Bone Lord 4, стр. 51
My mind was simultaneously inside the kraken, directing its furious limbs, flinging warships around as if they were mere toys, smashing them to splinters, and dragging them to a watery grave below the depths.
It didn’t take much longer to win the battle. Most of the enemy ships ended up sinking, of their own accord or dragged down by the kraken. The few that were left on the surface were burning pyres, with all hands on deck dead. Once the fires finished burning through them, they too would end up as wrecks on the seabed below.
Percy stared wide-eyed at the aftermath all around him. “That was the greatest sea battle I’ve ever seen, Captain Chauzec.”
The waves were littered with flotsam and jetsam from the destroyed fleet, and thousands of dead bodies.
“Now that we own the seas,”I said, “we head straight for Yeng.”
“Aye aye, Captain Chauzec!” Percy exclaimed. “I’ll pass on your command to all the ships.”
I only raised a handful of the Transcendent Sails men from the dead: the highest ranked commanders. They would be serving as my messengers to the Church from now on. I pulled back most of the anti-putrefaction magic from them. I wanted the flesh to rot on their bones. I wanted them to stink and invoke revulsion and disgust in everyone who saw them. I half regretted turning the Grand Commander into a tree, because he would have been perfect as a messenger, sent directly to Elandriel—after a few months of rotting, that was.
I assembled my new zombie messengers before my party. They were dripping wet after having been dredged by my sharks from the ocean depths. They still looked almost alive, having died so recently, but the vacantly lifeless stares in their glowing yellow-green eyes were a dead giveaway.
“They certainly are your most regal-looking zombies,” Layna commented. “And their armor is rather exquisite.”
“A suit of armor like this is worth more than a thousand peasants’ lifetime wages combined.” Rollar examined one of the zombies’ full plate armor, etched all over with the intricate designs of a master artist.
“And they have the gall to preach the virtues of modesty and a humble lifestyle, dressed like this,” Elyse spat. “I cannot believe how blind I have been to the Church of Light’s hypocrisy.”
“This is what all those tithes are drained into,” Friya remarked. “We in the North, with our Wise Women and Shamans, we never ask for fees to heal people or help them with spiritual matters, and we build no grand cathedrals. We saw the Church of Light’s hypocrisy long before they came to the North, and this is why my tribe fought so hard to prevent them from digging their claws into our society and brainwashing us, like they’ve done with much of the rest of Prand.”
Rollar sighed. “It is a pity my tribe did not fight harder against them.”
“You like brother to me, Rollar,” Drok said as he gripped Rollar’s hand. “Don’t matter if your tribe believe in Church of Light. You believe in Old Gods. You a true Northman!”
Rollar grinned and said something to Drok in their barbarian language, to which Drok responded in the same tongue, and both of them burst out laughing, as did Friya.
“What did you say to him?” I asked.
“I said if he really considers me a tribal brother, he’d let me fuck his sister,” Rollar answered. “Then he said, ‘I like you, brother, I wouldn’t want you to go through an ordeal like that’!”
I had to laugh too; if Drok’s sister looked or smelled anything like he did, I wouldn’t want to fuck her either.
I returned my attention to my new zombie commanders. “How do I get these guys to rot as fast as possible?” I asked. “They should look and smell like total abominations by the time they get to Elandriel.”
“Heat, damp, and darkness, a place with such conditions is the quickest way to get a corpse to become very foul very quickly,” Isu answered.
“I’ll stick them in the cargo hold then, and get some zombies to keep a small fire burning down there,” I said.
Anna-Lucielle wrinkled her nose and crinkled her face. “Ugh, I don’t even want to think about what they’ll be like after a few weeks of that.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t have to be around them while they’re getting to the point of advanced decay,” I said. “We can’t be too far from Yeng now, right, Percy?”
“Aye, Captain Chauzec,” he said. “We’re about three or four days from landfall, I’d say.”
“Then let’s get some rest and prepare ourselves for the next phase of this quest,” I said. “You all fought hard, and you fought well in this battle. You deserve some rest.”
“You fought harder than any of us, Vance,” Layna said. “And I wouldn’t describe what I did in the battle as fighting hard. No, it was good fun! These ballistae are wonderful toys, and it is quite a sight to see one of their gigantic spears obliterate an entire squadron of men. I was quite sad to see the end of the battle, to be honest. I’ll have to order my engineers in Aith to build some ballistae. Mm, I could use them for public executions …” She rubbed her spider limbs together and smiled with patent vicious delight.
Everyone began to disperse, eager to get some rest after the battle. Friya stayed back, waiting for the others to go, as did Elyse. They