Cinnamon Bun

Chapter Five Hundred and Fifty-Five - Live to Tell the Tale

The pirates gave up at about the same time as reinforcements started to fly our way.

The ship at the very front of the convoy, the PMS Streaker, used a strong light and some shutters to flash a signal out ahead. It wasn't very complex. "Encountered Pirates. Require Assistance." They kept sending the message over and over again, and when one of the closer ships over Southerfell asked for clarification, the Streaker explained in a few flashes that the ship behind us was a pirate vessel.

A few of the merchant ships around Southerfell seemed to move back at that. Some didn't budge at all, and a few more decided to start moving our way.

I think the pirates caught on that they'd lost their chance; they weren't going to be grabbing any booty.

Even if they downed the entire convoy somehow, they'd never be able to retrieve anything while so close to the city.

So they did the wise thing and veered hard to port, arcing toward the south and the depths of the forest.

I cheered along with my friends on seeing the back of them, but the ship wasn't quite done. It used one of the searchlights on its rear to flash a final message. "Will Return."

How spooky! But I wasn't too scared. In fact, I was feeling pretty confident at the moment, especially as the convoy relaxed out of flank speed and returned to a steadier, normal pace. We crossed paths with some of the ships from Southerfell, and I found myself leaning over the rails to catch a better look at them.

Most of the ships around the city followed the same general pattern as the ships in the convoy. They were 'classic' airships. Big, canvas-wrapped bodies with their engines in nacelles along their middles and with a long cabin stretching along the bottom.

A few were different. I saw a sleeker ship that looked like it was more boat than blimp, with a wooden structure and balloons above. That had to be a harpy design! And further back was a ship that was mostly balloon as well, only it had all of its engines and props at the very back. I think that was how Mattergrove made their ships?

Ahead of us, the Streaker signaled a message via semaphore, asking for landing clearance. We received it within a minute and shifted our formation, lining up for a landing off to one side of Southerfell.

To my eye, the city seemed strangely designed. The jungle beneath us had dominated the landscape for hundreds of kilometers, but now it broke against a sheer cliff that rose up to a wide plateau. Atop the cliff was a wall of stacked stones, as though the locals were dead certain that the cliff wasn't enough of a barrier.

Behind the wall and atop the plateau were large, open fields, parallel lines of farmland crisscrossed by ditches and small roads and farmhouses, all leading to a short wall around Southerfell proper.

It wasn't the biggest city we'd ever come across, but it wasn't tiny either. It began as a sprawl of smaller homes, building into taller structures as one traveled north, that squeezed in tighter around a central district.

Looming over the city - although not in a menacing way, it was more of a friendly loom - was a large castle, settled atop a small hill overlooking the city. An uneven pentagonal layout, with sheer stone walls and a handful of broad, flat-topped towers jutting out of it. Upon each tower were some pretty large siege weapons. Maybe that was for anything hungry that came out of the jungle below?

One of the fields near the city was the designated landing spot for airships. It was a large green pasture, with a few roaming sheep and some cattle that scurried away as the convoy came in for a landing.

There was a second space for ships, with a small port facility, but it didn't look as advanced as what I'd seen back on... shoot, I still didn't know the name of the continent we'd just come from. I was on a new continent, right? I was sure I'd seen that on a map. It felt different.

Clive guided the Beaver down, and we made a soft landing just next to one of the convoy ships. "Tell everyone to take the rest of the morning off," I told Clive as the propellor wound down. "You too."

The old harpy huffed, and I had to hold back a laugh at that. Maybe huffing was more than just an Amaryllis thing? "I'm not too decrepit that I can't handle a bit of a long day," he said.

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"I know! But I think we all deserve a break after last night," I replied. I certainly felt like a nap wouldn't go amiss, but there were some captain-y things to take care of and it was my job to look them over.

As I looked over the side of the ship, I noticed Captain Gum walking over, accompanied by a few officers from his ship and what looked like a guard captain, a human man with a tabard embroidered with a green shield that had a white pentagon centered on it.

"Ahoy!" I called out.

"Captain Bunch!" Captain Gum called out. "Well fought! I was hoping to speak, if I may?"

I nodded, then hopped over the ship's railing and fell the two or so stories down to the grass, landing with a hard bend of my knees but no injuries.

The guard captain startled, one hand pressing to his heart. "By the green depths, you're quite young to be a third tier, aren't you?"

I blinked. I could almost feel question marks floating around my head. "Third tier?" I didn't think what I'd just done was three-classes level, was it? "No, no, I'm not there just yet! Soon though, maybe! We do have one on our crew! He's super strong." Bastion was definitely a tier above just about anyone.

"Maybe Captain Gum's story holds up a little better than I thought," the guard said. He reached a hand out and we shook. As it turned out, I was right, he was the captain of the guard for Southerfell, and he had a heap of questions.

After spending so much time in a hot desert, the air felt surprisingly chilly -- but the plateau was high, the sun had barely started warming us up, and it was January. We moved out of the shadow of the merchantmen's huge balloons to catch the sunlight and chatted for a moment. Captain Gum had filed a report already, but he wanted me to fill in the parts that he had missed. In the dark of night, our maneuver around the pirates had been hard to keep track of.

So I did just that, explaining with a lot of gestures how we'd done a loop around the pirate ship, using the dead of night to stay hidden, and how we did our best to damage the ship.

"But that wasn't enough to take it down?" the guard captain asked.

"No, not nearly," I said. "We destroyed or at least severely damaged one of the ship's six engines, and we poked plenty of holes in their gas bags, but by the time morning came they'd fixed a lot of those."

"Hmpf," Captain Gum said. "That was a well-executed plan nonetheless. Did your crew sustain any injuries? The ship?"

"The Beaver is fine," I said. "A few scratches and dents. We were hit by a few ballista bolts as well. Nothing critical, though."

Captain Gum straightened a little. "In that case, allow me and the rest of the convoy to pitch in for the repairs. It's the least we can do."

"Ah, that's really kind of you," I replied.

The guard captain nodded along. "This is the first indisputable proof of piracy we have."

"It is?" I asked.

"It is, according to the nobility," the guard said. He looked a bit annoyed at that. "All the other reports have either come from ships that never made it to the city at all, or those who dumped cargo along the way."

"And those weren't enough?" I asked.

Captain Gum grunted. "Dumping cargo works with these pirates. Most of the time, at least. But since there's no direct interaction, the nobility often suggests that the lost cargo was actually stolen by the crew, and they're just making up stories of pirates to try to deflect suspicion."

"That's silly," I said.

The guard captain cleared his throat. "I definitely did not hear you say that, and I definitely would not say that to a noble's face," he said. "In any case, half the city saw the pirates, four ships reported their attack, and your vessel was very obviously damaged, as were the pirates. It will be hard to dismiss the claims and harder to dismiss the rumours."

"Oh, those must be flying right now," I said.

He nodded at that. "They certainly are. More so if you allow locals to assist with the repairs. Speaking frankly, as one of the captains of the guard, my official position is that if pirates do exist within our skies, then we ought to do something about them."

"Mhm!" I agreed. "We'll see what we can do. We won't be in Southerfell for too long, though. We're heading a little ways out, towards a small town... ah, I can't remember the exact details, but my first mate took some notes. Hopefully we'll be out of reach of any pirates for a while."

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