BECMI Chapter 246 – The Fall of the Free City

Newport was a hive of scum and villainy, and designed that way. At least, it was designed that way by the scum, and villainy naturally followed suit.It was the southernmost settlement of Eislas, located just north of where the territories of the Northmen formally ended. Which didn’t mean there weren’t a lot of Northmen in the area, but the local Urto tended to be divided between savage wandering tribes and forest communities or fishing villages, and weren’t under anything like a designated king. They were far more likely to be raided by their cousins to the south than anything else, and so had little love for the formal kingdoms, even disunited as they were.

Newport wasn’t much better. Founded by Siricilans seeking to plunder the natural wealth of Eislas, the greedy and unscrupulous had flooded into it to take advantage of the frontiersmen doing the real work, and had rapidly turned it into a center for smuggling, a pirate’s base, and mercenary hangout, one that preyed upon other shipping heading north to or returning from Seacall and Aetla.

It had been burned to the ground three times over the last two hundred years by Delphans and other parties who’d gotten sick of the impact on trade the city was having, but the rich had always sailed away in time, and then come back to rebuild over the ruins and the dead of those who couldn’t run away, picking up where matters had left off.

Many people would have been frankly amazed at the amount of influence Sama and Briggs had in the wretched city. But, not only did the pair of them have a knife to the throat of more than a few members of the Thieves’ Guild of Siricil, which had funded and guided the establishment of the port as a northern investment, but the pair of them had significant mercantile investments, and their solution to pirates raiding their ships was generally for the pirate crews to die to a man, and their nominally independent captains to gain fearsome reputations as the hardest of targets and pirate hunters themselves.

If said pirates were privateers or mercenaries, their employers, be they governments or otherwise, also became viable targets, and generally elevated the price required to take them on to completely unreasonable levels.

Those certain free captains even occasionally received requests to hunt down one another, which they politely refused, and then silently informed the other parties in Markspace as to what was going on. The offering party often soon had some devastating losses on sea or land at different ports, and if they went out to sea, had the bad luck of meeting the very people they had wanted killed. Out on the high seas there was no shelter and no witnesses, and so they died, their ships and cargoes were seized, and the reach and influence of Sama and Briggs grew.

Those captains were never observed to meet other than publicly, passing and wary acquaintances at most, but had reputations as some of the hardest and most skilled men on the seas, often trainers and teachers of small groups of students who in their own time became renowned captains.

Four of those captains came into Newport fairly close together, bringing southern cloth to exchange for northern furs and lumber, the long straight trees prized for shipbuilding and bringing good prices in the south. Their crews were a little more numerous than usual, and after they filled their holds, a bit lighter than usual heading out of the city.

Newport hadn’t been burned down recently because the thieves of the city had made an offer to Delpha, offering the Empire the chance to appoint the Lord Mayor of the city in return for neutral status, and not being idly wiped out when the raids of those who frequented the port became too annoying.

This had been agreed to, and it did have the effect of cutting down the attacks on Delphan shipping. It also gave the Delphans an excuse to have agents in the town at all times, who could take actions against those who irritated them the most.

Thus soothed, the Delphans turned a blind eye to what else was going on, and even partook of the criminal atmosphere themselves. After all, the natives didn’t discriminate against non-Casters like Delphans did, so there were plenty of opportunities to make money.

As a result, the Delphans guarding the place became part of the forces at work there before too long, exactly as intended. If they held nominal alliance to Delpha instead of Siricil, it just meant they had to be a bit more careful about making money.

The repeated corruption of their agents didn’t escape the Delphan Empire at all, and soon enough being assigned to Newport became a career-ending position for the inept and the cowardly, those who’d failed the Empire enough to warrant being sent away and just barely not executed or turned into a wizard’s experiment.

The latest of these Lord Mayors had just taken office. His name was Fergil, nicknamed ‘the Souse’, and he was the half-brother of the new king that Delpha’s Empress had just installed up in Aetla. He was also a son of the Empress’ Captain of the Guard and General of Delpha’s armies, as was King Brucall, but was not the Empress’ son looking for a realm of his own, having a different mother. Brucall had pulled strings to see his half-brother appointed there, and the Empress had actually been relatively glad to appoint the worthless, envious sot away and so be rid of him.

Fergil had happily delved into the sins and corruption of the port city, and as long as his needs were met, had neither the desire nor the inclinations to stop anything of what was going on there.

It was an unfortunate time to be taking up a new political position.

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Flames were licking at the night sky from the poorest amount of town, where three fires were spreading slowly among the rickety shacks and ramshackle buildings that had managed to endure there. There was nothing like an organized fire service, of course, and the main effect of it was simply to drive people out of their homes and workplaces, where they could only watch helplessly as their homes were destroyed.

The few wizards in the town armed with spells of ice or cold were hurriedly rousted by the wealthy to protect their own properties, especially the few prized warehouses present in the city.

The fires didn’t fade away, and soon it was apparent someone was having fun spreading them, because they were flaring up in more and more areas around the city, the winds blowing them and their cinders around the city in a devastating pattern.

There were no spellcasters in the city powerful enough to affect the winds or the weather, and by late morning of the second day, fully half the city was on fire, and the rest was starting to smolder and ignite.

The wealthy and the relatively powerful began to vacate the city in droves, heading for secondary homes in the surrounding area, or shipping out for sudden vacations to the south with the vessels leaving the docks in port.

The poor could only flee along the shores with what possessions they could carry and form a new shantytown down the beach from the city.

“We have to get out of here now!” Fergil shouted, clutching his purse to his slovenly, wine-spattered shirt. The purse had all the money and important papers he’d managed to acquire during his short mayorship, enough to set himself up comfortably back home for a time. If the city was rebuilt, he’d be even more comfortable with his deeds of ownership and being able to blackmail the incipient fools who didn’t think he knew they were simply using him as a cats-paw!

Well, he would show them, show all of them, when he returned in triumph!

Gods, he needed a drink!

“I can’t you back to Delpha… sir,” Irgonkles, the hawk-nosed and auburn-haired common-born Delphan mage assigned to him as both minder and spy replied to his order. Did the curt bastard think he didn’t know the man reported to his father?

“What? Why not?” He hadn’t secured alternate passage out of the city, or arranged for an airship, certain that this fool could simply whisk them both away and home!

“There’s an interference in the Veil, possibly a result of wild magic from some of the homes and secret possessions burning. We will have to leave the city to a safe distance first.”

There was an explosion off in the east wing that shook the whole dump of a building they called the Mayor’s Mansion. “What was that?” Fergil half-shrieked, and watched a rain of embers fall down just outside the window. “The fires can’t have reached us already!”

Irgonkles valiantly kept a straight face. Obviously the wind whipping over the town had driven the fires faster than expected. The roof of this place was sealed with tar and pitch, and would go up like an oil-soaked rag. That explosion… ah, the nodes for the Wards over the building included a post on the east side, which was probably now on fire and burning enthusiastically.

“We either flee or burn down with the building, Your Grace,” the Delphan Wizard ground out. How the valiant General Bronswer had managed to have a feckless idiot like this for a son, he had no idea. He was sorely tempted to just abandon the fool to his fate. “Get your coat on now, I’m leaving,” he stated in no uncertain terms.

Fergil looked at him in disbelief that his father’s servant was daring to order him around, but Irgonkles could apologize to the General later, and kick some sense into the fool now. “You, you don’t order me around!” the drunkard sputtered.

“You have one minute,” Irgonkles declared evenly.

That finally got the sot moving. He scuttled over to his closet, pulled out a long fur coat that might have been in good shape and fashionable three previous owners ago, and now just looked like a ragged accouterment for a fool.

Irgonkles flicked up the for the idiot to sit on, then grasped a chair and flung it out through the window nearby. Precious glass imported from the barbarian capital to the south shattered and fell away as Irgonkles segued into Casting a spell of to escape from this place, while Fergil sat on the and instinctively brought his legs up to clutch the bottle of Coral Islander rum in his hands tighter.

Hiding his sneer, the wizard rose up and flew through the window without hesitation. The , anchored to him, followed smoothly, bearing its sole passenger as they slammed into the heat wave of the fires outside.

He instantly knew he couldn’t rise high into the sky, or he’d be cooked by the updraft. Cursing and hacking at inhaling a plume of smoke, he dipped down towards the streets, finding half the street was aflame, and the other half being doused with cinders. The wind was stiff and like an oven, and he knew nothing was living in there…

Was that a fire Elemental jumping from one roof to the other there?

He blinked, and then something flashed past him, like an expanding dome of ethereal magic.

The next second, his spell ceased to work. Gravity came down like a king reclaiming his throne, and suddenly the magic of his spell wasn’t strong enough to bend or ignore it. With a shout of surprise, he plummeted from the sky, out of control and heading right down towards one of the flaming homes!

It was Onrad the moneylender’s home, abandoned for these past few months after Irgonkles had turned the man into a potted plant in return for payment from one of the fellow’s many usurious loanees, leaving him in the window of his own home to soak up the sun. It had been shuttered and closed, and he found it strangely ironic that he could see the pot, shattered and a seared and blackened corpse laying on the ground below it as he hit the weakened roof above the master bedroom and plummeted on through into the inferno raging within, followed by the screaming and wailing Lord-Mayor Fergil.