King Vogt and the Guardians of the Round Table
— by Mario Crescibene
I. The Battle of Lake Erie
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
II. The Quest for the Holy Grail
Interlude
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
III. The King of the Wind
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
IV. The King of the Sea
Chapter 12
Chapter 13. Purple shards of the shattered gill drifted across the water like slivers of stained glass. Captain Cash stood silent at his rail, his mouth agape. But then his shock turned to rage and he drew his cutlass and pointed
it at the Guardians’ schooners.
“Crush them!” he screamed as thunder crashed overhead.
The four sloops rushed the Guardians’ whaling schooners. Black hulls slid in from every side, herding the whalers of King Vogt and Sir Ramírez away from the rest of the fleet until the two schooners had nowhere to go but toward each other.
Their hulls met with a groan of timber, locked side by side inside a ring of black sloops-of-war. Meanwhile, Willis’s schooner was shut out on the far side of that ring, and Smith’s circled beyond it, searching for a way in.
Then twenty-six ropes came raining down from the four sloops, and the Cursed Crusaders swung across, their black armor glistening from the ocean mist, purple visors lowered, armed with burning lime-green pikes.
Sir DeLauter met the first wave of attackers at the rail, driving a harpoon into the nearest Crusader’s thigh the moment he boarded. Beside him, the head of Sir Adell’s mace was already coming up under the chin of one attacker, while Sir Lowe brought his warhammer down on another’s helm with a clang that rang across both decks.
Amid the skirmish, one Crusader, bolder than the rest, climbed the mast of Sir Ramírez’s ship with a knife in his teeth and cut the giant red sail free. It came down slowly, billowing like a red cloud, and settled on the water beside the hull. Without it, Ramírez’s ship sat dead in the water.
And then… the wail came.
Every blade on both decks stopped. The Guardians looked at one another, and then over the rails at the boiling water. Sir Ramírez looked with them, and three Crusaders saw their opening. They whirled and hurled their pikes. The throws slammed Ramírez back into the bulwark, pinning him where he stood — two lodged at his left shoulder and the third at his waist.
Ramírez tugged, but the pikes held firm.
But then… the wail came again… louder and closer.
No order came from Captain Cash, and none was needed. The Crusaders knew the sound all too well. They instantly abandoned their attack and ran for their ropes, swinging back to their sloops as they fled.
Beside Ramírez’s drifting hull, the water began to swell.
“Everyone to my ship!” King Vogt roared.
Ramírez’s crew scrambled across the widening gap while the Crusaders’ sloops sailed for safety further off. King Vogt swung the tiller hard and the schooner’s sails filled as it escaped. Sir Bazzana counted heads as the Guardians abandoned the immobilized ship. But then he stopped.
“Where’s José?”
They all looked back at Ramírez’s stranded schooner, its mast bare, the sea swelling beneath it. And against the bulwark, still tugging futilely at the three green pikes, was Ramírez.
Sir Smith had seen all of it from beyond the broken barricade and put the tiller in Sir Espino’s hands.
“Hold her steady and aim just to the right of José’s ship. When I give the order, throw the tiller hard left so we cut across its bow.” Then he cupped his hands and bellowed across the water. “King Vogt! Come about! Bring her back through! Be ready when it breaches!”
As Vogt’s ship wheeled back toward the spot where the sea-beast was about to surface, Smith climbed the mast to the crow’s nest. There he tied off a long line and wrapped the end twice around his forearm.
The water bulged beneath Ramírez’s hull as Smith’s schooner desperately raced toward it, trying to get there before the Demon breached. Just as they came upon it, Smith called down to Sir Espino, “Now!”
And then he jumped.
As Espino threw the tiller hard left, the schooner swung across the bow of Ramírez’s ship, and the turn flung Smith out to the right like a pendulum over the churning water. Smith hit Ramírez’s deck at a run, the rope still wrapped around his forearm.
“Took you long enough,” Ramírez said.
“Hold still,” Smith said, bringing his gauntlet down across the pikes, snapping all three shafts in a single blow. Then he caught Ramírez by the belt as Espino swung the schooner away. The rope snapped taut and yanked the two knights off the deck.
Smith and Ramírez were midair when the deck behind them erupted. The hull burst into splinters, the devil ray rising high into the air between the broken halves of the ship.
The two knights hit the deck of the fleeing schooner as splinters rained down around them. The beast crashed back into the sea and tore after it, its wings churning the water into a purple wake.
On their sloops, the Cursed Crusaders watched eagerly as the beast overtook the schooner. It banked to the right and lifted its long barbed tail high above the deck to dash it to pieces.
But just then, King Vogt’s ship burst through the spray at full speed, with Sir Halpin braced at the bow, a harpoon in each hand. The spray ran off his helmet, but behind his lowered visor, he didn’t blink.
The schooner raced beneath the rolling ray’s lifted wing, where the three remaining gills flared open and shut. Sir Halpin launched his first harpoon, cracking the nearest gill. The second followed in quick succession and finished the job, shattering it.
The Demon screamed, its tail convulsing in a spasm of pain. The beast thrashed and dove once again as the green glow of its barb faded into the purple depths.
The three schooners drew together, and the Guardians of the destroyed ship found new decks. Across the water, the four sloops-of-war had drifted back into formation. Captain Cash stood at his rail, one hand locked on his cutlass, the lime-green feather trembling in his hat.
The charcoal sails of his fleet filled, and the ‘727’ surged forward.
King Vogt watched them come. “What’s our status?” he asked.
“We’re down to three boats,” said Sir Halpin. “But now we’ve got just two gills to go.”
