The Stranger In The Mist

  Boots of polished buckles and the finest calfskin lazily swaggered its way across the ebony stained teakwood deck collecting droplets of Mother Nature’s sorrowful wails. At first glance the naked eye wouldn’t see the small cracks or the permanent flecks of lifeblood on the swaggerer, but they were there especially as they announced their owners identity.

 The Captain a towering juvenile with hair that fell down in riveting raven layers and curls to just above his shoulders which often times was pulled up into a tight ponytail revealing shaved designs into his hairline. His skin tanned and marred with scars from sailing the high seas. There was something off about this man though and no it wasn’t the fact he was built like an ox with freckles and tattoos that would make any lass want to wed him, or the fact he was one of the youngest pirate Captains about. It was his eyes… The eyes that could silence a siren, the eyes the color of vermillion and primal life forces.

  Yet this time there was an eerie nature to them, the Captain had never been exactly a calm man when others forcefully boarded his ship. He would be raising hell or making sure that the galleon’s figurehead hadn’t been blasted off into the deep blue with an cannonball. But the Captain was standing there assessing the ships, the crew members from each ship on their knees with weapons brandished to them, the brandishers, and the ancient man in front of him with a tarnished snaggle toothed smile a little too excitedly reaching for his pistol.

  With actions for the young Captain, often came consequences. Maybe that was why he always traveled with a small crew, made sure to hold extra fine cargos, and always carried two loaded flint lock pistols and a dagger in his boot at all times. Even his silver gilded rings were much more than what met the human eyes, a few contained various forms of poisons in liquid, powdered, as well as the animal likes.

  “So laddy, what do you think ay? Didn’t suspect us to board your vessel so easily.” The “silver fox” gargled out spraying his s’s all over the ornately stained deck of The Privateers Fear while clicking and cocking the metal beast in his palms so the barrel would point north in the direction of the youthful Captain’s soul.

  “I think nothing, maybe fear the competency of some of my crew members when I actually may step away from my vessel but I believe that they had rather compelling notions of what their fate might be if they had in fact let bullets and cannonballs drown my beautiful vessel.” He said shooting the ginger first mate named Abasi who had a alarmed look in his eyes a rather stern glare before taking up his spot much closer to the other Captain.

  “So then boy, you wouldn’t be worried if we did this?” The snaggle toothed Captain flicked his wrist giving a order to a man who swiftly responded resulting in a crew member flung overboard.

  “No…” The boy scoffed and fixed his tricorn hat while brushing some of the rain drops off of his chin, he was grateful for the gloomy weather it disguised his inward sweating nature.

  “Salazar, grab that girl.” The elder Captain watched the two lines of captives with transfixed beady eyes as his lackie grabbed both by the shoulder blades and dragged them quickly up to their feet from the kneeling position, it was quite infuriating that no one could do a job right on his ship. He didn’t want the boy flung over the ship, he wanted them wounded. He didn’t want two girls, he just wanted one to use as means of getting telltale information or to simply release on the nearest isle before she drove everyone and everything to the brinks of insanity as well as to wound the boy’s already minimalistic crew. “You daft fool just drop them.”

  With that simple distraction the young Captain countered and whipped out his guns pointing them at the man proclaimed to be Salazar and the geezer, “Wound any of them and your next breath will be your last.”

  “Crikey… Greystone.”Salazar gulped and gently placed them down on their feet as he heard the clicking of pistols before raising his grimy fish smelling hands into the air before looking over at the raven haired Captain and then his own. Just like the wind and the ran had shifted into a horrid downpour so had the tensions between the two pirate ships. The picturesque islands of Fallheller had came into view offering a moments notice of relief but not for them.

  The juvenile Captain smiled calmly,“ Now that wasn’t that hard now was it, Captain Greystone? How about we wager ourselves a deal. I’ll share the finest silks and spices and you let the rest of my crew walk free.”

  Stubbornness and frozen ichor coursed through Captain Greystones veins as his gravely voice hissed out threats that would make even a cobra shrivel up,“You must have mapped me for a bloody fool, child. I’m not like other pirate Captains, spices and silks won’t get you far.”

  Without the batting of any eyelashes a scream of anguish pierced the thick rainy veil as Abasi was clipped with a spear and knocked out cold with the butt of an metal canister thus resulting in a chain reaction of the privateers crew getting the courage to finally free themselves from their captors that held them on their sore knees.

  The Captain with the raven hair just gave him a lifeless smile and gestured for his crew to pull the men to their bootstraps and to drag them over to their own ship, so the privateers fear could evacuate.

  As the fog slowly seared it’s presence into the creaking timbers the young pirate Captain smirked at old Greystone, his calm nature still in tact despite what had gone down in tatters, “My name is Caspian Archer the Captain of the Privateer’s Fear. You have boarded my vessel and wounded my crew, now you will pay my toll.”

  Plans had dearly changed and so were Caspian’s eyes now the color of black widows, his locks messily dripping storm water hung out below his black tricorn hat that had small ornaments beaten into it. Slowly and surely he raised his trained guns to the clouds above.

  As the smoking guns previously raised to the sky clattered to the ground signaling his crew to smash the lanterns into the crimson ship on the right of them. A signal that had been used more than once before but still was always amazing how fear turns the best men into mice especially when fire becomes the main part of the equation. Caspian made it evident that he was going to be the one to set fire to the world and was he going to relish in watching it burn.

  Welcome to the depths of Fallheller…