Now
In open ocean
Sailing north
It had taken a little longer than the six hours that Denor had allotted for the ship to set sail, but not overly much. The cannons were all still original, and had been blackwashed over the rust inside the barrels that the shot had to be rammed home with heavy strokes of the loading mallet rather than gently slid down. A good bit of the running rigging was rotten, and one of the topgallant halyards had broken on trying to raise that sail. Some of the packing wedges around the rudderpost were spongy, and were leaking gently. And last but not least, the Aurora sailed now with only thirty six men, rather than the stated minimum of fifty-eight. It was difficult to crew a ship that all the locals knew to be haunted. All of these problems would certainly need to be addressed, and in time they would. But for now, the beautiful Aurora ran north, ten miles off shore, at an easy twelve-knot clip with a fifteen-knot wind abaft the port beam, with only two-thirds of her rig set. The sea was a calm state two, and the waxing moon shone brightly on the inky waters through a cloudless sky. Her motion was easy and she answered to Denor's inexperienced hand with authority, despite the fact that most vessels were sluggish to answer when running. Though he'd commanded dozens of vessels over the course of his career, this was the first one that moved through water with the wind; All the others had moved through space with a plasma turbine or a matter-antimatter reactor. Denor was still struggling to both learn how to command a sailing ship, and to make the crew, such as it was, believe that he could. He'd slipped up a few times earlier in the day, but now had mostly settled in.
He couldn't quite explain it. He'd come to this land with the intent to go north, to see what, if anything, was left of the tower he'd once lived atop, but his desire to see it immediately had become overwhelming in the past few hours. He'd never rushed things, and never would again. Normally, he'd've fitted new Krupp shell-guns in place of the worn, rusty generic four-pounders Aurora now had. He'd've waited the day or two to crew the ship completely, instead of going with the minimum number of men necessary to barely operate some of her expansive rig. Normally, he'd've hauled the ship, replaced the rudderstock and any suspect timbers, and probably would've had her whole hull reskinned with new copper. And certainly he would, when time permitted. But now, for some reason, time did not permit. His mind told him that he had no time, that he needed to be further north, anchored off those same windswept cliffs that he'd left all of fifteen years ago. At some time in the past twenty-four hours, it'd become an compulsion, rather than a simple part of the mission at hand. He no longer simply wanted to see the ruins of the tower, he was obsessed with the very act of being there. He'd rehearsed the scene a dozen times in his mind already; Setting the Auroras' anchor, arming six of his crew for assault should assault become necessary, lowering the gig, and rowing the small boat and his party around the little jutting eye of land that sheltered a crack in the cliffs from the open ocean. There, only a few dozen yards in, and well hidden by washed-up debris, driftwood and the like, was a little stone dock with room for one small boat only, and at the end of it, a stout door that was always locked and could never be opened. Could never be opened, unless of course, the one seeking entrance had a pin to clasp a cape shut that had the shape and likeness of a serpents' eye. And Denor had the serpents' eye pin clasping his cape shut as he'd had for better than twenty years, ever since he'd come to this land the first time around.
Now Denor's black-blue eyes came up to scan the horizon again. Though most human eyes wouldn't detect it for at least another few minutes, the Cardassian Gul could see the faintest traces of a vague muddy dawn trying to assert itself on the mighty darkness. Soon, his head told him, Soon you'll see it.
He didn't change his course yet, partly because he lacked the confidence to con the vessel closer to the shore without the light of morning to help, and partly because the crew hadn't been beaten to quarters yet. He'd learned only today that to be beaten to quarters was to be awoken at dawn by a member of the nightwatch beating a drum to get all crew to their stations. The crew still had almost twenty minutes to sleep.
So he waited the full twenty minutes, foot tapping, and gloved fingers drumming on the rail. The eastern sky grew lighter and lighter until Denor called, "Mister Pearsall, please tell the purser to beat the crew to quarters."
Though it was normally the drummer boy's job to actually beat the drums to rouse the crew, the Aurora had sailed without one, and so the purser was to fill in. It took almost three minutes to get thirty bleary-eyed men assembled on deck with some semblance of order. The night watch had consisted of six men, plus Denor, and the remainder had been allowed to go below to get ready for their first real day of work. They'd assembled in two-minutes and fifty-three seconds. The manual that Mister Heinegen gave him said that it should've taken one minute flat. Obviously, some work needed doing, but that was fine, because Denor was the happiest when working hard and devoting all his thought to the work at hand.
"Mister Pearsall, please drop all canvas, and drop the anchor."
The trim, short man next to Denor nodded and turned to the crew, bellowing, "Topsmen to the yards, riggers to their place! Four 'tweeners to the capstan, and let her out gentle slow!" Nearly the whole of the assembled crew leapt toward their spots. A third of them went up the main shrouds and mizzen shrouds to down the topgallants, mizzen topgallants, and mizzen staysail. Another half of them went to the halyards to douse the main, the jib, the fore staysail, and the foresail. Finally, a few dribbled over to the big winch that raised and lowered the anchor and started to crank it to the left. The single anchor and it's thick chain began a descent into ten fathoms of water. Further shouted orders saw the sails bundled to their booms or stays, tied neatly. Aurora began to drift with the four-knot current, then swung around to face it when her anchor bit deep into the sandy bottom.
It was then, in the moment that the sun had just fully cleared the horizon, that Denor saw it. Oddly, he'd been caught in the moment of watching his newest warship go from motion to rest, her billowing sails be tucked handily away, her clean, black anchor and chain being lowered into the deep blue waters that for moments on end, his newest obsession had slipped his mind. Intellectually, he'd known that he'd see it just around this last crag in the rockface, but that notion had escaped his mind for a short time. But now, he turned, and laid eyes on it for the first time in almost sixteen years. Long before the last three wars he'd fought, long before his father's death, long before the apocalypse he'd both just handed out and had just endured.
Holy God, He thought, It's still there. Damn.
The sun rose over the land just to the right of the Tower, and it was framed by the fire of the newly-risen sun. Though the stout black walls of the tower and the surrounding fortress still stood, the tower itself leaned at a rakish angle, as though tired. Some of the battlements were shattered, and where there had previously been windows, there now were gaping holes. Moss and ivy covered vast portions of stone where fifteen years ago there had been none, and even a small sapling had taken root here and there, where before these would quickly been culled. "Mister Pearsall, please ready the gig and six strong men to accompany me; I'll be going ashore. All men are to arm for assault and HTH." Denor ordered that the 12-man boat be readied and that 6 of the fittest men be assigned to arm themselves with hand weapons and firearms and ammo, but without provision. The essence of assault was to destroy resistance it became a problem, and before reinforcements could be brought to bear. No food or provisions would readily be carried because a successful assault made their carriage unnecessary; It also allowed an assault party to be quick and very mobile.
Pearsall looked up at Denor, who was easily a foot and a half taller. "HTH sir?
"Hand-to-hand combat, Mister Pearsall. Axes and hatchets and knives, if you please. And body armour if anyone has it." Denor replied. It was growing sometimes difficult to reconcile the terms that spacefaring, tech-savvy Denor used with the speech of men who still sailed in wooden ships, and vice-versa. Denor and the crew both were struggling to acclimate.
"Of course, Sir. Rightaway." Pearsall knuckled his head to the hulking Cardassian Sailor.
Denor returned the salute, "Thank you, Mister Pearsall."
And now, it was only minutes before the Cardassian Gul was standing at the bow of the Captains' gig, with six strong men rowing towards the chasm between massive rocks that sat more than two hundred feet below the ruined tower he sought. Though calm at anchor in a six hundred ton corvette, the sea was quite active for a thirty-foot boat here between the rocks, rowing into a fissure nearly thirty meters wide, with shallow rocks all around. The boat they'd taken bounced and jostled with the waves for position. But once they'd gotten away from the huge ocean rollers that crashed against the cliffs above them with incessant fury, had gone deeper into the crack in the cliff face, the sea grew calm enough and only rose and fell six or eight inches. It was just like he'd rehearsed a dozen times in his mind.
They proceeded further into the chasm perhaps twenty meters, and it was then that Denor spied it: His hidden entrance. Eighteen years and some change ago, when Denor had lived in the Spire full-time, he'd done quite a bit of exploring in the lower levels of the tower complex. One of the exits he'd found in that meandering warren was the one he saw and had his men row towards now. It was the lowest, most secret, and most heavily-guarded entrance to the tower complex that he'd found in his days of extensive survey of a facility that probably predated him by several hundred years. It had never opened for him without his serpents' clasp, despite the fact that all other doors in the complex opened at his mere touch. Perhaps there was magic at work here with which he was unfamiliar.
It was a little stone dock carved into the sheer cliff walls, just behind the shelter that the overlapping crack in the rock face provided. It wasn't long enough to accept any vessel larger than that which he'd come in on, and the bobbing journey in was unsupportive of larger vessels regardless. The rope that hung between stone posts was frayed, decayed, and green with age, but was fresh and white in Denors' last mental picture of the scene. Denor had been gone for a long, long time. He leapt from the bow of the boat and onto the stone dock, then he helped the crew tie the boat to the dock securely.
Then he turned, striding towards the big wooden door at the end of the dock. He drew his wicked, soul-drinking Claymore with his left hand and his equally-wicked 12.5mm Devin-Roha automatic combat slugthrower with his right. He hadn't been here in many years, and as always, caution was the word of the day. He held the big automatic pistol towards the door, then turned to the six men he'd come here with.
One was armed with a blunderbuss that looked to be a light cannon, and he had a bandoleer of charges for it. Two more carried muskets, one was silver and the other was blue-black. The other three carried swords and axes, but had on their person at least three muzzle loading pistols each. One had a nice wheel-lock in hand. The big guy with the light cannon whispered, "We're wiv' you, sar. You tellin' us where ta' go." They all crept lightly on the dock after Denor, perhaps taking a cue from his silence.
"You'll stay here for the moment. I go in alone. Listen for my signal, it'll be two shots with the pistol," He held his automatic up. "Two shots in quick succession. Then come in, and kill everything that moves." He turned back towards the heavy wooden door, gave it a glance, then turned toward the hefty guy with the blunderbuss. "And for God Sakes', keep this door open once it's open, but don't pass it unless you hear my pistols." He didn't think they'd be able to pass once he was in, if at all. The door needed to stay open.
"Yessar, I will, sar. Two shots wiv yer pistols. We'll be watin' far 'em" Said the guy with the light cannon.
Denor nodded once then turned to the door he would enter though. He hoped that his pin would work after all this time, and after a heartbeat or two, it did. The door clicked open as he moved within a foot of it, and he pulled it open against rusty hinges. Against the black basalt of the cliffs it guarded, the door was still a weather-beaten white. Denor walked into inky darkness, leaving his away team, such as they were, behind.
He went up one flight of cut-stone steps, then two. The light was fading, and although his away team kept the door open, they only kept it open a foot or two. It was no matter though, but Denor's bioluminescent eyes provided him with all the light he needed. He hadn't been born with them, of course, but now he made good use of them, seeing through darkness that hadn't been pierced in probably ten years. He wound up the spiral stairs that had been cut from raw stone hundreds of years ago with the speed of an olympian sprinter, through darkness that was palpable. This staircase ended near the main library, near Raz's receiving room, if he wasn't mistaken. And he wasn't.
He paused a spiral of steps below the exit point of the secret passage, evil blade in hand and with his big automatic at the ready. He paused just to listen, to wait a moment, to make safe his entrance by any and all means. And it was probably a good thing that he had, because he now heard a female voice calling to see if anyone was home.
He wasn't home, not really, so Denor kept his mouth shut for long minutes, standing on the other side of the wall with both blade and pistol drawn and at the ready, just listening.
