The Sac of Xiangliao

The Sack of Xiangliao

Caeruthir II

War was coming.

Guyin, Master of the Walls, looked out from the ramparts over the harbor of Xiangliao, greatest port in all the world. He was afraid. For fifteen years, the city had been under the control of Dorhacin, Tyrant of the Alchemists' Cities and all of Indica. The last decade had been occupied with an ultimately fruitless war against the Emperor of Leiyan to the north. Dorhacin coveted the emperor's crown and vast domains, while the aging emperor desired control of the Alchemists' Cities, where they promised they would soon learn the secrets of eternal life.

After ten years and hundreds of thousands of dead, the two warring monarchs had at last agreed to a peace, to be sealed with the marriage of Dorhacin to the emperor's youngest daughter. Few had expected the peace to last long. And yet they were still surprised at how quickly it collapsed.

Aboard a great fleet bound for Dorhacin's palace, the young princess Daiyu had been intercepted by a vast armada of pirates who had annihilated the fleet and carried the unfortunate bride off to a life of slavery. The peace disintegrated. Dorhacin blamed the emperor's incompetence for the plague of piracy that festered along the coast. The emperor accused Dorhacin of the same. The tyrant had called for a levy of three hundred thousand men, to invade the emperor's domains in four columns. The emperor's armies had only just returned from war and were exhausted, battered, and underpaid. Uncaring, he sent them south once again.

When word had reached the city of Xiangliao, along with the tyrant's demands for forty thousand recruits, silver to pay them, and rations to feed them, the city had broken. Sha Lang, the city's viceroy, had declared Dorhacin unfit to rule. He had raised the requested army, but instead of marching on Leiyan, he declared himself king and aimed his army for Dorhacin's capital. Shortly thereafter, word had reached the city that three other viceroys had done the same.

Sha Lang had been the man who appointed Guyin to command of the fortress. Guyin owed him everything, yet he found himself on the ramparts on this cold morning considering how to dissuade his master from going to war. While Sha looked north, Guyin looked south. The pirates who had stolen Dorhacin's bride still sailed the seas, taking ships for plunder. Clustered against the dockside below his perch, Guyin saw a gaggle of merchant ships who had been too afraid to weigh anchor for the last two weeks.

As he watched Sha's men disassemble the harbor's cannon emplacements and load the massive guns onto wagons, he shuddered. The former viceroy had already stripped the city's garrison to fill his ranks, replacing them where he could with drunkards, vagabonds, and green peasant boys. Now he took their guns and left them defenseless to any seaborne assault.

"The pirates are no threat to us," King Sha said from behind Guyin. "They are gorged on plunder and slave girls. They will feast and fight in their holes and once we have dealt with the tyrant, we will burn them out of their hideouts and eliminate the scourge of piracy once and for all."

"A fitting beginning to your reign, my king, but in the meantime--"

"When I have won my kingdom," Sha said, cutting him off. "I will need loyal men of distinction to help me manage these lands. They have seen much devastation and will need strong, wise hands to guide them back to prosperity. You have always been a strong and wise servant of mine, Guyin. Perhaps you might be worthy of joining my family. My dear Rui-Ah is still without a husband, hm?"

Guyin thought of Rui-Ah, his king's dear daughter. She was a lovely, lively young lady who would make a good wife for whatever man fortunate enough to win her hand. And the king could hardly leave his son-in-law as merely the Master of the Walls...

Guyin nodded. "Very well, my king. I will hold the fortress for you."

Smiling, King Sha nodded and left. Guyin turned back toward the harbor and was soon joined by his lieutenant, Captain Shen.

"You are taking on a difficult task, master," said Shen gloomily. He held his blue-plumed helm under his arm, his hand resting on the pommel of his saber. "These... men that we have recruited are the lowest of them all. We have as much to fear from them as from the pirates."

"It will take a strong hand to keep them in line," Guyin agreed. "But we will have the alchemists and their guard at our back." He turned and looked back at the Brotherhood of Alchemists' huge fortress that towered over the harbor. Seat of the enigmatic alchemists, the citadel was the foundation of the city's power. It was there, deep within cavernous vaults, that the alchemists refined the indigo spice that fueled sorcery the world over. The Brotherhood were a secretive, stubborn order, and only years of bribery, careful persuasion, black intrigue, and outright war had brought them under Dorhacin's banner. Long ago, the tyrant had been one of their number himself. He had learned their ways and eaten them from within until he was their king.

Guyin mistrusted the Brotherhood, but if the pirates he feared came calling, he would have to rely on their guards and their wizards.

"Pfah," snorted Shen, as if in answer to Guyin's thoughts. "The alchemists will seal themselves in their citadel and leave us to die on their doorstep. We will be on our own."

"Then we must ensure they understand how much they need us. Come, we have work to do."

Guyin turned to leave but took a last look over the harbor. One brave ship, a sleek, teak-hulled dhow, had set sail. She was heading south on a northeasterly wind, her white sails billowing as she cut through the wide blue sea toward the far-off ports of Vaedia or beyond. Guyin wished he was aboard the ship, headed for safer waters.

---

On the third morning after leaving Xiangliao, the crew of

King's Grace

were dismayed to see a ship appear behind them. She was the

Unrelenting

, a swift corvette captained by an elf loyal to Caeruthir, the lord of the Azure Armada, and the villain who had seized Dorhacin's bride for himself. The captain of

King's Grace

, a weathered merchant named Suryanama, summited the quarterdeck and blanched. Yet he took heart, for they were sailing against the wind, where his dhow's fore-and-aft rig gave her the advantage over the square-rigged corvette. Suryanama ordered his crew to pull their hardest, and cast off any weight they could spare.

Yet the corvette continued to gain on them.

Unrelenting's

expert elven sailhands eked every bit of wind out their sails and drew steadily closer throughout the day. Desperately, Suryanama looked to passing ships for aid, but none was forthcoming. By midafternoon,

Unrelenting

was in cannon range. She fired a single shot from her bow guns, and

King's Grace

heaved to. The elves boarded, installed a prize crew, and turned the ship east.

Together, they sailed through the night and the following day until at twilight they sighted their harbor. From the choppy waters far into the Sunrise Sea rose the shell of an enormous turtle. A mile across, the zaratan was Caeruthir's greatest weapon. With ancient sorcery he had bound it into his service, able to move his refuge throughout the trackless waters between Leiyan and the sunrise. He struck without warning and disappeared just as quickly, never staying in the same place long. The traditional methods of defeating pirates for useless against him, for the kings and princes could find no base to attack. The war had turned their eyes from this task as well, allowing him to plunder unimpeded.

And that plunder had brought him followers. When he had first arrived in the Sunrise Sea, an unknown elven pirate in command of three ships, he had immediately become a major thorn in the sides of all the rulers who had the misfortune to border the sea. Yet he had quickly begun to amass followers. The Azure Armada had been born on the back of his zaratan. And it had assembled again.

Dozens of ships crowded the zaratan's flanks. Towering galleons and sleek galleys jammed together against the stone quay, all of them swarming with pirates. Caeruthir's victory the previous year in Dragon's Bay was already the stuff of legend, bringing thousands more pirates to his banner. For as long as Dorhacin had warred with the emperor, piracy had flourished along their coasts. The battle, and the mountains of plunder, had sated the hungers of the veteran captains. When they retired to their fortresses and fleshpots to spend their plunder, the scourge of piracy had slumbered. A new generation of aspiring plunderers had proven to have neither the experience nor the coordination to make their mark.

But now Caeruthir had put out the call. Emerging from enigmatic seclusion, he had made known his intentions to strike again.

Suryanama watched from the forecastle of his dhow as

Unrelenting

led the way into port. His hands were chained, and an elven guard stood by his side with a hand on his sword, but despite his predicament Suryanama could not help but marvel at the assemblage of pirates. It seemed that all the pirates of the world had answered the elf's call. The corvette passed beneath the shadow of

Naked Wench

, a massive galleon built of reddish wood that bristled with cannon, the dreaded home of the pirate Xi Cao, a renegade from the emperor's navy and previously a mercenary in Dorhacin's service.

Beside

Naked Wench

was

Terror of the Tides

, a longer, sleeker galleon captained by the fearsome orc marauder Baamith. Passing beneath her gunports, Suryanama looked up to see monstrous faces staring down at him with cruel amusement. He blanched.

A longboat filled with eager pirates passed by

King's Grace

, carrying provisions for their ship. Barrels of gunpowder, bags of shot, boarding pikes, sabers, grenades... The fleet was ready for war.

At last, they neared Caeruthir's infamous flagship, and Suryanama felt his blood run cold at the sight.

Tempest

was built of elden oak, ancient trees that were old when the world was young. The pale white wood gave the ship an eerie, ghostly look to it, as well as unnatural resilience and light weight. Fearful sailors whispered that there was not a ship in the world that could outrun or outfight

Tempest

. The corvette moored itself to the zaratan's shell, and Suryanama's captors moored his ship to

Unrelenting

. He felt his heart flutter as he crossed the corvette to land.

No, not land, he reminded himself. He stood on the back of an enormous turtle, itself under the power of a mighty elven pirate with a taste for death and destruction. He swallowed hard, fearing what came next.

---

Caeruthir stood over the unfortunate captain, who sat chained to his chair. The light was dim inside the little pavilion he had prepared for his prisoner, and despite the chill breeze, the man was sweating under a barrage of questions. Caeruthir paced behind the captain, then whirled with another inquiry.

"The viceroy's army is mustered?"

"Not yet," sputtered the man, eager to please. "But he will in just a few days. And he's a king now."

"And how many men does the garrison have?"

The captain's teeth chattered. He sputtered uselessly before at last he managed a reply.

"Ten thousand, or so he claims. The viceroy-- no, the king!-- takes them for his army, but his Master of the Walls finds new ones every time."

Caeruthir chewed on that for a moment. No king's supply of men was inexhaustible. To fill his ranks, the viceroy must be taking lower quality recruits. Men who would run at the first sign of trouble.

"What of the harbor? Is it crowded?"

"Yes, my lord!" the captain gushed. "Ships come in, but they fear to leave. Your power is unmatched! Had I known of it, I never would have left."

That brought a smile to Caeruthir's face. The enemy was ripe with fear. All they needed was a good scare. His mind ran through the possibilities.

"How tall is the tallest tower in the city?" he asked, and the captain's face fell. He furrowed his brow, his mind hard at work.

"A hundred paces?" he guessed with a shrug. Caeruthir now frowned. Men were useless when it came to guessing distances, especially height. He would need to see with his own eyes.

"Belathir," he called to one of his lieutenants who lurked in the pavilion's gloom. "Bring my arcane implements."

His servants obeyed, and Caeruthir's prisoner shuddered with each strange tool brought into the room. First, the elf took up a thin brush which he dipped in indigo ink. He wound his hand through the captain's hair.

"Hold still, this shouldn't take long."

Suryanama grimaced but did not struggle, and the elf slowly painted strange arcane sigils onto the man's head. The captain did not resist, though Caeruthir suspected he would soon regret that. But the work continued painstakingly slowly until at last Caeruthir stepped back and nodded in satisfaction. He had more indigo spice brought up, already mixed into a potent elixir for his use. He raised the bottle to his eye, the captive man trembling below him, and tipped it back.

Power coursed through him. He felt a jolt of lightning rush through him and his head snapped backwards. His vision swam before him, showing a hundred different views of the past, present, and future, each as varied and brief as the next. Caeruthir clenched his fists, bringing the sorcerous energies coursing through him under control. Heaving, he clapped both hands on Suryanama's head. The captain yelped with fright, then screamed as Caeruthir directed the energies through him. Suryanama spasmed, legs kicking futilely in the air, but Caeruthir did not let go. The painted sigils began to glow and the captain's spasming subsided.

Caeruthir closed his eyes. For a moment, he was swimming in utter darkness, adrift in time and space alike. Then he willed his eyes to open. In the gloom of the pavilion, his eyes remained closed. But light flooded through him again. He looked around and smiled.

He stood not in a shadowy tent on the back of his zaratan, but on the deck of

King's Grace

, securely moored to the quayside in Xiangliao's great harbor. Through his prisoner's eyes, he could see the harbor just as the captain remembered it. He watched as the captain's hands exchanged coins with the harbormaster, a dour, balding man in a blue robe. At the end of the gangplank, two guards lazily sat on an upturned crate, staring glass-eyed at the cobblestone. One lifted a skin of rice wine to his lips and sipped half-heartedly from it. The harbormaster alone took his business seriously, grumbling about the poor quality of his servants as he went about his day.

All along the harborfront, he could see fear in the city. People moved as if in a nightmare, with hurried looks toward the horizon. The king's watchmen patrolled the streets, inept and corrupt to a man. Caeruthir watched through stolen memories as two bedraggled guardsmen beat and robbed a fish merchant for protection money. Turning his eyes upward, he saw another cannon being hauled out from the bastion forts. Only two remained, black tongues of wrought iron protruding from the embrasures, a weak but defiant show of force against would-be raiders.

Caeruthir set his mind adrift in Suryanama's memories. All the captain's time in port was open to the elf. He saw the merchants the captain had bargained with, the longshoreman who had taken his goods to the warehouse, the innkeeper who had rented him a room, and the whore who had shared his bed. He tasted the wine the captain had drunk, heard the worried chatter in the taprooms, and smelled the fragrances of meats cooking on street corners.

At a courtyard shrine, he saw worshippers pour out an offering for the safety of those taken by the pirates. Crowds gathered at the temples; mourners and anxious loved ones waiting desperately for news. Fear reigned in the city like a plague.

The elf turned his stolen eyes up toward the alchemists' great citadel, studying its defenses, its tallest towers, and its stout walls. Cannon bristled from its walls, and a great moat cut the citadel off from the rest of the city, crossed only by two great drawbridges overlooked by cannon emplacements.

But Caeruthir's eyes were those of a trained engineer. Already he saw angles of attack, blind spots in the citadel's guns, and weak points in the walls. His eyes still closed, he held out his hands in the pavilion, beckoning for pen and paper. He cracked open one eye and then, seeing the stolen memories in one eye and the paper in the other, he sketched the fortifications and watchtowers with the practiced craft of a draftsman.

Below him, Suryanama twitched, his mind fraying as his memories were sifted through like sand. Foam formed at the edges of his mouth, but Caeruthir would not stop. He ransacked the unfortunate captain's mind, stealing every memory of the city and its defenses that he could. At last, he stopped and opened both eyes.

The papers before him were covered in sketches and notes. Caeruthir had done his best to commit everything he had seen to writing so that he and his lieutenants might study it for their attack. Belathir peered over his shoulder.

"That's the citadel?" he asked in their native elvish tongue. Caeruthir nodded.

"It is."

"A formidable bastion. We will pay dearly to seize it."

"Someone will," Caeruthir agreed. "Yet elven blood is too precious to spend, even for a prize like this. We will do what we always do."

"Indeed," agreed Belathir. He looked to the captain, now reduced to a drooling mess. "What of him?"

"I have no further use for him. Take him to the zaratan's head and dispose of him."

"And then, shall I assemble the captains' council?" asked Belathir.

Caeruthir smiled.

---

Under a peaked cloth of gold roof, the captains gathered. Caeruthir seated himself on his throne, itself raised up on a short platform, and looked out over the assembled pirates. They were as varied as ever, though some of the famous infamous pirates were missing. There was of course Thoramar, who had immediately left the scene of their previous victory and sailed for parts unknown. The orc Surrak had retired from piracy, taking his ship and plunder far to the west. Aravin had also taken his plunder and headed for port, glutted on the spoils.

Yet the numbers of Caeruthir's armada were undiminished, for the tales of their triumph had brought swarms of new pirates to the zaratan, all hungry to share in the riches. Foremost among them was the orc Baamith, a cunning and cruel raider come up from the south in his galleon

Terror of the Tides.

He sat at Caeruthir's left, flanked by Xi Cao and Dural, two returned veterans of Dragon's Bay. The orc regarded Caeruthir coolly, yellow eyes probing his strength, and rested his chin on his fist. Over his shoulder, a succession of his crewmates whispered advice into his ear. He turned at the approach of one, a lovely young woman with olive skin, green eyes, and strange, silvery hair.

The woman laid a hand on his shoulder and bent to kiss his cheek. Baamith smiled slightly, but did not return the gesture. She whispered something in his ear, stole a sideways glance at the throne, then disappeared back into the crowd. Baamith adjusted himself slightly in his seat and leaned forward, shoulders out and his brow furrowed, an expression of strength.

Caeruthir allowed himself a small smile. He raised his hand and beckoned to someone behind him. A hush came over the hall as from the shadows emerged Princess Daiyu, daughter of the emperor of all Leiyan and, after her fleet's capture at Dragon' Bay, the wife of Caeruthir. She was pale and raven haired, dressed in green and gold silk, with her face half hidden by a veil. Even beneath it, her beauty was evident, and Caeruthir felt the lustful eyes of a hundred pirates fall on his bride. Their eyes lingered on her curvaceous hips and her big breasts, and he heard whispers go through the hall about whether she was yet with child. It was no secret that the elf had promised to put their son on the imperial throne, but to all eyes such an heir had not yet appeared, nor even been conceived.