Emmaline watched as cannonballs whipped through the screen of smoke. Geysers of spray gouted where the balls struck empty sea. The Hammer's guns had already fallen silent, nothing but the swivel guns would now bear and there was no point in wasting shot. Suddenly Emmaline felt a prickle across her skin. Von Roberts was no fool, he had hired a mage to counteract her supposed power. Which would have been wise if she had any power to speak of. Markus stiffened too, his magical proclivities warning him of the magical gaze as well.

"He is going to..." Emmaline began and then snapped a series of arcane syllables. A ball of fire tore through the curtain of smoke towards the Hammer. Emmaline only just managed to squeak a counterspell, the fireball bursting twenty feet short of the ship. She staggered from magical backlash scarcely able to keep her feet. Already she could feel a second spell building. More cannon fire whipped through the screen of fog, still blind but more accurate for following the wizard's fireball.

A second ball of fire, bigger than the first screamed through the curtain of fog. Emmaline caught it with a counterspell, faster this time but weaker as she was driven to her knees. 

"They are going to burn us, bring us about..." Markus began but Emmaline pulled herself to her feet, gripping Markus' belt.

"No, I have an idea, we just need to bring one gun to bear," Emmaline whined weakly. Markus looked dubious but turned to Morgan.

"Helm over three points, gun captain's hold your fire till my command."

Emmaline pushed herself to her feet and half staggered down onto the gun deck. Smoke roiled and swirled as the crew frantically sponged and loaded the guns. 

"Which one?" Emmaline demanded but Markus grabbed her and physically carried her over to the rear most gun carriage. Emmaline flung herself onto the gun, gripping the cannons barrel, still warm from firing and chanting her spell. Golden light began to spark and glow around the gun. She reached out, finding the track the last fireball had made.

"Fire!" Emmaline commanded, hugging the gun. The gun captain, one of the sailors who had come aboard with Emmaline, hesitated. Markus shoved the boy aside, siezed the slow match and touched it to the cannon. The gun thundered and leaped back, blotting out Emmaline's scream. There was a huge cloud of powder smoke glittering with motes of golden light.

Two hundred yards away on the deck of the Sea Drake, Kamal Al'Azred was about to send another blast of fire to obliterate the petty mageling on the deck of the Hammer. So confident was he in his impending victory that he never felt the subtle spell Emmaline had crafted. He never had any inkling of danger until a cannon ball shattered the tafrail three feet infront of him, quilling him with a thousand splinters of wood some as long as a mans forearm. The wizard collapsed to the deck, gurgling blood and rolling in his death theros. Unfortunately for the crew of the Hammer, the body of Kamal Al'Azred shielded Von Roberts from the storm of splinters.

"Got him," Emmaline said as she picked herself up off the deck. The blast had thrown her free of the cannon with some considerable force, the impact tearing her tunic open. She came rather unsteadily to her feet, grinning proudly. Markus' smirked back eyes flicking down to her considerable exposed bosom. She pulled her dress half heartedly closed.

By the time the Sea Drake broke though Sketti's wall of fog the Hammer was almost a league distant, running down the coast with sails set. The big square rig ship tried to follow, but it was a simple matter of sail plan. The Hammer could get within 40 degrees of the southerly wind that warped along the coast, the Sea Drake couldn't manage closer than sixty. Their courses slowly beginning to diverge as the afternoon wore on. Just before dark the look outs shouted that the Sea Drake was bearing off.

"Is he giving up?" Emmaline asked. Markus close his telescope with a snap.

"Sort of," he admitted, wiping his brow with a coat sleeve.

"He knows he cant close on us like this, so his only option is to tack out to sea, and hope to get ahead of us. He also knows that as soon as he does, we can cut out to sea, turn back and take the soldiers wind back north. He has to hope he outguesses me and catches us during the night."