Duchy Unleashed

by Zack Finley

  “The teleport was dicey,” Gera said. I could now see the maturity I’d missed before. Gone was the carefree youth I had first met in Augun. This man had seen the elephant. “We had so many fish attached to us. I think it was more weight than I have ever teleported before. When we reached the hospital, I thought I’d waited too late. The two men were so very bloody. I am so grateful to Alba.”

  “I understand if you no longer want me as your aide,” Gera said, unwilling to look me in the eyes.

  “Why wouldn’t I want you to be my aide?” I asked.

  “I failed in my mission, I panicked, I couldn’t remember any spells,” Gera said.

  “You remembered your main duty, your duty to your men. You did not let them down. You stayed the course, even took additional damage to make sure your men lived. I would be honored for you to continue as my aide,” I said, nodding toward him.

  “I am not worthy,” Gera said.

  “Your men think you are and I think you are. We’ll just have to work to convince you. Of course, we both need some training in casting offensive spells when we are up to our ass in rabid fish,” I said, clapping him on the back. “Let’s get this mess wrapped up so we can check out the next pirate base.”

  One of the Duchy Guard approached me at a run. He had a message demanding I meet Maude in the animage’s quarters. I had forgotten Maude was still at the outpost. This was one time I was actually glad to see her.

  “You must stop this abomination at once,” Maude demanded.

  “What do you mean?” As usual, Maude began every discussion with a demand. As usual, it made no sense to me.

  “Those poor fish,” Maude said, looking stricken. “That animage is evil and cannot be allowed to live.”

  “If you know where I can find him, I’ll be happy to remove him from this plane?” I said.

  “He is not here, but his influence lingers. I will destroy these abhorrent charms. I will return over the next several days to soothe the fish until they fully recover. You will probably find the vicious animage in the nest of pirates,” Maude said.

  “He cannot be sane,” she added. “Animages love their animal friends. Through your love, they come to do your bidding. To violate that love in this way is true evil. To turn them into mindless eating machines. The animage didn’t care that thousands would die, even if things went his way.”

  “How did it work?” I asked.

  “First he intoxicated them,” Maude said. “I’m glad you removed the poison he put into the harbor. That poison sickened all the fish with a mindless hunger. Only the charms on each boat and ship held them in check. I suspect the animage had to visit at least once a week to soothe the fish or they would have attacked the pirates, even with the charms.”

  “I suspect he has an affinity for fish,” said Maude. “He can still charm other animals. It is just this methodology implies a strong bond with fish. For most of us, fish aren’t that easy to charm. He probably has water magic as well, that usually goes hand-in-hand with affinity to fish.”

  “I’ll have Perga send Jestn and a few farmers to tend these fields,” said Maude. “I’ll check them and the fish tomorrow. They will need earth mage support to set up irrigation.” With that Maude ‘ported away.

  “Tobron,” I sent.

  “Yes, my boy, you have been busy I hear,” Tobron responded promptly.

  “Perga will be sending Jestn and a few farmers here. Make sure they all have sigils. I also need at least four more Duchy Guard. Cleon will probably take them when we leave and assign better trained troops here.”

  “Are you intending to keep a manned outpost there?” Tobron asked.

  “I honestly don’t know. It has a harbor and some infrastructure. So maybe. No matter what, we need to catch the animage and I won’t be able to convince Maude to leave here until we do.”

  “I’ll send Loma and some of our construction crew to give them some protection and better conditions. I also have a few contract ship crews for Capt. Malek. I know he wants to get those ships moored in the Keep harbor. I’ll coordinate that with him,” Tobron said.

  I briefed all the Duchy citizens at the outpost about the help that was on the way.

  One of the first things Clive and his team did was to put up a set of toilets, showers, and laundry facilities. They also brought lunch for the group. Everyone pitched in to give their fellows a much-needed comfort break. There wasn’t even the normal grousing.

  Capt. Malek assigned the contract crews to the two best ships. He assigned a petty officer to each as the owner’s representative. The petty officers were ordered to teleport away if something went awry. The contract crews were mind scanned, and their own ships were either moored at the Keep or in Klee, so no problems were anticipated. Pirate Two and Three set sail for the Keep.

  Argon and I were resting after a shower and meal, waiting for our laundry to finish when Gera approached us.

  “Sir, in all the excitement I forgot to give you a message,” said Gera.

  “When I needed to get my crew teleported back to the Malan, I couldn’t think of anyone to contact. So, I called Olive. Three of our Augun barge mages came and helped ‘port my crew back. They told me that if the Duchy needed any barge mages, they’d love to join. All six of them. I worked with them a lot in Augun, and they are very good people. They could live at the Keep and work in Augun. I think a few might be happy to work in Klee or Losan. Xerib told them he didn’t need part-time mages in the Augun Mage Corps, so they aren’t doing much for the military anymore. Olive can get in touch with them if you want. They volunteer with the civilian corps when she needs mage help.”

  Argon offered to contact and recruit them. She needed to consult with Capt. Malek, but we used rented barges in Klee and Losan. I also was sure some right-sized water propulsion units could cut down on barge travel times.

  Inoa joined us for dealing with the awakening pirate crews. She had already interrogated the pirate captains. The captains didn’t know the proprietor of the tavern and brothel was a mage. They knew he sometimes locked himself into his room for weeks at a time. They also had a lot of information about the pirate base near the border of Ylee and Kavil.

  “I am concerned the animage will return while our people are here,” Inoa sent me privately. “Since he likely ‘ported directly to his rooms, I want to leave them intact and set up a nasty surprise. Loma has one of her crystal packs to power a serious stun. I’ll set it up so that anyone teleporting into the room is stunned and sounds an alarm. Getting our hands on the animage would be nice. Even if he has an emergency teleport loaded and escapes, our people can then call for reinforcements or evacuate.”

  “I’m getting uncomfortable with the spread of our batteries into areas we don’t fully control. What happens if they fall into non-Duchy hands?” I asked.

  “Loma is way ahead of you. The appliance business is cutthroat, and they have some awesome anti-theft protocols. Loma has encrypted the spells we are deploying, so you need a Duchy sigil to read them. If someone without a Duchy sigil attempts to activate a device, it will destroy the crystal matrix. If Loma’s group sends a self-destruct it will convert all the magic at once and explode. I’m already thinking of ways to use that feature as a future weapon,” sent Inoa.

  Clearly, I had recruited the right people. “I think we must bring Loma and Clive in on the prophecy,” I sent Inoa. “Marfo and Jord as well.”

  “Loma and Marfo suspect something already,” Inoa sent. “Clive just likes to build things. I don’t know about Jord.”

  “It isn’t something you can tell someone and leave their mate in the dark about,” I sent.

  “I don’t support telling everyone at once, but some people need to know, and I agree Loma and Marfo need to know,” Inoa sent. “Let’s take out the pirate base first.”

  It took Loma and Inoa very little time to set up the mage trap in the tavern hut. Clive was disappointed to leave the hut in place. He was insulted by its shoddy construction.


  Clive was putting the final touches on his combined guardhouse and residence when we completed our executions. Of the final group, Capt. Malek gave 10 of the pirates a second chance. They were added to the cage with the earlier three.

  We killed the rest as humanely as possible, burying them in a way that allowed the local trees to eventually benefit from their nutrients.

  Argon and Inoa interviewed the rest of the slaves and most were offered Duchy citizenship. Argon and I spent several hours healing all of them. Each had neglected injuries, some poorly set broken bones. We learned anyone receiving a serious injury was tossed into the harbor to feed the fish. The pirates wagered on how long the slave would last. Most of the males were sailors captured in either Ylee or Kavil. The women came from the smaller towns in Ylee and Kavil. All were eager to get back to some type of civilization. We told the Duchy recruits they would be welcomed into the Keep. The others were promised passage to Klee if they helped crew the ships. All were eager to leave the outpost.

  Capt. Malek spread the ex-slaves between the three remaining pirate ships. He did the same with the ex-pirates. He then assigned two of his crew to each ship and Cleon assigned two members of the Duchy Guard. This left the Malan very short handed. Cleon was already arranging for more rookie Duchy Guard to backfill his ranks on the Malan.

  I suggested Capt. Malek ask for volunteers from the freed slaves approved for Duchy citizenship to continue with the Malan. He was overwhelmed with volunteers. He agreed to the 10 most skilled sailors. Loma and Argon administered the oath, fitted them with sigils, and provided them with stun guns.

  After the three pirate ships departed, Erik ran boat drills in the harbor with a mixture of rookies and vets.

  Capt. Malek, Cleon, Argon, Inoa, Gera, Loma and I met to discuss the next steps.

  Inoa had learned the pirate base was really a small city with a harbor and about every amenity anyone would expect to find in a city. We decided to call it Pirate City. The Pirate City Guard was ruthless and brooked no interference. While the city housed hundreds of thieves, thievery within the city limits was a death sentence. Murder wasn’t tolerated although dueling was a major betting sport. Slavery was a major business. Pirates and raiders between missions lived in barracks or hostels. Rent was high enough to encourage pirates to keep accepting missions. Pirates who racked up a lot of debt became slaves, themselves. A few pirate groups maintained stable teams and lived within their own enclaves. They were always busy but had good operational security, so no one we captured knew what their missions were.

  Most of our captured pirates were lower tier. Everyone knew someone who took part in the sacking of Ylee and Kavil. Those raiders still had plenty of coin. The rest of the raiders and pirates were running out of juicy missions. That was the reason our pirates agreed to maintain the blockade despite the slim pickings. Our captives felt they were better off than most who stayed behind. They had heard rumors about the demise of those hired to plunder Augun, Klee, and Losan. Pirates who asked too many questions disappeared. That tended to curtail the curious.

  Most believed the Pirate City leaders answered to the merchants. Merchants who purchased the loot repackaged it and sold it as trade goods were considered city royalty. Every prominent household had slaves and security teams.

  Whether the security teams would help the city guard during an attack was unknown. I wasn’t clear what our objective for Pirate City would be. Pirate City was much larger than I had expected. I knew the consequences of launching a mission without clear objectives. We did not have enough people to assault the city directly. Another glaring weakness in any attack was that our intel revealed nothing about the mage community supporting Pirate City.

  While the low-level pirates we captured didn’t think there were any mages, the pirate captains knew better. The captains didn’t know very much, they just knew that if they skipped out of their contracts someone would hunt them down.

  “Any ideas?” I asked the group.

  “Can we agree we can’t attack them directly?” asked Cleon.

  Cleon got a quick consensus on that.

  “Can we sail in openly?” asked Capt. Malek. “What would they do if we did?”

  We all looked at Inoa to answer that.

  “I’m not sure. Since the Malan is not a known pirate, I suspect they’d attempt to capture her,” said Inoa. “They used to get some non-pirates in to purchase cargoes, but not since the blockade went up.”

  “Are there still pirates looting in Kavil and Ylee?” asked Cleon.

  “The pirate captains think so. Our captives weren’t good enough to get those contracts,” said Inoa.

  “If we capture a ship they sent to loot Kavil do you think we could fool them for long enough to take over the city government?” I asked.

  “It might get us in the harbor, especially if we can question the pirates before we kill them. Too many unknowns about the rest,” Inoa answered. “Whoever hired the ship will know the captain and maybe his officers. They will know there is something wrong.”

  “Even if it doesn’t get us all the way in, capturing another ship could get us some needed intel,” I said. “And it is on our way.”

  “I can provide several illusions you may find helpful, assuming our contact in Pirate City isn’t a mage. Malek can impersonate the captain of any future ship we capture. It won’t last more a few minutes, but it should help get past a brief encounter,” said Inoa.

  We agreed to set sail in the morning. Capt. Malek said we’d be at the mouth of Kavil River by mid-afternoon. We’d leave the Malan nearby and send in all four longboats to reconnoiter. Loma had tweaked the controls for the boats. They now had an invisibility cloak button and a force bubble button.

  Loma had already promised to work with Alba and improve the sigil’s trigger for an unconscious teleport. After the fish attacks, we all agreed that waiting for hearts to stop as a teleport trigger had nearly been too late. Alba said it was a tricky problem but one they could address, but she didn’t have an immediate solution.

  Tobron assigned Jern to lead the outpost. His main job was to monitor the mind-reading app, call for help if the animage ‘ported in, and to get all of his people to safety. Maude would continue to work with the fish, and the pair of farmers she left would tend the crops.

  All of the sailors spent the night on board the Malan. I wasn’t surprised the landlubbers chose to spend the night ashore. We all slept in our armor with weapons close to hand.

  The Keep sent breakfast and chee and a pile of boxed lunches for the expedition. No fish jumped into the boats, but a few rammed into them on our way to board the Malan. Maude still had some work to do. Argon told me to stop complaining, at least they weren’t chomping on us.

  She had a point.

  Argon and I thought we should use our Kavil ‘port site and determine whether the pirates were in the harbor before we put the Malan arrived and put the ship's boats in the water. Our reasoning was if there was no ship in the harbor, we needed to hide the Malan and wait until one showed up.

  I didn’t mention that if there wasn’t a ship in Kavil, I’d be inclined to sneak into Pirate City and learn what we could there. Argon didn’t say anything because she agreed with me. I was confident it would take direct orders to get Cleon and Capt. Malek to go along. We’d face that battle if it happened.

  Argon and I took off our livery and found cloaks to wear over our armor. Oso-hide armor was distinctive enough we didn’t want to stand out. Our livery might be unknown in most quarters, but we felt stealthier without it.

  We stood back-to-back, Argon cast an invisibility spell, and we ‘ported to Kavil.

  No noticeable change in the Kavil temple. Argon and I both launched our mind-reading app. Almost at once we noticed the squad of pirate raiders. Kavil’s scavengers were reluctant to leave their lairs. Most were holed up, hoping the raiders would pass them by. The raiders had arrived two days ago. They were plundering things Kavil’s scavengers no longer valued. Kavil’s
residents were on a constant search for food. The raiders were still looking for jewelry, precious metals and the like.

  The scavengers would have gladly traded such items for food. But the raiders just killed any scavengers they unearthed. The docks were too far for us to read the minds of those on the ship. We confirmed a concentration of people at the dock consistent with a ship. Argon relayed the news to Capt. Malek and Cleon. Then we headed for the docks. We took great pains to avoid scavengers and raiders alike on our trek to the docks.

  Argon and I considered hunting down and killing the raiders, but we wanted intel from the ship, first.

  I wasn’t prepared for the level of destruction on the docks. I’d pictured a clean slate, not a landscape of melted and tumbled stone. It was good for us, there was plenty of cover. We barely entered the zone of destruction when Argon called a stop. She was in mind-reading range of the pirate ship.

  I kept a lookout for hidden mages and others. I also struggled to imagine the mage fire needed to turn so many stone buildings into mounds of fused rock. I certainly didn’t have that fire spell in my magical arsenal. Even my plasma spells barely melted rock. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to learn a spell this devastating.

  It was sobering to know at least one dark sect mage had perfected such destruction. I wasn’t foolish enough to think that we had killed or captured that mage. I suspected greed was the only thing that stopped the dark sect from firebombing Klee, Augun, and Losan. I was left worrying at what point the dark sect would cut their losses and just go for sheer annihilation. It was a sobering thought. And one I really wanted an answer to.