Chapter Fifteen: Flames on the Sea
Magnus was enjoying a light to moderate cool wind blowing from the north east as the schooner made a good pace gliding through the waves towards the east. "What do you think, master?" said Callixtus, who at that moment appeared on deck.
The boy's appearance was very different. He wore a sheepskin jerkin over his shoulders. It left his arms bare and he wore it unbuttoned, leaving his chest also bare. On his back he wore his elf bow with a quiver of arrows, attached by a leather strap running diagonally across his body and attaching to a thin leather belt at his hip. On this belt he wore a hunting knife in a black leather scabbard; the knife had a hilt made of antler.
He wore a small triangle of soft leather hanging from the front of his belt, and another one at the back. Magnus was pleased to note they were only the skimpiest of coverings, and when the breeze blew, or if the boy bent over or indeed did virtually any movement, tantalising glimpses of his assets were easily uncovered. He wore leather wrist bracers, and tightly strapped ankle length leather boots, with a criss cross of leather straps as leggings extending up his calves. Around his neck he continued to wear the lighting flash sigil and the wolf's tooth charm on thin twists of black leather.
Magnus thought the outfit extremely fetching, and said so. He had also given Callixtus a hooded cloak, in the same blue-green colour as the mage's own. This could be worn over all the other gear in cold or wet weather, and came down to below his knees.
Magnus said, "The only problem is that with your bow and quiver there is no room for the knapsack. I will have to carry that myself. But no matter, I only have a few items in it, and there is room for me to carry your cloak in it when the weather does not require you to wear it. Though perhaps we might find a mule to carry our things, and the provisions we will need, when we make our journey to the King of the Mountain."
Just then there was a cry from the lookout - in the Sassid language - which indicated that a sail had been sighted. Magnus and Callixtus could see nothing for a few minutes, but then discerned a schooner approaching from the north with dark grey sails. The Captain joined them on deck.
"What do you think, Tammuz?" said Magnus.
"It's hard to make out, but it seems to be a Black Island ship, judging from the dark sails."
"A pirate?" asked Magnus.
"Of course. They are all pirates." A sudden chill struck Callixtus as he remembered the Fennec youth they had rescued from the Imperial marines back in Avenna. He recalled that the boy had been a captive on a Black Island pirate ship.
Tammuz shouted out some orders and the Sassid sailors, their white robes whipped by the breeze, set about trimming sails and altering course. "He is ahead of us, but bearing down from the north, while we are travelling due east. If we maintain this course he will intercept us. The wind is from the north east so he is on a broad reach, whereas we are close reached and so cannot outrun her unless we alter course to the south. I am afraid this may take us out of our way."
"So be it" said Magnus. "We cannot risk being taken."
The tension grew over the next hour as the pirate ship gained steadily on them, aided by its skilful handling and sleek lines. Tammuz's taut expression showed that he looked at it with growing concern. "Darkness will fall in two hours" he said. "If we can hold her off till then, we may have a chance."
Callixtus, fingering his bow, said "Can we not fight her off, captain?"
"No" said Tammuz. "This is not a fighting ship, whereas they are trained for piracy from childhood. And besides, Joab gave me strict instructions to avoid danger. He must have great love for you, Magnus", and the captain allowed a sardonic smile to play on his features. The effect on his scarred face was rather grotesque, thought Callixtus.
Soon the other ship was in clear view, and there was no longer any doubt that it was anything other than a Black Island pirate. Suddenly, a fiery bolt fired from a small ballista on board shot out, though it fell well short. Now, shouts and roars from the pirate ship carried to them across the wind, and they could see a gang of dark-clad bearded men crowding the bows of the enemy vessel and brandishing axes and bows.
Before long, more fiery bolts arched towards them, and one struck the beam of the ship a glancing blow before falling harmlessly into the sea. Callixtus ran to the stern and fitted an arrow to his bow. "No Callixtus! Come back!" called Magnus, but for the first time in his life the boy ignored him. Standing in full view of the stern, he became a target for half a dozen arrows, but all fell around him, some into the sea but some onto the deck; one lodged quivering in the stern a few inches from his right leg. Callixtus fired several shots in quick succession - without effect - before Magnus dragged him back and pushed him down.
A sudden change in the wind left the sails of the Sassid ship flapping as the frightened sailors were caught off guard. Sensing their advantage, the pirates glided closer and prepared grappling hooks. They were only a dozen ship lengths away, and another fiery bolt came crashing through the rigging, tangling in it and setting it alight.
Callixtus crouched on the deck and looked up at Magnus, who stood boldly upright at the stern and took out the Oriflamme from inside his tunic. As more arrows hissed around him, he held it up in his left hand and raised his staff with his right, pointing it directly at the pirate ship, while pronouncing a loud incantation whose words were whipped away by the wind - though as they were in the mystic tongue of the mages, Callixtus could not understand them. Suddenly, and with a loud crack, a ball of flame shot from the tip of his staff and exploded with a fiery detonation right in the heart of the pirate ship. From all sides, sheets of flame erupted and spars and rigging flew out - some burning pieces rained down on the Sassid ship, one of them catching Callixtus a glancing blow on the shoulder. The pirate ship, engulfed in flames, had come to an abrupt stop, and shouts and screams came to them across the water. Within minutes, the ship became a towering column of flame, then broke up and sank with a shudder beneath the sea.
The shaken Sassid sailors quickly put out the small fires which the enemy bolt and the burning debris had caused, and resumed course to the east. There was no attempt to look for survivors. "Behold the power of the Oriflamme" said Magnus with a stern voice. Tammuz gave a grim smile.
The rest of the voyage passed without incident. There were no injuries except for the bruising on Callixtus's shoulder where he had been struck by debris from the pirate ship. Magnus was, for the first time, seriously angry with him and spoke to him so harshly about his foolish irresponsibility in risking his life for, as Magnus put it, no real purpose except youthful bravado, that the boy burst into tears. But then the mage kissed him gently and put him to bed, carefully tending his bruise and pronouncing an incantation over it which had the effect of immediately removing all pain and discolouration, though leaving his shoulder and neck a little stiff for a day or two.
The Sassid sailors, on the other hand, were delighted with Callixtus after that, and looked at him with renewed respect; and as for Magnus, they kept an awed and reverential distance, bowing low to him whenever he appeared on deck and calling out "Skarruz na gellum! Skarruz na gellum!" Callixtus asked the captain what this meant, and he told him it was the Sassid for "Wielder of Flames", and was the new name they had bestowed on the mage.
Magnus seemed indifferent or even bored and irritated by these salutations. In truth, he was thinking what a splendid bauble the Oriflamme was, and what a pity it seemed to sell it to the King of the Mountain.
Two days later, early in the morning, a sailor called Callixtus from his bunk. He did not understand what he was saying, but followed him on deck where he found Magnus and Tammuz staring at the eastern horizon, where the sun was rising to reveal a brown shore line with distant mountains behind. "Look, Callixtus, we will make landfall soon."
"Is this the country of the King of the Mountains?" asked the boy.
"Not exactly. This is the coastline of Phyrgia, once a great and powerful kingdom, but overrun many centuries ago by other peoples. The inhabitants call themselves Phyrgians, and speak a bastard version of the ancient Phyrgian tongue, but in truth only a few of them are descended from the ancient inhabitants. I have been here before, and we can expect a hospitable welcome. But our true destination lies in the mountains, several days journey inland. We will hire a pack mule and a guide to take us to the Mountain Kingdom."
And so it came to pass that they soon bade a warm farewell to Tammuz and his crew. Callixtus thought the small town where they landed scruffy and dirty and looking , and poverty stricken compared to the cities of the Empire or even the towns of the Cheskans and Veskans. But they were invited to dine in the villa of the leading merchant, a fat and courteous man named Bagaois, dressed in brightly coloured robes and with his beard dyed a curious shade of green.
Callixtus found it strange to be reclining on divans to eat and not sitting on a chair at a table, as was the custom nearly everywhere else he had been. Magnus pronounced the wine "barely tolerable" - though not within earshot of their host - but they were served multiple dishes of tasty food, more heavily spiced than Callixtus was used to.
Callixtus said, "Master, I have never seen so many rent boys here - almost every boy I saw while walking through the town seems to be on the game! Is this really the case?"
"No, my boy" laughed the mage. "All youths and young men adopt the customary dress of the Phyrgians, which as you have noticed is a collection of leather straps leaving the buttocks and genitals exposed, and which is also the uniform favoured by rent boys in the Empire, who derived the dress from here. But you will note that older men wear trousers and shirts of light coloured linen underneath the straps, and those strange red caps which are the badge of the married. Whether the Rivermen of the Empire, who wear caps in the same style, are also descended from the same ancestors, or merely influenced by them culturally, is an interesting question on which there is no scholarly consensus....."
Bagaios - who feared with some reason that Magnus was about to embark on a lengthy discussion of the ethnography of the Phyrgians - swiftly interjected. "I have arranged the best guide in the town to take you to the King of Mountain. Very good, very experienced, and speaks your language. But not cheap - I'm afraid I must ask for one hundred silver crowns." Magnus raised his eyebrows. Bagaios sighed and said, "Although as you are my friend I will accept eighty and cover the loss myself." The old hypocrite was certainly pocketing a healthy commission on the guide's fee already, thought Magnus, but as Joab had handed him a fat purse from the funds of the Order of Mages, he counted out the coins without demur.
Later that evening, as they retired to a guest room in Bagaios's villa, Magnus said - "I'm annoyed that the merchant has foisted a guide of his own choosing on us. I bet it's someone old and hideous. I noticed lots of cute youngsters clad in those adorable leather straps, with all their splendid tackle dangling free, and I'm sure I can prevail on one of them to act as our guide instead."
Callixtus said, "But I would be very angry with you, master, if you did such a thing."
" Yes, I suppose you'd be jealous."
Magnus was sitting on the bed getting undressed, and Callixtus approached him and said "No I wouldn't be! I wish you wouldn't tell me how I'm feeling when you don't know!"
"Calm down, dear boy, you are flushed and agitated, though I can't think why" said Magnus.
Callixtus said, "Don't you see how annoying you are? You blew up at me because you said I risked my life for nothing shooting arrows at the pirate ship - though I don't regret it, because after all it gave some encouragement to the Sassid sailors - but now you are considering something as stupid as hiring a guide based entirely on his looks! You will certainly want a pretty boy with his cock dangling free, which means he will have as much experience at finding his way to the Mountain King as I would! Don't you see that we have to take an experienced guide? We can't allow ourselves to be swayed by...by...frivolous notions of yours or we will certainly get killed for nothing! Joab told us that the road to the Mountain Kingdom is dangerous!"
Callixtus had worked himself up into quite a state and was almost shouting - he went red in the face and concluded his speech by placing his palms on Magnus's chest and shoving him back, so that the mage fell back on the bed with a look of astonishment on his face.
"I...I'm sorry, master. I forgot myself."
After a pause, Magnus gave a chuckle. "Well, that was quite a performance. I've never seen that side to you before. But you are quite right, of course. We will take whichever guide Bagaios has allocated to us. I'm sorry - I am frivolous at times. I'm also sorry I spoke so harshly to you a couple of days ago about the battle with the pirates. I can see you are still upset about that, and I didn't mean to hurt you. It's just that I would be so very, very devastated if anything happened to you."
Callixtus said, "Well, I'm sorry too. I was upset because you were angry, but that's because I hate to be the cause of making you angry and unhappy when you chose me to make you happy. At least, I think you did."
"Of course I did" said Magnus, "And you do make me happy. But now you can make me even happier if you slip out of those clothes, fetching though they are, and come into bed with me. From tomorrow, we will be on strange paths and dangerous ways, and there is no telling when we may be able to take our pleasures again."
Callixtus did as he was bid, and soon he was lying on his side. He held up his outer leg so Magnus could gain easy access; the mage reached round and grasped Callixtus's cock as he thrust inside him from behind. Ten minutes later, Callixtus felt all his tension drain away from triple causes: the mage had wanked him to orgasm, the sensation of the mage's warm and pulsating cock inside him, and the feeling of pleasurable repletion from the mage's gushing seed, released deep in his innards.
They both fell into a contented sleep.