Work Text:
"Commodore Luque. My nephew insists on being permitted to take his ship into hostile waters."
"Is he drunk?" Commodore Luque's face went ashen. Because he was a Xoan, this passed unremarked. "Admiral Abascal, I'm not entirely sure this is --"
The admiral clapped a companionable hand on Luque's shoulder. "Luque. Darling. We've been over this. The nation of Xoan has a fine naval tradition --"
"A tradition that he has successfully buggered up the ass six different ways since you got him commissioned, pardon my language --"
"He's my nephew," said Admiral Abascal, with a firm-bordering-on-predatory squeeze. Luque restrained a squeak. "He should have a chance to prove his worth, don't you think? He says he's got kit for a full crew. He claims that the barbarians won't know what hit them ... and we're all in this together, aren't we?"
"All in this together," agreed Luque. If he smiled any harder, he would pull a muscle. "But if, ah, if Sandoval should --"
"Excellent!" cried the admiral, releasing Luque and turning again to the tabletop map. With a long cue, he pushed one ship definitively into barbarian territory. "See to it he's fully supplied. Don't want to get caught with our trousers around our knees again."
"Oh, no. We certainly don't want that." Luque made a note on his ledger and underscored it briskly.
The note said, Find another job.
At the prow of the Xoan flagship, Sandoval drew in a shuddering breath of brisk salt air, tilting his face into the howling wind. He felt it tear his hair free of its updo, and he hoped that the effect was suitably picturesque; he had spent nearly three-quarters of an hour attempting a nautically tousled demeanor, and with Allegory as his witness, he intended to achieve it. Through the sulfurous oceanic miasma, he detected a subtle scent -- a sweeter scent than the sea-musk, with undertones of butter. "Delicious," he murmured, running the point of his tongue over his lower lip. He very nearly regretted the necessity of the sacrifice.
It wasn't precisely that it got him hard, but neither was that precisely not the case. Sandoval always preferred to err against precision.
He turned from the forecastle rail with his shoulders squared. ("Forecastle" was a damnably cumbersome word, he thought. He would contract it, when he made admiral.) From this elevated vantage, he regarded his troops with a nigh-paternal fondness. The traditional Xoan bicorn was well represented, as was the ceremonial Xoan war-mask; these artifacts were not, in the strictest sense, being worn by Xoans at present, but such trifling matters little concerned him. "My soldiers!" he bellowed, raising his scimitar high. "My friends! Through many trials, we have prevailed -- drawn close by adversity and nigh-insatiable desire. We have been down together in my sleep, unbuckling helms, fisting each other's throats and other penetrable orifices ..."
... where was he? He'd lost the thread of it. The bicorns bore the slip with stoic grace, but he fancied that something had gone empty in the eyes of the war-masks, and his adjutant was giving him that wearied look particular to adjutants of all races and factions. There was nothing to be done but to reclaim the moment before he lost their loyalty entirely; he understood, on that primal level that still remembered those bloody golden years of the Xoan Empire, that he must strike fear into the hearts of those whose love he sought.
His scimitar stretched over the lashing waves, Sandoval turned the full force of his glare upon the enemy. The winds had brought them close enough to lock eyes with one another, and even Sandoval -- himself a thoroughly hardened veteran of naval shenanigans -- felt a slight frisson of anticipation. He squared his jaw and flourished the scimitar, crying, "There, men -- there lies the adversary, and I will not rest until our vessel is drenched in their rich, creamy mascarpone innards! No, the going may be rough, and perhaps even delightfully rough should they take us alive, but we will strive, seek, find, and never yield!"
That struck him as an excellent line, and one that he might reserve against future rhetorical want. "Jot that down," he told his adjutant, who made a dutiful note.
Now, now was the time. Victory, or perish, he told himself grimly, watching the distant lightning draw fell glints of silver from his scimitar. Above him, the sails creaked and snapped like overtaxed corsets; below him, the trebuchets were primed and ready to launch. More immediately below him, his trousers strained at the seams. He was, he concluded, armed well beyond the teeth and quite probably halfway to the uvula.
He had spent his whole life preparing for this moment, and he was determined not to fail.
At the prow of the fast-approaching barbarian longboat, a dragon's head had been carved into the unyielding wood. It wore a stern and forbidding aspect, as though it had caught Sandoval eating ginger snaps in the library and intended to put a stop to such madness once and for all. Fixing his eyes on that draconian figurehead, he slashed the mooring line that held his trebuchets at bay. "Fire!" he cried, less a command than a jubilant post facto announcement. The assembled ranks of masks paid dutiful witness as the counterweights sank level with the deck, hurling eight missiles across the lashing waves to strike the enemy's vessel.
Sandoval could scarcely watch the carnage. He put a spyglass to his eye to ensure that he missed not an instant of it, leaning well over the forecastle rail.
Aboard the barbarians' ship, chaos reigned; the waters around their vessel were thick with shattered discs of marzipan. A thick glob of custard cream had struck the sail and slid all the way to the deck, even as the seven-layer cake had blown a hardy oarsman into the water. Sandoval threw back his head and laughed, his blood surging with the heady tonic of triumph; "Reload!" he cried to his adjutant. "Reload, and let no one be spared! All, all is shortbread and slaughter!"
Clunk, went the chief barbarian's grappling hook, latching fast upon the rail. The bicorns, clearly paralyzed with fright, huddled at their posts; the masks seemed to laugh at him, and he was forced to slice three of them to pieces for insubordination before he reached the barbarian's hawsers.
He hacked once or twice at the rope, but to no avail -- the barbarians had pulled their longboat flush against his ship, and their chief had put one fur-encased foot upon the Xoan deck.
"Show me your honor," he snarled, his red hair custard-splattered and his horned helmet dripping a viscous concoction of cream and mascarpone. He was the picture of conquest, if conquest had been engaged in a rather energetic bout of pudding wrestling.
Sandoval exchanged a commiserating look with his adjutant, then let his scimitar fall, hitching down his trousers over his burgeoning erection.
"You ought to go into diplomacy," said the barbarian, almost kindly, as he turned Sandoval about and gripped his hips. "I don't think you're really cut out for the navy."
"I don't know why I thought this would be fun," agreed Sandoval. With a sigh, he braced both hands on the rail and spread his legs.