Witch-Queens of Hyboria, full fanfic, ongoing

[mingerganthecat]

Commentary thread here:
swordsofreh.proboards.com/thread/1543/queens-hyboria-fanfic-commentary-errata?page=1&scrollTo=45918

The Witch-Queen of Hyboria
by Mingergan the Cat

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Copyright Notice: this story is primarily inspired by the mythopoeia of Robert Ervin Howard of Texas (1906-1936) and set in his fictitious Hyborian Age. Which itself is inspired by Greek mythology, among many other mythological and historical sources. To the best of my knowledge, all material used herein is either in the Public Domain under U.S. copyright laws or else a product of the author’s suicidal ideation and ever-worsening amphetamine abuse.

***

“When my fictional characters can’t slash and slog and litter the pages with one another’s carcasses, I’m an utter flop as a tale-spinner.”
-REH

***

Disclaimer: As a writer of yet another bog-standard Howard/Tolkien/DnD-inspired fantasy, I probably shouldn’t claim that anything new, unique, or original will be found within these pages. However, as an amateur historian of Medieval and Renaissance-era Central Europe, I do hope that my contribution to this genre will not be wholly insipid.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Opinions and views expressed by any fictional characters are not necessarily shared by the writer or the writer’s representatives. Any resemblance to real past or ongoing events or to living or dead persons is absolutely intentional and I’ll take you to the parking lot if you have a problem with it.

The following story may contain references to violence, sex, violent sex, drugs, crude language, crude behavior and cruder attitudes, and other elements unsuitable for absolutely everyone. As most readers probably know, Robert E. Howard wrote of eras much harsher and less sensitive than our own, and he himself lived in a time and place with common beliefs on many subjects, which are functionally blasphemous in the modern era. Robert E. Howard died almost a century ago and therefore doesn't care. I'm a cat and therefore I also don't care. Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

I take quite a bit of pride in the fact that I wrote much of my rough draft for this on the same kind of typewriter, an Underwood No. 5, as was used by REH.

***

Prologue

Dawn crept in fresh purple hues across the forlorn streets of the gleaming walled city, with its many citadels and towers. It stood upon the vast dry plains as capital of the Zamoran Kingdom, a place that had once been known as Shadizar the Wicked. There were to be no thieves retiring from their nightly ventures this morning, nor workmen rising to the labors of the day. Curfew remained in effect in these early hours, enforced by the wild heterogeny of ironclad men who served the city’s new conqueror.

“Men who were not men,” was the word passing from one fearful lip to the next. Some had claimed to glimpse serpentine and pisciform scales or simian and lupine fur beneath polished mail and ashen grey cloaks. The occupiers used sorcery to partially conceal the monstrous nature of the army who served them, or perhaps they used sorcery to make perfectly normal servants look monstrous. Either possibility served equally well to confuse and terrify the Zamorans, helping to ensure that no one would be quick to directly challenge the rule of their strange, beguiling ruler.

From a high balcony of the royal palace stood Aradia the Awakened, a fearsome sorceress and re-ascendant Witch-Queen resurrected from the ancient dusts of Acheron. At least that was a common story of her origins. Aradia did not deny it, nor the other five-score stories of how she came to command an army seemingly conjured from the clay to seize a kingdom overnight. Narrow brown eyes, alive with cunning and ambition, surveyed the expanse of her new domain. The morning breeze played at her straight, coppery-colored hair. Her face was striking in its strong features, though a bit too long and narrow to be conventionally beautiful. Her velvet garments ill-concealed a full, powerfully-built body, and she moved with a grace that belied lethal strength and agility.

She turned and walked back into the confines of her throne room, where a retinue of advisors and commanders awaited. A pitcher and two goblets had been prepared at a side table, and she drifted towards it and filled one of before turning around to speak.

“Well, I own a city now.” She punctuated her statement with a testing sip, followed by a more eager gulp. “That was easy, eh?”

High Chancellor Wallarius Beren raised an eyebrow at those last four words, spoken in her perplexing native tongue. Not Acheronean as he might have imagined, nor Old Stygian nor any other dead language still remembered by the living. It bore nothing in common with any modern Northern or Hyborian language, nor those of the Middle Kingdoms or even farther-flung lands of the south or the east. Wallarius sometimes thought it sounded like some ancestor of Himelian or Vendhyan, but in truth it was like no tongue he knew, and surely he knew all of them.

“The Zamorans had always put more faith in intrigue, cunning, and sorcery than in direct military might.” he said at last. “Not a bad policy in and of itself, why fight an army when you can bribe or assassinate their captains, or cast crippling plagues upon their soldiery? Not a bad policy, so long as your spies and assassins and sorcerers bear more loyalty to you than to your enemies...”

Wallarius was a rotund, corpulent man with a broad red face and an unkempt, bushy white beard. His wild head of snowy white hair reached down to his shoulders. He had chanced upon the enigmatic woman not long after his disgraced exile from the royal court of Nemedia. Although almost Aradia’s inverse in appearance and temperament, he seemed to complement her well enough.

“Right.” she smirked. “And, uh, the others? How do we stand in the, the rest of the kingdom?”

Aradia spoke Nemedian, the de-facto language of her court, as a naturally-skilled amateur. Her speaking style was eloquent and powerful, only occasionally showing the slowed uncertainty of one who hadn’t yet reached full fluency. Wallarius had been tutoring her in Nemedian and Aquilonian as well as the basics of Zamoran. She in turn had been teaching her mystery language to him and her most trusted subordinates.

“We consolidate the countryside with very little in the form of overt resistance.” said Captain Cerallard, a strongly-built man wearing the gilded uniform of the old Royal Guard. “Unsurprising, as those nobles who languish in the dungeons or decorate the torture poles were almost never loved by their subjects. The cities of Yezud and Arenjun still stand against us, but they will not resist in the face of siege. More likely, the reactionaries will flee before our armies can arrive in force to stop them. Flee across the borders to Corinthia and Koth, respectively.”

“More escape than we would likes, and we’ve nothing fast enough to pursue.” admitted one of her advisors in a high-pitched hiss. It was a tall, unnaturally slender figure who sat mostly apart from the others, fully concealed in grey robes. “As much as it pains me to say, perhaps there’s a place for more human cavalry in our forceses…”

“Indeeed.” came the deep-throated croak from another robed figure, shorter and rounder than its counterpart. “Our kind have little use of equines, but they do serve a purpose in these accuuursed drylands. Yeees, we should put as more of our apes in saddle as soon as we can.”

There was a short grunt from a third robed figure, impossibly wide of shoulder and narrow of waist. It glanced up at the mention of “apes” in what was almost certainly a scowl. If it was yet capable of speech, it would doubtless make known its umbrage at being compared to the Naked Ones.

Aradia smiled at her unhuman advisors. Quite a thing for either Serpent-Men or Deep Ones to admit that lowly humans could be their betters in any field, or for a Grey Ape not to smash when offended. It was a big reason why those three, Amnagaset and Alkran and Khuttofram, had received such high positions on her council.

Captain Cerallard sighed. “Horses and horsemen cost a lot of money, good riding camels only slightly less, and Zamoran nobles aren’t in the habit of spending what they needn’t. They seldom levy more than what’s required for raiding across the border, fighting off raids against their own holdings, or escorting caravans. I’m sure you can cozen more out of them with a little time and effort, but in the short term you might do better to look for mercenaries. Historically, we were as likely as not to hire Brythunian Hussars whenever we needed lancework.”

“I don’t disagree with the captain, but that only transfers the burden from our vassals to ourselves.” said Wallarius Beren. “Nevermind that we’re also working to reform the pike and halberd formations of our infantry and improve the cannons of our siege train. We have considerable stores of wealth, and now our control of the trade routes will increase it immensely, but we must remember that our income is not inexhaustible.”

Cerallard and Alkran were about to counter when Aradia raised a hand to quiet them.

“Fear not, gentlemen. While I still question the continued usefulness of cavalry in pitched battle, I will concede that they are essential in many other roles. I recognized the shortcomings of our army, and I hope to rectify them before we go to war. Cerallard, when is that likely to happen?”

“Sometime this year, I think. The rebel Zamorans will naturally seek the Kothian Empire’s patronage. That means a Kothian-led invasion probably before the next winter. The duchies of Khauran and Khoraja are vassals of Koth, and not without respectable armies of their own. Ophir and Corinthia are tributary states and many cities and baronies of western Shem have long-term mercenary contracts with the Emperor. It is impossible to say what the host that will march against us might look like, though we can safely assume that it will be our quantitative and qualitative superior.”

“Nothing we can’t handle.” said Wallarius dismissively. “Even an unlikely alliance between Koth and the Hyborian Union would not affect our plans greatly. Not so long as the Erlekian Caliphate of Turan and Hyrkania doesn’t intervene. That would be unlikely, as they are rivals to Koth and Zamora both, but I will be focusing the efforts of our diplomatic corps on ensuring their neutrality, if not their outright friendship.”

The discussions continued at length in that direction, focusing on diplomacy and statesmenship before moving into matters of economy and finance. It was nearing mid-day when a break was called and the palace slaves brought food and drinks for lunch. Aradia grinned in satisfaction when she saw that one slave in particular, Iphinnoe, had been assigned this duty at her command.

Iphinnoe was a cinnamon-skinned Zamoran with a heart-shaped face and small, lithe body. About sixteen years of age, she had been enslaved shortly before the fall of Shadizar. Her father had been prosperous before his discovery of gambling. Her upbringing had thus been sheltered and she was far too inquisitive for her current station. The previous evening, she had dared to ask of Aradia what a Witch Queen was and what it took to become one. The senior kitchen maid had threatened to hold her wrists against a hot stove for that remark, and would have done so without Aradia’s intercession. A translator was summoned and Aradia spent some time answering the lowly slave-girl’s questions, patiently discussing sorcery and alchemy and even a thing called “science.” That had seemed odd, even to innocent Iphinnoe, and she halfway wondered if the Witch Queen was setting her up for some hidden retribution. She was right to have been wary.

“You!” she suddenly commanded in her slightly-broken Zamoran. “Stay.”

Fear flashed on the girl’s face as her mistress glided towards her with a fresh-filled goblet in each hand, though the older woman’s smile disarmed her. Iphinnoe had guessed Aradia to be about twice her age, though sometimes she seemed younger and sometimes much older. With her strange blood-like hair and the odd faint marks that covered her pale skin, Aradia was the most interesting and the most interesting-looking person she had ever seen. Iphinnoe tried to return the smile as one of the goblets was thrust into her small hands.

“Witch wine.” she explained. “Drink.”

Iphinnoe looked at the liquid in her goblet. It was not like normal wine, it flowed strangely and the color appeared either black or dark blue, depending on how the light caught it. Iphinnoe’s doey dark eyes looked into Aradia’s narrow gaze, and with trepidation she began to drink.

It was a sweet beverage, like mead or like that sparkling wine from Poitain. It was easier on the throat than any of the alcoholic drinks she had tasted before, which were admittedly few, and she was surprised by how quickly the goblet emptied. The second and third refills disappeared just as fast, and a warm tipsy smile was shining on her face as the first tremors began to rack her body.

“Oh. Here it comes, my child.” cooed Aradia. She took the shaking slave girl in her arms and bade her to recline on a nearby divan, where a number of straps and restraints were discretely positioned. Keeping the newly-bewitched firmly immobilized seemed to help with the transformation, and she had worked it down to something of a science. Iphinnoe’s convulsions became more and more intense, vainly fighting against the bonds. Her eyes darted back and forth and blinked with unnatural rapidness as she tried to resist whatever was happening. She attempted to speak, but all that came out was a hoarse moan as a trickle of wine leaked from her mouth. Aradia gently wiped her chin with her thumb and slowly traced a hand through her hair.

“Shhh… there, there, my sweet child.” she whispered in the mystery language. “Try your best not to fight it. Just lay back and let it happen, let the tasty wine do its job. Soon you’ll understand everything. You’re a smart and pretty girl and I’m sure you’re going to make a good little witch for me.”

Iphinnoe took no stock of the fact that she somehow understood this. She was very nearly lost to the world at this point, writhing and panting feverishly. Her eyes finally rolled into the back of her head and her struggles subsided. Aradia loosed the straps and returned to the table where the council had been watching, most in placid indifference. Matters of state continued unimpeded.

“I want to circle back to military matters.” she declared calmly. “To be sure, we have enemies to our south and west, a well-inclined neutral to our east… and what of our north? Cerallard, you said they’re a good source of mounted mercenaries, will their kingdom pose a threat to us?”

The Captain’s eyes lightened and his lips tightened. Aradia noticed the same look on the face of Wallarius and several other humans, and she knew at once that something she just said must have seemed very silly.

“Ah yes, the Brythunians… as I said, some of the best light cavalry in the world, skilled in use of lance, sword and bow. Their peasant levies tend to arm themselves with flails, pikes, arbalests and handgonnes, and their wagenburg formations have started to give Zamoran and Hyrkanian raiders trouble.”

“Not enough trouble.” said Wallarius mirthfully. “Brythunia barely counts as a true kingdom, more a loose collection of fractious principalities holding a wasteland of dreary plains and wolf-haunted forests, and a central state that exists more in theory than in fact. Their blond-haired, blue-eyed women have a reputation for beauty and their men a reputation for being too thickwitted to protect them. The women are thus a common sight on auction blocks through all the known world, and their men a common subject of bawdy tavern jokes.”

There was a cough from the divan as Iphinnoe emerged from her fugue. She slowly rose to a sitting position and remained there with her head cast downward, panting heavily. Wallarius glanced in her direction and smirked.

“Of course, if it’s pretty girls you like, Brythunia might be a good target for expansion when we beat back the Kothians. Brythunia is a founding member of the Hyborian Union and a realm in particularly good standing with the Church of Mitra, but we can raid their borders for now with little risk of serious retaliation. It might be a good testbed for our army, in fact.”

“I’ll take that into consideration.” said Aradia, echoing his smirk. “For now, I wish to provide my council a small demonstration of the kind of power at our disposal...”

She rose from her seat and procured two heavy quarterstaffs. One she launched in the direction of the still insensate-looking Iphinnoe. Instead of letting it smash against the side of her skull, an arm jerked up and grabbed the projectile in midair. Using it as a crutch, she rose unsteadily to her feet. Aradia offered the second staff to Amnagaset, who made no attempt to grasp it. He knew better, as he had sparred with the bewitched before. She could almost imagine the grimace forming on the scales of his veiled face.

“If you pleases, my lady… might my Sergeant Evougerset receive this honor? He shouldn’t be hard to find at this hours, and he thinks himselves our best in the martial artses.”

“Very well, Officer Amna.” she said.

“You don’t plan on doing that to everyone, do you?” asked Cerallard with a nod towards the girl as the Serpent-Man left the room. “I mean, if nothing else, I don’t see the point of secret emissaries or seditious printing presses if gaining followers is as easy as offering drinks to them.”

Aradia looked askance at her captain. Of course nothing would excite her more than a whole world drunk on witch wine, but for the moment it wasn’t a possibility, and she answered as honestly as she dared.

“Don’t worry, you’ll keep your free will, so long as you keep your loyalty. Witch wine is toxic to men in any event, though I do have other means of getting use out of the recalcitrant. Moreover, my powers of bewitching are still very limited, I can probably only do it to a few thousand at most.” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “I’m not even sure why I bother, surely so few can’t have an appreciable benefit, not when I’ve already gained the might of Serpent-Men and Deep Ones both...”

The door opened again and Amnagaset entered. The unrobed Sergeant Evougerset followed behind. He was even taller than his commander, his greyish-green limbs were marked by battle scars and corded with muscles, and word of a sparring session had brought a smile to his fangs. Unlike Deep Ones, the Serpent-Men could generally sustain themselves in this dry climate without the water retaining properties of the special clothing. In the secrecy of the palace, he made no attempt to hide his flat scaly head or his saurian yellow eyes. Like many of the lower-ranking Serpent-Men, he relished the animal fear that mammals seemed to experience in his presence. His commander pointed out Iphinnoe and returned to his seat. Evougerset saw a shaking, ragged-looking wraith that struggled to remain standing. Vacant glassy eyes glared at him behind a curtain of sweat-dampened black hair, and he looked at the staff in her hands, then at his own, and then up at Aradia in confusion.

“Sergeant, this slave was insolent. Punish her!”

Serpent-Men were known of old for their dark intelligence and dark magic, and they had lost only most of the latter. Evougerset was dull by the standards of his race, but he was not an idiot. The human that stood before him must be more than she appeared, and he grimly suspected that she was not the one being punished on this day. No matter. He had been given an order and he would carry it out.

“Apprentice, try not to kill it!”

He was on her with the speed of a striking viper. His staff thrust forward and then went wide when her own shot out to deflect it. He recovered and tried to swipe low at her, but she was quicker and painfully rapped his calves, coming just shy of felling him. He backed up a few steps before coming at her again, holding the staff by both hands as he drove it into the snarling human’s face. Blood flowed freely from Iphinnoe’s shattered nose, though her eyes now burned with battle-lust and her lips pulled into a kind of grin that belonged on no living human. She backed away and then rebounded with a downward twist of her staff. He lifted his own to meet it and a deafening crack resounded through as the two weapons exploded into splinters.

Evougerset knew that humans, finding his kind repulsive, typically try to keep as far as possible when fighting them. Iphinnoe wasn’t doing that. She pulled in close and bombarded his body with her fists, feet, elbows, knees and forehead. Normally he wouldn’t feel the slightest pain from such a small attacker, but this one bruised and battered with every blow. Worse, he could only get in one good hit of his own for every two or three of hers. Frankly, she reminded him of an angry jenny mule that he once drunkenly challenged to a fight. That had been the last mule he ever fought, and this would be the last witch he ever fought.

The fracas continued for minutes before the saurian warrior finally succumbed to the pain, falling unconscious against the stone. Two naked figures now lay crippled on the blood-stained floor, flesh bruised, cloth and bodies torn, ribs broken and joints yanked out of socket. Iphinnoe giggled lightly as she spat out a tooth and looked up to Aradia.

“Ar… Aradia my Queen… can you fix me, so that I may be of more service to you? Are you pleased with me, Witch-Queen Aradia?”

“I can, and I am.” said the Witch-Queen, arms crossed in satisfaction. “Thank you for the demonstration, Iphinnoe, and welcome to the sisterhood.”

[mingerganthecat]

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 scrolls and codices when his party had chanced upon a book merchant in Ophir, 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 the Hyborian and 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 to find whatever reward his god 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 those courts where Mitra held sway.

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 to 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 spiritual 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 as one 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 thunderdust 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 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 hamlet that no longer existed. As a young man he sought freedom from the stifling rules and authorities of royal Aquilonia, first on the sea and then at whatever trade he could find it. He wandered the world as a sailor, workmen, and adventurer before developing his education and becoming an itenerate worker of various mechanical and alchemical trades, which more suited his reserved and melancholic personality. Finally, he found first a patron and then a father-in-law in the form a of a minor Brythunian nobleman, Gienek of the House of Budne. 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, Kataryna Budne, 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 duke at bay. It was good for him that he had the wealth to spare.

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 pale blue 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 frangible weapons 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 large guns 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 thunderdust. 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 Asgalun, 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 Gienek’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 Level items only, though keep the sulfide of arsenic and other Third Level items close at hand, just in case. And try your best not to die.”

Jasonik nodded. There was a sharp piercing sound from on high, 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 handgonne, hookgun 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 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 were 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 cannonade brought scraps of vagrant memory to the fore of Methyr's mind: winding corridors of iron, a shuddering explosion, a sudden lesson in just how fast a stricken vessel drowned. He cast aside those thoughts for now and tried to focus on surviving this engagement.

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 the 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 steel 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 knocked 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 mid-sized 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 with thunderdust, 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 Shemite 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, fire-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 the enemy lines. The corsairs fell away suddenly and lifted up their weapons in a sign of truce.

“Parley! Parley!” yelled several in Shemitish 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 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 thunderdust 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 sailor. 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 melodramatics. 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!”

[mingerganthecat]

II.

As he guided his ship into the port of Asgalun, Methyr belted out a song of getting married instead and spending all night in bed and going to sea no more. The tune was catchy enough; it lifted the spirits of the crew as they continued about their repairs, even as many still smarted from wounds received in battle.

Tattered piles of sailcloth still littered the quarterdeck, too badly damaged to ever hold wind again. Much of the hempen canvas bore cuts and holes and burn-marks and bloodstains, there was nothing left to do except to turn it into funeral shrouds or grain sacks, and that really bothered him for some reason.

It shouldn’t bother him. It wasn’t like the Padua lacked for spare sail, or that more couldn’t be bought in any port, or even that the damaged material represented so great of a loss to him. But for some reason, those sad-looking shreds seemed like the clearest reminder of what they had just gone through.

Four of his men were dead, five more badly maimed and at least some of those likely to perish, many more bore injuries that may well fester and kill in this tropical environment. The Padua was no democracy in the way that a pirate galley might have been; indeed, many of his crew had been his serfs on land. Nonetheless, Methyr was not without concern for their well-being. He knew the names and faces of all who had died, he knew that some of them had wives and children, and he tried not to imagine those children crying in anguish as he tells them that their fathers are never coming home. Comparing it to the likely price of acquiescence, it almost made him wonder if fighting the corsairs had been a mistake.

“Plan on joining the lads in their victory celebrations ashore, sir?” asked Rithello, interrupting his thoughts.

“Not really. Oh, I’ll make an appearance if I can, but it’s best that I focus on our business here and seeing to the state of the ship.”

Rithello nodded. It didn’t surprise him; Methyr seemed to be one of those brooding, melancholic types disinclined to drinking and carousal and all other markers of civilized sociability. There was a slightly-strained look on his face, as if he longed to say more against his better judgment. In short order, his urge to do so won over.

“You know, you didn’t really ruin Sebsel and his scurvy crew. They’ll spend a few months in petty thieving around the docks and fishing piers before they recover their strength, but they’ll ply the open seas again ere long, and with a score to settle.”

“Yes.” agreed Methyr, as if he had no intention of building his own strength.

“And he may well do as you asked and tell his brother captains about you. And on the return trip to Messantia, there may well be an armada from the Free Brotherhood awaiting you.”

That was indeed a possibility, though in Methyr’s estimation a remote one. Sebsel would be quite connected indeed if he could raise a whole armada to take off from roving just to scour the seas in hopes of avenging him for a single small merchant ship.

As the Padua pulled into the docks of Asgalun, Nakoula patiently awaited with a retinue of porters and house servants. He had changed only slightly from when they had first met on the Black River of Bossonia. His black beard had whitened a little and his paunch was slightly sagging beneath his silk vestments, though the finery of those vestments seemed to have improved a bit. His face seemed unchanged however, as affably jovial as it had ever been.

Methyr sometimes wondered if the man was immortal. What he represented most certainly was. There had been a Nakoula in the days of Kull the Conqueror and Conan the Great, selling to and fencing from the vaulted Mercenary of Atlantis and Thief of Cimmeria. There would be a Nakoula in the days to come, even should the prophecies prove true and the nations of the world be eaten by the glaciers and mankind forced to rise again from savagery. Nakoula and his twins exist everywhere, in every age and among every race. For better or worse or irregardless, Nakoula was forever.

“Methie, my boy!” yelled the rotund man in out-of-practice Bossonian as he strode forward, embracing the younger man in a brotherly hug. He was always like that with those who could make him richer. And, Methyr had to admit, often with those who couldn’t.

“How long has it been, lad? Tell me the stories of your travel! Tell me of your achievements, your business interests, tell me of the great estate and the glorious dynasty you’re building back in Brythunia! Tell of... oh…”

Nakoula immediately relented when he saw the shot of pain on his friend’s face. His ostentation dropped in an instant as his voice and tone softened.

“I… I’m so sorry. I forgot about the fate of Natala and your troubles with certain of her family, I was so excited to see you again that it completely slipped my scattered old mind.”

“You’ve no reason to apologize, my friend.” said Methyr quietly, in adequate Shemitish. “Natala died surrounded by people who loved her, with little Kataryna in her arms and a smile upon her face... as good a death as anyone could hope for. It’s the greatest ache I carry, and I still think of her every day, but I hope I’ll be with her again in time. Now come, let’s speak of more cheerful matters.”

Methyr and his officers were invited into the merchant’s dockside office, where they were presented with a pitcher containing a delicious, energizing beverage extracted from the beans of a plant in faraway Punt or Keshan. The taste was truly remarkable, and Methyr wondered not for the first time if after he was done with Stygian cotton… ah, but better to focus on one quest at a time!

Bolts of cloth were brought up from the hold and taken to warehouses belonging to Nakoula. These were traded for gold and for provisions. Methyr’s interest in this port was primarily one of resupply before continuing southward, but he wouldn’t pass up on the chance to take a new job or to purchase more merchandise if the price and conditions were right, and Nakoula wouldn’t pass up on the opportunity to foist such merchandise upon him. Haggling continued, more-or-less good-naturedly, from early afternoon until the sun was low against the sea. He and the merchant sat alone at this point, when the latter unfurled his most exciting of wares.

A serving girl entered with a fresh flask in hand. She was dressed in a simple white tunic with fine embroidery, well-tailored to accentuate her slender body, and Methyr couldn’t avoid a moment’s distraction at her beauty. The setting sun brought a lustre to her golden-red hair and a sparkle to her clear blue eyes, and she responded to his stare with a coy, friendly smile. Something in that smile made him just a little suspicious.

“Her name is Illonia. She outgrew the Kothian caravaneer whom I bought her from. My wife says that I may not keep her, but slaves aren’t really my stock and trade. Now, I just don’t know what I’m going to do with her.”

“She’s lovely.” said Methyr noncommittally. Her eyes were intelligent, but not devious or threatening. No need to draw his rapier then, but it might not be a bad idea to hold tight to his coin-purse. Her face… it was a strangely familiar face… but he couldn’t quite understand why.

“Thank you, good sir.” said the girl in native Brythunian. “Your compliment pleases me, and I hope that you enjoy your time here.” She spoke with the dour, direct dialect of the southeastern Dry Plains, and in an instant he understood the meaning of her broad face and high cheekbones. Oh Nakoula, what are you pushing on me?

“She’s prone to speak when not given leave to do so.” said Nakoula in reproachful Shemitish, before dipping back into Bossonian. “Ah, but what can you do? Her last owner was too lenient, got her to thinking that she was an actual human being. I can try to have it trained out of her, but at her age I doubt it will take.”

The vacant look on Illonia’s face told Methyr that she didn’t understand what was being said of her, or was convincingly pretending that she didn’t. Nakoula leaned back in his chair and sighed.

“Like I said, I really don’t know what I’ll do with her. Men who want Brythunians generally want blondes, men who want redheads have no trouble finding Vanirians these days, often with little need to pay for them. She’s smart enough to work as a clerical slave, but she can’t read and I’ve no interest in teaching her how. It’s that big brain and big mouth that are her problem, if I weren’t so sentimental I would already have her slave-brained and sold to a bordello.”

Methyr visibly cringed at that suggestion. Slave wine was another new eastern beverage, this one from the alchemists of Zamora, which drastically lowers both the intelligence and fertility of women who consume it. It dissolves the higher functions of the brain and eventually leaves nothing but an empty, emotionless husk where a human used to be.

“Oh, I see that look, Methyr.” warned Nakoula. “I hope you’re not about to suggest something stupid, like paying for her freedom. You haven’t been turned into a moralizing abolitionist have you, like so many of the more devout Mitra-worshippers? If so, then you best not let the wrong people know it. The last northerner who came to Asgalun seeking to mend us of our heathen ways found himself dredging the canals of the kings for the rest of his short life.”

“Oh, not at all. But, I really didn’t have slave-trading in mind when I came here. And as you say, the Church of Mitra doesn’t like it.”

“So do what you wish with her once you’re out of our waters, that’ll be no concern of ours. And what’s more, I think you can find her more useful as something other than a slave.”

“Indeed?”

“Think about it. A beautiful girl, freed from the horrors of the southern slave trade, brought back into the fold of her people all because of your selfless generosity. Your name will be praised in every sejm in Brythunia! And, if you’ll wait for some associates of mine, I’m sure they can find evidence of our lady here being a long-lost daughter of some minor noble family.”

“Yes, I’m sure they can.” said Methyr, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head. “You’re not the first to tell me that I should remarry, and that my chance of gaining a title and the security of my daughter's estate would improve if I did, but I must say that you’re the first to suggest I buy a wife and then counterfeit a lady.”

That sentence he spoke in Shemitish, causing the slave to look at him oddly. He noticed a grin briefly crack her face, though he had to admit that she was better at this than most of her countrymen would be.

“It’s getting late.” said Nakoula. “Illonia normally finds somewhere on the floor to sleep at night, but she said earlier that she would like to see the insides of that strange-looking ship of yours. If you promise to bring her back tomorrow, I’ll agree to leave her in your custody for now.”

He got up and left the room. Methyr looked at the girl, then at the floor, and then he chuckled.

And not once in that conversation did I say that I wanted her. What is that called, assuming the sale?

She does have such pretty eyes, though.

The two of them walked from the office in silence. They stopped a few paces from the mooring lines of the Padua, where Illonia looked towards the balmy golden twilight and took in the wharves and waters of the harbor from which she may soon depart forever.

“Will I share your bunk tonight, sir?” she asked timidly.

“You will not. You’ll spend the night in a hammock, it’s a sort of suspended bedroll made of cloth and string. Takes some getting used to, but far superior to sleeping on the hardwood deck.”

“I see.”

“Don’t misunderstand me, dear Illonia. You are lovely, but I wish to know of more than just your womanly charms. For instance, do you always cooperate so eagerly when conniving dockside merchants seek to pass their surplus wares on to gullible, lovesick travelers?”

“Depends on how well I like the merchant. Or the traveler, for that matter.”

“And I take it that you like Nakoula? That, or you hate him and fain wish me rescue you from his overbearing tyranny?”

“Oh, I could say something like that I’m sure, and I might if I thought you would believe it. But you seem to know Nakoula. He’s a good man in his own way. Sell his own daughter if the price was right, but most men would. At least he admits it. And, I don’t think he would ever knowingly give a slave or servant over to a cruel master.”

Methyr looked the slave girl in the eyes, in the same way that some would look a gift horse in the mouth. He had a suspicious undercurrent beneath his personality, it was easy for him to see real or imagined ulterior motives. Still, something about her, her plain and simple earnestness… it reminded him so much of that Brythunian nobleman’s daughter he had fallen in love with years ago, in truth one of the only women he had ever allowed himself to love. Perhaps...

When she offered her hand, he gently grasped it, and together the two of them strode up the gangplank. He grimaced when he noticed the girl stopping and sniffing at the air. Caravels have a reputation as cramped, rather unhygienic vessels, repelling to the uninitiated. He wondered if it might be a big problem before she spoke in a distant tone.

“Blood... and infection. Are there wounded men aboard?”

“There are. We got in a scrap with some corsairs, a few of our boys had the worst of it.”

“Take me to them.”

Illonia went below and donned a cabin boy’s spare jacket uninstructed. For the next few hours, Methyr watched in fascination as the slave-girl buzzed about the hold, working in the amber glow of oil lamps as she saw to the wounds of his men. She acted with seemingly automatic skill and precision, even the worst of the injuries did nothing to blanch her. She checked and occasionally reapplied bandages, she joked and bantered with each of the Brythunian- or Shemitish-speaking patients as she learned of their medical histories. She spoke knowledgeably with the ship’s surgeon, offering advice while also learning of many medical practices previously unknown to her. Methyr couldn’t help but notice how the soot and sweat on her face, the blood on her hands and the dirty handkerchief that covered her hair all did little to tarnish her beauty. No rich man’s harem ornament, this one.

“You know something of the healing arts?” he asked at last.

“I apprenticed with a Kothian medicus during my time with the caravans. He used to have me listen to the healers and old wives in the villages we passed through, and we seldom lacked opportunities to test what they suggested and take notes on what did or didn’t work. Or, at least he took the notes. I had hoped to gain his position when he grew too old for it and when I grew too old for my master, and maybe… maybe if I had ever learned to read...”

Well, that’s a shortcoming that we can easily mend, methinks.

The next day saw the bulk of his sailors stagger back to the ship, with all the port gossip to share. Of particular note to Methyr was the volume of pasquinades, broadsides and pamphlets that seemed to be present in the taverns and other public places. Leaving Illonia to rest after her night in the sickbay, he joined Nakoula for an early meeting at a local alehouse.

Looking across the stretch of street, Methyr could well see that Asgalun was a city in motion, though it hadn’t quite picked a direction. There were renovations ongoing for a church of Mitra. There was a new temple of Erlik being built nearby. A few passing pedestrians, most of them older residents of the city and followers of the old Shemitish gods, eyed the buildings with scowls tinged by resignation. And, glued to walls and affixed to statues and drifting on the breeze were those pamphlets his men had spoken of. Methyr procured one and read some of the printed writing:

“The kings and the priests all conspiring
To burden us down with more woes
Now rise up ye dregs and resist them
And join now with Shadizar’s Rose!

A glorious new order we’re building
From Zamora’s heartland it grows
Come join us and fight in her vanguard
And march now with Shadizar’s Rose!”

“Nakoula, do you understand any of this bubble?”

“Ach! Just more strife and discontentment to get in the way of honest trade. As if it wasn’t bad enough having Mitra's and Erlek’s missionaries snipping at each other in a land where neither of them belong. Now, there’s a new queen in Zamora. Said to be gifted with dreadful powers of cunning and sorcery, who often speaks of pulling down the old orders and replacing them with ones built upon freedom, and rationality, and equality, and so on and so forth. The Kothian Empire has pledged to reinstate the old Zamoran dynasty, and those bits of sedition began appearing not long after they asked the Kings of Askelon to raise mercenary companies for them. I suppose she seeks mercenaries of her own.”

“It’s a familiar story.” said Methyr with a sigh. “Ambitious usurper draws in the innovative and free-thinking with promises of change, playing against their rightful grievances. Uses their idealistic energy to pull down the old order, to invariably replace it with something altogether worse. And you think that there will indeed be war between Koth and Zamora?”

Nakoula nodded.

“Then I think it would be well if I hasten my business in Kush, and return to Brythunia forthwith. And, yes, I believe there will be one more of Brythunia’s daughters coming home with me.”

Nakoula tried to price Illonia at forty shillings, he eventually settled for thirty. It was a fair sell, about the same as that of a good cattleman’s horse. With Methyr’s cloth selling at six or more shillings a yard, it was an expensive but not exorbitant purchase. Frankly, it was almost as much as he had given that book merchant from Ianthe. He opted not to sham a title of nobility for her, though didn't entirely discount the possibility that he might one day return for one. The afternoon and evening was spent on the last of the refitting as the crew began to find their way back from the shore. Two Argosians fell in among them and asked for employment. Rithello brought aboard three keen-looking Kushite men who sought to work their way back home, then he looked askance at his employer’s new companion.

“Master Methyr, you’ve brought one of your Vanirian cousins aboard? You don’t intend to debaunch her mid-voyage, do you? By Mitra man, at sea you may be beyond the laws of mortals, but you’ll curse our whole ship with your incestuous perversions!”

“Rithello, this is Illonia of Brythunia. And you had best treat her kindly, ere you find yourself beneath her surgeon’s knife. Anyway, I intend to have us wed by the ship’s chaplain as soon as we reach open water. Now let’s be underway, we depart with the evening tide!”

[themirrorthief]

ah a writer...I promise to read this

[mingerganthecat]

III

The remainder of their southward journey was accomplished with determined haste. Rumors of a war so near to their homeland sobered many of the crew, and helped to spur their progress along the half-forlorn shores of the Black Coast.

Arriving in the fabled port of Zabhella, Methyr easily sold off his remaining cloth and purchased a number of replacement trade goods, with an eye towards lightweight products that could be quickly and easily unloaded back in Messantia. The local market, as it turned out, was not particularly good for diamonds and gemstones at this time. No matter; Zabhella was a hub for trade routes stretching throughout the Black Kingdoms and up to Stygia and as far east as Iranistan, and good deals on one thing or another could always be found here. Salt, for one, was almost always a good option, and ivory was as well. It was a good time to pick up exotic hides and leathers, and peppers and other spices were going for unusually low prices. Illonia pointed out a number of local plants and balms that seemed to have useful healing properties, and Methyr purchased samples while making notes on their names and attributes.

Among his more interesting acquisitions were a number of melons, gourds, squashes, passion fruits and other fresh edibles, along with dried and salted fruits meant primarily for the enjoyment of his crew. There was a lady back in Messantia, whose husband had formerly been an ambassador to Kush, who was a devoted frugavore and missed the tastes of her former residence. She was willing to pay for a ship fast enough to bring fresh fruits unspoiled to her banquet hall. She was also a budding horticulturalist whose experiments with warm-weather plants had gained Methyr’s interest, and he hoped that a successful delivery would lead to further collaborations on that front.

In his short time in port, Methyr saw confirmation of stories he had gleaned from his transient Kushite sailors. Proselytizers for Mitra and Erlik were competing for souls down here as well, with the former spreading by sea and along the rivers while the latter traveled overland with the camel trains and ox-cart convoys. The dividing lines were very clear, and that surely meant trouble. On a happier note, he heard that the Erlikians had introduced bananas from Vendhya and were starting to cultivate them in the Black Kingdoms. These fruits were not yet available in the marketplace, but he didn’t doubt his ability to profit from them on subsequent voyages.

The energetic monotheists would likely displace the old pagan faiths in time, though perhaps not as quickly as in Shem, and both of them seemed equally rebarbative to Stygia. There was peace with that realm at present, but it was a dubious peace, and the public mood seemed to be one of a people who expected trouble from one of any number of directions. There was no talk of Zamora or its Witch Queen here, but happenings of some kind were clearly brewing.

One more crewman died of his wounds not long after their departure. The funerary ceremonies were performed in the usual fashion and his naked body was dumped into the sea, to the frenzy of the sharks who were on it within seconds of the body hitting the water. Illonia watched the bloody spectacle with stoic composure.

“Tchodin was his name, seventeen years of age and no family to speak of. We had known for several days that we were going to lose him... I’m just glad he went easily there, at the end…”

Methyr wrapped a reassuring arm around her shoulder and held her closely to his side. He expected her to break down at that point, but she merely drove onward as her calm blue eyes watched the water tinge with red.

“...I don’t think we’ll lose anyone else. Not from battle wounds, at least. Our crew is in good health and the surgeon says that they’ve become a lot more willing to frequent him than they were at the outset. They had superstitions about some of his methods, especially the non-Brythunians, but they’re starting to overcome it I think.”

“And I’m sure the surgeon’s apprentice has nothing to do with that.” said Methyr, kissing her lightly.

In the days to come, Illonia continued to prove herself a boon to crew health and morale. She wasn’t just popular because of her skill as a healer, or because of her calm and friendly demeanor, or even because of the wonderful way she filled out a cotton tunic. It was much more than that. There is something that invigorates an ailing man when he’s being cared for by a woman of his own race who speaks his own language, especially when he’s far from home and trying to reassure himself that he’ll live to see it again.

The fact that she was the ship-owner’s woman and thus decidedly off-limits was not a big problem for the crew, since it was easy enough to imagine that they might find one not unlike her back in the fields and forests of Brythunia. Still, the surgeon did have to reprimand one or two with accusations of malingering when they reported to his station a little too often. When she wasn’t busy with her duties or taking lessons in writing and ciphering from Methyr and the other ship’s officers, Illonia would spend evenings sitting on the forecastle and singing the peasant songs of her childhood.

The Padua took a oddly northwestern path out to sea, far from sight of land. This was normally an action that unnerved all but the most seasoned of crews, but Methyr’s men had enough trust not to question it overtly. He, Rithello, and Jasonik kept a careful track of their speed, heading, and longitude. They marked their approximate position on charts and logs and were busily discussing their progress when Illonia wandered into the cabin and noticed something very odd.

“Methyr, why are we so far out to sea? If these charts are accurate, we’ve almost overshot Messantia when we should head directly towards it. Is something the matter?”

The three men exchanged glances as they arrived at an unspoken agreement. Without prompting, Mister Emileo left the room and took up a watch position outside. Master-at-arms Jasonik had an unsure look as Methyr unlocked a small chest and removed a scroll from it.

“Can you keep a secret, my dear?” he asked.

“I can, yes. I learned discretion early in life, and I don’t think learning to read will make me forget it.”

“Very good. If anyone asks, we made a near-fatal mistake and were on our way out beyond the Barachan Isles before someone noticed the error and corrected our course. And yet our ship and our crew are of such high quality that we’ll nonetheless make Messantia several days ahead of schedule. Our charts and logs will all be marked to prove this to anyone who should grow suspicious, though we’ll have to be careful about doing it too often.”

“And not a word of that is true, is it?”

Methyr grinned and shook his head.

“What I’m about to tell you consists of a number of Second and Third Level secrets. Long story short, Second Level secrets are considered Brythunian state secrets and Third Level secrets are those known only to me and my house. We try to not even let the uninitiated know that Third Level secrets exist, and the only people on this ship with clearance for them are the three of us in this room.”

Jasonik started, “Sire, are you sure that you should...?”

“Could I be any less sure, cousin? This woman is going to share my bed and hopefully bear my children. At some point I’m going to have to trust her.”

At that, he simply nodded.

“Fair point.”

Methyr unfurled the vellum scroll. It was a portolan chart, a very large and very detailed nautical map of the Western Sea and its coasts. She recognized some names of major kingdoms or landmasses. There were markings to indicate what must have been ports and routes of travel, and then there were a wide variety of things that she didn’t recognize, including number of arrows and pathways moving across the sea that must indicate something important.

“Right, so I’m sure you’re somewhat familiar with maps and map-making. They give you a depiction of where you are in the world, but it’s a highly imperfect depiction. And the very nature of map-making means that this really can’t be helped, you can only make a decision on what kind of imperfections are acceptable to you.”

“Yes, I know that maps are often incomplete or inaccurate. And you’re saying that even someone with full knowledge of the terrain he’s depicting is still going to have problems when he tries to illustrate it?”

“Yes. The reasons why are very complex and I’m not sure if even I understand it well enough to fully explain, but… well… you understand that the world doesn't really look like this? For one thing, you do know that the world is round, right?”

“So I’ve heard. Nakoula didn’t believe it, but every sailor and almost every caravaneer I’ve ever met thought it was true. I once met a Nemedian who was traveling through Western Shem and trying to guess the size of the world by measuring the shadows cast into wells at different locations. From what I understand, he wanted to make a big wooden ball and paint the lands of the earth onto it.”

“A globe, I think is what that’s called.” said Jasonik. “Some of our people are working on something similar.”

“So you know that the world, being round, also rotates on an axis, like a spinning children’s top?” asked Methyr.

“I didn’t know that, but I suppose I could believe it.” said Illonia.

“Alright, well that rotation has a very strong effect on wind and water. It fills the seas with these semi-regular circular motions known as gyres, almost like rivers on the ocean.” He gestured in ovular circles on the map, in movements that roughly followed the pathways she had noticed earlier. “Now, most seafarers are dimly aware of these gyres; they understand that it’s much easier to sail from the Northern Kingdoms to the Black Coast than it is to return again. What they haven’t yet realized is that they can radically ease their return voyage by veering far out to sea and then circling back to port, as we’re doing.”

“Rivers on the ocean? Now, that almost does seem impossible.”

“I know it stretches credibility.” said Jasonik. “I didn’t believe it either at first, since I can’t think of anything else like it.”

“Well if I'm willing to reconsider... I can think of a few things, maybe. Clothes in a washtub, or soup in a cauldron. When you churn the liquids, some items get caught in the motion and start moving faster than others. I’ll bet the mechanism between that and your ocean rivers is similar.”

She looked at Methyr for confirmation, and Jasonik did too. Methyr scratched his head in contemplation and shrugged.

“I… actually I never thought about it like that. I suppose there’s a similarity.”

“Anyway," said Illonia. "This means that you’re traveling from Zabhella to Messantia, moving across these gyres for half of the journey and moving with them for the other half… and most people have to fight against them for the entire second part? Well I’m no sailor, but even I can see what an advantage that gives you. And no one else knows about this?”

“No one who says so.” affirmed Methyr.

“We suspect that the Barachan Pirates may have an idea about it.” said Jasonik. “And we’re going to have to skirt close to their home base before we reach ours.”

“Aye. So you see, there’s a special reason why we want our line to build up a reputation as one that isn’t easy prey for pirates.”

“What about Rithello?” asked Illonia. “How much of this does he know?”

“He’ll put two and two together in time. He'll probably do it at least as fast as he figured out how my seeing glass works, and I hope I’ll have him sailing exclusively for me when he does. More than just him in fact. I intend to build a riverine and high seas merchant navy for Brythunia, and he has several up-and-coming bastards who want employment on my ships. I can’t expect this secret to stay ours alone forever, but every week that it does is one that our fleet has a much-needed advantage over competitors.”

One more sailor died on the day they sighted land again, an Argossian. His was not a festered battle wound nor a working accident, merely a sudden sickness of the kind so common on small, cramped, soggy ships. He reported stomach pains that morning and he expired by the second watch that night. Illonia hadn’t spoken his language and thus didn’t have the chance to build very much rapport with him, but she also hadn’t had time to prepare herself for his death, as she had with Tchodin. She wept at his funeral, and didn’t stay above deck to witness the burial.

The Padua finished the last leg of its journey in an incredible eight days. It blew into port and docked in an area outside the main harbor, what was increasingly coming to be known as the “Brythunian Quarter.” This was the terminus of Methyr’s riverine operations. A number of squat, broad, heavily-laden barges plied the waters here, along with smaller rivercraft that were little more than two- or three-man rowboats. Oars and sails bedecked many of the former, though they relied most heavily on the towing power of the mules and horses and men that walked along the banks, especially when going back upriver.

From a terminus of river trade, the Brythunian Quarter was steadily developing into a starting point for his high-seas ambitions. Two of the Padua’s sisters, the Pamir and Passat, were nearing completion not far from where she moored. A narrow basin was being dug into the shore. Locks and pumps would be constructed to flood or dry it at will, creating a structure that Methyr ultimately intended to use for ship repair. Rithello directed his crew with practiced skill, barking orders in Argosian or gesticulating his intentions when his still-limited store of Brythunian failed him.

“Well Master, you had better hope no one looks at your voyage too closely. You’ll be lucky if rival captains don’t accuse you of colluding with Stygian sorcerers. And what feats of navigation do you have planned next, if I may ask?”

“Give me leave to do it and I can build a carrick to sail from Vendhya to Argos in less than four months.”

“No you can’t.” said the sea-dog flatly. “No one can do that, not even with the aid of sorcery.”

“We’ll see.” replied Methyr with simple coyness. “But… but I fear that in the time to come I’m going to have to put distant Vendhya and mysterious Stygia and even Shem and the Black Kingdoms far from my mind. I need to see to my men and make our barge ready.”

The latest news from the East had grown steadily more distressing. Zamoran troops had been sighted along the Brythunain border. Corinthians had been too, and one or both might be tempted to raid into the neutral kingdom and gain supplies or a flank around their foes before the start of main events. Among the Brythunian men in Messantia, there were many requests to return home to serve in their kingdom’s defense. Methyr agreed to a few of these, but in most cases he reminded them that the best way to serve Brythunia was by serving as skilled workers who ensure the supply of critical goods and resources upriver in the event of war. That was the reason why the Brythunian king had provided the diplomatic and financial backing which allowed their merchant fleet to come into existence in the first place. It was also why any of the common men who served about the boats had been exempt from service in their lords’ levies.

Members of the nobility, however, were not given such a boon. Jasonik hadn’t stepped off the gangplank before he was presented with a generically peremptory letter, instructing him to report “with all haste” to his liege, the Duke Ceallin Willafric. Methyr’s letter from Duke Willafric was similar but more conciliatory, almost apologetic. It asked him if he might set aside his business interests for the nonce and come forth to speak on matters of national defense, “at his earliest convenience.”

Methyr didn’t know if he should feel slighted or flattered. It seemed as though the duke still saw him as a low-born foreigner who just happened to own a lot of land, good for production and tax revenue but not someone he would trust to raise the war banner and march on command with retinue and levies in tow. On the other hand, he also clearly saw him as a vital player in the defense of the Brythunian Heartland, as indeed he was. It put him in a truly odd position, one that his recent marriage would simplify only somewhat, but not on the whole an unenviable one.

Those bound for Brythunia tarried for only a day and a half as local trustees were informed of their assignments and expectations. The Padua was left in the capable hands of the newly-minted Captain Rithello while Illonia, Jasonik, Methyr and others boarded one of the upriver salt barges and set out on their journey.

Travel up the Khoratas through most of Argos was comparatively easy. The barge was not heavily-laden, the river here was largely cleared of obstructions, the current was mild in early summer and there was a favorable wind for the two squat masts and square-rigged sails. His crew supplemented wind power with bouts of rowing and poling, and they were almost to the confluence of the Red River before it was worthwhile to disembark and trudge the towpaths.

Methyr primarily used draft animals for riverine motive power, but none had been available at his arrival and on this occasion his barge employed a number of burlaks to tow the lines for him. These men were the dregs and detritus of murdered civilizations, mostly Pictish and Cimmerian, their sullen-faced and rotgut-reeking parties a common sight on every Hyborian river. They sold their backs and legs for a pittance and then drank up every coin they earned before hiring their way back down to the sea. When not stomping alongside the waterways or wasting away in portside taverns, the Picts and Cimmerians occasionally retired into the quays and back-alleys where they coalesced into footpad gangs and waged intermittent war against the town guards and each other.

“By Mitra, look at these poor creatures!” exclaimed Illonia to Methyr as he worked the keel one day. “I’ve seen Stygian field slaves who didn’t look half as decrepit. Given all this talk of equality and human dignity, I would have never imagined that misery of this kind would be allowed to exist in the northern kingdoms.”

“A lot of these people were woodsmen or farmers or villagers in their old countries." said Methyr sadly. "That, or maybe their fathers were. Driven down here for their failure to adapt to economic or societal changes forced upon them. And the conditions in what’s left of their homelands is often worse than anything they’ll find on the rivers. The coming of Mitra to the savage tribes did a lot of good for them of course, but it clearly did a lot of bad as well. They’re a good example of what happens when a people are given 'civilization' without first being asked if they want it.”

“Can anything be done for them?” she asked.

“I honestly don’t know. I personally prefer not to hire burlaks so long as good muleflesh is close at hand, but that doesn’t solve much in the grand scheme of things. Every one that I won’t hire is going to end up under someone who lacks my moral inclinations, and probably someone who wouldn’t use slaves because he has to feed them and who won’t use mules because they’re too smart to work themselves to death. They're not slaves, mind you. The Church of Mitra ordered a ban on slavery to put an end to things like this, but it seems that little has been done to make conditions less slavish.”

“I guess some problems don’t have solutions,” said Illonia gloomily. “At least none that we’ll ever be in a position to try. Not much to do about it, except to hope for small victories here and there.”

“Indeed.” said Methyr, putting a palm to the top of her head and rubbing his thumb through her soft, fiery locks. Illonia looked at him and smiled.

The Red River cut across the Plains of Shamu in the border region between Ophir and Aquilonia, and by then the barge-goers had settled into a steady traveling routine. Each burlack worked for eight hours under conditions that were exhausting and monotonous, but not quite torturous. In the hottest hours of the day they reposed beneath the awning-covered bow of the barge, and at night they typically slept ashore. Methyr and his men primarily saw to the roles of steerage, supervision, and guard duty, but on occasion they too took turns at the harness.

The barge had a locked cabin at the waist where Illonia and the handful of other women slept. The crew’s pawnable valuables were kept here, as was a swivel gun and an arsenal of weaponry which they all knew how to use, with instructions that any bands of thieves who try to force entry be shown no mercy. Methyr didn’t fully trust his temp workers and, as far as he was concerned, one could certainly sympathize with their plight without being blinded by some misplaced sense of altruism.

Although burlacks were banned from bearing arms by the laws of most river-watered kingdoms, Methyr instructed cudgels and staves be cut for them. If anyone asked, he did it to provide protection from the wolves and boars that lived thickly in some of the riparian woodlands. In truth, it was two-legged predators that scared him. River pirates were not unheard of on the Aquilonian frontier, and he had seen strife between barge crews as well.

When two towed barges meet on the same river bank, there’s a complicated set of rules by which one pilot or the other is supposed to halt his pullers and allow the towline to disconnect or slacken, thereby giving the one with right-of-way leave to pass without incident. In practice, tow barges are hard to stop and hard to get moving again and pilots are often prone to argue over some portion of the rules, or whether or not the rules apply in their instance. Things can rapidly become kinetic if two barges are owned by competing entities, or if their burlacks come from rival tribes.

Methyr felt a familiar tinge of irritation as they trudged along the hilly border of Nemedia and then Corinthia. Not only was the river narrower and the currents swifter here, but tolls were higher and the towpaths weren’t as well maintained as in Ophir or Aquilonia, even though river traffic was at least as heavy. It was an issue he had been trying to speak to Nemedian barons about, but few were interested in the opinions of a clout-less nobody from the Land of Oafs, least of all one who had gone there willingly and not had the minimal excuse of being born a Brythunian. Corinthian senators and councils had been less openly dismissive, but they nonetheless lacked power, funding, or inclination to act on his plans for improvement.

Finally reaching the broad plains of the Brythunian Frontier and the Yellow River, Methyr breathed an intense sigh of relief. Home! Months on the water and countless nights in foreign ports, and he was finally back where he belonged. A good bit richer to be sure, and with a good woman at his side, but now he suddenly wanted nothing more than to take her to his house and watch his crops and daughter grow and pray to Mitra that he never feel waves beneath his feet again, something he had been doing since the first time he came home from sea.

River conditions were good on these wide open plains; they quickly marked the eighty miles north to the confluence of the Naurew River, which traveled east-by-southeastward towards the mountains that roughly define the Corinthian-Zamoran frontier. This they traveled for the sixty miles to bring them, at last, directly into Methyr’s demesne.

The Naurew was a gentle braided river that consisted of shallow channels, marshy peat-bogs and shifting sandbars. The soil in the surrounding land was good for farming and it was also quite conducive to irrigation, and the untapped agricultural potential of the region was staggering. Illonia rose every morning and watched in growing wonderment as the fields and forests and sun seemed to zip around them, workers with their crops and peddlers with their carts who saw the passing barge would smile and wave at her. Her eyes grew misty as she tried to convince herself that it was all real.

“I’m home... I’m really, really home…” she murmured.

“My daughter is going to absolutely love you, Illonia. She once told me that the only thing she wants for Mihragan is a mommy.”

“I was only ten years old when they took me, but I still remember my childhood here. I remember my mom singing the old songs with me, my father sometimes carrying me into the woods to cut firewood. I remember collecting moss and working the fields with the other children, and all the games we used to play. There’s other things I remember, horrible things, but this… I never thought I would come back again…”

She begin to sob, and Methyr held her close as she worked it out of her system.

Since the day they first met, he had been wondering if he truly loved her. Oh, he most certainly enjoyed her companionship, and cared for her well-being. He knew she was important to him and his marriage vows were very clear on his duties to her, but he wasn’t sure if any of that could really be called “love,” in the sense that people who don’t marry for political considerations use the term. That afternoon, holding the weeping woman in his arms, he was pretty sure he had his answer.

It was getting dark when they made landfall in the village of Solgolda, a farming community populated by some one hundred and twenty of his tenants. He barely knew how to react when the militiamen who came aboard didn’t try shaking him down for transit tolls, cargo taxes, or baksheesh. Conditions among the peasants seemed good enough, and they greeted their liege with an eagerness that didn’t seem entirely feigned. A room and bed was prepared in one of the houses, and Methyr and Illonia would spend their first night together on something other than a rollicking ship’s bunk or a flee-infested inn mattress. They seemed to be ending their odyssey on a nearly-perfect note.

Then came the alarm call in the predawn twilight. A human body had been seen floating in the river.

[mingerganthecat]

IV

In palisaded camps across the border in the Republic of Corinthia, in an alpine valley through which ran the Road of Kings, massed a counter-revolutionary army to march on Shadizar and make war against Aradia the Awakened. Adventurers and sell-swords drawn from parts irrelevant largely filled the ranks of this army, officered by Kothic centurions and Corinthian lokhagos. Shemite archers and Ophirian knights and Ophirian arquebusiers supplemented the force, a general from the semi-autonomous Duchy of Khoraja and his companions were placed in high command. And in the midst of it all they threw a fugitive nobleman of Yezud, and this they had the audacity to call the Royal White Army of Zamora.

In the early days of its existence, the assassins and saboteurs of what was increasingly being called the “Beige Army” found that much of their job was being done for them. Infighting among the various factions, both new players and acrimonious old cliques in the old Zamoran nobility, did as much damage as they ever could. The young Prince Hermero had finally risen to the top more through luck and attrition than through any skill on his part, though he did manage to whip the army into reasonable shape through his ruthless efficiency.

He bickered incessantly with his primary patron, the aging Kothian Emperor Tarquinius Vatallius. Hermero wished for an immediate push into southern and western Zamora, removing the usurpers from power before they entrenched and grew stronger. Vatallius, though sharing the young man’s hate and fear of the Witch Queen, wished to wait until August or September before marching in full force. His plan was for two large armies to conduct their assaults from Koth and Corinthia while two smaller, more mobile forces would ride around through the Duchy of Khauran and neutral Brythunia to seize the Kezankian Mountains, fully enveloping the kingdom and preventing the escape of the usurpers. The arguments for or against were immediately shackled when word came that Aradia’s army was preemptively marching upon them.

As she rode along with her personal guard, Aradia almost hoped that anyone who saw her unease in the saddle would mistake it for battle nerves. That, at least, would be more easily understood than the idea of a warlord who could barely ride a horse. Riding had not been a common aspect of her previous life, and she now learned the skill with some difficulty.

“We should get you a chariot to survey the battlefield, as Kothian and Stygian nobles were said to do in the days of King Conan.” jested her new general, former captain of the guard Cerallard.

“Well, I had considered riding with Waltarius in our war wagons.” she replied, not entirely in jest. “Maybe we could lighten a few of those and hitch them to fast coach horses, for use as rapid mobile firing platforms?”

“Maybe.” said Cerallard. “Though I already see problems with the idea. Best to stay mounted for now, my lady. A commander afoot barely commands at all.”

Aradia's force was about as heterogeneous as Hermero’s. Most were Zamoran levies officered by their liege-lords or by Nemedians and Aquilonians of Waltarius Beren’s acquaintance. Hillmen of the frontiers, mounted pastoralists of the arid inland, levied peasants and city militiamen were all collected under the same banner. A significant number of her “men who were not men” were also in attendance, as were units consisting exclusively of women which, to many, would be almost as strange. The troops who marched alongside her were one such unit, and she fully expected them to play a significant role in the coming battle.

Her more recent reinforcements came from an army of zealous volunteers who harkened from all kingdoms to the Witch-Queen’s revolutionary message, which promised freedom from the oppression of the nobles, the corruption of the priests and the greed of the burghers. Rudimentary in training and equipment, still a work in progress, these were nonetheless notable for their heavy use of pavise and firearms and for the crimson-red jackets and armor that they wore. At first she had called them the Army of the Awakened. When they, independent of her prompting, began to refer to themselves as the Hyborian Red Army, Waltarius spent many days wondering why she found it so gut-rendingly funny.

Altogether, she boasted a force of some forty thousand footmen, ten thousand horsemen, three hundred armored wagons and one-hundred and twenty guns. Serpent-Men numbered five thousand, Ape-Men numbered two thousand, witches one thousand. Deep Ones would not take part in direct combat as they performed poorly in the heat of day, but they did busy themselves in raids and chevauchée.

Against her host stood Prince Hermero’s army of eighteen-thousand foot and twelve thousand horse with eighty guns. The Corinthian Army stood at forty thousand foot and four thousand horse with few if any guns, though most of those would arrive late to the battle. The Ophirians and Kothians were even further afield. Aradia would be outnumbered, but if she could destroy the White Army here and then turn on the others and crush them in detail then none would be able to challenge her rule in Zamora, or places farther afield…

As she rode by her column of marching witches, she noticed one non-commissioned officer in particular and rode alongside to speak with her. Having temporarily doffed the helmet of her munition armor, the doey-eyed young girl with stringy black hair looked to her queen and smiled toothily. Her teeth were all there now, and there was no other sign of scarring or injury, though her cinnamon skin had grown somewhat pallid as an effect of the witch wine.

“Iphinnoe! How goes the battle, my child?”

“Oh, Queen Aradia! Is there anything in the world more wonderful than the sound of marching men?”

“Actually, yes. I can think of one thing that might be better, it’s…”

A drum-roll of explosions thundered from a nearby hilltop, as if to answer the question on her behalf.

“...welp, it’s that. I guess we’ll chat again when we’re done fighting then, eh?”

Aradia had more guns than the White Zamoran and Corinthian enemies who outnumbered her, owing to the conservatism of those factions. She suspected that her guns were better and she knew that her crews were, only the Ophirians outpaced her in that metric. These she mostly had trained on the fortifications of the enemy host, hoping to weaken the defensive works sufficiently by the time her army reached it. Artillery probably wouldn’t be decisive in a battle like this, but it would help to soften the enemy forces and maybe unnerve them a bit.

While the armies arrayed against each other on the floor of the shallow valley, her sorcerers were busily casting spells to bring fear upon her enemies and fanaticism upon her subordinates. This, she hoped, would at least be more effective than the earlier plagues they had tried to conjure, which ended with a percentage of the enemy suffering unusually bad stomach bugs. Like the artillery, it seemed as though it would soften up the foe but could not be relied upon to vanquish them.

Waltarius Beren had a scowl on his face as he debussed from where the wagons were fortifying and strode towards Aradia’s makeshift command post. He looked over his shoulder at the far side of the field, at the array of moving men and heralds and banners, and his scowl deepened.

“Days of conjuring barely thins their ranks, where at one time we would find nothing but blackened corpses in their camps! It’s the blast furnace and the powder mill that’s the death of our trade. Magic disagrees with iron and steel, and it likes the villainous saltpeter even less!”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” smiled Aradia. “Magic has always depended on sword strokes and lance thrusts to a certain extent, as you yourself once told me. Now it depends on cannonballs as well, but I suspect that changes from one aeon to the next do not alter the fundamentals of what you call magic. Why do you think my gifts are almost as useful now as they were in my own time?”

Waltarius nodded. “Perhaps you are right. I certainly won’t question the wisdom of Ancient Acheron.”

For the rest of the morning, they watched the battle develop. Cloaked in tan and beige and yellow, her Zamoran archers and gunners skirmished forward at the start, trading shots with their opposites and eliciting a charge of white-caparisoned heavy cavalry in response. They withdrew behind the heavy pikemen who now made a stand against these elite mercenary horsemen. Heavily armed and armored, they first fired several withering volleys of arrows and javelins into the infantry before charging home with lance and sword. Men and horses died by the hundreds, experience strove against fervor and fervor held firm, but at horrendous losses.

Aradia ordered her own cavalry to flank and envelop the lancers, four thousand heavy cipayos on the right and six thousand light and medium on the left, the latter including levied jinetes, the mounted contingent of the Red Army, and tribal warriors on horses and camels. Their charge absorbed and now being reversed, the Whites knew that they had no choice but to fall back, and Aradia was glad to see her troops resist the temptation to pursue.

The Whites and the slowly-growing number of Corinthians were in an enviable position, with fortifications before them and their flanks well-anchored by the rocky valley walls and the scattered tangles of evergreen highland shrub. Even with the damage being wrought by the cannons, getting up to them and then breaking through their positions would not be easy.

“Do we order the pikes to follow?” asked Cerallard.

“They’re already mangled pretty badly, and they won’t do so well in a push against infantry.”

“Indeed not.” he said in a diplomatic tone. “The other side… I think they have more halberds than we do...”

Aradia stiffened at that comment. General Cerallard had vocally disagreed with her proposal to reduce the number of halberds in pike formations, as he felt that their relative inefficiency in defense against cavalry was more than made up for in their offensive power against other pike formations. Now he was close to seeing his liege admit that he might have been right, which in truth wasn’t always a good place for an underling to find himself. Thinking more about it, she merely shrugged in resignation.

“Can’t send the cavalry either; we don’t have enough of them for something like this. And the Red Army is still too nascent for direct assaults. And we shouldn’t wait any longer than we have to, since every passing hour sees another Corinthian column arrive. Those Corinthians are mostly local militia, aren’t they?”

“Yes, but no peasant rabble.” said Cerallard. “The Corinthian national militia consists of some of the best mountain fighters in the world. They’re actually very similar to the Acheronian phalanxes, being among the first of the Middle Kingdoms to use armored pikemen as an offensive rather than just a defensive weapon.”

“I see.”

“And, I don’t suppose you’ll withdraw and declare your small-scale raid a resounding success?”

She looked at him mirthfully.

“I think it’s down to me and my fellow monsters, general. Tell Amnagaset and Khuttofram that we’re joining the fray early. Our forces take the center while the Red Army supports us on the flanks. You rally the Zamoran levies and rejoin us as soon as you can.”

Serpent-men in front, followed by ape-men, followed by the witches. While none of these were invulnerable, they did die a lot harder than the average human. They were stronger too, and the very sight of them unnerved all but the stoutest of their human foes. Horses generally didn't like them either. They tore through the abatis and cheval de frise of the defenders before bashing down or climbing over the remnants of the palisades and gambions.

The Serpent-men, like the mercenary White Zamoran infantry they faced, fought primarily with pikes and halbards. Both sides carried a number of barbed throwing spears which they loosed before closing to melee. One tool somewhat unique to the reptiles was a number of hand grenades, made with explosive compositions both mundane and alchemical. The less heavily-armoured Ape-Men who rushed in behind them bore two-handed maces, hammers, and poleaxes. The witches mostly carried estocs and bucklers, as well as sheaves of war darts hurled with an accuracy and power inconceivable for what appeared to be mere teenage girls.

Aradia held tight to her mace as she drew closer to the bleeding edge of the fray. The wounded were already being dragged or led away from those places where the fighting had passed them over. She saw one serpent-man holding to his shattered arm with a look of irritation but little sign of anguish or pain. One of her witches nodded and tried to smile at her as they passed, the quarrel in her jaw making the expression look rather odd. In time, both wounds would probably heal completely if they didn’t fester, which she had ways to prevent. The wounded apes and men she saw were generally not so lucky.

There was a thudding and splattering sound directly in front of her, and Aradia saw a splatter of blood from the side of a mounted witch’s bassinet where an iron shot tore through it. That one had once been a scullery maid in Arenjun, a very pretty one whose charms she and Waltarius had both enjoyed. There were a lot of things a witch could survive, but a gunshot to the head typically wasn't one of them. She stayed in the saddle for what seemed like a long time before finally sliding out and dropping to the ground.

Aradia felt a twist in her stomach at the spectacle; she knew exactly what the gravediggers would find when they removed that bassinet. Much of the head would be gone, the headgear having contained the contents quite well, it would be full of bone shards and soupy brain matter and other wonderful things, it would even look a bit like very meaty soup. She knew this because she had heard that sound and seen the aftermath before, on another battlefield far removed from this one.

The rest of the battle went by in a blur for her. When she came back to her senses, she found herself dehorsed in the midst of the enemy’s camp. Broken weapons and broken bodies littered the ground, carrion birds screamed from on high. Her mace arm was sore as it had never been before, and a fresh mount was being summoned. Her officers were gathered about in good cheer and some of the men were busy at work loading the spoils of war, while others stood on guard against a possible counterattack.

In the following few minutes, she was able to get an idea of what had happened. The White Army was shattered as a fighting force and driven away in retreat, with the arrival of the Corinthian main force being all that saved them from complete slaughter. The blue- and cyan-cloaked Corinthians appeared to be every bit as formidable as Cerallard had warned, but they had few cavalry, fewer ranged weapons and no cannons. They would not risk battle against a force so equipped, so they ultimately retired from the field unmolested by the exhausted Zamorans.

And so Aradia stood as master of this little mountain pass in Southern Corinthia. The Army of the Awakened had faced the best mercenaries that money could buy, and they had beaten them. Not a crushing victory to be sure, but it was certainly a victory. What it would ultimately portend, the Witch-queen did not know.

[mingerganthecat]

V

The night sky was graying before the dawn, the early birds and insects just beginning their daily matinal songs. Some of the peasants were awake already and preparing for the day, hoping to finish the bulk of their work in the cool of morning and rest in their homes before the afternoon heat. It thus took little time after the watchman’s first yell before a crowd with peat torches and weapons gathered on the river bank. The barge crew immediately manned their gun and the village militia rushed to reinforce their defensive positions, fearing the possibility of an attack. Methyr strode towards the scene of the commotion with his poleaxe in hand, passing through the array of onlookers and slender torch-flames with Illonia close behind him.

“Easy with him, he’s still alive!” said someone.

“You sure it’s a he? Or even a human? Poor old sod had its face ripped off!”

“What’s going on here?” demanded Methyr, finally working his way through the press. Two leaders of the village, an elderly man and a middle-aged woman, looked up to him as the former spoke.

“Wounded stranger, my lord, found floating on a piece of driftwood. Judging by the wounds, he looks like the victim of a bear mauling.”

“A bear?” asked one of the bystanders. “On the river, outside of salmon season? That’s unusual...”

“Let me through!” yelled Illonia as she forced a gap in the crowd. The village’s znarkar and babki made a place for the younger healer, in deference to their liege-lady if for no other reason. A litter had been summoned and the badly injured man was gently placed upon it, moaning as consciousness returned to him. Not the moan of one already lost to the world, thought Methyr; maybe he would last long enough to say what had happened. They carried him into the babki’s nearby cottage and laid him upon a table in what was usually the birthing chamber for expectant mothers. The re-examined his wounds in ameliorating lamp light.

He was a middle-aged man, strongly-built, bald and otherwise not particularly distinct in appearance. An initial cleaning of his wounds showed that his face had not in fact been ripped off, though the actual injuries seemed almost as bad. His skull could be seen where parts of his scalp had been torn away, ribs and sternum were visible in the long lacerations across his muscular chest. Watery blue eyes opened and scanned around the room, taking in the ad-hoc medical team who worked over him. He motioned for a goblet of water, which Illonia placed against his lips. He drank and he sputtered and presently began to speak.

“Nixies!” he gasped in a near-whisper. “They took my barge, killed my crew, they were after our cattle... and I’m sure they’ll hit Solgora next, most of the herd is in the laager there. I… it was the nixie who did this to me! Please, someone send word to Solgora before it’s too late!”

The village midwife and the village healer eyed each other at the mention of nixies. They were not the dabbling quacks or provincial shammers that they might appear to be at first glance, they were a father-and-daughter team who had become very well-educated at Zhenka and Methyr's patronage, and who had become experienced in the healing arts through years of service to the village. That is to say, they were too well-educated to immediately believe every peasant superstition, and too well-experienced to immediately disbelieve them.

“What’s a nixie?” asked Illonia innocently.

“It’s, uh… it’s probably best if we talk about it later.” said Methyr. “Focus on stabilizing this man for now, I’m going to mount a patrol around the village and see to it that our surroundings are safe before the peasants take to the fields today.”

The dawn seemed slow to overtake the light of the torches and warning fires. The sky was overcast and the people beneath it moved with the nervousness of those for whom the daily talk of vague and distant troubles comes at last to crash upon their own shores. Methyr understood the feeling, he had seen it played out among his own people once before. He and his men procured horses from the village stables. His sortie from the village was a cursory affair, little more than a visit to outlying homesteads and a run up a nearby hillock to scan the surrounding countryside with his seeing glass. Finding nothing amiss in the near vicinity, they returned to the village in the full light of morning.

Illonia was presently outside the militia’s staging ground, issuing instructions to a team of crossbowmen. She hadn’t yet noticed Methyr and he watched for some time at the way she dealt with his subjects, properly regal yet not overly haughty. Dismounting at last, he finally made his presence known.

“Ahem... my lady...”

“Carry on, gentlemen.” said Illonia to the shooters before she turned to face him. A slight blush of embarrassment showed on her face.

“Illonia, I should have taken Nakoula's offer to dummy up a title for you. You’re a natural-born villein-wrangler!”

“I’m a child playing Princes and Princesses.” said Illonia, her blush deepening. "At least that's how I feel."

“You’ve been brought abreast on the nature of nixies, I hope?”

“Well, I suppose so. Nemedian river demons that rise up from the water and lure men to their deaths?”

“Yeah, not your typical suspect in piracy and cattle theft, eh wot?”

“No, I guess not.” she stated. “But whatever attacked that man, I don’t think it was a bear or a cat, or any other beast of mundane origin.”

Illonia looked towards the river and peered at it through narrowed eyes, almost as if wishing she could roll back the water and see what hid beneath its currents. Dismissing the thought for now, she turned back to Methyr and continued.

“The people of Shem and other seafaring kingdoms have myths of frog-like monsters who live deep beneath the Western Sea, in a city that was ancient before man first walked the earth. There are stories of them rising from the waters to pull down ships at sea or to lure the denizens of remote fishing villages into the worship of detestable fish-gods. Some legends of King Conan’s last voyage say that he was waylaid by them out in the farthest expanse of the oceans. Fear of these Deep Ones is said to be a reason why his voyage was never repeated by others, though few grown men will openly admit to believing such things anymore.”

“I’ve heard stories like that in the Northern Kingdoms too.” remarked Methyr, gravely. “Beneath the black abysses and upon the slimy ocean bed lies Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha-nthlei, and in that lair the Deep Ones skulk in silence amidst their stone idols and obelisks of water-soaked granite, waiting for the day that they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind.”

He paused for a moment, then his tone brightened noticeably.

“They’ll have help in exterminating the land-dwellers and upsetting the social order and making our serfs less interested in meeting their productive quotas, of course. And conveniently enough, that help always comes from people we’re already inclined against at the moment. Usually it’s the worshippers of Set and Derketo, or the Ashurans, or sometimes its whatever heathen renegades remain in Pictland or Cimmeria, as often enough it’s whatever political faction is currently out of favor. Sometimes they move the sunken city all the way over to the Vilayet Sea and place the Erlekians in the role of humanity’s betrayers.”

Illonia forced a narrow smile at his sarcasm. It would be easy for her to grow angry at Methyr for making light of such a horrid thing, but she already knew him well enough to understand that sarcasm was the shield he relied upon when he didn’t want to show how much something scared him.

“Most recently it’s Waltarius the Depraved, his Witch-Queen who may be just as bad, and their clique of sorcerers in Zamora. And seeing as we already know them to work with Serpent-Men, I think this time it might be more than empty calumny.”

Illonia would spend the day caring for their wounded stranger. Hutniko was his name, a boatman under contract to one of his more acrimonious neighbors, Duke Dugaeth—or his wife the Lady Latolka to be more accurate. He was helping to move a large herd of their cattle to their summer pastures. Whoever or whatever the reavers had been, the nearby village of Solgora did indeed seem a likely next target if it hadn’t been hit already. It was just upriver of where he had been, and about three times bigger than Solgolda, and the defenses were not as extensive as what was found in Methyr's land.

However, Methyr's first duty was to his own people. He knew that his castle chamberlain and the coachman were supposed to arrive by wagon at mid-morning, with two outriders escorting them. He doubted they were in danger, as the path they would take would not bring them near the river, but he ordered a stable boy to mount up one of the nags and ride out to meet with them. The wagon and one escort were to return to the castle to summon a relief force, the second escort would return with the boy. Next he ordered the burlacks and boat crew to move weapons and valuables from the barge into the village, and assist in its defense in any way they could. He ignored any protests from those who argued that this wasn’t part of their job description, pointing out he could leave them alone and unarmed beyond the safety of the palisades if they so desired.

Home defense taken care of, he now organized a second, larger warband, this one using every decent riding mount he could get his hands on. There weren’t many; Soldolda was well-off by the standards of such a small village, but a small village it still was. There were the six coursers they had ridden on the earlier patrol. There were three sumpter horses that were trained to the saddle, as well as three mules that might make acceptable mounts. There were two spirited Zamoran jennets that had been purchased recently, no questions asked, from a traveling adventurer. There were two aging yet stout rounceys that the znarkar and babki used to pull their cart for house calls. Methyr took one of these over their desultory protests, paying for its use and offering compensation should anything happen to it. He ordered the remainder of the militia to hold tight until he returned or his soldiers arrived.

Together, he and Jasonik looked over their party. Clad in quilted armor, cuir bouilli, chainmail, jack-of-plate, and brigandine. Armed primarily with boar-spears, axes, crossbows, and several hand grenades. Not a force of elite hussars to be sure, but it could be worse. They used the barge to quickly ferry across the river and began to trot on a trail that would lead them into Dugaeth’s land. Jasonik rode beside Methyr and spoke quietly, lest the rest of his party take note of his concerns.

“We’ll make it there by mid-afternoon if we don’t wish to tire the horses. Do you think it’s enough time?”

“I hope so.” said Methyr. “These Deep Ones are said to be night creatures, so if they didn’t raze the village before sunrise then maybe they won’t start until after sundown.”

“Right.”

“I just hope we don't encounter one of the fearsome living war machines they're said to wield. Is something else on your mind, cousin?”

“Just one thing: Duke Dugaeth. You know how he feels about you.”

“He hates me. He’s told me so often enough, though he at least has the rude graces to say it openly. Also to his credit: he’s one of my few rivals who would hate me just as much if I was a Brythunian nobleman as he does when I’m a Bossonian commoner.”

“He would hate you more, if anything. Dugaeth believes that a noble lord should be a warrior above all, not one who soils his hands in commerce and merchantry. It was for that reason that he also hated Natala’s father, even before he bought land cheaply from his father in what the Younger Dugaeth considered a dishonorable exploitation of temporary misfortune. As far as he’s concerned, the flax fields that made you rich were built on stolen ground.”

“Solgolda was indeed built on land that his family once owned.” agreed Methyr. “And populated with peasants that Natala herself contracted from Solgora, but I doubt he would have ever made such a profit of it as we have. Whenever the Lady Latolka visits here, she often tells me that her spouse would like nothing more than to raze Solgolda, move the peasants back to Solgora where they belong, and turn the whole allotment back into pasturage for his cattle and warhorses. He really has a thing for his warhorses.”

“Well, he does raise good ones. They're among the best in Brythunia and thus among the best in the world. And we better hope that no one riding them catches us on his land as a party armed for war.”

Methyr harrumphed. “We ride against a foe that’s as much a threat to our well-being as his. And we also ride to the protection of his subjects, who are friends and family of our own.”

“Which only exacerbates our infraction, at least by his way of seeing things. Not only do we willfully trespass on another lord’s land, we seek to lend aid to his peasants without his permission, thereby undermining his authority over them. By the laws and customs of the landed nobility, he would be well within his rights to put us all to the sword for such heinous behavior, though he’ll only do that if he’s in one of his legendary bad moods. More likely, he’ll march us home in hoods and binds and make a claim of recompense upon Duke Willafric. Probably a fine of moderate severity, made slightly more-than-moderate by whatever court fee our liege demands, of course.”

“Of course.” said Methyr. “Willafric does have his code of honor, which he abides by more devoutly than most, but he never minds making a zloty or two in the process. I’ve secured the rights to the land I hold as much on monetary grounds as legal ones; he knows that he makes more money with me than without.”

“Yes… well, I still think this sortie is the right thing to do. I hope I haven’t given you a good reason to cancel it.”

“Not at all, young Jasonik. If anyone asks, I'll just say that one of our pigs went missing, that I suspect the nixies of having stolen it and that I merely arrived on the scene to demand a recompense of my own.”

The riders spread out into a staggered travelling column on the narrow dirt trail. In the village behind them, the inhabitants guardedly began to see to the labors of their day.

[mingerganthecat]

VI

Several sets of batrachian eyes rose above the water in the golden-hued evening, as they gazed malevolently upon the unsuspecting village. There were no walls or fortifications to speak of, the local defenses consisted of one full-time constable, four professional men-at-arms and a simply-equipped militia of some twenty men who were mostly focused on the task of guarding the livestock. The manager of the community was a village wojt driven mad by unrequited lust for a local young woman. He was serving as an agent of the Deep Ones in exchange for their promise to kill her fiance and leave her alone and unharmed for him to “rescue.” Those terms were agreeable to Alkran; after all, he needed at least a few survivors to crawl back to their lords with terrified depictions of the ravaging fish-frog monsters and pleas that they pressure the king into agreeing to whatever tribute the unbeatable Army of the Awakened demanded.

The population numbered some four hundred humans and, at the moment, some six or seven-hundred head of cattle held in temporary enclosures for branding and culling. Both would be of use in Zamora, and the raiding force of one-hundred-and-sixty should have little trouble swarming the place and absconding with many once darkness fell. There were hiccups in the plan, it had started when that cattle barge had blundered into their staging ground and it’s crew had to be dispatched, and then when that haphazard-looking gang of mounted men showed up with news of what had happened and a warning that Solgora might be the piratical nixies' next target. There must have been a survivor, thought Alkran in annoyance.

Whoever the strangers were, the surly old wojt had done an admirable job of getting rid of them, declaring that he would hear no talk of stupid frog-man stories, screaming that he wouldn’t have them scaring his peasants with such nonsense, and finally brandishing an arquebus and all but threatening to blow them away if they didn’t leave. That had taken care of that, and at a single telepathic command the dark forms in the water began skulking shoreward.

Just shy of the docks, there were two quiet “plops” in the water followed by terrific explosions. Plumes of smoke and water geysered in the dying light, carrying a mix of blood and bone and meat and smelling uncomfortably more of chicken than of fish. Broken fishman-frogman bodies bobbed in the water. Alkran snarled in surprise and anger at that; he had never expected some wandering sentry to notice the slight ripples that might indicate approaching swimmers, much less to respond to what he saw by throwing grenades in after it.

Alkran didn’t have time to think about the surprising power of the blasts, nor the curiosity of a human-made thunderdust device which explodes under water. He did fleetingly consider that perhaps he should have forced his craven agent to knife or poison the sentries before finding an excuse to leave town for the night. The first Deep One who lifted himself onto dry land was promptly shot back down with several quarrels in his scales, and Alkran knew at once that he was facing more than a single wandering sentry.

Some five crossbowmen were firing from positions around the outer edge of the dockyard, shadowed by about double their number of infantry. It was the same motley band of riders from earlier, probably having secreted back into the village to establish their ambushcade. That was a troublesome development, though at least they didn’t appear to have summoned reinforcements. The Deep Ones loped ashore with croaking, baying howls as they sought to close with their foes. Another crossbow volley tore into them, as did one of thrown spears. The humans took to their mounts and tried to flee through the darkening streets, though not all could escape in time.

Talons tore into the rump of a disoriented horse and brought the rider down into their midst. Clubs and maces rained down on his armor as tapered daggers thrust into weak spots, leaving nothing but a pulped mass of reddish goo leaking through the mail. A spearman found his shaft wrenched from his hands as a huge fist wrapped around the back of his neck, twisting the spine in a horrible crack before flinging him to the ground. One was pushed into the river and then had heavy sacks of grain dropped on him by a chuckling foe who knew well how humans feel about drowning. Alkran hadn’t lost many men from this diversion, but he had lost the element of surprise and that’s what really hurt. The warning cry sounded throughout the village and the citizens were roused into action.

Viewed from the air, the village of Solgora would have vaguely resembled an orthogonal triangle with the hypotenuse curving outwards to rest against a gradual bend in the river. In each corner of the triangle were several buildings that had been constructed with defense in mind: the barracks and armory in the outer area near the cattle pens, the dockside tavern and inn on one corner of the riverfront, the Temple of Mitra on the opposite end not far from the docks. Most of these were two-storey structures built with walls of stone, with few accessible windows and sturdy doors and roofs of slate instead of thatch. As the Deep Ones began to flood the narrow winding streets of the densely-built village, citizens struggled to find shelter in these places or in other semi-defensible structures, such as the large common hall near the village center.

The Temple of Mitra was fittingly enough the first place to come under siege by the worshipers of Dagon, and it’s defensive aptitude was dubious. It had been redesigned in the years since its construction, the doors and windows were no longer easily barred or barricaded. A number of peasant domiciles had grown to abut the structure, allowing easy access to the roof which could be breached if ground-level entry proved troublesome. Worst of all, almost all of the villagers who sought its sanctuary were presently unarmed and would find no siege stores within, these having been relocated, misplaced or stolen at some point in the past. A single militia spearman and an assortment of men and women armed with little more than sticks and stones stood in the path of men-who-were-not-men. Their destruction came quickly of course, though they did buy time for many of their children to purchase a moment's reprieve.

The strangers rode to relative safety before alighting from their mounts, now grown next to uncontrollable from the sights and smells of fish-frog-things running thickly in the streets. They wheeled around towards the temple and marched once more into the fray. Moving against the horde in a wedge formation, they hacked and stabbed and shot their way to the back of the temple and performed a rearguard action for its occupants, just as the front door was hammered down and the first of the Deep Ones began dropping like spiders from the holes they had torn in the roof. A lamp was shattered and the building was soon wreathed in flames, which annoyed Alkran but also amused him quite a bit. Several buildings were burning throughout the village by now, the uncomfortable smell of pork or beef began to intermingle with that of slightly-fishy chicken.

The back of the temple opened in the direction of the village barracks where the constable had finally gathered the bulk of his forces. Now there was the beat of steel sabatons on the cobbled streets as the men-at-arms and militia sallied forth to cover their friends and allies. Alkran noticed the handgonnes that many of them carried. He recalled that these were thunder-dust weapons, fascinating devices, more primitive than the one his agent had first used to threaten the strangers and frankly inferior to a good crossbow in many ways. But the volley of fire and the damage it wrought made him hope that he could have something like it the next time he warred with humans. He must once again speak to Aradia about her plans for a “bellows gun” which may be carried in water and still shoots death on land, without the need of thunder and fire.

Recovering from their shock, the Deep Ones surged forward to bash down these new foes. It was harder this time, facing trained and fully-armored warriors rather than desperate and panicking peasants. Pikes and halberds tore at scales while clubs and maces staved in helms. Men died and gave ground to their attackers, but their lines did not break and they managed to retreat to the barracks in good order. Alkran screamed in rage, then he considered his situation.

The combat had lasted no more than 15 minutes. His casualties were heavy, those humans and beeves captured so far hardly seemed to make up for it, and little more would be gained from remaining in the village any longer than it took to loot or burn what they might. Still, he felt no need to quit the raid just yet. If nothing else, he could at least force the apes to lose a night of sleep.

[mingerganthecat]

VII

Methyr had cracked the shaft of his poleaxe not long after parting with his horse. As he and his men shepherded the villagers away from the rapidly-catching temple, he narrowly dodged a massive club that drove at him from out of the dark, then feinted low and thrust his rapier upwards to cut deep into the grey-green barrel chest of his attacker. He recovered in time to parry and riposte against a swinging maul, hitting the side of the neck but failing to send his steel point all the way through the gills. Their skin, it seemed, was at least as tough as boiled leather, and their staying power seemed to have more in common with horses than men, even when wounded.

With their narrow fish-heads and big bulging eyes, Methyr suspected that his opponents might see better in the dark and in their peripheries, though perhaps they struggled with range and depth perception. He used this to his advantage as he warred against them, and he quickly saw that they were not mere mindless brutes who would fall without thought upon the human blades. When it became obvious that the humans with their spears and other polearms held an advantage in reach over bare talons or shorter-handled blunt weapons, they utilized their superior speed and agility to try and take them in the flanks. Jasonik gripped his poleaxe high on the shaft and drove the upper spike into the brain of the one that threatened Methyr. Then he was showered in wattle and daub fragments as another tore through a nearby wall to sideswipe his armor and knock him sprawling to the ground.

Fighting at close range, Methyr brought down his pommel on the creature’s back to little effect. Though knowing that he probably wouldn’t have time to save his cousin’s skull from a good clubbing, he readied for a halfsworded thrust when one of the peasants, a young woman with a carpenter’s adze, darted forward and gouged the creature’s eye out in angry, frenzied blows. It grabbed to its wound and fled, the humans continued to give ground, trying not to trip over the bodies of friends or foes as they did.

As the fighting retreat to the barracks continued, some of the Deep Ones began to pull up cobblestones from the plaza and hurl them at their lines. Deep Ones weren’t the best of shots, nor was their rate of fire impressive, but the missiles were damaging when they made contact. A crossbowman screamed when a heavy stone cracked against his skull. Methyr took up his bow and grabbed him by the arms, Jasonik grabbed him by the legs, and together they carried their comrade the last few steps into what would pass as safety. Methyr didn’t fancy the sound his skull had made, but he wouldn’t leave a stricken man alone with those monsters, not if it could be helped.

The door was barred mere seconds before the first large body slammed against it. The attackers scurried around the three-storey building in search of an entry, croaking to the smoke-filled heavens and bashing against the walls or playing against ironshod window shutters with staves or captured spears and axes. The facade was too smooth for even them to climb, restricting access to the upper floors or the roof, and for a time the occupants settled into a siege.

Candlelight flickered dimly across the stronghold, low enough not to ruin night vision and just bright enough to aid in administering first aid or for reloading ranged weapons. It also illumined the expressions of sheer anguish on the faces of the peasants whose pitiable forms covered the bare stone floors. Each thud or howl from outside brought forth cries of terror.

Something about those cries struck Methyr deeply in his soul. It reminded him of similar scenes he had witnessed in other places and times, when squirming piles of refugees huddled together while death rained down from above. It also made him wonder if perhaps his wife or even daughter were cowering in fear at that moment as scaley monstrosities lay siege to their abodes.

He ruthlessly dispatched that thought as quickly as possible, knowing that it did him no good. Illonia was in a palisaded village held by a vigilant guard with heavy reinforcements, while Kataryna sheltered behind stone walls, his personal retinue, and a battery of cannon. It would be madness for mere raiding parties to assail such defenses.

Then again, for all he knew there might be forces caparisoned for war and following in the path of the raiders. One with a mission of murdering the families of the nobles while the raiders had them distracted...

No, damn it! Stop second-guessing yourself! You already made your decision, now trust that it was the right decision until you’re given a reason to think otherwise!

With smoldering green fire in his eyes, Methyr jerked the pilfered crossbow close against his cheek as he peered through one of the barracks embrasures. He wasn’t trained in the art of arbalestiery, but he did have some cursory range-time under his belt and the weapon was intuitive enough. The light of nearby fires gave glimpses of movement outside, he picked what seemed a promising location and fired. A rending yowl told him that his quarrel proved true and he moved to make way for a rather diminutive handgunner and a matchbearer who was even smaller, little more than a child.

Shrouded in shadow, the gunman hooked his devise against the masonry and held the tiller over his shoulder. At a high-pitched scream of “Give fire!”, the matchbearer placed his ember to the touch hole. There was a moment’s delay, then a blast of fire from the barrel and Methyr could see in the flash that the “gunman” was in fact a gunwoman, the same who had aided him and Jasonik earlier. And if his eyes smoldered, hers blazed with all the grue intensity of Cooper Hewitt Vapour Lamps. Having discharged the firearm, she and her little brother passed it down to a broken-armed man-at-arms, picked up a freshly-reloaded piece, braced and aimed and fired again. Sparing only a moment's appreciation, Methyr placed another quarrel in the groove of his crossbow and searched for something else to shoot. He could see nothing at this point, though the twang of bows and blasts of guns continued all around him.

“Spare your ammunition, comrades!” yelled Jasonik above the din. “Don’t shoot unless you’re hitting something more than empty night, because we’ll have a lot of that before the sunrise.”

From that point forward, few targets would present themselves. The besieging Deep Ones understood that nothing could be gained from filling their own hides with shot and broadhead, so they retired from the line of fire and continued lobbing cobblestones and croaking taunts to goad the defenders. Methyr passed his crossbow on to another fighter before making a quick review of his men and those villagers whom they sheltered amongst. Jasonik was examining the barred and barricaded barracks door, and Methyr spoke to him lowly.

“There’s, what, sixty or eighty people in here, about fifteen to twenty in fighting shape? How many of those are ours?”

“I count you, me and three of our Solgoldans, though I think more of our party managed to break away and find shelter in that alehouse on the far side of the plaza.”

“Smart sods.” commented Methyr dryly.

“We should have enough to hold here, even if they do find a battering ram somewhere and try to force the door.”

“True enough, that. I doubt we’ll sleep much tonight, but our lodging should be safe. At least so long as our enemies don’t bring petards to bear against us.”

“Pray they don’t.” said Jasonik sincerely. “Also pray they don’t think to rush us in force with hooks and nooses to try and pull a wall down. They might be strong enough to manage it.”

Methyr nodded. That was not a cheerful thought, but it did help keep him on his toes as he volunteered for first watch.

There was rain that night, but not enough to extinguish the fires which eventually died of their own accord. Another morning came grey and sullen, and Methyr found that he had somehow purchased a few hours sleep leaned against one of the supply chests, with several of the peasant children nestled against him as if his cold steel plates were the softest of down pillows. His rapier was sheathed, but the sheath was gripped firmly in his hands. With a gentle pat to the top of one of the tawny-headed youths, he carefully untangled from their mass and roused Jasonik from where he slept. A carpenter's daughter stood vigil over him, adze in hand and firearm, match, and candle still in close proximity. As light began to grow in the village, the two of them organized a sallying force to see if anything else survived the night.

Solgora Village was a scene of complete devastation. Most of the peasant cottages were burned or collapsed or thoroughly ransacked, the rain and the mist that followed had done just enough to turn ash into miserable black sludge. The cobbled streets were torn and filled with rubble, crowds of shell-shocked survivors emerged from hiding places and picked their way through the wreckage. A few beeves and horses had eluded the raiders and now ran rogue in the streets. His party managed to find the babki’s borrowed rouncey, stumbling and injured but not hopelessly so. Three of his missing men were also found huddled in the alehouse. Seven more were unaccounted, presumably carried away or to be found among the corpses that littered the village.

Seven dead, Methie. You lead your little army into someone else’s affair, and now almost half of them are dead against a force of over-sized naked frogs. Are you happy?

I saved a whole village by doing it, and we gigged many a frog in the process. You’re damned right I’m happy. Now go away, I have work to do!

Technically, he saved half a village at most. Some two hundred of the citizens were dead or carried away, along with almost all their cattle and any portable items of value. The Deep Ones had apparently lost some fifty of their number, with a handful of the badly wounded left abandoned where they fell. The humans were already going to work on these with flails and sawblades and hot tongs, and Methyr ordered an immediate halt to this. He understood the anger but he wanted prisoners, or at least he wanted answers.

Unfortunately, most of those captured who deigned to speak at all did so in Zamoran or what might have been Stygian or other languages that none of the Brythunians understood. They finally found one alive and in his senses, who spoke Shemitish, and to whose resting place Methyr rushed quickly. He assumed the bearing of one disciplining rebellious and freshly-flogged serfs as he approached the bound and motionless figure, propped sitting against a smoke-blackened wall.

“Monster, you’ve hurt these people most grievously, and for that you will die most grievously. At least, that will prove your fate unless you make yourself useful to me.”

The creature looked more through him than at him, though the mind behind the bulging eyes clearly registered his presence and his words.

“You? You are lord of this village?”

“I am Methyr of Cunneda, lord of a neighboring village and friend to this one. Who are you, and whom do you serve?”

“Methyr? Ah, Methyr the Clothier, lord of Solgolda village. We opted to pass over your settlement, for its defenses were too great and the reward within too little, and I see that we chose wisely. We hope you are not offended.”

His low croaking words ended in a chuckle, and it was an oddly human chuckle. The voice held all of the dark shades of articulate expression which its staring face lacked, but Methyr soon found the emotions of the stricken beast as easy to read as a man’s, and that somehow unnerved him more than if he were viewing something wholly alien. With a smidgen of levity, it continued.

“I am Samsnagaset, lieutenant to Master Amnagaset and second-in-command of this raiding party. I’m sure that most of my comrades are on their way back to Zamora at this moment, heavily laden with slaves and livestock and all other forms of booty. There will be much celebration when they return, though I will not be party to those celebrations. I… I will die…”

“Tell me a story, even a convincingly faked one, and you’ll be tended to and sent on your way. You will not die, leastways not of if you’ve any real fiber to you.”

Methyr spoke assuredly, though he couldn’t possibly know that. The creature suffered a number of bad bruises across his body, a shallow puncture wound to one side, a jagged slash across the belly that didn’t look or smell as if it reached the guts, and a shattered leg that would probably need amputation. His wounds were serious and he would never fully recover, but none of them appeared truly hopeless. Or at least they wouldn’t in a man. Perhaps these creatures, being typically larger than humans, were more like horses in their constitution: hard to kill but easy to cripple, and often mortally crippled? Samsnagaset gave what might have been a shrug, and then he sighed.

“Your medicine is not sufficient to heal my wounds. Amnagaset will not accept an invalid back into his host, and I can’t return to our realm in the Western Sea. I am truly an outcast, and my kind cannot last long in these conditions. I will die.

“If you want a story, I’m afraid there is little worth saying. Oh, I could bore you with the intrigues and contretemps that pulled us from our distant ocean fastness, or the twists and turns by which we found ourselves in the service of the Witch Queen and her desert realm, but little of that is of any consequence to you. I can say that she does not expect to remain in that blighted, dry land for long. Corinthia is her immediate goal, though she must fight the combined might of Koth and their allies if she wishes to take it. If she finds that overly difficult, as we suspect she might, then know that your Kingdom of Brythunia is not considered an overly rewarding prize, but it is a comparatively undefended one.”

“Is it, now?” asked Methyr, looking askance at the creature’s devastated body and thumbing the hilt of his rapier. Its head tilted slightly in response, then pivoted to and fro as if to indicate the devastation wrought on the village.

“Right, I suppose that remains to be seen.”

There was a sound of trumpets in the distance, and peasants who had been milling around amongst the ruined tatters of their domiciles rose to attention. Methyr was soon informed that a large column of heavy cavalry was riding towards the village, bearing a noble banner.

“Friends of yours, I presume?” asked Samsnagaset.

“That would be Duke Dugaeth, the lord of this village, and I’m afraid that ‘friend’ is not the first word I would use to describe the state of our relationship.”

[themirrorthief]

Ive read a couple chapters of this probably shouldnt comment until I have read more but i appreciate the hard work you have put in...muy only complaint would be a somewhat droning quality at times...you need to liven up parts. the sea battle was pretty cool tho

[mingerganthecat]

Sept 3, 2022 23:51:09 GMT -5 themirrorthief said:

Ive read a couple chapters of this probably shouldnt comment until I have read more but i appreciate the hard work you have put in...muy only complaint would be a somewhat droning quality at times...you need to liven up parts. the sea battle was pretty cool tho

Yeah, there's way too much exposition in the first part, and I hope to find a way to revise that later.

[themirrorthief]

yeah you got to work that in while some fun stuff is going on at the same time...I guess

[mingerganthecat]

VIII

Methyr walked away from the stricken monster with many heavy thoughts on his mind, some of which he would endeavor to lighten in what time he had before the Duke arrived:

Samsnagaset was a rational being, that much was obvious. One aware of his own mortality to boot, perhaps even one who shared the human fear of dying. Was it really appropriate to refer to such a being as a monster?

True, he took part in an unprovoked attack on a near-defenseless village and killed or enslaved many of its inhabitants, but in that the Deep Ones were being no more monstrous than the typical human warband. Methyr himself had witnessed rape, torture, and mutilation often enough in the past, and would surely do so again if his liege-lord ever commanded him to take part in chevauchee against their enemies. And yet the citizens of Solgora had been spared from such atrocities, so who was the real monster in this kind of conflict? He sighed at the sound of pounding hoof-beats, knowing that his answers would have to wait until his fate had been decided.

They came in at a canter, eighty men riding massive warhorses and wearing polished black armor with blood-red trim. Spearheads, blades and pennants showed starkly in the dawn, and many of the horseman held their swords in gauntlet-covered fists as they rode down streets or maneuvered around the blackened ruins and rubble. Seeing the devastation around them, they surveyed their surroundings with guarded wariness.

While the knights of Poitain had long been famed for their two-handed greatswords, the Brythunian hussars were carving out a reputation with their long thrusting koncerz, essentially an estoc stretched to serve better from the saddle. It was effective against the mail or plate-armored foes of the West, as well as the scale or lamellar armor of the East. One could see at a glance that the men of this band knew well how to use them, their master approached Methyr and alighted, and he could immediately tell that something wasn’t right.

Full-plate armor, indeed most any good armor, was anonymizing in the way it concealed one’s face and body. Commanders in the field typically adorned their shields or helmets with the banner of their noble houses, and Methyr could recognize the heraldry of the House of Dugaeth on the figure who approached him, but the posture and the body language did not suggest that of the ironclad Duke whom he had often seen jousting in the tournaments and with whom he occasionally competed in the sparring matches. It didn’t help that the figure was only slightly taller than Methyr where the titanic Duke Dugaeth had at least half a head on him. A brother or a son, perhaps? He had no brothers, and none of his sons were old enough for field command. Methyr decided to take what might be a very serious risk as he greeted the dismounted rider.

“How fares your kith and kine, Lady Latolka?”

Seemingly startled for just a moment, the figure started again and slowly removed its helmet. Methyr concealed his relief when he saw the long strands of gleaming jet-black hair fall away, offset by creamy white skin and piercing dark eyes that had often met his gaze from the far side of a bargaining table. The statuesque woman now regarded him with a neutral expression, then she spoke in her fluid northern accent.

“You can well see the state of my kine.” she said with a tinge of anger. “As for my kith, I fear it fairs little better. Duke Dugaeth lies stricken with a broken back, thrown from the very horse I now ride as he charged a force of brigands. I’ve taken it upon myself to secure his lands for the nonce.”

The Lady Latolka was a sharp-witted princess of mixed Hyperborian origin, one who’s beauty and poise had brought her the admiration of even her husband’s rivals. That was good, as she also held the purse-strings to his treasury. Among his many other idiosyncrasies, Dugaeth had doted greatly on his lovely yet adventurous wife, and generally encouraged her interests in riding, hunting, and the martial arts. Methyr knew her to be at least his equal with a rapier, and he suspected that she had jousted in the guise of the duke more than once.

“The creatures who ravaged this town did violence on my land.” he fibbed slightly. “We surmised that they would come to this village and rushed to intercept them. I regret that we could not do more to defend it, my lady, nor to ask leave for our presence here, though if I may ask a boon of you...”

“You’re not the one who will owe a debt this day, Methyr.” she interrupted. “I understand that Solgora would have been destroyed without your intervention. I know that my husband has his own opinions on such matters, but I feel the utmost gratitude for your actions.”

Bullet dodged, thought Methyr in self-amusement.