The Blue Road Home (2)

"It's the Skuroms!!"

The ship suddenly grew noisy when a sailor keeping watch over the surroundings from the lookout post attached to the mast supporting the sails shouted.

Skurom is a large country roughly comparable in size to Mintar, and the name of a rival vying for supremacy over these waters.

In other words, it, too, is a country that has prospered through maritime trade.

So why were the sailors on this ship so frantic and wary? ...Because Skurom's warships were nothing less than pirates to merchant vessels trading with Mintar.

It was only natural, of course, that merchant vessels trading with Mintar would be an unwelcome presence to Skurom, since they enriched its rival.

Thus, obstructing that trade was perfectly natural for Skurom, one of the national policies it pursued to seize supremacy over the nearby seas.

However, merchants and merchant ships that ventured onto these dangerous seas to conduct trade were valuable, and they often changed their trading partners, so they were rarely killed or sunk along with their ships.

The job of Skurom's warships was simply to collect money or part of the cargo under the pretext of a toll, making the merchants feel that trading with Mintar was no longer profitable.

For that matter, Mintar did the same to Skurom and to ships trading with yet another rival nation, so they were even.

It seemed barbaric to me, but I supposed that was simply the custom of these seas.

There were also plenty of pirate ships that weren't warships, apparently, including some licensed by nations—privateers, as they were called.

Looking into the distance, I could indeed see a splendid warship.

Was that a ballista mounted on the deck for launching large anchors?

When I thought of a ship's weapons, I pictured cannons, but artillery of any kind had yet to appear in this world, so even warships mainly relied on a ram at the bow, ballistas, and catapults.

In short, those weapons alone were somewhat inadequate for sinking a ship.

So ranged attacks were probably meant to hinder and restrict the enemy's movement, while the real attack would come in the form of a boarding assault.

The enemy ship also caught the wind in its sails, but its primary means of propulsion was human power: it was a rowed galley.

Since the rowers would also become combatants once the ships came alongside each other, their fighting force greatly outnumbered ours.

But as for speed... the wind was favorable now, and even with our ship heavily loaded for trade, our sailing ship was faster.

"There's still some distance between us. We'll give it everything we've got and outrun them!!!"

Apparently reaching the same conclusion I had, the ship's captain, Suin, a Huanggu Empire native, ordered the crew to flee.

The lookout had spotted the other ship early, so there was ample distance between us.

As long as nothing happened, we could probably escape.

...Yes, if nothing happened.

Unfortunately, it seemed things weren't going to work out quite so conveniently.

Even if plundering was their mission on these seas, a military force was very different from ordinary bandits.

That difference lay not in some vague matter of morale, but in factors directly tied to strength: the soldiers' training, the quality of their weapons, and their numbers.

And in this case, the problem was the last of those three: numbers.

"Captain Suin, this direction won't work."

At sea, you entrusted yourself to the captain and crew.

Since that was the rule, I hesitated over whether I should interfere, but I steeled myself, approached Suin, who was busy issuing orders, and spoke.

"Forest Person-sama or not, you promised to follow our instructions at sea. As you can see, we're busy right now. Keep quiet."

Suin, bristling with hostility, nevertheless said this to me while doing his best not to raise his voice.

Well, his reaction was only natural.

Suin was prosperous and knowledgeable even by Huanggu Empire standards, which was why he treated Forest People—elves—with particular courtesy, but I had spoken to him at a moment when someone from another country would have been shouted down.

"I understand that, but there are two more ships waiting in ambush ahead of us. I thought Captain Suin might be in trouble if we continued like this."

But that was because I thought Suin would listen to me.

The two ships ahead and the one pursuing us from behind were probably working together from the start.

Otherwise, there would have been no reason for the slower rear warship, which couldn't close the distance, to keep pursuing us without giving up.

It was an encirclement made possible by the military's numerical superiority.

We were being herded toward a net.

Suin's expression twisted grimly at my words.

He had correctly grasped the situation.

He was probably regretting his decision to flee.

Naturally, the money and cargo they collected would be very different if we stopped willingly versus if they caught us after we tried to escape.

That would discourage us from trying to flee again, while also serving as a warning to others.

Or perhaps, if the captains of the three warships were loyal not only to their military duties but also to their own greed, they had deliberately provoked our escape to increase the amount they could collect.

Even on a warship, the captain wielded considerable authority, and if the amount collected was large, he could line his own pockets by skimming off a share.

Still, I didn't consider that a bad thing.

After all, even soldiers venturing onto dangerous seas would surely find it impossible to carry on without some kind of perk.

The only thing I disliked was that they had chosen the ship I happened to be traveling on as their target.

The warships of Skurom each had circumstances of their own, too.

But the same was surely true of Suin and the other sailors.

Suin had chosen to flee if possible precisely because he thought paying the toll would hurt their next trade.

So I wanted to put the circumstances of the people who had looked after me aboard this ship first.

"We can escape over there."

I pointed my finger and indicated the direction.

Because the ship was currently catching a following wind in its sails, it was faster than the pursuing warship, which was a galley.

But if we changed course, we would lose half the wind's benefit and be caught by the oar-powered galley.

That was why the other two warships had laid their net downwind of us.

But Suin stared intently at my face for several seconds...

"All right, I'll trust you, Forest Person-sama. Hard to port! The wind's going to change! Brace yourselves!!!"

He shouted the instructions to the crew.

Ah, men of the sea were all refreshingly decisive.

That booming voice reverberated pleasantly.

"Wind, water."

So I, too, would gladly lend my aid.

The spirit of the wind rushing past.

The spirit of water dwelling in the magnificent sea.

I asked both of them for their aid, and they thrust the ship—now turned onto its new course—forward with ever-increasing force.