Free Web NovelChapter 108: Red Wake
Steady friction echoed through the hold as the whetstone slid across steel.
Midnight hung over the open ocean.
Outside the hull, forty black galleons practically skimmed across the rolling swells, kicking up so much saltwater that the cedar deckboards stayed permanently slick.
Down inside the lamplit belly of the flagship, Kane sat on an overturned keg, methodically working the edge of his secondary broad-daggers.
Footsteps padded softly down the ladder.
Seraphine stepped into the warm ring of the oil lamp.
She had discarded her ruined paladin cape entirely, stripped down to her fitted leather under-harness and soft linen trousers.
Without asking for permission, she dropped onto the floorboards right between his boots, leaning the back of her silver head straight against his battle-scarred stomach.
"Your hands are steady again," she murmured, watching the orange sparks catch the oiled cedarboards.
"They have a job to do at dawn," Kane replied.
Setting the gray stone aside, he let his calloused fingers catch her chin, tilting her face up.
He brushed a wet lock of silver hair away from her temple, his thumb lingering over the high curve of her cheekbone.
Up close, her silver irises held zero traces of her old imperial scripture.
She looked at him with the unapologetic focus of a woman who had finally tasted a real war leader.
"When we break the harbor line," Seraphine whispered, her breathing picking up as his palm drifted down to claim the dip of her waist, "leave the Iron Duke’s command vessel to me. He ordered those suicide runes put on my people."
’She wants her pound of flesh,’ Kane smirked internally, feeling the quickened hammer of her pulse against his knuckles.
’And she knows who holds the leash.’
Leaning down, he pressed a bruising kiss directly against her forehead, letting his mouth drag down to the bridge of her nose.
"I figure we can split his hull down the middle. You take the right half."
"And who gets the left?" Thora’s voice rumbled from the bottom of the ladder.
The barbarian didn’t pause at the edge of the light.
Walking right up to the keg, Thora dropped her solid weight onto the crate beside him.
Seraphine didn’t scramble backward out of his grip.
She held her ground between his shins, but Kane immediately reached out with his left arm, hooking his fingers into Thora’s sword belt to pull her hip flush against his thigh.
"So much for holding back."
He turned his face, catching Thora’s mouth in a deep, highly grounded kiss that tasted of stale ration ale and unshakeable familiarity.
"You get the left," Kane murmured against Thora’s lips, his fingers squeezing her corded waist warmly.
He didn’t rush the moment, tasting the spice of her breath, letting his bicep press firmly against her shoulder to remind her that no matter how many high-born women stood in his circle, she was the one who owned the foundation.
"How are the rowers?"
"Exhausted," Thora laughed softly, leaning her forehead right against his temple while her hand rested flat over his racing heart, feeling the steady, uncompromising rhythm beneath his skin.
"Brak promised them three barrels of the Elven Queen’s personal vintage if we beat the sunrise. They are pulling so hard the oarlocks are smoking. You are turning into a lord; it’s terrifying."
’That’s my girl,’ Kane thought, a profound surge of genuine love anchoring his ribs as he breathed in Thora’s scent.
’The paladin is a lethal weapon, but Thora is a part of him. I never lose my balance with her.’
Before Kane could pull Thora onto his lap properly, the aft cabin door swung open.
Lyssel stepped out holding a glowing crystal lantern, her face unusually serious.
"Chief. You need to come check on your little Milfheim receipt. Grieselda’s magic finished taking root."
Rising from the keg, Kane led the two women into the rear quarters.
Princess Misha stood by the small circular glass porthole.
The frail girl was no longer shivering. The empty, dead gray of her eyes had vanished entirely, replaced by a striking ring of seraphic gold circling her dilated pupils.
She didn’t reach out for his palm this time.
Turning her pale chin toward him, her voice came out perfectly steady, yet carrying the eerie, dual-tone layered resonance of a Fallen Seraph’s speaking oracle.
"They have already broken the outer chains, husband," Misha stated calmly.
Her pupils stared straight through the glass into the pitch-black ocean miles away, mapping a war zone she couldn’t even see with physical sight.
"The Iron Duke’s mortar vessels are anchored in the shallow mud. I can hear the white marble of the Queen’s east wing collapsing into the surf. Sixty dead in the last three minutes. Their blood is turning the harbor foam pink." ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
’Grieselda didn’t just patch her up,’ Kane realized, a spike of tactical awe hitting his nervous system.
’She turned the kid into a living radar. We aren’t sailing blind anymore.’
Stepping forward, Kane placed a gentle hand over Misha’s small shoulder.
"Where is the flagship sitting?"
"In the center," Misha whispered, leaning her pale cheek softly against the back of his knuckles.
"Waiting for you."
Hours melted into the sea spray.
Dawn broke across the outer continental shelf of Sylvandar.
Beneath the prow, the colossal sea-serpent released the linked iron hausers with a tired, echoing snap of its huge jaws, sliding back down into the freezing black safety of the deep ocean trenches.
Forty obsidian galleons glided silently into the wide mouth of the royal bay.
Enormous pillars of oily soot billowed from the lower Elven merchant districts.
Sitting in the center of the bay were one hundred plated Menual ironclads, their clunky steam turrets methodically belching explosive shells straight into the Queen’s palace terraces.
"They genuinely believe the continent is theirs," Kaelia whispered, her red hair catching the sickly orange glare of the burning shoreline. frёewebηovel.cѳm
Kane didn’t call for defensive shield-walls.
Stepping up onto the highest command platform of the flagship, he reached up and stripped his remaining linen bandages completely away.
He tossed the ruined fabric onto the deckboards to stand bare-chested in the falling ash, his crimson gladiator tattoos drinking in the ambient heat of the burning shoreline.
"Commander Kaelia," Kane rumbled. His voice carried the terrifying, absolute stillness of an executioner.
"Spread the forty hulls into a wide, loose crescent. We don’t drop a single anchor today."
Silver steel rang out to his right as Seraphine stepped onto the high rail, her broadsword resting on her shoulder.
To his left, Thora stepped up, her weapon spinning once before locking into her grip.
Kane looked dead at the towering Menual flagship, turning its clunky iron broadside toward his unburnable, pitch-black armada.
"They brought ironclads to an axe fight," Kane grinned savagely.
"Snap their oars."
[Urgent Regional Quest Updated: The Sunken Crown]
[Objective: Exterminate the Menual Iron Armada (0/100)]
[Tactical Override: No Surrender Permitted]
