Power of the Sword

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If I would have given way to an arbitrary way, for to have all Laws chang'd according to the Power of the Sword, I needed not to have come here. King Charles I of England.

Speech on the scaffold, 30 January 1649.

The Power of the Sword

The fog smothered the ocean, muting all colour and sound.

It undulated and seethed as the first eddy of the morning breeze washed in towards the land. The trawler lay in the fog three miles offshore on the edge of the current line, where the vast upwellings from the oceanic depths, rich in life-bringing plankton, met the gentle inshore waters in a line of darker green.

Lothar De La Rey stood in the wheelhouse and leaned on the spoked wooden wheel as he peered out into the fog. He loved these quiet charged minutes of waiting in the dawn.

He could feel the electric tingle starting in his blood, the lust of the huntsman that had sustained him countless times before, an addiction as powerful as opium or strong spirits.

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