Aid

OF GODS AND MEN

Chapter 11: Storms

            The ship Defiance rose and fell on the face of the Crystal Sea.  What had promised to be a calm and serene ocean at the start of their voyage, only seven days ago, had now broken that promise and was stirred to bubbling fury.  The storm was upon them.

The wind lashed at the ship with the explosive force of several whips.  Raindrops as large as a human fist were crashing down on the deck.  Down below, the ocean roiled with breaking crests that were getting higher and higher: the hands of the sea were slowly enfolding the Defiance in their embrace.

  “All hands, prepare yourselves!” shouted Amelia as she took her place on the elevated quarterdeck.  

On the main deck below, her crew scurried all about, busying themselves with ship tasks to brace for the storm.  Tarsus, Cecily and Finnian could only stand by and watch, half in shock at how quickly the storm had come upon them and half in amazement at how quickly the crew was responding to it.  

Tarsus was especially impressed.  It seemed to him that none of these men and women really thought about what they had to do.  They simply took on a job and went to it.  But, they were trained to respond that way, surely.  It made all the sense in the world to be incredibly confident and competent when you had been trained.  If he had half of their experience, he would immediately jump in to help them.  But he didn’t have their experience, or their knowledge.  Instinctively, he gripped the hilt of the sword at his side.    

He was a soldier, after all: not a sailor.

“You three!” Amelia called to them from behind.  Tarsus, Cecily and Finnian all turned to look up at her on the quarterdeck.  “Find a way to be helpful.  In a storm, no ship can afford idle hands.”

Tarsus was struck with the simplicity of this order.  It was so vague to him.  Weren’t orders supposed to be specific?  Didn’t good leaders have a clear vision of how to move forward, in any given situation?  Wasn’t it their responsibility to communicate their needs clearly to their subordinates?  

He began panicking then, as his mind came back around to the situation he was in.  He did not know the inner workings of a ship.  He did not even know the outer workings of a ship.  Where could he even begin to look for a way to be helpful?

He turned to Finnian, expecting his friend to be wearing the same dumbfounded expression that he imagined he had on his own face.  But Finnian was gone.  Tarsus turned to the port side of the ship, expecting to find Cecily there, but she had left him as well.  He turned fully then, to face the front of the ship, and he quickly spotted them both.

At the foremast, Finnian was taking direction from a sailor who was throwing rope over the fore boom.  Once all the rope was in place, Finnian helped the sailor tie it down: meaning that Finnian did the tying while watching the sailor gesture strongly with an open hand toward the bow of the ship, sliding his forearm forward.  It seemed to Tarsus that the sailor was emphasizing that the ship needed to be moving forward at all times.

Not far from Finnian, Cecily stood on the forecastle deck talking to a female sailor.  The sailor held a telescope, and used it to point out to the open sea.  Cecily followed the sailor’s gestures with a telescope of her own that she was looking through.  Tarsus surmised that the two women were looking for a port, or some other shelter from the storm.

“Excuse me, chosen one?” he heard Amelia ask glibly.

Tarsus turned and looked up at her.

She stood next to Cassius, who seemed to be enjoying this open mockery so much that his grin spread from ear to ear.

“That sword won’t help you now,” Amelia continued.

Tarsus realized his hand still gripped the hilt of his sword.  He quickly let his hand fall from it, as he felt the heat of embarrassment flush his face.

“Be useful.  Find something you can do, with what little you know,” Amelia concluded sternly.

Suddenly, the ship tipped slightly to the right, pulling Tarsus’s focus to the starboard railing.  He saw the crests of crashed waves; like thin, pale fingers; recede from the twelve foot height they had climbed to invade the deck.  

The briny hands had tried to envelope the Defiance in their hold, but they were not large enough yet. 

Tarsus shivered, looking down at the assault of the cold wet that had invaded his boots.  His head popped back up, looking beyond the railing through the harsh winds and heavy rains.  A stroke of lightning lit up the dark grey sky, and Tarsus saw the hand of the sea rise up to greet it.  The wave, that only a moment ago had reached a paltry height of twelve feet, was now a mighty fist that towered over even the tallest mast of the Defiance.  

Instinctively, Tarsus grabbed the hilt of his sword again.  He let his head fall, shaking it to himself and his own foolishness.  What use was a sword now?  What good was a soldier here?  If only he had a flesh and blood opponent to prove himself against…but this was a storm, and only the gods themselves could temper the weather of the world.

His mind held onto that revelation, and slowly his head rose in realization.  He turned and looked back up at Cassius.  Amelia was not next to him anymore, but behind him wrestling with the steering wheel to keep the ship from straying off-course.

“You’re half a god!” Tarsus declared with a pride he could not hide.  Cassius only deigned to bow his head a little, in bored acknowledgement that he was being spoken to.             
        “Can’t you help subdue the storm?”

The demigod was silent.  Tarsus could not see his face clearly in the dark grey tumult of the storm, but he felt Cassius’s scrutinizing gaze on him, and the slight pull of the immortal’s limited power in the pit of his stomach. 

“No,” Cassius finally said.  It felt to Tarsus a condemnation: that the god-man had judged the request of help against the requestor, and deemed one of them unworthy.

The sunsword wanted to argue; to demand the help of providence for his own life and all the other lives on the ship.  But he knew that such an entreaty was worthless.  There was no changing a god’s mind once it had been made up.

Tarsus turned back to the front of the ship, just in time to be struck in the face by the white water of a wave’s crest.  He toppled backward, even as the ship tipped toward the starboard side.  The fingers of the Crystal Sea were upon them, and their grip was tighter than it had been before.

Tarsus slid down to the starboard railing and managed to grab hold of it before being thrown overboard.  He spit out the salty blood of the ocean left in his mouth; a remnant of the cruel blow it had struck him.  Sputtering, he caught his breath as the ship bobbed back to its righted position.

Struggling back to his feet, Tarsus’s ears were filled with cracks of thunder, howling winds, crashing waves and the joyous laughter of an overly amused deity.  Tarsus only stood there, feeling humiliated: suffering the sounds of these tormentors.  

But slowly, the buzz of ship’s deck displaced the din of damnation in his ears.  He focused on the shouting of desperate men and women as they did all they could in the face of a force far lager and older than any of them.  He marveled again, at how composed they all seemed as they ran this way and that doing all kinds of odd jobs: tying off broken boom lines, clamping together torn sailcloth, distributing ballast on whichever side of the ship needed it to keep the thing level. 
All of these things, he saw Cecily and Finnian rushing around and helping with: as though they had been on the crew for years.  

All of these things, he admonished himself for not doing, not thinking of, and not even trying to think of.  

He should get up and help them now, then.  But he didn’t.  What could he do now? 

This storm was not some god’s gambit or game to test his mettle.  It was real life; and in the face of real life, he had failed.  Had it not been for all of the other quick-witted, skillful, and even not-so-skillful people he was sailing with, he would have drowned.

        He realized that, once again, his hand had grasped the hilt of his sword.  He let it fall.