Savarus

These are harsh times, there's no escaping it. The very essence of the Middle Ages—when the sea belonged not to gods or kings, but to those bold enough to reclaim it. Pirates. Fearsome people, an encounter with whom promised only a cold, salty eternity.

Among them was Savarus, a name that made even the wind catch its breath.

He reigned supreme aboard his ship—a colossus whose sides glistened with ivory and red gold stripped from fallen captains. Forty-six souls of the crew, welded together by iron discipline and fear of their master. No one dared to defy Savarus, for everyone knew that those who stood in his way were wiped from the face of the earth as carefully as if they had never existed. And he hated women. He despised them with all the black fury that can live in a sailor's heart.

But one day, at an hour when the sun was setting towards the water, drenching the horizon with blood, Savarus saw something that he himself could not believe.

Mermaid.

She thrashed in the nets in the shallows of an abandoned island. Her tail—wonderful, iridescent, like mother-of-pearl at the bottom of the abyss—was bound in heavy chains. Someone had deliberately shackled this creature, abandoned her to die among the rocks, like a hardened sinner. But even in her shackles, even in the grip of her accursed rigging, she was as beautiful as morning mist over a calm sea. Her fins curled like tongues of black flame.

Savarus ordered her aboard without a word. And when the chain scraped across the deck and the sun illuminated the wet strands of hair on her shoulders, he slowly squatted down in front of her, examining her as one might look at a blade found in ruins—with apprehension and greed.

"Well," his voice was low, saturated with the salt and copper of past victories. "Who did this to you, beauty? And for what deeds?.. Tell me, don't keep me in suspense. In our navy, we get patted on the head for telling the truth. True, rarely. So seize the moment."

Savarus's ship, the Black Throne, cut through the thick midday water like a knife through flesh. The sun was at its zenith, scorching the deck white, but the captain didn't retreat into the shadows. He stood at the gunwale, gazing at the patch of land looming ahead—an unremarkable island, like hundreds of others in these waters. A wasteland. A place where the dead are brought or the doomed are abandoned. "Left hand drive," he said through clenched teeth. "There's someone there." The crew exchanged glances. No one dared ask how the captain knew. Savarus was rarely wrong. When the ship's bow hit the sandy bottom at the shoreline, the first thing the sailors saw was nets. Fishing nets, old, twisted with chains that would have been shameful enough to chain a convict. And inside the net—not a fish. Not an animal. Not a man. She. Savarus jumped into the water first—something he never did. Usually, he sent his striped watchdogs ahead. But now he approached, treading heavily on the rocks, and froze. A mermaid. Alive. Made of flesh and scales—not the kind of salty tales you hear in port taverns. Her tail, shimmering in the sun like mercury, was bound in iron up to her waist. Her slender arms were covered in wounds. Even her fins, delicate, almost transparent, were roughly clamped together. Someone had done this deliberately—not to kill immediately, but to kill over a long period of time. Her eyes—huge, wet as the ocean floor—looked at Savarus without fear. Or perhaps the fear was too deep to show. He silently snatched up his cleaver and cut the chains with a single blow. He tore the net off with his hands, cutting his palms, but didn't notice. He picked up the mermaid—light as a foamy crest—and carried her to the ship. No one was breathing on deck. Savarus lowered her onto the wet boards, next to a barrel of fresh water, and squatted down—huge, terrifying, in a black cloak with gold embroidery. Blood dripped from his fingers—his own, not someone else's. "Well," he began hoarsely, his voice, accustomed to giving orders in a hurricane-force wind, suddenly dropping a half-tone. "Tell me, girl. Who did this to you at sea? It wasn't the fishermen who did this. And it wasn't the soldiers either."