William Jones
Stories
10
Chapters
3,868
Words
2.6 M
Comments
0
Reading
8 d, 21 h
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As Mariah faded to smoke and raced away into the Skye, Captain Woodrat put away the deck of cards and piled his mound of chips in the same drawer. Then, with a spring in his step, he pulled Ozzy out the door of the cabin. "So, it's just you and I again, Mr. Ozzy. Time to take a look and see what sort of ship we have here." She was a sloop, about 40 feet long and 15 feet wide with a single mast that gleamed brightly, the same color as her hull. Woodrat explained to Ozzy that the taller mast and long…-
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Three people were ignoring the mayhem that was happening inside Baron Pinchpenny's keep. The first was the Baron himself. His hearing was not good, and even if he had noticed the screams of panicked horses and the shouted orders of guards, he would have ignored them. He paid good money to those men, and he could care less what little problems they had to solve by abusing a few peasants to stifle a rebellion. The second person, was the Legion Centurion in charge of the far side of the Baron's keep. The…
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The road to Northguard was in a sad state of disrepair, and the man riding the horse chose to stay off of it and take the side of the road instead. Less chance of his horse stepping in a hole and going lame. Based on Pinchpenny's reputation, he had expected bad roads. But this bad? Wagons would shake themselves apart in ten miles. Which was about the distance between this little guard post and the city he was heading to. The guard post was two little shacks on either side of the road, with some smoke…
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Ten minutes later, Ozzy had gotten Woodrat to agree to not start another fight. They were in the captain's cabin, seated around a round table that was bolted to the deck. A circular bench, also attached to the floor was in lieu of chairs. The table was inlaid with geometric patterns in different colored woods and worn smooth. In the center they created the image of a drunken mermaid, a jack of ale in each arm. The top was worn smooth, and in a few places the wood was discolored. Ozzy could only imagine how…
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"How the hell do you get into trouble so fast, Woodrat? You were barely half a minute ahead of me!" The other derelict ships they had explored had been easy to climb into. Sargasso weed had grown up the hulls and provided handholds or the damage and rot had provided a way inside. Not this ship. The sides were mostly devoid of weed and what there was had been charred to a crisp. Ozzy had resorted to a running start and leaping to grab the railing and pull himself aboard. Somehow in that small slice of time…
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Captain Woodrat and his mate set out across the Sargasso, doing their best to keep to a straight course, but they became sidetracked time and again by the lure of a derelict ship. There were hundreds of wrecks, somehow drawn to this part of the smoke and drawn into the clutches of the strangling sargasso weed. To explore them all would be the work of a dozen teams exploring for a year or more. Woodrat explained that long before that the strangle weed would be growing again. This was a golden opportunity…
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"Good job, Captain! You found breakfast." Of course, Ozzy wasn't sure if the sea critter or his captain was first on the menu. As he saw Woodrat lifted into the air by the tentacle, Ozzy threw his arm forward and concentrated on the chain wrapped around his arm, pouring smoke into it. The Trammelian chain shot out and wrapped several times around whatever had grabbed his captain and he pulled the long, sucker-filled arm back towards him, bring along its captive. Woodrat appreciated that he wasn't…
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Woodrat made the decision to head back to their little pile of wreckage and load up the ship's boat. A camp on the salad was too exposed a place at night and it bothered him. A group of charred sailors could attack, or a beastie from the smoke could find them, or the salad might get frisky. After a life at sea, he wasn’t comfortable without a deck under him. They made it back to the whaler as the light was starting to dim. It took very little work to rig chain to hoist up the ship’s boat above the…
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The heat began rolling over Ozzy in waves. Woodrat quit struggling and went quiet after a few minutes and Ozzy was feeling feverish. His heat was going up at a constant rate, with a spike as each new wave hit. He was worried about what would happen when he exceeded his limits. Woodrat had mentioned something about men who burst their furnaces, and that didn't sound pleasant. He lowered his heat by burning fuel and making smoke, until his smoke was at the limit. It was a temporary fix, and his heat was…
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To Woodrats obvious disgust, the next two ships they explored contained nothing he considered to be treasure. The first was a tall three-master tilted at a 45 degree angle, making it difficult to explore. The dark cargo hold was the domain of salad and a large tentacled creature that stayed in the shadows. By unspoken agreement both sides agreed to ignore the other, and they moved to the higher decks. Ozzy tossed a chain and hook into the far rail and they climbed the deck like it was a mountain. Reaching…
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