Chapter 17 April 406 AD Cuban Archipelago-Explorers

Authors note- Earlier this year I had two chapters dealing with the Merchant Guild attempting to raid one of the Cuban Islands, this chapter takes place after those chapters. When I get a chance I will adjust the chapters on my patrion page, just super busy right now.

            Muuza looked over his fleet of four mother ships and wished he had been allowed to bring some trimarans, unfortunately, the Merchant Guild knew they were warships, so he had been overruled when he was sent on this expedition to find the Merchant Guild territory. They had no idea how long this journey would take, so the trade goods were mostly medicines: antibacterial, antiparasitic, insulin, sedatives, and pain medications. The vast majority of the hold was filled with supplies to allow the voyage to last at least a year.

Although the voyage could last more than a year, the journey back to Paulsland would not be nearly that long. Between the ship clocks that allowed them to know where their longitude was, and the various star charts and horizon measuring tools that allowed them to know where their latitude was, they knew how to get back to Paulsland, assuming they didn’t come across any overpowering storms. That said, fear of overpowering storms was why they had four ships.

Although they hadn’t found the Merchant Guild yet, they had come across a rather primitive civilization at the mouth of a massive river. When Muuza’s fleet found them, they had hoped this was the Merchant Guild, but when they saw the dirt structures and canoes and had the linguist talk to them, it was obvious this was a different group of people. The biggest clue was the lack of stone structures, as the Merchant Guild had sold Paulsland ox-powered stone cutting equipment. There was no way anyone trading with the merchant guild would be reduced to earthen structures. The linguist aboard the ships confirmed their suspicions.

Even though the river people were not the Merchant Guild, they clearly had some sort of civilization, albeit primitive. With that in mind, one of the doctors on the ship healed someone with antibiotics, and then traded some more for four slaves, which were technically legally free once they came into Paulsland custody, although practically the four individuals would not know that for sure until the linguist deciphered their language.

Truth be told, if this were all this continent had to offer, Paulsland would not be interested in it at the moment, as Paulsland was busy colonizing islands in the East Erythraean Sea to promote trade between Paulsland and the various nations in the far east. If the Merchant Guild turned out to be a good trade partner, then Paulsland may become very interested in colonizing the land surrounding that gigantic river, if only as a way station between Merchant Guild land and Paulsland. It all depended on whether the powers that be considered the Merchant Guild a good enough trade partner to be worth investing in waypoints.

Muuza considered the possibilities because when he returned, he would have to give a full account of every person he met on his journey and accurate navigation information on where they were.

After they left the great river, they headed northeast for several weeks, following the coastline of the contenent. One day as they continued moving east, and maping the coastline someone shouted, “SHIP TO THE EAST!”

Muuza immediately made his way to the mast and began climbing up. As he climbed, he heard shouts from the crow's nest at the top of each ship's mast, each confirming the sighting. When he reached the top, the lookout handed him a scope and pointed to the east, where Muuza spotted a longship with fishing equipment quickly raising anchor, and as soon as the anchor was on board, they raised sail and began sailing away. Muuza’s fleet naturally followed them, and when the longship noticed, they took out oars and began paddling. It wasn’t long before Muuza’s fleet spotted a harbor filled with longships.

Muuza smiled and told the spotter, “I think we found the Merchant Guild.”

The spotter shook his head and said, “That doesn’t make any sense. The Merchant Guild gave us the rock-cutting equipment. With an outpost this close to that gigantic river, the Merchant Guild should have already taken over, and uplifted those people.”

“We don’t know enough about the Merchant Guild’s culture to make that sort of judgment call.”

“That’s true, but I don’t understand why the Merchant Guild would travel all the way to Paulsland and pass up the people on that gigantic river.”

Before Muuza could respond, one of the slaves from the earthen structure culture on the gigantic river began screaming and pointing at the longships at the harbor.

The spotter said, “I guess I was wrong. Our guests clearly know something about these longships, and he really doesn’t like them.”

Muuza said, “It’s disconcerting that he is clearly so worried about those longships. I wish we could talk to them. Anyway, I need to go back down to the deck, keep an eye out for anything.”

Once Muuza was back on deck, the linguist informed him that their guests considered the longships to be bad and dangerous, but the linguist had not been able to make much headway besides that.

As for the harbor, it had half a dozen longships, but to Muuza’s surprise, the locals took the longships out of the water and brought them inland. Clearly, the locals were expecting trouble, so Muuza made the call to wait until the morning to try to have peaceful contact with them, as he hoped everything would be calmed down by morning, and so his four ships dropped anchor.

In an overabundance of caution Muuza ordered his sailors to wear their sea armor that night to bed. The sea armor was similar to Paulsland infantry armor, except that it had rubber baffles inside that the sailors were required to blow up with air when they wore them. The Sea Armor gave them enough buoyancy to swim, although with the weight of the armor, it wasn’t buoyant enough to float without the sailor activily swimming, but it was much better than falling overboard being a death sentence.

Muuza also ordered the sailors to sleep next to their shields, cutlasses, and sea spears. Sea spears were only five and a half feet long, as spears longer than that were worse than useless when fighting on the deck of a ship. As for the cutlasses, they used them over the straight swords of the Paulslan army because cutlasses were curved and as such, much less likely to get lodged in the wood of the ship while fighting.

The sailors were very unhappy with these orders, as the longships had a very low draft, and the mother ships had a very high draft. They didn’t see why they needed to sleep in their armor when it would take forever for anyone in a longship to climb aboard. Muuza didn’t care, he wanted his sailors to be able to react instantly if the longship people attacked, especially since it was clear the longship people overreacted to their ship showing up. There was a lot of grumbling among the crew, but they were Paulsland sailors who had long ago completed their service in the Paulsland military. They were disciplined and obeyed orders even if they didn’t like it.

As the sun went down the sailors set up lanterns on twenty-foot-long poles hanging over the sides of the ships. They wanted to be able to see if the longship people attempted to attack them in the dark.

All was quiet on the ship but around midnight warning gongs on all the ships began to sound out waking all the sailors. The sailors duitifully rolled out of their hammocks, grabbed their weapons and shields, and quickly made their way to the deck of the ship only to be surprised by the sight before them.

The longship people had turned the crossbeam on the mast of their longships into wooden bridges reaching out past the bow of their ships. The wooden bridges were long enough and high enough that they reached the motherships decks and the bridges had metal pieces with jagged teeth that bit into the mothership. The wooden bridge was from the mast to the bow of their longships, but from the aft to the mast was a rope bridge that connected the deck of the longship to the bridge. Furthermore, the longships were filled with raiders who were climbing the rope bridges, to the wooden bridges, and crossing them only to jump down onto the motherships, which completely negated the Paulsland’s motherships' draft advantage. The Paulsland crews would find out in days to come that the longship people were able to easily build these bridges by pulling them out of the water, turning them to their sides, and making the modifications at ground level.

Fortunately the Paulsland sailors were incredibly disciplined, so although they were surprised when they came on deck and saw raiders jumping down from wooden bridges onto their decks they did not stop and block the rest of the sailors from going on board. In fact the Paulsland army and navy had specic drills to teach soldiers and sailors to never pause in a doorway. Instead the sailors turned to the left and right and formed up in small five man teams like they were trained to do, and began attacking the raiders.

As the two sides clashed it became apparent to everyone involved that both sides were filled with men who were both experienced sailors and warriors, and both sides were surprised by this, although they were all experienced enough not to let their guard down just because of surprise.

The raiders had a mishmash of weapons and armor. Their greatest weapon was the fast fire bow, but only a handful of men had that, and the ones who did stayed on the crows nest of their longship and fired into the Paulsland sailors. That said, every raider had at least a tomahawk.

In contrast, the Paulsland sailors were all fully armed and armored. In fact, it was a matter of law in Paulsland that required every man to have functional weapons and armor, and every man at least had the set that was given to them when they finished their military service.

As the two sides clashed, it became very clear that the raiders had the advantage in numbers but the Paulsland side had the advantage in equipment and teamwork. The raiders had the bad habit of attacking individuals, whereas the Paulsland sailors had it drilled into them since they were thirteen years old that a team of five attacks one enemy at a time. This coordination devastated the raiders as they attempted to fight the Paulsland sailors as individuals, which made their attacks easy for the Paulsland sailors to deflect, while a group of five focused on one enemy at a time.

Although the Paulsland soldiers were easily able to deal with the ax wielders with their superior tactics and equipment, they still had issues with the fast-fire bowmen. Between their shields and helmets, they were losing few sailors to the attacks, but they were losing them. In response, several of the sailors took their sea spears and began throwing them at the raider’s bowmen who were in the crows' nests of the longships. One by one they began taking the bowmen down, as the bowmen had given up one of the best advantages of the fast fire bow, their ridiculous range. The bowmen thought that the raiders would sweep through the Paulsland forces like the raiders had gone through most of their enemies, and so they were only expecting to pick off tougher opponents. They never expected every sailor to be a capable fighter with excellent equipment. If they had known that they would have burned the ships instead of trying to capture them.

Nearly half the raiders died before the raiders realized they were not going to win the fight. They attempted to dislodge their longships from the motherships but they couldn’t so the raiders began jumping into the sea and swimming back to shore.

The battle took nearly half an hour to complete, but when it was over, the raiders had over two hundred dead, while Muuza had fifty dead, and another sixty wounded. He only had two hundred men altogether, so this battle would be the end of this expedition. That said he had several skillful surgeons, the best medicine in the world, and three dozen wounded enemies, so if nothing else he would have a lot of information to give to his bosses at the Central Roman Trading Company when he returned.