They Come To Feed

Chapter 1

"Don't let those blackhearted bastards set their irons into our gunwales, hearties!" roared Tristero, captain of the Osprey. He was a burly bear of a man in his middle-forties, barrel chested, broad shouldered, with massive heavily corded arms left uncovered by his black leather jerkin.
    Tristero continued to shout commands in a deep baritone voice, as sailors crowded the port side of the deck, cutlasses and hatchets in hand, to slash at the grappling irons of their foemen, lest they board the Osprey. Momentarily he was amongst them, hacking at the hempen cords with his mighty arms, his black-bearded face taut with fury.       
    "Archers, feather those Mavrosian dogs!" he bellowed. Arrows hummed overhead like angry hornets, the sound of pained shouts attesting to their accuracy.
    To his right were the two barbarians, Grimm and Freyja- tall, doughty, warriors of the Northland. One tawny haired with emerald eyed, they other raven-tressed with eyes like blazing amber, their sinewy forms rippled with pantherish grace as they met the first charge of the Mavrosian corsairs. Three of the Mavrosians had managed to clamber up the gunwale. Cutlass clanged on cutlass under the blazing southern sun.
    A thin line of blood opened on Grimm's chest as a downward slash grazed him, his dexterity saving him from a more serious wound. He parried the next blow then returned with a ferocious offensive, driving his own blade down through the corsair's collar bone. The swarthy Mavrosian went down in a pool of his own spreading blood.
    The corsairs fought for purchase as the pirates of the Osprey swarmed the portside gunwale in a frantic defense, driving the corsairs back as best they could manage. Sabres and axes hacked at limbs and grapnel cables as the sea below turned scarlet.
    The wooden deck of the Osprey was slick with blood and gore. The battle raged as corsairs, mostly Mavrosians, Oparians, and ebon-skinned men from the far south vied against Tristero's buccaneers. The men of the Osprey were mostly Eberoseans, and Oparians, but also there were the two slayers from Thule, and Pellus the Sly, a slack-jawed Arcadian of ill-repute.
     Freyja advanced relentlessly on an enemy sailor. Her attack seemed a constant flurry of motion as her sword sheared away an Oparian's ear, then quickly cut through flesh and bit into bone, rendering her opponent's sword arm useless. Her lips skinned back in a toothy smile, not of joy, but of victory, as she dealt the killing blow.
    A corsair tried to outflank the barbarians, his plan coming to an abrupt halt when a giant fist pummeled the side of his head like a meteorite, instantly pulping half of his grizzled face. Tristero looked down at the olive-skinned corsair, hefting him and tossing him to the turbulent waters below.
   "We've beaten back their first assault, but we cannot hold them off forever, Captain,"
growled Grimm, gore staining his black linen blouse.
   "Then we sit with Tyr One-Hand in Valhalla this night," returned Freyja's voice haughtily.
    "I am not out of tricks yet, my boy!" said Tristero, his voice deep but incongruously cheerful "Pellus, fetch your toys and we'll see what they can do!"
    With that, the evil looking Arcadian broke off from the fray, pulling another sailor along with him, a malevolent smile marring his weathered face.
    Grimm saw the two pirates return carrying a heavy crate, and shot a questioning look at the captain. Tristero returned his gaze with a bleak grin and spoke, "The only thing of worth that feckless Arcadian, Pellus, brought aboard, including himself."
     Freyja's attention was captured now too. She greatly disliked the Arcadian, but she was curious to see what was in store for the corsairs. Pellus and his companion, an Oparian, drew clay jars, their mouths sealed with cork and wax, from the crate and loaded them into the shipboard petraries.
    "Archers, ready the fire arrows," rumbled Tristero. With a curt thunk, the catapults hurled the clay amphoras into the starboard side and aft deck of the enemy ship. A viscous oily liquid, its pungent odor instantly defiling the breeze, coated the corsair vessel and seeped into the water around its starboard flank.
    "Loose your arrows!" came Tristero's strident command. The corsair war galley's aft section exploded with a whoosh of blue flame, and in moments her masts were also engulfed. Frantic, men desperately tried to extinguish the spreading conflagration to no avail. Even the very water was alight now, as the burning fluid spread across its surface.
    "Unless you're eager to meet Hades, get some distance between us and those bloody Mavrosian dogs," boomed the captain.
      "Witchcraft?" Grimm turned a suspicious eye upon the captain.
    "Nay, my boy," retorted Tristero with a cheery laugh, and he gave Grimm a hearty slap across the back, "not witchcraft-science. It is called Arcadian Fire, its formula is a closely kept secret of Arcadian sailors."
    When Freyja heard the captain speak of Arcadia her interest was even further piqued. Her mother was Arcadian by birth, and Freyja's Arcadian ancestry showed in her patrician features. She was ever curious about all things of that ancient land, save only that pinch-faced villain, Pellus.
    "You don't know from what materials this Arcadian Fire is made?" Freyja inquired.
    "No, not entirely, but by the scent I'd venture it's mostly naphtha," the captain answered indulgently.
    With the flames the sea battle ended.

    Tristero assessed the casualties aboard the Osprey. The final count was grim, barely enough hands to manage the vessel, all told, and that was not accounting for the potential of another fight with either pirates or privateers.
    "Not much for it I'm afraid," Tristero concluded, "we'll just have to do the best we can."
    Grimm turned his viridescent eyes toward the corsair craft, now barely floating, thirty ship-lengths distant, "We are in a better predicament than those wharf rats, captain."
    Freyja trained her eyes on the wreck, then turned to Tristero, "Captain, I have an idea."
    Looking into Freyja's gemmed eyes, Tristero burst into laughter and spoke, "You are mad, lass, utterly mad, but I'll allow it," then speaking to the crew, "Bring us about! Hailing distance."

    Freyja stood at the low gunwale of the Osprey scanning the smouldering hulk of the Mavrosian sea galley. Only five of her crew remained alive or ambulant. Of the five survivors, only one was a Mavrosian, the others were black men, Ghandans.
     The finely dressed Mavrosian, no doubt a ship's officer, was shouting commands as the more modestly attired blacks continued the futile task of trying to save the doomed ship. Freyja hailed them, her voice clear and strident. And all five approached the near side of the corsair deck.
     "Will you parley?" came Freyja's husky voice.
     The Mavrosian stood forward of the rest. He wore a cloth-of-silver djellaba with arabesque tracery in cobalt blue, a cream coloured turban wound about his head, his hair hung to his shoulders in dark loose ringlets, giving him a garish appearance, his ostentatious jewelry scintillant in the sunlight. The blacks crowded, glumly, behind him.
     "A woman?" a look of contempt and hate clouded the corsair's neatly bearded face, "We do not parley with women."
     There was a sharp twanging sound in Freyja's right ear. Suddenly the corsair officer gripped his chest, an arrow sticking from his shattered breast bone, as he lurched forward and fell into the sea, dead before he hit the water. Freyja did not need to cock her eyes to her right, to know it was Grimm that loosed the arrow.
     "What of you, Ghandan, do you parley with women?" Freyja eyed one of the black men.
     The Ghandan hesitated a moment, then spoke in clear Osirian, with only a hint of a Ghandan accent, "We will parley, women warriors are not unknown in our native lands, and we saw that you fight like a lioness."
      "Your ship is bound for the seabed, and you will surely die, but we are in need of sailing men and fighters upon the Osprey. Will you swear an oath of fealty to our captain and to the Osprey, that you may join our crew?" Freyja voiced without emotion.
     The corsairs agreed in unison. Their spokesman explained tersely that they were not loyal to Mavros, nor her pirate captains, but were escaped slaves of Mavros, pressed by circumstance to sail as corsairs.
    And so, the four men of Ghand took their place amongst the crew of the Osprey.