Bookworld Online: Marsh Man

It took two weeks to make the alterations and additions to the ship, while I trained the crew to really fight, and I also brewed number ten potion constantly. Either luck was on our side with the calm waters, or it was unseasonably warm and the winds were not going to be of much use for a while. The crew thought it was a mix of both, especially when we extended the masts and the extra sails being added didn't even rock the ship.

One of the biggest alterations we made was adding a bigger deck onto the front of the ship and then mounted two cannons under it, one on each side of the bow spirit. We also added two cannons to the back of the ship. We could now fire at a ship we were chasing or at a ship that was chasing us. To say that the crew was extremely happy at the new capability of the ship, was an understatement.

It was a good thing that I already had a full and unaltered movement enchantment installed. It wasn't going to do much on such a large ship, especially with me trying my best to increase my magic use and could only use one enchantment at a time. With a ship this big, at least three movement enchantments would be needed and as far as I knew, I was the only person on the ship that could run an enchantment.

That thought made me pause, because I knew a very simple test to find someone that has the potential. The problem was, a lord going around kissing random people wasn't going to go over well with the crew. At least, that's what I thought. When I mentioned the test that mages could use to find potential recruits, every single woman on the ship came together and formed a line.

“If I didn't know you were an honest bastard, I'd seriously consider castrating you for kissing my woman.” Jensen said to me.

Molly was the first woman in the line and she was blushing slightly. She could easily hear him and she ducked her head a little.

“It's just a peck to see if their lips tingle.” I reminded him.

“Yeah, you're a right bastard.” Jensen said with a grin and the men around us laughed. “With my luck, she's going to make your whole face tingle.”

I gave him a smile and pat his shoulder. “If she does, I'll give her a crash course in what I know, then this ship will have two people that can make it better.”

Jensen nodded and stepped back.

I waved Molly forward and she blushed a bit more. “Please excuse the intrusion.” I said and leaned forward to lightly touch my lips to hers and added a bit of magic. Her whole face seemed to light up and my lips almost vibrated at her responding magic.

“By the Son's Light!” Jensen gasped.

I held in my laugh at his reaction and stepped back. “Molly, please step to the side and I'll talk to you more later.”

Molly nodded her head and went with her man over to the side of the ship. When they were far enough away, she grabbed him tightly and kissed him hard. The crew gave appreciative noises and shouts, then the two of them went inside the ship.

“I guess I'll talk to her much later.” I said and that made a lot of the men laugh.

My maid was next and Ann gave me a happy and sad look.

“I am not your lord right now. I'm testing for magic.” I said and she nodded. “Please excuse the intrusion.” I said and lightly brushed her lips with mine and added magic... only to get nothing.

“Whew. What a relief.” Ann said and took her place behind me.

That make some of the women laugh, because they all knew that she took her maid duties very seriously. If she had to split her work to also learn magic, her maid job would suffer.

My slave Hanna was next and after a brief kiss, her lips only slightly tingled.

“Were you tested with crystals before?” I asked as I had her step aside.

Hanna nodded. “When I was a little girl.”

I nodded back and turned to the next woman in the line. I kissed her and there was nothing. The line advanced and I only found one other woman that had a partial tingle and it was the young woman that refused to use a different sword. That meant my idea to give her an enchanted weapon had been the correct one.

“Why aren't you testing the men?” The last woman in the line asked after I kissed her.

“Biology and social rules.” I said and she looked surprised. “I love my betrothed and she is the beautiful woman that rescued me. I won't betray her trust by breaking a social taboo.”

“You're not our type, either!” The men shouted and they all laughed.

With two new students to learn from me, I had my work cut out for me. Of course, I wasn't going to teach them the academy way. No, my way was what was needed, especially with the movement and weight enchantments that I had installed on the ship and would install the multiples that were really needed. I also thought about reproducing Kracken Tubes, now that I had potential recruits that could launch them with me.

I pushed that idea aside, because I would need them for moving the ship. Well, to power the enchantments that I would use to move the ship. They would need a lot more practice with magic to be trusted to run the enchantments on their own. If given enough time, I'll have them at that point and our smaller boats will skim across the open seas to assault the more dangerous targets. Namely, the Eastern Empire's warships and the Kingdom Of Fata's ships, if we could find them.

The thought made me smile and the crew responded in kind. They recognized my feral smile, because they had their own.

“You just had a great idea.” One of the men said.

“Yes, I did.” I said and looked over at the piles of wood that we hadn't used. “Who wants to help me build an assault craft to assault military ships?”

Nearly every hand shot up into their air, because they all had their own reasons to hate navy personnel. They also knew that the navy ships always had slaves to be rescued and sometimes pay for their crews.

We got to work and at one point Jensen reappeared with a huge smile on his face. He gave me a pointed look and then whispered that he didn't mind me kick-starting his wife every few days if she was going to react like that with him afterwards. That made me smile and I agreed, as long as he was always right there to benefit from it.

Half an hour later, we had the keel and hull constructed, to everyone's surprise. Even seeing the ship's attachments being built, it didn't quite hit home that what we were doing was more magic than anything they had ever seen before. I added the protection, weight, and movement enchantments, altered to be weaker and concealed, of course.

I also made four small Kracken Tubes, square unfortunately, since we had limited ammunition and I didn't have any springy trees. They were less efficient and that was okay, since we would be up close and personal to the ships we were going to attack and the longer range wasn't needed.

Instead of adding the metal heads that we didn't have the metal for anyway, I left the heads flat and added the reverse of the fire suppression enchantment and made it create fire instead, just like my firestarter spell. Anything it hit would burst into flames and no one believed me... until the first test run an hour after that.

One of the crew had found a big piece of driftwood from the crow's nest and I declared that it was an enemy ship for us to assault. The crew cheered and we hooked up the pulleys to our new assault boat and hefted it over the side. Once it was in the water, I was lowered down into it and three others climbed down into the boat with me. It had oars and they were unnecessary.

“Get your weapons ready and hold on!” I said and they did so, then I poured my magic into the movement enchantment.

“WOOOHOOOO!” The three men yelled in delight as the boat took off and the crew behind us cheered loudly.

I swerved us to the left and to the right, simulating cannonballs being shot at us and telling them so, and the men with me and the crew on the ship kept cheering. I touched the Kracken Tube at the front of the ship and activated the enchantments as I hit the mini-catapult release. Everyone immediately fell silent when the rectangle missile shot out like a rocket and slammed right into the side of the driftwood... and then exploded as fire engulfed the now mangled driftwood.

“YYEEAAAHHHH!” Everyone cheered.

I brought the assault boat over to let the men slam their swords into the burning driftwood, then I swung us around and took us back to the ship. As we approached the ship, I saw writing on the bow.

“Who put that on the side of our ship?” I asked and pointed.

The cheering died down and one of the slave men tentatively put up his hand, as if he expected to be chastised.

“Good work! Now we don't have to come up with the name!” I shouted and they all cheered again. I brought us to the side of the ship, the boat was reattached, and the men crawled up as I rode the boat up. “Give me another week and then it will be time to start making ourselves known.”

“Take two!” One of the crew said and they all nodded.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“You've been working day and night, sir.” Jensen said as he and Molly held each other on the deck. “Take a day off. Or two.”

Everyone around us nodded.

“What am I going to do with a day off?” I asked.

“BATH!” They yelled.

Ann was suddenly there in front of me with a huge smile on her face, grabbed my hand, and dragged me away. The crew laughed as I was easily manhandled by the older woman and then Hanna was there to help her. They were still laughing when the door to the ship slammed shut and I was taken to the bath room.

I actually did take the two days off from working on the ship and spent the time working with Molly, Hanna, and the young woman with the sword named Gella. The first thing I did was have them push their will into my sword. Molly made it glow as much as I could and Hanna and Gella only made it softly glow.

I told them I would teach them what I could in the short time we had. They had promised to work hard, and we did so.

_______________

Montage mode engaged. Skipping details. Speeding up time. Done.

_______________

Molly took to enchanting like a near-duck to water. She had carved her first enchantment successfully on the second day and even charged it up using my enchanting potion. Neither Hanna nor Gella had the fine hand work experience to handle the enchanting tools and could only empower the enchantments.

I didn't tell them that they were lacking, though. No, I told them that finding someone like them was like finding a needle in a haystack and that finding someone like Molly was like that same needle in a haystack that was a mile wide. The three of them were shocked by my words and stared at me.

“You're also getting paid more.” I said and that made them catch their breath. “You are each doing two jobs and this is a working man's ship.”

The three of them exchanged smiles, almost feral as the ones the men had when they were about to assault an enemy ship. I thought they were going to attack me and instead they attacked the work in front of them. They worked harder than they had before and Molly had a second enchantment done that night while Hanna and Gella powered everything to try and get their magic to a higher level.

For the next two weeks, I continued to teach them magic during the evenings after they did their normal jobs during the day. I also kept training the crew to keep fighting like the elite soldiers in the Gulf Kingdom and we built another assault boat for the other side of the ship to balance it out. Molly was the driver and Jensen assigned himself to her group to ensure that nothing happened to her. She loved him all the more because of that.

*

A week later, everyone in the latest port stared with open mouths as the very large and wide frigate floated into the bay. No one had ever seen anything like it before and the crew around me, preened proudly. I never asked where they got the paint and wood stains to make the ship look so nice. A couple of the slaves had been work crew members and had taken to using my number ten potion like Frank and his crew back at the Henrietta Longshore estate.

Scrollwork and designs were all over everything to make it look like gold filigree on a black background. One of the women slaves even sewed up a couple of flags for us. One was for using in port and was bright and colorful. The other was pitch black and had a skull and crossed swords under it that we used on the open waters when being pirates.

We didn't call our ship The Frigging Frigate for no reason.

We couldn't dock normally, so we had to use the smaller boats as ferries for both crewmen and supplies. The looks of envy we received was exactly what the crew had wanted and their opinion of me was raised even more. We were becoming that which I promised, the best pirate ship on the ocean, and only needed to find more targets to prove our worth.

I used my vigilance technique and roamed my eyes over the ships that were in the bay and I found one that we had been looking for. A warship from the Eastern Empire. I nodded at Jensen and then at the ship, then we both showed identical feral smiles on our faces as we started to plan.