The Chernagor Pirates

The catapult crew raised a cheer. The Chernagors stopped laughing.

“Form line abreast and advance on the foe,” Grus told the officer in charge of signals. The pennants that gave that message fluttered along both sides of the galley. The ships to either side waved green flags to show they understood. The system had sprung to life on the Nine Rivers, and was less than perfect on the ocean. But it worked well enough. Grus saw no signals from the Chernagor ships. When had the pirates last faced anyone able to fight back?

Catapult darts flew. Every now and then, one would transfix a pirate, or two, or three. Marines at the bows of the river galleys started shooting as soon as they came close enough to the Chernagor ships.

By then, of course, the Chernagors were close enough to shoot back. Carpenters had rigged shields to give the river galleys’ rowers some protection—that was a lesson the first encounters with the big ships full of archers had driven home. Every so often, though, an arrow struck a rower. Replacements pulled the wounded men from the oars and took their places. The centipede strokes of the galleys’ advance didn’t falter badly.

Clouds covered the sun. Grus hardly noticed. He was intent on the Chernagor ship at which his ram was aimed like an arrow’s point. The wind also began to rise, and the chop on the sea. Those he did notice, and cursed them both. The wind made the Chernagor ships more mobile, and with their greater freeboard they could deal with worse waves than his galleys.

“Your Majesty—” Pterocles began.

Grus waved the wizard to silence. “Not now! Brace yourself, by the—”

Crunch! The ram bit before he could finish the warning. He staggered. Pterocles fell in a heap. The Chernagor ship had tried to turn away at the last instant, to take a glancing blow or make the river galley miss, but Grus’ steersman, anticipating the move, countered it and made the hit count. “Back oars!” the oarmaster roared. The river galley pulled free. Green seawater flooded into the stricken pirate ship.

A couple of other Chernagor vessels were rammed as neatly as the one Grus’ galley gored. Not all the encounters went the Avornans’ way, though. Some of the Chernagor captains did manage to evade the river galleys’ rams. The kilted pirates, shooting down into the galleys while they were close, made the Avornans pay for their attacks.

And one river galley had rammed, but then could not pull free— every skipper’s nightmare. Shouting Chernagors dropped down onto the galley and battled with the marines and the poorly armed rowers. Grus ordered his own ship toward the locked pair. His marines shot volley after volley at the swarming Chernagors. Pirates and Avornans both went over the side, sometimes in an embrace as deadly as their vessels‘.

Pterocles struggled to his feet. He plucked at Grus’ sleeve. “Your Majesty, this storm—”

“Storm?” Grus hadn’t realized it was one. But even as he spoke, a raindrop hit him in the face, and then another and another. “What about it? Blew up all of a sudden, that’s for sure.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Your Majesty,” the wizard said. “It’s got magic behind it, magic or… something.”

“Something?” Grus asked. Pterocles’ expression told him what the wizard meant—something that had to do with the Banished One. The king said, “What can you do about it? Can you hold it off until we’ve finished giving the Chernagors what they deserve?” As he spoke, another river galley rammed a pirate ship, rammed and pulled free. The Chernagor ship began to sink.

At the same time, though, a wave crashed up over the bow of Grus’ river galley, splashing water into the hull. The steersman called, “Your Majesty, we can’t take a lot of that, you know.”

“Yes,” Grus said, and turned back to Pterocles. “What can you do?” he asked again.

“Not much,” the wizard answered. “No mortal can, not with the weather. That’s why I think it’s… something.”

“Should we break off, then?” Grus asked doubtfully. “We’re beating them.” First one, then another, Chernagor ship hoisted all sail and sped off to the north at a speed the river galleys, fish in the wrong kind of water, couldn’t hope to match.

“I can’t tell you what to do, Your Majesty. You’re the king. I’m just a wizard. I can taste the storm, though. I don’t like it,” Pterocles said.

Grus didn’t like it, either. He didn’t like letting the Chernagors get away, but their ships could take far more weather than his. “Signal Break off the fight,” he shouted to the man in charge of the pennants. Another waved smashed over the bow. That convinced him he was doing the right thing. He added, “Signal Make for shore, too.” In the thickening rain, the pennants drooped. He hoped the other captains would be able to make them out.

The last Chernagor ships that could escaped. The others, mortally wounded, wallowed in the waves. One had turned turtle. So had a wrecked river galley. Here and there, men splashed by the ruined warships. Some paddled; others clung to whatever they could. The river galleys fished out as many sailors—Avornans and Chernagors—as they could.

Make for shore. It had seemed an easy enough command. But now, with the storm getting worse, with rain and mist filling the air, Grus was out of sight of land. He and the steersman had to rely on wind and wave to tell them what their eyes couldn’t.

“We beat them,” Hirundo said. “Now, the next question is, will we get to celebrate beating them, or do they have the last laugh?”

“They may be better sailors on the open sea than I am,” Grus said, “but, by the gods, I still know a little something about getting home in a storm.”

As though to answer that, the freshening sea sent a wave that almost swamped and almost capsized the river galley. Grus seized a line and clung for his life. When the ship at last righted herself—slowly, so slowly!—the first thing he did was look around for Pterocles. The wizard, no sailor, was all too likely to go overboard.

But Pterocles was there, dripping and sputtering as he hung on to the rail. And the fleet made shore safe —much battered and abused, but safe. The storm blew higher and harder and wilder yet after that, but after that it didn’t matter.

Prince Vsevolod took a long pull at the cup of wine in front of him. “Ask your questions,” he said, like a wounded man telling the healer to go ahead and draw the arrow.

Getting the exiled Prince of Nishevatz to show even that much cooperation was a victory of sorts. He thought everyone else should cooperate with him, not the other way around. Lanius said, “Which city-states in the Chernagor country are likely to oppose Prince Vasilko and the Banished One?”

Vasilko sent him a scornful stare. “This you should answer for yourself. King Grus takes prisoners from Nishevatz, from Hisardzik, from Jobuka, from Hrvace. This means no prisoners from Durdevatz, from Ravno, from Zavala, from Mojkovatz. These four, they no sail with pirate ships. They no love Vasilko, eh?”

That made good logical sense, but Lanius had seen that good logical sense often had little to do with the way the Chernagors behaved. He said, “Would they ally with Avornis if we send our army into the land of the Chernagors?”

“No. Of course not.” Yes, while Lanius thought Vsevolod strange, Vsevolod thought him dull. The Prince of Nishevatz continued, “You want to drive Durdevatz and other three into Banished One’s hands, you march in.”

“But you were the one who invited us up to the Chernagor country in the first place!” Lanius exclaimed in considerable exasperation.

Prince Vsevolod shrugged broad, if somewhat stooped, shoulders. “Is different now. Then I was prince. Now I am exile.” A tear gleamed in his eye. Regret or self-pity? By the way Vsevolod refilled the wine cup and gulped it down, Lanius would have bet on self-pity.

“Why do the city-states line up the way they do?” he asked.

Holding up the battered fingers of one hand, Vsevolod said, “Nishevatz, Hisardzik, Jobuka, Hrvace.” Holding up those of the other, he said, “Durdevatz, Ravno, Zavala, Mojkovatz.” He fitted his fingertips together, alternating those from one hand with those from the other. “You see?”

“I see,” King Lanius breathed. Immediate neighbors were hostile to one another. Pro- and anti-Nishevatz city-states alternated along the coast. After some thought, the king observed, “Vasilko would be stronger if all the Chernagor towns leaned his way. Can he get them to do that?”

“Vasilko?” The rebel prince’s father made as though to spit, but at the last moment—the very last moment—thought better of it. “Vasilko cannot get cat to shit in box.” That