Deathless

Deathless Chapter Sixteen: Spire

Chapter Sixteen: Spire

Risselyn stood alongside Lindale, at the head of their group. They cut their way through the jungle, which was denser and more overgrown than the Lacus Forest by far. Risselyn slashed through the leaves and ferns with his longsword, and Lindale with his machete. They could not waste any time.

Risselyn zoned out as he worked, slicing them a path through the jungle. He had to be careful not to make his wounds too obvious, else the rebels would find them by following the trail of decapitated plants.

“What’s the plan?” he asked grimly. “How are we going to get away?”

“I don’t know,” Vanya admitted. “Right now our only hope is to go deeper into the forest and hope we lose them.”

“I know the rebels,” Risselyn muttered. “They don’t give up so easy.”

Vanya chose not to reply to that.

“What about the pirates?” Risselyn continued after a time. “What happens if we run into some?”

“They’re just pirates,” Sirya blurted. “They’ll be lightly armed and armoured. They’re no stronger than the bandits we fought in the Silvus Forest.”

“The pirates of the Island of Spires are tougher than the common bandit.” Lindale objected, silencing Sirya. “Pirates are clever. They are cunning. They will do anything to get what they want. Anything at all. A bandit will slit your throat with his own axe. A pirate will slit your throat with your knife while you sleep.”

“What if we tried negotiating?” Vanya asked. Unlike Sirya or Lindale, she was less inclined towards combat, at least if she knew they were outmatched. She didn’t care for dying needlessly. For Vanya, surrender was always an option.

“You can try,” Lindale answered. “Even if you somehow managed to win their trust, there’s no telling if they’ll hold their end of the bargain.”

Unlike the Lacus Forest, however, the forest of the Island of Spires was not teeming with wildlife. They had been hunted to near extinction long ago. The pirates had a long history with the Archipel Islands. Two hundred years ago, the legendary pirate captain called Gamaal, often called the Storm of the Sea, had wrestled control of the Island of Spires from Imperial control, and had raised up a colossal fleet of over fifty ships of pirates at that island.

A bloody campaign had then spawned from the Storm’s warfleet, and at one point, he had conquered all of the Archipel Islands.

The emperor at the time, Cornelius the Coward, had cowered, as was his nature, before the pirate fleet as they invaded Seapoint and Southport, crippling Arlenia’s economic trade with Luartia, Ninever, and other neighbouring empires. This event was known as the Pirate Uprising of 974 2E. 

The pirates had then raged across the countryside, pillaging as Cornelius cowered in Ninquelen, until his general, Dosoyn, in a tremendous feat of espionage and brilliant strategy, had put to torch the pirates’ entire war fleet that was moored at Southport.

Without their naval advantage, Dosoyn was able to corner the pirates’ invasion party in the mountains of Southreach, and slaughtered the lot of them. He captured Gamaal, and publicly executed him in Oronthurin, to help gain the confidence of the southern citizens of the empire.

After Gamaal fell, the alliances he’d forged with other pirate crews crumbled, and they fled into the Archipel Islands, into the smaller isles, where they still held sway. And there they remained.

However, the scar the pirates left behind did not heal immediately. With so many trading ships and merchants slain in Seapoint and Southport, Arlenian trade with other nations was crippled, and it took two hundred years for them to recover what they had lost in the Pirate Uprising.