Those innumerable islands, keys and sandbars known as the Westward isle, are particularly adapted from their locality and formation, to be a favorite resort for pirates. Many of them are composed of coral rocks, on which a few cocoa trees raise their lofty heads. But a chief peculiarity of some of the islands, and which renders them suitable to those who frequent them as pirates, are the numerous caves with which the rocks are perforated,. Some e of them are above high-water mark. It is hardly necessary to observe how convenient the higher and dry caves are as receptacle for articles which are intended to be concealed, until an opportunity occurs to dispose of them.
Other islands are full of mountain fastnesses, where all pursuit can be eluded. Many of the low shore are skirted, and the island covered by the mangrove, a singular tree, shooting fresh roots as it grows. The interval between the roots offer secure hiding place for those who are suddenly pursued.
Some pirates do leave memoirs, the most famous being Bilge Rat's A Pirate's Life, and many merchants have left accounts of the piratical towns they know well. Additionally, the countless court records of captured pirates tried and confessed provides an invaluable source of pirate lore. For sheer literary artistry, the interested reader should not neglect An Account of the Horrible Depredations and Monstrous Crimes Committed by the Sea-Going Pirates by "Captain Shark," who is believed to be none other than the famous man of letters, Tarwanan of Boliske, who has lately written so eloquently of the Great Plague of Colist.
The pirate vessels in the Westward Islands are chiefly composed of natives who have lived in the islands for generations, but their crews experience an influx of Miviorans, Rombunis, Hothiorans, Shucassamites, and vagabonds from the Banished Lands. The island of Lebow is a great nest of pirates at the present day, and at its main settlement (since one can hardly speak of a capital in the Westward Isles, since each organized band of pirates with its support personnel and hanger-ons is an independent constituency) of Fudenbur, piracy is the most honored profession practiced.
Popular assumption makes the Westward Islands a place shunned by all honest traffic, save for the occasional military raid. This may be true, but of dishonest and questionable traffic there is much. Relatively little of the thefts of the filibusters of the Westward isles is recovered by them in specie. The vast piratical seizes of bulky goods would be utterly useless to them beyond the tiny market of their own islands without the contrivance of ostensibly honest traders.
In fact, traders flock to the islands to buy and to sell. It is good business, as the luxuries they bring to sell are generally sold dear to pirates temporarily awash in loot, while the goods purchased from the filibusters, largely useless to them, constitute a buyer's market. And the pirates need not depend upon traders from outside. Goods are habitually smuggled into the coastal kingdoms of Minaria, sometimes through arrangement with local criminal interests, sometimes through the contrivance of local authorities.
Who is the pirate? He ought to have nerve to thrive in his occupation, though his frequent barbarity against the vanquished prevents us from describing the group as a whole courageous. He is a materialistic scoundrel, but outside of a few famous luminaries such as Nonnus the Missionary, we live in a world of materialistic scoundrels. For the most part the comes from the slums of port towns, or from the peasantry which abandons or flees bondage to the soil and goes to sea. Many begin their piracy by being captured by pirates, who, if they need crew, commonly seek recruits among merchant sailors. Some are not so lucky, but are abducted to the Westward isles and sold as slaves. Those who live for a time in local slavery may follow a piratical master on board a ship. Pirate society is fluid, and many slaves become free after a few years. Another source of pirates are the ranks of deserters from the ships of honest captains, with their brutal discipline and starveling wages.
Rare is the man who engages in sea robbery because he wants no other kind of life. He robs to become rich, to live as a local grandee, or to return to live in propertied obscurity in their own country of origin. That small number which has attracted fatal fame must hope to purchase amnesty from corrupt Minarian governors and live under their protection.
In earlier days such persons as would become pirates gravitated to Skull Island and hence became the ancestors of early Rombune. But as Rombune fell into the power of a few dominant piratical houses, the small-time pirate found the Westward Islands more congenial. This was the false spring of piracy out of the Westward isles; it did not last long.
During the invasions of the Vanatta (often known as the "Wisnyo," meaning "desert jackals" in Hothioran) many refugees, particularly seamen arrived in the isles from ruined ports, such as Parros and Zefnar; they indelibly colored the culture of those islands with the style, the flash, and the color of the South Plains. But the era of the Vanatta precipitated a great loss of sea trade for a time, a condition which brought profound changes to Rombune itself, leading ultimately to its becoming a kingdom in its own right.
The effects of sea trade had a different effect upon the Westward Islands. Piracy was reduced to a trickle, and these had poor pickings against the heavily-protected convoys of the only remaining maritime power, Mivior. For the most part the inhabitants of the islands lived off agriculture on land and fishing off shore. The economy was local only, and many islanders lived a lazy life in the sun, working only to support their own needs, or, if they were fortunate, their families. For a long while women were scarce in the islands and so the population remained ephemeral as the majority of footloose males aged and died.
When both Mivior and the Vanatta collapsed in the wake of the invasion of the "Abominations of the Land and the Horrors of the Air," even less incentive for piracy existed, though the recovery of Parros and Zefnar as land powers, and the newly-risen Girionese kingdom of Afgaar, provided markets for slaves. Prostrate Mivior and Hothior especially were made to order for slaver's sweeps, and of course, made themselves market for the prisoners taken in local strife, as both countries had largely reverted to tribalism.
But Mivior did recover, and as their fleets fended off the piratical raids, they turned their attention elsewhere, to the recovery merchant fleets of Parros and Zefnar, and even Rombune. Emergency measures by Parros defeated the filibusters for a time, and in this desperate hour, the Rombuni fleet arrived to take control. A long war of liberation followed, but though Rombune finally withdrew, liberation did not bring unity to the isles and over the last couple centuries, the filibusters have changed their ways only tactically. Someday a more concerted effort than the Rombunis will no doubt subdue their island redoubts and make them a pacific backwater, or perhaps a local kingdom shall be forged by some energetic genius arising form their own ranks, but for the time being, the rapacious pirates of the Westward Isles remain what they have been for a long while -- a carbuncle on the nose of maritime Minaria.
Any reader of Minarian pirate lore can recite a score of names of its desperate and adventurous rogue captains. But for sheer ruthless cruelty few stand forth in the ranks of Scarthroat Andelys.
In Mackra of 1329, the lamash King's Oath, Captain Culvert commanding, sailed from Castle Lapspell on the morning of the twenty-first, for Port Lork. About two leagues from shore the next morning, the Oath was brought to by a piratical sloop, Andelys' Osprey, containing about thirty men. After the Oath struck her colors, a boat from the Osprey with ten men came alongside her. With Scarthroat at their head, they commenced plundering with such violence, and with insolence to the women passengers, that they provoked some sailors and passengers to attempt to expel them. The pirates overwhelmed such haphazard resistance and bloodily slaughtered all who had taken a hand against them. Afterwards, they made a clean plunder of it, taking nearly all the clothing, all the cooking utensils and spare rigging, unroving part of the running rigging and cutting the small cable, while breaking the compasses and tearing the mast's coats to pieces, appropriating from the crew and passengers all their possessions. Out of mere spite that Scarthroat was so famous for, they beat the mate unmercifully and hung him by the neck under the maintop. They also battered the captain severely with the flat of a large broad sword across his back until it broke, and ran the stub through his thigh, so that he almost bled to death. Then all judged suitable for enslaving were manacled and taken down to the hold of the Osprey. All a common day's work for Scarthroat and his crew, really, but the King's Oath was a faithful prize. One of the brave passengers killed was Hasmo Trelaine, and one of the slaves taken was Armon, his son, later to be known as Bilge Rat the Pirate.
A swift sale to Slave Island back in the piratical isles rid the Osprey of its unwilling passengers, but Scarthroat had unwittingly planted a seed which would one day grow into a creeper that would strangle him. It is unlikely that he gave the boy another thought as he picked up his young daughter Tana when he returned shortly afterwards to the port of Fudenbur.
Seamanship and robbery are usually relegated to the male occupation, so we may pause to wonder at the frequency with which women pirates are mentioned, indeed, celebrated. Captain Karah and her all-woman crew, the subject of chantey and story, is doubtlessly a sailor's myth, but there is reliable evidence for many another individual she-pirate, and here I need only evoke the name of Leira Tosha, Vanne Hashli, and Tiara to stir the blood with the sense of exotic adventure. While many stories of these lioness of the tides maybe be colored by romance, more than a few proven she-pirates have been brought before the dock of the maritime powers to answer for their crimes. Rather few of them have been as beautiful as their counterparts in legend, alas.
To understand the pirates casual acceptance of pirates in their ranks, while other seafarers superstitiously regard women as a source of bad luck, or at least of avoidable quarrels, the background of the merchant sailor and the pirate are oftentimes very different. Be he what he is, the common sailor usually comes from a long-established society in which hierarchial and societal roles are of venerable age and taken for granted. But the piratical experience, in the early years of Rombune, and currently in the Westward Islands, is substantially different.
Frontier societies, as the piratical society certainly is, are dependent upon hard work and full contribution form all of its members, lest their precarious existence be overwhelmed by hunger, the elements, or enemy attack. In such a unique caldron of social experimentation, women tend of necessity to take over work not accustomed to their landlubber sisters. As work so often defines one's role in a society, the supposition of woman's equality is early established in a frontier society.
In the Westward Islands especially, women were scarce in the formative years, and remain in something of a minority even now. A man might well be proud to win the daughter of a pirate in good standing with his mates, and tended to treat her accordingly (not least of all because pirate father-in-laws tend to be protective and vengeful sorts). But this is not the whole story. Women make prize slaves among the islanders, though most of such do not belong to individual pirates, but to public establishments, taverns, bawdy houses, and the like, either locally owned, or owned by foreign merchants and operated by his hired agents.
Nonetheless, men are men and woman are women. Many more women might go to sea and stay there, except the free and easy life of the pirate often leads to pregnancy, and child-rearing is unheard of aboard a fighting ship. For that reason few women remain long at sea unless they be of the rare chaste type, or infertile by nature. By reputation, Tana Andelys is a woman who loves not often but well. Her mother was a slave whom her master was forced to sell to Scarthroat at the point of a sword. She grew up in the squalid city of Fudenbur, watching the sea for the return of the father she seldom saw prior to teenage. Nonetheless, she enjoyed the status of being the offspring of a feared pirate captain and early on appreciated her aristocratic status among thieves.
When she was sixteen young Tana finally importuned her fierce father into granting her what she wanted most. Scarthroat, a paradox as so many men of violence tend to be, might laugh in the face of the pleading of helpless victims, even women and children, but could deny his pretty daughter nothing. He took her to sea to learn the ways of the filibuster. A good sailor she already was, having been sailing between the ports of the Westward Island under the loyal sea dogs who served her father, a master of divers ships and ambitious enterprises. Scarthroat intended to be a great man in his retirement, and make his daughter an honorable lady.
It was not to be. Lured in by flags, Scarthroat suddenly found himself in the midst of a piratical fleet -- a fleet commanded by Bilge Rat, the youth whom he had wronged grown up. Bilge Rat took his personal vengeance on his enemy, and though most present called it "fair duel," Tana considered it murder and forever after nursed a brooding hatred against the Bilge Rat.
It may seems strange that a cruel robber like Scarthroat might be loved, but Tana had never been ignorant of her father's business, nor of the manner in which he provided for her. The girl no more could fault her sire for his predations than the leopard cub could fault its own parent's. Not before the pirate's death nor afterwards did Tana give sign of disloyalty either to his legacy nor his memory.
As they tend to do, the several companies which were beholding to a "Lord Captain" Scarthroat broke up, though many joined the new Lord Captain Bilge Rat. Bilge Rat had put Tana on a ship bound for Fudenbur, but she wasted no time in organizing the bravest and most loyal Andelys men on the island into a new crew for one of her late father's properties, which she remained The Red Lioness. She put her self forward as captain, but until her nautical skills increased, made due taking the lead of lesser ships offices. But her aptitude for the sea was phenomenal and at last, at the age of twenty, took personal command as a piratical sea captain.
Tana decided that better intelligence as to comings and goings of vessels
in the major ports was needed. To be sure, pirate had oftentimes
planted spies in ports and freelance informers oftentimes sold them information,
but Tana made the practice more systematic, making special use of pirate
woman to infiltrate the places where sailors worked and played.
From the beginning the information Tana's agents drew was superior to any
other pirate band's. She was able to pick and choose her targets,
avoiding the shipments of low-value bulk and plum-plucking the more valuable
shipments of precious metals, rare tropical products, and spices.
Her spies had not been in place very long before Tana learned that Bilge
Rat was soon to pick up an ransom for some noblemen he had abducted.
Tana decided that it was a chance too precious to waste. She negotiated
a Hothioran pardon with King Boarhort's minister of the navy and gained
that kingdom's aid in laying a trap for the Bilge Rat when he sailed in
unsuspecting. In their first collision Tana learned why the man was
a legend among her kind. The Red Lioness was destroyed and her crew
captured. Tana herself avoided the humiliation of requesting clemency
from her hated enemy, so swam ashore by herself.
The Shucassamite militia soon had her marooned men in tow and were beating
the brush for Tana, who was wanted in Shucassam for robbing The Pride of
the Desert, a ship laden with royal gifts for the Padillan state in Girion.
Somehow she made it safely into Zefnar, where she contacted her secret
agents there and received disguise and shelter.
But her cooperation with the Hothiorans against a fellow pirate had been
rash. She would face trial for violating the pirate articles and
the penalty could be brutal. So Tana decided to let the Westward
Islands be, until the lord captains there realized that they needed her
more than Bilge Rat.
She took a coasting vessel to Port Lork and put herself at the service
of the royal navy. Her misadventure along the coast of Shucassam
had not impressed her would-be masters, but she was given a small patrol
both and in several months had proven her worth.
Hothior's subsequent war with Mivior had the Hothioran fleet bottled up
in Port Lork. Tana offered a daring plan, the success of which would
mean a captain's commission and a ship of the line. She prepared
her coaster to look like a private craft and led a few handpicked marines
to the Mivioran fleet. A large part of the fleet was made of mercenaries,
and as always, these contained a large number of former pirates, many of
whom were known to her. With their help, Tana managed a mutiny aboard
several mercenary ships at once, and ran them off in a piratical cruise
against the coast of Mivior, an in the nominal cause of Hothior.
The Mivioran fleet was divided to pursue the pirates, but the sally of
the Hothioran heavily assisted by their marines, mauled the remaining blockaders
and the Miviorans withdrew to Colist.
By this time Bilge Rat had ceased to be a pirate in everything but name
and so Tana was able to return to the Westward Islands in triumph, laden
with the booty of Mivior.
Leaving Hothioran service, Tana soon became a much-sought after mercenary
captain, soon rising to the command of entire fleets. Many say that
Bilge Rat would still prove himself her master, and that Tana waits for
the day she can show that they are wrong.