Serial Fiction: WAR FOR THE WHALE-ROAD, Ch. 1: Plotting Vengeance

In the last installment, a fleet of Vikings in motorized dragon-ships seized an Everetti whaler as part of the opening campaign against the Republic. Now the Republic’s Unified Security Bureau is plotting is revenge. Full list of chapters is here.

In a book-lined Unified Security Bureau office overlooking Everett’s vast, famed Arsenal, Senior Special Agent Ronald Lewis leafed through a manila folder whose contents described the latest crimes against the Republic committed by Ragnar Crow-Feeder, jarl of Abuarik. His long fingers tightened on the folder as the description went on. When he finished, he laid the file in his lap atop the khaki pants he wore to the office. He looked across his superior Assistant Director for Sejer Operations Bianca Bennett’s broad, paper-strewn desk.

“That savage took three whalers in one day?”

Bennett nodded, her thin lips pursed with irritation. Eyes as gray as her hair glittered with anger. “Before we’d even gotten word that petty lordling of Kroksey had bent the knee to him. Although much of what we know comes from the inflated story he included with his ransom demand, it seems Crow-Feeder took the Stirling and Herberta at roughly the same time. When they didn’t rendezvous with Juanita, that ship tried to escape, but the jarl’s boats caught up with it.”

“How many prisoners?”

“Around two hundred combined from all three ships. Almost all common whalemen and officers of the individual ships, though they bagged the fleet commodore too.” Her lips grew thinner. “Crow-Feeder has a particular trouble with Commodore Fields.”

“All men?” No captain with any sense would risk Everetti women that close to the mainland, but even those who met the exacting standards to command one of the Republic’s ships could make mistakes. And there were always stowaways like foolish little Elena Ross. That tramp steamer she’d hidden aboard was taken by pirates and, decades later, Sejer lords still boasted about their descent from her. Ronald frowned at the unwelcome thought.

Bennett nodded. “All three were whalers, so of course.” Her scowl deepened. “If he’d gotten an Everetti woman, he’d trumpet it far and wide. He’d threaten to sell her to some chieftain in the interior to get the highest possible ransom.”

Ronald changed the subject. “Do you think we’ll be ransoming those whalemen?” He’d dealt with Sejer before, mostly in the outlying islands but sometimes with the jarls on the mainland. If it was worth keeping a particular Sejer warlord sweet, captured seamen might be ransomed rather than rescued. That’d be cheaper than reprisals, and burned war-boats couldn’t be directed at the Republic’s enemies with the right leverage.

“No.” Bennett’s voice was almost a growl. “This is where you come in, but not for negotiations. Not even spying out where they’ve got our boats and men to send in the marines. The Council of Ten wants to make an example of the Abuariki. Taking an individual boat can be forgiven, but half that fleet and its commodore? Never.”

Ronald swallowed. The Ten oversaw Everett’s security, internal and external. Their eyes were everywhere and their reach was long. He had the sinking feeling he’d be helping their reach stay long.

“You’ll be sending me to Leif Heilagr again? He thinks he’s a holy man. He hanged nine sons of whatever that jarl was – ”

Bennett shook her head. “Crow-Feeder’s not just pushing outward into our seas. He’s also expanding north and east, making axe-claims in the wild country at the foot of Sejera’s interior mountains. According to surviving Old World records, the Spine was rich in minerals. Many of those mines might be usable still.”

Ronald nodded. The mountains that made up the Spine were old, and had been extensively mined before the Fall. He was no geologist, but iron and coal meant steel, and steel meant ships. And the best coal to fuel these ships and the factories that made them was anthracite – the mines in central Lefka provided the Republic with some, but the rest came at great cost from the distant eastern lands. Expanding into the mountains and reopening the ancient mines would make the Abuariki even more of a problem, even if all they got was ordinary coal.

Bennett rose and pushed aside a bowl of candied pineapple chunks hopefully purchased from the Lemovs and not from the Tejadans. She leaned over a large yellowed map spread across her desk. Her long, thin finger traced the blue line of a river. “Crow-Feeder has established two large new settlements across the northern stretch of the River Vioa, Vioabyr and Heiorburg. He’s expanding around Helgavik’s eastern marches, forcing the natives up into the Spine, off their usual hunting grounds.”

Ronald’s blue eyes widened slightly. The Sejer were fishers and farmers when they weren’t trading or raiding. Hunting was a hobby, not a way of life. There were people up in the hills who supplemented the gardens they scratched into the rock with hunting, but –

“We’re sending others to spur Heilagr toward some valorous deeds at Crow-Feeder’s expense. Since you’re relatively young, unmarried,” – she let the word hang on the air for a moment – “and have mainland experience already, we have a more interesting assignment for you.”

Ronald began adding up everything she was saying. Natives who hunted, whom the Sejer were driving off their lands…

He remembered the strange skulls wild-eyed Heilagr had shown him in his hall during his second visit. They looked like the usual human heads the savages collected, but they were too thin, cheekbones too high, and eyes and nose too large.

And teeth too long and sharp.

Heilagr had bragged about burning out “troll-men” who’d hunted humans like the Everetti and Sejer hunted fish and whales. He called them spawn of Loki and was proud of how he’d made bonfires of their lairs in honor of Odin’s son Vidar. He’d taken him to the settlements pushing up against the deep forests around the Spine, where those who traveled too far with too few companions disappeared. Where similar heads were mounted on spikes on walls that weren’t just for marking the city limits.

Where he’d glimpsed eyes that shone back in the dark.

Ronald sat bolt upright. “You don’t just want to have Heilagr fight Crow-Feeder as usual. You want me to enlist the troll-men.” He’d gone to Helgavik, Heilagr’s jarldom in central Sejera, thinking the troll-men, like the shorter and stockier trolls rumored to hide in the remotest parts of the Spine or the mountains ringing the more distant Basin, were nothing more than a barbaric myth. Like Odin, Loki, and the enormous metal snake that, if it were even real, had to be some kind of ship.

Then he’d seen those strange unblinking eyes in the dark.

“Don’t worry.” Bennett was nonchalant in the way only one who’d earned her rank organizing and analyzing data collected by those who’d ventured beyond the Republic’s safe seas and fortified colonies could be. Compared to him, she’d been born on cotton.

Ronald checked his subversive thought. There were many ways to serve the Republic, and it was far more fitting men risk themselves than women. He forced himself to continue listening.

“We’ve got connections with a number of Sejer merchants who trade on the sly with these…people.” Bennett glanced at the map again. “They’ll vouch for you when you arrive. I doubt they’d attack any Everetti, not when there are plenty of Sejer to eat and our trade guns are better than anything they can steal from the Sejer or make themselves.”

Ronald’s jaw worked. Everett had been playing the jarls of the islands and the mainland off against each other for centuries. No barbarian had ever become as powerful as Thorkell Krakauer, who’d menaced the Home Islands themselves. The Republic had supped on colonial produce and traded as it pleased, with only those hypocritical Tejadan anarchists providing real competition.

But allying with monsters that ate men?

“Are you hesitating?” Bennett asked. Before Ronald could respond, she twisted the knife. “We’re only alive because our ancestors didn’t. We did what we needed to so we could survive the Fall, and then again when Thorkell brought his horde here. If you can’t handle taking more risks than usual, well maybe the Ten were wrong about you.”

The Ten personally approved all their higher-level agents, including himself. Right now, their eyes were on Crow-Feeder, the ships and prisoners he’d taken, and the islands he now claimed in defiance of the Republic. He did not want those cold eyes on him. If he were lucky, he’d end up monitoring the Sejeran coast on one of those miserable little islands for the rest of his career. If not – well, he knew as well as any the penalty for dereliction of duty.

“I’m not hesitant, ma’am,” Ronald said, ignoring the sweat beginning to gather beneath his black hair and hopefully not darkening his blue button-down. “It’s just – have we ever done this before?”

Bennett shook her head, then gestured at the map. “No. But the Crow-Feeder has taken Kroksey and has probably taken the other five Sudreys by now. If he can take the whole chain and consolidate control, we’ll have another Thorkell Krakuer to deal with. If not now, then in another generation or two.”

Ronald nodded. Every child in the Republic knew how, in the century after the Fall, the dreaded Thorkell mustered his fleet on the Sudreys and sailed for Everett, to loot the city bare and claim its fabled Arsenal for himself.

He looked out the big windows. Beneath the cobalt sky painted with white streaks of cloud, stood the legendary Arsenal. Whitewashed watchtowers stood row upon row, bracketing huge drydocks and slipways leading out into the vast blue ocean. Enormous orange cranes stood over gray-hulled ships in various stages of completion like birds guarding a pond. If he squinted, he could watch the hundreds of workers, busy like ants. Their torches sparked in the afternoon sun.

The Arsenal had been built before the Fall. By hook and by crook the Everetti had kept it running for over two centuries, replacing the wondrous machines with simpler devices as they inevitably broke down. The Arsenal had kept the islands alive, servicing the fleet that raided the coasts of what would become Sejera and seized ships at sea, all to gather food or the precious parts needed to maintain their technology during the Dark Years. When shadowed skies grew light again, the Arsenal allowed the Everetti to colonize the islands from the northern ice to the easternmost reaches of the Great Foreland and keep the grasping Tejadans south of Ironwrack.

That Arsenal was the envy of every warlord on the Sejeran coast. Not just the barbarous Sejer in their dragon-ships, but also the Jiao who’d colonized the northernmost parts when they’d arrived from the distant west after the Fall. It was the Arsenal Thorkell had craved, and had he breached that final line of ships and taken the Guardian Islands, there would be nothing stopping him from taking it.

The Crow-Feeder could not be allowed to become another Thorkell, nor could any of his sons or grandsons.

“Not to mention the thrice-damned Tejadans,” Bennett interrupted. “They’re nosing around Lefka again.”

“House Hawken?” When the Republic was recovering from Krakauer, that glorified Tejadan bandit gang had seized the island and ruled it for a generation. They’d been driven out when order had been restored, and from their island fastness far to the south they were always scheming to take it back. Though the Lefkans had been Everetti citizens, the legal equals of those born on the Home Islands, longer than they’d been subjects of House Hawken, all too many still bore grudges from the Dark Years and would welcome the Tejadans back.

“Hopefully it’s just them this time. It’s hard to tell if it’s one of their corporations or clans or the whole damn Union until we capture somebody and give them three pulls of the rope.” Bennett kept talking, thankfully distracting Ronald from the image of the strappado. “Much of the fleet is deployed to Lefka now, and there are other colonies to defend. With the Crow-Feeder on the sail, it’s time to be creative.”

Ronald understood his duty. Lefka was too precious to lose, but any Sejer jarl controlling the Sudreys was an intolerable danger long-term. Ronald locked his own eyes on those of his superior. “I will carry this out for the good of the Republic. Abuarik will burn if he doesn’t give up the islands.”

Bennett grinned. “You’re like embers covered by ashes, Agent Lewis! I know you’ll pull this off.” She lowered her voice. “Now, this isn’t like going to Helgavik like before, no sailing from one port to another. The best way to get to the upper reaches of the Vioa unnoticed is overland.” She pointed to a spot on the Sejer coast, too far south of their ally’s border for Ronald’s taste. “The Helgaviki border is a war zone, or soon will be, so you’ll go in farther south. One of our local friends will bring you to – hopefully – potent new allies.”

Ronald’s gaze ran from Bennett’s finger to the river, the new settlements, and the woods beyond. Those glimmering eyes in the dark forced their way once again into his mind.

Remember, this is for the Republic.