“Were you at Elger’s Roost, or did you stumble through a Portal later, Second Mate Harnzgo Macguire of the Callibrae? Because I distinctly remember that the Callibrae was taken and renamed after Black Tam MacGillium was stupid enough to raid the Roost when my father was passing through with my mother there, and paid for it with an exploded skull. As I recall Dad telling it, Black Tam’s first mate MacNaill led the survivors of the Sea Ursuins in a panicked flight through a Portal that popped up back then, screaming for his miserable life. Your captain Sea Wolf Corey MacTaggrel didn’t quite manage to make it there before my mother took his head off.”
The dead pirates were well on their way to groveling after that statement, and when she started laughing, that Cackle that no pure human woman could do quite right without having direct exposure to the madness and evil of the Hag Curse, the undead there fairly ground themselves into the soil and stone.
“It appears, Your Highness, that they also remember your mother,” I said diplomatically, although my Shards did not go away. “Speak, sailor! Who claims command of your damned souls?”
“Mac, MacNaill is our chief now!” Mate MacGuire answered promptly.
“I honestly thought his cousin the MacDugal would have taken control, what with being more experienced at banditry on the land,” Kris said acerbically. “How did you end up in such a state, sailor? Your tendency to prey on civilians aside, your crews had no known truck with necromancy.”
A rattling sigh seemed to escape all the former bandits and pirates. “We-we died proper-like, Your Highness. Died defending the people escaping all the things coming from everywhere after Asheron’s Fall.” A withered, flesh-peeled hand vaguely indicated the area about them. “Died about the city here of Hebian-to, helpin’ the women and children flee up the peninsula, where they were opening a last Portal to the islands.
“When the next night came, me and the lads woke up, dead as door nails. Surprised the life right out of those Hea tumeroks and Gotrok lugian raiders looting the city, and we put much of the lot to the sword before they ran away. They come back sometimes, and we send them packing each time, them and their false armies they bring with ‘em.”
Kris and I shared a glance. “That is also the direction we are heading, Mate MacGuire,” Kris stated coolly, but her voice had lost much of its edge. “How long have you performed this duty past death, Harnzgo MacGuire?”
The bowed, rotting undead could only shake his flaking head. “I know not, Your Highness. Time... is not what it is like this. Day and night just seem to pass, and we tally them not.”
Undead perception of time, lengthened with the absence of the urgency of death to meaninglessness. It did not surprise me.
“Is your captain available to speak with, Harnzgo MacGuire?” Kris continued, much more gently.
“Aye, Your Highness. He commands from the dead city behind me,” the mate responded quickly.
“Very well. Send a man to escort us to him. And know this, Second Mate Harnzgo MacGuire. I do indeed have the power to send you to True Death. Rise, sailors!”
Her voice dragged them to their feet, and they even sort of shuffled and tried to stand at attention for her as they did so.
“You were fools in life, and equally great fools in death, giving your lives valiantly in defense of others,” she said firmly. She held up Quaver, whose notes had changed to something gentle, yet martial, making them all tremble as they stared at the Blade in longing. “This is my foolish vow to some equally great fools.
“I will return to you, and when I come, it will be with the living behind me, and the long guard you have stood will be over. I will send you all to sleep, the duty you took upon yourselves will be over, and you can rest, knowing that all that you sought to do and defend is at last coming to pass.
“I, Imperial Princess Kristi Rantha of the House of Briggs, salute you, sailors of the Callibrae and free men of the seas, one great fool to a pack of them!”
It was a very precise Salute, a full ceremonial flourish and dance done by a true master of the sword. It swirled around her with energy and floral grace, beautiful and hypnotic, a dance of the blade performed with a flawlessness that radiated honor and respect behind it, something that made the dead men remember what it meant to live well and die well. They straightened up at the recognition that this salute was something done for them, done for heroes true, a fancy thing of high honors and knighthoods.
But it was being done for THEM, and it was not some empty artistic frippery and tale. This was being performed for them by an Imperial Princess, the daughter of the dread Commander Briggs!
The Salute of the Rose ended with her on one knee to them, bowing with all the weight of the Empire behind her, Quaver’s burning Blade and its terrible reality extended out and down in salute to them. The dead men were as rigid as statues as they could feel... something pressing down on them, an honor and an acknowledgment of something greater that they’d never felt in their time alive.
“Bow to accept the honor, fools,” I said softly to them.
Haltingly, creaking, the dead men bowed at the waist, accepting the Salute, and all that it meant behind it, a Glory and Duty the dead could feel far more acutely than almost any of the living.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Kris rose back to her full height gracefully and effortlessly, all Imperial pose and a Princess no storybook or tongue-wagger could possibly equal. Quaver’s slowly tolling notes were silenced, a lot of bones rattling in a common breathless sigh as her Sword was sheathed.
“Send me to your captain, fools,” Kris said formally, respectfully.
“Aye, Your Highness,” the dead mate stated quietly. “Lao Li, run Her Highness to see the chief.”
The dead Sho skeleton in armor that shouldn’t have been able to stay on his bones saluted somewhat awkwardly, as if half-remembering it was the proper way to do things.
The dead bandits and pirates who’d died in the defense of Hebian-to stepped quickly to the sides of the road to get out of our way, and a fallen pirate left with only clacking bones and memories of a final duty led us on our way toward the former capital of the Sho territory in this land.
------
-What are you thinking?- Kris /asked me as she trotted quickly towards the city.
-I’m a pragmatic realist. Wonderful gesture and an Imperial granting of honor and Glory for their deed. Also, their deaths during a time of ley line instability probably resulted in whatever magical system the existing undead use to return to unlife grabbing them and doing the same to them. Fools caught in magic, and unable to free themselves,- I /answered promptly.
-According to my father’s stories, they weren’t reavers or brigands, just lazy men who didn’t want to follow any laws and preferred other people do the hard work before relieving them of their gains. So, he made a point of showing them where living by the sword was going to send them, and they ran in utter fucking terror from him into a Portal and were never seen again.-
-That must have been early in his career. Almost forty years ago?- I /asked.
-Yeah, not long after he met my mother, and before they ‘retired’ to the mountains to have us kids. The Viamontians were still in power in Celdon, but Mom’s machinations and Dad’s brute competency shenanigans started forcing them out and roadblocked any building influence they might have had in Aluvia. Killing every blue-skinned sot who challenged them to a duel didn’t hurt, either.-
My inherited memories of Viamontians were anything but complimentary, so I didn’t speak up against it. She’d been with her mother on campaign and likely seen a lot of things done by desperate blues, and her opinion of them was likely well-earned.
-They loved the way he kept all the local pirates and bandits under control, I assume. Of course, I seem to remember all the other lands, especially Viamont, enjoyed a rather tempestuous period of buccaneer raids for some reason.- I glanced over in time to see her smirk.
-There were, eh, political and temporal limits to what and who he could pursue. As long as they kept their swords out of Aluvian business, he let them be... with quiet word that Aluvian business could be interpreted VERY broadly when it came to trading with Aluvia. Viamont, however, he didn’t care much about. So, there was also a strange expansion in Aluvian mercantile fleets during this time, and a lot of missing Viamontian shipping.-
-Backed and partially owned by a future Empress?- I /reasoned, knowing how Sama did things.
-It kind of stunned everyone just how fast mom got her hands on so many naval assets, and just how much money and influence she commanded while living up in them thar green and unblemished hills of Aluvia, away from all the money and centers of power.-
-Running the world via Markspace from nowheresville or while on the move is just what I’d expect from her.-
------
We were coming up on the city now, the road rising to the hill upon which it was constructed, giving a natural advantage to it that had been helped with some hasty stone walls in need of repair and maintenance. It also overlooked the River Prosper and the bay said river emptied into, which would have made it a fairly important port city if there was any significant sea traffic.
There seemed to have been some simple docks down there for fisherman, but mostly, there were undead.
A lot of undead, and most of them weren’t Summons. The neatly arranged farms and fields were abandoned and overgrown, and what Summons existed were more Skeletons of various types, mostly bearing Sho-style armor and weapons, even though the unliving assembled here were a motley display of multiple species.
It didn’t miss my eyes that there was a significant percentage of blue-skinned animated corpses among those here, although perhaps only five percent of the total.
-Well, at least some of them know how to die properly,- Kris /murmured as we passed by a brute of a corpse in rotting full Viamontian plate. -You know they stole some of Dad’s design work when they improved their armor? He was more than a little pissed at them for it.-
-Can’t imagine why adding thief to their list of arrogant racial traits wouldn’t improve their image in his eyes, I truly can’t.-
Kris laughed softly to herself, ignoring all the many undead eyes turned our way as the lines of unliving converged ahead of us to block the road.
The rattling strides of Lao Li took him up to that big Viamontian, who somehow managed to look dour and pompous with half his face fallen off and the other half rotting aromatically. Kris stopped ten paces short, her posture absolutely overbearing, knowing exactly how to look in the eyes of the pompous, authority-responsive Viamontians.
“You are a fool who will believe any story a living soul tells you!” the Viamontian commander started to say, lifting his rusting broadsword to point at Princess Kristie, who just narrowed her eyes back at him for the insolent gesture. “Seize them, and we will question them-” he began, even if there was a tiny spark of hesitation in his words.
“ON YOUR KNEES BEFORE HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS KRISTIE RANTHA OF THE ISPARIAN EMPIRE, DOGS!” I roared at them with full Heartsong and Truth.
The entire blocking force stumbled back and went down to their knees in proper subservience of lower classes to higher, including that oaf of a dead Viamontian Knight. He actually almost fell over, scrambling to get his sword in place as a proper knight should.
Lao Li, tellingly, did not fall over.
“Fool, please continue on,” Kristi sniffed, and Lao Li, proclaimed a proper fool by an Imperial Princess, straightened right up proudly and led us onward as the skeletons and rotting corpses hastily parted to let us go by.
Normally Heartsong didn’t have much effect on the undead, but Truth was truth, living or dead, and a status-conscious mindset getting the brute truth of there being an actual Imperial Noble standing in front of them was all that was needed to trigger all that mental conditioning and back them off.