“Could I ask a small favor?” The rescued nobleman had his hands nervously clasped behind his back.
“You may ask,” I said. Whether or not I would grant the favor was another question.
“I was wondering if perhaps you might announce my arrival as loudly as you can,” the nobleman said. “When we sail up to the Castle of Negroponte.”
“Really?” I frowned. “Like a major-domo announcing a guest?”
“Just so, only louder.” The nobleman nodded. “Being that we are arriving in a ship of a style that they will not have seen before, it may save some difficulty.”
“But … there’s no way that the Venetians at the castle know anything about me,” I said. “I’m as much of a stranger to them as the ship. The convoy that left Venice while I was there hadn’t yet called at Karystos.” At least, according to the harbormaster.
The nobleman shook his head. “From what your officers say, I am sure that a description of you has gone by pigeon post from Venice to Pula, Corfu, and Negroponte. There is only a little news that can be sent by pigeon, but you were…” He trailed off, searching for a suitable word.
“Pigeon post?” I asked, puzzled.
“Yes, pigeons make very good messengers,” the nobleman told me. “Though you have to take them away from their homes, so they must be carried one way slowly before they fly back.”
My mind raced, thinking back to the pet pigeon that Ehrhart had lost just outside of the border of the Gothic Empire, the one with a scrap of paper tied to its leg that was nattering on about going home. Had Ehrhart loosed the pigeon to send a message? I shook my head, focusing back on the present.
Given how many larger birds preyed on pigeons, I felt skeptical both of the reliability of pigeon post and said as much, then continued to the real question. “You think that if I announce you, they will be quicker to give us permission to drop you off and pass through the strait? Why?”
“Er. Well, you’re an impressive fellow,” the nobleman said quickly. “Just wear your golden armor, that lovely cerulean cape, and have your orichalcum trident in hand, and they will surely know that you’re a respectable gentlemage of means. Even if they haven’t had word of you by pigeon post.”
“It’s Corsican brass,” I said by way of a correction. “Fine. I’ll announce you.” I paused, trying to remember his name and title. “Baron Logos?”
He shook his head. “I gave that as a false name to the pirates. My real name is Constantine. I will write out the style of my introduction for you.”
And so it was that I sailed to the gates of the Castle of Negroponte. When I saw cannons begin to shift in our direction, I commanded the oars put in the water to brake, walked to the highest point of the prow, holding my trident in one hand and unfurling a scroll of paper in the other. I took a deep breath before beginning my speech.
“Hail the castle! I speak as Marcus Corvus,” I began, my eyes scanning the page. “You may have heard of me. Pause for one minute.” I stared at the paper, realizing that ‘pause for a minute’ had been an instruction intended for me to follow, rather than part of the message. Reading ahead in the page, I found several more instructions nestled into the introductory statement that the nobleman had penned. I shook my head, deciding to ignore them.
“I come to return from durance vile the noble Constantine, thirteenth of that name. He was held by those who enslaved many of his people, chaining them to oars until death. He has promised me a reward for returning him to his proper position of status and authority upon the island known by the Latins as Negroponte,” I said, pausing to interject my own words. “He hasn’t been specific at all about that reward except to say that it will be well-worth any trouble. It certainly should not involve any cannonballs.”
I glared for a moment up at the ramparts, where several bombards were still pointed in the direction of my ship. A watchman who had been holding a spyglass was now standing and waiting impatiently as a well-dressed man made use of it, pointing it at my direction. I looked back down at the paper, finding the place where I had left off, and then I heard the distinctive sound of Katya’s rifle break the monotonous rhythm of wind and wave. Looking up, I saw a man with a mallet in hand fall down next to one of the bombards, a red stain blooming around the shoulder of his mallet arm.
“He was going to strike the phoenix stone of the bombard,” Katya called down, justifying herself pre-emptively.
I took a deep breath, finding within myself to shout more loudly. As I did so, for a few dozen yards in front of the boat, a triangular shape formed where the surface appeared calmer. “This is your last warning. Move to fire again and I will make you regret it.”
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The mallet-man at one of the other bombards dropped his mallet, stepping away from his bombard with both hands raised. The well-dressed man with the spyglass was now talking with several officers; I waited for them to finish before resuming the introduction. “You will call upon the retainers of Constantine within the city of Chalkis. They will take position within the Castle of Negroponte and within the harbor to greet us. Thus speaks Marcus Corvus, mercenary and renowned warmage.”
I skipped over the line that called me “blessed of Poseidon” and “breaker of armies,” as I felt no confidence that the former was correct and the latter seemed a bit boastful. However, the last sentence seemed perfectly friendly, just a bit of well-wishing. “May the walls of the Castle of Negroponte stand tall forever, and may it be not today that a great earthquake casts the whole city of Chalkis into the sea, taking with it faithful and faithless alike in screaming horror. May the people of Chalkis see today only sunlight, and not the dark clouds of wings of carrion-feeders hungering for flesh.” I paused, spontaneously deciding to add a benediction that seemed of greater interest to normal persons. “And may your fishing nets never come up empty for weeks on end, leaving hunger in your bellies.”
Having wished both the castle and the surrounding city good fortune in a friendly if mostly oddly specific manner, I rolled up the scroll of paper, handing it to Georg. Then I made a respectful salute with my trident, hoping that the soldiers and other important persons scurrying around on top of the wall would believe that I really was just delivering a lost nobleman to them. I steeled myself and kept one eye on the bombards as the rowing-engine engaged, prepared to try to shield the ship from harm if they decided to fire, but there turned out to be no need.
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We did have to wait a little while in the harbor before Constantine’s escort arrived to take us to the castle.
I had been impressed by how well-dressed the soldiers on top of the ramparts of the castle had been, but at the harbor we were greeted by a ragged formation of soldiers wearing their armor over more humble clothing. Their armor was generally poorly-fitted, several were clearly inexperienced with handling arquebuses safely, and a third of them were barefoot. They were accompanied by half a dozen very well-dressed Venetian gentlemen with empty baldrics.
Constantine greeted the soldiers in Greek and the Venetians in their own tongue. Katya and I spent a pleasant evening in a soft land-based bed, Felix sold off much of our cargo and replaced it with other cargo he thought was valuable, and the next morning saw Constantine’s reward delivered to our ship. This generously included a small chest packed with several grivnas of golden ducats, a jeweled and enchanted dagger, and half a dozen personal servants. I was also offered a trained giraffe that apparently had belonged to a Venetian noble whose estate had been recently dissolved, but demurred; I could not see how to safely keep it aboard our boat in rough seas.
In the end, the only major complication that weighed on my mind about our arrival to the Castle of Negroponte was the unfortunate bombardier who took a bullet to the shoulder; Constantine promised that the man would be seen to. We set out in a well-rested and well-fed state, absurdly well-compensated for the simple task of returning a kidnapped noble to his home island. It has not been my experience in general that nobles are generous without reason, but there are exceptions to every rule.
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I had no experience with having personal servants, unless Georg counted in her role as my de facto squire. Knowing that Georg had been a lady’s maidservant and that Katya had grown up in a wealthy family, I delegated the task of figuring out what to do with them to those two worthies while I focused on teaching the mermaid how better to speak to Ragnar in his native tongue.
In the excitement over our sudden departure from Karystos, I had put aside the question of whether or not Ragnar should remain a lieutenant; in the end, I decided to leave the matter of disciplining Ragnar to his cousin Felix, who decided to run him ragged in drills on the deck. I did, however, decide to promote Georg to the rank of banneret and Teushpa to the rank of lieutenant. After all, Teushpa had been a banneret for a long while, and even if his pretense at being an illusionist was unconvincing, Ragnar’s misadventure brought it to my attention that I had never had to discipline the Cimmerian for misbehavior in spite of the fact that he’d been part of my company from the very beginning, which made him unique among my junior officers.
Once we rounded our way out of the northern gulf between Negroponte and the mainland, we were in the northern Aegean, in waters controlled mostly by the Sultanate. While the Venetians relied heavily on galleys, the fleet of the Sultanate included a number of steamers – not as large or as quick as the French ones, but as mobile and maneuverable as any galley with greater persistence and heavier artillery. As we entered the open waters of the northern Aegean Sea, I could not help but remember all the news sheets I had read as a child about the helpless state of the fleet of the Golden Empire against a more advanced naval power – and of the rapacious nature of the Axine Sea pirates funded by the Sultanate.
Still, if I wanted to return home to the Golden Empire, the fastest route lay through the heart of the Sultanate – across the northern Aegean Sea, through Hellespont, and across the Axine Sea. If I wanted to reach Katya’s father, I should then take the ship through the Cimmerian Strait, across the Cimmerian Sea, and up the Kama River. It was a route traveled regularly by merchant ships, and the sea trade passing through Hellespont was highly important to the Sultanate.
True, our galley looked a little bit different from a modern galley, but would that be any reason to block our passage?