Carnifex

Nicobar Straits, 7/4/467

It had all been going far too well, Parameswara knew. Something had to go wrong eventually.

"Eventually" came in the form of another group of Malay pirates heading out just as Parameswara's group was moving in. The outgoing pirates spotted one of Parameswara's launches looking alone and vulnerable and motored over to seize it. By the time they realized that that launch was not alone it was too late; the seizure turned into a fight which quickly escalated into a general melee at sea.

Parameswara's boys won that fight handily. When they were finished, and it only took a matter of minutes, three of their foes boats were burning on the haze-covered water. The boats themselves were draped with hacked and shot bodies, the blood that collected in the scuppers beginning to steam from the heat.

It's a terrible waste of good seacraft, Parameswara mourned.

Worse, though, was that the fight, while desperate in places, had overall gone too easily and ended too quickly. Their blood up, Parameswara's men hastily forced a landing and began an assault into the village from which their fellow Malay pirates had come. There, the massacre became general with the assaulting pirates shooting or hacking down old men, women, children and even the dogs and pigs of the place.

It was only with the greatest difficulty, and only after the huts were already burning, that the pirate chieftain and al Naquib were able to bring the men to order. By that time, there was nothing left but fifty or so women and children, most of them already raped at least once, remaining. The survivors wept, some of them. Others stood in shock. Parameswara was shocked himself.

"It was so damned unnecessary," he cursed at no one in particular.

"I'm not so sure," said al Naquib, who was rapidly picking up the local lingo. "We had already, maybe, made as much peaceful progress as we could. Didn't you pick your early conquests based on how likely they would be to fold without having to fight or massacre? Didn't you push the ones most likely to resist to the back of the list? Was not this group one you thought might put up a fight anyway?"

Parameswara shrugged. It was true but . . .

"Well they did. And they've paid for it. Now there are just about enough survivors to spread the word: If you resist the great new pirate king, Parameswara, all you will earn is death. So let's let these go with nothing but the clothes on their backs, their eyes to weep with and their tongues to spread the word."

* * *

Within a fortnight, the first chief of the still independent pirate bands along either side of the Nicobar Straits arrived at Parameswara's newly fortified coastal town to offer his allegiance to the new paramount chief.