the bay. Slowly. Too slowly; the tribal boats had almost arrived there, and soon their warriors would be climbing his rigging. With their size and power, and the terrible glass-toothed spears and clubs, they were enemies of nightmare.
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He thought of the object, hanging in its cradle of vines and felt only anger. “Load port catapults!” he called. Nine waited on the port side of the warjunk, the tenth on the shore. It would be enough. It had to be.
The boats were moving fast. The muscles that made the tribals such good workers sped them through the waves. Their sails came unfurled now, plumping instantly with the wind now denied Anhchoi. On the decks of the outriggers the tattooed priest-witches were in the midst of their odd dancelike movements.
The landbound catapults loosed, the pots of sea fire shattering once again on the waves. The shots were precise, the spreading carpet of jellied flame blanketing the ocean, meeting the spots already there. It seemed to do nothing but push the tribal boats were even farther out of their way, circumventing it.
“Close them off!” he called to his crew.
The arms of the catapults sprang upward as one. The fireball on the water was blinding; Anhchoi had to turn away. His eyes danced with blue spots. A vast section of water was now an inferno. The barrage had caught one unlucky boat. It blazed like a campfire on top of the waves, its crew having jumped over the side. Perhaps they saved themselves. Perhaps not.
The first of the tribal boats made it to the mouth of the bay just as the landbound catapults hurled two more pots of sea fire into the fleet. One of them shattered on a boat, crushing it, consuming it in a flash. It looked like luck, but the tribals were rapidly running out of space to maneuver in. Splashes heralded where the tribals had leapt into the water, desperate to avoid the fire, but Anhchoi never saw them come back up.
The warjunk, now barreling for open water, crashed into the tiny picket at the mouth of the bay. Thunderous cracks split the air. The warjunk barely shuddered as it crushed tribal ships under its prow. The seaward side of the bay was a glowing horizon of orange and on fire now, the pyres rising and falling with the swelling waves.
“Fire!” he called to his catapults.
As one, they obeyed. An firestorm now spread out around them. Tiny splotches of blue water marred it here and there. At the edges, the ocean bubbled, hissed, and smoked. Anhchoi allowed himself a cruel smile. He was in open sea, and the ocean was little more than fire.
Only seconds later, he saw he had celebrated too soon. The burning sea rose up next to the warjunk in an unnatural wave. It hung there, poised over the gunwale, the promise of annihilation within it. It was gorgeous in its alien beauty, the underside of the wave shining with its own orangey light against the sapphire blue of the water, topped with the glitter of sunlight.
It was also death.
Anhchoi watched the wave pull itself from the water in mounting horror. At the periphery of his vision, he saw the tattooed tribals on their boats exhorting their creation higher. Soon, it would engulf the finlike sails of the warjunk. Anhchoi had an idea. A horrible, stupid idea.
“Oars in!”
The paddles gave a final splash to be accompanied by the clank of the compartments closing.
“Hard o’ port!” he called to Kwandok.
The steersman stared at the warchief like he’d gone mad. Moving to port would crash directly into the wave. Kwandok only hesitated for a moment; he might think the order insane, but fear or love would ensure he followed it. Anhchoi reminded himself to reward the pilot later, should they live through this.
The warjunk lurched to port, crashing into the wave. It exploded in a spray of jellied fire and saltwater. Small blazes clung to the deck, and more than one began eating at the sails.
The side of the warjunk, though, was a raging fire, the sea fire sticking in a sheet, black smoke blotting out the entirety of the world. It was bad, but not as bad had the monstrous wave that crested over the deck and engulfed the vessel.
“Firemen!” he shouted, though it was hardly necessary. Men passed up pots of retardant to those in the rigging, splashing it on the sheets to keep them from being utterly consumed. The small spots were covered over with the bluish jelly, the flames quickly suffocating to red embers. The blaze on the hull of the ship, though, was a larger problem.
“Makani!”
His own priest-witch couldn’t defeat the might of all the others, but she could work on her own. Wind tossed the ribbons of her cloak. She looked like an anemone of a wave-punished reef. Her motions were hidden, only a hand briefly freeing itself from the storm-washed color broke the impression that she was something entirely inhuman.
As the crew broke the pots full of retardant on the sides of the hull, letting the jelly drip, Makani grabbed the substance with her magic. She guided it down the hull in sticky sheets, guttering the flames. The warjunk turned.
“Starboard catapults, load!” Anhchoi called.
His men obeyed, taking the fragile pots from their racks and placing them in the cradles of the weapons.
Anhchoi braced himself on the deck, watching the world whirl about him as the warjunk changed directions. He caught only glimpses of the tribals in their small boats, surrounding his vessel like insects. As soon as he had the starboard catapults pointing out to sea, he would order the volley. Kwandok knew what his warchief wanted, and was in the process of straightening the ship out when the first tribal pulled herself over the gunwale.
She was a giant, even for the tribals. Tall as one man on the shoulders of another, and with arms and legs like tree trunks. The first thing she did was grab one of the catapult men. Her hand was so large, she was able to palm the mariner’s head. With no greater effort than a man throwing a bone from his dinner, she hurled the sailor overboard. The rest of the crew drew their bronze hatchets and daggers, and attacked. She, though, had one of those awful tribal war-clubs, teethed with volcanic glass. Heavy enough to shatter bone and sharp enough to cleave limbs, they were terrors.
Three more tribals hauled themselves up onto the deck, and the melee commenced. Five of the catapults flung their payloads, but the others were quickly disabled, their arms either smashed or cables cut. If the sea fire managed to hit anything, Anhchoi had no idea. He saw only the savage giants slaying his men.
Drawing his own shortsword, he threw himself into the fray. He’d fought tribals since he was young. He knew their weaknesses. They were large, yes, but this was also a weakness that could be exploited. The men of Zhao-Chi were quick enough to avoid the clumsy strikes. Anhchoi quickly dispatched one of the tribals, leaving the big man on the deck for his men to finish, before moving to another.
The smoke had turned white, and though it still scorched his lungs, it was far cleaner than the tarry black miasma. Makani had done her job well. Perhaps well enough for the to survive.