by Robert Adams
"The great Russian-led invasion had ebbed as it had flowed, but if any of them returned to Russia, it must have been a miracle, so fast did they drop along the way to die. For some reason, a goodly number of Russians remained in the coastal departments of France, eventually taking Frenchwomen as spouses or concubines, and, therefore, France had become, by the time of my arrival in its coastal waters, a bilingual land, for all that it was as splintered and politically fragmented as any other European nation of that period, perhaps a little more than most, though, really, since the French have never had a stable, central government for any long period since they murdered their king and butchered their nobility at the close of the eighteenth century.
"By the time of my arrival, Milo, a few generations of breeding had brought the population of Western Europe back up to a fraction of its earlier size, but at least such progress had encouraged the people, had made them to think that perhaps mankind was not irrevocably doomed as a species. As the largest remaining port city in all of northwestern Europe, Hamburg was becoming something of a power, and its ships sailed out in every direction, just as its land merchants traveled the roads and byways of the continent with their heavily armed and pugnacious escorts.
"Of course, in times of such uncertainty, ships needs must sail well armed and, often, in convoy, shipping along larger crews than would have been necessary simply for working the vessel. Erika was such a ship, standing up from one of the Basque kingdoms with a mixed cargo and bound for home, Hamburg.
"My greatest good fortune was to be able to sail to Hamburg under Erika's strong protection through the waters of the Dutch and English pirates, as well as up the Elbe, where had I not been in company with her I would likely have been blown out of the water by the line of powerful cannon-and catapult-armed forts or boarded in force by the river patrols and either killed or enslaved.
"After so many long years of either total solitude or companionship of only a few, pitiful survivors of all of mankind's disasters, I found that new Hamburg to be most stimulating in all conceivable ways, Milo. It was, of course, as always, a booming, bustling center of commerce, but now much, much more than just that.
"Some twenty thousands of men and women and children were resident within the earth-and-wooden perimeter walls that were fast being replaced with dressed stone. Protected by well-armed guard ships, the fishers sailed out and came back up the Elbe, bearing heavy catches of stockfish to be smoked or salted or pickled; others of them brought in barrel on precious barrel of whale oil. Other ships brought in lumber for the flourishing shipbuilders, or sailed in laden with broken pieces of old statuary, bells and other bronze or brass scrap, copper, tin and zinc for the cannon foundry, sulphur and niter and charcoal for the powder mills. All of the rest of the world might be sinking into a slough of despair and barbarism, but Hamburg was keeping lit the lamp of true culture and civilization.
"The master of Erika, Kapitan Klaus Hauer, and his son and first mate—the fine young man who had rowed over to my vessel—Fritz Hauer, escorted me to the new seat of government and introduced me to him who just then was serving as Präsident of the Aristokratisch Sammlung of Hamburgerstadt, Herr Hubert Klapp-Panzertöt, whose surname was derived of his grandfather, who had been a great hero of the stand against the Eastern European hordes that had invaded Germany.
"When once Hubert learned just how much I in my mind held of the old, near-forgotten technologies of the world of almost, by then, three full generations before, he saw me declared an aristocrat and we two worked together for years until his death, at which time I moved on, traveling with merchants as far as Westphalia. I lived there for some years, a client of the Graf, to whose retainers I taught refinements of swordplay and oriental martial arts. After some years there, I moved on; of course, you know how and why it must be so, Milo.
"For longer or shorter times, I lived all over the German lands, in France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Rumania, the Baltic States, the Russian princedoms, all of Scandinavia, the Kingdom of Ukrainia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Albania, Macedonia and, finally the Peloponnese.
"By then, nearly two hundred years after the Great Dyings, the Greeks were once more getting a bit crowded on their poor and rocky holdings; despite their idiosyncratic perversions, no one ever has been able to fault Greeks at the act of breeding. Unable to feed themselves by way of farming or fishing, many of the men of Greece were become pirates of shipping and consummate raiders of other lands, and my own fleet was one of the largest, strongest and most feared, incorporating as it did techniques and relics of times past which gave it a distinctive edge over its opponents.
"However, as the fleets got larger and more numerous, not just Greek but Italian, Sicilian, Turkish, Syrian, Spanish, southern French and others too numerous to recount, we too often found ourselves fighting each other, bleeding and dying and losing ships to no real account or gain. The field was becoming overcrowded, you see, friend Milo. That was when the great idea occurred to me.
"Following actual years of careful plannings and negotiations, I was able to organize a relatively peaceful meeting of all the leaders of all the larger fleets of Mediterranean pirates and shore-raiders. So successful in many ways were our parleys that some began to take to heart my contention that were they to not all die by way of bloody violence and find as their only grave the belly of some sea-beast, then they had best find arable land somewhere, that they could hold and which would easily nurture them and their get.
"All knew that such was simply not available in most of the seacoast Mediterranean lands, and what little still was would be so hotly defended by present inhabitants as to demand a cost far greater than any possible gain, could it be taken at all. So I told them of the vast, almost-empty spaces of the sparsely inhabited North America that I recalled from before I had sailed back to Europe. I spoke of the fertility of the earth there, of the rich ruins to be stripped, of the thick forests, the abundance of clear water, the sad, huddled, all but helpless knots of survivors, the plentitudes of wild and feral beasts to be eaten and skinned or captured and retamed to the uses of man.
"Two decades of my sermons they heard, and following two deadly calamities that struck almost as one—a very powerful man ascended to the sultancy of the Turks and began to not only put down pirates with his numerous and intrepid fleet, but actually to mount bloody seaborne raids on the bases of the raiders, then a succession of terrible earthquakes and resultant tsunamis devastated the Peloponnese, Crete and many other islands—a large percentage of the sea-robbers of Greece, southern Italy, Syria, Sicily and even far-off Spain made indication that they would favorably consider setting sail across the ocean to a new land where the Turks could not so easily hunt them out."
Milo just stared. "You? It is you who was responsible for the conquest of most of the East Coast by the ancestors of the Ehleenohee, Clarence?"
Bookerman-Laskos shrugged, self-deprecatingly. "It wasn't all that easy, Milo. Ships that were fine for sailing or rowing on the tideless Mediterranean would never have made it across the Atlantic, and I knew this fact even if others did not know it or think of it. I had all of the bases moved from Crete and Cyprus, Sicily and Malta, Sardinia and Corsica and the Balearics to a single point, a huge, sprawling base, on the coast of Portugal, a bit south of the vast ruins of Lisbon. We were compelled to conquer the people of that land in a succession of wars. Only then could we go about utilizing their labor, their wood and their shipyards to build for us an oceangoing fleet.
"I like to think that we were good rulers and protectors of the people, Milo. We drove off countless raids by sea-rovers, defeated utterly two in-force raiding fleets of Moors and one of Basques. In answer to repeated provocations, we sailed up to Bilbao, scuttled or burnt all of their ships and even boats, went ashore and defeated their forces, then looted and fired the town that squatted among the ancient ruins. No, I had forgotten, we did not destroy all of their ships; those that loo
ked usable to our purposes, we sailed or towed back to our base to add to our burgeoning flotilla, and, having learned from this episode, we began to do the same to other Atlantic-coast Spanish, French, English, Irish and other ports. We carefully scouted out objectives, struck with overpowering forces, fought hard, but then most often sailed away with only usable ships and easily come-by bits of loot, ships' stores and perhaps a few new women.
"Even so, doing the best that we could, doing it as carefully but still as fast as we could, it took us the best part of eight years to make ready for the great adventure. Using ancient maps and charts, I laid out our course for North America, and, late in August of that year, we set sail out of our jam-packed harbor— nearly twelve thousand men aboard seventy-eight ships, leaving almost as many men to follow in a second wave whenever enough bottoms were built or taken from others to bear them. And even as we sailed out into the Atlantic, more of our kind were sailing in from the Mediterranean, fleeing the wrath of the savage Turks.
"The voyage, unlike my terrifying solitary one two centuries past, was relatively easy and almost serene. We did not begin to lose ships until we had sailed into the coastal waters and begun to run up against unmarked shoals and other dangers that were not, of course, shown on the two-hundred-year-old charts. But, recall, please, Milo, this all occurred more than two and a half centuries prior to that horrible spate of seismic disturbances, volcanism, tsunamis and land subsidences, so the coast was basically unchanged, with few swamps worthy of the name along them, so landings were effected with a fair degree of ease and we began to acquire a few mounts and send out some parties of scouts to see what lay before us and allow us to carefully choose initial objectives, for it was plain that the lands were not deserted as I had recalled them from so long in the past, but that certain numbers of folk were living on them, exploiting them in various ways.
"We had landed on the Atlantic coast of that area once known as the State of Georgia. There were many ruined places, yes, but there were also quite a few agricultural settlements, two of these large enough to be considered small cities, by then-current Mediterranean standards, and these were called Savannah and Brunswick. We knew that both must fall quickly were we to gain uncontested possession of the rich croplands between them; also, we needed harborage for our fleet, lest the autumnal and winter storms wreck it.
"I decided to first attack the larger, stronger of these little cities. I personally reconnoitered, lying hidden and still in many places for days, but finally emerging with a sound plan of action.
"With the weapons and equipment then available to us, Savannah sat impregnable atop its bluff, impregnable by river, that is. But still I sent elements of the fleet up the river, where they created a noisy disturbance just beyond the ranges of the defensive engines mounted atop the bluffs. All but a handful of the foolish, painfully naive Savannanans rushed to the walls atop the bluffs, and that was when I led my men against the landward walls. We swarmed up them on our assault-ladders, flung open the gates and let the rest of our men in to begin a bloody massacre of the inhabitants. Understand, Milo, I did try to control my men, but a single man cannot be everywhere at the one time, you see. Some few escaped the city, naturally, such things happen in warfare, so we well knew that the other city, to the south, Brunswick, would be warned and very watchful.
"The river harbor below Savannah was roomy enough for our fleethaven for the season of storms, so we moored the most of the ships therein and let Brunswick wait and watch and worry while we spent the autumn and winter and early spring in consolidating our gains and moving by both land and water against the smaller centers between us and the other city. I had managed to convince my bloodthirsty minions that live slaves were far to be preferred to decomposing bodies, so we oversaw our new-won lands planted in the spring, then the most of us marched off southward and westward to win more land and slaves and loot.
"With all of the countrysides surrounding it in our hands and all of its vessels sunk or driven off sea and river, besieged Brunswick fell to our arms a year almost to the day after Savannah had fallen. Therefore, with a firm foothold established on that coast, I took four ships and set sail back to the east to fetch back the second wave of Mediterraneans to conquer yet another part of the lands.
"On my return from Portugal, Milo, my starting fleet of some fifty-three ships was storm-scattered, and only forty-one still were With me when we laid over, briefly, on the coast of New England. We were bound for the lands just north of the originally invaded area, but another terrible storm drove us into the southern end of the Bay of Chesapeake, and so we made our base among the shattered ruins of that huge complex of ancient cities and commenced to fan out south, west and north.
"However, after two signal defeats of my Mediterraneans in the north and northwest, I ordered that all expansion head south and southwest, directions in which the indigeneous resistance seemed both weaker and less well organized, while I took thirty-two ships and set sail for Portugal and more men.
"I arrived back at the Portuguese base to find that thousands more folk, both pirate-raiders and more peaceful ones, had come to the base just in time to swell the ranks of the defenders in a war against invading Spaniards from the southeast and swarms of sea-raiders sailing up from Morocco and other points along the west coast of Africa.
"Leaving my fleet and that of the base to combat the Moors, I led out the army and, after a lengthy campaign of maneuver, caught, cornered and virtually exterminated the Spaniards, for all that their force was larger and stronger than my own. My victorious forces came back just in time to meet and drive back into the sea an invading army of Moors whose fleet had cunningly led mine off on a wild goose chase and thus left the base vulnerable and thinly defended. The one fortunate result of all this was, however, that we managed to capture a good two-thirds of the Moors' ships, more or less undamaged, so some ten months after I had returned to Portugal for the second time, I sailed back toward North America with almost a hundred ships.
"The Chesapeake base lay empty of life, and through the tales of the survivors, by then holding lands along the coast of what is now called Karaleenos, I learned that a huge, well-armed army had marched down from central Virginia to join with another army of indigenes in southern Virginia and move against the base, crushing it and slaying all who were unable to crowd aboard the few ships I had left behind.
"The hearing of these tales bred a rage of vengeance in the men I just had brought over the sea. Therefore, deciding that such combative rage should not be wasted, I once more passed over the more southerly lands and led all of my fleet and forces up the rivers and into the heart of the Commonwealth and Kingdom of Virginia.
"Milo, that was a long, grueling war, the conquest of Virginia. Yes, we had cannon, but then so, too, did they. As you no doubt recall, small arms had become very rare by then, repeating firearms almost nonexistent, because of the lack of self-contained cartridges. Most guns as did exist by then were flintlock-muzzle-loaders. The King of Virginia had a corps of two hundred gunmen, perhaps eight hundred bowmen and crossbowmen, a thousand horsemen—about half of whom had at least one flintlock horsepistol—and several thousands more infantry armed with pikes, spears, swords, poleaxes and suchlike. A strong army, well and innovatively led, good morale in the beginning, hard fighters, most of them. But we defeated them, in the end. We took very few male slaves, though, for those men were of the sort who will fight to the very death rather than surrender while still a drop of blood remains within their veins; you have to admire such men . . . but, also, you have to kill them, all of them, are you to retain that which you have won from them.
"As in all of the other lands we conquered, the few units that did run fled to the mountains or took refuge in states not yet conquered by our arms, to the north or the western parts of the south. Again leaving men employed at cleaning out pockets of resistance and otherwise consolidating their conquest, I took some ships and bore back to Europe for yet
another wave of my new-style immigrants.
"The base in Portugal was filled to overflowing; so crowded was it become in the three years I had been absent that folk were living perforce in tents and hovels outside the walls on every hand or aboard ships in the harbor.
"The Turkish sultan, stung to the point of malicious rage by Greek coastal-raiding, had first taken most of the islands, one at the time, then had launched an invasion of the mainland of Greece itself, and refugees—whole families of them—were pouring into any place or land that might give them permission to make landfall.
"Aware as I was that, even by that time, the states that had been known collectively as New England still owned only sparse populations and so would likely not be long or difficult in the conquering, I assembled the leaders of the Greek horde and, after extolling the beauty and richness of the lands, put forth my plans for helping them acquire a new home over the sea. Their straits in Portugal were no less than desperate, and so I had no difficulty in filling all of my then-available ships with displaced Greek families."
"Hmmph!" grunted Milo. "So that's why Kehnooryos Mahkehdonya has not only a different culture but even a different dialect, a Greek purer than the tongues of all the other Ehleenohee-settled lands.
"Since you were mostly responsible for settling the distant ancestors of these Ehleenohee here, Clarence, do you have any sense of ... say, paternity, of being pater familias toward these, their very distant descendants?"
Bookerman-Laskos smiled lazily. "Why, of course I do, Milo. Just which of your schemes are you trying to lure me into, eh?"
"Refill your goblet and I'll tell you, Clarence," Milo replied.
Epilogue
Perforce, the one time pirates of the Pirate Isles knew every inch of the still-sinking coastlines of the former kingdoms of Karaleenos and that now of the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee in some detail, so locating safe anchorages in which to lie up and await the summons of the High Lord had presented no slightest difficulty to Lord Alexandros or any of the captains.