Chapter 144

Luke spent the next hour or so using [Analyze] on every sailor on the ship. None of them were over level 20, and in fact only one of them was a higher level than the Captain herself. Even then, it was only just barely, and that guy’s skill set was so obviously geared towards being a sailor and nothing else that Luke actually considered him one of the weakest people on the ship in terms of his odds of winning a fight.

He still wanted Zea to bump up her strength a little bit, but she waved his concerns away. She’d already set up her portable enchanting work table and was busy etching runes on a thin metal cable about four feet long. Luke hadn’t seen her working on that piece before, but he knew better to ask. Her explanations had always confused him, and since she’d upgraded her enchanting skills, that had only gotten worse.

It took her a few minutes to get used to inscribing runes while they were on a ship, and Luke wasn’t all that confident that she would be able to do any finely detailed work once they left the harbor, but for the moment, Zea was happily working away at whatever it was. He’d thought she wanted to finish up that razor prong whip, but this new project didn’t seem to have anything to do with that. Or maybe it did, and she just hadn’t gotten this far with her first attempt.

Once he’d finished scouting everything out, he turned his thoughts towards the upcoming trip.

“System,” Luke said softly.

“Yes, Luke.”

“How long are we going to be on this boat?”

“My apologies, but I’m not able to answer that. There are too many variables to predict how long your voyage will take with any degree of accuracy.”

“Give me a rough guess? Two weeks? Two months? Six?”

“Somewhere between two weeks and two months is probably the most likely scenario,” System told him. “If the weather was perfect over the next two weeks with no complications, it is theoretically possible to reach the shores of the eastern continent. It would be far more reasonable to assume it may take up to three times that long under average conditions, or even longer, circumstances pending.”

“What kind of circumstances?” Luke asked.

“Any sort of attack on the ship that resulted in damage could theoretically slow down the trip. As I said, there are too many variables to predict what dangers the Silk Lady will face, if any at all.”

“So, most likely guess, with average weather, is between four and six weeks.”

Either the continents were much closer together than Luke thought, or sailing was much faster on Aros than it had been back on Earth. He was sure his history classes said it took explorers months and months to sail across the Atlantic. He couldn’t swear to how many months, but more than one or two, usually.

Those people didn’t have the system and all its benefits to help them. Luke wasn’t precisely sure what exactly those benefits were, but everything here seemed to get done faster and better than it should be without the benefits of machines and computers. He didn’t see any reason to believe sailing would be any different.

“Something’s happening,” Luke said, noting the noise of metal clanging against metal.

“They’re pulling up the anchor,” Zea said absently, not looking up from her runes. Somehow her hands were still holding steady with the motion of the ship. “Tide must be coming in.”

“It’s hard to believe we’re finally on our way,” Luke said. “So much shit happened to trip us up on the way. The church, multiple times. Those mercs, even the stupid squirrel druids.”

“Hopefully the church doesn’t send anyone else after us,” Zea said. “It would be… Bad… If we ended up in ship-to-ship combat with them. The Silk Lady is not designed for naval warfare. It’s pure speed and nothing else.”

“She,” Luke said. “Aren’t we supposed to call ships ‘she’ or ‘her’ when speaking of them?”

Zea shrugged. “Who cares?”

“I suppose I’ll just do whatever the sailors do. No point in picking a fight with anyone over it. Let ‘em call the ship however they want.”

Zea grunted, but otherwise ignored his rambling. Her nose was practically touching the chain now as she etched tiny lines into it. It looked like she’d run out of patience for conversation, so he set the key next to her and said, “I’m going to go up on deck and get a look around.”

“Have fun,” she said absently. “Try not to get in anyone’s way.”

* * *

The deck was busier than he’d expected, but Luke found a barrel propped up in a corner and took a seat on it while sailors scrambled around, tying off ropes and lines as they raised and lowered various sails. The Captain stood on a raised deck at the back of the ship behind him, occasionally snapping out orders.

There were truly a dizzying amount of sails and ropes, far more than it seemed like there should be. Luke was almost tempted to pick up a rank in [Sailing] just so he could make some sense out of what he was seeing. Maybe it would also tell him why more than one sailor gave him a nasty look as they went by. Then again, maybe it was just that they were working while he was watching. God knew he hadn’t met a person yet who enjoyed having someone else stand around watching them work.

The Silk Lady got pointed towards the mouth of the harbor and started inching its way out. It seemed like it ought to go faster, but when he considered the wind seemed to be blowing in the wrong direction, he supposed he ought to consider himself lucky that it was moving at all. He had no clue how the complex arrangement of cloth and rope managed to turn the wind cutting across the deck into forward motion, but it did.

“Captain,” one of the sailors said up on the deck behind Luke. “Someone is rowing a boat out to us. I don’t recognize him.”

“How many of these assholes do I need to bribe before they leave me alone?” the Captain snarled. “Let this one onboard, but if he tries to get so much as a single bent copper out of my coffers, I’ll string him up and slice his guts open to feed the seagulls.”

* * *

Lath had gone up and down the harbor, and he’d come to the conclusion that the dwifkin and her apostate lover had boarded one of the ships. Specifically, they’d boarded the ship that was even now slowly sailing away from the dock it had been moored to.

The ship was only about fifty yards out and the winds weren’t favorable for exiting the harbor. It was going to get there eventually, but not fast enough to prevent him from catching up to it. He might even be able to do it just by diving into the water and swimming, but it would be faster to find a…

“Ah, there,” he said to himself, spotting a small three-man fishing boat with a single sail.

Lath ran at full speed, weaving through the few remaining workers on sailors on the docks and arriving at his destination in seconds. He snapped the ropes holding the sailboat to the dock with his bare hands, tossed the excess length into the boat, and lightly leaped on board.

A man was snoozing up against the bow, his form obscured by a light blanket. He groaned and blinked blearily as the boat rocked from Lath’s landing on it. Before he could say or do anything, Lath leaned in and raked his fingers across the man’s throat. Blood spurted, and a kill notification popped up in front of him. Lath dismissed it and flicked the blood off his hand.

He didn’t bother setting the sail. The wind would be just as against him as it was the ship he was pursuing, and there were already a pair of oars ready to be locked into place in the boat. They were sturdy, though not strong enough to handle the full force of his strength. He’d need to be careful not to break them as he rowed after the ship.

Using one oar to push away from the dock, Lath started rowing. He made good progress as he cut through the cold water and still night air, and by his judgment, he’d catch up with the ship well before it crossed over the mouth of the harbor and into open water where it could alter its direction to better capture the wind.

They saw him coming. That was no surprise, considering it was a clear night and there was nothing he could do to hide an entire boat. It didn’t matter. Even if they decided to run, which it didn’t look like they were doing, he’d still catch them. With each stroke of the oars, he got another foot closer to the ship. With each stroke, he got another foot closer to avenging his apprentice and completing his mission.

Soon, it would all be over.

* * *

There was a smell in the air, something familiar that Luke couldn’t quite place. At first, he hadn’t even realized it was there, not until he’d overheard one of the sailors talking to the Captain. That was when it clicked. It was that dead smell Lath’s not-zombie body had. It was fainter now, subtly different in a way Luke lacked the knowledge to express, but he still recognized it.

He jumped to his feet, almost knocking a sailor over in his haste, and turned towards the rear deck. The sailor started cussing at him, but Luke ignored the man. With a twitch of his legs, he leaped up, twisted around a rope line in his way, and landed next to the wheel.

“This area’s off-limits to you,” the Captain said immediately. “Leave afore I have you tossed off.”

“The man in that boat isn’t some dock official come to collect some coins,” Luke said. “He’s an inquisitor after me. If you let him catch up, there’ll be a fight. I can’t guarantee your ship won’t get damaged.”

“Gods damn it. You’ve barely been on board for an hour! We even set sail early. How did they find you this fast?” the Captain snarled.

Luke shrugged. “Can your ship outrun him?”

“Out in open water? Maybe, if the winds favored us. Here, now, in the harbor? Not a chance.”

Luke peered out into the night to see a small boat with the oars working furiously to propel it towards them. “Got anything to sink it? Maybe he’s a bad swimmer.”

The Captain scowled and shook her head. “I should have charged you even more.”

“Well, win some, lose some. That’s how it goes,” Luke said.

“Why don’t we just give the inquisitor what he wants?” the sailor who’d let the Captain know someone was coming asked.

“Oh, that would not end well for you at all,” Luke said with a sad shake of his head. “I’m not going in without a fight. And I’ve fought that guy before. Shit gets messy. Little ship like this will be lucky to still be above the water by sunrise if I decide to start breaking things.”

“Don’t you dare threaten the Silk Lady,” the Captain said.

“Relax. I don’t want to sink your ship. I’m relying on you and your crew to get me where I need to go,” Luke said. “I’m just telling your idiot over there why it would be a bad idea to try to sell me out, especially after we paid you so much money in the first place. If you can’t outrun a guy in a rowboat, well, I guess I’ll deal with him when he gets here.”

Luke reached behind his back and pulled his mace off the harness. He hoped his words sounded more confident than he felt, because he figured he had maybe three minutes before Lath caught up to them. If all else failed, he still had 125 AP he could spend. [XP Cycle] was important, but not getting captured or killed by a psychotic inquisitor trumped XP Madness concerns in the short term.

125 AP. What was the best way to spend that?