Demesne Patron EX SS 30 – Banditry (Patreon)

Grem had never thought he would find himself turning to banditry. During his time in the militia, he'd had to lead men to put down bandit gangs. The bandits had hidden in either the colored borders between demesnes where a spring or stream let them wash and survive for extended periods of time between raids into Lomabuyar Demesne. They attacked edge farms and logging camps, stealing food, warm clothes and firewood for themselves until the militia could come to wash them out.

He'd never had sympathy for such people. They stole and killed, hurting the people he had sworn to protect, and forcing him and his brothers and sisters in the militia to have to leave their nice, warm forts and camps to put them down. More than once he'd been part of desperate retreats as bandit wizards had set off fire, lightning, steam and freezing liquid air at them, struck at them with undead beasts, trapped them in vistas to be easier targets to arrows and magic, or simply struck down by a Mentalist. The retaliatory strikes, once the survivors had managed to get back and militia wizards had been called for, had been bloody and vengeful affairs, and he would be lying if he said he hadn't been there along with everyone else, giving no quarter and putting anything that would burn to the torch so that the colors would burn them all.

Grem had even been part of a group of militia who had been sent to against a group of bandits who'd had the audacity to found a demesne beyond the edge of Lomabuya Demesne, in the swathes of color that was the demesne's border with Sedagata Demesne. The militia hadn't done more than act as a line to keep any stragglers from escaping. Militia wizards from the dungeon's own elite squads and some of the Dungeon Binder's tame wisplings, undead and more things he didn't have names for had moved to overwhelm the bandit demesne with the Dungeon Binder's power. The earth had heaved like a blanket being kicked off, fire and lightning had erupted like bubbles from a pot of boiling water, molten earth had spewed like blood from an artery, and trees like fallen like snow as they had watched in awe and horror.

The militia had marched away from there that same day, and the next time Grem had passed that place some months later, the colors had taken it again.

That had been years ago, when he'd been younger. Now here he was, turning to banditry, though it was a form of banditry he had had never known was possible. A water bandit, of all things. It would have been unthinkable in the mountains of Lomabuyar Demesne, but here on the ocean, on water beyond the reach of any Dungeon Binder, it was possible.

The winter had been harsh that year, or so Grem had heard. Personally, he had thought the winter had been unexceptional, but he supposed that was his experience with Lomabuyar Demesne’s northern winters biasing him. Still, if Mykwohker—who had insisted they all simply call him Myk—hadn’t allowed Grem, Naineb and Rann to stay with him that season, the three of them would all have frozen to death on the streets. Even with a place to stay, the four of them had found themselves needing to venture out into the cold to buy food. When they hadn’t had enough money, they’d stolen food.

Grem had worried Myk would turn on them once he realized the providence of the food they were bringing back, but the man had been surprisingly understanding. “What else can you do, starve to death? Your lives are worth far more than whatever they’re losing from you making off with their food,” he’d said. “It’s not like you stole the food from anyone who needs it, right? We’ll just remember to pay them back or something when things turn around for us and we have the money. In the meantime, eat!”

He’d gone to steal food with them the next day, helping keep watch as Naineb had grabbed handfuls of meat buns—all the while muttering about how it was all that woman’s fault she was being forced to steal like a criminal—before the four of them had quickly made themselves scarce, and Myk had joined them in eating their ill-gotten meal.

“Now I’m in this like the rest of you,” he’d said with a smile after he’d taken a bit of one of the meat buns. “We’re all in this together now.”

They had survived the winter, but when spring had arrived, there hadn’t been enough beads for Myk to continue paying for the room in the boarding house. The three of them had found themselves back out on the streets once more, thrown back into the streets once more, only this time Myk was with them, carrying the pack of all his worldly possessions. However, instead of doing as they had done and slowly selling off what he owned to live, focusing only on survival, Myk had extended his hand to the other homeless around them. Even when it started to get harder to get food because of their increasingly unwashed appearance, he'd shared what little he'd had with the other homeless who had inevitably started trailing after them.

The gang had grown from that as more and more people had been drawn in by Myk's proferred food.

Grem had objected, until their increased numbers had allowed them to raid a bakery for enough bread to feed them for three days.

Their crimes and banditry had escalated from there, culminating in them setting fire to a warehouse and stealing a ship from Covehold's harbor. They'd charged up the ramp and thrown the ship's remaining crewmen over the side and into the water to their deaths while the dockworkers were distracted by the burning warehouse. Jharri, a Whisperer that Myk had managed to talk into joining their gang, had gotten the ship's steam driver working to let them turn the ship around after the ropes holding the ship in place had been cut. The gang been able to ride the wind and the driver out of the bay and had sailed in as straight a line as they could until the two wizards with them then had both declared they were outside of Covehold Demesne's boundaries. Mentalists had tried to pursue them in the air, but with the wind at their backs they'd managed to outlast their pursuers, forcing the wizards to turn back towards Covehold Demesne.

Once the Mentalists had gone out of sight over the horizon, Myk had directed the ship to turn in a wide arc that would slowly take them back to land as well as keep them out of sight of any other pursuing Mentalists they had eventually reached the shore again.

The ship had been well-stocked with food but little water, but since they had a Whisperer with them, they had been able to purify salt water into something drinkable. Still, they had gone through all the drinkable water that first night as the gang that had gathered itself around Mykwohker had celebrated their escape and gorged themselves on the ship's provisions, or at least the ones they could eat easily. All the fruit had been devoured, as well as some of the meat that they'd managed to toss into a pot and start to stew before they'd gotten impatient.

After that, the difficulties began.

The next day, the indulgent gluttony of victory had made way for the difficulties of their new circumstances. Given their old circumstances had been ‘mostly on the streets’ as they slowly escalated their thievery to be able to get enough food for the slowly growing gang, it was still an improvement since they now had shelter and food. Still, between Myk, Grem, and some of the older men and women, they’d been able to get the rest of the gang working on the promise of better circumstances. The most fastidious and reliable had been taught how to cook the barrels of salted meat, grain, and other provisions in the hold into militia food, which after all their recent lack of eating had tasted wonderful. The rest, Myk had taken to help him work out how to use the sail so that Jharri wouldn’t need to imbue the steam driver with heat to move the ship.

By the second day, Myk was having them dismantle the sail.

“Look, a sail like this only really works when the wind is right behind you,” Myk had said confidently. “Yhon, Karis, Vov and Vil can use the tools they found to build a moving horizontal mast and let us rework the sail into one that can catch the wind from more angles. It will let us be more maneuverable so we’ll have an easier time slipping back into Covehold Demesne’s territory at night to get the Iridescence off us and out again without their Dungeon Binder noticing and setting us on fire. Trust me Grem, I know what I’m doing.”

In the end, they hadn’t had enough tools to build ‘horizontal mast’, but they’d been able to remove the sail from the mast and hang it up again according to Myk directions, as well as set up an arrangement of ropes and pulleys that allowed them to adjust the position of the sail. As Myk had said, the arrangement had allowed them to catch the wind from more angles, but it needed to be constantly adjusted, and the ropes and pulleys needed to angle it to the wind was hazardous. Still, with practice they’d been able to use the reconfigured sail to catch the wind from most angles that was even a little bit behind the ship.

Once they’d managed to sell the first batch of furs and used the profits to buy supplies, those among them who had any sort of experience in sewing had gotten to work on turning furs into winter clothes and bedding, while others had worked on making the ship more livable. They had divided the space in the hold, everyone claiming their own little space, with raw furs to keep them all warm. A few had been frivolous with the furs still unsold, some even laying them on the floor to walk on! The fact that every three or four days they’d harness the winds to swing back ground Covehold Demesne’s boundary to get rid of Iridescence growth on the ship meant that didn’t need to wash the ship, making the use of the furs in that way viable.

After the distraction with the sail, which had admittedly occupied everyone so they wouldn't become restless, the question had arisen about what they would do with their bounty of trade goods aboard the ship.

"Well, it's not like we can eat it," Myk said when the gang had met about the matter, all wearing clean clothes raided from the sailor's belongings—which while not the cleanest were much cleaner than what most of the gang as wearing—and bathed using soap from the ship's stores, "so why don't we sell most of it? That's what it's there for, after all. we can use that to buy the things we can actually use, like better food and new clothes!"

Everyone had been amused at the idea of selling the very goods they'd stolen along with the ship back to Covehold Demesne. They'd made bundles of some of the furs—a small fraction of the goods aboard the ship—and Myk had gathered men to help him carry the bundles overland… and sold them back in Covehold Demesne, to one of the merchant houses who that had set up fur trading house just outside the city. The profits from the audacious sale had been used to buy coal, more food, soap, pawned but clean clothes, sewing materials to turn the furs the still had into warm clothes for winter, bedrolls and blankets.

"This is just the beginning," Myk said as their new bounty was handed out to everyone. "We have two wizards with us. We could set up our own demesne, build a home of our own. And if we need anything else, we have a nice store of furry savings we can dip into."

"And then?" Grem said quietly from where he stood next to Myk.

"I don't know," Myk had said cheerfully. "I'm making this shit up as I go along. But at least we're not starving anymore, right?"

Grem had never had any sympathy for bandits. He'd thought them weak, cowardly people, thieves who'd fattened themselves on the work of others, leaving nothing but blood and destruction in their wake.

For the first time, he wondered what had caused them to be thrown out into the glitter.