---------------------------------------------

  Guiman, First Militiaman of Vilge Waevine

  ---------------------------------------------

  Guiman stared down the river, adjusting his cap for perhaps the hundredth time. The sun was high over the fields, bouncing off the golden wheat in quite a pretty way. The river, too, was looking very pretty on that particur summer day, what with the way its steep banks and gentle curves twisted across the ndscape, reflecting the summer-blue sky. The vilge behind him was also fairly picturesque, fit for a bard, what with the way its houses were lined up in neat rows, nestled between the hills which were all pierced through by the entrances to mines and the like. A nice pce to live, Waevine was.

  But prettiness didn't do much to keep his scalp from baking. His hair had disappeared with the appearance of his paunch, a lumpy bulge to his belly growing over the years that he'd never stopped being nervous over, though the healers always promised him it wasn't dangerous. Guiman didn't agree. A big firm gut lump, even while the rest of him was skinny, wasn't normal. The healers said nah, because when they tried to heal it, nothing happened, so that must mean it wasn't a problem. Guiman still didn't like it, still wanted it gone, but there it was. And today it was pissing him off more than ever. Between his lump straining against the threads of his ratty gambeson and his scalp sticking to the metal cap, he was having an awful time of things.

  Beyond his personal wellbeing, though, he thought he'd done pretty well. When Lady Ibota had put him in charge of the militia way back when, on account of his few months spent marching circles with the army twenty years ago, he'd popped off what he thought was a good-enough salute with a "Yes m'dy!" and never thought of the thing again.

  Way he figured it, Waevine was out of the way no matter which direction you reckoned. On the southern side of Sporatos, sure, but that didn't matter, not since old Tulian got wiped out by the gods, and a few miles innd, enough that they hadn't worried about raids in generations, ever since the Carrions got their act cleaned up. There wasn't anyone to cause trouble, beyond some local brigands or whatnot, and the Lady had proper soldiers for that. There wasn't nothing for a militiaman to do other than poke his head in the armory every few weeks, making sure bugs hadn't started eating up the spears they kept piled there. He'd not wanted the duty, but never bothered protesting, on account of the fact that he knew he'd never have to do anything.

  Well, fat lot of shit that'd been. The biggest godsdamn ship he'd ever seen was puttering down the river, carried in by a bit of a sea breeze and some damn hard work. There were two ships in front of the first one, more normal sorts, with oars stuck out either side, churning the blue water brown as they towed the big bastard along.

  All Guiman could do was count his lucky stars that the river Waevine had been built on used to be a lot more important than it was these days. Once upon a time it had lead to Hagos, a nice deep river running from a ke thereabouts, letting ships roll right on up to trade with the big city. Then the river had shifted, bending away from the city, and the city, as cities tended to do, failed to pick its britches up and follow along. Back in the day that had made Waevine a whole helluva lot poorer, something some of the craft-sorts in town still liked to moan about, but he'd never been the type to bitch over losing something he'd never known.

  No, as far as he was concerned, the only good thing that came of Waevine's centuries-gone heyday were the towers, one of which he was stood up in at that very moment. A nice, proper tower, with another of its ilk on the other side of the river. They hadn't been used in gods knew how long, (other than a pce for the local brats to sneak off and get busy in, Guiman's younger self included), but back when Waevine had mattered, the towers had mattered too. They were chain towers, with a big fat slot facing each other across the way. For a long time, these towers had done their part keeping pirates and raiders out of Hagos.

  A chain was s'posed to be dropped out of one tower, hauled across the river by some poor bastards in a boat, and hauled up into the other tower. When the chain wasn't pulled taut on the big cranks that used to sit in either tower, it'd droop low in the water, stopping any ship from getting through. If some pilging ship wanted to go farther in, they'd have to come up on shore and fight up through one tower or another, all the way to the the very top, and break the chain there. Wasn't any other way to reach it, 'cept to bump your ship up against it and start hacking away, which wouldn't work great, what with the way you'd be getting every archer in both towers personally pissed at you the whole time you were cutting.

  Sadly, that chain was long gone. Iron wasn't easy to come by, and it'd probably been melted down before Guiman's father'd been born. Didn't matter too much though, at least for the moment, 'cause Lady Ibota was as paranoid as she was cheap. Years back, she'd bought a big old pile of the thickest rope Guiman had ever seen, tossing it in the town's armory with all the spears and bows and whatnot. He'd never even known what it was for, up until Old Tonnin had come riding up from the coast hollering his head off about ships coming up the river. While Guiman'd been recovering from his heart attack, some of the other folk had started chatting up a storm about running a chain across the river, and Guiman had finally put two and two together.

  Which was what brought him to the here and now. Rope wasn't as good as chain, but it was still thick enough to stop a ship, and cutting it without mage-types would take a damn long time. So there he was, standing on the tower, tryin' to not pull his helmet off to scratch at his head, sucking in his lump as best he could without holding his breath. He had about forty or fifty of the militia up in the tower with him, and about that many on the other side. Just about all of them had bows in hand, and some of them even know how to shoot. The rope was dipping low in the water between the two towers, which he supposed is why the ships were still coming on. Probably hadn't seen it yet. Once they did, they'd have to realize that they'd be looking at taking the tower to cut it down, and then they'd bugger off back down the river to the coast. Pirates– and pirates was what he'd heard were taking over old Tulian– weren't interested in anything other than a cheap payday.

  He said as much to the folk around him, mostly to give his lips something to do other than sucking great heaping mouthfuls of hot summer air.

  "Then why're they doin' that over there, Guiman?" One of the girls asked, pointing an arrow.

  Guiman squinted, then grunted as he saw a boat getting tossed over the side of the big ship. Folks were loading into it, dressed in shiny armor.

  "Well shit," he said, because there wasn't much else to say. "They're really gonna try and take the tower?"

  "Hope not," someone said.

  Guiman was about to agree, until he remembered himself. He tried to muster up what his old sergeant had done, back when he'd been in the army for a those uneventful months of patrol.

  "Won't matter if they do!" He decred, thumping his chest. "Solid stone, this tower. Been here as long as Waevine! That ain't gonna change today!"

  The response to his glorious speech was a lot of side-eyed gnces and the baker's girl muttering, "I guess." They continued milling about the tower rooftop.

  Well screw them anyway, Guiman thought, leaning further over the edge. Not like what they think matters right now anyway.

  The bastards outta the big ship were puttering their way to shore, so much gleaming metal packed into one boat that the thing looked ready to tip over every time the oars hit the water. He kinda hoped it would, macabre though it'd be. The river was deep– hence the big bastard ship fitting through– and they'd drown right quick.

  No such luck there, either. Instead Guiman was treated to the very strange sight of pirates walking up on the riverbank toting, of all things, a white fg.

  "Don't that mean they're surrendering?" Someone asked.

  "Nah," Guiman said. "Just means they're tryna get us to roll over before they slit our bellies."

  Though he was certain it wasn't the smartest thing to do, Guiman told the archers to hold their shots as the little cluster of pirates approached. Shooting arrows at a white fg, he knew from the stories, was the sort of thing that got you hanged by your own side when all was said and done. Not honorable, y'know? And then there was what happened if you lost the fight to the fels with the white fg. Then things happened to you that didn't do much good to think about, not unless you were interested in pissing yourself.

  "Hello there!" The leading man called from the group. He was still all dressed up in his armor, and way up in the tower, Guiman couldn't get a good look at him. "Do you respect the fg of parley?"

  Guiman frowned. Was that a trick question? "Ain't shot you yet, have I?"

  "Just so!" The man replied with a deep-throated chuckle. It sounded forced, and what's more, his accent sounded foreign. "I've come on behalf of Admiral Nora of the Tulian Navy, seeking to negotiate passage and a peaceable transfer of goods from your vilge to our stores. Am I speaking with the appropriate authority for this negotiation?"

  For a foreigner, the man down there sure liked his fancy words. Guiman leaned back, looking at the rest of the militia with a question on his face. Was he the right person to be talking this out? What with Lady Ibota down south with the King's Army and her daughter barely out of diapers, there wasn't much authority of any sort left in Waevine.

  The rest of the militia gave him a variety of I-don't-know-either expressions, so Guiman leaned back over the wall.

  "For right now, that's me."

  "Excellent!" The man replied, hitting the T too hard with the tip of his tongue. Folk born speaking another tongue never did get it right, no matter how long they'd been speaking the King's. "Then I will ask that you raise the rope and allow us to proceed to your town, sir."

  "Huh." Guiman scratched at his chin, getting grime underneath his fingernail. "No?"

  "Is that a question?"

  "No." He shook his head, tin cap rattling. "No, no, it's not a question. Y'can't just sail up the river to go doin' whatever you want up there."

  "We can," the man replied simply. "And it wouldn't be much trouble for us to do so. But if at all possible, we'd like to keep this exchange free of blood."

  "You seen this tower?" Guiman patted the parapet next to him. "Solid. Stone. We blocked up the doors down there with more crap than you could ever shove through. So screw off, shove off, whatever. Or we'll start throwing arrows down at you like I oughta done in the first pce!"

  The man didn't say anything else that Guiman could hear. He turned to one of the other shiny folk and talked for a bit, until one of them reached into a bag and pulled out a fg on a stick. The fellow raised it so it fluttered in the wind, and just as he tried to figure out what was drawn on it, he heard the oddest sound.

  Guiman didn't make the comparison quite so quick in the moment, but when he told the story ter– again and again and again, every chance he got– he eventually settled on describing it a certain way. He said it was like someone had put a cooking pot over his head, then whacked the side with the biggest wooden mallet the world had ever seen. A big old metally boom, loud enough to make his ears hurt and his eyes feel funny. When he'd tell the story, that little image almost always got a good ugh, which was helpful for setting up when he told the next bit.

  In a fit of pure contrarianism, the solid stone tower that had seen so many centuries pass it by picked that very moment to give up on having a second story. Leaning over the wall as he was, Guiman was given a prime view to a man-sized chunk of the wall politely removing itself from existence, folding inward like a door that someone had forgotten to put the hinges on. The hammer-on-pot sound was followed up by a bang-boom accompanying the wall's disappearing act, two quick smashes happening in near enough the same instant to sound like one big crash. The entire tower jumped beneath his feet, everyone stumbling as it twisted a few degrees to one side.

  He looked up at the big bastard ship, which was suddenly half-covered in a puffy white cloud, looking for all the world like the sky had come down to pay it a personal visit.

  "I have been instructed by the Admiral to inform you that a second demonstration is allowed, if you are not convinced," the man called. "The third, however, shall necessarily be both much greater in scale and slightly higher in aim. And I have also received a request from the man in charge of the weapon you just experienced to express his desire that you not surrender, so that he may train his crews." He lifted his visor, smiling in a frowning sort of way. "This second facet, it should be noted, is voiced only to honor a debt I owed the man, and I cannot honorably recommend you fulfill his request."

  The stones beneath Guiman's feet were shaking. That or his boots were. He wasn't quite sure which, and he didn't think it mattered. Most of the militia were already running for the dders, hollering about doom and gloom and pirate mages coming for their blood, which the fellow down below most certainly heard.

  "I-I don't t-think we need a-another, ah, showing!" He called down. "What's say you and I have a little chat on some–" the tower twisted beneath him, it wasn't his boots "–some more solid ground?"

  "I will see you shortly," the man replied.

  Guiman ran for the dder, taking some soce in the fact that he was the st to head down it. Passing the second story of the tower and being able to see east to west was damn unnerving, so he did his best not to look at it. He dropped the st couple steps to the bottom floor, wiping sweat from his brow.

  Most folk were already busying themselves with clearing a way to the door they'd spent so long blocking up, tossing aside all the stuff they'd hauled up from the vilge to barricade it. Seeing one girl throw a nice-looking desk hard enough to crack its edge– and he knew that one belonged to Marn– he raised his voice.

  "Hey! Hey, what do you think you're doing!" He started to shove his way through the crowd right about the time the tower let out a little rumble. Guiman stopped. He, with the rest of the militia, slowly turned their necks upward. He had to blink hard as dust floated down to nd in his eyes. He then slowly looked back down at the folk that had frozen by the door. "What do you think you're doing!" He yelled again, finding his breath. "You think any of this shit matters? Go, go, get us the hells out of here!"

  The rest of the militia joined the effort of clearing the way, steadily uncovering the big solid sb of iron-wrapped timber that protected the tower's inside from the outside. Guiman didn't think twice about throwing its tch open, stumbling out into the sunlight.

  "Weapons down, if you'd please," the man said immediately. Guiman was still blinking the sunspots out of his eyes, turning circles as he tried to find out where the man was.

  He eventually found him standing exactly where he had been before, the dozen or so armored folk having spread out into neat rows beside him. They all held bits of wood-wrapped metal on their shoulders, pointing the things at the militia like they were crossbows. After the big fuck-off cloud maker, Guiman didn't want to take any risks. He threw down his spear, and soon the others did so as well, along with their bows.

  Looking at the man from up close now, he recognized he probably woulda done the same no matter what the pirates had at their shoulders. They were all dressed up in proper armor, metal through-and-through, and they all wore matching sets, which wasn't what Guiman would've expected from your usual pirates.

  "Thank you," the man said, waving for his troops to lower the metal poles. They did so, but Guiman didn't miss the fact that they just pointed them at the ground, easy to raise again in an instant. "Now, according to our charts, this is the vilge of Waevine, yes?"

  "It is," Guiman cautiously replied. He didn't want to tell a robber much of anything useful, but he also didn't want to see what the fellow would do if he sniffed out a lie.

  "And you are a mining town, yes? Utilize barges to float your ore down the river, so that it may refined and sold at the port?"

  "Yeah...?"

  "Excellent. We will require all of it."

  Guiman blinked stupidly.

  "What?"

  "We will be commandeering all of it."

  Guiman turned around, looking at the vilge he'd spent his whole life in.

  "The whole vilge? W-we can't do that." Guiman swallowed hard, trying to muster up the courage to say he'd rather die than see the whole vilge cpped in irons. It was true, but that didn't make it easy to say.

  It was the man's turn to ask a confused, "What?" Then he paused, realizing his mistake, after which he forced out another fake ugh. "No sir, not your entire vilge. All of your ore, your raw iron. It will be loaded onto our ships."

  Guiman didn't think he was pying a game, but what with the way the confusion ball kept getting tossed back and forth between them, he wasn't sure.

  "Y'want our iron?"

  "As I said."

  "Just... raw iron?"

  "Unrefined, yes."

  "I mean... not, say, even the bits we've smelted up into swords? Or tools?"

  "Guiman!" One of the militia snapped, affronted that he would be trying to offer this pirate more than he'd demanded. But how could he not? The demands didn't make sense, and Guiman had spent long enough around nobles to know better than to start on orders that he didn't understand, 'cause that meant he was liable to do 'em wrong, and doing 'em wrong was liable to get him dead.

  "No sir," the man replied. "Admiral Nora was rather specific in her instructions that no cargo space was to be wasted on other products." He briefly gnced at the sun, and lifted his visor. For the first time, Guiman realized the fellow had skin the color of tar, smooth as a baby. That was damn weird. "We will begin shortly. Return to your vilge and begin preparing crews to help with the loading process."

  "That's... uh... Alright." If the man wasn't really going to take more than iron, he'd gdly help him on his way. Wasn't cheap to lose, but sure beat having to rebuild half the damn vilge. "Y'want us to cut down the rope, or...?"

  "That will not be necessary. Are all your militia removed from the tower?"

  Guiman did a quick headcount before answering. "They are."

  "Dal, the same fg, please."

  The fellow to the man's right raised a fg, and it wasn't but two seconds ter that another cooking-pot-mallet boom thumped out of the big bastard ship, hitting the tower again. This time Guiman thought he saw something flying through the air, bck and round, but he wasn't sure if he was imagining things.

  Stone chips rained down on the militia as the leftmost corner of the second story folded inward, taking with it everything else. The chain tower, which'd stood for more years than Guiman could count, started falling over like a drunkard that had taken a blow to the head. It hit the steep bank with an awful ctter, tumbling over itself in an avanche that ended in a great big spsh, stone bricks piling up in the river.

  The pirate man frowned. "Apologies, sir. I'd hoped that we'd not pollute your waterway. If the debris proves difficult to remove, I at least hope it will not inhibit the passage of your barges in the future."

  Guiman let out a little huh, which was all he could offer in response to something as bizarre as all that. He started to wonder, for the very first time, if these folk were really pirates at all. The fellow to the man's right leaned over, whispering in his ear.

  "Oh, yes. Thank you, Dal. In addition, sir, are there any members of the nobility presiding over your vilge?"

  "Uh." Guiman was at least gd he didn't say 'what' again. "Yes, properly speaking, but not really, not at the moment. Lady Itoba's down south, fighting the..." Guiman trailed off, realizing this man had cimed he was from Tulian. Probably best not to call him a pirate right to his face. "Y'know. Fighting down south."

  "I see. And she left no one of noble birth in her stead?"

  "Just her daughter, sir."

  "A woman of age?"

  "No sir. Just turned two, she did. There's a few stewards taking care of her and all that, but they're all hired sorts from the capital, not proper nobles. There's only Sir Suen, nephew of Baron Suen, and he mostly just reads off what Lady Itoba says to do in letters. Barely in charge, he is."

  "He will do. I assume this Sir Suen has taken care of the proper guard, defending the Lady's estate while he sent your militia to dey our forces?"

  "Er. Yes, just about." Guiman scratched the back of his head nervously. "Fat lot of good we did, though."

  A fsh of sympathy passed over the not-pirate's inky face, and his voice lowered a touch. "If any of authority question your prompt surrender, expin that this conversation we are having was your attempt to dey our passage, a ploy you chose after we destroyed the tower. It is technically working, after all."

  Guiman blinked. Had the man just given him advice on how to get out of hot water? And good advice, at that? If so, the man didn't think anything of it, because he kept talking.

  "Now, when you return to your vilge to begin preparations, inform this Sir Suen of the following. Are you literate?" Guiman shook his head. "Well then, best remember well."

  After a few minutes more of talking, Guiman walked away in a bit of a daze, rubbing his stubble with both hands. He didn't stop being in a daze all the way down the road to the vilge, and he still hadn't shaken it while he told all the folk hiding in their homes about what had happened and what they needed to do. In fact, he barely noticed himself walking up to Lady Itoba's walled manor to holler over the walls at the guard, expining all the things that the not-pirate had wanted him to expin. He only snapped back into reality an hour or so ter, when the gleaming Tulian-folk marched up to the Lady's manor and pulled to a stop about a hundred yards or so away, looking all nice and shiny in their armor as they waited for Sir Suen to show himself.

  "Is the noble known as Sir Suen, nephew of Baron Suen, present?" The man called, speaking into a cone that made his voice a whole lot louder.

  After a moment, Guiman, who was watching from the sidelines with half the vilge beside him, saw Sir Suen poke his head up over the wall.

  The manor was surrounded by a ten foot ring of mortar-packed stones, hardly a castle, but it was a decent enough little fort for most of Waevine's needs. Guiman himself had sheltered in it a number of times, when bandits or fires came a-calling. After seeing what had happened to the tower, though, he didn't think it much more protection than kindling, though he'd not gotten the chance to tell Sir Suen or his ilk that before being told to screw off. Guiman didn't think the big bastard ship could see the manor from the river, but he didn't know much about magery, and for once was gd he was on the wrong side of the walls.

  Sir Suen himself poked over the wall in response to the not-pirate's call. He was barely more than a boy, not yet out of his teens, and it showed in how fresh-faced and young he looked. He wore some sort of armor with the visor lifted, not proper Knight's armor, but whatever his uncle had been to afford. Even his show of putting up a fierce scowl didn't help him look any older, and that was made worse by the way his voice cracked as he yelled back at the not-pirate.

  "I am he!" The young noble cried shrilly. "And I have in my employ a force of thirty well-trained guards, all of whom are prepared to defend the nds and rightful possessions of fine Lady Itoba to the st!"

  "That's fine," the man replied. "I come only to deliver a message from the Governess of Tulian."

  "And that is?"

  The not-pirate gestured to one of the soldiers beside him, a man holding one of the wood-and-metal poles. The fellow raised it, squinting an eye. Sir Suen flinched slightly, recognizing it as some type of weapon or another, but was brave enough to hold his ground. Guiman imagined that the boy was thinking that a hundred yards was well beyond the range any mere rabble could be expected to shoot, so it was best to keep up appearances, aiming for a knighthood as he was.

  That was probably the st thought the boy ever had, before his face caved in.

  There was a cry of shock and dismay from the assembled vilgers, greatest from those that hadn't seen the earlier dispy on the river. Guiman only shook his head sadly. Poor fool had been too brave for his own good.

  The guard betedly leapt into action, moving to charge out of the manor in vengeance for their fallen commander. As the gates began to swing open, however, and the rest of the pirates raised the weapons to their shoulders again, he could see a wave of recognition go through the guards:

  Why bother?

  Sir Suen was dead. Lady Itoba was hundreds of miles away, and her daughter would remember nothing of the day. The pirates weren't even asking for anything more than raw iron, which stuffed the hills full all around them.

  Slowly, perhaps with a tinge of shame, the gate swung shut once more. The pirate whistled and made a gesture, causing his fellows to turn around, heading back for the river.

  "Well," Guiman said to the rest of the vilgers, cinching up his belt. "Best go help them folks load up their iron, huh?"

  The rest of the vilgers, perhaps in a state of minor shock, began to follow Guiman in dead silence.