Chapter 14: A New Hero

I was sorta expecting it, but it was still a surprise the first time an Earth Hero came through our bank. We had quite a few men who wanted to be crew on our warships and earn some easy money but could not swim, and I had to have something for them to do. I set four of them up as pairs of bank guards so that if anything happened one could continue to watch while the other went for help. One pair had the mornings and the other pair had the afternoons.

I still remembered the bank at Long Cut when some Brotherhood thugs were checking everyone for rings and I’d had to fight my way through them. The guards were supposed to watch for others like them, people just standing around the bank looking at everyone who came out. If the Brotherhood sent anyone to Jayport to watch the bank I wanted to know about it before they could cause any trouble.

And, since they were there watching the bank anyway, they should talk to anyone who came out talking or looking funny. If they weren’t a local the visitor should be sent to go see me. So, several months -maybe a hundred days- after the bank first opened, the first Hero came through our bank.

He looked funny and talked funny and had funny clothes and didn’t know his way around, so one of the guards walked him over to see the local lord. Me. I was in the “Audience Chamber”, really just a meeting room of our still unfinished residence doing the management thing and meeting with different people to decide things, when Gottfried von Nurnberg was brought in and introduced.

“Aus der Deutscher Reich?”

His head whipped around. “Nein, aus das Deutscher Republik.”

I laughed. “Look, can we speak English again? That’s about all the German I know.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Thank you. Welcome to Chaos, Sir Gottfried!”

“Thank you for seeing me so quickly. Am I in arrest?”

“No, you are free to go on your mission. I just wanted to meet you and see what help you needed. Please sit down. Is this your first mission?”

“This is my third mission.”

“Good. You know what you’re doing then. Very well, I am Lord Jason. Can you tell me what your mission is and what help you need?”

“I am to rescue the Lady Carmine Worker from a pirate ship that is supposed to be coming this way. She had been held on the mainland for some time and had been considered a low-priority rescue but since she was sold to the pirates this may be her last chance for freedom. I was given to believe that I could hire a ship here.”

“Do you know how to find this pirate ship? We have no navigation tools here, so most sailors just follow the coast to avoid getting lost.”

“No. We realize that I may not be able to find that ship, but I am her only chance.”

“Very well.” I nodded to the bank guard who had escorted the Hero in. “Can you go find Captain Jono and Captain David and have them come here?”

The guard repeated his orders and left to go track them down.

“Sir Gottfried, do you know where the pirate ship is, and when it might be coming by us here?”

“It left Pollock’s Bay three days ago and is expected to return to its home.”

“Right, and that means it should pass by here sometime today or tomorrow. Do you know anything about how many men the ship has?”

“I was told there are about a hundred pirates on the ship. Can I hire fighting men here?”

“No. Nor can you buy a warship here. However, I will lend you a ship and crew for this mission. Please, have some ale. We cannot brew anything as good as this, so we buy this from one of the mainland cities that is known for its ale.”

We sat and made small talk while we waited for the two captains. If Sir Gottfried was a German, I wanted his opinion on both the Long Cut ale and the local brew. Maybe he could tell us what we were doing wrong. His analysis was that the Long Cut ale was very good for something not brewed according to Das Reinheitsgebot, the German ‘beer purity law’ that was enforced throughout Germany. The local brew, on the other hand, was horse piss that could only be sold in America. He had no idea what we were doing wrong.

On to more important things. Sir Gottfried was not a sailor, and his two previous missions were deep in the mainland where the only water was a river or stream. After a few minutes Jono and David showed up.

“Sir Gottfried, this is Captain Jono and Captain David. They command two of my warships. Captains, this is Sir Gottfried. He is looking for something that may be on a pirate ship that left Pollock’s Bay three days ago. Which of your two crews is complaining the loudest?”

They looked at each other. Jono said “That would me mine, Lord Jason. My crew is all poor. They are eager for more pay so they can spend it all on ale and women and be poor again in three days.”

“Very well. Jono, do you remember when I first showed up at Widemouth and you had to teach me everything about the sea and keep me from getting killed?”

“No, Lord, I don’t remember teaching you anything about the sea. Maybe I kept you from getting killed, though.”

“Can you take Sir Gottfried out and find his pirate ship? You command your ship and your men. He will NOT give you any orders about how to capture the pirate ship. However, once you are alongside you must let him do what he needs to do. Consider this a particularly stupid manhood test. Sir Gottfried must be able to return to his home and say that he did this himself. He may have gotten a lot of help, but the final part he must do himself.”

“Yes, Lord.” Jono was grinning. “Does this particularly stupid manhood test have anything to do with an unusually beautiful woman, a cock-burner?”

I sighed and smiled. “Yes. You understand what is happening here. If Sir Gottfried can rescue her and get her to the bank, she will give him children and they will live happily ever after.” Just not together, right.

That was that. Sir Gottfried was wearing scale armor, though, and would sink like an anvil if he fell overboard. I had Jim Armorer outfit him as well as he could with what leather armor was immediately available, and Jono took him out on Thunder.

They got back in late that night, a captured ship coming in ahead of them. The port guard woke me up when they saw the two ships, and I met them at the pier. Yes, the Lady Carmine Worker was a truly beautiful woman, unquestionably a Cassandran. The dozen or so captured pirates were locked in their hold for the night, and the good knight and his fair lady were given a room to rest in until the bank opened in the morning.

When they came out, I greeted them with “Sir Gottfried, NOW I have a ship to sell you, if you are still interested!”

He laughed. “Thank you, Lord Jason, but I believe that I have everything I need. Unless you object, we will be leaving when the bank opens.”

“That is not a problem. Please keep that armor for your next mission. If you ever come back this way, please arrange to be here long enough for a set to be made specifically for you. You will be happier with how it fits.”

“Yes, Lord Jason. If I don’t see you again, thank you for your hospitality and all of your help. Without your ship and captain and trained crew, this would have been an impossible mission.”

“It was a pleasure to meet both of you. If you ever come this way again perhaps we can spend some time talking.”

That was about it for my first Hero visit. Sir Gottfried had turned out to be surprisingly easy to get along with, and we captured another pirate ship that we otherwise might not have caught. We fed them both breakfast, and when the bank opened they went in. They didn’t come out again.

With both Bridgetown and Small Cove sending warships out, the sea between Hunter Island and the mainland got cleared out fairly quickly. I heard that they also had some fights with ships from the mainland that wanted to contest who could sail where without paying a toll, but those ships just added to the Island’s wealth after the fights. That ended up being their particular share of the job, dealing with any mainland-based people who thought that piracy would be a great way to make a living. If they had to deal with any Pirate Isles ships that got past us that was fine, too.

Widemouth ended up with several ships that they could send out to patrol the western side of the Island, but they had pretty slim pickings. After what happened to Lord Howard’s raiding force and the Brotherhood’s invasion the pirates left Hunter Island alone. Excuse me, they left us “the fuck alone”.

We were the ones getting all the action, based out of Jayport where we could sail immediately when our lookout towers saw a ship. It wasn’t constant, though. Sometimes we’d see a ship every couple of days, while other times it could be eight or ten days between sightings. We had to investigate them all.

Once we had three good warships we could rotate through maintenance periods for each one. We kept an eye on all the green wood we’d used for repairs, and sure enough during the next summer when the ocean water was warmer it all started to soften and leak.

Wrong Place was the worst, since we’d had to replace large parts of the hull sheathing with unseasoned planks. As long as we had Shark and Thunder, though, we could let Wrong Place go back to Widemouth to have the hull repairs done right.

Sea-borne commerce started to pick up again with the decline of the pirate fleet. Of course it took a while for all the mainland cities and towns to recover from the Brotherhood, but they all understood trade. There were still a lot of ships around, and every time we captured a pirate ship there’d be another one on the market for anyone who wanted a cargo ship cheap.