The Arkanist

The Red Sky

Another arrow, cloaked in red, roared through the mist. Eller’s eyes widened in surprise as it hissed toward his face, catching his soft white cheek like a cool blade of grass. It stuck like a broken arm in the rich wood of the rail behind, the fingers of flame crawling feverishly across the wood, as if starved and looking for food. Eller’s cheek was numb, both from the fire and from the steel. He lifted a jerky hand to it and caressed his silky flesh until he came across the gouge. It was more a slice, sliver-thin and glistening with brilliant red blood. 

A tear of crimson drooped down the cut like a bead of ice, stinging his flesh as it rolled like a marble. His shivering fingertips flashed with the blood like fat grapes, and stained his fair skin. Another arrow howled by his eye in a bright blur like the sun, jolting him from his trance. Eller licked the blood of his fingers like a cat as he rushed to the main deck, the wooden stairs thumping like drums.

“Archers!” hollered Shaalad. “Take up positions! Fell these rotten men into the sea! Put them where they belong! Let the fish rape their petty little bodies until the fish get tired and the sun sets.”

Eller witnessed the seamen burst out from under the decks like rivers, the oars pulled back into the belly of the ship, like a great wooden skeleton. Men dashed to and fro, grabbing wooden bows, arced at the tips, and wooden spears glinting with and iron crown. Swords sang as they were drawn from their leather sheathes, the blades curved and smoky with a piercing point sharp enough to butcher a wild boar like it was a rabbit. They had been sharpened everyday by the smith, Borren Ironhands. Eller had only met him once, and as the crew said, his hands were as hard as the iron of the blades.

Waves of arrows, all wreathed in flame, assailed them like rain falling from the sky and quivering as they hit the wood or the flesh of man. Eller watched a pirate fall like a crippled goat with an arrow through the knee, the flame eating his clothes and flesh. Blackened shadows sat under the arrows in the wood, charred like meat, crispy and baked. Still, the arrows howled through the mist, the ship firing at them veiled beneath the curtain of grey. They were blind.

Another volley arced across the misty sky, the fletching whistling and the arrowhead crackling with flame like lightning. Eller grabbed a shield from a fallen pirate, the round wood banded with iron and painted grey and black. He raised the shield over his head as the arrows dipped and began to fall like sleet driving into the wood all around him. Three arrows drove into the wood of his shield with deep thuds, the fibers of wood splintering slightly and the wood beginning to lick with flame. Eller fumbled to throw the shield off until after scorching his forearm slightly it clambered to the wood like a ring of fire.

His arm stung as a gust of cool wind felt like needles of ice against his burnt skin, where underneath the bright pink flesh glowed like the heart of a purpura. He hissed in the blaring pain and cradles his arm like a babe sucking at his mother’s breast until he was tripped up on a rope and he dove forward, with his arms bracing his fall. Like bands of wire his muscles rippled under his gleaming flesh as he hit the wood and quickly, through the searing agony picked himself up, knowing that if he lay too long he would die. I did not come this far to die! Death will not find me so easy to imprison!

He urged his body to keep moving across the deck, bustling with men, most reeking of fish and dung with tunics drenched and haggard, the salt of the sea sparkling in their wavy tendrils of hair and grizzly beards. The bowmen waited on either side of the galley like stone soldiers, watching the mists curl with stiff eyes. They waited for the command, fingering the fletching of their arrows as if it was the softest thing in the world. Quivers bristled on their backs and small braziers knelt beside them. At a single uttered command they would spring to life, lithe and quick as a snake.