The hero navarre book 3, p.1
The Hero (Navarre Book 3), page 1
NAVARRE
BOOK 3
The Hero
By Gilbert M. Stack
Amazon Edition
Copyright 2025 by Gilbert M. Stack
Cover Copyright 2025 by Shirley Burnett
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Prologue: The Seeress
Part I: The Squadron from Forestria
Chapter One: An Unmistakable Warning
Chapter Two: An Impromptu Town Council
Chapter Three: An Unexpected Invitation
Chapter Four: A Poor Beginning
Chapter Five: The Luncheon
Chapter Six: The Sharing
Part II: The Storm
Chapter Seven: The Girl
Chapter Eight: Recovery
Chapter Nine: A Druid’s Advice
Part III: Flotsam and Jetsam
Chapter Ten: The Castaways
Chapter Eleven: A Little Fisticuffs
Chapter Twelve: Chief
Part IV: Danger on the High Seas
Chapter Thirteen: Trouble
Chapter Fourteen: The War Sloop
Chapter Fifteen: Baronet Reginald Spenser
Chapter Sixteen: Heroes
Part V: Oak Grove
Chapter Seventeen: Fond Memories
Chapter Eighteen: What Callista Saw
Part VI: Troubled Waters
Chapter Nineteen: The Sea Hawk’s Return
Chapter Twenty: Thorne Speaks
Chapter Twenty-One: Return to Hidden Harbor
Chapter Twenty-Two: Thorne Speaks Again
Chapter Twenty-Three: Accusations
Chapter Twenty-Five: Departure
Part VII: The Battle of Queenstown
Chapter Twenty-Six: A Plan of War
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Fleets Close
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Opening Moments
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Braddock’s Gambit
Chapter Thirty: On the Deck of the Dragon Claw
Chapter Thirty-One: Courage
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Battle Barge Is Sinking
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Gift
Chapter Thirty-Five: The Steadfast
Chapter Thirty-Six: The Shark
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The New Sun
Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Power of Thorne’s Blessing
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Ogre
Chapter Forty: The Brig
Chapter Forty-One: Broken Tusk
Epilogue
Excerpt from Leverage
About the Author, Gilbert M. Stack
Other Works by Gilbert M. Stack
Contact Gilbert M. Stack
Dedication
I am dedicating the books in this series to the RPG players who helped me cultivate my love of fantasy. This one is for my friend, Scott, who is not only my most loyal reader, but the man I bounce most of my story ideas off of when they are still in the pondering stage. I met Scott at a Medieval Studies conference just before I started graduate school. A few months later and we were rolling dice together and marking up character sheets. Many of the characters in my stories were born in Scott’s games and they developed into people I loved enough that they inspired me to write new stories about their adventures.
Scott is a consummate storyteller whose medium is the RPG. He has perfected the game master’s art through tens of thousands of hours of preparation and play over the last four and a half decades. Scott is not just a master of medieval fantasy. His imagination could not be contained by a single genre. So together we gamed westerns, super heroes, and horror stories. He even created a storyline modeled on the Dick Francis novels which we both love to read. And when my son was old enough to play, he started creating games for him as well. This one is for you, Scott. I created the character whose personality became the template for Navarre in one of your worlds. I hope you enjoy what I’ve done with him in mine.
Prologue: The Seeress
The trees of Sylvania dwarfed the great oaken forests of neighboring Forestria to the south. Where Forestria was populated with forests of what even the elves termed old growth, Sylvania was home to ancient woodlands dating back to the beginning of the world. Its people were as ancient as its forests—some would argue, even older than the elves. But unlike their less-rustic monument-building cousins, the sylvan had never felt the need to cut down their homeland and turn its glorious foliage into dead edifices. Instead, they lived simple lives, sleeping on the branches of their colossal trees in small communities that roamed their homeland hunting, and laughing, and loving until strangers with axes once again ventured into their realm and threatened to cut it down.
On one of those trees near an intruding army out of the Great Defile, a seeress of the twin gods, Mara and Lakara, twisted and groaned in her sleep. Like her distant elven cousins, she was slight of stature and had sharply pointed ears beneath hair that hung from her head like pine needles to frame a face whose flesh had more in common with bark than with skin.
She sat up suddenly, looking around her in alarm, until she sighted her twin brother hovering near her.
“Nada,” her sibling’s greeting was sharp with worry. “I wanted to wake you, but it looked like a foretelling.”
Still breathing hard from a dream that should have been a nightmare yet strangely was not, the oracle met her brother’s silver eyes with her golden ones. “No, not a foretelling, but a farseeing.”
Lukon grimaced with unhappiness. “Are things truly that terrible. Everyone knows you were dreaming. If the orcs and the ogres are so terrible, this will crush their spirit.”
Indeed, Nada could see that her extended family had gathered on the surrounding branches, none coming too close, but all acutely listening to their conversation.
The seeress reached out and touched her twin’s hand. “You don’t understand,” she assured him. “I did not dream of here but of an island far out in the Western Sea.”
“But you screamed about orcs!” her brother objected.
Her family crept closer to her, determined to hear clearly what their priestess had to say.
“The orcs are everywhere, brother,” she warned him. “They are pushing at the edges of the Accord, looking for weakness.”
Her family began to mutter unhappily, which was not the intent of her telling.
She stood up and raised her voice. “But the halfling beat them!”
Silence greeted her words as each of her family members repeated them in their minds, certain they had heard her wrong.
“That’s right!” the seeress insisted. “Mara and Lakara sent me this dream so that we would know that we do not fight alone. On an island called Hidden Harbor, a lowly halfling has banded together a group of outcasts and pirates to defend their home. But they didn’t just defend it. They crushed the orcs and their battle barge!”
Her family shook their heads in shock, unable to fully credit her news.
Nada did not give them time to think on it. “If a group of outcasts led by a halfling can throw back the orc hordes,” she shouted, “how much more can we—the free people of Sylvania—do?”
A bright eyed elder suddenly lifted his face in understanding.
Encouraged, Nada continued her speech. “We do not have to flee before these monsters. We do not have to run away abandoning our beloved trees to die.”
“But Nada,” her brother protested. “The orcs fight in great armies and we have always been few in number.”
“Others will come,” the seeress assured him, although she had not actually seen this in her dream. “And we do not have to fight as the other folk do. We can snipe from the sides, making the orcs pay in blood for every foot that they advance into our homes. We will strike from the shadows and from the branches until they fear the fall of every loose leave that flitters down amongst them.”
A few of her kin cheered at her words and a young cousin shouted, “We will make them fear our lands even more than the humans do!”
More cheered at this notion and Nada did not correct them, even though she knew that they were wrong. If Sylvania was to survive, they would need the Accord to rally to their cause. But for now, she let them think that it was their arms alone that could turn back the horde.”
“Let us go scout the enemy,” an elder uncle decided and as if with one mind, her family turned away, running across the branches toward the intruders into their home.
Her brother held back. “A halfling really did this, Nada?”
“He did, brother,” the seeress assured him. “With two small axes, he took on orcs and hobgoblins and triumphed.”
“I would have liked to see that,” Lukon said. “I would like to hear that song.”
“It’s time for us to make our own songs,” his sister told him.
She started after her kin, but her brother reached out and held her back. “Did this halfling have a name? “
She met his silver gaze with her golden one. “They call him Navarre, Lukon, Sheriff Navarre.”
Part I: The Squadron from Forestria
Chapter One: An Unmistakable Warning
The halfling called Navarre turned toward the sound of his name to see a twelve-year-old human boy running toward him along the sand of the beach that bordered the lagoon. One of the surprising things about the little pirate community called Hidden Harbor were the fairly large number of children growing up in the tiny town. Most of them were destined to become pirates or privateers themselves, although there were a handful of craftsman and traders whom they might conceivably serve an apprenticeship under.
Navarre adjusted his fashionably plumed hat as he turned to greet the child. Even with the head piece, the young human was taller than him by a solid foot, but the boy’s bare feet did not have the lustrous growth of hair that the halfling sported on his toes. Nor was his chest nearly as muscular as that sported by the sheriff beneath his vest. “Hello to you, Alec, what brings you running to see me this fine morning?”
“There’s a fleet of ships entering the outer harbor,” Alec panted out the words as he struggled to catch his breath. “They fly the flag of Forestria.”
Navarre took a moment to try and remember which of the numerous human kingdoms Forestria was. Since the Immortal Empire was killed thirty years before by the magical destruction of its capital city, the former pieces of that polity had been splintering off and further fragmenting. Forestria was the largest remaining human territory and he had been told numerous times that it was busily trying to collect all of the other fragments of humanity under the rule of its king.
“And what is the problem?” Navarre asked the child as much to reassure him as to get an answer.
“Forestria hates pirates,” Alec reminded him—not that the halfling had forgotten.
“And why is that a problem for us? We have no pirates here. Only traders come to Hidden Harbor.”
The boy shook his head. “Everyone is really upset.”
“Then I shall go calm them down before I explain the three rules to the commander of this fleet from Forestria.”
***
“Captain, you better see this,” Lieutenant Douglas advised as he peeked his head through the partially opened door.
Captain Edith Grant, Knight of the Order of the Crimson Sword, rose from her desk in her cabin on the cruiser, Steadfast, and donned the dark green coat of her uniform. She was in command of a fairly large squadron of the Royal Navy of the Kingdom of Forestria that included the Steadfast, a schooner called Coventry, and five frigates: Sir Oswald, Sir Broderick, Dame Matilda, Sir Charles, and Dame Patricia. The entire squadron was passing into the protected waters of what she dearly hoped was the infamous, Hidden Harbor—a pirate enclave where a lot of ill-gotten goods got passed around and sold to supposedly legitimate merchants. Wiping out this outpost would be a great stroke for law and order. And this location might make a good site for a forward base for Forestria in the future.
“What’s the problem, Douglas?” Grant asked. “Those pirates weren’t stupid enough to attack the Sir Oswald or the Dame Matilda, were they?”
“Not yet, captain,” Douglas answered, “but I think that an assault might be a larger possibility than we anticipated.”
Grant noticed her master wizard, Sir Alfred Whitelock, looking over the lieutenant’s shoulder, his ever-present pipe notably not in his mouth.
“Alright, what’s the problem, gentlemen?” Grant pressed them. “The two of you wouldn’t be here like this if something wasn’t seriously wrong.”
“Douglas is right, captain,” Whitelock told her. “You need to see this.”
Frowning, Grant stepped out of the cabin and realized that half or more of her crew were on the port side of the ship staring at the east coast of the harbor. There were so many of them at the rail that she couldn’t immediately see what they were looking at, but she noticed her ranking priest, Father Thomas Crane among the men, shoulders hunched in concern as he looked toward the shore.
Crane’s obvious worry surprised her. She had served with the priest of Thorne for six years and had come to respect him and depend on his counsel.
She stepped up beside him. “What’s going—What in the name of Thorne the All-Powerful?”
Stretching out on the coast at regular intervals on the eastern shore was a line of pikes each of which had a carcass affixed to it by piercing the body from groin to head. She couldn’t immediately identify what sort of creature the bodies belonged to, but the sight of them enraged her.
“Bloody pirates! They deserve everything we’re going to do to them.”
“Look closer, captain,” the priest advised her. “I don’t think you understand what you’re seeing.”
Grant’s frown intensified. She squinted toward the shore, but still couldn’t identify the creatures’ race. “Where’s my glass?”
Her cabin girl handed it to her, having obviously anticipated the request.
Grant lifted the small telescope to her head and examined one of the carcasses. There were tusks and snouts the like of which she had never seen before, but she felt certain that whatever these things were, they didn’t belong to one of the races of the Accord. “What are they, Alfred?”
“Orcs,” the wizard answered her.
Astounded, Grant whipped around to face him. “No!”
“Yes, they are, captain,” Father Crane assured her.
“They can’t be!” the captain protested. “How would they even get out here? And how would a bunch of pirates kill that many of them?”
“Those are two different questions, captain,” the priest pointed out. “As for the first, our histories tell us that the orcs are capable of building deadly ships. As for the second, this wild pirate community would appear to be far more dangerous than any of us would have ever dreamed.:
Grant still had difficulty accepting the identification. “Orcs haven’t been seen in the Western Sea for more than fifty years!”
“It’s actually closer to seventy-five years,” Whitelock told her. “The Immortal Empire laid waste to their last attack at the Battle of Ice Floe Cove.”
“Then what are they doing back here now?” Grant demanded. “There are dozens of them.”
“If not more,” the wizard cautioned.
“Perhaps they turned on each other,” the captain suggested. “Orcs are supposed to be highly fractious.”
Whitelock eyed her balefully. “You don’t believe that, so why should I? Besides, those are corsairs—not war sloops—fleeing deeper into the harbor ahead of us. There are goodly races in control of this port—not orcs.”
“I suspect that goodly is a bit of a misnomer in this case,” Grant corrected him. “Whatever their race, they’re all still a bunch of no-good pirates in this harbor.”
“Pirates who appear to have killed a lot of orcs recently,” the wizard reminded her. “This troubles me more than I can say. That’s at least a war sloop worth of orcs on the shore there. My studies suggest it would take our whole squadron to defeat a single war sloop—and we might still lose.”
“I wouldn’t get too excited about this, Sir Alfred,” Lieutenant Douglas advised. “There’s really no evidence that these pirates defeated an orc vessel. Perhaps the orcs landed and the jungle thinned them out, or they were sick, or they were—”
“Ahoy, captain,” the lookout in the crow’s nest called. “You won’t believe this, ma’am, but look down in the water over the bow to starboard.”
Grant glanced up at the crow’s nest prepared to give the man a few choice words over his poor report, but then decided to look at what he had seen first. She crossed the deck and the crew followed after her. Just off the bow, fifty feet below their own hull, there was a substantial pile of wreckage on the harbor bottom and a considerable number of corpses tangled in the rigging.”
She heard the voice of her cabin girl from further down the railing. “Are those orcs too? What kind of ship is that?”
“Alfred?” Grant asked.
“I can’t be certain, captain,” the wizard cautioned. “I’ve only seen drawings. But impossible as it seems, that looks like a battle barge turned on its side.”
Douglas scoffed. “It can’t be! There is no way a group of pirates sank a battle barge. It would take an elf-manned galleon or two to sink one of those.”
“Storm damage?” Grant suggested.
Whitelock shook his head. “You know better than that, captain. Maybe we could convince ourselves of such foolishness if those bodies weren’t staked out all pretty for us on the shore, but not now. No, somebody in Hidden Harbor sunk a battle barge and that means they probably also sunk its escorts.”
