King Vogt and the Guardians of the Round Table
I. The Battle of Lake Erie
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
II. The Quest for the Holy Grail
Interlude
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
III. The King of the Wind
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
IV. The King of the Sea
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14. Purple rain hammered down through the eye of the storm as the four black sloops bore down on the three red-sailed schooners.
King Vogt stood at the wheel of the first ship, which now carried Sir Kwan, Ramírez, DeLauter, Adell, Lowe, Bazzana, Halpin, Rocchio, and Martínez.
Beside it, Sir Smith’s schooner had Espino, Cantillo, Cecconi, Bibee, Bailey, Hedges, Fry, and Genao crowded along the rails.
And Willis the Wise held the wheel of the third vessel, with Sir Williams, Messick, Griffin, Gaddis, Sabrowski, Herrin, Festa, and Armstrong at the lines.
Standing on the rail of the lead sloop was Captain Cash, the lime-green feather in his bicorn hat waving frantically in the tempestuous wind.
“We’ll divide and conquer ’em, boys!” he called out. He pointed his cutlass at the schooner on the left. “I want Vogt’s ship. That’s the one that attacked my Demon.” Then he swung toward the second sloop. “Lieutenant Díaz, you’re with me!” And to the others he ordered, “Lieutenants Rasmussen and Baker, you take the other two. We’ll teach them what it means to cross the Cursed Crusaders!”
The four sloops swept in, wedging between King Vogt’s ship. Vogt’s schooner peeled away toward the left edge of the eye with Captain Cash’s sloop-of-war on its stern and Díaz’s close behind. Smith’s and Willis’s veered off to the right, with Rasmussen and Baker on their tails.
As Cash’s bow came within range of Vogt’s ship, Sir DeLauter drew back a harpoon from the stern rail and let it fly. It punched through the shield of the nearest Crusader and knocked him backward off the sloop. The Crusaders still onboard answered at once. Caminero stepped up from the bow of Cash’s sloop, pulled his pike back, and threw with everything he had at Vogt. The pike streaked across the water like a bolt of lime lightning, straight for the helm.
But Sir Halpin was already running. He sprinted the length of the deck, and — leaping in front of King Vogt — snatched the pike out of the air. He crashed down against the stern rail at King Vogt’s feet still holding the burning shaft in his fist.
A green grappling hook came sailing in low across the deck of the schooner and almost clipped Halpin’s outstretched foot. DeLauter lunged for it from one side and Sir Bazzana from the other, but the iron claw skidded between them and caught the rail. The line snapped taut, and Cash’s sloop began reeling the schooner in.
Another pike came whistling at King Vogt, but Sir Bazzana saw this one coming and snatched an oar off the rack… and swung. The pike rocketed back the way it came with a crack like thunder, flying over the sloop’s deck, over its charcoal sail, and into the purple ocean.
With the Crusaders’ eyes still following the flight of the pike Sir Bazzana had just sent back — Sir Rocchio took aim at the man holding the grappling line — and hurled a harpoon that split his shield down the middle. The line slipped from his fingers and went slack, and the schooner lurched free. For a moment, it appeared the Guardians had room to escape.
But when King Vogt looked back to see where Díaz’s sloop was, it was gone.
While Cash pursued the schooner, Díaz had quietly doubled back, and now his black hull — glowing with phosphorescent green and its charcoal sails that dripped ‘727’ — was bearing down on their path. Vogt desperately spun the wheel left, but Díaz’s sloop-of-war was already closing in. There was nowhere left to turn.
“Abandon ship!” King Vogt roared.
The Guardians leapt over the rails. Sir Adell scooped Martínez under one arm as he jumped, and Vogt was the last to let go of the wheel. He dove into the purple water just as Díaz’s black bow struck the whaling schooner. The schooner burst in two as the sloop-of-war charged through it without slowing.
Captain Cash gloated from his rail, “I told you my ships can’t be sunk! But yours sure can!”
King Vogt broke the surface. All around him, the Guardians were clinging to the splintered timbers. Cash’s sloop and Díaz’s swung wide on either side of the wreckage and began to circle in order to come back around, their black hulls drawing a slow, radiant green ring around the men in the water.
But Sir Smith had seen it all.
From the far side of the eye, Smith had watched Díaz’s sloop break away from the chase, and he had known what it meant. He threw his wheel hard over and cut his schooner loose from Rasmussen and Baker, racing back across the eye toward the wreck. Cash’s sloop and Díaz’s were still wheeling around the wreckage when Smith’s red sail slid through the gap in their wake.
“Lines over the side!” Smith shouted, and the shipwrecked Guardians climbed aboard.
But there was no time to waste: on the other side of the eye, Willis’s schooner had been running alone ever since Smith broke away. Rasmussen’s sloop had now slid up alongside it, with Baker’s cutting off any escape. Rasmussen stood calmly at his bow with six grappling hooks at the ready. At his side, Aranda held the loose lines, their coils piled at his feet.
Rasmussen picked up the first hook, swinging it once around his head, and let it go. It sailed high over the trapped schooner and bit into the top of the mast. He sank the second hook low into the base of the mast and the third into the rigging above the yard, each iron digging deep into the wooden whaler.
Aranda passed the ends of the lines to the nearest Crusader and stepped in front of Rasmussen with Walls, and the two raised their shields in front of Rasmussen like a wall. Behind it, Rasmussen kept throwing, swinging a fourth hook, and then a fifth, while the rest of the Crusaders sent burning pikes whistling across the gap at the Guardians’ ship.
The first Crusader volleys found their marks with Sir Messick taking the worst of it. One pike tore past his helmet and another raked his shoulder, but he stood at the rail and hurled harpoon after harpoon until his arm hung heavy at his side. Sir Herrin stepped in to take his place, but no sooner had he reached the rail than a pike struck him square in the chest plate, sending him staggering back against the mast.
Then Sir Armstrong, Sabrowski, and Gaddis stepped to the harpoon rack, and every Crusader who raised a pike was met by an iron point flying the other way. But as the battle raged, Rasmussen’s sixth hook bit into the mast, and the Crusaders hauled on the lines as he swung his sloop away.
Willis threw his whole weight against the wheel, but the schooner would not answer. The mast groaned and bent toward the water until the deck tilted beneath the Guardians’ feet.
“Over the side!” Willis shouted. “Abandon ship!”
The Guardians leapt just as the schooner rolled onto her side — the mast falling like a felled tree — the downed red sail spreading out across the water’s surface.
And then… as the Guardians clung to the hull of the capsized ship… the wail came.
Sir Smith’s schooner was already racing in from the left, with Cash’s and Díaz’s sloops close on her stern. But from the right of the wreckage, a wave rose out of the purple sea in a great chevron and sped toward the capsized ship. Behind the rolling wave rose the giant green barb, cutting through the water like an emerald blade.
Smith’s schooner raced in just ahead of the chevron, pulling alongside the wreck, and the stranded Guardians were hauled aboard. The last man had barely cleared the rail when Smith threw his wheel hard and the schooner swung away. Behind them, the green barb rose high above the capsized hull… and came cracking down like a whip, bursting the ship into splinters.
Cash’s and Díaz’s sloops swept in from either side, and Rasmussen’s and Baker’s closed from the front, until the four sloops-of-war had enclosed the lone schooner. Behind them, the Demon of the Deep rose out of the swell, as the hurricane raged.
A green bolt of lightning shot across the eye of the hurricane, from one edge to the other. The crashing thunder that followed shook the very sea. Every plank on the schooner rattled, and even the Cursed Crusaders flinched. But as the thunder rolled across the water, another sound lingered… a second rumble… deep and resonating. A drumming.
As the rain pelted the Guardians crowded together on the deck of their last ship, the war drum pounding through the storm, and the enemy closing in from every direction, all hope seemed lost. Willis the Wise slammed his staff against the planks.
“Time!”
And everything stopped. The hurricane, the sloops, the Demon rising behind them — even the lightning hung frozen in the sky, one fork stretching down toward the schooner’s mast. But the feverish drumming continued.
King Vogt looked at the Guardians gathered around him, and then at the golden ‘C’s on their chestplates. They were dim now, barely glowing at all. He made his way through the Guardians, and climbed the mast to the crow’s nest, looking down at them.
“My Guardians…,” he began. I know that it looks like the odds are stacked against us. After all, we are up against four sloops-of-war, a hurricane, and a Demon of the Deep. And despite destroying two of the Demon’s gills, we are now down to just one ship. But there is no ship I would rather sail on, and no crew I would rather stand with than you… my Guardians of the Round Table.”
The Guardians gave a rousing cheer before King Vogt went on.
“If we are destined to lose this battle, then at least we will go down together… But that is not our destiny!
“We have come too far, and fought too hard, for this to be how our quest for the Commissioner’s Trophy ends. Remember… we have seen the Holy Grail. Fate would not have shown us the Holy of Holies if we were destined to fail. The Grail taught us to maintain our faith at all costs, and to persevere no matter how daunting the challenge may be.
“And so where do I choose to place my faith? I place my faith with you… my Guardians of the Round Table! Because the challenges we face today are nothing when faced together.”
With that, King Vogt pulled Excalibur from its sheath and raised it high over his head.
“They can break my ships, but they can’t break my faith! Rise, my Guardians of the Round Table! Our destiny awaits!”
Below, Willis’s staff began to shake in his hands.
“Sire,” he said through his teeth. “I can’t hold it any longer.”
As time moved once again, the fork of lightning that had been frozen above the schooner reached down and struck the tip of Excalibur. The lightning raced down the extended blade, turning from green to gold. It poured into the ‘C’ on King Vogt’s chest, then spilled down the mast like St. Elmo’s fire, crackling across the deck and igniting the ‘C’ of every Guardian at once.
The sky crashed with a roll of thunder so monstrous that the Crusaders staggered at their rails. And as the drumming kept pounding away, faster and louder — the golden ‘C’s blazed on the Guardians’ chests — the light radiating from the deck of the schooner, cutting through the darkness.
One boat remained. Two gills to go.