The Stockade of the Jade Circle
Bromm XIII
The predawn darkness was deep and still. The waves broke over the rocks, pushed onward by cold northern winds and the five little boats cutting through the night. Ahead of them loomed a wooden palisade overlooking the sea, its walls lit by warmly glowing torches. The stockade slumbered in the winter night, blissfully unaware of the incoming raiders.
At the head of one of the boats crouched the pirate named Bromm. He was young but seasoned in raids and battle, with powerful arms, broad shoulders, and a thick black beard. One of his calloused hands lay on the boat's gunwale while the other clutched a basket-hilted broadsword, its gilded hilt covered in a thin black cloth for stealth. Between his teeth, Bromm clutched a short knife, and he had thrust a pair of pistols through his wide waistband. Behind him sat his friends, all equally well armed with blades, firelocks, and even a handful of grenades.
With swift, silent strokes of their oars, they bore down on the seaside stockade occupied by the smuggling ring known as the Jade Circle. From their secure base off the Bountiful Coast, these daring merchants circumvented the oppressive monopoly of the Spicers' Guild that was maintained throughout the major southern ports and the Auric Empire, making hefty sums in the process.
Hefty sums that Bromm and his compatriots now intended to steal. They sailed for an infamous pirate captain named Gonnsar, one of the legends of the sea. Gonnsar had brought his crew here for more than gold. The rumors swirling around the ship's hold were that he had been cheated by the ringleader, a Leiyani man named Yu Fan, and was out for revenge. Gonnsar had spoken nothing of revenge on their sail north, but he had flogged the crew onwards harder than usual, desire for something in his eyes.
And now, at long last, they had reached the stockade, which sat on the edge of a place known as Ram's Cove. Bromm could see little of the place in the dark, but the mountains that loomed beyond blotted out the stars on the northern horizon.
Bromm looked up from the stockade, toward those same stars. The sign of the Wolf was in ascendence, blazing bright and clear over the dark mountains. On the western horizon, the sign of the Hearth was set to dip over the edge of the world and would have already were they anywhere but on the wide open sea. The sorcerer Myrdahd, Gonnsar's newest and most terrifying ally, had spoken animatedly of that sign, insisting that it meant good fortune for them. But that was of no concern to Bromm.
Once, a ship's navigator tried to explain to him the meanings of the star signs, but Bromm had not been in the mood to listen. He left the astronomy to the sorcerers and philosophers. All he needed from the stars was enough guidance to steer a ship. Of course, now he needed no such aids. The stockade was near.
He looked up toward the walls again, where a single sentry patrolled lazily. The torches along the parapet cast golden pools of light in the water, hardly extending past the rocky shore. Burning low close to dawn, they did more to illuminate the defenders than any attacker, showing a handful of light swivel guns mounted on the parapet and a single cannon facing out to sea.
Bromm pointed to the side and hissed new directions for the boat. His boat veered to starboard, skirting the edge of the torches' glare toward a darker spot. He looked back, and saw someone stand up in the bow of another boat, this one coming to a dead halt just beyond the edge of the light. A man raised a bow, loosed an arrow, and the sentry on the wall fell dead. Bromm heard a murmur go through the boats' crews. The way was clear.
The rowers quickened their pace now, and the boats shot through the narrow harbor mouth. To either side, in the black night, Bromm saw windlasses for a harbor chain that had mercifully been lowered. They were into the harbor.
He leapt out of the water on the cove's beach and helped haul his boat ashore. His friends piled out in short order, weapons at the ready. Bromm looked around the stockade's bailey.
The central keep rose above them, a stone and earth construction reached by a winding path that went up from the beach. To either side loomed cannon-studded bastions meant to protect the harbor. But now their guns faced out to sea. A threat to Gonnsar's ship
Furious
, waiting offshore, but not to his crew of hardened cutthroats within the stockade's walls. Along the outer walls of the stockade ran low blockhouses, warehouses, workshops, and one squat stone structure that Bromm knew had to be the treasury.
He turned to see Gonnsar standing beside him. The infamous marauder was taller and broader than even Bromm, with a bald head, thick tree-trunk arms, and beady eyes beneath a craggy brow. He wore a blackened iron cuirass around his barrel chest and a morion cloaked in cloth to deaden light and sound. In his right hand, he held a wide-bladed boarding axe. With his left hand, he pointed up toward the bastions.
"Boat One, take the south bastion. Boat Two, the north bastion. Galles," he pointed to his lieutenant ashore, a stocky dwarf with a long black beard, "guard the treasury. Everyone else, with me."
The commands were largely unnecessary, as the raid had been planned and rehearsed aboard
Furious
for a week. But Gonnsar would brook no mistakes. Bromm fell in behind the captain and Galles on the steep path. His friends trailed behind him in grim silence.
Nothing stirred in the stockade except for them, and Bromm began to wonder if that unfortunate sentry had been the only one awake in the entire fort. His question was answered at the entrance to the keep, where two sentries sat dicing before the door. They looked up with initial disinterest, then their faces lifted in surprise when their minds could not recognize the newcomers.
Gonnsar did not let them recover. He heaved his boarding axe at the first man and the weapon split his chest open with a wet crack. The man toppled backwards off his stool and landed in the dirt. His companion had no time to mourn him, for Galles, acting quickly, sprang upon him and drove a knife through the man's neck. The man's cries were muffled by the dwarf's hand over his mouth, and his kicking died swiftly, yet Bromm still feared they were discovered.
"Someone probably heard that," Gonnsar growled, wrenching his axe from the sentry's corpse. "Quickly now."
He booted open the door and his marauders rushed into the main hall. Inside, rows of sleeping men lay between the long tables, and the hall's hearth smoldered at the opposite end. Two serving women crouched by the fire, tending to it with long tongs. They started at the sight of Gonnsar's men and ran for a side door. The marauders pursued them, some stopping to dispatch or disarm the sleepers before they fully awoke. Gonnsar's desire for slaves spared some of them, but many died in their beds without knowing they were under attack.
The pirates charged off into the depths of the fort, eager to overrun the defenders before any defense could be mustered. Some made for the kitchens, others for the armory. Bromm and his friends ran for the stairs at the rear of the hall, for that was where he expected to find the master of the fort. They thundered up the wooden staircase and Bromm threw himself against the oaken portal, only to find it locked.
