The great iron bell atop the watchtower of Almathea Grand Harbour tolls midnight, its heavy bronze ring vibrating through the cold sea mist. Below the stone ramparts, the wide basin is a sprawling, chaotic sea of flickering torches. Yellow firelight dances over the surging water, reflecting off the dark hulls of the four heavy galleons—the Julia, the Cealina, the Maria, and the recently loaded Amelia. The force gathered on the broad stone quays has more than doubled in a single afternoon. Five hundred newly hired mercenaries move in sharp, disciplined columns down the timber piers. There are hardened veterans clad in polished iron cuirasses that catch the amber torch flame, Wanghai crossbowmen wearing supple leather jerkins with heavy quivers slung across their backs, and stoic free-company line infantry carrying long ash-wood pikes. Their iron-shod boots strike the wet cobblestones in a single, thundering, rhythmic pulse that shakes the dust from the wooden gangplanks as they board the ships.
With eight hundred and twenty men now crammed into the quarters and three galleons packed to the very brim with mountain-like stacks of grain, heavy racks of weapons, and dark kegs of gunpowder, the fleet drops its heavy hemp moorings. The thick ropes splash into the black tide, and the massive wooden hulls push slowly out into the open ocean.
Up on the high quarterdeck of the flagship Julia, the female captain stands with her boots braced wide against the rolling timber deck. Her long cloak whips violently around her ankles in the rising offshore gale as she grips the polished oak wheel with white-knuckled strength. She leans over the railing, her face illuminated by the sharp glow of the deck lanterns, and bellows into the pitch-black night.
"All hands to the rigging!" she shouts, her raw, command-hardened voice cutting effortlessly through the rushing wind and the heavy slap of waves against the bow. "No stopping at coastal ports! We take the offshore deep-water currents! Double watches, day and night! Sail for Sapocitradansia!"
The ocean voyage instantly transforms into a relentless, bone-crushing, exhausting grind. To reach their distant destination with maximum speed, the four heavily laden ships press forward without a single moment of pause. They drive headlong through blinding, howling squalls that hammer the decks with sheets of icy rain, plow through dense, impenetrable banks of white sea fog where the other ships become mere ghost-shadows, and endure scorching, breathless tropical middays where the midday sun bakes the tar out of the deck seams. Great pelicans and black-winged petrels skim the foam-frothing crests of the massive ocean swells, diving with sudden, terrifying force into the dark troughs to strike at schools of flying fish, while deep below the keels, unseen leviathans brush against the iron-bound timber hulls, causing the massive ships to shiver against the tide.
Life aboard the four galleons settles into a strict, endless cycle of tactical drill, weapon maintenance, and forced integration. The original three hundred and twenty earthling slave-soldiers are systematically divided and interspersed among the five hundred new mercenaries to maintain absolute tactical control and teach the hardened sellswords the company's complex system of whistle signals and flag routines.
Down on the cramped, low-ceilinged gundeck of the Maria, the air is thick with the smell of sweat, wet wool, and stale timber. Lanterns sway violently from the heavy oak overhead beams, throwing long, exaggerated shadows across the iron cannon barrels. Comtois stands barefoot on the wooden deck, spar-training with a massive, broad-shouldered, bearded Ofliran mercenary who stands nearly a head taller and is easily twice his age. Thick wooden practice swords clash violently in the dim, golden light, the heavy thuds echoing through the hold.
The old mercenary lunges forward with a heavy overhead strike, his muscles bulging under his sweat-sheened tunic. With a sudden, explosive burst of speed, Comtois parries the veteran's falling blade with a sharp upward flick of his wrist. He steps inside the man's guard, lowers his center of gravity, and slams his heavy shoulder directly into the mercenary's chest. The impact sounds like a sack of grain hitting the floor, and the massive mercenary goes flying backward, tumbling head over heels until he crashes hard against a stack of burlap grain sacks.
The surrounding mercenaries, perched on wooden barrels and gun carriages, erupt into wild, deafening cheers, pounding their calloused fists against the wooden bulkheads until the iron rivets ring.
"Not bad for a kid!" the fallen mercenary grunts, spitting a bloody tooth onto the deck timbers with a wet click. A wide, gap-toothed grin breaks across his dark, bearded face as he hauls himself up onto his knees, shaking his bruised head. "Where'd a slave-soldier learn to hit like an ox?"
Comtois wipes a thick sheen of sweat from his forehead with the back of his forearm, his chest heaving as he lets out a bright, energetic laugh. He steps forward, extending a broad, calloused hand down to the seated veteran.
"Incheon gym culture!" Comtois laughs loudly, pulling the heavy man to his feet with a single, powerful jerk. "Get up, old man! Next round, we do deadlifts with the freshwater casks!"
The mercenary blinks, resting his hands on his knees while he catches his breath, looking at Comtois with genuine, utter confusion.
"What is Incheon?" the mercenary asks, scratching his tangled beard with a dirty fingernail. "And what is a gym? Is that some kind of moonshine or water-earth magic stuff from your world?"
Comtois chuckles, tossing his wooden sword from his right hand to his left with easy familiarity.
"It is a place where people go because they want to look muscular without actually having to become a soldier and march into the mud," Comtois explains, his eyes gleaming with amusement as he mimes lifting a heavy iron bar. "Men who just got their hearts broken by a girl go there for a 'training arc' to forget their pain."
The surrounding mercenaries listen intently, nodding their heavy heads in deep, solemn consensus, their eyes wide with intense fascination and excitement as they exchange muttered comments about this strange, mythical place called a gym where men train purely for strength.
Meanwhile, near the main hatchway of the Julia, where the salt spray sweeps down through the open grating, Hano sits slouched on top of a low wooden crate. He pushes his sliding spectacles up his thin nose with a dirt-caked knuckle, sarcastically trying to explain shipboard logic to a small cluster of young Wanghai crossbowmen. The young archers are staring down at their wooden ration trays, grumbling sourly about the rock-hard, beetle-spotted biscuits in their hands.
"Look, guys," Hano says flatly, waving a dry, brittle biscuit in the air between two fingers like a schoolteacher holding a piece of chalk. "You can sit there and complain about the rock-hard bread all you want, but Captain Aldo calculated that this single dry slab has enough calories to keep your hearts beating for twelve hours straight. Eat the bread, drink the sour vinegar-water, and pray to whatever ocean gods you have that we hit land before we all turn into salt statues."
One of the Wanghai crossbowmen blinks, tilting his head as he stares at Hano's tired, unimpressed face.
"Is your commander always this cheerful?" the crossbowman asks, his voice laced with genuine bewilderment.
Hano lets out a long, dramatic sigh, taking a sharp, crunching bite out of the corner of the hardtack biscuit, his jaw working slowly to grind it down.
"I'm a realist," Hano grunts around a mouthful of dry crumbs. "Which is just a polite, educated word for someone who knows life is utterly painful, but eats his biscuit anyway."
[If they think this bread is bad, wait until they see the rations when we're actually under siege. They'll be begging for these rock biscuits.]
Late into the night, up on the high, wind-swept quarterdeck, Adelberd stands stiffly alongside Aldo. Both boys are wrapped in heavy woolen coats, their faces turned out toward the pitch-black, endless ocean as the cold stars wheel slowly overhead in the dark sky. The heavy galleon rolls violently over the crest of a massive, black wave, its massive sails humming tight as steel sheets against the shrieking gale.
Adelberd rests his gloved hands on the cold wooden railing, his knuckles white as he peers into the darkness.
"Eight hundred and twenty men," Adelberd mutters softly, his deep voice carrying over the groan of the ship's timbers. "Two hundred tons of grain. Four galleons loaded with iron and powder. We are no longer just a defeated slave company, Aldo. We are an army."
Aldo does not turn his head. He stands motionless, his hands tucked behind his back, his dark, calculating eyes reflecting the faint, eerie green glow of the bioluminescent ocean phosphorescence churning in the foam far below the hull.
"We are an advance force," Aldo replies softly, his tone completely flat, devoid of any pride or grandiosity. "An army requires a sovereign state to feed it, clothe it, and replace its dead. Right now, we are simply running out of ocean, and Sapocitradansia is waiting."
On the twelfth night of continuous, non-stop, agonizing sailing, as the moon hangs low and pale behind a curtain of thin clouds, a single, screaming voice shatters the quiet, rhythmic splash of the bow waves from the high crow's nest.
"LAND HO!" the lookout screams at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking with pure relief as he waves a lit brass lantern frantically back and forth against the dark sky. "LIGHTS ON THE HORIZON! SAPOCITRADANSIA!"
The sudden shout echoes down the decks like a thunderclap. In an instant, hatchways burst open. Aldo, Onaga, Hano, Comtois, Adelberd, and Lourdes all rush forward to the bow railing, their heavy boots clattering against the deck planks. They cluster together at the sharp prow, leaning far out over the wooden figurehead into the cold spray.
Far across the vast, dark, rolling expanse of water, thousands of faint, twinkling lights appear against the pitch-black horizon, glittering like a dense cluster of fallen stars scattered along the dark edge of the continent.
The long, grueling oceanic journey is finally over. The Sapocitradansia campaign is about to begin.