On board the Maris Stella, Freiburg,
7th day of Primus 1669.
Dearest Melisandre,
I pray you will forgive me for not being able to wait
for your return; Armin tells me he does not know where you are to be found.
I pray Theus, his Prophets and his saints to hold you safe from all dangers
until we can meet again, soon I hope.
I offer you my very best wishes for the new year, but
I confess to you that I see it opening with great foreboding. You
will understand why in a moment, after I have told you of my most recent
peregrinations.
I hope you have received my last letter, sent in early
Decimus. Since then, I have been spending my time fulfilling my orders
from the Admiralty, viz.: to patrol the Trade Sea and intercept Vendel
merchant ships trading with Montaigne. This I did with all due energy,
until it was almost time for La Noche Divina, Prophets’ Mass, and Año
Nuevo. I had been hoping to return here to Freiburg in time to give
my men shore leave and to spend the holiday with my family and friends,
before wintering in Freiburg.
But just as I was ready to return, I encountered a
raider ship from Vestenmannavnjar. The captain told me she had learned
of the Maris Stella’s activities in the Trade Sea, and was hoping
to enlist our aid against a merchant convoy bound for Montaigne under mixed
escort. After making clear that I would not condone or allow the
mistreatment or slaughtering of prisoners, I agreed to her offer and we
joined forces. The Maris Stella sank a Montaigne frigate and
captured a Vendel fleut, although alas my crew was severely hurt in the
naval action and I lost many good men.
I thought this was going to be the end of our involvement
with the Vesten, for in truth neither the men nor I liked allying with
their weather sorcerers. But despite my earlier discussion with the
Vesten captain, my erstwhile allies then claimed one of the Vendel prisoners
I had captured, arguing that he was a known criminal. The prisoner
was a mere boy of seventeen; after investigating this claim, I learned
that two years before, he had worked for a Vendel merchant and helped to
repossess cattle from Vesten farmers unable to make the payments on their
loans. He was accused of cattle theft, for which the penalty was
death.
I will not bore you with the details. I defended
the boy and pleaded for his life, because I did not think it just or fair
to kill him. But the Vesten made it clear that if I refused to turn
him over, they would consider this an act of war and would simply attack
my vessel and take the boy. They outmanned and outsized us, and with
their sorcery could also simply rob us of the power to sail. I did
not want to have the rest of my crew massacred, but upon learning
that the sentence was carried out by a combat to the death between accused
and accuser, I said I would take the boy’s place.
The man who accused, the bosun of the Vesten ship,
was in fact a good and fair man. He did not want to kill me, which
he would easily have done. Instead he pleaded with their council
and in the end the boy was indentured to him rather than killed.
But another man, the first mate, was very angered by my interference, claiming
that I was siding with the enemies of Vestenmannavnjar. He challenged
me to a trial by combat, which I thought was an utterly stupid idea, but
the Vesten put great stock in these contests and I eventually accepted
the challenge to not change this man’s mind, but to convince the rest of
the Vesten that I was not siding with their enemies.
No one was more surprised than I when I won.
I truly expected to be reduced to a pulp – or worse – by this man.
But win I did, and although I was pleased with the victory, in the end
it would be the cause of more trouble for me.
You see, this fight for an ethical dilemma that no
Vesten (and, I fear, none of my crew either) was able to fathom, followed
by an unlikely victory, somehow convinced the captain that I was the one
designated by one of the holy soothsayer, the Oracle, and that I must be
brought to meet this Oracle. I wanted no part of it, repelled by
these heathen sorcerers and soothsayers, but then the captain made it clear
than my agreement was not required. Rather than have my crew be massacred
in an attempt to rescue me, I gave my word to accompany my Vesten “hosts”
to the Oracle.
We sailed to a northern island where I left my crew
and vessel to effect repairs, and two Vesten (a sorceress and a sort of
minstrel) took me to the Vendel city of Kirk. From there we climbed
the mountains inland to reach the lair of this crone.
After fighting our way through mountain goblins, we
reached the Oracle at last. She was an ancient, withered, blind old
woman who seemed to have stepped right out of a scary fairytale.
She toiled over a cauldron of stew which I had been warned not to
accept a taste of. Although she spoke only in the Vesten language,
which the minstrel then translated into Théan for me, she seemed
to understand every word I said.
She gave me a bone-chilling prophecy of doom, of the
end times (which the Vesten call Ragnarok).
If I am to believe her words, they are close. Pity this is also what
the likes of Cardinal Verdugo have been saying; I would hate for him to
be right on this matter. It also hinted at more personal disaster,
although I suppose that should be a small matter compared to the End Times.
Yet I confess that it is the personal aspect which has seized my mind most
firmly; such is human nature, I suppose.
As prophesies are wont to be (and I generally place
low confidence in these), the words were confusing and frightening, giving
little understanding. But I have come to believe that the first stanza
points to a task I must accomplish in southern Eisen. Unfortunately,
the words indicate quite insistently that I must accomplish this task alone
and with all haste. Hence, my uncouth arrival to and flight from
Freiburg. I hope to return to Freiburg within a few weeks, and I
pray you will not hold this behaviour against me.
May Theus hold you safe from all harm, my dear friend.
Constanza
