“Heh, those guys think they can rout us with this measly force just cause we are a band of pirates eh… if so they have another thing coming for them” When a fleet of ships reached their shores without any information the pirate leader was surprised. He simply assumed that the king must have dispatched a few ships to take care of them, thinking them to be pirates, which might have gone unnoticed. Heh 10 galleys vs their 10 warships, don’t you know that in marine warfare the one who besieger is the one at a disadvantage. The pirate leader Sarp Naag ordered 7 of his galleys to come out of sheltered waters of the port, stand in a single file along the coast of the town wall and simply act like cannon stations and fire ahead at the incoming galley. To some this would seem like an odd way of fighting a naval warfare, but Sarp Naag had three reasons to do so; firstly the reason general defending armies would send their ships out from the pier to the invading ships is to take the battle away from port to prevent damage to the city from cannon which he did need to since he was only here for plundering; secondly though moving ships are harder to aim at, considering the size of galleys, cannon bolts generally find their way and manage to harm them regardless, on the other hand due to the hard manoeuvrability of the ships his men would find it difficult to aim if their ships were moving so much; thirdly and most importantly the galleys were not owned by the pirates, they were gifted to them by the one who planned this attack, they were meant to rapidly deploy troops to far off land, a primary necessity for a country like Bhasmachal which is surrounded by water on all sides.

When Julius saw the galleys he instantly recognised the technology behind the ships, “Don’t think you will be able to escape my grasp you traitor!!!” he swore in soft voice.

Each pirate galley was 500 m by 70 m wide, beautifully constructed and aligned themselves along the coast, their cannons aiming at the incoming warship fleet which were 100 m by 20 m. They seemed like they fish boats in front of the large deployment galleys. They were like moths running into the fire, certain doom. The pirate were becoming nervous about the oncoming war, generally they were the invaders so a defence battle was new to them, but the strategy of their leader was quite easy and the cannons they were using were top notch enough to load an fire. Its range was 45 km – 50 km, as they were lined up for attack something weird happened, the weird warships were making a bee line for the port. There was no changes in direction there was no strategy, they were literally acting like stupid moths. Thing was, attacking a moving vessel was tough but if you know the path, you could simply attack the expected location where the ship would be. Sarp did not delay the command and ordered “Fire!!! Fire!!! Kill them all”. Bhasmachal had been attacked by pirates in the past, but nobody had been able to beat the naval power of the country in pirate history ever. This was his moment to go down in history as the first independent pirate to hunt down the country’s navy.

‘Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom…’ several hundred cannons were fired as soon as the fleet came in range, most of them were way off target, some weren’t in range and some misfired, none came in dangerous range for the warships “Fire!!! Fire!!! Fire!!! Fire!!! Fire!!! Fire!!! Fire!!! Fire!!!” ignoring the strange coincidence of hundreds of cannons not being able to hit the warships and chalking it all upto errors caused due to initial round of firing and inexperience of the pirates on the new advanced cannon.

‘Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom…’ came the sound when the ships fired but this time too all of them missed. This perturbed the pirate, but the illiterate he was, he did not pause to think of the reasons and ordered his men to fire continuously. The canons were now hitting in range but, weird thing was… the warships were moving a few 50 m to the side as soon as the cannon balls left the barrel. It was surreal, impossible even, the warships were moving like a large organism with ten tentacles each moving with awesome dexterity, but the odd thing was… even if they were calculating the trajectory of the cannon balls, they were dodging it too well as if… as if… they were pred… “Captain!!! Captain!!!” came the person who was the lookout for the pirates. The person said “Pant… pant… (breathing heavily) captain, their king… pant… Julius is on one of the warships”

“What???” The captain became crazy on hearing the news, he grabbed the person with his arms and lifted him up, as someone would a baby and shook him asking him again and again “Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?” the man couldn’t speak amid all the shaking so he only nodded his head in response. On seeing this Sarp threw him aside and looked in the direction of the warship as if looking Julius directly in the eye he said, this kingdom has been a thorn in my side for quite long, giving safe passage to traders and cruise ships, I am not going to let this opportunity go and screamed. “All you bastard heed my command!!! All the bare minimum crew board the ships and arrange yourselves in the pier in the sheltered waters of the port and kill the bastard Julius!! Tonight we feast on his death bed and tomorrow we invade the capital and take over the country” he was saying all sorts of non-sense and was overjoyed at the prospect of plundering the nation. His thoughts weren’t straight anymore almost drooling over the bounty right in front of him.

Of the 50000 pirates 20000 pirates, which were a bare minimum crew required to man various stations at the vessel, were now in the shallow sheltered waters of the port area with all 10 of the galleys only around 150 m from the port jetties. The port sheltered waters were 45 m deep, just enough so the vessel can have draft to stay afloat, shallower than any port some say (true for all ports of Bhasmachal). It was weird for the traders all across the globe who came here, but since it was sufficiently deep nobody complained.

Now the bombarding on the naval warships increased even more, but weirdly all the warships moved forward undaunted. When the warships were around 20 km from the shore, the pirate captain was then able to see it, a 6 six feet tall, bare chested man standing at the fore of one the central warship looking straight at the port, he would scream command in his communication piece after every volley of cannon balls fired in air. The scene was like something out of fairy tales, it was like the ships were following a path where there were no attacks at all. The pirate captain on seeing the scene screamed hysterically “What are you scallywags doing????Fire!!! Fire!!! Fire!!! Fire!!! Fire!!! Fire!!! FIRE!!! FIRE!!! THIS IS MY CHANCE TO GO DOWN IN HISTORY FOR TAKING THE HEAD OF BHASMACHAL!!! KILL THE FUCKERS”. But his screaming did not change the results.

Unbeknownst to him about a 100 km from the town inland, on two canals which were coming out from the town had hundreds warships lined up. Leading them in one of warship was another handsome man 5’10” adorned in jewelleries befitting a royalty. On receiving the signal, the ship had started their sail, Marcus was lost in thought…

“Julius!! I agree with your plan, but let Augustus, your general, or even me lead the warships from the front, its too dangerous”

Julius was silent and did not respond for a few seconds in thought and then said “You do realise that as long as I don’t want it, he will not be able to even touch the hair on my head”

“Julius, try and understand, what you are saying is not absolute”

“If you want to catch a big fish…”

Marcus coming back to the present uttered with a smirk on his face “… you need a big enough bait”.

Augustus standing next to Marcus then said “I really hate the fact the king is going up in the front lines acting as bait” he paused and then with his hands on his forehead and a wide smile on his face he said “But damn would I hesitate, following him through the gates of hell”

Marcus then said “That’s how it always been with him”

Augustus then screamed “FOR GLORY OF THE KING… ALL MEN… FORWARD!!!”

Slowly the warships picked up speed, a speed never seen in any ships this size, probably never before seen in the world, why was it?? Why was it travelling at a speed twice or thrice normal speed?? This was another reason Julius was famous, it was because he invested in R&D, his scientists had figured out an oil which was deemed as useless in all aspects had a very specific purpose. Shale crust oil, it did not burn good enough to heat the house, left a lot of soot making it unusable for household purposes and it was mildly poisonous for a normal person when consumed, but it had one specific purpose and that was when applied to the base of the boat, it formed a protective layer which prevented marine growth and decomposition of ship’s base, increasing the speed by atleast two or three time expected.

Back at the port town under question…

A look out on the in-land side of the city saw a silhouette of a ship coming from in from 70 km. the geological features were blocking his view making him unable to understand what was the ship flowing on, when he zoomed out and at the scenery, it struck him. “They are using the inland canals to mobilize the ships to join the war effort…” at first he did not understand if what he was seeing was true which was why he rubbed his eye a couple of times and them saw the ships rushing in at a speed more than anything he had ever seen. He turned around and started running towards Sarp “Captain!!! Captain!!!” it took him some time to cross the entire town reach Sarp. Sarp was too busy and ignored the screaming subordinate. By the time he reached Sarp he was panting heavily and between pants he said “Captain!! There are…. hundreds of ships are coming from the inland side”

“The fuck do you mean??” it then struck him, “the canals!!!” He turned around used the binoculars to look far into the distance and there he it, a fleet larger than any he had seen before. They were trapped!! Their ships were all out of the port in shallow shelter waters it would take them some time to return to take his crew back in. “Does that damn Julius want to burn this whole town down?”

“Order the guards for prisoners and pull them, we will use the hostages to plan our escape” he ordered to another subordinate who ran out to relay the command to his gatekeepers of the hostages.

After sometime came another bad news for the pirates, the hostages had been freed from their lock ups and are nowhere to be found and it looked like several hundred of the guards had been killed.

Shock filled the pirate captain on realisation, all his escape methods were in the waters, they had been surrounded from all sides and he did not have a bargain chip to negotiate a safe passage. If the king could so easily save all his subjects then why go through the whole charade of fighting us here, why not simply send an army in and massacre us all, not like the port town was fortified too much anyway. It then struck him, the canals were not simply meant for irrigation people had thought, by means of his canals he had turned his entire country into a fortress. He could simply maintain a superior military at the capital, the other nobles need even bother maintaining an army, Julius had used him to send an example to everyone both outside and inside the country.

Slowly he heard sounds of clashing of the troops inland, swords clashing, shields bashing, pirates were diving into the ocean to escape the wrath of the army of Bhasmachal, but each arrow of the army always hit its target. On being the hit the pirate did not resurface; either on purpose, to try and escape while swimming underwater or cause they were dead. The town had a population of 8000 people and like other places in Bhasmachal was densely populated, but today it was filled corpses of more than 25000 pirates. The huge war galleys which were marvels of Bhasmachal engineering were being torn down one by one by the incoming avalanche of cannon bolts, destroying them piece by piece and the pirates who jumped in the water to escape were either killed by the debris of ships or arrows. Julius had decided today was the day he ended terror of local pirates in the country, he was going to rout out all the pirates. No one will be left alive after today.

Death and destruction had surrounded Sarp Naag, in but a few hours everything around him had turned from bed of rose petals to a commode of thorns. In the far distance he saw a 6 feet tall man with naked torso. For the first time he was the handsome face of perfectly chiselled god like man walking up to him slowly, atleast that’s what he thought. So he fell on his knees, as if to show his surrender one commander to another. Julius unperturbed by the pirate’s movement continued along his path, which was heading near where Sarp was kneeling. The more Sarp saw Julius, the words which came across his head were regal, royal, leader, majestic, imperial. It was like seeing like seeing a being of higher level walk among the common folk. When he thought Julius was in earshot he started saying “So the better man won in the end huh… this is the first time I have been bested so badly… but Julius even though I don’t fear death, I would like to say that my skills and intel would be quite useful for you and your people, if not as commander you would do good if you let me as you advi…” Sarp stopped mid-sentence when he saw that Julius had walked past. Throughout the entire conversation, Julius had never made eye contact, never spared even a single glance, it was as if his existence was nothing to him. This pissed him off “You rat bas…” and before he could complete his sentence, his head was disconnected from the rest of his body.

And so the Julius’s popularity another high, the heights which were never enjoyed by any king till then perhaps. People literally worshipped him in shrine at their houses, as his daughter Sylvie too was really popular. Everywhere she went people would shower her with gifts and praises. Nobles and princes from major countries would come to ask for her hand in marriage, then came the news that she following the footsteps of her father had entered the Nalanda Uni as well.

All was going well… until that dreadful day… that one dreaful day which took everything thing from this prosperous paradise of a country.