Chapter 27: In the Cut

What the fuck had that been about? Every other time we’d run into pirates, they had wanted to talk first. They weren’t bloodthirsty maniacs just out looking for people to kill. They were trying to get rich by capturing ships, slaves, and loot. They wanted us to surrender so that they wouldn’t take any casualties. If we surrendered instead of fighting, they got our ships and all of us as slaves. Talking us into surrendering was much better than fighting and maybe getting killed.

These people had acted crazy. They hadn’t wanted to talk first. They hadn’t even tried to get away when our archers started cutting them down like wheat. They had just lowered their heads and charged. What the fuck?

That had to wait while we cleared the ships. We had to do that ourselves, since there were so few prisoners. There weren’t more than seven or eight unwounded survivors between the four ships that had attacked us. There were many more wounded, maybe thirty or more, but they could wait, too.

We all took part in stripping the dead pirates, going through their clothes and belongings, and dumping their bodies over the side. We set our own dead and wounded aside for later. Eventually we had Shark cleaned up to the point where we could wash the decks off. After that we could strip the prisoners, bring them over to Shark where they could be watched, and go through the three captured ships.

We didn’t bother cleaning the ships up, as they didn’t seem worth keeping. We had enough ships. None of the captured ships held anything of note, either, nothing of real value. They had all sorts of supplies, though, so we stripped them as completely as we could, from rigging and spars up on the mast all the way down to water barrels down in the hold, and then sank them. All three of them. With their dead crew still laying on their decks.

While the men were going through the ships us management figures talked to the prisoners. I tried to stay out of it and just listen. None of the survivors were officers or leaders of any kind, they were all simple sailors. They were all Prince Alfred’s men, though, and they had all sworn to die before being captured by the King. They all seemed surprised to hear that we weren’t from Central Isle and weren’t in any way connected to the King of All the Isles.

Not that it mattered much. They wouldn’t have surrendered to a bunch of Hunter Island assholes, either. Begging our pardon, of course. I stepped in, there.

“No offense taken, we just wanted to know what was going on. Everyone else we’ve met here wanted to talk first. You guys were the first ones to just charge in and start fighting.”

“Well, we thought you were from the King. We’re done talking, us and them. Nowadays we just fight.”

“Do you never get any ships from other islands? What if a ship came from North Isle? Would you just attack it, too?”

“North Isle ain’t got no ships no more. The King wiped them all out!”

“Uh, that wasn’t the King of the Isles. He’s probably at home on Central Isle, sitting on his throne and wondering who did it. That was us. We did that to East Isle, then we did that to North Isle. All we did on South Isle was to kill Landon and his men, though. We left alone everyone who didn’t fight for Landon. We’re going to do the same thing here, too. We’re looking for some asshole named Prince Alfred, and we’re going to kill him and all his men. Anyone who steps aside and says ‘He ain’t my Prince’ will be left alone. We don’t have a beef with them. Just this Alfred asshole.”

“Why you mad at the Prince?”

“He took something of ours. We’re going to take it back. We figure it’ll be a lot easier if we kill him first, though. We’re willing to let his men surrender if they want, but we’re also willing to kill anyone who gets between us and him. Like you guys. We were willing to let you surrender, and you would all be set ashore. After we sink your ships you aren’t a problem any more, so there’s no need to kill you all. Now, it looks like you men will be the only ones who get to walk home again. I figure that your five ships probably held a thousand or so men all told, and there’s only about twenty-five of you left to walk home. It would have been better if you had been willing to talk first.”

“Well, for myself I agree, but I ain’t the Admiral. I ain’t even the Captain.”

“Huh. Well, you seem to be willing to speak for your men, and your men seem willing to let you speak for them. As far as I’m concerned you’re the Captain of this crew. Now, Captain, we’re going to ask you and your crew a bunch of questions. You don’t have to answer them, but we’d appreciate it if you did. Once we’ve gotten what we came for, we’ll set you and your men ashore.”

I left my staff to it. I was supposed to be running the fleet. I never did hear what they would do if they got a ship in from somewhere else. I guess every ship was assumed to belong to the King of the Isles and would be attacked. No wonder the King of the Isles couldn’t control his people!

While we were busy, Sir Tony had taken six of our transports and landed their men at the beached ships below the eastern headland fort. The Commander had taken another six transports over to the western headland to do the same thing. Both groups had a couple of our escorts along to keep them from being bothered. As soon as our fight was over, our warship captains talked it over and two of them went to help.

After a couple of hours, Sir Tony was back on Flying Arrow for a command conference, and I got summoned. They also summoned the Commander from the western group, and we all went over what we had. The Commander’s group had had to fight two ships that came out to meet them. After that they had landed and captured the fort and four more beached ships. Sir Tony had captured three more beached ships as well as the fort.

Both of them reported the same sort of hatred and aggression. They hadn’t taken the sort of casualties that we had, though. The soldiers were far better armored than our sailors were, although not up to the Guard or our Marines’ standards. They also had numbers on their side. The sailors in the forts couldn’t surround them the way our attackers had.

Did we keep the forts, or destroy them? And, what did we do with the ships they’d captured? I couldn’t speak for the forts, but I told Tony and the Commander that we didn’t need the ships at all. Have the sailors strip them of everything useful and sink them in deep water.

They had a discussion about the forts. We didn’t really need them, but it was possible that they may have some value. For now at least, we would keep the eastern one. If nothing else it gave our men a safe place to sleep that was off of the transports. They didn’t want to separate our soldiers for too long, though. They finally decided to evacuate and destroy the western one, the one that the Commander’s group had captured.

They also had some more prisoners. For now, they would be stripped and kept on one of the captured ships. They would have no clothing, weapons, or tools. They would have no food or water except what we delivered to them every day. When we were done with Mountainside City, we would beach the ship and let them off. Until then, the ship would be kept in the middle of the Cut. If they wanted to swim to shore, that was fine with us. We didn’t care either way, if they wanted to chance swimming that far.

We had to talk over what we were doing. Were we going to have to slaughter every person on Mountain Isle? Were we willing to do that? A philosopher might say that they were only defending their homes, but there was something wrong with these people. Everywhere else we’d been, the people had been willing to at least talk to us, before deciding to fight. These people seemed to just go crazy and attack us as soon as they saw us.

I leaned over to the Commander and asked “Do your people tell their children scary stories about monsters, trolls and giants and such?”

“Yes. They don’t really exist.”

“Sure. However, where we are from there is a kind of craziness that this reminds me of. The people become like monsters from a story. I’m going to say its name and I want you and the other Hunter Island natives to just not listen for a second, okay?”

I looked at Tony and Tom, and said “Religious fanatics”.

Tony said “Yes, that sounds about right.”

I looked at the rest of the men. “It’s a sort of craziness that is contagious. If one man gets it, it’s possible to give it to others. They are mostly normal people, but they become sort of stupid and they know they are right about something. It doesn’t matter what you say or do, they know they are right and if you disagree with them the only thing to do is kill you. You can’t reason with them about that subject. You can leave them alone if you want, but sooner or later they will come looking for you because they know you are wrong and should be killed.”

Tony added “You can agree with them just to get them to leave you alone, but that just makes them want you to prove you’ve converted to their way of thinking, and they’ll want you to do something that you know is wrong, like kill everyone else who disagrees with them. Your wife, your children, your neighbors. Whoever is still saying they are wrong. And if they all agree that the crazy people are right just to save their lives, they have to join you in finding more people to convert or kill. It never ends unless you just stand your ground and kill them. They can’t get along with anyone else. You have to agree with them and help them, or you are wrong and must be killed.”

Tom asked “Do you really think that that’s what we are dealing with here?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not going to risk any more of my men’s lives trying to talk, though. If they want to talk, they can put their weapons down and ask for a truce. Until they do that, I’m telling my men to just assume that everyone they meet is an enemy and to consider themselves in the heat of a battle. Unless they go out of their way to surrender, they are an enemy to be killed. I’ve got fifteen dead and another twenty wounded just on Shark. I’m not taking any more casualties because we want to talk to crazy people.”

Tom looked at Tony and the Commander. They both nodded. Tony said. “He’s right. Sending a small group out to parley will just get those men butchered if the enemy doesn’t want to talk. I agree. We should tell our men to just assume they want to fight. If they want to surrender, they know how to do that. Until then, they are enemies to be killed.”

Tom nodded his head. “It’s wrong, but you and Lord Jason have experience with those people. Do it. Allow them to surrender, though.”

“Anyone who throws down their weapons will be allowed to live. If they start fighting again, though, we will kill them.”

Filo spoke for the first time. “Remember Lion when those five ships attacked us off Rocky Point. They don’t get to surrender twice.”

We all nodded, and Tom asked “So, what’s our next step?”

I wanted to back up some. “Can we revisit that fort? Sir Tony, do we really need it? What does it do for us, and how much will it cost us to keep it?”

“No, we don’t need it. We need to keep our men together. Small detachments will get overrun. You’re right, if we’re dealing with crazy people we should evacuate our men and destroy both forts.”