Chapter 313: Keelhauled

Among the Crew of Honoria's revenge, one lass, in particular, stood out among the primarily European crew. This woman was named Nazeeha el-Fahmy; she was a woman from the Mamluke Sultanate who had made her way to Austria as a slave sometime earlier in her life.

However, due to Berengar's legal reforms that outlawed slavery within the Kingdom of Austria, Nazeeha soon found herself accessible and incapable of working. After all, she was both a woman and a minority, and she was not afforded the privileges that the normal Austrians received.

With nowhere to go in life, she had ended up selling her body to sustain herself within the city of Kufstein; after all, a foreign beauty was a highly desirable object by many of the patrons who visited the brothel where she had previously worked.

Nazeeha was out purchasing supplies on one fateful day when she came across Princess Honoria, who had introduced herself as Valeria Zonara. The two ended up chatting for some time before the runaway princess gave Nazeeha an offer, one where she could live a life of freedom and fortune.

After carefully considering the offer, Nazeeha had joined Valeria's Crew. She did not mind that Valeria was a Byzantine, despite their two peoples being bitter enemies for centuries; after all, it was not like she was a member of the Byzantine aristocracy who was responsible for the numerous invasions into her people's lands.

Or so she thought, and as such, she had been enjoying her time as a member of Honoria's Crew. However, the more she utilized the weapons provided to her by the Austrian Crown, the more she became convinced that such weapons needed to be smuggled into her homeland so that they could be used to repel the Byzantine invaders.

Due to Austria's military aid, most of Egypt and Lybia had fallen to the Byzantines. With it, the most economic regions of her homeland had fallen to their bitter enemies. As a profoundly patriotic woman, Nazeeha desired to aid her people in whatever way she could.

Thus while the Crew of Honoria's Revenge was docked in the city of Benghazi to sell the loot they had acquired from the vessels they had recently ransacked, Nazeeha was undertaking another mission. Hidden beneath her cloak was one of the 1421 Repeating Flintlocks that Berengar had designed for Honoria's use.

She was secretly heading to a clandestine meeting between herself and a representative of the Mamluke Sultanate. Unbeknownst to her, she had been followed by a mysterious agent in the shadows.

For over a year now, Linde's spy network had expanded to Byzantium and the Mamluke Sultanate; with the opening of trade routes across the Mediterranean largely in part to Berengar's naval expansion, opportunities for embedding agents across the coastal regions of the sea presented themselves.

Never one to miss an opportunity, Linde had taken this chance to expand and strengthen her spy network. As such, a small cell of Austria's intelligence agency was located in Benghazi and had become aware of this meetup. They had quickly identified the target and followed her to the meeting, where she was now standing face to face with a member of the Mamluke military.

The man was a high-ranking official tasked by the Sultan to procure the advanced weaponry that the woman claimed she had come across. As he stood in front of Nazeeha, he asked the question on his mind.

"Do you have what you have promised to bring?"

Nazeeha nodded her head silently before revealing the repeating flintlock. The moment the officer gazed upon the weapon, he knew it was not something remotely similar to the arquebuses in use by the Byzantine Forces.

As such, he reached out and grabbed ahold of the weapon, pointing it into the air and cocking the action back before firing. The shot flew into the air, and after it had done so, he cocked the flintlock back and fired again.

After several uses of the weapon, the officer nodded his head with an excited grin curved upon his lips. He handed the gun off to a subordinate before taking out a small chest filled with gold coins, which he handed over to Nazeeha.

"Your service to the Sultanate is greatly appreciated, a small reward on behalf of the Sultan as proof of his gratitude."

Nazeeha eyes widened as she saw this wealth and quickly grasped ahold of it before stashing it away beneath her cloak; she bowed her head respectfully before departing from the meeting area.

The young Arab woman was utterly unaware that after she had left earshot, the officer and his assistant were assassinated by the Austrian agents. The weapon was recovered, and Honoria had been informed of the woman's betrayal.

As such, when Nazeeha finally returned to the vessel after spending her newfound wealth on frivolities, she found Honoria and the Crew gathered before her, armed and ready to restrain her.

Nazeeha knew not what she had done to invoke their ire, but she knew she was in trouble; however, before she could escape, one of the girls hit her on the back of the head with the stock of her firearm, knocking the lass out completely.

When she finally came to, she was tied up with steel wire rope and lined against the ship's edge. Nazeeha had no idea that her treachery had been revealed and attempted to plead with Honoria.

"Captian? What are you doing? Let me go; I have done nothing wrong!"

However, in response, Honoria simply sneered in disgust before retrieving the repeating flintlock that Nazeeha had sold to the Sultanate. The weapon had the same proof mark and the serial number of the musket she had handed over to the Sultanate, and after observing this, the Arab beauty's eyes widened in disbelief.

Seeing Nazeeha's expression, a sadistic grin curved itself upon Honoria's immaculate lips as she asked the question on her mind.

"Do you deny that you have sold the weapons afforded to you by the Austrian Crown to its enemies?"

After hearing this question, Nazeeha looked away; she knew there was nothing she could say to prove her innocence; evidently, the Agents of the Austrian Crown had found out about her betrayal, and they had the evidence to prove it.

As such, the woman accepted her fate, though she had no way of knowing just how cruel the punishment for her crimes was. With the evidence presented before the crew and a lack of denial for the crimes, Honoria declared Nazeeha's guilt for all of the crew to witness.

"Nazeeha el-Fahmy, for supplying the rivals of the Austrian Crown with the advanced weapons his Majesty's generosity has afforded us, you have not only betrayed this crew but endangered the lives of every one of your sisters who you have fought beside. For the crime of treason and mutiny, there is only one punishment. I sentence you to be keelhauled! May God have mercy on your soul!"

With this decree uttered, the steel wire rope bindings were looped beneath the vessel before Nazeeha was tossed into the Meditteranean; as the ship sailed through the sea, Nazeeha was slowly dragged along the keel of the vessel. Multiple lacerations accumulated on her back as she was violently forced across the sharp steel-plated keel; whether the woman bled out in the water or drowned was uncertain.

However, what was undeniable was that Nazeeha had died a miserable death for her actions against the crew, and more importantly, the Crown of Austria. If Berengar's agents were not already in Benghazi spying on the Sultanate for the Byzantine Empire; then, the likelihood of Berengar's rivals reversing engineering such advanced weaponry within the next ten years was high.

Luckily for Austria, their intelligence network had spread across the Mediterranean and was able to intercept such valuable technology before it fell into the wrong hands. With the increase in trade to the regions of the Mediterranean, Berengar was able to easily infiltrate the societies that shared the sea, to what degree depended entirely on the area his Agents had entered.

With this in mind, Honoria sighed heavily as she returned to her Captain's quarters with a bottle of whiskey in her hands. It was never easy to punish someone you thought of us as a friend after they had betrayed you. As such, the runaway princess began to sulk alone in her room; as she drank from the whiskey bottle, she expressed the thoughts on her mind.

"Berengar, I miss you... When will you return home?"

Honoria was utterly unaware that Elfrun had been listening to her complaints from the other side of her door, with an ugly expression on her otherwise cute face. The fact that Honoria thought of Berengar in such times greatly annoyed the adolescent girl. As such, she refused to stand by and listen to Honoria's words; instead, she departed from the corridor in silence. Nobody ever was aware that she had been eavesdropping on the Captain.