Chapter 31: Back to North Harbor

Lord Black showed up at the strait before we were done loading all our loot and supplies. He only had three ships, though, his own Honest Work and two of the cargo ships which we had filled with food for North Harbor. Where was the last one? I was still at the plaza, supervising the Jakes and their toys. Tom and Tony were back with the fleet, though, so Filo took Andrew to them on Flying Arrow.

The four ships had reached North Harbor without incident and started unloading their cargo. Starting with the starving guards, I was sure. Andrew had talked to the other captains and they had decided to see how trustworthy Lord Vernon was. No one at the port was willing to help unload unless they were paid, so Andrew decided that the ships could be unloaded by their own crews and soldiers instead of giving money to people who they were already giving food to.

They had decided that it was better to completely unload two of the ships first instead of having each crew work on unloading their own ships. So, everyone from two of the cargo ships went over to Honest Work and the third cargo ship to help them unload faster. All they left onboard the other two ships were a few men to keep an eye on things.

After a few hours soldiers who claimed to work for the Lord of North Harbor had boarded one of the ships that was not being unloaded. Once they had taken control, they had told the crew to start unloading it because they worked for Lord Vernon now. The crews didn’t want to get into a fight with soldiers, so they all picked up a load of the cargo and carried it off the ship. And then dropped it and ran for our other ships.

Andrew had been expecting something like this. He stopped unloading food, got everyone back onboard, and got the remaining three ships away from the wharf as quickly as possible just to keep the soldiers off of them. Once they had everything secured for sea again, they had come back south to report that one of our ships had been commandeered by Lord Vernon.

Well, Filo and Sir Tony both preferred to say that the ship had been ‘pirated’, and King Tom had accepted that interpretation. When Tom had agreed, Tony had turned to Andrew and told him “We’ll take care of it. You already know what we do with pirates.”

Then he had turned to Filo. “Captain Filo, take whatever ships you need to either blockade that ship in the harbor, or run it down if it has already left port. If it’s already at sea, feel free to sink it and leave its crew to drown if you want. As soon as we get everything loaded up again, we’ll go do the same thing to North Harbor and its Lord as we did to Mountainside City and its Lord. We’re in no hurry for the army, but we want to make sure that ship doesn’t get away.”

Filo had taken six ships and headed up north as fast as they could go. Tony and Tom sent a messenger the other direction to us still on the plaza, to let us know that we needed to hurry it up because we needed to land the army again at North Harbor as soon as we could. The Jakes had already completely disassembled the floating catapult and stored it belowdecks on Shark, and they were in the middle of disassembling the floating trebuchet when we heard this.

Fine. Stop disassembling the trebuchet. We’ll take both of the shore-bombardment ships with us. If we need them, we’ll put them back together. If we don’t need them, we’ll finish taking the trebuchet apart, store it on Shark, and get rid of the two ships one way or another. We got the men and the rest of the loot all thrown onto the ships as fast as we could and got underway for North Harbor.

The men were doing some grumbling. They were all filthy stinking rich and most of them had a wife, girlfriend, or concubine to keep them warm at night, and it was past time to get home and get the harvesting in. Sorry, men. This one shouldn’t take very long. It’ll be a lot faster than Mountainside City was. We’ll just be in and out in no time and then we can head home.

We left Mountainside City in ruins, at least the waterfront and the area for several blocks along the Royal Road between the main waterfront plaza and the Prince’s palace, as well as several other areas where we had sent raiding forces. The survivors could squabble among themselves to decide who would be in charge of what was left.

We picked up the rest of the fleet at the strait; there was no point in blocking it any more. Besides, no ships would be coming from the south, and we’d meet any ships coming from the north.

The two bombardment ships had cobbled up some sails so they didn’t have to be towed, but they were definitely the slowest ships in the fleet. The bigger one, the one with the trebuchet, used it as a mast. They tied the arm straight up and down and hung a pair of jibs off of it. Depending upon where they tied the sheets, they could catch wind from any direction. It wasn’t much sail area, but it helped.

The smaller one, the one with the catapult, did the same thing but the catapult arm wasn’t that high. The crew jury-rigged a tripod mast over the catapult, but it didn’t help that much either. That ship got towed most of the way to North Harbor.

Even so, the trip north went a lot faster than the trip south had, since we weren’t constantly stopping to capture ships, loot warehouses, and burn boats. We sailed all night and got to North Harbor about noon or so the next day. We found Acting Admiral Filo blocking the harbor with two ships, and the rest of his squadron up north a bit watching the Cut. Maybe I can retire!

There was no hesitation among the men this time. They knew what they were doing, they’d done it several times before, and they’d even seen this town before and already knew how it was laid out. Fifteen of our companies, by now only about a thousand men, landed outside of the walls on the south. Another fifteen companies did the same thing where the army had landed the last time, on the north side. The rest, about two thousand soldiers, landed along with all of our Marines from every ship that wasn’t already busy, right at the waterfront where our pirated ship was.

The two forces outside the walls had orders to simply contain the town. No one in, no one out. Kill anyone who doesn’t accept that. Otherwise, leave everyone alone. We are still hoping to not destroy this town.

North Harbor had seen the fleet coming in, and it wasn’t about to argue with all those men. Our men had orders to simply kill anyone who was armed unless they surrendered. If they surrendered, they were to be disarmed and taken to the waterfront where we could keep an eye on them. There wasn’t much fighting. By the time anyone was ready to fight us they could tell they were both outnumbered and outclassed.

The town had to have enough men to fight us off. There was no way they couldn’t come up with a big enough force to hold us out. Widemouth had done it, and Widemouth hadn’t had the population, the arms, or even the walls that North Harbor had. The only thing that Widemouth had was leadership and a determination to fight. Okay, and someone who had read a lot of history books.

Still, North Harbor shouldn’t have rolled over for us. We wouldn’t have. Hell, they shouldn’t have rolled over for us the first time. It showed a lack of moral fiber or something. Certainly leadership.

There was a fight at our pirated ship. Apparently one of the pirates said something disrespectful to our soldiers who were boarding it, and they decided that the pirates had already been talked to once, and there was no reason to try talking again. At least, that was what they told us afterwards. I had no reason to question their story.

At any rate, Vernon’s men on the pirated ship were all slain where they stood. Some of them jumped into the water instead of facing our men, but that didn’t help them. Our archers just shot them as they came up to breathe.

Back when we had organized our companies back on Hunter Island we had tried to get at least twenty archers in each hundred-man company. It was actually supposed to be sixty sword-and-shield men and forty spearmen, but the best twenty archers among the spearmen also carried a bow and a quiver full of arrows. When marching or in melee combat, they slung their bows and held their spears. When about to go into combat, though, they normally handed their spears to the man standing next to them and used their bows until it was time to take their spears back.

That was why only half of the spearmen carried bows. The other half had to carry two spears and those things weren’t light. I guess it was incentive to become a better archer, so that you could go into combat carrying a light bow instead of two heavy spears.

The system made each company a complete force with swords, shields, spears, and archers, able to deal with anything they faced. Except maybe artillery, and they hadn’t had to face that yet. Our ships had, but not our soldiers. Tony was still thinking about what we’d do if our army had to face artillery. For now, until he actually saw it, the answer was probably “avoid whatever direction the artillery is facing, and go in from the side and capture or destroy it as quickly as possible”.

Even a cavalry charge would melt under the arrows and the spears. Unless the horses were armored, I guess, but as rare as metal was here who was going to armor a complete formation of heavy cavalry? I didn’t think we needed to worry about that. Anyway, our army got very little guff as they moved inland towards the Lord’s Keep, where whoever was running North Harbor this week lived.

We didn’t have any trouble with directions. Once we were all back on our ships and leaving Mountainside City, after a quick conference with Tom and his council we had passed the word to all the ships that those sailors who had joined us here in the Islands could go serve Lord Black, if they wanted. By the time we landed the army at North Harbor, Andrew had more than five hundred fighting men willing to swear to follow him as Lord of North Harbor.