It was a long, quiet night. Owls hooted and screeched in the distant forest, outside of the port city’s walls, accompanied by the wolves who howled towards the clear moon, hanging in the sky above the dark, vast expanse of the sea.

  It was calm, quiet and reassuring – until it was not.

  From the mountain cliffs and forests, where the wolves and owls sang just moments before, bombards and canons rang like drums of war, overpowering every other sound, driving our ears to madness and clouding our thoughts. By then, everyone was awake. Both those resting in the ships tied to piers on the shore and those sleeping peacefully in their comfy beds, surrounded by the brick walls of the tenement houses. Women screamed, children cried, and men – quieted down in fear.

  Me and my officers, were already long awake – in a fortunate twist of fate, just preparing to abandon the port city and venture into the sea under the cloak of the night. The underdeck lowlifes and the actual crew too, of course. The first ones were long cuffed to the rows, while the latter prepared the top deck, sails and hawsers.

  While the townspeople, guards other shipmen and merchants rushed to the battlements – already crushed by the overpowering strength of the cannonballs and explosives – we hastened our departure, fortunately not blocked by a sea-chain. I always check if a port I am about to visit has one, those are always tricky to live around, especially when a night attack like that one might happen at any moment.

  Our ship slowly tore from the wooden pier, moving the masses of water, undisturbed until then. The underdeck wretches pulled on the oars with all their might, forcing my will on the wooden planks clashing with the waves, until the ship started to swim, with grace and dread, as the metal-coated oar blades struck the water in a steady, practised, rhythm.

  As we slowly moved towards the strait acting as the gateway to the port city, the sounds of battle only grew. Bombards and cannons didn’t stop their unrelenting assault, toppling buildings as if they were made out of loose, rope-tied, rocks. To the cascade of booms, smaller cracks of personal rifles and black powder pistols joined, accompanied by ominous sizzles and horrifying flashes of light, much stronger than anything that had shaken the earth before. Local Wizard had joined the fight.

  No one rushed after us, as would be expected when leaving a port unannounced, some only took a quick, resentful glance in our direction before rushing to the battlements, leaving us to our own things.

  Finally, a huge cannonball struck the lighthouse, located on the outskirts of the city, high enough to shine above the hills on either side of the strait. The projectile flew through, losing much of its power, and the tower fell with a deafening rumble. If I were on stable ground at the time, I am sure I would have felt that crash through my feet.

  As the stones fell, I turned around, looking at the attacked city no more. Just then, our ship was about to enter the strait and emerge onto the open waters of the sea, slumbered in darkness.

  But as the prow left the bay, the man on the lookout started to shout. A ship was stationed outside, sideways to the entrance, with cannons bare and lights onboard aflame. Someone was waiting for those like us – escapees.

  They fired as soon as Marietta emerged fully from between the rocks, all cannons at once, shaking the wooden structure of their galleon. Marietta, being a much smaller galley, had no chance in direct confrontation, at least in one where the cannons roared. So, I’ve given the only sensible order I could think of.

  Oarsmen – full power, helmsman – course for the enemy vessel.

  The rows could be heard all the way on the bridge, as the wood once more clashed with the waves mightfully. Well-fed, the lowlifes proved their strength as the galley visibly increased in speed.

  But before we were able to turn towards the galleon, and start our near-suicidal charge, the cannonballs reached our deck. Not all, in fact, barely any of those fired from the enemy vessel hit the target, mainly being overshot or undershot. But still, the projectiles carved their way through the walls, creating two gaping holes in the hull, through which the sea stormed in, as the waves crashed into Marietta. There were some other losses, one man was caught in the cannonball’s way – it's safe to say he died immediately – and one or two chairs or other furniture met their ends against the enemy volley.

  Fortune smiled our way, and our enemies didn’t have enough time to shoot another time before our bow ram tore into their ship’s lining. Marietta punched through the wood, and with a deafening screech embedded herself into the galleon. The oarsmen stopped pulling on their rows, as the ship could no longer move without moving the enemy galleon.

  My sailors, thoughtful as always, threw themself into the fervour of battle right off the bat, not even considering escape or surrender, all of them – apart from those who could not leave their position – rushed to the helm with their sabres unsheathed and crossbows bolted.

  My officers and I moved too, though much slower and more thoughtful. The enemies had the upper hand especially now, that the hole was the point of friction. It would be stupid of us to rush to such a narrow breaking point, especially when others ran so madly there. Soon though, those few marines who blocked the hole in the hull, fell and our sailors stepped onboard the galleon by stepping on their corpses.

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  Men manning the cannons, unprepared for such abrupt boarding, fell one by one until the whole lower deck was full of corpses. Some of them ours, most theirs. But it wasn’t the end of the battle, only one deck fell and the ship was still bustling with life. What’s more, we would have to get off soon, slashing through people, cutting arteries and dismembering was fun and all, but the two ships conjoined, slowly drifted towards rocks near the shore.

  I ordered the retreat, but not before setting fire to the wooden hull and taking two cannons with us on Marietta. We had a few of our own, but not as big and powerful as theirs, especially on Marietta, who while agile and swift, isn’t the heaviest-hitting vessel in my fleet. As we retreated, the marines onboard pushed us out at the same time, while also letting volleys and volleys of arrows and bolts rain onto Matitta’s deck, where few of my men remained, and had to hide from the ranged onslaught.

  Just before ordering the oarsmen to push us out of the enemy vessel, my trusted officer, Jarve, came up with a devious plan. Hidden behind faw last of us who were on the galleon, he found a keg of black powder, highly flammable and explosive, which he then lit aflame and threw into the angry mob of sailors, who pushed us out of the ship.

  I can’t stress how weird it is that he was the only one who thought of that.

  The galleon shook mightily from the explosion, fire roared and escaped through the windows before settling on the wooden structure. The blast, which rattled the vessel, proved to be of much help in getting Marietta’s ram out of the enemy ship. Oarsmen had a hard job to do and did it wonderfully, but it was the blast that broke the dam and separated the vessels in the end.

  Few of our comrades remained with the enemy, as their ship was slowly turning to cinders, or rather, their lifeless corpses. The rest of us escaped with a wide range of injuries, but alive, sailing with the full power of the lowlifes below the deck and the wind roaring above us. As far as we could from the ship burning in the distance, and the roaring city, slowly falling apart to the rhythm of the bombards.

  “That corpse creeps me out, did you notice how it looks at us?” Ekta asked her sister quietly, keeping her mouth close to Sekta’s ear and looking towards the ceiling furtively.

  “No? I didn’t notice anything, should pay more attention to him?” the wizard of a sister answered, perplexed. She stole a glance at the corpse but remained in thought, the Lich seemed normal to her, as normal as a living corpse that happens to be hanging from the ceiling can be.

  “Exactly! Shouldn't he act more… suspicious? If I understand correctly, it’s the first time he speaks with the living in at least… 300? 400 years? Yet, apart from his constantly evolving way of speaking, he acts as if he was just a normal guest here, slightly introverted and whatnot, but if he had skin and sat among us, I wouldn’t be able to recognise him… And that creeps me out.” Ekta explained slowly, moving closer and closer to her sister as if seeping comfort.

  Sekta moved away from her, then replied in the same, hush tone. “You are overreacting Ekta. You have to remember that he too, was a human a long time ago, and can’t expect that he would act differently than us like if he was some ogre or goblin. Even if, people as old as him learn many things and acting isn't that rare of a skill.”

  “But… A Lich… In fairytales, they always are so… unique. And you always tell me that fairytales are true stories most of the time, old and maybe a bit skewed, but real...” Ekta seemed depressed as if the reaction broke something in her. A dream perhaps, or maybe naivety remaining from her juvenile years.

  “I don’t say they don’t, it’s just that these stories tell of liches in solidarity, surrounded by their undead in their damp crypts and catacombs, not a lich bound to the ceiling of a lively hall. The guy up there hears people talk every day, hell, he is probably one of the greatest sources of rumours and gossip in this castle. we just have to account for such things when evaluating people, else the situation with that boy repeats itself. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Sekta instructed. She, as the more educated and enlightened of the sisters, always held the leading position. It isn’t that she lords over her sister though, they consider themself equal.

  “No… we wouldn’t…”

  Two weeks, that’s how long it took us to escape the consequences of the battle and join the rest of my fleet – stationed around the Fasmaris Islands, where one of our hideouts once was.

  The islands, four of them to be exact, act as a natural fortress, defending the ships hidden between them from bad weather and enemy vessels alike. Before we took them, they were in the hands of a smuggling group that poured gargantuan amounts of gold into expansion of the local garrison — turning the islands into a massive fort.

  Each island housed a tower surrounded by a stone courtyard, a few barracks and other, bigger buildings and finally a tall wall. All the outposts were connected in some way. From the north and south, there were bridges that connected the fortifications, making each pair into one, bigger bastion. From west and east though, where the waters were deep enough to traverse and cross with a ship — leading to the open, inviting beaches between the islands, so different from cliffs that bare their teeth towards the hostile sea — massive chains bound together the islands. Those monstrous pieces of metal acted as a perfect gateway — if lowered, ships could cross freely, if raised, not even the greatest galleon would survive the clash.

  We spent there two months, waiting for the seas to calm down after the port-city’s raid and ruin. The battle you see, shook the waves a little too much, making each and every respected pirate, smuggler and fugitive hide in their holes, away from the sunlight. My fleet, despite its power and formidability, hid too — even though we were able to voyage the seas freely, it would only cause us harm. Think, what would people think if they got to know that the only Pirate Lord who managed to escape the city, paraded among the waves with no worry?

  People would say it was us who staged the raid, who hired mercenaries and bought bombards. No one would listen to our side of the story, in fact, even those in the know would shut their trap, after all, if the whole marine world turned against me, and wrestled my treasures and wealth from my hands, who would like to be the only ones not eligible for a cut?

  But, as it turned out later, staying cut off from the world for whole two months might not have been the best idea.