The messenger arrived at dawn, his horse collapsing in a froth of sweat at the docks. He thrust a scrap of parchment into Taimur's hands—a single line of hastily scrawled Arabic: "Thirty Crusader ships sighted north of Damietta. Heavy with grain and arms."
Taimur crushed the note in his fist. The time had come.
The Egyptian fleet slipped from Alexandria's harbor like a pack of wolves. Twenty Shu'la al-Bahr led the formation, their black hulls low in the water. Fifteen Sahm al-Layl followed, ballistae loaded. Fifteen Asad al-Ma' brought up the rear, packed with marines hungry for blood.
At the helm of the flagship Lion of Yusuf, Captain Red Yusuf tested the wind.
"Allah smiles," he muttered. "They'll smell nothing but their own shit until we're upon them."
The Crusader fleet wallowed like fat geese off Damietta's coast. Their broad-beamed transports sat heavy in the water, packed with Sicilian grain and Frankish steel. Only six escort galleys patrolled their perimeter, their decks cluttered with complacent knights.
A young Egyptian lookout trembled as he counted the crosses on their sails.
"Thirty-eight ships... there must be five hundred fighting men..."
Yusuf backhanded him. "And we have fire."
The Sahm al-Layl struck first.
At three hundred paces, their Qaws al-Jahim ballistae thrummed. Six-foot steel bolts shrieked across the waves. The first punched clean through a transport's hull, pinning three men to the mast like insects. The second struck a knight square in the chest, lifting him into the sea.
Panic erupted. Crusader trumpets blared.
Then the Shu'la al-Bahr closed range.
At one hundred paces, bronze shutters snapped open.
Greek fire roared across the waves in emerald-green jets. It clung to sails, decks, men—burning through chainmail like parchment. A Frankish knight stumbled blindly, his face a melting mask, before plunging overboard. Even the sea itself caught fire where the flames touched.
"Reload!" Yusuf roared. The fire crews worked frantically, pumping the bellows to build pressure. A second volley erupted, this time aimed at the waterlines. Timbers exploded inward, ships swallowing themselves whole.
Where fire didn't claim them, the Asad al-Ma' did.
Khalid's boarding party hit a floundering transport like a storm. His Khanjar al-Bahr hooked a knight's shield, yanking him into the path of a point-blank crossbow bolt. Around him, Egyptian marines butchered in grim silence—curved axes finding groins, throats, the soft gaps between armor plates.
A Frankish captain swung wildly with his broadsword. Khalid ducked, gutted him with an upward slash, and kicked the body overboard before it hit the deck.
Only one Crusader galley escaped—a fast Tarida that cut its own tow lines to flee. Its captain, a grizzled Sicilian, would later kneel before King Baldwin IV, his voice broken:
"They came from nowhere. Their ships moved like ghosts. The fire... dear God, the fire burned on water..."
At dusk, Taimur surveyed the carnage. Charred timbers dotted the sea like funeral pyres. Here and there, Crusader banners slipped beneath the waves.
Yusuf approached, his face streaked with soot and blood.
"We lost eleven men. They lost thirty ships and five hundred souls."
Taimur turned his back on the burning sea.
"Send word to Salahuddin. The Mediterranean is ours."
The morning sun painted Alexandria's harbor in gold as Salahuddin walked the docks, his boots clicking against the weathered planks. The scent of salt and charred wood still clung to the air, mixing with the tang of fresh paint and hemp rope. Before him, the victorious fleet rested—their black hulls scarred but unbroken, their decks stained with the ashes of burned Crusader ships.
Sailors stood at attention as he passed, their backs straight, their chins high. There was a new fire in their eyes—not just relief, not just exhaustion, but something deeper. Pride.
Salahuddin stopped before the flagship, its prow still smeared with soot from Greek fire. He placed a hand on the warm wood, feeling the pulse of the sea beneath the dock.
"From this day," he announced, his voice carrying across the silent harbor, "this fleet shall be known as Dhuyūf al-Bahr—the Sea Wolves."
A murmur swept through the men. Then, like a wave, a cheer rose—deep, guttural, triumphant.
[System Notification: Sea Wolves Established]
[+3000 Merit Points]
[Total MP: 16,800 / 100,000]
Taimur stood slightly apart, watching as Salahuddin moved among the ships, speaking to captains and common sailors alike. The Sultan paused beside a young marine, barely more than a boy, scrubbing blood from the deck with trembling hands.
"Your first battle?" Salahuddin asked.
The boy nodded, his throat working. "I didn't think... I didn't know it would be like that."
Salahuddin placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Nor should you have. But because of you, our shores are safer tonight."
The boy's trembling stilled. He sat a little taller.
As the sun climbed higher, Salahuddin found Taimur at the end of the pier, staring out at the horizon.
"You've given us fangs where we had none," the Sultan said quietly.
Taimur didn't turn. Below them, a crew hauled up buckets of seawater, scrubbing away the last traces of battle. The red-tinged water sloshed back into the sea, dissolving into blue.
"This is only the beginning," Taimur said.
Salahuddin followed his gaze south, toward the open sea.
"They will come for us now. Not as merchants or raiders. As men who have felt fear."
A slow smile touched Taimur's lips.
"Let them."
Far to the north, in the war room of Jerusalem's palace, King Baldwin IV stared at a map unfurled across the table. His advisors stood in stiff silence as the sole surviving captain of the Damietta disaster gave his report.
The man's hands shook as he pointed to the Egyptian coast.
"Their ships... They moved like living things. The fire—"
Baldwin cut him off with a sharp gesture. He traced the coastline with a gauntleted finger, then looked up at his silent lords.
"Send word to Venice. To Genoa. To every port that owes us allegiance."
His voice was steel.
"The game has changed."
Back in Alexandria, lanterns flickered along the docks as night fell. The Dhuyūf al-Bahr rested at anchor, their crews finally allowed to sleep.
On the deck of the flagship, Red Yusuf leaned against the railing, a cup of spiced milk in hand. Below, the water lapped gently against the hull. Somewhere out there, the Mediterranean stretched—wide, dark, and waiting.
He took a long drink and smiled.
The hunt was just getting started.
The scent of charred wood and salt still clung to the docks as Taimur walked among the wounded. Men with bandaged burns and splinter wounds sat in rows beneath the shade of palm-frond awnings, their eyes hollow with exhaustion. The 'Sea Wolves' had won their first battle—but the cost was written in their scars.
He knelt beside a young marine whose gambeson had been torn open by a Frankish boarding axe. The linen padding beneath was stained dark with old blood.
"This could have been stopped," Taimur murmured, pressing a fresh dressing to the wound.
The marine laughed weakly. "By what, effendi? The mercy of Crusaders?"
Taimur's fingers tightened around the bloodied cloth. "By better armor."
The workshop in Alexandria's naval quarter pulsed with heat, the forges breathing like living things as their flames licked at the evening air. Taimur swept a hand across the table, scattering arrowheads to make room for his schematics. The parchments unfurled with a whisper, each line and notation speaking of war yet to come.
"Light cuirasses for every man," he said, his finger tracing the outline of a hardened leather breastplate reinforced with linen laminations. "Not just the marines—the rowers, the deckhands, every soul aboard our ships." His hand moved to the next drawing, detailing studded vambraces down to the bronze rivets. "Forearms protected. Not just from blades, but from the ropes that flay skin from bone when wet."
He flipped to another page, revealing an open-faced helm with a curved nasal guard, its edges rolled to deflect glancing blows. "No more blinded men stumbling overboard because some Frankish archer got lucky."
Then came the greaves—clam-shell in design, with quick-release hinges. "These can be kicked off if a man falls into the sea. We won't let our own drown wrapped in iron. That's a Crusader's death, not ours."
Finally, he laid out the gambeson pants: quilted wool, thick and treated with vinegar and salt. "Greek-fire licks at a man's legs first," he muttered. "This turns flame into agony—but not death."
The last schematic made the gathered smiths lean in. A scale cuirass of interlocking steel plates, no larger than a thumbnail each, sewn into a silk backing.
"For the boarding teams," Taimur said. "The men who leap first onto enemy decks need to survive the first minute."
The chief armorer, a Copt with hands like tanned leather and eyes dulled by decades of heat and iron, picked up the drawing. He studied it for a long moment, then set it down with care—as if the ink itself had weight.
"Sixteen thousand full sets," he said finally, his voice like gravel dragged across steel.
"Light cuirasses, vambraces, helms, greaves, gambeson pants—and two thousand of those scale abominations for your mad boarding parties." He began counting on soot-blackened fingers. "Eight tons of steel. Forty miles of linen cord. Enough leather to sheath every ox in the Delta." His gaze locked onto Taimur's.
"Three hundred thousand dinars. Minimum."
The forge roared behind them, casting flickering shadows across the walls. Somewhere beyond, a hammer rang against an anvil, steady as a heartbeat.
Taimur didn't blink. "How soon?"
The armorer barked a laugh—rough and sharp. "With every smith in Alexandria working dawn to dusk? A year. Maybe. And if you can find silk that won't rot in seawater."
Taimur rolled up the schematics. "Then we start today."
The arrowheads on the table trembled as the door slammed behind him.
The study was quiet, save for the rustle of parchment and the distant cry of gulls from the harbor. Salahuddin sat motionless behind his desk, his fingers steepled beneath his chin as Taimur laid out the numbers. The lamplight flickered across the maps and scrolls cluttering the room, casting long shadows that stretched toward the future.
"Sixteen thousand armored sets," Taimur said, his voice steady. "Light cuirasses, vambraces, helms, gambeson pants, greaves—and scale armor for the boarding teams." He didn't soften the figures. "Three hundred thousand dinars, at minimum."
Salahuddin's gaze didn't waver, but his breath came slower, more deliberate.
"Then the garrison," Taimur continued. "Thirty-nine hundred marines stationed permanently in Alexandria. And at Damietta—" He placed another sheet before the Sultan, the ink still fresh. "Thirty new ships. Six thousand recruits."
For a long moment, there was only the whisper of Nile wind through the latticed windows. Salahuddin's hand moved almost absently, tracing the coastline on the map—the curve of the delta, the vulnerable stretch of Crusader-held ports. His fingers paused at Damietta.
"The second fleet," he said finally. "That, we cannot do without." His thumb pressed into the parchment, as if to anchor the vision. "A blade at the Franks' throat. Yes."
But when he looked up, his eyes were shadowed with the arithmetic of kings. "The armor..."
Taimur recognized the pause. The weighing of blood against gold. Ambition against reality.
"Priorities," Salahuddin murmured. He leaned back, the decision settling on his shoulders like a cloak of mail. "Ships first. Then we clothe our wolves."
Taimur nodded. He had expected nothing less. "Then I'll find the dinars myself."
Salahuddin's brow rose slightly, but he didn't ask. Some things, they both understood, were better left unspoken—until the deed was done.
The docks were alive with the day's last labors when Taimur stepped onto the sun-warmed stones. The scent of salt and tar clung to the air, mingling with the shouts of sailors and the groan of ropes drawn taut against the masts. In the distance, the black hulls of the 'Sea Wolves' rested at anchor, their decks still bearing the scars of their first taste of war.
He walked without hurry, his mind already turning over the pieces of the plan. The System's tactical map hovered faintly at the edge of his vision, glowing with pulsing contours—whispers of opportunity, danger, and untapped wealth.
The war for the sea had only just begun.