Episode 1:
The Sinister Ocean

"CHARWAN KAN!"

From the crow's nest the frantic look-out pointed wildly, not out at the open, wine-dark water, but down at the vessel itself.  The mate stormed across the quarterdeck, cutlass springing to hand, a grim knot forming in his belly.  He slammed against the quarterdeck rail, searching the waist below with darting eyes.  The men on the lower deck glanced about anxiously, naked swords glittering in the midday sun.

"There!" exclaimed a black man, ritual scars down both temples.

Two pale hands clutched the gunwale, knuckles purged of colour from the fierceness of the grip.  Then, as they watched, a seaweed entangled figure pulled herself over the rail to flop limply upon the deck.

"That's no agent of Kan," muttered the mate ruefully, propelling himself down the steps.  The pounding of his boots on the boards roused the prone figure.  She lifted herself, grimacing, and settled into a crouch on the balls of her bare feet.  She was dressed in a purple jerkin and blue pantaloons plastered wetly about a svelte figure.  Her hair was matted darkly upon her head, but looked fair in colour.  Her eyes flashed with a feral intensity, made eerie by their colouring: her left eye was cat-green, her right a pale azure.

The mate skidded to a halt as the woman, beautiful as any sea-goddess, dragged a broad-bladed knife from the sheath at her thigh.  She trembled with exhaustion, the knife waving unsteadily.

"Easy, girl," he said.  "You don't look in any shape to be using that."

A weak grin turned her lips.  "Are you a...a gambling man?"

He was a handsome man, with shiny black hair atop the dusky brown skin of a desert dweller, and a scruff of beard at his chin.  He studied her for a moment, then looked at the steel in his hand.  With great show, he slipped it into his yellow sash.  "You took us by surprise, that's all.  No one means you any harm."  When she made no move to lower her weapon, he asked, "How came you to the middle of the sea?  You're no fish I think."

She licked her full lips unsurely, blinking water from her eyes.nbsp;"My name's Neekin," she said at last.  "I was a...a mercenary aboard the mer...merchant ship the Micha out of Hiraljah.  I went overboard about a day and a...day and a half ago..."  She sucked in a deep breath, then pitched forward.

As she fell she glimpsed the door beneath the quarterdeck opened a finger's width, and an eye peering through the crack.  Then the door shut instantly and Neekin had no more time to consider the secretive observer as consciousness slipped effortlessly from her grasp.

                                 *     *     *

She came to with a start in a private cabin, momentarily disoriented.

The gentle rolling reminded her she was on the high seas, and moonlight stabbing through the porthole betrayed the evening.  Not her first night on this vessel, she surmised.  Not given her exhausted state.  She threw back her sheets and found herself naked, but apparently unmolested.

She had "disembarked" from the Micha when her fellow mercenaries, after a hardy night of drinking, decided she would look more appealing in a bed than on deck. Though hopelessly outnumbered, she had fought savagely, cutting three throats before choosing the frigid ocean over satisfying their lusts.  Neekin was not proud to the point of madness. She might well have submitted to the rape, contenting herself with a later revenge, but the mood of the crew had grown vicious and ugly, and once they had penetrated her hips with their bodies, she feared they would penetrate her heart with their blades. So she chose the ocean which, if uncaring and capricious, was at least not malevolent.

What had burned most in her veins, though, was that it was her own comrades-in-arms who had turned on her.  Even reflecting back on it caused her upper lip to curl unconsciously in a snarl.

Grim, gore-drenched visions of revenge had kept her warm and afloat as she drifted for a day and a night.  Then, barely conscious, half delirious with exhaustion, she had espied a ship on the horizon...

Neekin stretched, then groaned as muscles spasmed with a cacophony of aches.  Stealing herself grimly, she gingerly rose from the bed.  Her dry clothes were laid out on a chair by the porthole, but so stiff and saturated with salt as to be unwearable.  That seemed to have been anticipated by her benefactors: a man's shirt and pants were laid out as well.  Too large for her, she donned only the white shirt and a black belt.  She hefted her knife, contemplatively, then slipped it into her belt.  She knew nothing of her hosts or this ship, after all.

The cabin door was unlocked and, beyond it, a short hall.  She went cautiously to the stairs at the far end and climbed out onto the open deck.

A light fog curled over obsidian water, the sun a vermilion hearth-glow sinking in the west.  A few men lolled about, half-heartedly pursuing their chores; true work best left for daylight.  Earlier she had vaguely remembered noting at least thirty or forty heads, but she counted only eight on the nightwatch.

"Ahoy there," came a voice from above.

She looked up at a figure limned by lantern light.  The mate grinned and motioned her to join him.

She climbed the ladder with the effortless grace of a feline, unselfconscious of the fact that her oversized shirt dropped barely to the beginning of her thighs, leaving legs bare as well as showing considerable cleavage above.

As she gained the quarterdeck, the brown-skinned mate said, "I'm Alombo ben Fadahl, first mate on the Falcon's Heart, and your tale will certainly be one for the ports.  A day and a half on the water, by Hasih's blood."

She leaned casually on the rail overlooking the lower deck.  A mischievious briny breeze tossed the tail of her shirt, exposing rich white curves.  Alombo coughed and quickly followed her gaze.

"You're a fighting ship?" she asked.

"Aye.  Zimagrawa coastal navy."

Neekin had passed through Zimagrawa just two months previous and knew it as one of the larger southern kingdoms, its influence due more to trade than military might.  Its army consisted largely of mercenaries and transient nationals from a dozen lands.  Her ill-matched eyes sparkled in the lambent lantern glow as she said, "You're far from any coast -- Zimagrawan or otherwise."

He shrugged good-naturedly, but pointedly ignored her unspoken question.

In the waist, two men tossed a ragged hat between them.  A hapless third man, shorter than they, muttered profanities as he grabbed futilely for it.  He tripped, noisily knocking over a pail.  The play ceased instantly.  The three men glanced, not aft at the mate, but fore.  Quietly the pail was righted and the men slinked back to their duties.

Neekin looked forward.  Across the ship, a lone figure stood statue-still on the forecastle, facing the sea.  She belatedly realized he was not a figurehead only when his cloak twisted in the breeze.

"Who is that?" she asked.

"Our captain."

"Perhaps I should introduce myself."

"El-Antiague is not a...sociable fellow," he cautioned.  "Even to see him on deck is a rare sight."  Abruptly, he fell quiet.

Across the vessel, the dark shape descended from the forecastle.  Men stepped back, eying him as he passed, but he seemed oblivious to their presence.  Before he disappeared beneath her feet, Neekin caught an impression of fair skin and white hair and beard.  His fine garments of red silk and gold satin incongruous on an army ship.

"A strange captain who leaves the minding of the ship to others," she remarked once he was gone.  "And who takes her far from sanctioned waters," she prodded.

"Our mandate is to defend the coastal villages from marauders.  A black ship in particular has left a bloody trail from Kalicat to Hushil and we don't intend awaiting her next attack."

She frowned.  He was not telling her everything, she knew, and his evasiveness raised the hackles on the back of her neck.  "At least tell me if we're making for the continent."

He shook his head.  "I'm afraid you're stuck with us for awhile.  I hope you're in no hurry to be somewhere."

Neekin had been rambling southward, but with no real destination in mind.  She was a wanderer by nature and a seeker of things which she would only know when she found them.  After the Micha she had intended making her way toward old Cathangian, but her plans were flexible.  All she said, though, was, "I'm in no position to complain -- you saved my life."

"Good.  If you're what you say, good with a blade and know your way around a ship, there's even profit in it for you.  And I promise you'll get no trouble from my crew; they're a ragtag bunch from north and south, but disciplined."

"Your destination?"

He looked away.  "The Xarolouth Ocean," he said quietly.

Neekin inhaled sharply between her teeth; a little thing, but enough to betray her thoughts.  Though a landlubber by nature, she had sailed more than once and then with crusty, wind-bitten sea dogs.  Most would sooner swim the shark infested waters off Ehrolt than sail a ship on Xarolouth's bosom.  Lore had it that the few craggy islands there were the home of ancient races; from before the very coming of humankind.

In the port town of Feraltian she had met a legless skipper, a G'Natian by birth, cast like driftwood far from home.  He claimed to have been blown westward onto Xarolouth by an ill-gale and a giant serpent made him a cripple...and crewless to boot.  But that was not the worst of it.  Bloodied and half-dead on the remnants of his ship, he had drifted past a beachless island.  In his delirium he thought he heard strange, inhuman chanting and weird flutes.

The grim set to Alombo's jaw showed he knew the stories as well as she; better, perhaps, since he was a professional sailor.  All he said, though, was, "We crossed over this afternoon while you slept."

Neekin said nothing, but wondered if she might have been better to give herself to the pigs on the Micha after all.

                                 *     *     *

Neekin awoke, blinking in confusion. It was darkest night, of that she was certain. Yet an orange light shimmered through the porthole in her cabin. She tossed aside her sheet and rose naked. Her sensitive ears could hear muttering from above her and, more, an odd, crackling sound. It was not an unfamiliar sound...but not one she would expect to hear upon the ocean. She looked out the porthole, but could see nothing from her angle, save that the sky was, indeed, still black as creosote, and streaked with milky ribbons of stars.

And a strange wash of light rippled over the ebon water like a sheet flapping in the wind...