The Doge

The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight
by Johnny Pez
7 November 2001

Venice
17 June SE 288 [1060 CE]
Hermann Ulfson, Thane of Halberstadt, stood atop a pile of rubble that was once a house, and glared across the Laguna Veneta at the unsacked islands of Venice. Wealth untold beckoned to him from the unreachable houses, shops and churches. Being a devout Submissive, Hermann swore by Holy Ragnar, the North Star, the Sacred Teachings, and anything else he could think of, turning the smoky air even darker with his profanity.

"By Ragnar's Sword, I'll gut those dog-bothering infidels if it's the last thing I do!" Hermann bellowed in his native Saxon.

"But how, My Lord?" wondered his Chief Companion, Erhard the Ugly. "We're over here, and they're over there, and there are all those ships between us."

"Buggered if I know," Hermann muttered to himself. His angry glare swung around from the unlootable town beyond the Laguna to the collection of Companions, retainers and hangers-on who stood in a group behind him in the courtyard of the ruined house. "Do any of you crack-pated pig-sniffers have any ideas?"

There was silence from the assembled men until one of them stood forth and said, "My Lord, I have a cunning plan!" Hermann recognized the speaker as Burgrick the Smelly, the by-blow of one of his father's Companions and a Bavarian drudge.

"What is it, then, lad?" said Hermann.

"What if," said Burgrick, "we invite the Doge of Venice and his men over to parley, then overpower them and take over their ships?"

"No, wait!" Hermann exclaimed. "I've got an idea! We invite the Doge of Venice and his men over to parley, then overpower them and take over their ships!"

"Good idea, My Lord!" said Burgrick encouragingly.

Hermann assigned Burgrick the task of wading out into the Laguna holding a white shield on a pole. Eventually one of the Venetian ships came close enough for Burgrick to call out Hermann's proposed parley. Unfortunately, none on the Venetian ship spoke Saxon, and Burgrick of course spoke nothing else, so he had to wade back to shore. A search among Hermann's men turned up a Swede named Svein who had learned Greek during a stay in Constantinople, and he was sent out in Burgrick's place with the shield on the pole. Svein was eventually able to make himself understood to some of the crew on the Venetian ship, which took Hermann's proposal back to the Venetians.

A rain fell during the night, dousing the last of the fires Hermann's men had set during the sack of the mainland town (they never did learn its name), and the Saxons busied themselves with the important business of looting the town's wealth and killing those remaining inhabitants who refused conversion to Submission. In the morning, after the mist had burned off, one of the Venetian ships approached close enough for Svein to wade out and converse with the crew.

When he returned to Hermann, Svein reported that the Doge had agreed to a parley, and that a boat would be sent to the mainland to convey Hermann to Venice.

Hermann swore some more. "By Ragnar's hairy breeks, I'm not supposed to go to them, they're supposed to come to us! How in Hel's name am I going to seize their ships if they won't land them? Svein, go back and tell those uncle-buggering infidels that I don't trust them! Either they come here to parley or the deal's off!"

Svein duly relayed Hermann's words, and the Venetian ship returned to the islands. As the day wore on, Hermann noticed some unhappy muttering among his men and some dirty looks sent covertly in his direction. At duskfall, Erhard came to Hermann's tent.

"My Lord," he said, "the men aren't very happy waiting around here. They say they have all the loot and slaves they're going to find here, and there doesn't seem to be any way to reach Venice. The Imperial Army is going to be turning up soon, and nobody wants to face those Easterners with their small, fast horses and their wicked curved blades."

Hermann's face, which was red as an apple at the best of times, turned an alarming shade of purple. "You tell those cowardly, no-good, turnip-eating whoresons that we'll go when I puking well say we'll go! Any man I catch trying to scarper is going to have his guts torn out and roasted over a low fire!"

The tension got higher and higher in the Saxon camp as the next day passed with no word from the Venetians. Hermann finally decided that he was going to have to give his men a good old-fashioned pep talk, and if that didn't stop the bellyaching he'd string a couple of them up. The word went out the next morning that Hermann was going to address the men, and they all gathered around his tent to hear him.

"Now, I know there's been some talk," Hermann told them, "about how we ought to be happy with what we've got and hightail it before the Imps show up." This provoked a round of agreement from the crowd, more than Hermann had been counting on in fact. "But you all know as well as I do how many of the buggers here got away to the islands before we could take the town. They're all over there right now, not a league away, loaded down with gold and jewelry, the best that they had, that they took away with them! Now I've got a plan that's going to get us over there, and when we do we're all going to be as rich as kings when we get back home! But it's going to take a bit of time for the plan to work itself out. I say that it's worth a little waiting if we're all going to be as rich as kings! If there's anyone out there who thinks being well-off today is better than being rich tomorrow, they can light out now! Go ahead! There'll just be that much more for the rest of us!"

Hermann was rather disappointed when none of the men in the crowd made to walk away. They'd all been with him too long, though, to believe him when he said he'd let anyone go. Nevertheless, the men grew quiet, and as the sun passed into the west a ship came out from the islands. Svein waded out again into the Laguna, then came back to tell Hermann that the Doge had agreed to his terms for parley, and would come out himself the next day.

Far into the night Hermann and his Companions talked and planned, and as dawn broke the Saxons were hidden around the ruins of the town, waiting to spring upon the Doge and his party when they came to parley.

Hermann and the Saxons looked on with awe at the ship that came out from the islands to meet them. The hull had been painted all the colors of the rainbow, and bright metalwork gleamed everywhere. Here in truth was a vessel worthy of the famed Doge of Venice.

The Doge's ship was closing on the dock where Hermann and his Companions waited, when the Saxon Thane saw a long metal tube swing up from amidships, and around to point directly at him. Then a gout of fire erupted from the tube and arced through the sky, landing in the midst of Hermann's Companions. Hermann himself, standing at the head of the line, was spared the initial blast, though he was trapped at the end of the dock. The awful screams of a score of burning men filled the air, and the heat of the flames drove Hermann off the dock and into the dark waters of the Laguna. Topheavy in his mail shirt, Hermann just had time to look back to shore and see a troop of mounted Easterners charging his remaining men, before his feet slipped in the seabottom ooze and he was pulled under by the weight of his armor.

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