On the River
.....................
A girl walked slowly, eyes down.
There had been a battle the night before.
Out on the river there had been the boom of cannon and the shadows of barges and monitors thrown by burning hulks before they slipped under the water. No one she had spoken to had known who the sides were- or if there were only two.
A beam stepped over. An oar. A body.
The dead man had worn buff and tan, cheap dyes but strong fabric, stitching doubled over what was needed, but how it had been washed she could not tell under the riverine silt.
An overturned boat, with footprints leading away. She'd have to tell the village hunters to keep an eye out for stranded pirates- they were likely to be careless with the lives of the locals.
Another shattered mess of timber. Some rope. A shirtless youth, perhaps fourteen. Who twitched.
She gasped softly, swiftly kneeling and turning him first on his side as he choked out the water then to his back as she checked him over for wounds, the only thing apparent an ugly purple mottling over the base of his throat, as if a blow had struck to take off his head.
She frowned. ABCs, airway, breathing, circulation. He was gasping, so that was good? No bleeding she could see. So.... She wracked her thoughts.
"Sister Juliana's lesson...ABCs, then broken bones, then make sure they are warm, but don't move them much. Ok! I can do this."
She felt down his limbs and across his ribs, remembering only to blush when his blue eyes flickered open with her hands spread across his chest.
He seemed ok. She swirled her cloak off her shoulders and across his body, leaning a little closer to whisper- "Stay still, I'll go get help."
........
Douglas Mitchen, Heir to Stonefort Valley by the grace of Myrmidia and his father's strong right arm, choked, spitting out water. The golden-haired girl of about his age had just run off, and he wasn't sure he'd survive till her return.
The last thing he remembered was his uncle's ship, there pride of his father's fleet, shuddering under him as the spiked boarding ramps slammed down. They had fallen upon the three EIC merchant barges just after sunset, staging from a two tributaries to avoid the dwarven patrol and then pincer their prey. It had been a glorious fight, full worthy of a princeling's first battle. He even dueled a marine! Uncle sent him in the second wave to the last ship, the first two falling to small, slim galleys with grapenels and the last saved for the River Viper, after a ranged duel to goad the Marines into exhausting their powder.
And then it had all gone wrong. The River Viper was tied to the barge, all the Prince's fleet engaged in looting and making their prizes ready for tow in the near-black, when two new ships, looking like variants on light dwarven half-monitors in the cannon-flash, opened up on them. And only them- their gunnery was good enough to quickly set two of the smaller raiders alight, and from there cannon systematically destroyed anything revealed by flickering light. Except the EIC barges, they were untouched. But counter-boarded by musketry and sabres in the hands of merchant troops, and...
His throat hurt. He had been wearing a gorget, hadn't he? That and a wide leather and metal belt over his kidneys- too much more, he had been told, and he'd drown should he fall overboard.
He groaned again. Trying to form words and ending up with a whistling moan.
But as he turned his head, he saw the girl returning, with two men and a small wagon, two other survivors, one in the colors of his father and one in EIC gear.
But the girl smiled.
.................
"It was years later that Douglas, known then as the Silent Prince, would be celebrated in song for his deeds driving back Waaagh Broketeeth, alongside his wife, Marianne of the Shallayan Priesthood. But it is to his childhood that we must look for the influences that made him the man he was, first among the border princes-turned-pirates so common in those days, and then in the small river village where he met his future wife and was tutored by shallayans, and an ex-EIC trader, known to history only as Uncle Joe."
- The Conquest of The Badlands, Lissile d'Monafortreau, Senior Thesis Collection XCVIII, U of K8P Press
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