Chapter 10: Pirates I

It was only a few days after Eric had come through town that second time that the pirates arrived. Our first warning was the signal fire from the headlands watch post. Soon after that, one of the watchers galloped into town with details. They had seen four ships standing in for the channel and, as agreed, felt that there was no legitimate reason for four trading ships to all arrive at the same time.

The moat was nowhere near dug deep enough to stop anyone, but it was at least down low enough for the tide to fill it and it would be a messy slog through it even at the easiest parts. Any sane man would use one of the bridges. The wall wasn’t done either, but it was at least a few feet high everywhere and higher in most places.

The town’s defenses were being worked on by the town’s guardsmen. They were getting paid anyway, and any who weren’t needed for actual guarding were working on the defenses. Many of the town’s part-time volunteer militia were helping and getting paid for it as if they were part of the Guard. Added to that work force was anyone else who didn’t mind doing some manual labor in exchange for some food and maybe a couple of Pinches.

The town had originally started at one end, working on both moat and wall at once, with everything pulled from the moat going to fill in the wall right behind it. That was a good efficient way to get the most return for their labor, as it used the materials right next to where they came from and no labor was wasted carrying the mud any further than they had to.

However, it wouldn’t do the town any good to have a finished moat and wall in one place, and nothing at another place. Before the pirates arrived, we needed SOMETHING all the way around the town. That meant that anywhere the moat wasn’t finished we needed a wall, and anywhere the wall wasn’t finished we needed a moat.

Thankfully, someone else had pointed that out before Eric and I had arrived, and the perimeter effort had turned more into ‘something everywhere’ instead of ‘beautiful finished moat and wall to this spot here, and absolutely nothing past here’.

We had strongpoints on either side of both gates. For now they were simple wood-and-mud structures. They were nothing that would withstand a determined assault by the trained professional army of an enemy empire, but they should be good enough to keep pirates out. Maybe someday in the future they would get replaced with good stone structures.

The militia could defend the walls and the bridges and hold the ground force off for a bit. There was nothing they could do about ships docking and taking the town behind them, though. Along the river, we had two more wood-and-mud strongpoints where the walls ended, up against the riverbank. We had a couple more strongpoints along the river, at the docks. The docks were still a weak point, there was no way to fortify the docks and still have them usable, but maybe the artillery could help us hold the riverbank. It was what it was.

We sounded the alarm and everyone started scurrying around doing their emergency tasks. Everyone in Widemouth’s militia was called up for immediate service, of course, but they all knew it was coming and they’d been drilling for some time. Some of the outlying farmers came into town seeking safety. Some of the townspeople took off down the two roads seeking safety.

There were several wagonloads of children that headed up the river road to Epper’s Mill, the next village upstream, to wait it out and see if they were now orphans. Oh, and all the fishing boats got ready to move over to the other side of the river and as far upriver as they had to go.

There was also a lot of dithering by some people who couldn’t decide what they needed to do. Not much we could do about that, idiots were gonna act like idiots no matter what. I asked everyone I knew to try to keep track of those people, as they were really just children no matter how old they were. If they had a twenty days to prepare for this and they still panicked, they weren’t really adults and they needed to be watched over like the smaller children. Once this was all over, we shouldn’t do anything to punish them, they couldn’t help it, but I wanted to make sure that they were never trusted with anything important.

I still wasn’t anybody official, and I certainly wasn’t the Commander of the Widemouth Guard, but the town had long since realized that wherever I was from they had big empires and big armies and big wars. I may have looked like a young man, but I talked and acted like an older man and it was clear that I’d seen more than my share of too many of those wars.

So, the town’s soldiers all listened to me, but I couldn’t give them any orders. In fact, I couldn’t even give orders to the artillerymen. When I had first asked the town to pay all the people working on our artillery, they had asked why I shouldn’t pay them as they were working for me.

“If I pay them, they work for me, you’re right. And they are my very own private group of mercenaries, building weapons that could destroy this town. Do you really want them loyal to me, instead of being loyal to the town?”

Put that way, of course the town council agreed to pay them. They’d be a branch of the town Guard, under the Commander. I was just an advisor and I couldn’t give any orders to anybody.

It turned out that that was how Widemouth came to have such a fancy Town Guard in the first place. The story I heard was that one of the town’s wealthy families had started the Guard as their own private security force with good soldiers and good metal armor and weapons and training, but then decided that it simply cost too much. They had gotten together with the other wealthy families and before anyone knew it the town council -which was made up of those same wealthy families- was paying for the Guard out of the town’s funds. Instead of just protecting that family, the Guard was supposed to protect the whole town. I’d heard a rumor that the Commander had originally been one of the young mercenaries hired as Guards when the force was first created.

I’d never really been a warrior as they thought of it, but I had a pretty good education about how wars and battles and sieges worked even before I spent my summer vacation in Afghanistan. That had just increased my interest in things military and by now I had a good handle on all sorts of things that no normal American needed to know. When I made a suggestion to the Guard or the militia or the town’s new artillery company or even to the town council, they were getting to the point where they just did it while asking ‘why?’ instead of arguing first.

It wasn’t that I made outlandish demands. Most of my ideas were common sense, once they’d had a chance to think them over. Like, the town should pay any soldiers that they wanted loyal to the town. Like, people fleeing down the coastal road toward Cowford should change their minds and head upriver towards Epper’s Mill, as we didn’t know where the pirates would land and anyone on the coastal road could be captured or killed. Some listened, some didn’t.

Before long, another man from the headland watch team came galloping in. All four ships were headed down the coast, southward. When I heard that, I made one of my ‘strong suggestions’ that no one else be allowed to leave along the coastal road. All they would do was give the pirates, wherever they landed, some captives, food, and information. Not to mention horses, wagons, weapons, etc.

The Commander of the official Widemouth Guard was a grizzled old scarred-up soldier with a slightly younger assistant they called the Captain of the Guard. I’m not convinced that the Commander ever had a name. When he was born he probably already had his beard and a half-dozen scars, and his parents just called him ‘Commander’.

When he heard my comment about the coastal road refugees, the Commander immediately turned to his messengers and made that a formal order. The surrounding farmers could enter from either gate, but no one else would be allowed to leave by the coastal road. Then he turned back to me and said “Obvious, once it’s been pointed out. What else?”

“Can we send scouts along that road? On foot, so they don’t get surprised by pirates on foot, but they should have horses so that they can report back to us. Maybe, when they find the pirates, some of the hunters can remain behind to see what they are doing and maybe how many there are.”

He ordered that, too, and that was it for a while. We relaxed the alert and went back to building the wall and digging the moat. Now, everyone in town helped. Anyone could carry a rock or a basket full of mud and dirt. Men, women, children, even the farmers who had come in had their families help while they went back to their farms to hide their possessions and bring more food in.

We didn’t hear anything else until the afternoon, when our scouts reported that many pirates, hundreds, were coming down the coastal road towards Widemouth. They had a couple of horses, but most were on foot and they couldn’t make it here before nightfall. That news made some more men send their families upriver where they might be safe. Some of the men went with their families. Some stayed behind to fight and defend the town.

The rest of us worked on the wall and other defenses and took turns resting. After all, the pirates might try to attack us at night. Probably not, though. If they did, they would all be tired from walking all day while we might be rested. If not, they would certainly attack in the morning! Getting as much rest as possible was just as important as all of our last-minute preparations.

Another innovation I had given them was a war-room with a scale model of the town and the surrounding area. With that, it didn’t take much nudging for the Commander to see that once the pirates arrived, our watch team out at the headland would be cut off. They could hide, they could try to swim to the other side of the river, or they could withdraw back to Widemouth before the pirates arrived.

Or, we could send them a boat. We had a sort of war council, with everyone who commanded men having a chance to say their part before the Commander made the final decision that we all had to follow. One of the ship captains countered my concern with the suggestion that one of the smaller fishing boats drop down to where the watch team was just before dawn. Then, they would also have the option of getting on the boat and helping row it back upriver to safety. We all laughed at that. “But, didn’t they join the Guard because they don’t like boats?”

“What about their horses?” Someone asked that, and no one had a good answer until someone suggested that the horses might be led to swim across the river. Otherwise, if there was no way to return them to town they would have to be killed to keep them out of the pirates’ hands. It was ugly, but it was true. Get them into the river before you kill them, if you can, so they get swept down to the sea and don’t provide more food for the pirates.

We sent a messenger down to the watch team to let them know that they hadn’t been forgotten and ask them to stay until dawn before getting on the boat. Within an hour the messenger came back leading four horses. Or, they can send their horses back before they get cut off! That works, too.