Chapter 73: To the Backwater Keep!

I held the paper gingerly between my thumb and forefinger, trying not to let the spattered remains touch me. It riffled in the gentle breeze. The little knife hole made extra noise, adding a higher-pitched buzz to the bass-heavy flapping sound coming from the rest of it. My own little hi-fi dirge.

Great.

A few chaotic sentences marred the surface in a hasty scrawl. I could barely make out the words. They were either written by an illiterate moron or a creative poetry major. Still, they were indeed words, and I did indeed recognize them:

Warning: to the backwater keep!

Until the whipjack what done in our matey steps forth…

Will burn yon factorages and negotiums until ye brigand disembosoms hisself!

P.S. One commercium conflagrated nightly!

Well, I recognized most of them. A few looked either invented or run through a thesaurus a few times. I turned it upside-down to look for clues, then inspected it up close to check for invisible ink.

Nothing.

“Negotiums? Disembosoms?”

“This outfit quomodocunquizes up and down the Silver Coast,” Lady Talia reminded me. “It makes sense that they’ve looted a few ten-gold words.”

I blinked at the dragonkin. Had she just flexed on the pirates with her own ten-gold word?

Fortunately, I’d read a Dukerino book once, and I’d looked up the definition. It was indeed a real word, and she’d used it perfectly.

Still, I was less clear about the pirates’ missive.

"So, what do you suppose the note means?" I asked.

"I think we know exactly what the note means. It was pretty clear."

"Well, I'm missing a lot of critical context about this world. Why don't you spell it out for me?"

Lady Talia's blonde locks whipped behind her in the breeze. She sported a tight ponytail, but stray strands of bangs remained untied. They flapped obnoxiously over her eyes and face, and she continually tried to tuck them back behind her ears.

Farmer Cal and Yvonne approached from within their house. He paused for a second to say something to someone still inside—the kids, probably. Then they made their way toward us.

Meanwhile, the constable translated the letter for me.

"The note says they need to bring justice to the keep of this little backwater. They'll keep burning places down until either the cowards who killed Strider come forth or the whole place is in flames. They'll burn one place per day until they've gotten their revenge."

"Well, you make it sound so straightforward."

"What part of it don't you understand?"

"Now? All of it. Before? None of it."

"Maybe you're not as smart as I thought. It would certainly explain why you literally jumped into bed with a criminal succubus." 

"If you thought I was smart to begin with, maybe you're not as smart as you thought, either. It would certainly explain why you still keep my company." I smirked. "Or, as they say where I'm from, it takes one to know one."

Was my smirk well earned? I wasn't sure. When I said it, I was pretty sure I’d skewered her. Yet when it came out, I was less confident in my logic. I was pretty sure I'd just called her an idiot, but I wasn't sure if it landed. 

So, maybe she had a point about my intelligence. Whatever. Just wait till I pulled out the old I'm-rubber-you're-glue. She wouldn't know what hit her.

As the farmer family closed the distance, something in the note struck me as odd. Backwater keep? Could the pirates have lost critical information in the retelling of their escapades? Perhaps they wrote backwater instead of Breakwater. And keep instead of barkeep.

Perhaps their odd vocabulary had gotten in the way of clear communication. If that were the case, then it could take the villains longer to find me than I’d initially thought. That gave us a chance to prepare more.

On the other hand, it meant more of the town was at risk. One building per night, and all that.

The crunch of gravel announced my friend’s arrival. Farmer Cal tipped his hat to me, then to Lady Talia. Yvonne offered a meek wave. “Hi Drew. Hi, constable.”

“Hey, you two. Sorry to see you again under such circumstances,” I greeted them.

“It truly is unfortunate,” Cal agreed. “Any other time, and we’d invite you and your newest harem member here in for iced tea and sandwiches.”

My startled protest died in my throat. Lady Talia whirled on me, speechless. She opened her mouth to tell me off—or correct the farmer’s mistake—and then decided against it with a shake of her head. Instead, she got down to business.

Almost.

"Perhaps next time,” she grunted. “We’re just here to investigate. What can you tell us about the fire?"

Hesitantly at first, the farmers shared details about the encounter. From how it sounded, there weren't many worth sharing. A group arrived, shouted some belligerent threats, realized the farmer wasn't who they were looking for, and set his barn ablaze.

Farmer Cal didn't catch how many were in the party because he was too busy fearing for his life inside the threshold of his door. Not only that, but of the pirates who arrived, he only saw a few—it seemed that his barn caught fire even while the others spoke to him. However many Black Ship Raiders there were, he never could've gotten a full count anyway.

Also notable: the Black Ship Raiders didn't seem interested in harming him or his family. Destroying their livelihoods, or at least making things difficult, sure.

Actually doing murder? Not so much.

Lady Talia nodded along, jotting notes in a small, black booklet with a charcoal penicl. "And can you describe the Dreaded Pirate Robertson?" She chewed on her tongue and furrowed her brow as she wrote. She looked like a few students I'd known back in college—and she was built like a student athlete, to boot.

Commotion came from the house. A door slammed shut, and the kids looked out at us from the porch. One of them pointed at us excitedly. The other hopped up and down a few times, holding in his energy as though it were a full bladder.

Then, the two of them shot towards us at nearly a dead sprint, yammering incoherently. They shouted over each other, talking about glowing red eyes, a sinister mask, and shadowy figures in the dark. They ignored their parents' repeated requests to go back inside.

I knelt down and greeted the youngsters as they reached us. “Remember anything else?” I asked.

"He was big!" One piped up.

"And dark!" said another.

"What my kids mean is that he was about yea high." Farmer Cal estimated height with his hand, clocking him at somewhere a little over seven feet tall by my measure. "And with stony gray skin, though he wore a black bandanna over his eyes, just like the legend."

"Orc, you think?"

"Possibly. But with that complexion, I wouldn't be surprised if he's got stone giant blood. Could be a goliath."

“Ah, of course.” I nodded sagely. “Natural athletes. Mountain born with powerful builds.”

Lady Talia started. “Why… yes, actually. How did you know?”

“Acclimated to cold, and, uh. Yep.” I stopped there, realizing I’d lose all credibility if I talked about their bonus to strength and constitution scores.

Maybe I was starting to get cocky, but all of this sounded much like my favorite TTRPG once more. I was happy to feel like things were back on familiar ground.

As the farmer family exchanged a few more details, Lady Talia provided assurances that his family would be taken care of. Seaport wouldn’t leave them to pick up the pieces of their life alone. Finally, after we’d gotten what information we could, we let them return to the house, promising to tell them if we found anything else of merit.

We checked a few more things on the ground after waving goodbye to them. Both of us took a slow walk around the premises. My focus zeroed in on every miniscule thing: a crushed flower; a scrap of burnt red paper; thick, multicolored hairs, each about four inches long.

Those might’ve been from cows, actually. They matched the pattern. Still, I filed them away for evidence.

Lady Talia and I had split up to cover more ground. I crept along where the pasture abutted the barn. Hunting for things people’d dropped reminded me of the late nights cleaning the bar. The way I used to sweep away the evidence of a thousand shoes with the deft push of a broom. Or how I polished the floors to a stinky, muddy shine with a mop and suds bucket.

As I swept the area, I detected a scurry of footprints. Even though I didn’t have a survival skill to roll, I could estimate volume like a pro. Noticing the difference in displacement that feet made in the soil helped me estimate what we were up against.

Lady Talia walked over and checked in with me.

"So, what's your read?"

I scratched my jaw. "Sounds like four, maybe five guys? Six, tops."

"Scared witnesses are unreliable narrators. Could be as little as three, and fear fudged the numbers.” She knelt down and ran a finger along the traces of a misshapen footprint. “But it could be seven or eight. Maybe more. Tough to know if they brought the whole crew out or not."

"I've only found four distinct pairs of footprints. One's definitely larger than the others." I didn't need any special tracking abilities to know that. I was hovering over some barefoot indentations that would make Shaquille O'Neal impressed. "Do orcs have feet this big?"

She gave the impression a quick glance and a noncommittal shrug. "Sometimes. It's definitely on the bigger side."

That was saying something. A few of the other tracks we found also suggested larger people. My guess was a couple of orcs along with the Dreaded Pirate Robertson, whatever he may be.

I tried to keep everything straight in my head. One set of prints was wide and gargantuan. Another was long, narrow, and bony. There were two big pairs, which I could tell apart by how poorly clipped the toenails were on one set. That and I was pretty sure one of them had a bunion.

Possibly, a third set of big prints was muddying up the mix, but it was difficult to say. It wasn't as though people wore boots with different and recognizable tread patterns, like back on Earth. In fact, the weirdest thing to me about the whole thing was that they were all running around barefoot.

You’d think pirates could pillage some decent footwear.

There were also a couple of small prints. Small enough to be children's—possibly Cal and Yvonne’s kids if they’d been out playing before. I filed it away anyway, just in case.

“I forget. Did Strider and Buckshank wear boots?”

“Who?”

“The raiders who visited Seaport. Strider was the one who, uh, perished by misadventure.”

“Oh! Yes, they wore boots.” She looked down where I was inspecting the individual divots of toeprints. “Some of the more, erm, monstrous races have thick, callused feet. They don’t need shoes if they decide to forego them.”

I peered closer at a print. Indeed, I could practically see the cracked, scaly imprints of toughed soles in the mud. “Is it like, a point of pride for hard work or something?”

“No. It’s easier to fight barefoot. Better connection to the ground. Grip. Agility. All that,” she said.

“Oh. Drat. So, these are tough guys.”

"Very tough. See anything else interesting? Anything I should know about?" Lady Talia asked.

I searched through my recently filed-away things. There was one item in there.

"Are these tracks just kids'? They're barefoot, and their feet are pretty small."

Lady Talia leaned down and inspected the ground closely. After a second, her lip curled into a disgusted sneer. She spat off to the side, angry, but careful not to disturb any evidence.

"Goblins."

"We don't like goblins, I take it?"

She shot upright, eyes suddenly nervously wide. "No. No, not that. Goblins are perfectly fine people. It's just that the goblins who have joined up with the Black Ship Raiders are particularly loathsome."

"How's that?"

She stood, striking an imperious stance, like a tour guide ready to spout off interesting facts that meant little. She cleared her throat.

"They are fine peoples. A storied history of creative inventions, vibrant culture, unique cuisine. They're a bit obsessed with bombs and fireworks if you ask me, but who am I to judge their culture?"

After that, I half expected her to say, one of my best friends is a goblin. Speaking of which, I still hadn’t met that supposed human best friend of hers.

Yet I didn’t let my thoughts distract me for long. The tattered, burnt scrap of red paper I saw flashed back into my mind. Could that be some kind of explosives casing? The wrapper on the outside of obliterated tubing?

I scratched my jaw, wondering just how much trouble we were in. Goblins were always starter villains. Trash mobs at the beginning of an adventure. I almost expected to hear that they’d all flown in on a dirigible.

Also, how weird was it that Earth had gotten so much lore correct about fantasy races? Our media had these guys nailed.

Except for succubi, I guess. But I wasn’t mad about that.

"They’re like, a little violent, right? Worship a god of war?” I asked.

“What? No. They follow many religions, usually based on region, and… wait.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose and shot me a look of utter disappointment. “Is this another stupid thing from your former world?”

I didn’t even dignify that with a response. Because the answer was yes. Obviously. Instead, I went with, “You think these are Black Ship goblins, then? If they like explosions and fireworks so much, I'm sure they'd make expert arsonists."

"That's exactly what I was thinking. And if I know anything about goblins, it's that they never work alone."

Back on Earth, I played a rather popular trading card game. One of my favorite decks involved goblins. It moved fast, was dead simple, and usually flooded the board quickly with far too many tokens for an opponent to deal with.

"So, a handful of guys, plus a couple of goblins?"

"And they're going to take down one family's livelihood at a time until they get their revenge against you."

Me. The barkeep of the Breakwater. I'd really gotten us into hot water. All I wanted to do was cast Fireball at a table with my friends, and instead I'd stumbled into a tiny port town in a fantasy world and thrown everyone's lives into disarray.

There was a way to end this, of course.

"It might be easier if I just turned myself in."

Lady Talia burned me with a withering glare. "Absolutely not! I know humans are unpredictable and like to improvise in any situation, but I simply cannot allow it. You're too valuable."

"Me?"

"Since you showed up, you've done quite a lot."

Yeah. That was the problem. That was what I was just thinking about.

But Lady Talia continued. "You gave Wynnie hope again. You turned around one of the town's ailing businesses. You established better trade relations with the Crown, and you've even started making a name for Seaport among merchant vessels. You know they talk with each other about which stops have the best food and libations, right? The whole town has found a fresh spark of creativity and joy since you brought your unique flavors from your world. Loath as I am to admit it, you've even managed to make Shivai look like an honest woman."

I was starting to blush. I could feel it.

And that's when Lady Talia gave me her final piece of her mind. "You stood up to the Black Ship Raiders when nobody else would. I've been too scared to do anything for years. But you've given me hope. That means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me."

What could I say to that? There was only one thing.

I twisted the ball of my foot into the ground. "Aw, shucks."

"Now come on. We are going to find a way to beat these cowards. And we're going to do it without letting you turn yourself over. I'm not going to lose you—I mean, let the town lose you—over all this."

She hooked my elbow and pulled, marching sternly back down the long pathway to the main road. The whole way, a dangerous, committed expression stayed fixed on her features.

For some reason, she was still holding on tight even as we approached town once again. She didn't have to do that. It wasn't as though I was going to run off.

Yet I wasn't about to ask her to let go, either. In some strange way, I didn't mind being manhandled by a strict, surprisingly complex woman who could probably keep up with me in any weight room.

And to my surprise, I realized something else. Something important.

The whole time she'd been holding me, her hand kept touching the leather-sheathed blade stashed on my forearm. I'd almost forgotten it was there. She didn't even seem to have noticed.

If I could get one past her, could I fool a pirate?