Solo Moonless sky over the black winter tides

[Hadseora]

Hadseora -1

45th of Winter 513 AV

The foggy darkness attune into a a blurred looming deck. He raised his head and cushioned another swing on his temporal. He could feel the crisps of blood and salt pulling his skin, taste the iron flavours drooling down his lips and chin there was a seasoning to it... Azurra! The pigment he had used to paint his lower lip not more than two days ago just moments before... his mental stasis was gone and the thoughts run into auto completion as he shake them to make room for more pressing matters as avoiding the next incoming blow.

He needed more time to think on a counter attack so he ducked, the hostile fist swung less than an inch over his head and the unbroken momentum forced the svefran to step one foot forward, exposing his right ribs. "You are mine!" thought Hadseora. As his uppermost arm blocked his foe's descending elbow the rest of his arms ram against the sailor's ribs, then one push and the foe was overboard.
No sooner had he dispatched his foe two others rushed to take their comrade's place. This time his foes wielded harpoons and by the way they were holding them Hadseora could tell the both of them had fought wielding lances and spears. He was tired, hungry, bloody, soaking wet and unarmed despite his superior mastery on the art of melee fight he wasn't going to face these primitive coward sea rats.

Fortunately Makutsi seemed to agree with him. The waves had grown so big that one just swallowed the deck dragging one of his enemies into the tumultuous waters. He had forgotten he had prayed to Makutsi to save him and she had sent the violence of the waves to rescue him. He had no need to fight the crew unarmed, the ocean was his blade, his shield and his ram. He looked around and despite the pitch black environment of a moonless night at sea he could make the gargantuan wall blocking the stars, closing in on them from starboard. The previous wave had stern the ship perpendicular to the wave motion, it was his chance. "I'll kill them all in a single blow, an offering from Makutsi to Dira!".

The Svefran ship are finely built, capable of enduring violent storms and furious waves and winds. But the builders count on the crew to protect the ship from the most extreme situations, not to work against it. On a ship with cables and ropes freed by the storm, unattended by the crew and flying everywhere a single epypharian is a whole crew by himself. Hadseora was familiar with the manoeuvre, all seasoned Souths were, but he never had tried it on a Svefran ship much less for the purposes he was about to.

He ran with the svefran on his tail, as he jumped offboard he saw the harpoon flying past him on his right, feathering his naked shoulder. His top limb's hands found their target on a sisal rope, at the same time his left lowest hand safely griped the harpoons handle. He swung on the rope folding his legs and arching his back gaining 16 feet over the deck. The critical part of the manoeuvre pertained to the ability of the sailor of pulling and releasing the sail cables at the right moment, ensuring that the torque on he mast was not excessive and that the sail it self did not rip itself to shreds, this meant Hadseora had to pull the cables on his side at the same time he releases the cables from the opposite side. This was the first problem the tired and exhausted epypharian had failed to anticipate, epypharian ships have a system of blocks and pulleys that allow both extremities of the sail to be pulled or released from any side. Unfortunately, as he had learned from his sailing master so many years before, Svefran ships do not rely on such systems and two men are needed, one on each side to work the sail.
But fortune had smile on Hadseora, Dira had sent him an extra weapon for him to do her deed. The harpoon the Svefran had thrown and he had caught would do the trick. He knew he wasn't good enough to expect hitting a tensioned rope at that distance, specially since the absence of light had given him absolutely no hint on where the rope might actually be. When the cable he was hanging from penduled down and then up again he released it landing on the far side of the sail support spar. He cut an access cable to the transversal yard and hold it with two hands, he knew his survival depended on the grip he could exert on that cable. Next he carved the harpoon on the spar and noosed the sail cable against it's blade loosely holding the free end of the cable on his hand. The svefran captain understood what he was trying to do, he had sent two men up the mast to try and stop the epypharian and two more to turn the wheel and once again put the ship parallel to the wave motion.

Hadseora smiled and thought; "Too late, sea rat! You are already my sacrifice". He jumped onto the air as he was planing on landing on the deck, 20 feet below, then the the access cable whipped as it stretched acting as a pendulum with the epypharian as the weight. Hadseora used his two free hands to catch the sideboard sail cable simultaneously releasing the access cable and using his motion to pull both ends of the sail. Now the fun part begins!
As soon as he pulled the cables the sideboard one freed it self from the yard and the tension on the noose pressed the fibbers on the rope against the harpoon's blade cutting the starboard rig apparatus all together, the shipbuilder's nightmare, the torque motion stored on the mast was suddenly free splintering the wood into thousands of flying wood shards lacerating skin and flesh of all souls on deck. The violence of the rotation sent the epypharian flying 50 feet across the pitch black waters. Mid air Hadseora gained sense on where he was as his fingers brushed atop the gargantuan wave. He did not see it but he heard it well enough, the unmistakable sound of water crushing a ships keel.

( to be continued... )