text: The drumming of the rain against the sails increased its rhythm with each passing minute. The growing sea undulated under the boat and the thunder grew louder as we tried to beat the storm. I squinted my eyes, trying to see through the water dripping from my brow. To the North, I could see Alessia’s boat battling against the swell. She had already left an hour earlier, deciding the ocean would be too violent to risk towing an empty ship. The islanders of Deer Drum would have to face this one without an experienced guide. After two weeks of sailing, the boat was now truly theirs. I watched Xander as he walked down the steps from the raised quarterdeck treading the length of the ship. I followed him down, sensing an urgency in his walk. “Sirad,” he shouted out. Sirad turned and noticed him. “Get the kids and anyone not on duty beneath deck. This gets worse before it gets better.” “Good idea,” Sirad said before turning. “Lachlann, be ready on that front sail.” Lachlann nodded in return. There was another crack of thunder, the sea briefly illuminated by a lick of lightning “What do you need me to do?” I asked. Xander stopped and laughed. “I thought you're supposed to be the knowledgeable one.” “Not anymore,” I called back, shaking my face as clumps of rain fell to the floor. Xander looked off to our starboard side. “What do you think of those waves?” “They’re going to keep getting worse.” He nodded. “We can’t go around the storm. If we don’t turn we’re gonna get smacked on the sides till we capsize.” “I’d agree.” “Tell Eir to turn into the waves,” he said. I ran back up the boat, climbed the steps and relayed the message to the helmswoman. “I was just thinking the same thing,” Eir said. She took a deep breath in and shouted at the top of her lungs. “Heads up. Beam coming round.” She steered the boat to the right, heading towards the eye of the storm. As the angle of the wind changed, the two giant gaff sails began swinging round. I ducked as the rear sail flew across at head height and out to the port side. We crashed into a wave at a three-quarter angle, spray flying up into the night sky, touching the top of the mast. The water landed on the deck, creating a wash across the surface of the boat; ropes, fabric, anything not nailed down was dragged a few metres before the water poured out the other side. “Everyone okay?” Xander called out. There were a few murmurs of agreement or a raised thumb in response. Eir leaned forward, peering into the darkness ahead. It was pitch black; the line between sea and sky indistinguishable. The lightless void was broken by another crack from the sky. A white fork rode down from the sky and in a brief moment lit up the sea in front. Eir gasped. I tried to follow her line of sight. Out in front of us was a wall; a rolling surge of water across the horizon almost the height of the ship. “We’re not getting past that at this pace.” Eir’s eyes flicked around the ship, checking the sails in front of us. “The foresail,” she said through gritted teeth. With the wind mostly behind us, the square sail at the front of the ship helped propel us forward. But now we had turned, the angle of the wind shifted, and the sheet was acting as a brake. “Lachlann,” Eir called out, “Loosen the foresail, it’s slowing us down.” “What?” came the reply. I shook my head. “I’ll go tell him.” I ran down the steps once more, my feet slipping against the wet wooden planks. I charged to the front of the ship. “Loosen the foresail. The wind’s pushing against it. We need more speed. Now.” Lachlann’s eyes widened as he understood the instruction. He bent down and began turning a large winch as fast as he could. The sail loosened, going from taut to a loose flapping, until the beam across the top began lowering down the mast. Almost as soon as the sail had lowered enough to no longer be catch the wind, we hit the foot of the rogue wave. The boat dipped as we reached the through, before lurching sharply upwards into the climb. I could see the lanterns flickering on Alessia’s ship alongside us. She was dwarfed by the giant swell, the boat reduced to looking like a man climbing a hill. But I watched as she reached the summit, the boat levelling at the top. I turned my eyes forward just as our boat reached the crest. The boat creaked forward, clinging to the tip of the rise, before charging down the other side, punching against the water at the bottom. A huge plume shot up from either side of the vessel, another projectile of sea foam added to our already waterlogged skin. But we had passed the threat. While the storm refused to ease, that one moment seemed to send a communal calmness through the crew. They had survived a moment that may have killed an amateur sailor. And they had done it with relative ease. As morning broke, the storm had gone and we were left with a flat blue sea that gave no sign of its former wrath. We dropped anchor. The islanders from Deer Drum were soaked, but otherwise fine. Alessia sailed over and rejoined us. “That looked like some pretty good sailing last night,” she said as she climbed up the ship and hoisted herself over onto the deck. “Pretty much perfect,” Xander said proudly, a grin on his face. “Ah, you should’ve beaten me through it by a good hour. But you’ll get used to the speed.” “What?” Xander asked. “Bigger boat. Bigger sails. This thing when it wants to go can tear through the water twice the pace of my boat. Perfect sail and I shouldn’t have been able to see you after the first half hour.” Xander dropped his arms by his side. Alessia chuckled. “You did good. All of you. You’ve come a hell of a long way in the past couple of weeks. You won’t need us anymore.” She looked off the front of the ship. “Besides, we’ve got a visit to make.” I raised an eyebrow. She waved for us to follow her to the thin aft of the ship, and pointed out ahead to the south. “You see that thin bit of land on the horizon?” I squinted hard. In the low morning light, the sun shone brightly off the water’s surface, and it was hard to be certain of what I was seeing. But as I watched for the movement of the water, I could see it, the bit of still land that didn’t move with the sea. “Tima Voreef,” she said. “We’ll sail a bit closer to land, but they won’t want us mooring a boat this big just to say hello. Best if we take mine and go as just the two of us.” She pointed between herself and me. “What about us?” Xander asked. “Right now, just stay and rest. You decided where you want to head yet?” “Not yet. We at least want to know who attacked us before we head anywhere,” said Kurbani. Alessia nodded. “I hope not to be here long. So with any luck, you’ll get your answers soon. So, stay, have a discussion and choose where you want to head. You’ll have decide sooner than you think.” We sailed side-by-side for an hour or two, until leaving the Deer Drum refugees behind and headed towards Tima Voreef. Even a couple of kilometers away, it already looked like the largest settlement I’d seen. Buildings some four or five storeys tall hugged the wide bay. Where there were gaps between the structures, I could see similar homes and offices stretching back into the island. “How’d they do last night? Really?” Alessia said, looking back at the ship. “Really well,” I said with a wide smile. “Better than I expected.” “They’re smart,” Alessia smiled. “We’ve done what we can for them. We’ll get these answers for them, and then they should be fine to sail on to wherever they want.” “Agreed,” I said, taking a couple of paces to the side to get a clearer view of the island. “What do you know of Tima Voreef?” “I’ve done one or two trade runs there. Long way out though. They hate the next island over, a place called Ruthogrey Landfall. They’ve been waiting for war with each other since before anyone can remember. All anyone here cares about is preparing for Ruthgrey to attack. But they make more than any war could ever need. And anything they don’t use, they sell.” “But they’ve never gone to war?” Alessia shook her head. “They’re both just staring across the strait, sitting on mountains of gunpowder, wondering who’s gonna light the match first.” “And Ruthogrey Landfall.” “From what I know, but I’ve never traded with them. Tima Voreef is pretty much a barrier between them and everywhere else. Who knows who they’re trading with. Maybe even people to the south of the Archipelago.” “South of the Archipelago?” I furrowed my brow. “I’ve heard there’s some small islands down that way. Not as populous as the Archipelago. But something.” “Never been?” Alessia twitched her nose. “Nah.” While I had always known that the Archipelago didn’t cover the entire globe, it seemed strange to think there were lands beyond what I had heard. My map of the Archipelago was never complete, but now I was learning just how small and pitiful my attempt to map the new world really was. “Why have you never been?” I asked. “Because I’m a trader. Not gonna risk actual business to go explore places no one knows anything about.” Alessia turned the wheel gently in her hand, her eyes fixed on the port. “You could have found new goods to trade though...” “Nothing good comes from long-shot ocean voyages. Trust me,” Alessia interrupted. Her face didn’t move, but her eyes briefly lost their focus, staring off into an unknown place. She shook her head. “Anyway, we’ve got this place to deal with.” We were close enough now to make out the details of the island - the throngs of people moving about on the wall, the carts loaded with goods being pulled to waiting ships, the wide glass windows, and the electricity wires strung from building to building. While previous harbours I had seen were made of wood or brick, Tima Voreef’s was made of smooth concrete that cut like a knife into the sea. The sheer grey face curved around the bay in a large semi-circle big enough to house a good sixty or seventy boats. On top of the quay’s edge, I could see a wide promenade filled with people hurriedly making their way along the waterfront, intersecting streams of citizens and traders marching to their destinations. My eye traced the promenade, taking in the buildings and people, until my view was blocked. A giant ship blotted out the landscape. The boat that housed the refugees was a good five times the size of Alessia’s. This ship was at least five times as big as that. Perhaps just as surprising though; the ship was made from metal, not wood. Smooth sheets of steel glistened from the hull that bulged from the water, rising higher than the walkway beside it. Four rows of portholes stretched the length of the ship. On deck, five tall masts rose to the sky with more than a dozen sails tied to them. “You ever seen a boat that big?” I scoffed, pointing. Alessia shrugged her shoulders. “Once or twice. Don’t know what you’d do with it anyway.” “Jealous?” I chuckled. “I’ll have you know my little boat’s just fine.” She patted and stroked the wheel with a tender smile. “That will be made by Tima Voreef. They’ve probably more on the other side of the island pointing guns across the strait. That one’ll be for sale though if you got another couple of bags of artefacts hidden away somewhere.” I frowned at her. “Let’s just moor up, get our answers and get out of here.” Alessia loosened the sails, and we drifted towards the quay. We found a small slip by the large concrete wall, tied up the boat, and climbed up a ladder to the street above. Straight ahead of me, there was a posted painted onto the wall. We’re working to prevent this. The words stood above a large image of a ruined town. I looked around. The town on the poster matched where I stood. Turning left, I could see another image on the next building. A dark figure of a man stood, leaning over, looking down on the reader. In Ruthogrey Landfall, someone is doing the same job as you. BEAT HIM! The tall ships, the tall buildings, the tall harbour - all of it was a sign of success and grandeur. But I began to realize the entire island was like a scared animal stretching out its muscles or rearing to its hind legs. It was all to appear as big as possible. To scare off the predator wondering if it could take you. Tima Voreef was the grandest island I had seen, but it all existed in the hopes of staving further away from the precipice of war. Part two published 12th August.