Witch-Queens of Hyboria, fanfic, commentary & errata thread
Jun 26, 2022 16:14:00 GMT -5
Post by mingerganthecat on Jun 26, 2022 16:14:00 GMT -5
Just posting this here to see if anyone thinks it's any good. It's the first chapter of some weird Renaissance-era Conan World that I'm doing, right after I finished introducing the evil villainess in the prologue.
I think this chapter shows just why it is that I like the Early Renaissance/15th-16th century. There's a lot of cool high-tech new weaponry to play with but it's not yet really good enough to completely displace the old stuff. You can run around shooting people or running them through with pikes if you really want, but a traditional knight in shining armor is still a force to be reckoned with. And... I played a lot of Darklands as a kid.
If there's any big booboo's on my part, do point them out to me. I got pretty far into writing this battle with lots of Errol Flynn-esque swordfights on the yardarms... before realizing that isn't really feasible on ships with lanteen sail rigging. There are a few anachronisms right off the bat, but (hopefully) all of those are deliberate on my part. The hand grenades and rapid-firing light artillery are NOT anachronisms, both really existed historically. The naval engagement itself is loosely based upon one that Christopher Columbus fought against Venetian Privateers.
Feel free to laugh at my version of the Nemedian Chronicles for now. I'm hoping that as I write it out more that I'll find a less... hamfisted way to explain why my post-Conan Hyborian Age differs so wildly from the post-Conan Hyborian Age as described by Howard.
I.
The sails upon the three main masts were colored oddly, marked with dazzling patterns of white and grey and blue. The ship’s hull was patterned likewise, making it difficult for an observer to guess the size, distance, speed and heading. This was done to the hoped-for detriment of sea reavers and the outspoken frustration of harbor pilots.
The good ship Padua was smaller than a carrack and larger than a cog or holk. It was of a new class of ships called caravels, fast and maneuverable craft designed for long-range missions of war, trade, and exploration. It was destined for Shem and then for Kush with a load of fine cloth, intending to bring back diamonds, ivory, salt and a rush order of exotic fruits. The hull was carvel-built in the Zingaran style, but the general outline appeared distinctly Argossian. Indeed, it had gone down the slipway in Messantia mere weeks before. The owner and much of the crew were not Argossians however, nor investors from more northward realms. Of all the Western races, they were perhaps the most unlikely of mariners.
“Brythunians!” groused Rithello Emileo, a scowl etched into his weather-beaten faced as he paced the sterncastle. “My twenty years of plying the Western Ocean has come to this, teaching Brythunians to sail as if I had wandered into some jester’s skit. Is that what my life amounts to?”
His employer was too lost between pages of vellum to answer. He had purchased a number of books and codices when his party passed through Ianthe, and he studied these voraciously when not engaged in duties aboard ship. One manuscript in particular had especially caught his interest, a continuation of the Nemedian Chronicles pertaining to events in Hyboria and the Northern Kingdoms after the dynasty of King Conan the Great.
That period was most clearly prefaced by the death of Arus, an unassuming priest of Mitra. From his temple in Nemedia, Arus had been struck with an urge to delve into the Pictish Wilderness and modify the rude ways of the heathen by the introduction of the gentle worship of Mitra. Shortly thereafter, he was struck by a hatchet and his blood-soaked head lobbed across the palisade of a Bossonian border fort. His body, in an unusual act of reverence, was not desecrated in the typical custom but burned in a simple funeral pyre. His killers bade his soul depart from the world of strife and go forth to find whatever reward his gods saw fit to bestow upon the brave yet foolish.
Arus would have been forgotten were it not for the actions of Bara Torkashian, a fellow priest, colleague, and friend who had implored him not to carry out such an ill-considered mission. Torkashian had been Turanian by birth, he converted early in life yet still maintained the roughness and will-to-power of those people. He was an advocate of Holy War. The priesthood needs more than words and sermons to bring eternal truth to those who’ve hardened their hearts against it, he argued. It also needs the backing of the armies and empires and the fire and steel that Mitra in His wisdom had bestowed upon His followers. As founder of the Order of Arus, he and a number of likeminded followers began to make their cases in the courts of Hyboria.
They hastened to insist that this was no mission of vengeance. Far from it! Their goal was not to destroy the bodies of heathens, but lift them from their backwards lives of misery and give them a chance for something better, and to give their children a chance to grow up in a world free from the oppression of shamans, medicine men, sorcerers, and spiraling cycles of tribal violence that often didn’t end until one tribe or the other had been exterminated. While changing entire cultures would be neither easy nor bloodless, they insisted that any harm done to the wretches would ultimately be for their own good.
When not invoking the memory of the martyr Arus, they often spoke of how King Conan the Great—an ancestor of many noble houses, and well regarded by kings and commoners alike even these several centuries after his death—had lost his entire clan to a nasty, brutish, and short Northern feud. Would the whole world not benefit if peace and civilization were brought to his homeland, so that more like him might live to see adulthood? Such were the arguments they made. That the ardently-pacifist Arus and the ardently-martial Conan would have both recoiled in equal disgust at what was being proposed didn’t factor into their thinking.
To even their own surprise, the message of The Order was very well-received in Nemedia, Aquilonia, and elsewhere. On one hand, some reverent followers were sincerely convinced of the righteousness of spreading the truth of Mitra at the point of a sword. On the other hand, they found a surprising ally among certain of the irreverent skeptics, the typical sort of busybodies that exist in all over-civilized societies, who ignored the religious overtones and focused instead on the tantalizing idea of making other people “better” whether or not they want to be.
Many in positions of power noted the vast lands and natural resources held by worshipers of Crom, Ymir, and Jhebbal Sag, and likewise noted that incursions in the north often failed less from lack of military might and more from lack of enthusiasm among their men-at-arms and levies. Fortified with religious fervor and guaranteed salvation should they fall in battle, perhaps adding a moral dimension to the conflict would supply their troops with the moral edge that they needed. In a rare act of unified effort, the kings of the civilized realms raised their flags and began to march northward.
“I say, Master Methyr, are you listening to me? For what I’m being paid to take you land-lovers on this voyage, I don’t want you going back to port and saying that you learned nothing.”
There were other topics therein that he wanted to study: the surprisingly-peaceful Mitraization of Vanaheim and the much more grueling crusades that ultimately subdued Asgard, Cimmeria, and finally even the obstinate Picts. The invasions of the Great Hyrkanian Horde and the introduction of thunder dust from the east. The societal changes that paralleled the Hyperborean Crusade and the various wars surrounding the slow disintegration of the Aquilonian Empire. The rise of the Erlekian Caliphate and the Hyborian Union, and the current state of the world. It could all wait. Methyr looked up at the salty mariner with a grin on his freckled face and a twinkle in his opaline green eyes.
“I have nothing bad to say against your lessons, Master Rithello. Seems to me that even the novices among our crew are growing their sea legs as fast as could be hoped. Is there anything, in particular, that you think we need to do to further improve our skills?”
The owner of the ship had already pegged Rithello as the kind of man who only got up in the morning to consummate his love for the sound of his own voice. He was well-spoken and sufficiently skillful in his chosen profession, such that others tolerated his perversion, and Methyr of Cunedda found little else to dislike about him, but he was glad that they would share few long voyages in the future.
“Sea legs? Huh, I like that. That’s a good phrase.” said Rithello in a slightly distant tone. “Anyway… no, no I suppose not. You seem to have done an admirable job of hand-picking a competent batch of sea peasants for this first voyage, and I just might make a few sailors of them yet. Heh, their grandmothers must have all been raped by Vanirians like yours!”
Methyr maintained a flat expression at that jibe. It was commonly joked among many southerners, and sincerely believed by some, that all redheads traced their ancestry to Vanaheim. Anyone with his flagrant mop of crimson would have heard it often enough, and he had long ago inured to being called a Vanirian’s stepchild.
In his case, it may well have been true. Methyr’s story was that he had been born in the Bossonian Marches in a village that no longer existed. As a young man he sought freedom from the stifling rules and authorities of Aquilonia, first on the sea and then whatever trade he could find it. He wandered the world as a sailor, mercenary, adventurer, and an itenerate worker of various mechanical and alchemical trades, before finding first a patron and then a father-in-law in the form a of a minor Brythunian nobleman. When he lost his father-in-law to sickness and then lost his wife, Natala, to childbirth, the king declared him rightful ward of their estate until his infant daughter came of age. It was a controversial decision, and Methyr spent more of his wealth than he would like on lawyers to keep her family and the escheators of the local voivode at bay. It was good for him that he had quite a bit of it.
It was among his father-in-law’s flax fields and weaving shops that Methyr would become one of the richest men between Belverus and Aghrapur. He had found that linen fabric could be immersed in caustic soda to give it more strength, greater resistance to tearing and shrinking, and an ability to absorb dyes that leaves it with a lustrous, silk-like texture. It was a good way to make money, since it proved him a valuable asset to the realm but in a way that didn’t make others particularly jealous. This, combined with other innovations, led to him receiving the suitable disarming moniker of “Methyr the Clothier” while the product that came to be called methyrized linen was known and valued throughout the western world. His empire of cloth had grown to a size unrivaled by any except the silk-weaving giants of Ophir, who snootily dismissed it as “peasant’s silk.”
Experiments with Kozakian steppe hemp had proven less fruitful, but those done on methyrized cotton showed it to be even better than linen. The results achieved with Stygian long-staple cotton was particularly impressive. Methyr believed that Stygian cotton could grow just as well in the irrigated lands on the frontier of Zamora or the Turanian Tribal Territories, but first he would need an abundance of seeds. That would be a problem, as the Priests of Set held exclusive monopoly on all cotton grown in their realm and did not look favorably on those who tried to sneak away with their highly valued commodity. Desire to solve that problem was at least part of the motivation for Methyr the Clothier to branch out into riverine and then oceanic shipping. Despite his troubles at home, he was not a man to pass up on the first trading voyage of his first caravel, not even if it meant having to interact with one Rithello Emileo.
“Anyway, I do wish that you would take more heed of what’s happening around you. The sea and her dangers don’t care if you’re off duty or not, and I would flog any cabin boy who got so lost in the deeds of dead men as you do. Take your nose out of those books and keep at least one eye open to the here-and-now, that’s all I ask!”
“Perhaps I shall...” sighed Methyr. He lifted himself from his chair and went to lean heavily on the nearby railing, still seemingly distracted as he glanced shoreward. The sun was rising higher in the morning sky, showing the green rolling meadows and sandstone beaches of Shem. This line of the coast was broken with several small rivers or large creeks flowing into the sea, with a number of hidden bays and islets. Tides were strong and channels shifted often, he knew that going too near to shore would be dangerous for those unfamiliar with the area, though it wasn’t just rocks and sandbars that frightened him. Methyr instinctively balled a hand into a fist as the other reached down to touch the shaft of his poleaxe.
“To that end, perhaps you should ask the cabin boy to fetch my seeing glass. I want to take a butcher’s at those two half-galleys emerging from behind the island to our port stern.”
“What!?”
Methyr’s back was already turned as he calmly instructed the young, blond-haired master-at-arms on his plan of action. He glanced over his shoulder as he donned his armor and scabbard, noticing the shocked look on the shipmaster’s face.
“Mister Emileo, my seeing glass if you please! And then I’ll need you to oversee the transfer of our frangibles deckside, as I doubt we’ll outrun these fiends!”
Minutes passed. Men were roused from sleep or recreation and assumed their stations in ones and twos and threes. Methyr directed the preparations for battle with a calm detachment, reassuring his men in a way that never once required him to raise his voice. Wind filled the sails as the ship pitched to a better heading. She would run well in these conditions, but the charging galleys still seemed to gain rapidly. The Padua couldn’t outsprint them and could only barely outmaneuver them, but at least she might aim to tire the rowers.
Methyr was presented with a thick wooden tube of about an arm’s length, with transparent glass stops on each end. If anyone asked, it was an item of his own design, based upon something he had seen in the home of a Corinthian wizard back in his adventuring days. The exact workings of the device were still a Brythunian royal secret and he wouldn’t say if they were magical or mechanical in nature, though most who saw it suspected the latter and many had good ideas on how it worked. That was the problem with secret technology, it just made people curious.
The galliots were sleek, slender craft with shallow drafts that cut easily through the water. He could see a large gun of some kind built into the prows, probably culverins or demi-culverins. They were unlikely to fire those unless they had to, since they didn’t want to sink their prey or its cargo and since corsairs were typically short on thunder dust. With a crew of about a hundred men each, combining to outnumber his by almost six to one, they would probably doubt it was necessary.
“Hell-pots on deck, sir, with my continued disapproval as to using them.” reported Rithello, now wearing bascinet and brigandine and holding an arbalest beneath his shoulder. “I don’t suppose you would consider surrender instead?”
“Surrender!?” blurted the master-at-arms. “Without even trying to fight? Everything we have will be plundered and we’ll all go to the slave pens in Askalon, assuming they don’t make shark bait of us!”
“Don’t believe everything you hear in the old sea stories, boy!” chided the captain. “Corsairs aren’t in the habit of destroying those whom they depend upon for survival. I’ve fought them off and bought them off many times as the situation demands, and these look like they’re willing to do business. They probably wouldn’t fleece us much more greedily than some port authorities, assuming of course that we give them no trouble. And they only take pretty sailors for slaves, although...”
“I don’t disagree, Rithello.” interjected Methyr with just a hint of amusement. “But I want our line to develop a reputation as one that doesn’t fall easy to reavers. Have faith in young Jasonik here, he has far more surprises than just those hell-pots.”
Rithello grunted as he made his way to a suitable firing position, muttering something about how Kraken would soon feast upon the lot of them. Methyr looked again to Jasonik, practically hopping with anticipation as he dabbed an oiled cloth to the tip of his boarding pike.
“Just how surprising do you want me to be, cousin-in-law?” asked the youth beneath his breath.
Methyr smirked. Jasonik had been one of his father-in-law’s favorite nephews, and from a branch of the family willing to accept an unvouched and low-born foreigner as one of their own. He had proven both his intelligence and his loyalty as a man-at-arms, though Methyr sometimes feared his youthful rashness.
“No more than you must, cousin-in-law. Use First and Second Items only, though keep the sulfide of arsenic and other Third Items close at hand, just in case. And try your best not to die.”
Jasonik nodded. There was a piercing sound from above them, and both looked up to see where an arrow had torn through the sails. Only eight minutes since their ship had turned stern to them, and they were already in bowshot. Methyr allowed a low grunt of frustration before taking his place at the helm.
“Really putting their backs into it, they are.” he muttered.
The Shemite corsairs had their nation’s famed composite bows on hand, which could outrange all handheld missile weapons except the best of heavy crossbows. Methyr’s sailors had mostly Nemedian medium arbalests and Bossonian-style longbows, and they soon returned fire as they could with these. There were also a handful of handgonnes and arquebus on both sides, and the crack of shot intermixed with the hiss of quarrels and arrows.
Already the Padua was taking losses: a man with his foot pinned to the deck here, another knocked flat on his back with broken ribs and a shot-dented cuirass there, a third who hadn’t quite noticed the life-draining stream of blood from the arrow in his back. Armor was proving its worth in saving many others. Methyr couldn’t tell what effect their own marksmanship was having on the enemy, but his well-trained shooters did seem to send out at least as much as they were taking.
Probably the most powerful weapons aboard were a set of two cast-bronze breech-loading swivel guns. At a little over a fifty paces, these belched fire and smoke and iron into the nearest approaching foe. Grapeshot tore into the vessel and a thousand little bits of wood and canvas and human flesh flew into the sky and water. Mere seconds later, they opened fire again. The lead galliot had three swivel guns of its own and these attempted to respond, but they were of a less-effective wrought-iron and muzzle-loading design, and the corsair crews was not so skilled in using them. Worse for them, the caravel with its higher profile held a marked advantage at close range over the low-lying galliots, since the merchant sailors could stand in relative cover as they rained fire down upon their exposed enemies. Having finally reached the Padua, they found it literally unassailable until the swivel guns and many of the bowmen ran out of ammunition.
The second galliot seemed to fall far behind the first, its rowers either unable to keep up or its steersman having misjudged the Padua’s movements. Now its crew dared not join in ranged action for fear of hitting nearby comrades. They veered off and circled around to the far side of caravel. They would attempt to board her simultaneously and swarm the crew by sheer weight of numbers.
Though the two bigger ships now firmly sandwiched the little trade ship, and though they still vastly outnumbered her occupants, this was going to be a very difficult undertaking. It required the nautical equivalent of an uphill charge into the pikes of fortified defenders who knew that they would be shown no mercy. Grappling hooks latched to the deck walls as attacker and defender made their last major exchange of missile weapons in the form of war darts, spears, javelins, and harpoons. Marksmen in the rigging continued to pick their targets when they could, but now only cold iron would settle the day. Or at least that’s how it usually goes.
Jasonik pushed himself from the blood-soaked deck and tried to shake the pain from his pounding skull. Smoke and sea-spray burned at his eyes. Something big had dented his helm, he could feel warm crimson running in multiple places beneath his plate and mail, and he looked up to see where a heavy spear had dug into the mizzenmast, still quivering from the impact. Probably not what had taken him down, else he would be with Mitra now. But there was no time to think of that.
“Grenadiers, have a care!” he screamed above the din of battle. “Fire-pots, ho! Fire-pots, ho!”
Strategically placed along the deck were a number of thick wooden chests. In each chest, cushioned with sand and straw, were a number of small earthenware jars. As the corsairs began to push against the surviving crew and force their way aboard, men grabbed at these jars and lobbed them port and starboard. Variously filled withed thunder dust, naptha, antimony, turpentine, and tar pitch, some of the jars exploded while others burst into flames while some fizzled and smoldered and filled the decks with blinding, noxious fumes.
Of course, fire pots and hand grenades were not unknown to the Shemitish corsairs. They even had a few of their own, and now they angrily used them in response. But they hadn’t expected the crew of a simple merchant ship to be so well-equipped, nor that the devices would be of such high quality. Even less expected were the armored men who now stormed down upon the disorganized and disoriented pirates. While Jasonik commanded a rearguard force to hold the second galliot at bay, Methyr took some two-thirds of his remaining crew and marched them through the smoke and flames in a counter-boarding action. Pikes and swords and axes took a grisly toll on the enemy, hell-pots continued flying intermittently, and his force managed to seize a good third of the larger vessel before the corsairs regained enough coordination to halt them. It seemed that a push of the pike would ensue, and Methyr wasn’t sure if he would emerge the victor, but then a trumpet blasted from behind their lines. The corsairs fell away suddenly and lifted up their weapons in a sign of truce.
“Parley! Parley!” yelled several in Shemish and Argosian. One soon emerged from the crowd, a big man with a large mace in his hands and armor covered in blood, only some of it his own. He had taken off his helmet to reveal a face of scars and burns that he partially covered with a long, blue-black beard. He wore a gilded corselet over a simple jack of plate, the latter seeming to be the common outfit of his crew.
“Merchant sailors, I would seek fair terms with your leader if he still lives!” boomed the man, in a tone that made it sound as if he would take up the quarrel again if the terms were not “fair” as he saw it.
“I am Methyr of Cunedda, owner-aboard of the Padua. Speak your piece, corsair!”
“I am Sesbal Bassaro of the Free People of the Seas. My ship is burning out from under me, and I’ll bet our sister ship is just as bad. Let us douse these flames, ere they spread to yours as well!”
“Fair terms. You may see to it.” said Methyr, his arms crossed. “And?”
“And… and you will surrender some one in twenty of your lesser stores, and you may depart from us in peace.”
Methyr chuckled, so did some of the men who could understand the conversation.
“We depart in peace, and you will give us all the round-shot from your culverins so as not to be tempted into sin when we go.”
It could be worse. He could rightfully demand tribute from the corsairs, or demand that the guns be spiked. The look on the Shemite’s face let Methyr know that he didn’t see it that way.
“You!? Now look here you, almost all of my thunder dust is expended, my ships are in a shambles and half of my men are dead or maimed. You’ve ruined me, merchant! Is that not enough for you? Was all this death and destruction you wrought really necessary, when all we would have taken from you was a tenth of your better stores and maybe two or three of your weaker sailors?”
Sesbal spread an arm and gestured to several of the broken bodies on deck, numbering about five corsairs for every one merchant. They had in fact lost only about a quarter of their crew, though even that was quite a bite for a ship moving mostly on muscle power. And captains of the Free People were democratically elected, so Sesbal probably saw them all as friends. The look of anguish on the big man’s face made Methyr wonder if he was going to cry, though he had learned long ago not to be swayed by Shemite over-acting. His expression remained impassive as his counterpart raved and vented, while members of both crews peeled off to tend to flames and the wounded.
“We’ll reach port within a few days. We’ve more grog than we’ll need and we’ll share our rations, as well as any extra medicines we may have.”
“The grog we accept, but you can keep your medicine. We Free People care for our own wounded!” He sighed, “And... we’ll throw our stores of round-shot into the sea, since we didn’t bring much of it anyhow. You may watch if you wish, and may I never see your zebra-painted ship again.”
As one, the crews of the three ships went about the tasks of repair. Fires were smothered, rigging mended, the worst off of the sails were replaced and the worst of the wounds were seen to. The dead were noted and collected for prompt disposal, and the two parties went their separate ways as the sun sank low in the evening sky. They would not leave as friends, but some of what he overheard gave Methyr some hope that perhaps he gained more of their respect than their enmity.
“If I may ask, merchant,” yelled Sesbal from the stern as his ship turned shoreward. “what is that accent of yours? You are no Argosian.”
Methyr smiled. “We are Brythunians, corsair. Let your brother captains know of us. The zebra-painted ships of Methyr the Clothier are no easy prey!”
I think this chapter shows just why it is that I like the Early Renaissance/15th-16th century. There's a lot of cool high-tech new weaponry to play with but it's not yet really good enough to completely displace the old stuff. You can run around shooting people or running them through with pikes if you really want, but a traditional knight in shining armor is still a force to be reckoned with. And... I played a lot of Darklands as a kid.
If there's any big booboo's on my part, do point them out to me. I got pretty far into writing this battle with lots of Errol Flynn-esque swordfights on the yardarms... before realizing that isn't really feasible on ships with lanteen sail rigging. There are a few anachronisms right off the bat, but (hopefully) all of those are deliberate on my part. The hand grenades and rapid-firing light artillery are NOT anachronisms, both really existed historically. The naval engagement itself is loosely based upon one that Christopher Columbus fought against Venetian Privateers.
Feel free to laugh at my version of the Nemedian Chronicles for now. I'm hoping that as I write it out more that I'll find a less... hamfisted way to explain why my post-Conan Hyborian Age differs so wildly from the post-Conan Hyborian Age as described by Howard.
I.
The sails upon the three main masts were colored oddly, marked with dazzling patterns of white and grey and blue. The ship’s hull was patterned likewise, making it difficult for an observer to guess the size, distance, speed and heading. This was done to the hoped-for detriment of sea reavers and the outspoken frustration of harbor pilots.
The good ship Padua was smaller than a carrack and larger than a cog or holk. It was of a new class of ships called caravels, fast and maneuverable craft designed for long-range missions of war, trade, and exploration. It was destined for Shem and then for Kush with a load of fine cloth, intending to bring back diamonds, ivory, salt and a rush order of exotic fruits. The hull was carvel-built in the Zingaran style, but the general outline appeared distinctly Argossian. Indeed, it had gone down the slipway in Messantia mere weeks before. The owner and much of the crew were not Argossians however, nor investors from more northward realms. Of all the Western races, they were perhaps the most unlikely of mariners.
“Brythunians!” groused Rithello Emileo, a scowl etched into his weather-beaten faced as he paced the sterncastle. “My twenty years of plying the Western Ocean has come to this, teaching Brythunians to sail as if I had wandered into some jester’s skit. Is that what my life amounts to?”
His employer was too lost between pages of vellum to answer. He had purchased a number of books and codices when his party passed through Ianthe, and he studied these voraciously when not engaged in duties aboard ship. One manuscript in particular had especially caught his interest, a continuation of the Nemedian Chronicles pertaining to events in Hyboria and the Northern Kingdoms after the dynasty of King Conan the Great.
That period was most clearly prefaced by the death of Arus, an unassuming priest of Mitra. From his temple in Nemedia, Arus had been struck with an urge to delve into the Pictish Wilderness and modify the rude ways of the heathen by the introduction of the gentle worship of Mitra. Shortly thereafter, he was struck by a hatchet and his blood-soaked head lobbed across the palisade of a Bossonian border fort. His body, in an unusual act of reverence, was not desecrated in the typical custom but burned in a simple funeral pyre. His killers bade his soul depart from the world of strife and go forth to find whatever reward his gods saw fit to bestow upon the brave yet foolish.
Arus would have been forgotten were it not for the actions of Bara Torkashian, a fellow priest, colleague, and friend who had implored him not to carry out such an ill-considered mission. Torkashian had been Turanian by birth, he converted early in life yet still maintained the roughness and will-to-power of those people. He was an advocate of Holy War. The priesthood needs more than words and sermons to bring eternal truth to those who’ve hardened their hearts against it, he argued. It also needs the backing of the armies and empires and the fire and steel that Mitra in His wisdom had bestowed upon His followers. As founder of the Order of Arus, he and a number of likeminded followers began to make their cases in the courts of Hyboria.
They hastened to insist that this was no mission of vengeance. Far from it! Their goal was not to destroy the bodies of heathens, but lift them from their backwards lives of misery and give them a chance for something better, and to give their children a chance to grow up in a world free from the oppression of shamans, medicine men, sorcerers, and spiraling cycles of tribal violence that often didn’t end until one tribe or the other had been exterminated. While changing entire cultures would be neither easy nor bloodless, they insisted that any harm done to the wretches would ultimately be for their own good.
When not invoking the memory of the martyr Arus, they often spoke of how King Conan the Great—an ancestor of many noble houses, and well regarded by kings and commoners alike even these several centuries after his death—had lost his entire clan to a nasty, brutish, and short Northern feud. Would the whole world not benefit if peace and civilization were brought to his homeland, so that more like him might live to see adulthood? Such were the arguments they made. That the ardently-pacifist Arus and the ardently-martial Conan would have both recoiled in equal disgust at what was being proposed didn’t factor into their thinking.
To even their own surprise, the message of The Order was very well-received in Nemedia, Aquilonia, and elsewhere. On one hand, some reverent followers were sincerely convinced of the righteousness of spreading the truth of Mitra at the point of a sword. On the other hand, they found a surprising ally among certain of the irreverent skeptics, the typical sort of busybodies that exist in all over-civilized societies, who ignored the religious overtones and focused instead on the tantalizing idea of making other people “better” whether or not they want to be.
Many in positions of power noted the vast lands and natural resources held by worshipers of Crom, Ymir, and Jhebbal Sag, and likewise noted that incursions in the north often failed less from lack of military might and more from lack of enthusiasm among their men-at-arms and levies. Fortified with religious fervor and guaranteed salvation should they fall in battle, perhaps adding a moral dimension to the conflict would supply their troops with the moral edge that they needed. In a rare act of unified effort, the kings of the civilized realms raised their flags and began to march northward.
“I say, Master Methyr, are you listening to me? For what I’m being paid to take you land-lovers on this voyage, I don’t want you going back to port and saying that you learned nothing.”
There were other topics therein that he wanted to study: the surprisingly-peaceful Mitraization of Vanaheim and the much more grueling crusades that ultimately subdued Asgard, Cimmeria, and finally even the obstinate Picts. The invasions of the Great Hyrkanian Horde and the introduction of thunder dust from the east. The societal changes that paralleled the Hyperborean Crusade and the various wars surrounding the slow disintegration of the Aquilonian Empire. The rise of the Erlekian Caliphate and the Hyborian Union, and the current state of the world. It could all wait. Methyr looked up at the salty mariner with a grin on his freckled face and a twinkle in his opaline green eyes.
“I have nothing bad to say against your lessons, Master Rithello. Seems to me that even the novices among our crew are growing their sea legs as fast as could be hoped. Is there anything, in particular, that you think we need to do to further improve our skills?”
The owner of the ship had already pegged Rithello as the kind of man who only got up in the morning to consummate his love for the sound of his own voice. He was well-spoken and sufficiently skillful in his chosen profession, such that others tolerated his perversion, and Methyr of Cunedda found little else to dislike about him, but he was glad that they would share few long voyages in the future.
“Sea legs? Huh, I like that. That’s a good phrase.” said Rithello in a slightly distant tone. “Anyway… no, no I suppose not. You seem to have done an admirable job of hand-picking a competent batch of sea peasants for this first voyage, and I just might make a few sailors of them yet. Heh, their grandmothers must have all been raped by Vanirians like yours!”
Methyr maintained a flat expression at that jibe. It was commonly joked among many southerners, and sincerely believed by some, that all redheads traced their ancestry to Vanaheim. Anyone with his flagrant mop of crimson would have heard it often enough, and he had long ago inured to being called a Vanirian’s stepchild.
In his case, it may well have been true. Methyr’s story was that he had been born in the Bossonian Marches in a village that no longer existed. As a young man he sought freedom from the stifling rules and authorities of Aquilonia, first on the sea and then whatever trade he could find it. He wandered the world as a sailor, mercenary, adventurer, and an itenerate worker of various mechanical and alchemical trades, before finding first a patron and then a father-in-law in the form a of a minor Brythunian nobleman. When he lost his father-in-law to sickness and then lost his wife, Natala, to childbirth, the king declared him rightful ward of their estate until his infant daughter came of age. It was a controversial decision, and Methyr spent more of his wealth than he would like on lawyers to keep her family and the escheators of the local voivode at bay. It was good for him that he had quite a bit of it.
It was among his father-in-law’s flax fields and weaving shops that Methyr would become one of the richest men between Belverus and Aghrapur. He had found that linen fabric could be immersed in caustic soda to give it more strength, greater resistance to tearing and shrinking, and an ability to absorb dyes that leaves it with a lustrous, silk-like texture. It was a good way to make money, since it proved him a valuable asset to the realm but in a way that didn’t make others particularly jealous. This, combined with other innovations, led to him receiving the suitable disarming moniker of “Methyr the Clothier” while the product that came to be called methyrized linen was known and valued throughout the western world. His empire of cloth had grown to a size unrivaled by any except the silk-weaving giants of Ophir, who snootily dismissed it as “peasant’s silk.”
Experiments with Kozakian steppe hemp had proven less fruitful, but those done on methyrized cotton showed it to be even better than linen. The results achieved with Stygian long-staple cotton was particularly impressive. Methyr believed that Stygian cotton could grow just as well in the irrigated lands on the frontier of Zamora or the Turanian Tribal Territories, but first he would need an abundance of seeds. That would be a problem, as the Priests of Set held exclusive monopoly on all cotton grown in their realm and did not look favorably on those who tried to sneak away with their highly valued commodity. Desire to solve that problem was at least part of the motivation for Methyr the Clothier to branch out into riverine and then oceanic shipping. Despite his troubles at home, he was not a man to pass up on the first trading voyage of his first caravel, not even if it meant having to interact with one Rithello Emileo.
“Anyway, I do wish that you would take more heed of what’s happening around you. The sea and her dangers don’t care if you’re off duty or not, and I would flog any cabin boy who got so lost in the deeds of dead men as you do. Take your nose out of those books and keep at least one eye open to the here-and-now, that’s all I ask!”
“Perhaps I shall...” sighed Methyr. He lifted himself from his chair and went to lean heavily on the nearby railing, still seemingly distracted as he glanced shoreward. The sun was rising higher in the morning sky, showing the green rolling meadows and sandstone beaches of Shem. This line of the coast was broken with several small rivers or large creeks flowing into the sea, with a number of hidden bays and islets. Tides were strong and channels shifted often, he knew that going too near to shore would be dangerous for those unfamiliar with the area, though it wasn’t just rocks and sandbars that frightened him. Methyr instinctively balled a hand into a fist as the other reached down to touch the shaft of his poleaxe.
“To that end, perhaps you should ask the cabin boy to fetch my seeing glass. I want to take a butcher’s at those two half-galleys emerging from behind the island to our port stern.”
“What!?”
Methyr’s back was already turned as he calmly instructed the young, blond-haired master-at-arms on his plan of action. He glanced over his shoulder as he donned his armor and scabbard, noticing the shocked look on the shipmaster’s face.
“Mister Emileo, my seeing glass if you please! And then I’ll need you to oversee the transfer of our frangibles deckside, as I doubt we’ll outrun these fiends!”
Minutes passed. Men were roused from sleep or recreation and assumed their stations in ones and twos and threes. Methyr directed the preparations for battle with a calm detachment, reassuring his men in a way that never once required him to raise his voice. Wind filled the sails as the ship pitched to a better heading. She would run well in these conditions, but the charging galleys still seemed to gain rapidly. The Padua couldn’t outsprint them and could only barely outmaneuver them, but at least she might aim to tire the rowers.
Methyr was presented with a thick wooden tube of about an arm’s length, with transparent glass stops on each end. If anyone asked, it was an item of his own design, based upon something he had seen in the home of a Corinthian wizard back in his adventuring days. The exact workings of the device were still a Brythunian royal secret and he wouldn’t say if they were magical or mechanical in nature, though most who saw it suspected the latter and many had good ideas on how it worked. That was the problem with secret technology, it just made people curious.
The galliots were sleek, slender craft with shallow drafts that cut easily through the water. He could see a large gun of some kind built into the prows, probably culverins or demi-culverins. They were unlikely to fire those unless they had to, since they didn’t want to sink their prey or its cargo and since corsairs were typically short on thunder dust. With a crew of about a hundred men each, combining to outnumber his by almost six to one, they would probably doubt it was necessary.
“Hell-pots on deck, sir, with my continued disapproval as to using them.” reported Rithello, now wearing bascinet and brigandine and holding an arbalest beneath his shoulder. “I don’t suppose you would consider surrender instead?”
“Surrender!?” blurted the master-at-arms. “Without even trying to fight? Everything we have will be plundered and we’ll all go to the slave pens in Askalon, assuming they don’t make shark bait of us!”
“Don’t believe everything you hear in the old sea stories, boy!” chided the captain. “Corsairs aren’t in the habit of destroying those whom they depend upon for survival. I’ve fought them off and bought them off many times as the situation demands, and these look like they’re willing to do business. They probably wouldn’t fleece us much more greedily than some port authorities, assuming of course that we give them no trouble. And they only take pretty sailors for slaves, although...”
“I don’t disagree, Rithello.” interjected Methyr with just a hint of amusement. “But I want our line to develop a reputation as one that doesn’t fall easy to reavers. Have faith in young Jasonik here, he has far more surprises than just those hell-pots.”
Rithello grunted as he made his way to a suitable firing position, muttering something about how Kraken would soon feast upon the lot of them. Methyr looked again to Jasonik, practically hopping with anticipation as he dabbed an oiled cloth to the tip of his boarding pike.
“Just how surprising do you want me to be, cousin-in-law?” asked the youth beneath his breath.
Methyr smirked. Jasonik had been one of his father-in-law’s favorite nephews, and from a branch of the family willing to accept an unvouched and low-born foreigner as one of their own. He had proven both his intelligence and his loyalty as a man-at-arms, though Methyr sometimes feared his youthful rashness.
“No more than you must, cousin-in-law. Use First and Second Items only, though keep the sulfide of arsenic and other Third Items close at hand, just in case. And try your best not to die.”
Jasonik nodded. There was a piercing sound from above them, and both looked up to see where an arrow had torn through the sails. Only eight minutes since their ship had turned stern to them, and they were already in bowshot. Methyr allowed a low grunt of frustration before taking his place at the helm.
“Really putting their backs into it, they are.” he muttered.
The Shemite corsairs had their nation’s famed composite bows on hand, which could outrange all handheld missile weapons except the best of heavy crossbows. Methyr’s sailors had mostly Nemedian medium arbalests and Bossonian-style longbows, and they soon returned fire as they could with these. There were also a handful of handgonnes and arquebus on both sides, and the crack of shot intermixed with the hiss of quarrels and arrows.
Already the Padua was taking losses: a man with his foot pinned to the deck here, another knocked flat on his back with broken ribs and a shot-dented cuirass there, a third who hadn’t quite noticed the life-draining stream of blood from the arrow in his back. Armor was proving its worth in saving many others. Methyr couldn’t tell what effect their own marksmanship was having on the enemy, but his well-trained shooters did seem to send out at least as much as they were taking.
Probably the most powerful weapons aboard were a set of two cast-bronze breech-loading swivel guns. At a little over a fifty paces, these belched fire and smoke and iron into the nearest approaching foe. Grapeshot tore into the vessel and a thousand little bits of wood and canvas and human flesh flew into the sky and water. Mere seconds later, they opened fire again. The lead galliot had three swivel guns of its own and these attempted to respond, but they were of a less-effective wrought-iron and muzzle-loading design, and the corsair crews was not so skilled in using them. Worse for them, the caravel with its higher profile held a marked advantage at close range over the low-lying galliots, since the merchant sailors could stand in relative cover as they rained fire down upon their exposed enemies. Having finally reached the Padua, they found it literally unassailable until the swivel guns and many of the bowmen ran out of ammunition.
The second galliot seemed to fall far behind the first, its rowers either unable to keep up or its steersman having misjudged the Padua’s movements. Now its crew dared not join in ranged action for fear of hitting nearby comrades. They veered off and circled around to the far side of caravel. They would attempt to board her simultaneously and swarm the crew by sheer weight of numbers.
Though the two bigger ships now firmly sandwiched the little trade ship, and though they still vastly outnumbered her occupants, this was going to be a very difficult undertaking. It required the nautical equivalent of an uphill charge into the pikes of fortified defenders who knew that they would be shown no mercy. Grappling hooks latched to the deck walls as attacker and defender made their last major exchange of missile weapons in the form of war darts, spears, javelins, and harpoons. Marksmen in the rigging continued to pick their targets when they could, but now only cold iron would settle the day. Or at least that’s how it usually goes.
Jasonik pushed himself from the blood-soaked deck and tried to shake the pain from his pounding skull. Smoke and sea-spray burned at his eyes. Something big had dented his helm, he could feel warm crimson running in multiple places beneath his plate and mail, and he looked up to see where a heavy spear had dug into the mizzenmast, still quivering from the impact. Probably not what had taken him down, else he would be with Mitra now. But there was no time to think of that.
“Grenadiers, have a care!” he screamed above the din of battle. “Fire-pots, ho! Fire-pots, ho!”
Strategically placed along the deck were a number of thick wooden chests. In each chest, cushioned with sand and straw, were a number of small earthenware jars. As the corsairs began to push against the surviving crew and force their way aboard, men grabbed at these jars and lobbed them port and starboard. Variously filled withed thunder dust, naptha, antimony, turpentine, and tar pitch, some of the jars exploded while others burst into flames while some fizzled and smoldered and filled the decks with blinding, noxious fumes.
Of course, fire pots and hand grenades were not unknown to the Shemitish corsairs. They even had a few of their own, and now they angrily used them in response. But they hadn’t expected the crew of a simple merchant ship to be so well-equipped, nor that the devices would be of such high quality. Even less expected were the armored men who now stormed down upon the disorganized and disoriented pirates. While Jasonik commanded a rearguard force to hold the second galliot at bay, Methyr took some two-thirds of his remaining crew and marched them through the smoke and flames in a counter-boarding action. Pikes and swords and axes took a grisly toll on the enemy, hell-pots continued flying intermittently, and his force managed to seize a good third of the larger vessel before the corsairs regained enough coordination to halt them. It seemed that a push of the pike would ensue, and Methyr wasn’t sure if he would emerge the victor, but then a trumpet blasted from behind their lines. The corsairs fell away suddenly and lifted up their weapons in a sign of truce.
“Parley! Parley!” yelled several in Shemish and Argosian. One soon emerged from the crowd, a big man with a large mace in his hands and armor covered in blood, only some of it his own. He had taken off his helmet to reveal a face of scars and burns that he partially covered with a long, blue-black beard. He wore a gilded corselet over a simple jack of plate, the latter seeming to be the common outfit of his crew.
“Merchant sailors, I would seek fair terms with your leader if he still lives!” boomed the man, in a tone that made it sound as if he would take up the quarrel again if the terms were not “fair” as he saw it.
“I am Methyr of Cunedda, owner-aboard of the Padua. Speak your piece, corsair!”
“I am Sesbal Bassaro of the Free People of the Seas. My ship is burning out from under me, and I’ll bet our sister ship is just as bad. Let us douse these flames, ere they spread to yours as well!”
“Fair terms. You may see to it.” said Methyr, his arms crossed. “And?”
“And… and you will surrender some one in twenty of your lesser stores, and you may depart from us in peace.”
Methyr chuckled, so did some of the men who could understand the conversation.
“We depart in peace, and you will give us all the round-shot from your culverins so as not to be tempted into sin when we go.”
It could be worse. He could rightfully demand tribute from the corsairs, or demand that the guns be spiked. The look on the Shemite’s face let Methyr know that he didn’t see it that way.
“You!? Now look here you, almost all of my thunder dust is expended, my ships are in a shambles and half of my men are dead or maimed. You’ve ruined me, merchant! Is that not enough for you? Was all this death and destruction you wrought really necessary, when all we would have taken from you was a tenth of your better stores and maybe two or three of your weaker sailors?”
Sesbal spread an arm and gestured to several of the broken bodies on deck, numbering about five corsairs for every one merchant. They had in fact lost only about a quarter of their crew, though even that was quite a bite for a ship moving mostly on muscle power. And captains of the Free People were democratically elected, so Sesbal probably saw them all as friends. The look of anguish on the big man’s face made Methyr wonder if he was going to cry, though he had learned long ago not to be swayed by Shemite over-acting. His expression remained impassive as his counterpart raved and vented, while members of both crews peeled off to tend to flames and the wounded.
“We’ll reach port within a few days. We’ve more grog than we’ll need and we’ll share our rations, as well as any extra medicines we may have.”
“The grog we accept, but you can keep your medicine. We Free People care for our own wounded!” He sighed, “And... we’ll throw our stores of round-shot into the sea, since we didn’t bring much of it anyhow. You may watch if you wish, and may I never see your zebra-painted ship again.”
As one, the crews of the three ships went about the tasks of repair. Fires were smothered, rigging mended, the worst off of the sails were replaced and the worst of the wounds were seen to. The dead were noted and collected for prompt disposal, and the two parties went their separate ways as the sun sank low in the evening sky. They would not leave as friends, but some of what he overheard gave Methyr some hope that perhaps he gained more of their respect than their enmity.
“If I may ask, merchant,” yelled Sesbal from the stern as his ship turned shoreward. “what is that accent of yours? You are no Argosian.”
Methyr smiled. “We are Brythunians, corsair. Let your brother captains know of us. The zebra-painted ships of Methyr the Clothier are no easy prey!”