Chapter 138
Harrock was a late-twenties grey-furred kelton man. His curled brown horns awkwardly rested against the headrest of the bed, whose grey blanket across his chest matched his fur. The wooden room would be considered small for his six-foot frame by most. To him, the fact that the room came with a wardrobe, desk, and mana lamp above the bed marked it as decadent. Compared to the cold river ships and dirty camps in the frozen north, decadent was underselling it.
Then the opulent room bounced up a good inch.
He swallowed spit so loudly, it bounced off the walls while skin pulled at his soft cheekbones. On water-bound ships, such things would not be worthy of note. Seeing that this was an airship, he felt a bit of panic at every shudder. If the chief hadn't needed men to go on this trip, he would never have agreed, no matter how elegantly they explained that nonsense about hot air. But it did come from the man who was responsible for the breath coming out of his wife's and children's lungs, so he went to make right an unpayable debt.
Pressure on his frame said the world was going up again.
Feeling distinctly less stalwart about his service, he rose from the bed and went about his routine. Brown pants and a grey shirt were retrieved from the wardrobe on the far wall. Stepping out in his black underwear, he came into a square wooden tunnel going right and left. Being one of the newer vessels, the crew's cabins rested along the sides, with this hallway giving them a straight shot to both ends of the ship. To account for the lack of windows, mana lamps along the ceiling doused the ship's guts in golden light no matter the time outside.
He took an immediate left towards the bathroom and shower near the back of the ship. Whatever his ignorance about the ship's inner workings, once he was through the first of three doors along the back hallway, the functions of the shower heads and toilets worked beyond any doubt. Airship custom was that the toilet pot should be emptied and washed down by its last user. Thankfully they were over ocean, so his dinner was allowed an immediate exit into the sea below instead of being held in the usual bucket beneath the seat.
After a few minutes, his person was clean and ready for the big day ahead. Coming out, there was a small line outside waiting for their turn. A sideways head bob to the man going past, and Harrock was moving past the queue. Dropping off his dirty clothes in a hamper by the stairs leading upstairs, he came out onto the main deck.
He was standing on the right side of the ship near the back. The overall shape of the light wooden floor matched the ship's similarity to a blade, with a thicker back end that gradually narrowed into a point near the front. It was larger than any he had been on, nearly a chief's mansion in size. All apparently held up by the black tube in the middle spewing heat into the white cloth balloon above. However high he currently was, the swirling mist around the ship obscured whatever lay below. That wasn't counting any potential views that would be obstructed by the mounted tubes and their shields along the railing, ready to shoot flame and rock spears with a simple press on their white squares atop the back handle.
This lack of vision didn't deter the kelton man at the chair in front of the black tube. A tall kelton specimen of brown fur that matched his robes, though it clashed with the spikes of white ivory coming out of his skull. His spot was comprised of a wooden ball missing its top half, while its bottom was seamlessly fused into the deck. The navigator's main purpose was working the wheel and its assortment of attendant levers; the purpose of each Harrock didn't even dare guess.
As the grey kelton went to the right side and leaned against the dark oak railing, he finally realized what wasn't present. A deep suck with his dark snout confirmed it.
Nothing.
Not a whiff of body odor, sewage, rot, or sea. Between being so high up and the daily showers, none of the smells that had accompanied him his entire life were to be found. Sending his hands skyward, he stretched in place before settling against the hardwood.
They had set out not two days earlier. Being so high and seeing nothing but mist, the only indication that they had moved so much as an inch was the navigator's word and a stiff wind that slipped in through the magic water covering the ship. Thankfully, the navigator said today they would be coming up on the Dragon Islands.
True to the pilot's prediction, it was not an hour past a meager breakfast of oatmeal and dried fish that the first real labor arrived.
"OI!" The navigator's grating voice called from above deck through the hatch. "It's time! Let's make this quick before the dragons smell us."
'How is it possible for a race to find its own voice intolerable? Surely, nature would sort that out.' Harrock grimly noted to himself.
The grey kelton sprang to life with his fellows, despite the internal wrangling, to begin hefting long poles onto the upper deck and over the railing. Along the shafts of wood rested telescopes of almost comical size. These were specially made for when airships wanted to see outside their bubble of mist without poking too big a hole in it. Whether they used glass or other forms of magic, Harrock only cared if the one he placed along the right side railing worked. His eyes hadn't been in the frozen wastes long enough to damage them as others had, so he had been selected to be one of the six men who would act as the eyes to tell the artists what would be put to paper.
Placing the telescope's lip up to his right eye, he then looked through to see blue. Dropping the pole ever so slightly, the world turned from blue to grey. Then the speech about how these worked came back to him. Working the wooden ring around the telescope in a right turn, the colors shifted for several seconds before perfect clarity came and ran back into hazy figures.
Keeping a profanity down, he turned the ring back left. When sharp, grey rock finally came into focus, he smiled in triumph. For several minutes, his only reward was more sharp rocks battered by sea waves. All remembered for their position, despite their dullness.
Then a flash of red.
A thrill ran up his spine, making him overcorrect and send the telescope past the red flash, though it now had some teal mixed in. An entire second was lost in sending the pole back, but it eventually landed on the legend. Now thankfully still on a nest of stone near one of the rock spire's peaks.
Scales covered its frame, with its lower half bearing teal scales while the top had red. The mouth was uneven, with the lower jaw leaving a considerable underbite beneath the flared snout. Three legs were semi-normal, though the front left stuck out a bit more. It was the back left leg that had the greatest deformity, having its knee go sideways, rendering any graceful movement on it impossible. Typical of the tales, it was only the wings on the back that had any sense of symmetry. Sheer size made the dragon dangerous, being around the height and girth of their airship by Harrock's meager estimation.
Harrock took a minute to take in the creature's magnificence before returning to his job.
Spying on the dragons took another hour before the navigator pulled the ship away. As the ship took a swing hard enough to be felt by all, the brown kelton man in the chair nodded to one of the youths off to the right side. The boy with black fur went below deck and promptly returned with a board nearly four feet tall and as wide, accompanied by an equally large piece of white canvas that was laid down to the right of the black pipe sticking out of the deck.
Painting through consensus probably wouldn't produce the most accurate picture of what lay below, but it had been pounded into their heads that, under no circumstance, are they to drop the mist shield and potentially expose themselves. Harrock's artistic experience was, in total, stick-drawn waves and a bird in the mud when he was a pup. This left others to work the brush and its ink as he stayed back and provided bits of correction for what he saw.
It took nearly an hour of argument before ink was put to paper. Minutes of brush strokes went by before a rocky circle in the middle with lines of rock flowing outward was inked on white cloth. All rather symmetrical despite its residents' misshapen frames. One matter of agreement was that each line held hundreds of dragons. Whether that was enough to keep the chief from setting up a base was a matter of contention. Seeing as that wasn't their decision to make, the last few inky touches were put on the canvas before it was set to the side to dry.
"Good," The navigator hoarsely called from his seat, wiping some moisture from his sharp cheeks. "Now we go past the Far Shores. That will take us about two days. Rest and get ready for the next art session."
For a moment, Harrock stood stunned, his white eyes going a bit wide. He had known from traders that the sea trip from the Dragon Islands to the Far Shores took some weeks. To say nothing of getting here from the Base. It was only now that he realized that this single trip will have taken him farther in one week than he had ever gone in the entirety of his previous life combined, both on foot and by sea.
As he made his way below deck with the rest of the men, it felt odd how little he was worried about his wife's and children's safety despite their now realized distance. In kelton holds, a woman and children by themselves weren't out of danger just because they were behind walls. Food could be taken with little recourse for justice, and the guards needed their bribes, which could be taken in coin or the use of a wife or daughter.
The guards at the Base demanded no such compensation, even when the chief wasn't present. Perhaps it was the general positivity of the place, but Harrock suspected it was also due to the stories the chief's wife Salamede had regaled them with. Tales of men butchered to meat on the table, yet the mercy of death denied through healing magic. Slaughter of criminals committed with a vicious glee even the worst of bandits would struggle to comprehend. And these weren't even men who had abused his generosity or authority. If any guards at the base had fancied copying their fellows in the kelton holds, those tales had knocked such ambitions out of them.
With nothing else to do, he went towards the canteen to inspect the ale on offer.
Two days of card games and dice passed before they all returned above deck, ready for the second painting. The navigator, despite calling everyone, didn't give the order to start inspecting. His head bounced between dozens of open spots in the mist shield for long minutes before he leaned back into his chair, contemplating in silence. It took another long minute before he swiveled his chair around to address the men around the furnace pipe. That it was done in voice rather than spirit connection was understandable considering the more than a dozen keltons present, yet no less painful for it.
"The chief said to paint these locations because they have no people on them. We assumed these islands past the Far Shores mainland and in the ocean proper would be empty, but they're crawling with ships and mages moving about with their powers. No reason to take risks, so I'm cutting this location out of the already meager list for consideration. Any objections?"
Seeing as they all had no way of making any sort of decision on this, everyone shook their heads.
"Good! Now, to the Lost Lands. I can't give a specific time for arrival, as we need to fill up our mana reserves at some point, but we will be arriving within a week or two, at the latest. Let's hope our cousins haven't taken after our tempers too much."
Smiles abounded, hiding the anxiety within and pain at the coarseness of the kelton voice. Nothing heard or read about the Lost Lands had ever indicated anything good about the place. Being in an airship, this hopefully meant any unpleasantness was kept to a viewing rather than an experience. Time would only tell.
Their day's labor now canceled, the men all went below deck to resume their routine of doing nothing. True to the pilot's word, the trip took a little over a week, from what Harrock's destroyed sense of passing days could measure. Sometime between early morning and late evening, which was the closest the grey kelton could estimate the day's cycle after staying in a wooden box for so long, he was stretching at a table after having put down a rather good hand of cards on the table. Just as his arms peaked in both length and satisfaction, the familiar voice of the navigator reached his ears.
"Lads! We've arrived."
Energy filled the room, both of eagerness to see their supposed homeland and dread at being anywhere near its famed horror. They were here, no matter the reaction, so there was nothing to do but see the task to its end. Getting up first, Harrock was at the head of the line to get above deck. This allowed him the privilege of having his telescope pole ready along the back-right side of the railing before anyone else got to their station.
"Now," The navigator called from his seat as the men got into position. "This is going to be a long tour. No one's been this far into the mainland, as far as any map we've gotten a hold of can tell. We'll sweep the southern half today, get all the details down, then head north to get the final bits for the canvas. The latter possibly taking place tomorrow. We're the first to properly see the lands that birthed us, and I want something nice to hang up in the canteen after the chief is finished inspecting it."
Harrock raised an eyebrow at the navigator. Myth and legend spoke of Lady Summer and harsh lands. It was certainly possible that keltons had come from the Lost Lands; it was just as likely, if not more so, that some failed transformation elsewhere had spawned all their lives. However undue the navigator's confidence in the story, none of the others seemed to care. Every head nodded in agreement before turning to their work. Already in place, Harrock was the first to peer into his telescope, allowing his eyes to absorb the fabled lands of his people before anyone else.
Grass filled his vision. A sigh of disappointment, and he adjusted the pole ever so slightly. Rocks on an upward slope came through the water lens. Getting a better feel for how to work the tool, he began forming a mental map of what he was seeing.
It was a long mountain range, with peaks of grey showing where no tree or grass dared take root. The sunlight bearing down on those peaks likewise informed him that it was just past midday. Scattered about were dots moving in patterns too varied to track and at sizes too small to pay any attention aside from the fact that there were far fewer near the mountain peaks. After what felt like an hour of committing every contour of the line of mountains to memory, the navigator loudly coughed for attention.
"Let's get the first ink down."
The young lad by his side promptly ran down the hatch and came back up with small pages and an ink quill. Again, the truth of the land's contours was negotiated between a dozen different pairs of eyes. This time it was a rather straightforward affair, as there was a wall of mountains going in a downward line while flat plains stretched on. When that was finished, the ship was brought further south to map out the beach and river portions.
Of course, this all had nothing to do with their actual mission. Setting up a secret base on the beach of demon-infested territory wasn't going to happen. Equally true was that if Harrock confronted the navigator about this fact, he would get a long spew about thoroughness or some such. Ultimately, the navigator knew how to get the ship back home, and no one else did. That balance of power left the rest of the crew grumbling as they gradually worked ink onto paper.
It took nearly three days before they etched out the final page on a late afternoon. Harrock was content to hang back and rest on the railing while the others watched the previous day's work come together. A bit of lounging that a chorus of hums forced him to end. Pushing off the railing, he strode up to see the canvas's bottom half had almost been filled in.
Black and white depicted a beach going down from the sides until it reached the ocean, with both sides coming together in a half-oval shape, save a large river down the left side whose origin was somewhere in the mountains and a pronounced corner on the right side slope. Oddly, the mountains almost formed a V-shaped wall in the center. Almost, because where the lines met rested an empty plain.
Of course, none of the Lost Lands were truly empty. There had been a great number of demons among the trees and hills. The men had even spotted three huge ones that could have been seen from the ship without a telescope if one had been so inclined. For the purposes of mapping the land itself, however, that spot where the mountains would have converged was left blank.
"Excellent!" The navigator exclaimed, clapping his hands together and sending his robe's brown arms flapping about. "What an excellent piece. We're going to have a detour tomorrow morning. After that, we'll scout the insides of the mountains and the northern ice sheet."
Eyebrows raised among the men, a question clearly being exchanged in glances between them. Harrock kept still, save the hair on the back of his neck raising. The navigator had an eager tone and glint in his white eyes. Experience placed the look as one of eagerness rather than malevolence. Not usually a problem, but this eagerness had a hint of reckless glee he had seen too many times to ignore. A long argument would take more than what his tired body would allow. Weighing everything out, Harrock decided he would come above deck tomorrow before anything else, even breakfast.
Dinner was served, final rounds of cards were played, and come morning, he did what he held true to his self-made promise.
The grey kelton man shoved the blanket down and walked out of the room in his grey shirt and black shorts, walking through the ship at a near sprint. As he pushed open the hatch, he saw the world was nothing but mist and, most worryingly, the navigator was still in his bowl of a seat, his face of brown fur and two spikes of ivory on top of his skull still staring intently ahead.
A position that should have been handed off to one of the younger co-pilots. Flying airships was a matter of great training back at the base, leaving teams where one person knew how to actually fly and one or two others who possessed the minimum skills needed to use stars and a compass to keep the ship relatively stable at night. Despite the apparent lack of sleep, the pilot was still alert enough to hear the creak of Harrock coming above deck and turn to see the newcomer.
"Ah! Good-"
The way his lips puckered in disappointment wasn't too surprising to Harrock, though the spirit connection in the right shoulder was.
'I thought you were Pec. The boy was supposed to be back soon.'
'And I thought you were supposed to be sleeping.' Harrock answered.
Brown eyebrows furrowed.
'I did. Just….Woke up early enough to snatch the last bit of the lads' turn.'
Harrock's shoulder fell just a hair in relief; it would be good if the only man capable of properly flying the ship hadn't completely lost his mind. Still, this was a break in routine. One the grey kelton strode forward to interrogate.
'What was the detour you were talking about yesterday? Unless the ship grew some extra rooms or the Lost Lands extra….Land, there's nowhere for us to deviate to.'
Brown-robed shoulders shrugged as the kelton pilot spun his chair back to his tools. The casual mood he was trying to give off at odds with the possessive grip he gave the steering wheel.
'There is. But that will be some time after breakfast is finished.'
Harrock stood still, staring at the robed figure for a long moment before he heard footsteps behind him. Instead of the boy, it was a black-furred kelton man with curled brown horns. His white eyes went to the navigator, then to Harrock. A subtle nod passed between them before they both went below deck to speak with the rest of the crew.
An agreement was quickly reached among the men, leaving two minders above deck at all times to 'stretch and enjoy the view' that just happened to keep the navigator in their sight at all times. If the subject of the watch noticed, he didn't comment on them or make any sour faces when he went below deck for his own needs. Back in the good old days of the frozen north, such a problem would have been resolved in a beating and a shouted demand to know what was going on. Seeing as the target was the only man on the ship who could get them all home, the situation demanded a delicacy the keltons were ill-practiced in exercising. Something Harrock found particularly grating as he lounged about the canteen with his fellows. After an hour, the awaited call finally came.
"We're here!" The almost ecstatic voice of the navigator exclaimed from above.
Tension filled the air as kelton men pushed out of their chairs with varying enthusiasm. Harrock felt a bit relieved to finally arrive wherever they had been going, with the attending energy. This left him near the front of the pack as they all shuffled into the furnace room with the endless humming of the copper spheres around the sides of the black tube before moving up the hatch ladder.
When he was finally on the top deck, Harrock was relieved to see nothing out of the expected. Huddling around the black pipe behind the navigator's seat, it took a few seconds for the final man to get with the group. The last smack of boot on wood prompted the navigator to work the levers at his seat. Shafts of metal went up and down to a purpose unknown to any save the one using them. When the navigator put his hand on the leftmost lever, a pregnant pause accompanied. The moment came and went before the lever was pulled down with a strong heft. Of all the things Harrock could have anticipated, the mist shield around the ship blowing away wasn't one of them.
Late morning sunlight blinded Harrock and the men for a second before white eyes finally readjusted. To the left was a long slope of sharp, grey rock falling away from the ship. Mostly gravel, though a boulder stuck out at points where a sheer drop wasn't present. When Harrock turned right, he saw a flat plain. The boulders on it had to be the size of hills.
Then, Harrock judged the distance. When the final calculation came through, his eyes went wide as adrenaline shot up his spine. They were not ten feet past the ridge of a mountain cliff. A mountain in lands infested with demons.
Turning to the pilot, he saw that the brown kelton man in matching robes was bidding his apprentice into the navigator's chair he was vacating. A task the lad took up with a scared nod before his master stood straight to address the crew.
"Now, prepare the water rope poles." The navigator's rough voice announced. "I'll only be gone a few minutes. If anyone else wants to join, it might take a bit longer."
"What?" A numb, coarse voice from behind Harrock asked.
"Oh, come on!" The navigator spat, throwing his head back in a scoff. "This is our homeland! Our people's birthplace and birthright. I'll be the first kelton to set foot on it for untold ages, of course, but you can all get a turn."
Harrock, despite his aversion to audible speaking, decided his throat needed to earn its portion of energy and rent.
"No one is getting off," He growled, bowing his head in direct challenge. "And if anyone was going to, which isn't happening, it absolutely is not going to be the one man who knows how to get this ship back home. Even if bruises and missing teeth are needed to keep it that way."
The navigator brought his head down, guaranteeing an exchange of violence by every convention of kelton kind.
Contrary to his expectation, the first pain Harrock felt was in his right shoulder. Some thought of a dagger or arrow had come and was summarily disposed of when he felt no blood dripping down his skin. Looking to his right and seeing nothing sticking out, something subtle about the sensation finally came through. It wasn't one point of pain; rather, it was a dozen prickling needles pressing into the skin despite the white shirt above the flesh being untouched. Between each pin was the buzz of a spirit connection.
A look around revealed he wasn't the only one feeling the odd sensation, as the rest were swatting various spots on their bodies. The navigator and one burly black-furred kelton, however, were staring to the right past the ship's railing. Harrock followed their gaze to look over the rock field beyond the ridge.
White eyes scoured the pebbles and boulders before he spotted sickly, grey flesh. An almost kelton head stood out from behind a boulder. Missing fur on its waxy skin, it had the same goat snout and a curl of brown horns. From the position of the demon's head and lack of curve in its neck, it was clear that the demon wasn't crouching or hiding its presence. Rather, chance saw it stop in front of a trio of boulders.
'Mother, wake up!' A loud, mournful babe screamed in Harrock's skull. It had the tone of a toddler, contrasting with the pain of its spirit connection, appalling clacking of teeth, and complexion of a corpse. Harrock, in spite of the moment, couldn't help but place the voice as being in the same range of his own children's wails.
The waxy, grey demon then took a step to the left, revealing a thin cage of ribs resting above an open stomach slit horizontally, leaving an empty space where the typical contents should be. No indications of gender could be seen on its thin frame of muscle; even between its legs rested a smooth patch of skin bereft of life's tools for procreation. Harrock's eyes went to the sinewy muscle in its long limbs that reached down to hands sporting near foot-long nails. Far from ruined and chipped, they protruded from each finger with a sheen and sharpness similar to blades. Three men snapped out of the stupor and started moving towards the magical weapon tubes on the right side of the ship, with Harrock following just a step behind.
'Not of Mother!' The demon screamed through the spirit connection, pure rage smothering any softness its child-like tone might convey.
The demon took off in a cloud of pebbles and dust, pulling most of the crew into action. Having decided to stay onboard, the navigator promptly sat back in his chair, squashing the boy. A few men went down the hatch to get weapons; others stood still in shock. Those three who had proven more quick-witted were just getting within arm's reach of their weapons when the demon did an exaggerated crouch for a leap.
Harrock couldn't see how it would close the good dozen feet between them. Seeing as the demon believed otherwise, he decided to believe in its self-confidence. Several realizations came to him with that assumption. The weapons on the railing would need too long to be raised and start firing, the navigator probably couldn't get the ship back far enough in the next second even with them now being past the cliff, and in the nearby railing lay one of the water rope poles resting in its hooks with its generously long chain fastened into the wooden floor.
Making what could be the last decision of his life, he changed course away from the tube weapon he had been approaching and yanked the water pole out of its holster. The demon shot upwards towards the ship in a grey flash. It's self confidence was vindicated, as anyone could see it was on a clear path to coming aboard. When Harrock got the water rope pole in place and pressed the white square on the handle groove, his nose registered concentrated rot and decay so pure, no corpse or rotten eggs could have ever compared.
A line of water shot out of the pole's blue end and into the monster's face. For a horrifying moment, Harrock thought himself too late as the creature continued its glide through the air. Physics, however, had not abandoned the crew. The laws of momentum saw the demon slow mid-air for a moment before the law of gravity took hold right as it was coming up to the railing. One long, hard scrape into the wood rang out before the ground hundreds of feet below called the demon down. A final roar was all the distant kelton cousin gave as it fell. When its body exploded into mush on the rocks below, none of the attending sounds reached the ship. A quiet that let the grey kelton loose a held breath.
"Aah-"
Harrock's long sigh of relief was cut short when he saw the long, deep gash the demon left in the hull. Part of living at the base was getting explanations for how things worked, one prominent fact being that the wood was magically enhanced to a hardness comparable to iron or even steel. If that demon had gotten on board, he was sure no weapon or armor they had would have helped them.
After feeling his heart pound for a few seconds, Harrock then turned around to face the pilot. Contrary to the previous enthusiasm, the brown kelton was pulled inward at the shoulders. His face was still as a statue as it stared directly ahead, not daring to meet the crew's gaze or even the now free apprentice on his right. A decision that was probably for the best, considering most of the crew looked ready to give him that first step on the Lost Lands right next to the grey mass now littering the cliffside.
A bad idea that Harrock decided couldn't be allowed to fester.
"Well, we finally found out where kelton hospitality comes from." He mused audibly.
Unprepared for the levity, several snorts and escaped laughs wafted through the air. The navigator's shoulders dropped and his fingers became less white on the steering wheel. Feeling the moment to press further, Harrock took a casual walk forward, one that drew the navigator's gaze away from the mist once again surrounding the ship.
Circumstance and the pressure of the crowd gave Harrock the upper hand. However, he knew the navigator had all the real power, something the crew wasn't minding. If the pilot decided to try again, there was absolutely nothing anyone on the ship could do to stop him.
As he continued walking through the crowd, Harrock desperately searched for the right words. Being a fighter since his earliest days, persuasion had never been his best muscle. Now it was strained to its limit as it tried to find something, anything that could twist the navigator's ears. Just as he took the first step beyond the crowd, an idea came with it. Stupid, was its simplest description. The only avenue his brain could summon was another label as he came to a stop between the crowd and the navigator.
'Please, Spirits or God or whoever may be listening, just let me get between my wife's legs one more time.' Harrock pleaded inside his head.
Clearing his throat, the idiotic idea was let loose.
"If you want to be the first to step down on the Lost Lands, that opportunity could come in the future. The chief wants a place to run to in case we get discovered, and these lands are the best place for a hideaway if the rest of humanity starts swinging axes at us. We just need to get back home, alive and the ship intact.
And if you aren't the first on the Lost Lands, you could be one of those who help take it back."
White eyes went wide, from both his target and the crowd.
"Think about it!" Harrock exclaimed, turning to address the onlookers. "The chief wants to stretch his hand over the world. Do you think he'd leave something as dangerous as this cursed dirt lying around when he'll have vast ships of iron and weapons capable of smiting across continents? And his wife Salamede. Would she not lend aid to the cause of her kin, both in magic and in whispering in the chief's ear?"
Energy filled the deck as snouts flared and mouths went wide with smiles. That several other men now seemed swept up in the fake cause made Harrock's fist clench. Then he turned around, and a weight fell off his shoulders.
The navigator was completely enraptured, his white eyes wide as he bounced in his seat with a childlike excitement that should have left his frame at thirty years.
"Yes!" He exclaimed as he worked the wheel and levers. Mist surrounded the ship as it ascended skyward. "Reclaiming our home will require a thorough scouting. Come morning, I want everyone up and ready."
Nods greeted the proclamation, his endangerment of all their lives a distant past.
Harrock quickly returned the water rope pole to its hooks before heading downstairs. The men were still enthused about the 'retaking the Lost Lands' bit. Logistics, weapons, and the glorious aftermath were all items of discussion, even among the cooks, who seemed barely able to stop and cut vegetables in between speculations. Grateful to be alive and with a full belly, his Jeseen waiting on the bed bare for him was the only thing that could make the night better as he turned in for a rest. Lying his head on the pillow for a night's rest, he decided that getting two of the three wasn't too bad.
Come morning, the crew maintained their enthusiasm. Breakfast was devoured without a thought before everyone was above deck, not even waiting for the navigator's call. Kelton men idled about for a good hour before the navigator pulled upward in his half bowl of a seat.
"Alright. It's time to see what our past and future home has to offer."
A tired sigh escaped Harrock's lips, covered by the mad rush of the men getting their telescope poles in place. He took up the usual position near the back right of the ship, hoisted the pole into place, and placed his eye against the long telescope on its side. Blurred grey came through first, before sharpening to grey rock as he worked the telescope rim.
Mentally preparing for another day of watching mountainside, Harrock settled in for a boring watch, which made it all the more surprising when the grey rock shot up and down. Pulling back and forth, he confirmed that the stone was formed in almost sheer walls, even where it touched the mountains. As the hours passed, the subtle curves of the stone waves were gradually teased out. Whatever magic was responsible for this clearly artificial formation in the otherwise flat plains, it started somewhere further north. Here and there were demons moving across the top, with some falling to their deaths right in front of the onlookers. Given their relative size to the stone killing them, the rock waves appeared to be twenty floors or so high.
As day gradually became night and the crew came together to agree on what they had all seen, the others relayed much the same images that Harrock had surmised. The V shape of the mountains had waves of stone between them, all cascading out from an as-of-now unseen northward point. Their day's task complete, the crew settled in for dinner.
This time the conversation was mixed with speculation of where the stone waves came from in between talk of how they would take back their lost home. Even Harrock felt some excitement at the prospect of completing the map. As hesitant as he was to indulge this nonsense about purging the Lost Lands, being the first to see it in its whole glory was a very real and possible achievement.
Night came, sleep went, and morning arrived with their routines mostly intact. The only difference was the spring in Harrock's step, both from possibly finishing the map and finally going home. The navigators' call was unneeded this time, as the men immediately took up their usual spots by the railing after breakfast. Agonizing minutes went by before the nod was given.
Harrock plunged his telescope pole through the grey mist and stuck his eye up to the lens almost as quickly. A minute of agonizing adjustment went by before his vision filled with the sides of mountains, grey demons, and stone waves. Those three items filled his vision for a long hour before something new was finally spotted.
Large trees suddenly replaced stone waves. From this height, it was hard to properly size them, as the absurd heights he was calculating in comparison to the stone waves defied belief. Green canopy reached several times higher than the stone waves in front of them. Staring at trees wasn't particularly thrilling, but when they smothered everything else save the peaks of the surrounding mountains, there wasn't much else to do.
After several minutes, a sense of wrongness settled in. The source eluded him before he paid more than idle attention to the bark-covered towers. They were perfect, refined with no gangly side branches, the usual signs of deformity or lack of sunlight one would spot among them missing, and their spacing wasn't in a perfect grid, but none leaned on another or tilted at an angle. Natural at first glance, yet too proper to be so.
"Um! They!"
Harrock pulled his vision back to the ship deck to look leftward. The front right spotter was working his mouth to find the needed words.
"Follow the black mountain ridge to the left. I-"
His mouth failed again as he kept trying to work his tongue.
Putting his eye back to the telescope, Harrock worked the pole to find that the mountains had indeed turned black. Following the instructions to turn left until the last bit where the pole threatened to smack against the wood hull, he saw the black mountains suddenly pull down into a clearing. At its center was a massive hole bearing the same pitch-dark stone.
Even with the sudden lack of trees, it wasn't clear what the spotter's problem was. Then he pushed the telescope slightly to the right. Long buildings presented themselves like small toys. Working the ring on the telescope, he adjusted his vision to get a closer look.
When he had the view of a nearby bird, he saw the structures weren't of boards, but long, smooth wood, more similar to the chief's wood magic than mundane carpentry. Fixing his gaze on one building, he noticed a flag of fine green hoisted on a pole. Its heraldry was a single tree in the middle with flames on the left and waves of water on the right, both seemingly battering the strong wooden trunk holding them back. A bit of movement caught his eye, and he turned the telescope downward.
Elves.
Fame and tales instantly placed the graceful figures moving about with impossible grace in fine leathers and capes or robes. His grip went white as he tried to confirm the truth he already knew. With the distance, he could only just confirm the sharp ears, but the speed they had going up stairs or the few archers practicing at targets barely seen even from his bird's-eye view matched the fantastical tales and abilities he had heard in times past. For the last bit of proof, he peered into an open disk seamlessly worked into one of the treetops. A man in a fine green robe was working an iron sculpture made to resemble an owl, using nothing but his bare hands. One of the famed artistic feats of that near-mythical species.
"It's elves." He announced, keeping his gaze on the artist.
A lot of noise and heavy breathing followed the announcement. No objections or yells, however. Harrock judged that he was the one to announce what they were watching, not the only one to realize it.
"C-Can they see us?" A shaken voice somewhere to the left asked.
A snort started its journey in the back of Harrock's throat and died almost immediately. He knew nothing of elves' true abilities, save stories and whispered theories. Yet, he saw an elf working metal bare-handed, just as idle tales told of.
'Would their vision share such extraordinary ability?' Harrock asked himself.
Then another question.
'Would their arrows be as reaching if they could?'
Pulling his pole backward and out of the mist shield, he placed it on the ground, drawing the attention of the entire crew, with the navigator being the only member whose gaze he returned. Harrock's spirit connection went to the brown keltons right shoulder.
'Get us out of here.'
Harrock gave a sigh of relief when the navigator, still possessed of some good sense, nodded before working the wheel.
"We're leaving." The brown kelton announced in a coarse voice.
The other telescope poles were quickly brought back on deck as a tangible pull said the ship was now flying away at high speed. Awkward silence filled the ship as the keltons stood around trying not to make a sound while looking for some kind of direction. This culminated in everyone present staring at Harrock.
'Am I really the captain now?!' he grumbled to himself.
After a second of meeting dozens of eyes, he sighed.
"We need to get back home." Harrock finally announced. "Write down the map and let's get it to the chief.
….
He's fought the elves before. If it's too dangerous, he'll know, and if he says we can make another run, we will."
Nods came from every man, including the navigator. The boy quickly retrieved the pages, ink tools, and, finally, a new canvas. Stone waves and then a sudden wall of trees were Harrock's vision of what lay below. As the placing of ink was negotiated, the rest of the watchers agreed with him.
Finally, the painting on the page was copied onto the canvas. The bottom was beach and ocean fanning out from a V-shaped mountain range in the center, save the blank spot where the two lines met. Inside the mountain range were waves of stone emanating from a spot up north held by trees and a people spoken of in fear and wonder. Further north lay blank white, perhaps to never be filled in on this trip.
The painting's future held no concern for Harrock; he had gotten his fill of the Lost Lands hospitality, and the instant the ink brush was pulled back from the final line, he nodded to the group and headed below deck for a meal. Dinner was a rather silent affair, in both preparation and consumption. Whatever notions they had about retaking the homeland that may not even be theirs, it now apparently involved going up against elves. Harrock, feeling that he might finally have some real peace, was about halfway through a bowl of red beef stew at the leftmost table when someone finally spoke up from the middle table.
"You think Salamede's quad mage children could take them on?"
Heads bobbed for a second before several ideas were launched from the crowd, none of which Harrock spent mental energy processing. Slurping down his soup and water as quickly as he could, the grey kelton got up and made his way back to his room. This conversation had the potential to go on for hours, hours he'd rather spend doing nothing in his bed.
Coming back to the square room, the mana lamp to the right of the door was turned on before the wooden slab was slammed shut behind him. Night's washing and teeth scrubbing still needed doing, but seeing as Jaseen wasn't around to scold him and the children wouldn't behold the poor example being set, Harrock allowed himself to lie on the bed and work his shoes onto the floor. Feeling the day's revelations and work slipping out of his tired body, the grey kelton pushed the mana lamp above his bed to allow darkness and sleep to ply their trades. Which they did in short order.