Dragons on the Sea of Night Read Free Page A

Dolman and the invading forces of Chaos in the Kai-feng, the final cataclysmic battle that signaled the end of the Ages of Darkness and Necromancy.
    The Tsubasa was like all things Bujun – that remote island chain the Dai-San had visited – delicate and mysterious as the mist that enshrouded its shores. The Bujun were reclusive, master warriors who preferred their own company. Many tales existed regarding the Bujun. One such insisted that they rode through the skies astride great horned and winged dragons called Kaer’n.
    Though Moichi was a master navigator, he had yet to fully grasp the intricacies and peculiarities of this magnificent, superbly constructed Bujun vessel. As he rose, dizzy, blowing seawater from his nostrils, he cursed the impatience that had led him to set out for home too soon and with an improper crew. He staggered down the companionway to the mid-deck like an over-confident wrestler who, having stepped into the ring, was only now realizing the hidden reserves that lay behind the obvious strength of sinew of his opponent.
    He risked a glance upward. There was no horizon. Instead, scudding clouds like angry bruises dipped to meet the rising sea, creating an almost seamless whole, a vast, writhing beast within whose belly the ship rocked and yawed dangerously. In every groan from the seasoned kyoki -wood timbers, from every pitch the ship took in the ever darkening swells, from the precarious bowing of the masts before the shrieking, gyring winds, his senses picked up the beginnings of the Tsubasa’s death throes.
    God bear witness, he berated himself, this would not have happened if I’d not been so involved belowdecks. Aufeya! Even now his thoughts betrayed him, straying to the silkiness of her creamy skin, the look of longing and love filling her copper eyes, the pleasure – sometimes gentle, other times fierce – of their nights together in the captain’s cabin.
    Dammit, no! Moichi had been born to be master of the seas: a navigator. And now, as captain of his own ship, he had at last achieved a lifelong dream. No storm, unnatural or no, would rip his new charge from beneath his bootsoles. Oh no, he vowed, gripping the railing to regain his balance. By the Oruboros, the great sea spirit who guides all mariners, I will not allow it!
    The roiling clouds above his head mangled the murky periwinkle daylight into patches of shifting, menacing shadow that raced across the ship’s foundering flanks as if they were working in concert with the angry sea in trying to pull it under.
    The fittings howled in protest and the Tsubasa again shipped water dangerously. On Moichi’s shouted orders men ran, stumbling, toward the bilges, manning overworked emergency pumps. But the wind was rising, sudden violent gusts like the claws of some evil-tempered beast making the tying off of the sails almost impossible. Moichi tried to shout further instructions to his crew but the storm cried him down hysterically.
    The ship canted over, almost capsizing, and Moichi turned, heading back aft to the tiller. He was halfway up the companionway when he heard a cracking from over his head like the sundering of a roofbeam. He did not have to look up to know that the mizzen mast – the thinnest of the clipper’s three masts – had been bent past its breaking point and had splintered.
    He launched himself up the companionway and raced across the shuddering deck. Unmindful of the treacherous footing, he shoved men out of the way of the hardwood as it came crashing down in a bird’s nest of rigging and tackle. Nevertheless, one of the cross-trees struck the first mate across his face, his flesh gashed open as he reeled backward, arms flailing in a vain attempt to right himself.
    Moichi lunged after him, stretching to his full limit, slipping, then catching himself. His powerful fingers encircled the mate’s wrist as a combination of his own momentum and the violent motion of the