Skell Jodason Of Jormo
1

Skell and his younger brother Torl had been born in the port city of Kormo on the west coast of the Land of Maag, and they were the sons of the famous Captain Jodan of Kormo. Captain Jodan’s longship was the Shark, a name that struck terror into the heart of every Trogite who sailed the western sea. There had never been any doubt that Skell and Torl would grow up to be sailors, and their childhood was a time of impatience and yearning. As they grew older, it became common practice in the port of Kormo for every sea captain to order a thorough search of his ship before leaving the harbor, since there was a distinct possibility that one of Jodan’s boys was hiding somewhere on board.

Skell and Torl became very good swimmers during that stage of their boyhood, largely because they’d been thrown over the side of at least two or three longships a week.

The complaints Captain Jodan kept receiving from other ship-captains finally irritated him enough that he decided that it was time for his boys to go to sea. Skell and Torl had always assumed that when their father finally relented and let them go to sea, they’d be sailing aboard his ship, the Shark, but Captain Jodan didn’t see it that way. During his younger years, he’d occasionally had shipmates who were the sons of the captain, and he’d found them to be lazy, incompetent and generally despised by the rest of the crew. He’d long promised himself that when his sons went to sea, they’d have to work their way up from the bottom and earn every promotion in the same way that other sailors were obliged to do.

As it happened, Captain Jodan had sailed with the now-famous Dalto Big-Nose when they were both young, and the two shipmates had become lifelong friends. And so it was that when Captain Jodan decided that it was time for his boys to go to sea, he contacted his friend and handed the boys over to serve as deckhands on board Dalto’s ship, the Swordfish.

Skell and Torl were very excited as the Swordfish sailed out from the harbor at Kormo on a fine spring day, and they were standing at the bow looking out to sea in boyish anticipation when Captain Big-Nose found them.

It was at that point that the boys learned the first rule of seamanship: ‘Always look busy when the captain’s on deck.’

They spent the next three days on their knees scrubbing the deck of the Swordfish, and things definitely went downhill from there. Any time that a task was difficult or unpleasant, Dalto automatically called for Skell and Torl. The boys soon agreed that they’d jump ship at their first opportunity, but the Swordfish had plenty of food and water on board, so she stayed out at sea for months on end, leaving Skell and Torl on their knees, scrubbing the deck.

In their spare moments - which were few and far between - they came to love the sea. She was forever changing, and at times she was so fair that the boys were almost stunned by the play of light and darkness sweeping majestically across the waves. It was usually at that point that Captain Big-Nose caught them idling and gave them a blistering reprimand.

Later - much later, actually - Skell reflected back on that first voyage, and he began to see the logic behind the Captain’s behaviour. He had set out from the start to persuade the boys that their father’s fame had nothing to do with their status. Big-Nose started them at the bottom because every apprentice seaman started there. After that it was up to them to prove that they were worthy of any task other than scrubbing the Swordfish’s deck or carrying buckets of rancid bilge-water up out of the hold.

By the time that the Swordfish returned to the port of Kormo, Skell and Torl had graduated to the posts of oarsmen, and they were beginning to feel like real sailors.

The Swordfish laid over in the port of Kormo, and before she went out to sea again, the boys’ cousin Sorgan signed on as a top-man. Sorgan had sailed aboard a couple of other Maag longships, and he was a few years older than his cousins. He tended to take a superior attitude toward his younger relatives, and Skell decided at that stage of the relationship that it might be proper to point out that he and Torl were the real superiors in the family, since they were the sons of Captain Jodan, while Sorgan was merely the son of their father’s sister.

That mightily offended Sorgan, so he ‘whomped’ on Skell for quite some time - to the vast amusement of the other crewmen. Skell did manage to give his cousin one good solid punch, however, and it was that single punch that gave Sorgan Hook-Beak his name.

The Swordfish continued to savage the wallowing Trogite ships in the waters off the coast of the Land of Maag, although she occasionally sailed off along the south coast, and then went as far as the coast of the Land of Shaan, where Dalto’s crew raided Trogite encampments in search of gold. So it was that Skell, Torl, and Sorgan learned the rudiments of land warfare.

The gathering of gold was, of course, the main reason thatMaag longships went out to sea, but as the years went by, Skell came to realize that it was the sea herself that had captured him. Gold was nice enough, but it could never match the beauty of the sea when columns of sunlight came down through the clouds to march across her glittering surface or when the moon rose to bathe her in pale light. She was forever changing, and, like every other Maag who chose a life at sea, Skell came to love her. Like every sailor, he enjoyed himself enormously when the Swordfish made port, but he knew that the sea was his real home.

After Skell had been at sea for about ten years, the Swordfish hauled into the port of Weros, and the crew went ashore in search of entertainment after Captain Big-Nose had sternly advised them that the Swordfish would be sailing out again in three days, and that he wouldn’t wait for any of them who happened to be late. Skell and Torl returned just in time, but Sorgan didn’t, so the Swordfish sailed off, leaving him behind. Skell and Sorgan had settled their differences by then, and Skell actually missed his cousin.

Then, on a rainy afternoon just after Skell had turned twenty-seven, the Swordfish hauled into the harbor of Kormo, and the Shark was anchored there. Captain Jodan rowed his skiff over, conferred briefly with Captain Big-Nose, and then he came back out on deck to advise his sons that they’d just been transferred to the Shark - as first and second mates. Their predecessors, it seemed, had been killed in a tavern brawl in the port of Gaiso a few weeks earlier.

Their father obviously wasn’t happy about the situation, but he didn’t really have much choice. When they were about halfway to the Shark, he stopped rowing and gave them a stern lecture on ‘proper behavior’. They were now officers, so the other members of the Shark’s crew would not be their close friends. ‘Always be serious’ had been at the core of his lecture. Laughing and grinning weren’t permitted. He closed his lecture with, ‘Don’t ever call me “papa”. I’m “Captain”, and don’t you forget it.’