This expanse of water had long ago forfeited whatever quaint, perhaps overly gentle names naive cartographers had once attempted to bestow upon it.
No one who had ever dipped an oar into its depths, who had felt the thick, cloying moisture of its spray against their skin or heard its unsettling whisper, could ever again think of it as a mere sea.
The locals; the seasoned fishermen and sailors who battled its unpredictable temper day in and day out; had given it a moniker that was far more fitting, serving as both a grim warning and an accurate description: The Sea of Iron Waves.
This was by no means a poetic metaphor, nor was it a romantic exaggeration.
The water here did not crash and roar, as the seas of the sun-drenched south were wont to do.
It ground.
It was dense, oily, and heavy as lead; as pitch-black as ink jetted in sheer panic by a colossal squid.
It didn’t smash against the rotting pilings of the wharves or the undercut shores of the harbor as if wielding the raw power of the elements.
Instead, it rubbed against them with a slow, almost lewd caress, grinding down wood and stone with an agonizing, unbearable patience.
The sound it produced in the process chilled the blood right down to the marrow.
It resembled neither a siren’s song nor the bellow of a gale, but something vastly more intimate and disturbing.
It was the distinct sound of solid bones snapping beneath layers of wet, frozen rags.
Every single wave carried this rustle, this wet crunch, like a whispered promise of slow, inevitable ruin.
A highly specific, oppressive odor hung in the air; a sickening blend of salt, flaking rust, and something that smelled distinctly like wood rotting deep underwater.
The Iron Waves were not hospitable.
They were profoundly patient and entirely unforgiving, and every moment spent in their proximity felt like a death sentence that had merely been temporarily stayed.
The floes drifting lazily upon the surface did not look like ordinary ice.
They were sickly gray, sporting sharp, jagged edges, looking far more like the shattered remnants of tombstones, or the teeth of leviathans that the sea had spat out, unable to digest.
The sky looming over the bay bore the exact color of a days-old bruise; a swollen, purplish-gray expanse hanging so oppressively low it seemed to scrape the tops of the masts.
It felt suffocating despite the biting frost; a cold that didn’t merely chill the skin, but drove thousands of invisible needles deep into the lungs, freezing every breath right in the throat.
From this thick, leaden slurry emerged the Ebony Wave.
Figlin’s ship was a technological chimera that shamelessly spat in the face of classical shipbuilding.
Its bulging, pitch-black hull resembled a floating fortress, brutally bound together by thick bands of volcanic steel that kept the entire monstrosity from bursting apart.
Along the flanks, just above the waterline, gaped three perfectly aligned rows of oar ports, while at the stern, nestled amidst rust and thick soot, beat the true heart of the beast.
A massive copper boiler hummed with a low, deep vibration, belching thick clouds of acrid smoke from a smokestack shaped like a dragon’s neck.
It was this primitive steam engine; the dwarf’s pride and utter curse; that caused the entire vessel to impart a faint, rhythmic tremor to everything around it.
The ship, having reached this godforsaken corner of the world through sheer miracle; or perhaps solely through its captain’s sheer willpower; bumped against the pier with a hollow, wet groan, as if the wood had just given up the ghost.
The planks of the dock, slick with algae and frost, shrieked under the immense weight of the armored construction, and the dragon-stack exhaled one last, exhausted puff of black smoke as the gangplank slammed down onto the wharf with a deafening crash.
Smarsson was the first to roll off onto dry land.
He instantly staggered, his face turning a sickly shade of green, and desperately hugged a wooden mooring bollard as if it were the only fixed point left in the entire universe.
“Blast it all to hell…” he groaned.
From the depths of his thick, braided beard, a red crab peeked out, snapping its pincers in evident nervous distress.”Here we go again!
The blasted ground is standing perfectly still!
How do you people walk on something that doesn’t pitch and roll?!
It’s entirely unnatural!”
The wharf around him was by no means deserted.
On the contrary, it teemed with life, albeit a life specific to the harsh north.
A chaotic throng of dockworkers and artisans scurried about like ants in boiling water.
Working right alongside the humans were slender, unnaturally pale elves diligently stringing paper lanterns across the lampposts, and stout halflings rolling creaking barrels packed tight with pickled herring.
There was even a fleeting glimpse of a small band of lizardfolk, looking simultaneously comical and pathetic, bundled in countless layers of wool and thick furs.
Only their snouts protruded, puffing small clouds of steam, their tails shivering behind them.
With a trembling hand, Figlin reached for his belt and unhooked his latest prize; a tankard fashioned from the skull of the Gilded Custodian.
It was a truly magnificent object, crafted of pure, solid gold, yet currently horribly disfigured by a crude, unmistakably pirate repair job.
The jagged hole in the left eye socket; the lasting souvenir of his own entirely too-accurate gunshot; was now unceremoniously plugged with a whittled wooden peg and generously sealed with black, foul-smelling ship’s pitch.
It looked absolutely hideous, but it held liquid.
He took a desperate swig of rum to aggressively deceive his failing equilibrium.
“Ugly piece of patchwork…” he mumbled, glaring critically at the black smear marring the brilliant gold.
“Looks like a boil on a nobleman’s arse.
Pity I can’t afford a proper smith to seal it with something dignified…
But at least it holds.
And it warms the belly.”
“Ara, ara…, (My, my…,) Figi-kun, don’t complain so loudly, you’re drowning out the music!” a bright, girlish voice sliced cleanly through the harbor’s din.
Duria vaulted lightly from the ship’s rail, landing on the snow-dusted planks as soundlessly as a falling cherry blossom.
Her buzzed, stark-white hair blended perfectly with the bleak winter scenery.
She was clad in her signature lamellar armor, its hundreds of small, red-lacquered plates clinking softly together like a handful of shifting coins.
She swept her gaze over the bustling crowd with a fiercely radiant smile.
No one scattered in terror at the sight of her.
The passersby were far too absorbed in stringing up decorations and battening down their stalls.
“Tadaima!
(I’m back!)” she announced, throwing her arms wide.”Just look at all this!
Everyone is so wonderfully busy!
Getting everything ready for the Matsuri!
(Festival!) Subarashi!
(Wonderful!)”
“If by wonderful you mean freezing your arse off in this chaos, then sure,” Zedora growled, stomping down the gangplank.
She wore a thick layer of furs draped over her meager scale armor.
The biting frost aggressively gnawed at her exposed thighs, but she marched proudly, stubbornly ignoring the shivers racking her frame.
“I loathe the cold.
It makes the blood run sluggish.
And those lizards…” She jutted her chin toward the shivering group.”They look like they’re actively dying.
What in the hells are they even doing this far north?”
Lengos strode down right behind them.
He looked like a walking, battered fortress that had survived one siege too many.
His armor was dull, entirely stripped of its former holy luster, and scarred with deep gouges and dents from countless brutal skirmishes.
His eyes swept the surroundings with clinical, analytical precision.
And what he saw didn’t sit well with him in the slightest.
“Don’t let these pretty lanterns fool you,” he said quietly to Duria, subtly nodding toward the nearest building; a fishmonger’s shop festooned with colorful ribbons.”Look at the window shutters.”
Duria blinked.
“They’re lovely.
Painted a cheerful red?”
“They are reinforced with thick steel bands,” Lengos corrected her flatly.”And the door?
Solid oak, at least three inches thick, bound in iron, with triple deadbolts on both the inside and the outside.” His sharp gaze swept down the entire length of the street.
Beneath the flimsy veneer of paper garlands, bright ribbons, and cheerful holiday bustle, he clearly saw the grim truth.
Every single house was a miniature bunker.
The window sills were built far too high to be easily vaulted.
The rooflines were aggressively lined with spiked iron reinforcements.
“This town doesn’t look like a simple fishing settlement,” he stated, resting a hand on the pommel of his bastard sword.”It looks exactly like a fortress bracing to repel a siege.
Or a stronghold designed solely to survive the night when something comes crawling out of the dark.
No one invites guests into a fortified bunker, Duria.
They are terrified of something.
And it isn’t pirates.”
“Let’s just hope they aren’t terrified of us,” Perval chimed in, casually hopping down onto the pier and landing with a feline grace no one would ever expect from a man of his colossal bulk.
Despite the biting frost, he wore his coat wide open, proudly exposing his massive, scarred chest to the elements.
He rubbed his hands together briskly.
“Though I must admit, the local climate is excellent for tempering the spirit…
and the nipples.
Achoo!”
“Bless you,” Neira said, stepping down right behind him, her serpentine tail shivering in the frigid air.
Yerga was the last to descend, or rather, to glide.
She hovered a perfect inch above the muddy wharf, carried on a cushion of shimmering, emerald magic.
She had no intention of allowing the filth of the Gray Water port to sully the hem of her elegant black gown.
Her wild mane of green curls pulsed with its own inner light, casting an eerie, necrotic glow across the dirty snow.
Perched on her shoulder sat Void.
The skeletal feline was slightly dusty, with a stray piece of cobweb dangling from one of its ribs, but she paid it no mind.
She stroked the bony spine mechanically, far more preoccupied with adjusting her immaculate lace cuffs than with the state of her familiar.
“Pure unadulterated kitsch,” she assessed, her piercing gaze sweeping over the building facades, which were densely festooned with colorful lanterns and paper garlands flapping in the wind like cheap rags.
“Crimson, gold, and that incredibly vulgar pink smeared against pitch-black wood?
Utterly devoid of subtlety.
It looks exactly like the makeup on a twopenny whore desperately trying to hide pox scars beneath a pound of cheap powder.
Void, drop that immediately, it’s just paper, it will only give you phantom heartburn.”
Enjoyed the chapter?
To avoid any missunderstanding: The first chapter of my Novel is called the same, as the novel – “Shadows of Sakurabara”.
The second one, which begins now is called “Ghosts and Sake”.