captain, especially with a battle looming before them.
The first shouts of alarm echoed down a few moments later. Wulfgar heard the concussion of a fireball exploding nearby.
"Pull her left to mark three!" Grimsley yelled.
Wulfgar and the one other man on the long pole tugged hard, lining the pole's front tip with the third mark on the wall to the left of center.
"Bring her back to left one!" Grimsley screamed.
The pair responded, and Sea Sprite cut back out of a steep turn.
Wulfgar heard the continuing shouts above, the hum of bowstrings, the swish of the catapult, and the blasts of wizardry. The sounds cut to the core of the noble barbarian's warrior identity.
Warrior?
How could Wulfgar rightly even call himself that when he could not be trusted to join in the battle, when he could not be allowed to perform the tasks he had trained for all his life? Who was he, then, he had to wonder, when companions - men of lesser fighting skill and strength than he - were doing battle right above him, while he acted the part of a mule and nothing more?
With a growl, Wulfgar responded to the next command of, "Two right!" then yanked back fiercely as Grimsley, following the frantic shouts from above, called for a dramatic cut to the left, as steep as Sea Sprite could make it.
The beams and rudder groaned in protest as Wulfgar forced the bar all the way to the left, and Sect Sprite leaned so violently that the man working the pole behind Wulfgar lost his balance.
"Easy! Easy!" Grimsley shouted at the mighty barbarian. "Ye're not to pitch the crew off the deck, ye fool!"
Wulfgar eased up a bit and accepted the scolding as deserved. He was hardly listening to Grimsley anyway, other than the specific commands the old sea dog was shouting. His attention was more to the sound of the battle above, the shrieks and the cries, the continuing roar of wizardry and catapult.
Other men were up there in danger, in his place.
"Bah, don't ye worry," Grimsley remarked, obviously noting the sour expression on Wulfgar's face, "Deudermont and his boys'll win the day, don't ye doubt!"
Indeed, Wulfgar didn't doubt that at all. Captain Deudermont and his crew had been successfully waging these battles since long before his arrival. But that wasn't what was tearing at Wulfgar's heart. He knew his place, and this wasn't it, but because of his own weakness of heart it was the only place Captain Deudermont could responsibly put him.
Above him, the fireballs boomed and the lightning crackled, the bowstrings hummed and the catapults launched their fiery loads with a great swish of sound. The battle went on for nearly an hour, and when the call was relayed through Grimsley that the crew could reattach the rudder to the wheel, the man working beside Wulfgar eagerly rushed up to the deck to survey the victory, right behind Grimsley.
Wulfgar stayed alone in the aft hold, sitting against the wall, too ashamed to show his face above, too fearful that someone had died in his stead.
He heard someone on the ladder a short while later and was surprised to see Robillard coming down, his dark blue robes hiked up so that he could manage the steps.
"Control is back with the wheel," the wizard said. "Do you not think you might be useful helping to salvage what we might from the pirate ship?"
Wulfgar stared at him hard. Even sitting, the barbarian seemed to tower over the wizard. Wulfgar was thrice the man's weight, with arms thicker than Robillard's skinny legs. By all appearances, Wulfgar could snap the wizard into pieces with hardly an effort.
If Robillard was the least bit intimidated by the barbarian, he never once showed it.
"You did this to me," Wulfgar remarked.
"Did what?"
"Your words put me here, not those of Captain Deudermont, Wulfgar clarified. "You did this."
"No, dear Wulfgar," Robillard said venomously. "You did."
Wulfgar lifted his chin, his stare defiant.
"In the face of a potentially difficult battle, Captain Deudermont had no choice but to relegate you to this place," the wizard was happy to explain. "Your own insolence and independence demanded nothing less of him. Do you think we would risk losing crewmen to satisfy your unbridled rage and high opinion of yourself?"
Wulfgar shifted forward and went up to his feet, into a crouch as if he meant to spring out and throttle the wizard.
"For what else but such an opinion, unless it is sheer stupidity itself, could possibly have guided your actions in