Travels with a Yellow Bird Part 7: Dragoon Warship Arrives

>Last time on Travels with a Yellow Bird
>To lure out the pirates, you crippled a Dragoon freighter, smoke chumming the sky like blood in the water
>The pirates come
>You fought the pirate Four Tails in her red cutter, the Dementmador
>The greedy pirates failed to bring their full wrath upon you when they see your crew is mostly men
>Taking advantage of your harpy's arsonist skillset and the lizardgirl prisoner's strength you manage to use a mine to blow a large hole below the waterline of the pirate ship and capsize it.
>Your ship is damaged and you are down to a party of six but you stand victorious

Time to pick up some new crew.


The more brazen surviving pirates make directly for the windjammer as they bail from their ship like drowning rats. I order more scattershot into the light guns on deck. When their first lifeboat disintegrates into a storm of bodies and splinters, the rest turn from our path. I feel sick as I see some tall red monster with a single horn survive the blast. Bleeding from a dozen wounds, she still holds fast to chunk of jetsam. It drives home just how even a once great human nation like Auk could be overrun with an army of soldiers like these.

"Find any humans you can and pick the best looking three." Flit screeches. "Take a scale or two if you must. We know the cell below will hold them. I wouldn't trust the others."

After most of an hour of searching, we drag three humans out of the water, one brawny tall woman even bigger than our goliath Stan, one small tough woman covered in northern furs and a myriad of fine twisted tattoos, and a haggard young man who couldn't be more than fifteen.

All claim to be worthy sailors, and they have experience in the straights and reefs of Natans. All are willing to sail with us, though the young cabin boy admits his job was usually as one of the captain's "comforts". The other two are hardened pirates skilled in sailing, gunnery, and close combat. I'll have to watch them. For now I order them to their first task.

The Dementmador is safe to salvage now, her crew all swimming toward a safe distance from the sucking whirlpool when she eventually goes down. We don't have much time but I will make use of what I can. I put the new conscripts to work with my crew salvaging a few of the carronade from the once feared pirate ship as she continues to sink deeper in the water. I look to the burning freighter on the horizon. We have little time in more ways than one.

Flit returns to the forward deck after taking Elsa back to the brig. She hops over dents and splinters and loose ropes to join me at the rail watching the crew ferry a second new cannon to our upgunned patrol boat. She still smells awfully of burning oil and tar. "This goes without saying, but I'll be guarding you even more closely now. No more sneaking off in the middle of the night to treat with that Lizarda whore."

"You made me worry about you there earlier." I ignore her implication.

"Worry about yourself and your crew first scribe boy." Flit seems much more bothered than usual. She'd usually be ecstatic with such a win. Instead her feathers puff out, fine pretty face creased in a frown.

"You going to tell me what's really wrong?" I ask her. This harpy has just gotten bitter and mopey since the full moon.

Flit scratches my leg with a sharp talon. "Even over this smell choking my lungs, I can smell the lizard on you. You won't even sleep in the same bed as me and yet you flirt with the enemy. What else can I do to protect you from your own stupidity? And now you've brought more dangerous women on board. I won't even say 'D-don't let your guard d-down." Flit stutters as I tussle her hair.

I grin. "Don't get jealous. You know the three laws the chief laid down for this trip."

We're hauling up the second cannon as the mate in the crow's nest shouts down that they've spotted another ship. "Dragoon interceptor! Big ironship and closing fast."

>Try to outrun it with a crippled foremast, hope they assist the freighter first
>Engage them in battle with your smaller damaged ship
>Other

There's no way would can survive a true Dragoon warship in our state. We got what we came for, crew and a key through Natans. Time to close up shop. "All hands, haul us around and put that freighter between us and those Dragoon long guns! Then best speed ahead." I bellow. Our new monster of a woman muscles two crew out of her way. She wraps the ropes stretched through the pulleys holding up the cannon around her wrists. Huge shoulder muscles flex and she takes the whole load in her own arms. For the first time I notice she's wearing large gold weights on her ankles. How the hell could anyone swim like that? The rest of the crew scatters into the rigging and hauls up our longboat.

After a few minutes the black smoke of the freighter obscures the oncoming ship. We're sailing against the current. I hope desperately we're making good enough time. My heart drops as I see the huge iron gunboat swing around the freighter and continue on a beeline towards our leaky old windjammer.

"They're still gaining." I hear the crow yell down in response to my stare. I see much the same through my own spyglass.

I spot dark clouds ahead and an idea strikes me as I scramble over the deck and head down into the Captain's quarters. There may be a way to lose them yet. The magic map sits solidly on the table, not slipping with the motions of the ship over the waves. I observe the storm gathering on the horizon. A small gray smear catches my notice. I take out a magnifying glass from the cartography chest. To my amazement, I see it's smoke, smoke from the burning freighter. I search the nearby waters. Only now do I notice a little black speck where we should be, sails billowing, small white wake trailing behind. "Magic map indeed." I whisper. I can see the Dragoon ship closing the distance slowly. They will surely catch us by nightfall. I look for options close by but every choice is a gamble. I'll need to make a call soon.

>Take refuge in the storm
>Attempt to repair the foremast and sails before nightfall
>Make for the pirate port of Prorepo
>Cajole any Dragoon warship info I can from Elsa
>Other

I decide to burn some of my precious time on the chance for new info that might tip the balance in my favor. Elsa waits in her cell, as always. She recognizes the sound of my footsteps by now and I notice her smile a little before calming her face into a more neutral expression.

"Not even half a day and here you are again." She laughs, her ears flaring out and her green scaled tail swinging slowly from side to side. "Trouble will always hunt you in Dragoon waters." She turns her dead eye toward me."Count your favors carefully hero. I am."

It looks like the battle did wonders for her mood. The lizardgirl has a genuine bloodlust that mixes with her passion. I ask her about patrolling warships: the types, the kind of crew they sail with, asking her all questions about description of the ship I can.

Elsa thinks hard for a moment. "The officers on a warship like that are decorated and wealthy enough to be married. They likely have husbands to return to at home. That means they won't hesitate to order this ship sunk if you push them. They'll bully the crew into it if they have to." Elsa licks her lips and stretches in her dress smelling of gunsmoke, cloth shifting over her modest chest.

"This windjammer can outrun them if you had it in top shape, but even without my eyes I can feel it drag in the water. It's damaged and overloaded with supplies and weapons." Elsa stops.

"What about how this boat will handle a strong storm?" I shift gears. Time is short.

Elsa motions me toward the door's grate with a shining black claw. She sniffs my shirt as I approach the bars. "That's all you get for free." She whispers.

>Ditch supplies to lighten the ship
>Ditch ammunition to lighten the ship
>Ditch weapons to lighten the ship
>Ditch balast to lighten the ship
>Attempt to repair the foremast and sails
>Head into the storm
>Offer Elsa another favor
>Other

Pick 3

I can't risk owing more favors to Elsa right now. There's something downright unsettling about her. I can't quite put my finger on it. I wonder if all the Dragoon soldiers on the front are like that. It would explain all the horror stories told around the campfires I heard as a child.

I need to run what I know by Flit, see what materials we can spare to dump off the ship, and what repairs we can get done realistically in the hours we have. Elsa grabs my shirt through the door as I turn to leave. "Come back when you reach the shallows of Natans. I'll be wanting one of my favors then, if you make it that far." She kisses my shoulder awkwardly, blushing when I brush her cheek.

Flit is waiting above deck on lookout when I step back into the sun. The rest of the crew is still hard at work coaxing every bit of speed they can out of the sails and clearing debris from the planks.

"Back from courting the scale are you?" Flit huffs.

"Courting info." I correct her. "Not much we didn't already know except the ship chasing us won't be particularly merciful, even to men." I kick a fragment of wood painted red into the sea. "We need to get moving faster or we need to hide."

I tell Flit what I see the possibilities on the table are. She shakes her head. "I've just been a little rattled today. I should have gone over this with you earlier." She tucks in her big wings and buries her face in my shirt. "I'm sorry! I've been so worried I haven't been doing my job." She sniffles and cheeps like a little chick. "If I can't think then I'm just as featherbrained and useless as those harpies in your stories."

I hear our new tall crewman shout to break it up. If we're lucky there's time for weeping later.

Flit, suddenly aware of all the eyes on her, straightens up. She turns to the railing, wiping her eyes once with her wing. The harpy clears her throat. "We don't have the manpower to do more than one task at a time. There's two things we can try. The first is to dump our supplies and head into the storm." She points her long yellow wing at the storm clouds.

"If we drop our sails as it blows over us, we have a good chance of making it. We take our odds on escaping when it's over. It will be a race to who can get rigged up first and we have the smaller ship. That might get us a good enough lead. But still dangerously risky." She tweets 'risky' with her sweet trill, confident voice gaining traction again.

"The second is to dump our ballast, avoid the storm, and head straight to the outermost Natans reefs. With the ballast gone, we should gain enough draft and speed to buy time to juryrig a partial sail to what's left of the foremast. We'll be dangerously unbalanced. There won't be time to shift around our cargo until the sail is set up. If a big wave hits us in the meantime, it could capsize the ship. Once the sail is up we should be able to begin to pull away. If we give up supplies, we won't have that problem. I just don't know if the weight is enough. It might take almost all our supplies and some of the ammunition." Flit leans against the railing, judging the speed of the water going by.

"But if the wind happens to die, and the Dragoon break out their oars, well I guess it won't be any different than if that happened now." Flit shrugs, then smoothes some feathers with her nose.

"Once we get to the reefs, our smaller size and shallower draft should let us lose them completely." She looks in my eyes, her own golden orbs tinted red. "What say you Captain?"

>Ditch ballast, head for the reefs
>Ditch 2 weeks of supplies, hide in the storm
>Ditch all 3 weeks of supplies, 2 battles of munitions, head for the reefs
>Other

OUR STORY CONTINUES NEXT TIME