Robert Newcomb: The Fifth Sorceress

The once-proud war galleon was named the Resolve , and she listed drunkenly in the nighttime sea, her seams slowly failing while she tried to hold back the brackish ocean that pressed relentlessly against her sides. Her ship’s wheel tied off on each side and her sails belayed, she rolled awkwardly at the mercy of the elements. The crew had tried to keep the ship’s lanterns lit, but the squalls of rain kept extinguishing them, finally forcing a surrender to larger torches both fore and aft. The firelight cast oddly shifting shadows upon her gently rolling hulk, revealing areas of scorched and destroyed deck and railing.

The old wizard in the rain-soaked gray robe was named Wigg, and he looked with tired eyes down the length of the galleon from his stand in the stern as lightning occasionally scratched across the cloudy, starless sky. Three of the galleon’s masts lay broken at impossible angles upon the rain-soaked deck, intertwined with frayed, seared rigging that snaked randomly about in the wind as if it had a life of its own. He watched with sadness as even the saltwater spray coming over the gunwales had no effect upon the blood that had dried there.

The war has been hard on this ship , he reflected. At least the bodies were taken ashore before we were ordered to sail . The urgency of their orders had left no time to make repairs. Strangely, once at sea, those same repairs hadn’t seemed so important.

He turned, the wet, braided wizard’s tail of gray hair falling forward over his shoulder, and glanced toward the restless ocean and to the lines from the galleon, which held in tow a much smaller vessel. The second boat followed behind in jerky, hesitant intervals, like a petulantly dallying child not really wanting to catch up to a scolding parent. Gray, froth-tipped waves occasionally licked up and over the sides of the fragile craft. For the hundredth time he wondered if it would be seaworthy. And for the hundredth time he reminded himself that it probably didn’t matter.

There were thirty-one of them on board, not counting the prisoners in the hold below, and none of them had spoken since the tattered sails had been dropped from the lone remaining mast and the ship’s wheel tied off, leaving them adrift in the stormy sea. The remainder of the ship’s company was evenly divided between seamen and military officers. They now stood before him in two neat lines awaiting their orders, anxious to relieve themselves of their burden.

He beckoned to the captain of the guard, painfully remembering once again that the man had no right arm, another casualty of the war. The old one knew this man to be a loyal officer, but tonight the look in the captain’s eyes told the wizard that this officer, no matter how true, was hesitant to discharge his duties. The same disconcerting look was on the face of each man that stood with him. The old wizard watched as the captain approached slowly, his black cape wet and sticking to the collar of his breastplate.

“Bring them up,” Wigg said simply.

The captain blinked his eyes in the rain. Despite the loss of an arm there was neither man nor blade that he feared, but this was different. All night he had been trying to summon the courage to ask the question. And all night he had been reminding himself that second-guessing the orders of any of those in the gray robes was never wise. Cautiously, he began to put words to his fears. “Forgive me, Lord, but are you sure they have been sufficiently weakened?” he asked. They had been sailing due east for fifteen days, and during that time they had severely limited the prisoners’ rations as per the wizard’s orders. He searched the old man’s eyes with his own, even himself unsure of what he wanted to hear.

“We have no choice,” Wigg said gently. He understood only too well the other man’s apprehension, for it was in his own mind, also. The wizard glanced anxiously upward as another crooked tree branch of lightning tore across the sky, followed by the inevitable rumbling of thunder.

“I have my orders from the Directorate. Besides, you know as well as I that fifteen days into the Sea of Whispers is the farthest we can go. Even if we were to pause here and wait, we could easily drift past the point of safety. This far out, the sea is bottomless. No anchor ever made could hold us here.”

He looked past the captain’s armless shoulder and into the frightened eyes of the seamen and officers. He was not pleased to see that fear was now turning into restlessness. “If we were to go farther into these waters the crew would mutiny,” he added, raising an eyebrow for emphasis as he turned his gaze back to the officer standing nervously before him. “And perhaps rightly so. No, we must finish this now, whatever the outcome.”

The captain bowed shortly and commanded a small company of officers to follow him below. The wizard looked back out to sea, not anxious to face the ones they were to bring up on deck. There had already been so much death and suffering.

May the task I am about to perform produce no more , he thought.

He closed his eyes and ran one hand down his creased, rain-soaked face, deeply inhaling the heavy, salt-laden air, remembering the past that he would much rather forget. The four prisoners belowdecks had been the leaders and the most difficult to capture, their followers protecting them to the very end at the cost of their lives. They had ruthlessly conducted a scorched-earth policy from which it would take generations to recover. Thankfully, as far as he and the recently formed Directorate knew, all the rest of their confederates had perished in the insurrection.

The flat, iron-braced door to the hold suddenly lurched up and over, falling backward noisily onto the shattered, rain-slick deck. One by one, four women emerged, their bare feet shackled in irons, their hands manacled in front of them. Even as powerful as he knew himself to be, he felt a chill go up his spine as the soldiers prodded the prisoners into line before him. Each in turn raised her face. He could feel the hate in their eyes bore its way into his brain, reminding him once again of who and what they were.

Sorceresses of the Coven.

The blond, the redhead, and the two brunettes stood unsteadily but defiantly before him on the slippery, rolling deck. Their once-luxurious gowns were torn and scorched, and their hair was disheveled, matted against shoulders and breasts. He tried not to notice the Pentangle that appeared upon each dress in faded gold embroidery.

The rationing of food and water over the last fifteen days had produced the desired effect. He had hated having to give the order to restrict their nourishment, but it was the only remotely humane way to maintain control over them. They looked thinner and weakened. Weakened, he hoped, to the point that they were now powerless. At the very least, enough so that he could overcome their combined efforts if need be. For unlike his Brothers, the females of endowed blood had found a way to join their power, making them far more dangerous when together. He had petitioned the Directorate for hours to have at least one more wizard accompany him in this madness, but they had declined. Too many from their ranks had already died, they said. Therefore, as he was the most powerful of them, the task had fallen to him alone. He took a deep breath, looking into their malevolent eyes, taking stock of what he saw in them.