Osa and the Orangemen
Copyright© 2025 by Osa Oladapo
Chapter 16
the Magic War, Part 3: First Blood
As soon as they see land, Ekina sends her eagle to scout the town for Orangemen. The captain orders the sails lowered and the anchor dropped. All hands are ordered to get ready for battle and stand by. They also take time to have a quick snack and relieve themselves at the head of the ship.
The bird returns to Ekina after about an hour. She takes it to a map where it indicates the locations of twenty Orangemen and one Redman commander by placing red and orange tokens on the map of the town. After he does so, Ekina praises him and feeds him a fish. They do a quick run-through of their plan again but now with target locations in mind. As soon as everybody is comfortable with their role, the captain has Osa push the ship inland from inside his cabin, while all the sailors and soldiers crouch down below the bulwark to conceal them from sight. The captain also steers from the second wheel, also located in his cabin, and is given directions by way of relay with his navigator looking out windows and shouting back instructions. The entire thing gives an eerie ghost ship effect to any onlookers on shore.
It is enough to scare off any of the dock workers. And when the ship comes to a perfect stop next to the dock, the workers all run off and hide. Quivina and her archers pop up with bows at the ready, and two sailors swing out to the docks to tie off the ship, while others extend the boarding plank to the dock. Adunbi and his warriors from the southern lands quickly and smoothly disembark, spreading out across the docks’ area, and begin setting up a defensive perimeter.
Once the warriors are in place, Quivina leads the archers to follow them and create a second staggered line just behind the first. Ekina, leading the sailors, quickly begins doing a systematic sweep of the docks, ushering any locals into one of the warehouses that will act as a safe house, then continues on to sweep two other ships at the docks. Osa and the Doc will set up a medical station on the foredeck of their ship, while the captain coordinates everything from his office.
As soon as all the buildings and ships on the docks have been secured, the sailors move up to the picket line established by the archers and soldiers from the southern lands. Adunbi and his soldiers move through the streets in groups of four, while Quivina and her archers take to the rooftops in groups of two so they can see one or two other groups of archers and cover the warriors on the ground.
Encounters spring up everywhere, rapidly. On the streets, several groups of warriors, backed up by at least one pair of Orangemen, take on pairs of Archers. They find out that Orangemen are not easy to kill, resulting in many injuries and a few deaths in the process.
On the ship, Osa is healing bleeding and soft tissue wounds, while the doctor is setting broken bones and putting them in splints before sending them to Osa for quick healing. There was only one warrior they were not able to save and three that were wounded so bad they ended up permanently disabled.
In the tavern, Adunbi and a group of his best four warriors engage the Redman and four Orangemen. Without Archer support, Adunbi and his men are quickly overwhelmed, but before any of his men get hurt, Adunbi calls for withdrawal. Once Adunbi and his group of warriors have drawn the monster men out into the open, Quivina and three pairs of archers are able to fill one Orangeman with enough ice arrows to kill him, while Adunbi and his men are able to separate a second Orangeman from the others. The Redman pulls the other two Orangemen back inside the tavern, where they have cover from the archers and the battlefield advantage over the warriors.
Despite more groups of warriors coming to act as reinforcements, Adunbi keeps his men out of the building and has them surround the Redman and his last two Orangemen. Quivina’s archers also take positions on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, cutting off any means of escape.
Inside, the Orangemen ask their commander, “Why them wait?” when the Red man notices a single dark-skinned human female dressed in light blue, with an eagle perched on her shoulder, walking down the road in their direction. The Redman replies to his troops in their butchered version of the northern language, “The magic woman comes.”
When Ekina arrives at Adunbi’s location, she sets her eagle on a horse rail and asks her brother to lead her into the building. Adunbi pulls out his necklace, with a granite stone inside, puts it on, and summons the power of the stone to make his skin and bones 190 times more durable, and also boosts his strength equally. Behind him, Ekina summons two shields of air and follows Adunbi into the tavern. Adunbi, a bull, rushed the Redman, while Ekina extended her shields into funnels of air as strong as tornadoes, striking both Orangemen and forcing them through the walls of the tavern and out into the street, where archers bombarded them, then warriors swarmed them, piercing and slicing them until they were dead.
Adunbi and the Redman are tossing each other around like children’s dolls, destroying tables and chairs as if made of paper, and cracking and damaging supports as if they were twigs. Ekina redirects her wind funnels to keep the upper level from crashing down on her as she rushes to get away from the battle of clashing titans. Once she is clear, she lets the building crash down on top of her brother and the monster he’s fighting. The dust from the wood and debris forms a cloud on the ground and causes the kitchen fires to leap out and catch the rubble of the far end on fire. From somewhere near the center, the debris begins to lift and teeter before Adunbi manages to dig and power his way out of what is left of the tavern. He looks around, grabs a piece of broken lumber, and jams it into the torso of the pinned and trapped Redman, finishing him off. Ekina quickly sends her eagle to bring Osa back so she can put out the fire. In the meantime, the archers are firing ice arrows into the fire to slow the spread, and the warriors are searching for buckets to bring in well water.
After the fire is put out, the archers set up a perimeter watch, while the sailors and warriors drag off the corpses of the Orangemen to be burned on a mass bonfire. Also, Osa and the Doc wrap and prepare the dead warriors to be shipped back south with the wounded. They also help get the framework of the new tavern in place in less than a day. From the debris of the old tavern, the tavern owner was able to salvage his coin box and most of his kitchenware, but the rest is a total loss. Captain Vulkarias gives the tavern owner two silver coins to help pay for the cost of rebuilding.
A few men with combat experience volunteer to fill the ranks of the dead or disabled warriors from the south. They are given one day of instruction on how to use the enchanted weapon and armor before boarding the ship to travel north to the next port.
Four hours out to sea, people notice a dolphin following the ship, and then eventually it starts leading the ship and trying to get it to turn in a different direction. Osa recognizes the dolphin as Jellen. Standing on the left of the ship, Osa dives off the side of the ship and into the ocean. Jellen leads Osa to some of the ruins of a lost city and all the treasures that have been forgotten by men. Where there had once been roads, there is now an overgrowth of coral. What is left of the buildings that people once lived in now serves as shelters to crabs, fish, and octopus. What were once statues of people held in high esteem are now just monuments of corroded marble. Amongst the ruins, the Jellen leads Osa to a lost treasure of silver, gold, and gems. Osa also becomes aware of the presence of enchanted items as she nears them. A pair of daggers, a set of metallic winged sandals, and an amulet, none of which are corroded in any way, but rather seem to glint and glimmer with only the slightest of light, almost as if glowing.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.