[Ships at Sea] Run Away
Title: Run Away
Story/Character: Ships at Sea / Godscalck, Johim, Theophrastus
Rating: PG-13
word count: 1,940
brigits_flame prompt of "a fool and his money".
* * * * *
They were still two days out of Portugal seas by the time Godscalck decided that his Navigator was stark raving, more so than normal. Not that a man could tell it by Ruyter's ever-cheerful demeanor, but there was a tell-tale lack of attention being paid to near anything besides his newest project - including food, drink, and the job he was supposed to be doing - that made Godscalck thankful the waves had been calm and the winds favorable thus far.
Johim's newest 'project' was what clinched it as pure bedlam, in Godscalck's opinion. The boy he had picked up was, by all accounts, as smart as Johim claimed; a virtual savant with numbers, he could calculate near any equation given to him without resorting to compass or slide. He was polite and quiet - downright silent so far as Godscalck could tell, unless Johim was drilling him through the Navigator's books - and nigh invisible a good ninety percent of the time.
For the remaining ten percent - which was when he could be pried out of Johim's grasp - he was a walking disaster.
In all his years on the sea Godscalck had never seen anyone so utterly inept on the deck of a ship as Johim's new toy. The boy wasn't one of those luckless souls who came up sick from the motion of the waves, God be thanked, but that was the only plus in his factor. He was willing enough to try to work, but the boy couldn't walk aft to fore without tripping over something, knocking over something else, getting tangled in the lines and near pitching himself over the rail. Beeck dutifully reported that it was useless to teach him knots and not a one of the men wanted him anywhere near the riggings; at best, he could be set to scrub one portion of deck at a time and then only if he didn't knock bucket or brush overboard.
Godscalck had, at first, tried talking to Johim about it. "He's useless," he said bluntly, over supper. "I've never seen a boy less suited for a deck." And then, tapping one blunt finger against his own temple, "is he touched?"
Johim had coughed over his mouthful and had to reach for the water. "No," he'd managed once the fit eased, indignant. "'Course not. He's brilliant."
Godscalck had snorted. "Seen one or two brilliant town idiots, in my day," he answered. "He's good with numbers, but that doesn't make him a Navigator if that's what you're thinking."
"He'll be fine," Johim had insisted with a stern frown that looked out of place on his brow. That was when Godscalck had known his Navigator was blind and raving over his newest fascination and it was going to be a right battle to get him to give over. It had been enough to sour Godscalck's temper ever since; it was going to have to be handled with diplomacy, of all things, because Johim could be like a rock when he had his mind set on anything, and no ship ran well when the Captain and the Navigator were at loggerheads with each other. In a pinch, when it got down to it, a ship could run without a Captain and Godscalck knew it just as well as any of the crew. A ship without a Navigator, on the other hand, was as good as dead.
So he soothed his ruffled Navigator and seethed quietly in his own foul tempered brine as he tried, without much success, to suggest the boy might be best put off at their next port of call. The Guild, he suggested, would want to see the boy if he was as good as all that, and he'd have to be registered in any case. Johim made noises that weren't quite agreement and avoided the subject and Godscalck wondered if it was worth taking to drink over. The object of their contention seemed to have enough sense to know that his future was being debated and took pains to make himself as scarce as possible, which suited the captain just fine.
Beeck had the wheel and Godscalck was pouring over manifest lists in his cabin one afternoon when a knock - more of a scratch, really - at the door roused him out of the lesser headache of weights and figures. "What is it?" he called, and it was the boy who answered, opening the door only far enough to lean his head inside.
"Sir?" The boy had a perpetual worried frown about him, and days on the deck had burned a bright color over pale cheeks that was going to peel before it tanned. "Message from Mister Ruyter, sir. There's a storm ahead; we'll need to detour twelve degrees north by northeast to miss it."
Godscalck grunted. He couldn't recall hearing the boy say much of anything that wasn't mathematical or navigation linked, but he was surprisingly well spoken. "Tell Beeck's to make the change," he told the boy, and then, before the boy could duck back out again, "hold a moment."
The boy froze and Godscalck impatiently gestured him in. If the lad was well spoken enough to carry messages then he could do so both ways. The captain flicked through the manifest to the end, tore off a bare corner of the parchment, and uncapped his ink well long enough to scrawl the pertinent numbers onto it. He held it out to the boy. "Here. Take this back to Ruyter."
The boy hesitated long enough to remind Godscalck of all the reasons he was simply going to have to go, before edging into the room and tentatively reaching out to take the parchment. His eyes were pinched thin and narrow, lower lip caught between a full set of solid teeth, and Godscalck didn't think he looked half that forbidding.
It made him pause, the trickle of a thought bubbling up from the depths. Godscalck narrowed his own eyes, relinquishing the note to the boy, and settled on one of the flash fire decisions that had earned him the Eendracht. "While you're here, boy, fetch me that lead case from the shelf."
He watched without further comment as the boy turned in the direction he pointed and paused, eyes bare slits in his sunburnt face, before walking to the shelf. It took him longer than it ought to find the case, and he came back with the same awkward slowness to put it carefully on the edge of Godscalck's table. "And what are you to do now, boy?" he asked.
"Tell Mister Beeck to make the course change and take your note to Mister Ruyter, sir," was the quick reply.
Godscalck huffed softly to himself. "You have a name, lad? Or do I just keep calling you 'hey boy'?"
The hesitation that time was, the captain thought, pure fear; something that made the boy swallow sharp and his eyes go wide. He hadn't, ever, quite met the captain's gaze, eyes always skittering to one side or the other. "Theophrastus, sir," he said quietly. "Mister Ruyter said 'Theo' 's good enough for yelling."
It made the corner of Godscalck's mouth turn up, but the humor seemed lost on the boy. "That's because Johim's used to having to yell at the men. But even most of them have two names, whether their Da's hung about to give it to them or not."
He couldn't properly tell, under the burn on the boy's cheeks, how much was sun and how much was a flush. The boy swallowed again, more pronounced, and he was looking away and down at nothing in particular on the table top. "...Strotten, sir. Theophrastus Strotten."
Well enough, he supposed. It gave him something to mark the boy with other than 'Johim's Folly,' which was what 'boy' had become synonymous with in his head. "Alright, then. You've got your orders. Go to it." He waved a dismissive hand at the door.
Just like that, the squint was back, the boy's eyes narrowing and it gave Godscalck more than half a headache just to watch him do it. "Yes sir," he said, and turned to the door - turned too far, and had to stop and re-correct, wavering slightly in the middle of one step before he settled on course. He near tripped up the shallow steps and wrestled the door open, and when he turned back it seemed to surprise the boy himself as much as it did Godscalck "...von Hughenson."
Godscalck frowned. "What?"
The boy licked his lip, cracked from sun and spray, and his voice split awkwardly when he raised it. "Theophrastus Strotten von Hughenson. Sir. If you need to know." Quick as that he was gone, ducked out and the door latched shut behind him.
Godscalck sat at his work table, the afternoon sun splashed bright over the surface cluttered with charts and lists, and looked at them without seeing them as he reflected that Navigators - in training or otherwise - seemed to live for nothing except new ways to bedevil their hard working Captains.
* * * * *
He tracked Johim down over breakfast the next morning. "Your lost fledgling's part hawk," he told him, bluntly, dropping his own plate onto the tabletop.
"Hmm?" His Navigator blinked, then swallowed and tried again. "Oh - you mean Theo?"
"I'm going to assume," Godscalck said dryly, "that you just forgot to tell me that he's landed blood."
"You didn't know?" The confusion on Johim's face was honest and, in retrospect, Godscalck thought it would probably be comical if it wasn't just one more thing that the man did to drive him over reefs. "It's nothing that important. Hughenson's a small wardship, not much more than an estate."
"And the boy?" Godscalck sighed. Johim waved dismissively with his spoon.
"He's got three brothers to take his place."
"Younger or older?"
"Younger. Does it matter?"
Godscalck sometimes thought he might possibly qualify for saint-hood sheerly on the number of times he refrained from wringing the other man's neck. "He's the eldest son of a landed family. I'd say that matters, yes."
Johim frowned. "Now, look here, Heyne. We're not going through this again, are we? The boy's brilliant, he's got the feel of it, he's perfect..."
"Except for the part where he can't walk across deck without tripping..."
"If you'd give him a chance-"
Johim broke off as Godscalck tossed a fist sized pouch onto the table between them, the heavy jingle of coin all too audible. "There's your chance," he told the navigator. "We'll dock in Oporto tomorrow. Take the boy into town and get his eyes looked at. He's blind."
Johim blinked, mouth moving for a blessed moment without sound. "...what?"
"Blind," Godscalck repeated, shoving his own spoon into the thick mound of porridge on his plate. "Haven't you seen the way he squints? I'll be surprised if he can see an arm's reach in front of him. Go get his eyes looked at. See if they can fit him with some of those new glass lenses."
His navigator swallowed. "That won't come cheap."
Godscalck shrugged, gesturing at the pouch with his spoon. "One chance. If he doesn't improve after that, I swear I'm putting you both off the ship when we get back to dock and requesting another Navigator from the Guild who isn't half such a fool."
Johim snorted, one long boned hand scooping the pouch neatly out of sight. "You won't find another half so good as I am, either."
"No," Godscalck replied around a mouthful of porridge, "but I'd have fewer headaches from locking horns with you, you stubborn whorespawn. Get the boy to a doctor."
[continued in Stormy Weather]
Story/Character: Ships at Sea / Godscalck, Johim, Theophrastus
Rating: PG-13
word count: 1,940
brigits_flame prompt of "a fool and his money".
* * * * *
They were still two days out of Portugal seas by the time Godscalck decided that his Navigator was stark raving, more so than normal. Not that a man could tell it by Ruyter's ever-cheerful demeanor, but there was a tell-tale lack of attention being paid to near anything besides his newest project - including food, drink, and the job he was supposed to be doing - that made Godscalck thankful the waves had been calm and the winds favorable thus far.
Johim's newest 'project' was what clinched it as pure bedlam, in Godscalck's opinion. The boy he had picked up was, by all accounts, as smart as Johim claimed; a virtual savant with numbers, he could calculate near any equation given to him without resorting to compass or slide. He was polite and quiet - downright silent so far as Godscalck could tell, unless Johim was drilling him through the Navigator's books - and nigh invisible a good ninety percent of the time.
For the remaining ten percent - which was when he could be pried out of Johim's grasp - he was a walking disaster.
In all his years on the sea Godscalck had never seen anyone so utterly inept on the deck of a ship as Johim's new toy. The boy wasn't one of those luckless souls who came up sick from the motion of the waves, God be thanked, but that was the only plus in his factor. He was willing enough to try to work, but the boy couldn't walk aft to fore without tripping over something, knocking over something else, getting tangled in the lines and near pitching himself over the rail. Beeck dutifully reported that it was useless to teach him knots and not a one of the men wanted him anywhere near the riggings; at best, he could be set to scrub one portion of deck at a time and then only if he didn't knock bucket or brush overboard.
Godscalck had, at first, tried talking to Johim about it. "He's useless," he said bluntly, over supper. "I've never seen a boy less suited for a deck." And then, tapping one blunt finger against his own temple, "is he touched?"
Johim had coughed over his mouthful and had to reach for the water. "No," he'd managed once the fit eased, indignant. "'Course not. He's brilliant."
Godscalck had snorted. "Seen one or two brilliant town idiots, in my day," he answered. "He's good with numbers, but that doesn't make him a Navigator if that's what you're thinking."
"He'll be fine," Johim had insisted with a stern frown that looked out of place on his brow. That was when Godscalck had known his Navigator was blind and raving over his newest fascination and it was going to be a right battle to get him to give over. It had been enough to sour Godscalck's temper ever since; it was going to have to be handled with diplomacy, of all things, because Johim could be like a rock when he had his mind set on anything, and no ship ran well when the Captain and the Navigator were at loggerheads with each other. In a pinch, when it got down to it, a ship could run without a Captain and Godscalck knew it just as well as any of the crew. A ship without a Navigator, on the other hand, was as good as dead.
So he soothed his ruffled Navigator and seethed quietly in his own foul tempered brine as he tried, without much success, to suggest the boy might be best put off at their next port of call. The Guild, he suggested, would want to see the boy if he was as good as all that, and he'd have to be registered in any case. Johim made noises that weren't quite agreement and avoided the subject and Godscalck wondered if it was worth taking to drink over. The object of their contention seemed to have enough sense to know that his future was being debated and took pains to make himself as scarce as possible, which suited the captain just fine.
Beeck had the wheel and Godscalck was pouring over manifest lists in his cabin one afternoon when a knock - more of a scratch, really - at the door roused him out of the lesser headache of weights and figures. "What is it?" he called, and it was the boy who answered, opening the door only far enough to lean his head inside.
"Sir?" The boy had a perpetual worried frown about him, and days on the deck had burned a bright color over pale cheeks that was going to peel before it tanned. "Message from Mister Ruyter, sir. There's a storm ahead; we'll need to detour twelve degrees north by northeast to miss it."
Godscalck grunted. He couldn't recall hearing the boy say much of anything that wasn't mathematical or navigation linked, but he was surprisingly well spoken. "Tell Beeck's to make the change," he told the boy, and then, before the boy could duck back out again, "hold a moment."
The boy froze and Godscalck impatiently gestured him in. If the lad was well spoken enough to carry messages then he could do so both ways. The captain flicked through the manifest to the end, tore off a bare corner of the parchment, and uncapped his ink well long enough to scrawl the pertinent numbers onto it. He held it out to the boy. "Here. Take this back to Ruyter."
The boy hesitated long enough to remind Godscalck of all the reasons he was simply going to have to go, before edging into the room and tentatively reaching out to take the parchment. His eyes were pinched thin and narrow, lower lip caught between a full set of solid teeth, and Godscalck didn't think he looked half that forbidding.
It made him pause, the trickle of a thought bubbling up from the depths. Godscalck narrowed his own eyes, relinquishing the note to the boy, and settled on one of the flash fire decisions that had earned him the Eendracht. "While you're here, boy, fetch me that lead case from the shelf."
He watched without further comment as the boy turned in the direction he pointed and paused, eyes bare slits in his sunburnt face, before walking to the shelf. It took him longer than it ought to find the case, and he came back with the same awkward slowness to put it carefully on the edge of Godscalck's table. "And what are you to do now, boy?" he asked.
"Tell Mister Beeck to make the course change and take your note to Mister Ruyter, sir," was the quick reply.
Godscalck huffed softly to himself. "You have a name, lad? Or do I just keep calling you 'hey boy'?"
The hesitation that time was, the captain thought, pure fear; something that made the boy swallow sharp and his eyes go wide. He hadn't, ever, quite met the captain's gaze, eyes always skittering to one side or the other. "Theophrastus, sir," he said quietly. "Mister Ruyter said 'Theo' 's good enough for yelling."
It made the corner of Godscalck's mouth turn up, but the humor seemed lost on the boy. "That's because Johim's used to having to yell at the men. But even most of them have two names, whether their Da's hung about to give it to them or not."
He couldn't properly tell, under the burn on the boy's cheeks, how much was sun and how much was a flush. The boy swallowed again, more pronounced, and he was looking away and down at nothing in particular on the table top. "...Strotten, sir. Theophrastus Strotten."
Well enough, he supposed. It gave him something to mark the boy with other than 'Johim's Folly,' which was what 'boy' had become synonymous with in his head. "Alright, then. You've got your orders. Go to it." He waved a dismissive hand at the door.
Just like that, the squint was back, the boy's eyes narrowing and it gave Godscalck more than half a headache just to watch him do it. "Yes sir," he said, and turned to the door - turned too far, and had to stop and re-correct, wavering slightly in the middle of one step before he settled on course. He near tripped up the shallow steps and wrestled the door open, and when he turned back it seemed to surprise the boy himself as much as it did Godscalck "...von Hughenson."
Godscalck frowned. "What?"
The boy licked his lip, cracked from sun and spray, and his voice split awkwardly when he raised it. "Theophrastus Strotten von Hughenson. Sir. If you need to know." Quick as that he was gone, ducked out and the door latched shut behind him.
Godscalck sat at his work table, the afternoon sun splashed bright over the surface cluttered with charts and lists, and looked at them without seeing them as he reflected that Navigators - in training or otherwise - seemed to live for nothing except new ways to bedevil their hard working Captains.
* * * * *
He tracked Johim down over breakfast the next morning. "Your lost fledgling's part hawk," he told him, bluntly, dropping his own plate onto the tabletop.
"Hmm?" His Navigator blinked, then swallowed and tried again. "Oh - you mean Theo?"
"I'm going to assume," Godscalck said dryly, "that you just forgot to tell me that he's landed blood."
"You didn't know?" The confusion on Johim's face was honest and, in retrospect, Godscalck thought it would probably be comical if it wasn't just one more thing that the man did to drive him over reefs. "It's nothing that important. Hughenson's a small wardship, not much more than an estate."
"And the boy?" Godscalck sighed. Johim waved dismissively with his spoon.
"He's got three brothers to take his place."
"Younger or older?"
"Younger. Does it matter?"
Godscalck sometimes thought he might possibly qualify for saint-hood sheerly on the number of times he refrained from wringing the other man's neck. "He's the eldest son of a landed family. I'd say that matters, yes."
Johim frowned. "Now, look here, Heyne. We're not going through this again, are we? The boy's brilliant, he's got the feel of it, he's perfect..."
"Except for the part where he can't walk across deck without tripping..."
"If you'd give him a chance-"
Johim broke off as Godscalck tossed a fist sized pouch onto the table between them, the heavy jingle of coin all too audible. "There's your chance," he told the navigator. "We'll dock in Oporto tomorrow. Take the boy into town and get his eyes looked at. He's blind."
Johim blinked, mouth moving for a blessed moment without sound. "...what?"
"Blind," Godscalck repeated, shoving his own spoon into the thick mound of porridge on his plate. "Haven't you seen the way he squints? I'll be surprised if he can see an arm's reach in front of him. Go get his eyes looked at. See if they can fit him with some of those new glass lenses."
His navigator swallowed. "That won't come cheap."
Godscalck shrugged, gesturing at the pouch with his spoon. "One chance. If he doesn't improve after that, I swear I'm putting you both off the ship when we get back to dock and requesting another Navigator from the Guild who isn't half such a fool."
Johim snorted, one long boned hand scooping the pouch neatly out of sight. "You won't find another half so good as I am, either."
"No," Godscalck replied around a mouthful of porridge, "but I'd have fewer headaches from locking horns with you, you stubborn whorespawn. Get the boy to a doctor."
[continued in Stormy Weather]