SciFi and Fantasy Stories: Lord Tacar and the Pirates

 “Lord Tacar!”

Makay, the night captain, raised his voice slightly to be heard through the Lord’s heavy bedroom door.  He rapped his halberd softly against the wood.  “I apologize for the late hour, m’lord, but there is a Captain Vale to see you.”

Benjamyn Tacar sat upright in bed, his eyes wide.  His lady wife murmured, “Vale?  Is that one of your captains?”

“No, my dear.  He most certainly is not.  I’ve only met him once.”

“What can he want at this hour?”

Tacar rose quickly and wrapped himself in a rich, velvet robe, with lace brocades and the saffron Tacar crest embroidered on its breast.  “The devil only knows.  I’ll see to this, my dear.  You needn’t bother to get up.  I’ll only be a few minutes.”

Makay snapped to attention when Tacar unbolted the door.  Stepping into the hall and closing the door behind him, Tacar said, “How many guards have you at hand, Captain?”

Makay looked concerned.  “I’ve assigned the twelve keenest listeners to patrol your halls by night, m’lord.  I can wake another twenty.”

Tacar hustled toward the stairs.  “Twelve should be enough, Captain.  I know Vale’s sort—he won’t cause trouble if there’re halberds about.  Bring your men to the receiving room immediately.”

Makay hesitated, “Is he trouble, m’lord?”

Tacar paused before descending the stairs.  “Vale is a mongrel, Captain, an eater of vermin.  He’s not here for blood.  He’s here to be paid.”

When Tacar reached the receiving room, six guards already stood near the heavy front door.  The rest arrived at a brisk march a moment later, lead by Makay. 

“Receiving formation, lads,” he said, and the guards formed lines along the walls, standing at attention with their halberds at their sides.  Lord Tacar nodded his approval—he’d never seen this maneuver before.  The guards were paid to train for situations that Tacar himself would not anticipate.

With the men in place, Tacar said, “Captain Makay, kindly answer the door.”

The captain unfastened heavy latches, including one that required the watch captain’s key, then swung the door open.

Outside, in the quiet and misty night, Captain Christian Vale leaned against the door frame.  He had a strong jaw and long, oily, black hair, salt-weathered skin, and plotting eyes.  “It be a cold night to keep my men waiting, Tacar.  I find your hospitality lacking.”

Behind Captain Vale, his crew milled about in the darkness.  Makay made out a barbarian carrying a huge, lumpy sack, an iron-faced sea elf with a spear, and a sneering, peg-legged man with a cleaver tucked in his belt.  Most of the ten others, bedraggled men and women, looked either brutal or cunning.  Vale himself appeared ready to go either way.

“Captain Vale,” said Lord Tacar curtly.  “My apologies for the guards, and for keeping you waiting as I dressed.  Please, do come in.”

Vale shouldered his way through the door and into the lamp light, and several of his crew followed.  His black overcoat fell open as he walked, revealing the handles of twin sabers.  Vale sensed the guards stiffen and turned around to see his crew eying the room’s fineries.  “Mind your manners,” he said to them.  “We’re here on business.”

He turned back just as Tacar took a seat in a thickly padded chair.  The peg-legged man with the sneer chuckled, “Nice robe.  Lacey.”

Lord Tacar ignored him.  “So, Captain Vale, what brings you this way?”

“Good news,” he said, and motioned forward the barbarian with the sack.  Peg-leg stepped forward, opened the sack, and said, “‘Eliminate with prejudice’ was your request, Lord Tacar.  Here’re twenty five who won’t trouble your ships again.”

He reached into the sack and pulled out a dismembered head, too mutilated to know it was goblinoid except by the skin color.  Tacar turned away in disgust, catching a glimpse of the round shape, the eye and mouth holes filled with something yellow.  And then he realized that he wasn’t looking at a goblin head, but a goblin face stretched around a yellow melon.

The peg-legged man smiled, a terrible smile.  “I interrogated this one.  The trick is to start at the top and go down, so he still has his lips to talk until the end.”

Vale motioned peg-leg back and said, “Twenty five gold for each goblin, and four officers, at a hundred and fifty gold each.  That’s eleven hundred and twenty five gold pieces, Tacar.  And we sank two ships in the process.  Our arrangement was five hundred for each sinking.”

Makay’s face grew cold and hard.  Who would pay such men?  And two thousand gold—more than his men would earn in years of Lord Tacar’s employ?  Feuds were fought over such wealth.

Lord Tacar looked as if he would be ill.  “Our arrangement stands, Captain Vale.  These waters will not be safe for merchants so long as the invaders still roam them.  You’ll have your fee, and my gratitude.”

He looked toward Makay and said, “Captain, if you would be so kind, someone must count the heads.”

Makay dutifully stepped forward.  The barbarian loomed over him and, holding open the sack, said, “They’re all here.” 

Makay could only nod as he reached down to his shoulder in the sack, pushing heads aside to count those beneath.  Some of the heads were in pieces.  Some were still fresh.  He felt wetness on his arm when the gore soaked into his shirt.

Tacar rose and walked to the mantle, where he pulled down an ornate chest, the size of a small dog.  He sat it on the floor before his chair, opened it, and began to count out coins—platinum coins, impossible to find in the lower city.  He formed them into stacks of ten and handed each to Vale, who dropped each stack into an unmarked burlap sack.

It took several minutes for Lord Tacar to count out twenty two stacks of platinum—a greater sum than anyone in the room but himself had ever seen in one place.  Vale’s crew looked increasingly lean and hungry as each stack was handed over.  Tacar’s face was stony as he handed over the last.

To Vale he said, “You’re holding two hundred and twenty platinum coins, worth ten times their weight in gold.  The extra, Captain, is payment for your discretion.  This is necessary work, but customers want it done without hearing the details.  I will take it most unkindly if word of your employment slips out.”

Vale smiled and replied, “Our lot are the very soul of discretion, Lord Tacar.”

He hefted the bag of platinum.  His crew cackled and slapped each others’ backs.  Captain Vale turned back to Lord Tacar and bowed, hardly low enough to stir his oily hair.  “We are ever your humble servants, Lord Tacar.  May the gods keep you and may the affairs of this city leave you unscathed.”

He gestured and his men seeped out through the door, laughing and whooping in the night like hyenas.  Vale himself was the last to leave.  He turned back briefly to say, smiling, “Health to your daughter.”

Lord Tacar’s eyes narrowed to slits.  Just as Vale’s hand cleared the door, Makay pushed it closed with the butt of his halberd and threw the latches.  He had no words.  The taste in his mouth was bitter.

The room remained silent except for the snap of Tacar’s chest closing and his fine robes’ swish against the floor as he restored the chest to the mantle, much lighter than it had been before.

Walking quietly toward the stairwell and his bedchamber, Lord Tacar saw Makay and the captain’s right arm, slathered in gore, then turned his eyes to the floor as he ascended.  Amid shuffling footsteps, Makay heard the Lord mumble.  “Summon the night nurse, Captain.  Tell her to draw me a bath.”