Hansel: Swordplay (pt 2)

Mishka wouldn’t tell him why Dread Jones had it out for them. Hansel had heard of her before he’d signed onto Mishka’s ship—just like he’d heard of Mishka—but he didn’t know then that the two of them were enemies.

“I’m sure it’s beyond me,” was all Mishka would say, his voice venomous, but Hansel was positive it was a lie. He knew. He just didn’t want to admit to it. Hansel didn’t push.

He did, however, find the entire thing fairly annoying when the fucking feud started nearly getting him killed.

Jonesy used magic, like Mishka—not exactly like his, but Hansel didn’t know or care enough about spellcasting to tell the difference. Spells would fly between the Red Blade and the Siren just like arrows and cannonballs and grappling hooks, and as the ships got closer they became more intense. Hansel was useless at range. He had to wait until they were close enough for him to leap across the gap between the ships, and there was always a moment of exhilaration when his boots slammed down on the foreign deck. This was where he shined. He didn’t have to worry about Mishka back on the Blade—he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself as long as no one got too close, and it wasn’t like he was a member of the boarding party.

He always kept his eye out for Jonesy. He didn’t have any personal ill will towards her, but he knew she was the most dangerous of her crew, and he had this idea that he could cut the head off the dragon and put an end to this shit. That would earn him some points. That would make him useful.

Instead, when he found her undefended on the top deck of the Siren, she turned her yellow eyes on him and waved a hand like he was nothing, and a blade of ice flew into his chest. It knocked the air out of him and when he opened his eyes again and started trying to push himself back up, she was coming towards him, and a flaming scimitar seemed to sprout from her hand. His own hand tried to find his trident, but it wasn’t where it should be, and she was getting closer, and he was alone—

Fine boots entered the edge of his vision, and they drew his eye to where his trident had fallen. His hand finally met it and he looked back in time to see the jeweled rapier lunge past Jonesy’s scimitar and jab into her side.

She looked more confused than anything.

“You fuckin’ bastard,” she spat.

And Hansel was on his feet again, following the attack up with a thrust from his trident, and she was able to deflect it but left herself open to another jab from Mishka—he stumbled into it, and Hansel finally looked at him properly. He was bleeding. He wasn’t supposed to be bleeding. He also looked fucking furious.

Jonesy stomped one foot on the deck and disappeared in a cloud of fog. Hansel knew how Mishka’s teleportation worked, so he immediately started scanning for places she could have reached from here—he was thinking crow’s nest, or somewhere up in the rigging—but Mishka grabbed his shirt and dragged him back to face him.

“Get back to the damn ship,” he snapped. “You’re slowing me down.”

“We’ve got her on the run,” Hansel started, then saw it again: Mishka was bleeding. That was more important. Why was that more important? It wasn’t—it wasn’t serious. He own chest ached much more from the shard of ice that had buried into him than the little scratch on Mishka’s face would.

But Mishka was hurt, and he didn’t …

He grabbed his captain’s arm and dragged him down the stairs, ignoring his objections at being manhandled. Suddenly Hansel was the angry one, spearing an injured, retreating sailor on the gangplank and kicking her off the end of his trident, into the ocean far below, without pausing. He shoved Mishka ahead of him onto the Blade.

“*You’re* supposed to stay on the fucking ship,” he shouted over the blast of a cannon only a couple of feet away. An arrow whizzed between them and he shoved Mishka again, back into the relative safety offered by the slight recess before the cabin, Mishka’s back hitting the wall.

“I just saved your fucking life, you could be grateful,” Mishka returned.

He didn’t do anything about the shoving. Hansel should have been paying more attention, but he did the math quickly in his head—what he’d seen Mishka do before the ships had gotten close enough to skirmish, what he’d recognized as Mishka’s magic once he’d been aboard the Siren. He was out of spells, wasn’t he? The bloody rapier clenched in his fist was all he had left.

Hansel wanted to shove him again, through the door, into the cabin where he’d be safe, goddammit. He just wanted to protect him. That was why he was going after Jonesy in the first place. He knew Mishka was far from defenseless but he just wanted to kiss him—

Oh.

He didn’t, of course. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do, so he just turned away instead without responding, turned back to the battle because that was something he understood. He kept an eye on the Siren’s masts for the red tiefling and her misty magic, but he never saw her again, and the ships soon broke apart, rendering him useless again. A few final cannonballs flew between them, a few more arrows, and they parted ways with no victor.

And then Hansel had to think about his feelings again, and he wished that the ice shard had just gone ahead and cracked his ribcage open and killed him.

# # #

Against Hansel’s better judgment, he confided in Elitash that he’d developed some sort of *feelings* for Mishka. She guffawed heartily.

“Those feelings are called lust, boy. And you’re the last one to notice, trust me.” She parceled out the rations they had left aboard and wrote it down in the ship’s log. “You just lost me a bet. Don’t tell anyone else.”

Hansel scowled. Like he would tell anyone else. He already regretted telling her. “It’s not like that.”

It definitely was like that. It just wasn’t *exclusively* like that.

Elitash shrugged. “He’ll probably fuck you if you ask. He’s been doin’ it with his eyes ever since you came onboard anyway. Get it over with already.” She glanced his way. “Just give it ‘til spring so I can make some money off Kheman.”

“You’re being real fucking unhelpful, Eli.”

She patted his shoulder as she left the room. “I never claimed to be helpful.”

# # #

There was no one else he could talk to. He kept up a front of stony impassivity in front of the sailors, and he’d never become close with any of the other officers. He hadn’t really realized that; he barely knew Crunch and Hunter, but at least they were new—Siobhan and Corven had been there well before him and he’d never gotten to know them at all either. Belatedly, he realized it was because he’d been fixated on Mishka that long. The others were comrades, not friends.

Of course, Mishka wasn’t his friend either. He was his captain. And he hadn’t really spoken to him since that battle, outside of giving him orders.

Hansel realized that he was fucking miserable on the Blade.

Maybe he’d leave when they reached Calimport. He’d never spent any time in Calisham—maybe it was time to get off the ocean and explore the land. He reckoned he’d make a good brigand. Surely they had brigands in the desert. Then he wouldn’t have to think about Mishka anymore, and how soft his hands were, and the gentle way he smiled, and the crass way he laughed when he beat Elitash at poker. The way he’d looked with blood on his face and sword, standing over Hansel and defying Jonesy to come a step closer.

He *had* saved Hansel’s life. Would he do that for the rest of the crew—take the chance he’d taken? If he just wanted to screw a brawny half-orc, he could do that in almost any port. He didn’t have to risk his life over it. Or maybe it hadn’t seemed like a chance to him at all. He *had* become a fairly accomplished swordsman, under Hansel’s tutelage. Maybe he'd just gotten bored when he'd run out of magic and decided to bring the battle to Jonesy, and Hansel had just ... been there.

Hansel thought about the way Mishka had laughed with him, been briefly honest about why he’d picked up the rapier. He drank until the ship was swaying around him despite the calm seas.

The lights of Calimport were emerging over the horizon, bright dots barely discernible from the stars, when he pulled himself up the ladder and lurched onto the top deck. Serena was on shift.

“Oh,” he said. “You’re here.”

She looked at him, then looked at him for too long with a dead expression. She really didn’t like him and he genuinely didn’t know why.

“Serena, y’know what I like about you, is I know where I stand with you,” he slurred, catching himself on the railing and dragging himself along it. “I don’t know why y’fuckin’ hate me, but at least I know that you do.”

She made a quiet *hmph* sound. He made it to the mizzen-mast and leaned against it, sliding down it to sit heavily.

“Serena. Ser … Sera.”

“Do not,” she said shortly.

“Serena can I ask you a question,” he said in a great hurry, barely getting the words out in the right order. His head was spinning from the impact of sitting down, and he closed his eyes and rested it back against the mast.

“No.”

“Do elves ever fuck orcs, or do all of you fuckin’ hate us like you do?”

She finally turned to look at him, flinty-eyed. “Granger, for fuck’s sake, I will never sleep with you. I don’t like men. Leave me alone.”

“*What*?” His head tilted back up and he gave her an incredulous look. “I’m not tryin’ to fuck you. What?”

“Then stop bothering me.” She turned back to the wheel.

“I was tryin’ to make friends with you, shit.” He leaned his head back again. “I know you like Hunter anyway,” he muttered.

She spun on him, eyes narrowed.

He grinned at her. He’d only been kind of sure, but the pink in her cheeks confirmed it.

Slowly, she turned back to the wheel again. After a moment, she said, “Most elves don’t sleep with orcs, no. There’s … a word for those who do.”

“What is it?”

“It’s impolite.”

“Oh.”

There hadn’t been orcs where he’d come from, or elves, either—all humans. It made the circumstances of his conception a bit of a touchy topic, and one he’d avoided ever talking to his mother about. And among the pirates there was little time to waste on racial politics. They were all in the same boat, metaphorically and literally. But Hansel did *know* that there was tension between elves and orcs beyond that between Serena and himself—it was why he was asking in the first place. Mishka and Elitash got along, for instance, but he wasn’t sure that they were *friends*, even though she’d been on his crew for years. It was just the way things were. Elitash had taught him a great many impolite orcish words for elves. He guessed he shouldn’t be surprised it went both ways.

“You shouldn’t be concerned,” Serena said, like it pained her to instigate the conversation again. “I really don’t believe Mishka would take offense to you coming onto him.”

“What?” he yelped, trying to scramble to his feet like he could physically defend himself from the accusation that he’d been talking about their captain.

“There’s only one other elf on the damn ship, Granger. And I also have functioning eyes. It’s been clear for years that the two of you sorely need to sleep together.”

Hansel scowled, but settled. He was the last to know, wasn’t he? He sighed and muttered, “I don’t want him to sleep with me.” He copied her phrasing because his brain was too drenched in alcohol to find his own words, but the delicate euphemism felt foreign in his mouth. It was no worse than what came out next. “I want him to … *like* me.”

Serena looked over her shoulder at him, pityingly. “Oh, dear.”