Chapter 307
Chapter 307
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 307
"But will mounting the Yudonno like that really be effective?"
"Unlike battles on land, it's certainly necessary in naval combat. If the pattern of battle so far has been ballista volleys followed by boarding actions, our new weapons are going to change the shape of naval warfare."
Gerard gave a deep smile as he said it, and Bogo let out a soft chuckle. Facing Bogo's expression, Gerard spoke again, his voice firm.
"For us, this isn't an option—it's a necessity. With our shortage of magical forces, we can't help being vulnerable in boarding actions. You know as well as I do that minimizing damage before we close to grapple is the priority."
"That's true."
"On top of that, we have few Pyeonjeon archers to snipe enemy wizards, and the magic storage cases for keeping bows still haven't been fully distributed."
Bogo gave a sober nod, and Gerard shifted his gaze toward the soldiers shouting as they finished their work, continuing.
"Until now we've only faced merchantmen or under-escorted fleets, so it hasn't been a problem—but this time is different. There's a real possibility we'll be engaging a large-scale regular fleet. And we may have to fight on land as well."
"Was there any such word from the homeland?"
"There wasn't, but we probably can't rule it out. You know better than anyone that the troop strength we have here far exceeds the homeland's."
"......."
"The Holy Empire isn't a child, after all."
Gerard's voice carried a note of something complicated.
"Commander-in-Chief! Fleet Commander Jang!"
"What?"
Chunsam came running up, calling out to Gerard and Bogo. He sprinted up the hill in a single breath and bent over to catch his breath. Gerard clicked his tongue and spoke.
"Not training much these days, I take it?"
"Oh, come on, Commander-in-Chief. I never miss a training session. It’s just that my wives keep me on a tight leash, heh-heh-heh."
"......."
Chunsam was expertly rubbing salt into Gerard's wounds.
"So, what is it?"
Reading Gerard's prickly mood, Bogo swiftly changed the subject.
"Just that something has arrived from the homeland via the teleport formation."
"Has what I asked for come?"
"Huh?"
At Gerard's calm tone, Bogo and Chunsam looked at him with curiosity. But Gerard showed no intention of satisfying their curiosity, simply continuing with what he had to say.
"Tomorrow evening, summon the fleet commanders of every fleet, as well as every front-line captain and first mate of every vessel. By tomorrow evening. Entrust patrol duties to the sailing masters."
"As you command."
At Gerard's order, Bogo and Chunsam thought no further, snapped off booming acknowledgments, and ran back down. Gerard drew a deep breath and gazed out at the distant sea.
"Piracy has its charms, but... still."
Gerard's words were laden with meaning.
The buzz of over a thousand people gathered together conjured the atmosphere of a feast. The sunset glow was fading and the moon was slowly lifting its head above the edge of the sea when Gerard appeared, cutting through the crowd of pirates.
"Everyone here?"
He climbed onto the platform, folded his arms, and looked around as he spoke his first words. His tone was oddly flippant, but no one took him lightly. How many men had mistaken that casual manner and been beaten like dogs?
"Everyone is present except for a handful of men out on patrol!"
"Good."
Jang Bogo answered Gerard's question in a crisp, decisive voice. Seeing that, the pirates clustered together began to sense that the mood was different.
"Doesn't something feel off?"
"Yeah. Huh?"
The gazes of the pirates muttering among themselves shifted to one side. It was because they saw the men who normally traded jokes with them now standing in ranks, fully armed and armored. And every one of them belonged to Gerard's direct fleet personnel assigned to the headquarters.
"Somethin' about this feels weird."
"Tell me about it."
Faced with those figures drawn up without a single trace of disorder, the pirates felt oddly cowed. Whether he knew the pirates' mood or not, Gerard was as nonchalant as ever.
"Hey, Teolbo."
"Aye, Captain."
He was Walter, better known by the name Black Whale, but thanks to the beard covering half his face, Gerard always called him Teolbo. There had been a little resistance at first, but nobody stayed stubborn after a beating, could they?
"Why'd you say you became a pirate?"
"Good grief, have you forgotten already?"
"You talk too much."
At Gerard's second rebuke, Teolbo Walter grumbled a bit but answered anyway.
"Couldn't stand the sight of Imperial bastards, so I beat a tax collector to death and sailed off with my ship."
"Right. And you, One-Eye."
"Dragging all that up again... me, I was with a sub-fleet of the Tomal Kingdom, then when the country got absorbed into the Maritime Empire I got out. That's all."
Gerard pointed them out one by one and made each talk.
"Next. You there."
"I heard this was a growth industry, so I switched careers."
At the word "switch careers," Gerard tilted his head and asked again.
"What was your old job?"
"Bandit."
"......."
"Pwahahaha!"
In an instant, laughter erupted from all sides.
After singling out about a hundred men like that and listening to their answers, Gerard closed his mouth and surveyed the pirates. By now, even the most clueless man would have realized the mood was different from usual.
Gerard kept silent for a long moment, then slowly parted his lips.
"However you slice it, in the end we are pirates. That's not to say the profession is a bad one. We've eaten well and lived well without trouble so far, after all."
This wasn't the same casually flippant Gerard as before.
"So, are you satisfied?"
The pirates couldn't grasp his reason for asking. But at the question—are you satisfied with this life?—they could only tilt their heads. Am I really satisfied with this life?
No one could answer rashly.
"You all know there's a big one coming up soon, yes?"
"Aye!"
To that question they answered with one voice.
"Do you know who the target is?"
"Well, seeing as it's war supplies, wouldn't it be the Four-Nation Alliance's ships?"
"Most likely."
Everyone gave answers, and nearly all of them named the Four-Nation Alliance's supplies, led by Gauri. That was how large the scale of this operation was.
"It's the Federal Empire and the Maritime Empire."
"Ah, right...!"
"......!"
"Who did you just say?"
In an instant, a great ripple passed through the pirates.
Of course, it wasn't as if they'd never faced the fleets of the Federal Empire or the Maritime Empire before. But this time the scale and the opponent were different. It was no less than the Empire Coalition.
"Captain, have you lost your mind!"
"How do you plan to rob two empires at once!"
"Hellfire, I knew something felt wrong!"
Even as the pirates clamored, Gerard showed no intention of reining them in—he simply watched. Through the uproar, a great voice rang out.
"Captain, you've got a plan, right?"
It was Teolbo Walter of the Black Whale Fleet.
At his question, the shouting pirates all turned as one to look at Gerard. This was Gerard, who had pulled off jobs so reckless they seemed insane—and had done it without a single mishap. It was only natural that the pirates looked to him with faith. Controlling the pirates of the Central Sea couldn't be done by force alone.
"Of course."
At Gerard's answer, brimming with confidence, the pirates finally showed expressions of relief. Facing those pirates demanding a clear answer, Gerard slowly opened his mouth.
"However—this is about what comes after the war is over."
The pirates looked at Gerard with puzzlement. Rather than explaining how they would pull off the heist, he was talking about the aftermath.
"The truth is, we've gotten too big."
"What do you mean, Captain?"
"As you know, the war between the Four-Nation Alliance and the Holy Empire has now drawn in the Empire Coalition as well, and it's going to become a true continental war in name and fact. Once this war ends, the empires won't have the capacity to fight another for a considerable while. And what do you suppose will happen then?"
At Gerard's meaningful words, every pirate furrowed his brow and sank into thought.
"Damnation. It's going to be our turn."
"As expected of a former bandit—you think fast when it comes to this kind of thing."
Gerard gave a passing mark to the pirate who used to be a bandit. At that, his comrades turned uneasy eyes toward the bandit-turned-pirate Santare.
"When a big war ends, even among the winners, the ones who didn't distinguish themselves will go around 'stabilizing the surrounding region' with the surplus troops they've got left over, and the losers, for their part, will go around 'stabilizing the country' and purging to erase the memory of defeat. It's obvious. Because after a major war, everyone refrains from fighting each other for a good while. It used to happen all the time on the continent, back when local wars were constant. When there weren't any bandits, they'd wipe out a whole slash-and-burn village and call them bandits. That's the kind of bastards they are."
"Damn it."
Some men, as if they'd half expected the answer, let out glum voices before they knew it.
"Dammit. That filth is exactly why I changed trades..."
Santare spoke again.
"So are you saying we make one huge score this time and then lie low for a while for a while?"
When one pirate cautiously threw out the question, the pirates around him rose up like a swarm of bees and started jeering.
"Hey, you rock-head, is that head of yours just for decoration? He just said these are bastards who'll invent bandits where there aren't any to go purge! They're obviously going to turn this whole area upside down—you think you'll be safe just by hiding?"
"In the end, the only safe place is right here on this main island, in the Sirens' territory!"
The pirates buzzed with agitation.
"Th-then what if we all relocate to the main island?"
"How do you expect that many people to come live on the main island! Are you going to live on nothing but fish? And where will everyone sleep? Judging by the numbers, if the whole force moves here, we'll be sleeping on our feet!"
"Then what the hell do we do!"
When the pirate who'd been ridiculed shouted, the eyes around him naturally turned toward Gerard. Seeing that every pirate wanted an answer from him, Gerard slowly paced across the platform and began to speak.
"First of all—this place is not safe either."
"Why? We've got the Sirens!"
A pirate shouted in protest. Gerard shook his head and went on.
"The reason is wizards."
"Wizards are rare!"
At Gerard's words, the pirates pushed back, clutching at any straw. But Gerard's reply shattered their hopes.
"True. Because wizards are rare, when we were going after merchant ships we seldom saw them, and even when we did, it's true that we managed to snipe them one way or another. But you need to understand that when a war ends, it isn't only soldiers who are left over—wizards are too. We might fend them off once or twice, but if this place is identified as our base, a full-scale invasion is certain. And once that happens, no matter how hard the Sirens sing until their throats burst, the enemy only has to cast Silence magic and all manner of protective spells on their ships and sail in. It's over."
"Th-then..."
"In a word, the reason we've survived this long is, in a sense, simply because the empires have been watching each other."
Despair settled over the crowd.
Pirates were human too. Even if they were pirates who dealt despair to others, they had their own lives and their own stories. No—since coming under Gerard's command, these were men who had avoided meaningless slaughter as much as possible, taking only goods.
Occasionally there had been those who went too far, but such men were driven out of the group, and in the end their own actions called down retribution and they were purged.
"Things will be different now from when we were scattered here and there before."
At Gerard's words, the pirates began nodding.
No matter how much of a pirate a man was, when life stabilized, something was born.
Family. The refugees Gerard had brought, the people rescued from slave ships—they had all become neighbors and family. On top of that, the majority of the men who had become pirates were men who had once lost or been abandoned by family.
What must it have felt like when they built new families?
"Captain. Then are the supplies we're going to take this time meant for the fight ahead?"
One pirate asked the question as if he had made some resolution. In the pirate's eyes burned a single determination.
There was no choice but to protect.
For the first time, the pirates found themselves thinking that they had to protect something.
Men who until now had only ever taken were now being called to protect. Because they had made their living by taking, they understood the difficulty of protecting.
"That's right."
At Gerard's answer, the pirates' mood began to turn solemn.