Prologue

The Chief Admiral had promoted himself to the top job earlier that morning, and was still unsure of what his new responsibilities involved. He had considered the title of admiral but decided that adding the word chief made the whole affair sound far more official.  His second in command approached him and handed over the golden trumpet of Rigol.

“Chief Admiral, the fleet is ready sir, your orders?”

This is where things could get tricky. The Chief Admiral had discovered that one of the drawbacks of promoting yourself to the leader of a large army was that lots of important decisions had to be made. He wasn’t known as a decisive man. It wasn’t that he cracked under pressure. The fact of the matter was that the Chief Admiral had a vague understanding of the limits of his own intellect. He was well aware that at any moment one stupid decision could be the difference between epic glory and catastrophic failure.

“Assemble the men,” he declared after clearing his throat. He wasn’t exactly sure why the men needed to be assembled, but it sounded like the kind of thing someone in his position would say.

“Aye sir. An inspirational speech before battle?”

“The men, assemble them,” he repeated in an attempt to delay answering the question.

The Chief Admiral turned around and gazed out across the bay. The water was swarming with hundreds of ship of different shapes and sizes. Large wooden galleons with massive sails mingled with destroyers whose long oars jutted out into the sea. It was the largest armada of warrior ships assembled in several generations, or so the Chief Admiral had concluded. Counting was never one of his strengths. Muscle strength on the other hand was something he could easily comprehend. He never saw the need to learn numbers higher than the number of muscles he was able to flex on his own body. He deduced through his limited use of counting that there were far more ships in the water than flexible muscles on a typical man.

His second in command returned leading a cohort of hundreds of warriors. All were beefy men with square jaws, the shortest among them standing a respectable six feet five inches tall. The Chief Admiral climbed onto a nearby boulder to address the crowd. They all huddled around their leader preparing their minds to be inspired.  Some in the front row knelt down on one knee so those further back could see.

The Chief Admiral at this stage was regretting his earlier decision to assemble the men, but now that they had gathered he felt something should probably be said. He re-adjusted his fleece shawl, cleared his throat and in a booming voice declared:

“Today,” he said before pausing. He was happy that he had chosen such a fine opening word. He thought it was an accurate word to use as it wasn’t yet tomorrow and yesterday had already passed.  He continued, “Today, we embark.” He paused again, proud he had remembered the word embark. He felt it was a far smarter word than journey, which was the first word that came into his head.

“Today we embark,” he bellowed, “on a great journey, a journey across the ocean.” Many of the men nodded their heads at this stage as everything their leader had said so far in his fine speech was entirely true.

“A journey to plunder our sworn enemies,” he added to great cheers. The Chief Admiral really liked how the speech was going so far. He was sure that it was time to wrap it up while he was on a roll, before he said something too foolish.

“To Innis Freeish we journey, to our bounty!” he said and all the warriors burst into rapturous applause. They were high fiving each other and banging chest against chest.

The Chief Admiral felt his earlier uncertainties about leadership melt away. He was now confident that he was exactly the right person for the top job. He looked down at the golden trumpet of Rigol in his hand and was overcome with a desire to blow it as loud as he could. He placed it to his lips and emptied all the air from his lungs into the instrument. The resulting sound created a noise so deafening that birds nesting in the cliff top perch of Thole several miles away were startled.

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