The Warg Lord (ASOIAF)(SI)

[drshree129]

Good, About time for Jon to let loose... Been waiting for this. Hope u do justice to the next chapter.

 

[oscar e Sampedro Lopez]

Thank for the chapter. Great story as always

 

[LazyWizard]

"Wolf's blood?" Robb asked in a bewildered tone and the massive shadow cat sitting by his side nodded in a humane manner. "You want me to find out about Wolf's blood?"


Robb and Jon were sitting beside the icy pool in the Godswood of Winterfell. Robb was there in person while Jon was there in the mind of Tiger his Shadow Cat.


Now, normally, a conversation between a human and an animal was a mentally exhausting endeavour at best times. And while the animal having a warg inside his head made it a tad bit easier... it was still not a walk in the godswood.

But with years of practice under their belt, Jon and Robb had managed to make this way of communication into something akin to an art... with Jon using Tiger's paws to write in the soil and Robb using his familiarity with his brother to understand what the ugly words crawled into the ground meant.


"That is correct," Jon wrote agonisingly slowly and in a short form that probably only Robb or Sansa could understand, "I want you to search in the library to find any of the old books that mention the Wolf's Blood. It doesn't matter if it just mentions a small incident or even as a joke, I need you to mark those books and those pages so that I can see them when I come back..."


"Did you forget how big our library is?" Robb asked with a raised eyebrow, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, "How am I supposed to search through all of them while trying to look for just a few words... Especially since most of the old books are in Old Tongue which I am still not particularly good at."


"Oh, you don't need to read all the books. You can just start with all the personal accounts you can find in there like if any of our ancestors wrote a journal or if there is a Maester's diary in there..."


"But why... Did something happen out there?" he asked with a note of worry in his voice.


"No, nothing," Jon replied shaking his head, keeping silent about his upcoming adventures with the Pirates that he knew Robb wouldn't be too happy about, "Just curious about it... want to know where all those stories and legends about the so-called 'Wolf's Blood' originated from..."


"Fine," Robb said nodding with a slight frown on his face, "I will see when I can find the time..."


"Oh, you don't have to do it all on your own," Jon added after seeing the somewhat miserable look on his brother's face, "You can get some of the Acolytes to help you select the appropriate books and I am sure Sansa or Emily wouldn't mind helping out either once you mention that it's to help me..."


Even though they were just words scrawled on the ground, Robb could almost feel that Jon was standing in front of him with a smirk on his face, bragging about how he was the favourite sibling.


"That would indeed make things a lot easier for me..." Robb said with a hint of relief in his voice.


"That busy, huh?"


"Oh, You can't even imagine," Robb breathed out with an exhausted smile, "And not only me, Father, Maester Luwin, The Steward and even Mother, every single one of them are busy with work from dusk to dawn." he said before looking at Jon with a fake annoyed look, "And most of the work is kind of your fault,"


"What? What did I do?" Jon asked somehow making an indignant expression using the Shadow Cat's eyes.


"Have you been to Wintertown lately? Do you know how large it has gotten now? Do you know that the number of people that live there now, during the peak of Summer, is almost triple the amount of people that came down to live there during Winter? And not mention the amount of people that just pass through there daily..." Robb just shook his head with a sigh, "It is just mind-boggling..."


"Are you sure you are not exaggerating?" Jon asked with a hint of scepticism in his voice.


He had been quite busy in Essos for the past few months so he had kept both Frost and Tweety beside him and since neither his Shadow Cat nor his Kraken Inky was any good for wandering the streets of Wintertown, it indeed had been quite a while since he was able to scout how Winterfell or rather how North as a whole has been doing... but still, he didn't think it has been so long as to have as big a change as Robb insinuating.


"I am really not exaggerating here. In fact, even though not quite to the level of King Landing, I think our small town is well on its way to becoming a small city like White Harbour in a few decades if it goes on like this,"


"Now you are just making things up..."


"I am really not..." Robb said with a wry smile, "You wouldn't doubt me if you actually saw the number of smallfolk and Merchant who stand in line every single day in front of Winterfell to meet us to get permission to open a shop or build a house or do business or a dozen other thing... And not to mention the Lord's and the other vassals... Oh! How I hate the lot of them,"


"What? Why?" Jon asked with an amused look on his face, "What did they do?"


"Oh, they are just the worst." Robb said as he shook his head, "Every time one of them arrives at Winterfell gates, we just need to drop everything we are doing and meet them and then entertain them for the duration of their stay no matter how long (and it is quite long for some of them) and not to forget the feasts at night... Ah! I tell you, Jon, we would have already been bankrupted by the amount of small and big feasts we had to throw in their honour during the last year if we had not already gotten so much richer... And it would have been fine if it was just once or twice but the frequency of visits has just reached ridiculousness.... And there is no sign that it would stop anytime soon as all of them are dying to get a piece of the prosperity that had suddenly fallen into our hands..."


"But why? It can't be all just because of the factory and the new blacksmith street, can it?"


"Oh, no, no," Robb said as he immediately shook his head, "I mean, sure, they could have played some part in it but the most crucial reason for all this sudden fortune (which had even evaded all of us for a while) was our decision with... the roads,"


"What? But that doesn't seem right, we are not actually making new roads, are we? We are just repairing and improving the already laid Kingsroad to make travel faster around North." Jon asked with a confused look on his face, "If the roads were so pivotal then wouldn't North or Wintertown have already flourished far in the past when they were first laid down?"


"And you are right about that." Robb nodded his head with a small smile as he had asked the exact same question to Maester Luwin when he suggested that Roads were the main reason behind this Windfall, "The roads alone would have never been enough for all this to happen... if they hadn't had the help of the other changes that had been made in the North during the last five or so years..."


"Huh?"


"Let me explain. You know that even before, Wintertown or rather Winterfell was somewhat of a trade centre of the North right? Or at least they had that intention when our ancestors first laid down here but unfortunately, even after years and years, the town could never fulfil its potential as North was just too big and Winterfell was not very accessible to utilize its location from the other parts of the kingdom. But now... now it can finally do that."


"Ah..." The shadow cat abruptly got an enlightened expression in his eyes as if he finally understood what Robb was trying to explain.


"That's right Wintertown is finally a place that is the easiest for the people of the North to get to and trade." Robb nodded with a somewhat excited expression, "Even before all this, Winterfell was already somewhat well-connected with White Harbour and the East part of the North because of the river White Knife, and now... travel had only become easier due to the frequent ships running up and down to transport the Starkhorse shipments from our factories. And more importantly, due to the now far more practical roads, we are also much better connected to the western holdfasts, most significant of which are Bear Island and Deepwood Motte which are at the moment brimming with goods from the Westerlands and the Reach which they can now easily bring to Wintertown and ultimately transport to the rest of the kingdom... The North has gotten much smaller,"


"This is all so... unbelievable,"


"I know," Robb nodded his head, "Who would have thought that North would change so much... Trade is booming all over, and no one is going hungry as food prices have never been lower. In fact, a few days ago I even saw some merchants that came all the way from Riverlands to trade with us, which is just... beyond belief." Robb shook his head with a smile, "And to think that we are not even one-fourth of the way through with the roads,"


"... It seems that the golden age of the North has finally come,"


"You're right about that... And North is more than ready for it."


...


There were many big and small islands in the chain of rocky islands that make up the Stepstones. But only a few of them were famous and big enough for people other than pirates to know of their names.


The biggest and most famous one was of course Bloodstone Island having previously been a host for not only half a dozen petty Pirate kings but also the infamous, Daemon Targaryen, self-declared King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea, who lived here for a short time during the height of Targaryen power in Westeros.


And now this island came under the rule of the infamous Lysene pirate and sell-sail with the most number of ships in Stepstones, Salladhor Saan.


But the second most famous island was called Grey Gallows and that is where the Ravager Fleet has made their base over the last decade or so.


Even after so many years, the pirates still hadn't made any permanent homes here instead they just used the centuries-old broken-down castles and buildings scattered across the island as shelters because after all their 'jobs' as pirates meant that they spent far more time at sea than at land.


On the top floor of the centermost castle on that Island, the Advisor exited the meeting room with a tired and irritable expression on his face.


The meeting had been a completely useless one just like all the others that had been called for the last week.


Ever since they had arrived back at their base the Pirate King Ravager had begun the long gruelling process of recalling all of his pirates who were scattered across Essos.


It was foolish and wasteful to keep a large number of ships in a single place without them doing anything, so most of Ravager's subordinate pirates had been sprinkled all over Essos in different numbers and they were free to traverse the waters surrounding different free cities looting and killing rich Merchant ships whenever they wanted. And they only came back to the base every few months to share information or sell their loot... both living and non-living kind.


And as for the reasons he was now recalling all his forces, well, there were mainly two of them.


Firstly, to share a very small portion of the massive wealth that he had looted from the Merchants that the Braavosi ships were protecting, which was a must in his position if he wanted to continue using them as cannon fodder in the future.


Secondly, he wanted them present near him and to consolidate his fleet's strength so that in case Braavos was stupid enough to underestimate him and send a weak force as revenge then he could decide at the drop of a hat if it was profitable to stay and fight them off. And if Braavos' retaliation was more fierce than expected he could also make the quick decision of leaving this part of Essos for a while to sail in seas out of Braavos' influence such as the Slaver's Bay.


Because no matter how much he made fun of them in front of his pirates, his actions still showed that he was quite scared of their retaliation.


But this meeting hadn't been about that, no, this meeting had been about the loyal lackeys of Ravager who had been sent to Braavos for that— very important task.


But after sending a short letter two weeks ago that said that they had been successful in their task and had captured a man who could have the information about the whereabouts of Northern Wolf Captain, they had gone completely silent.


So the Ravager had called upon his most trusted and competent pirates to ask them what their opinions were on this situation and what they thought happened to those two.


Most of them decided to go for the ass-licking route and suggested that they were probably on their way back with good news and that the only reason they weren't able to send any letters was that they were on a ship which Ravager somewhat agreed with from the pleased look on his face.


But a few also suggested that maybe they had gotten captured by Braavos while they were on the Island and while the Captain didn't like that he agreed that it was a possibility so he declared that they would only wait for them for four more weeks before deciding on their next course of action.


One of them, a reckless drunk fool, had even dared to suggest while whispering that maybe they had already gotten that secret method of Sea travel from the Northerner but had gotten greedy and decided to keep it a secret for their own use or sell it to the highest bidder...


Obviously, that man didn't survive the meeting for even suggesting something as insulting as Ravager being weak enough to lose control over his own men...


But the Advisor's instincts were telling him something else... that those two were already dead.


After all, the man they were targeting was not a normal human... because if what he had felt back then was right then he may just be a...


"Ah! Advisor! Do you want to partake in some girls? We got some nice goods from those Braavosi Merchants, hehe..." As the former Volantis noble turned pirate was on his way back to his room he was blocked by an ugly pirate with a lewd look on his face. He was one of the smaller pirate captains with barely more than three ships under him.


The screams coming from the nearby room told him that the girls were obviously not very willing in the... partaking.


"No," The advisor replied with a cold expression on his face barely stopping in his path, "Now get your ugly mug out of my face," he continued while looking at the pirate as if he were a cockroach before shoving him aside and moving on.


"You—" The Captain's face flushed in humiliation but just as he was about to do something stupid in his drunkenness, his fellow pirate stopped him.


"Oi! Leave him alone," The man said holding his friend's shoulder back, "You know how much the captain treasures him... Don't you remember what happened to the last Captain who crossed him?"


A hint of fear appeared on his face at the mention of that incident... before he spat on the floor to save his dignity and went back to the room to vent.


Advisor didn't care for what the creatures who were worth less than trash were doing as he was already in the next corridor.


He wanted to get to his room as fast as he could so that he could take a rest... which raised a few questions as the windows he was passing by clearly showed that it was barely noon at the moment which meant that the night had only passed a few hours ago.


But the reason his body was craving so much sleep was very simple... he hadn't slept for more than a few hours over the whole last few weeks.


And the reason for that was the same man that was giving Ravager so many headaches... Jon Snow, The Captain of the Northern Wolf.


Ever since he learned that they were going to target that company only one thing kept revolving around his mind again and again... those dark grey eyes looking straight at him from an impossible distance through the other end of his far-eye...


The way they had lost their last battle against the Northern company had just been bizarre.


The rest of the pirates had thought that it was just a coincidence that their ships had suddenly lost their sails just as they were about to chase enemy ships... That there just happened to be a mad group of seagulls flying around waiting to tear through their sails...


Those stupid pirates were satisfied with that explanation and just decided to drink a few to forget about it.


But Advisor didn't forget... because he couldn't forget about it even if he wanted to.


After all, he wasn't like the others.


He knew things...


He had grown up in Volantis as the third son of one of the highest-ranking nobles before he was forced to become a pirate, so obviously he knew a lot more about magic than an average pirate...


He knew that magic was a real tangible thing...


He had seen a few different forms of magic being performed in front of his very own eyes... he knew what it could be used for, he knew the things it could do...


He knew that it wasn't gone from the world like everyone else believed... instead it was just weakened, in hiding, waiting for a chance to come out...


And he knew that what he saw that day... was magic.


Of course, he had kept this discovery of his to himself, because why would he tell them... why would he try and save those worthless trash from the wrath of a being who was much more than a man...


Because even after so long, he didn't forget that he was just a prisoner and not a real pirate...


So he did not care whether they lived or died... the only thing he cared about was him and his son, his blood... The one person he wouldn't let be killed even if the enemy knew magic...


But on the other hand, if he could somehow use this to his advantage... then maybe...


"Wait! What if..." The Advisor abruptly stopped in the middle of the corridor as his eyes widened in sudden enlightenment and then without waiting a single moment he suddenly turned back and began moving away from his room towards the lower parts of the castle.


He passed by room after room as he went deeper into the castle before finally ten minutes later he stood outside a small blackened room at the very end of the corridor.


"Are you in here?" he asked while knocking on the door.


There was mad scrambling and loud clattering from the other side for a few moments before a sixty-year-old man wearing a blacksmith apron opened the door with a surprised expression on his face, "Ah! Ser Advisor! What can I do for you? Do you need your weapon repaired?"


The advisor didn't care about the man calling him a Ser as he knew that it was something ingrained in his blood as a former smallfolk to call all the people higher than them Ser.


"You're from Westeros right?"


"Eh? Ah! Y-Yes I am— I mean, I was. I lived there in Riverlands for about twenty years before I left for Essos to run away from a petty crime and then felt that it was much easier to make money here as a pirate than anything else, hehe..."


"So you must know about the place called North..."


"Huh? Um, yes, I do know a few things from here and there but not much... because even though we were the closest Kingdom to North, people rarely ever travel out from there," The part-time Blacksmith replied while scratching his head, "Ah! But I had an old man from the North who lived in my village so even though I have never been there I do know a bit..."


"Then do you know about their legends, their folk stories, their myths..." The Advisor asked with a serious look on his face, "Things from their history that people believe are just made up to scare children..."


"Huh? Do you mean like Snarks and Grumpkins... or do you mean legends like Bran the Builder..."


"Everything!" he whispered as his eyes narrowed in intense focus, "I want you to tell me everything..."


///

if you want to read a few chapters ahead and support me, you can go to: patreon.com/lazywizard

 

[oscar e Sampedro Lopez]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[GrimmKenway8646]

"Huh? Do you mean like Snarks and Grumpkins... or do you mean legends like Bran the Builder..."


"Everything!" he whispered as his eyes narrowed in intense focus, "I want you to tell me everything..."

Click to shrink...

Well that's gonna take some time cuz that would be like asking a church friar about Norse mythology just to find out about runes which are a subtle part of the legends, even in Odin's story.

 

[ATP]

Well that's gonna take some time cuz that would be like asking a church friar about Norse mythology just to find out about runes which are a subtle part of the legends, even in Odin's story.

Click to shrink...

Agree.Dude could not knew much,except that wargs exist.But - it should be enough for advisor.

 

[LazyWizard]

It was the hour of the wolf, the darkest time of the night just before the first rays of the Sun washed away the darkness.

In a medieval world like Planetos, the night represented the unknown, the terrifying, the time when even the bravest of knights were hesitant to go outside and this fear of the unknown was magnified a hundred times out on the open ocean.

Or at least it should be... for normal people...

Fifteen huge but sleek ships unhesitatingly cut through the vast turbulent ocean water during the hour of the wolf as if uncaring of the boundless darkness surrounding them.

All the ships were moving in a bird-like formation with adequate distance between them. The ships all had some kind of lamps on them spreading the light but the foremost ship, also the largest one, was leading the way using five massive torches that didn't go out no matter how fierce the wind got.

In a cabin inside the leading ship, sat a middle-aged man with black lustrous hair, a sharp nose, and black viper eyes. His face was set in a permanent gloomy expression as he sat on his bed contemplating some things while sharpening the tip of a spear in his hand, meticulously.

A sharp knock on the door broke the man out of his concentration and he looked up as a voice called from outside, "Father, are you awake?"

"Yes, come in," Oberyn replied while placing the spear vertically against the wall beside his bed.

The door to the room opened and in came Obara, Oberyn's oldest, looking much more like a woman now than during their time with the Company of Cats. Her hair had grown up to shoulder length and she had also stopped binding to her chest to hide her gender now as she had decided that they were in 'safe' company... for now.

"You're up early today," Oberyn asked with a raised eyebrow, "Something happened?" The Dornish man knew from the view outside his small window that there should still be about an hour before the sun rose on the horizon.

"We have reached, father," Obara replied in a peculiar tone.

"Hmm? Reached where?" Oberyn asked distractedly while putting on his leather armour that he never left his room without.

"The shore," Obara clarified while still looking at her father with a strange look as if she didn't know whether to laugh or cry, "We have reached the shore of Disputed Lands near Tyrosh where we were supposed to pick up the Company of the Rose..."

Oberyn's fingers which were in the midst of tying the knots on his armour froze for a few moments before he looked up at Obara with an amused smile, "Did that sellsword put you up to this? I know that we had a bet but still... he didn't have to be so desperate," he shook his head while finishing his getup, "How could we have reached Tyrosh so soon when it's barely been a week since we left Braavos... we should have barely crossed Pentos by now..."

"Just... come out and see for yourself," Obara interrupted with a look of sympathy on her face before she left his cabin.

Oberyn wryly smiled at his daughter's impatience but followed after her nonetheless.

After closing the door to his room he walked a dozen steps down the hallway before he reached the stairs and climbed them to reach the deck only to find more than a dozen sailors going to and fro all over the place doing... sailor things.

He wasn't too surprised to see this flurry of activities so early in the morning as he had learned over the past week that he had travelled with this Northern Wolf company that all the ships in it had sailors working in shifts which meant that sailors would be toiling over sails even during the darkest part of the night when not a single thing would remain visible in the surroundings... except of course, that bright torches on the uppermost portion of the ship acting like a lighthouse.

He had obviously been very curious about how it was possible for these ships to not only navigate the open sea during the night but also to do it without hugging the shore.

In fact, Oberyn hadn't seen any sign of land since they had left the city of Braavos and it would have been quite concerning if it weren't for the nonchalant way that all the crew behaved around him as if they hadn't even contemplated the notion that they could get lost on the ocean.

But sadly even after he set aside his pride and 'nonchalantly' asked Jon about his secrets his curiosity didn't get sated as the boy just smiled at him and pointed towards the sky in answer.

Oberyn had taken a while but had eventually managed to gather that the boy was maybe pointing towards the possibility of using the position of the sun and the moon in the sky to navigate... or at least that was the most prevalent theory amongst the sailors whom he had befriended during this time.

Shaking his head and deciding to forget about it for now, Oberyn walked past all the sailors to reach the edge of the ship where he found Obara waiting for him along with Gared, the leader of Company of the Rose.

"Haha, you finally came Viper," the massive man immediately guffawed after seeing Oberyn's face, "I thought you would stay hiding in your room from the shame of losing the bet."

"Lose the bet?" Oberyn snorted with an amused look on his face, "Are you perhaps still drunk from last night? Because I am not sure if you correctly remember how many days had passed since we left the shore so unless you mean to tell me that we traversed all the way from Braavos to Tyrosh in under a week... how exactly did I lose that bet..."

"Hehe, I mean to tell you exactly that..." he said before turning and pointing towards the distance with a shit-eating grin, "Look there! We've indeed reached the shore of Tyrosh,"

"I... can't see shit," Oberyn replied with a deadpan expression on his face while squinting and trying but unable to see more than a few meters ahead of him even though the darkness had begun to lighten up a little as the sunrise wasn't too far away.

"Ah! Apologies," Gared murmured as he rummaged through his vest before taking out a far-eye, "Here,"

Oberyn looked at Gared with a curious look on his face wondering how far the man was going to take his prank but he took the far-eye from his hand nonetheless. He raised the contraption and put it on his right eye before peering into the distance.

For the first few seconds he couldn't see anything but then abruptly out of nowhere, he began to see faint small dots of lights in the distance.

As he narrowed his eyes further, he finally caught sight of the shore in the distance occupied by what looked like tents upon tents of a sellswords company with hundreds of men hurriedly running everywhere and haphazardly moving things around as if they had just been given the order to pack up.

The scene left Oberyn mute for a few seconds before he managed to ask, "Are you sure they are the Company of Rose? Maybe we accidentally found some other group..."

"Yes, Yes, I am sure what my own company looks like," Gared replied while rolling his eyes.

"But... how exactly is this possible," Oberyn asked after finally taking the far eye off his face with a frown on his face, "I know that we were sailing day and night and we didn't take any breaks but still... it is too absurd to clear the distance between Braavos and Tyrosh in just six days." It was too much for the Dornish man to even fathom all the implications... of what one could achieve with speed such as this on their hands.

"As I told you before, my friend, I don't know and I don't care to know," Gared shrugged with an unconcerned look on his face, "I don't question too much and just believe in the boy when he tells me shit with that look of conviction on his face... and I haven't been led wrong with it yet."

When Jon had told them that they would only take about a week or so to reach their destination from Braavos, Oberyn had of course taken it as a joke and laughed it off, but Gared hadn't. The sellsword Commander believed in the Northerner boy completely and after seeing the disbelief in the Westerosi noble he had gleefully proposed a bet with him... a bet that Oberyn lost.

'Just how many more shocks is this boy going to give me,' Oberyn mused while placing 10 gold dragons in the eagerly waiting palm of the sellsword.

A few hours later, they reached the shore with the morning sun brightening up the sky, but since Jon had told Bran, Gared's son, to lead the company to the nearest coast he could find, there wasn't a proper dock here, so all their ships were anchored in the distance in the shallow waters and were not sending small rowing boats turn by turn to pick up sellswords to take them back to the ships half a dozen at a time.

Jon, Gared and Oberyn were standing underneath a tall coconut tree on the shore some distance away watching the ships slowly get loaded up with the warriors.

"So how far are we from Stepstones from here?" Gared suddenly asked curiously.

"Hmm... about five days if we take it slow and don't move during the night," Jon answered with a shrug, "That should give all of my sailors as well as your sellswords enough time to rest and prepare for the upcoming battle,"

"Ah! That's good then and it will probably also give some of the young ones who haven't been on a ship before, some time to assimilate to the sea..." Gared murmured with a nod.

They fell silent for a while after that before Oberyn finally asked the question that had been bothering him all this while, "So how are we actually going to do this? What is your attack plan? Are we going to take them down one by one? Employ hit-and-run tactics or what?"

"Hmm, Guerilla tactics are fine and good... but only if we wanted to defeat them ship by ship but my plan is much simpler," Jon replied in a calm voice, "We attack their base at night when they are all gathered together on the island... take them off guard with our full might when they least expect it and then... annihilate every last one of them."

"...That's it?" Oberyn asked back with an incredulous look on his face, "That's your whole plan,"

"Yes. That is right," Jon nodded with an interested expression on his face, "Why? Do you think it won't work?"

"You do know that you're about to fight the Ravager fleet, right?" Oberyn asked, somewhat confused with the nonchalant way the boy was taking all this, "The fleet of the notorious pirate king who has been hunting in these waters for the last decade or so. He probably has more than 100 ships under him not to mention the number of pirates... there must be something like 3000 to 4000 pirates waiting for us on that island ready to defend him." he said with a raised eyebrow, "How exactly do you expect us to defeat them with just these 15 ships, five hundred sellswords and what 150 of your own sailors? We will be completely and utterly destroyed if we meet them in a battle and that is a fact." He had expected that the boy had some kind of intricate plan, like the one he had used to bring down the Company of Cats, but this...

"First of all, they don't have 100 but 70 ships in that fleet," Jon replied in an unperturbed tone, "And secondly, I know exactly where that man is, where all his pirates are, what he is doing at the moment so he is just like sitting duck to me... and if we are done with him, the rest of his pirates will be just like headless chickens waiting to be slaughtered..."

"You make it sound so simple," Oberyn said with an exasperated sigh, "Even if the information you have is correct they still have about five times the number of ships that we have, and that Ravager is not some small-time crook who will run away at the sign of a fight... Last I heard about him, he even had the guts to loot from Braavos and do you know what they did about it? They placed a bounty on him of about 100,000 gold dragons, because they knew that even they wouldn't be able to easily catch someone like him with all his ships if he decides to fight or retreat..."

"And everything you are saying is correct... but once again these things only matter if we are going to go against them head to head in sea warfare which we are not... so the number of ships they have wouldn't matter," Jon said before a mysterious smile appeared on his face, "Besides I have a secret weapon under me which is going to make things a lot easier for us..."

"What?! What weapon?"

"Now for that... you will just have to wait and see," Jon replied with a playful smile, "After all, isn't that what you're here for," Jon said before leaving towards the boats which were just about finished with delivering the last group of sellswords.

Jon, of course, knew why the man was so frustrated, after all, anyone in his situation would have been if they didn't have the whole information that Jon had. But it wasn't like he could tell him all of the juicy secrets...

Besides, even if he could, Jon wouldn't want to because as they say the lower the expectation the higher the shock value and the more impact it would leave on him when things go out of his expectation...

Oberyn had an irritated look on his face as he watched the boy walk away arrogantly(in his opinion).

He was unsure if he should believe in the Northerner and take this huge risk or if...

"What about you? You don't have a problem with this?" He asked turning to the one man who was taking a much bigger risk than him with the existence of his company depending on it.

"Hey, I told you before, didn't I? I just believe in him and don't think too much about it..." Gared shrugged nonchalantly.

After all, the company commander had already seen the boy accomplish quite a few unbelievable things since the day he had met him, so he had faith in him...

"But if you are really not sure then how about another bet, huh?" Gared asked with a cunning smile, "I could always use some more gold, Haha,"

"You incorrigible?" Oberyn shook his head with a helpless smile, "Let's just go before they decide to leave us here,"

What Oberyn didn't know was that if he had asked Jon this exact question about his plans just a few days ago, then his answer would have been a lot similar to his own suggestion and something along the lines of hit-and-run. But thanks to something that happened three nights ago... his plan changed completely, as he got the surprising 'secret weapon' out of nowhere... as if the old gods were sending him their gift.

...

Three Days ago...

"Chii! Chii! Chii!" came a cute squeaking squeak from somewhere below her but Ice Pheonix ignored it just like she always did and kept on leisurely riding along the wind, "ChiiI!"

'Come now, Frost. Don't go so fast... you know that Tweety can't handle the cold like you." came the familiar soothing voice inside her head making Frost roll her eyes and huff in annoyance but slowing down her speed nonetheless so that tiny stupid bird hiding between her chest feathers and taking a free ride, didn't just freeze to death (not that, that would too much of a loss)

Frost preferred to fly far above the normal atmosphere where the air was cold and thin, with the freezing wind, helping instead of hindering her, making her almost twice as fast. But sometimes the pleasing cold winds could become somewhat life-threatening for her passenger.

'...I think we should be reaching the island just about now,' Jon said while ignoring his oldest wargs murderous thoughts about the younger one, 'You can lower yourself now, Frost,'

Jon saw through his blue eagle's eyes as they sped through cloud after cloud before they were finally low enough that the air started warming up and he began to see a tiny island located directly in the ocean below them.

As Frost slowed down, the island got magnified in her eyes and Jon was able to make out dozens of smoke plumes rising in the air from campfires scattered all over the island making it quite clear that the pirates were not staying in a single place together.

'I think this is far enough, Frost,' Jon said when they were just a few hundred meters away from the island, 'It's your job from here on, Tweety,'

"Chii!!" squeaked the tiny colourful bird as she exited the fluffy home she had made inside Frost's chest and after flapping vigorously a few times to thaw her cold feathers she took off after a final salute to her ride and flickered down towards the island as Jon shifted his focus from the bigger bird to the smaller one.

The position of the sun in the sky showed it was about 6 pm at the moment and since it was summer and it was an island, it meant that there were still a few hours of light left, but the pirates down there seemed to have already begun their dinner preparation.

Jon spent an hour wandering the island in Tweety's body, he scouted all the different parts, observing all the various groupings of the pirates, taking note of where the leaders were, what they were cooking, how many times the ships were patrolling the nearby waters, which group was bigger and which was smaller, on the which side of the island the concentration of the pirates was bigger and which side had fewer pirates... he noticed everything.

And, of course, it wasn't his first time doing this. In fact, Jon had been here constantly every other day for the past week and a half and in that time he had taken note of all the changes that were happening on this island and that led him to conclude one thing...

'It wouldn't be poison all of them at the same time...'

Not only were all the camps randomly scattered, but all of them also bought their own rations and everyone also ate at different times so even if he managed to poison a few groups, it would still mean that they would easily raise a ruckus and manage to alert the other groups before Jon's company could have any kind of significant advantage... so it would make poison not as potent of a weapon here. And while it wasn't devastating information, it would still become an obstacle to his plans.

Tweety circled for the last time and then took off towards the run-down castle in the centre to work on the next part of scouting.

He started from the top, from the room of the pirate Captain Ravager, and then worked down the ladder towards the other main captains.

Jon had already gotten most of the useful information about the fleet so he was mainly here to see if he could get lucky and eavesdrop on some important information or get a handle on some kind of weakness that could make the upcoming fight easier on the sellswords but alas... he hadn't had any luck yet.

Jon stayed outside the window of the pirate captain for a very short few seconds before leaving, not because he wasn't in there or anything but because if he saw that bastard's face for too long then he wouldn't be able to stop himself from poisoning that bastard right there and be done with all this.

But death by poison was too good... far too merciful for that bastard... just remembering the things that the young lad Gill had to go through because of this bastard sent Jon's blood boiling...

Anyway, he slowly went from one room to the other to see what the other smaller captains under him were doing, and who they were talking with, who had how many ships under them. And thankfully, it wasn't too much of a hassle as most of the higher-level captains were all living in the castle as they were too pompous to stay with the other low-level pirates.

On the way, he of course came across many pirates performing all kinds of unthinkable acts of atrocities that made him sick to the stomach but this only made his resolve, to butcher these bastards, stronger.

The last room on his list was that of a man named Advisor, and he wasn't the last because he was the least important, no he was the last because Jon felt that he was the one person on this shithole of an island that he wouldn't mind letting go alive as at least he behaved like a human unlike. In fact, Jon once even saw him save an underage girl from a life of misery by taking her under his care.

So even though he had only briefly noticed him during his scouting, he felt that he was better than the others.

'Huh? Where is he?' Tweety tilted her head while standing on the windowsill of an empty room.

The room was a mid-sized one with an empty bed, a chair, and a desk in the middle with some books on it, but there was no sign of any man in there.

'Hmm, that is weird, he would usually be here at this time, and why is his door locked from the inside—Wait! Tweety, No!! What are you doing?' The little bird squeaked excitedly as she zoomed straight for the table on which lay a plate filled with berries of all kinds, the colourful kind that just happened to be the tiny bird's version of a feast.

Jon usually never took full control of his wargs as that was not only cruel to his friend's minds but also inefficient in the long run. Instead, he kept a very tiny hint of control on them just to share their senses and made most of them work through communicating his desires with them, and while it worked perfectly most of the time, on a few occasions like this one when their emotions were heightened, they did things... out of his control.

'Ah! You stupid birdbrain! Why are you always so impatient,' Jon's exasperated voice echoed inside the tiny critter's brain but the bird just ignored him and kept her focus entirely on merrily sucking the juices out of the succulent berries, 'Ugh! It's not like I don't feed you enough—Swish!"

The bird's head was abruptly and forcefully turned around towards the wooden window she had come through only to see it be slammed close by the hand of the very man Jon had been here to scout.

"You can't imagine how long I had to hide in that awkward position to meet you," the man named Advisor murmured with an exhausted but pleased look on his face as he stepped out of the shadows of the window he had been hiding in.

'It was a trap,' Jon growled in his thoughts but didn't panic too much as he had a backup prepared for cases just like this and he knew that as long Tweety managed to stall for a few seconds then everything would be alright... and considering the bird's speed that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

"Oh! You don't need to worry too much," The man said with a smile while taking slow measured steps towards the chair beside the bed as if trying not to scare off the bird intently looking towards him, "I don't have any bad intentions as I only closed the window because I was afraid of you taking off and I wanted to have a chance to talk to you... to make a deal with you."

If a bird could make a stunned expression then that would be what Tweety's face would look like at that moment.

The man had a nervous but relatively confident expression on his face while talking to Tweety making Jon almost certain that he wasn't just insane but actually knew that Jon was inside the warg... which should have been almost impossible for him to know. So Jon was quite curious...

'Frost! Wait out for a while. I want to see where this leads,' Jon sent the words to stop his backup, who was on her way to smash through the windows to rescue him, before turning towards the Advisor.

"Are you Jon Snow?" the man asked after a few seconds of silence when he saw the bird not fleeing away but instead standing there calmly looking at him with an absurdly humane expression on her face, which finally dispelled the last of his doubts that there really was something supernatural involved here and he wasn't just being a paranoid idiot, "I am only asking because I am not sure if you yourself are the legendary Skinchanger I heard about or if you have one under you—Ah! So you are Jon Snow," The man exclaimed when the bird bobbed her head in answer, "Then that should make it easier,"

Jon was mighty interested to know how this man on the other side of the world managed to find out that he was a warg when he shouldn't even know what a warg was, plus he was also quite interested in what the deal he was talking about was. Besides if at any point he didn't like what the man was talking about then... well, there were always ways to deal with it.

"It isn't the first time I've noticed you, um, your bird, in fact, I have known that you have been scouting the island for quite a while, Ah, but don't worry too much, I only found out about you because I was actually looking for you. I don't think anyone else suspects anything," The man said waving his hands, "Anyway, It was very obvious from all that scouting, that you... are about to launch an attack on this island... on our fleet,"

Jon was quite surprised at how nonchalant the man was about being attacked as if he was talking about someone else's problem. And that only made him more nosy so he decided to go all the way and nodded his head to confirm that he indeed was going to launch the attack.

"Oh, That's good then," an almost relieved smile appeared on the man's face before he adopted a serious expression, "I am sure a man with your... powers should not have too much of a hard time dealing with our fleet but If I assure you that if you have my help... then the battle would become even simpler for you,"

Jon didn't reply and just stood waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the other end of the deal and sure enough the man wanted...

"And in return, I ask you for one thing and one thing only... to save my Son," he pleaded with a desperate expression on his face.

///

 

[ATP]

Well,he would win anyway,but any help is precious.
And - if they have 15 ships with 1500 sellswords,then it is enough for pirates during land battle.They almost never used armour,which against even medium armored enemies mean massacre.
I read about joanites in half armours fighting turks without armour - it was massacre.


Another thing - there must be at lest 400 sailors on 15 ships,not 150.

Aside from that - great chapter.

 

[GrimmKenway8646]

"And in return, I ask you for one thing and one thing only... to save my Son," he pleaded with a desperate expression on his face.

Click to shrink...

And here comes the plot twist.

 

[oscar e Sampedro Lopez]

Thanks for the chapter.

 

[theMerryMonarch]

.
"Likewise, Lord Benjen." Catelyn smiled a little, benjen reminding her of her little brother back home, and did a little curtsy while awkwardly holding the toddler in her hands.

Click to shrink...

Bro, do you KNOW what a toddler is? Robb and Jon are NOT toddlers. They don't walk aka toddle around. Why do you keep using that word????

 

[LazyWizard]

If you looked down from the sky, the small island of Grey Gallows partially resembled a banana, a very crooked and hexagonal-shaped one, but still a banana, wider in the middle and thinner at the edges.

According to Jon's rough calculation, a total of three thousand-something pirates were residing on this island at the moment, and that's of course not counting the number of slaves, prostitutes, blacksmiths and other workers most of who resided near the castle. But since only the ones counted as pirates were useful in a fight, the rest didn't matter much at the moment.

Now, around half of these pirates came directly under the command of Pirate King Ravager and were exclusively part of his fleet but the rest came from various big and small pirate fleets and usually hunted in other areas on their own but they still owed their allegiance to Ravager and came to him when he ordered, just like now.

The concentration of the population of pirates on this island somewhat mirrored its geographical shape, with most of the men under Ravager's direct command being densely situated in the middle. They were divided into two equal settlements, of about 700 men each, and stayed in settlements on either side of the big castle in the middle, where Ravager himself lived along with most of the smaller pirate captains.

The rest of the fifteen hundred pirates who were mostly part of big and small independent pirate fleets were roughly divided into four parts and were situated along the four diagonal shores of the island some distance away from the middle.

The only two ports in this place were situated near the two big settlements in the middle on both sides of the island. They were just shoddy docks made using the island's natural rock formation, but they were still big enough to house all the pirate ships belonging to the Ravager fleet.

The seventy-something ships were also divided almost equally between the two ports and while during the day they may go here and there, during the night almost all of them stayed at the docks, except for five randomly selected special ships.

These five ships instead of sleeping during the night like the others, would be given the task of patrolling the nearby waters by Ravager, you know, just in case any of the other pirates staying on the nearby islands got any funny ideas.

That was all the piece of information that Jon had shared amongst all the important leaders of the company and all the ones who were going to lead the night's operation.

It would be obvious to anyone that the very first obstacle to their attack plan would be the five patrolling ships circling the island from a distance.

Oberyn had initially assumed that it would be a very hard job and that they would need to be incredibly lucky to even be able to take out all of these ships without letting them alert the pirates on the island... but the reality of things had been much... much different.

A single ship... that is all Jon had needed...

He dealt with all the patrolling ships with a single fucking ship... and Oberyn was still reeling with the shock of comprehending it all, and if he hadn't been given the chance to be on that very ship and hadn't seen it all with his own eyes, he wouldn't have ever believed it no matter who told him about it...

From stealthily approaching the enemy ship during the night using the faint glow of torches provided by the enemies themselves with no light on their own ships, to Jon then taking out the few awake look-outs silently by somehow managing to shoot all his arrows perfectly in complete darkness.

To then, sending their warriors abroad on enemy ships using small silent row boats and then killing every single living person abroad with just a handful of muffled screams getting out, which fortunately got easily drowned by the wind and the waves of the ocean... it was all quite surreal.

And then without stopping, they went to the next ship... and then the next... and like clockwork they took care of one patrolling ship after the other until just an hour later the patrolling ships were no more than ghost vessels sailing in the sea aimlessly with the people on the island none the wiser.

Oberyn had so so many questions about what he had witnessed... How could someone see well enough in the darkness to shoot arrows? How could anyone even know where each ship exactly was, especially during the night? How could someone even get such detailed information about a pirate fleet in such a short time? How... How... How...

His mind was filled with so many how's that it was disorienting, but sadly for him, it didn't seem like he would be getting answers any time soon as soon after dealing with the patrols, their ships had been split up into two groups to begin the next part of the attack.

But if there was one thing Oberyn had concluded with surety after all this time with the Northern Wolf Company, then it was that the boy was... special, maybe even more than his ancestors.

This meant that all the things he had promised Oberyn back at camp, didn't seem so far-fetched anymore...

...

Jon had a total of 700 men participate in this operation, which may not seem like a lot but in actuality were a huge number of people for what constitutes a private army of a Noble Bastard.

These men included the 500 sellswords from the Company of Rose and an additional 200 sailors from his own company.

Sadly only half of those two hundred were good in a land battle as they were mainly trained to be sailors proficient in operating a ship and they were far too valuable to just be used to add numbers so Jon just left them abroad the ships to keep them 'running', in case they required a quick get-away(not that he believed that it would be needed).

So in total Jon had about 600 warriors under him and he planned to make use of each and every one of them. And unlike others in this world, he wouldn't be using them to brute force through his enemies, no he would use them like a precise scalpel that would cut through their enemies like a hot knife through butter.

The first thing he did was divide all the warriors into two equal groups each carried by about 8 ships.

One group would be mainly led by him along with some help from others, while the other group would be led by Gared, the Rose commander, and Oberyn, a man who probably knew more about leading men than anyone else here.

The attack plan Jon had come up with had a total of three phases.

The first phase was called trimming the edges. It involved the two groups silently and simultaneously attacking the pirate settlements on the upper left and the lower left side of the island. They would stealthily move through the island from left to right while taking care of all the pirates along the way until they reached the other edge, and that is when the next phase would begin.

For now, the first phase had begun smoothly with warriors sneaking up to the shores of the upper left side of the island in tiny row boats which deposited them in the shallow water and then went back to pick up the others.

Even from their position at the beach, the warriors could easily see the numerous small pirate settlements in the distance because of the numerous campfires but none of them made any move to attack them instead they just spread out in a defensive position on the shore while waiting for the rest of their fellows to finish landing.

It took about half an hour before the last of the ship had emptied their warriors and, finally Jon had the whole of his attack force gathered on the island consisting of a total of 355 warriors in front of him carrying all sorts of swords, spears, axes, and bows.

There were a total of six settlements of pirates near this side of the island, three within just a five-minute walk from the shore while the other three would take them about fifteen minutes to reach.

Each campsite had roughly about 100-something pirates sleeping in them so Jon also decided to divide his forces into three equal parts.

One would be commanded by him, one by young Bran(Commander Gared's son) and the last one by a 50-year-old sellsword who Gared had boasted as one of the best leaders that his company could offer.

While there wouldn't be any problems leading their units to attack the nearest campsites since they were visible even from here, the same couldn't be said about the other sites as even the pirates of this island would be hard-pressed to find their way in this darkness, thankfully Jon had a solution prepared for precisely a situation like this.

He gave both Bran and the older sellswords a thick piece of paper on which were lines drawn and instructions written as to where all the pirate campsites were located as well as how many pirates each one had and a few other useful information. The crude map was so detailed that as long as they followed them, it would be impossible for them to get lost and even if they did, they could easily find their way back using it.

After one final check and a parting nod, all three groups set off at the same time towards their targets.

Within ten minutes faint sounds of slashing and stabbing rang out into the night but what was uncanny was not a single scream escaped the massacre, as if all the pirates were in such deep sleep they didn't realise they were being attacked before they died, and the only thing signifying the death of so many was just the faint smell of blood in the air that dissipated not long after when a breeze happened to pass through the camp.

The main reason for such easy success was that the sellswords not only had almost double the numbers as their victims but they also found out that almost all the pirates they had fallen upon were fully drunk with bottles upon bottles of alcohol nearby as if they had a huge party the previous evening and this made their work more a butcher's job than a fighter's.

But they did their duty nonetheless, with grim determination and just fifteen minutes later all the groups were done with their first targets and then they set off towards the next one after just a short break.

This night was going to be a very long and bloody affair... at least for the pirates.

...

"Blrgh!" The drunk asleep pirate gurgled as Oberyn pulled his spear out of his throat but that was the last sound the pirate was able to make as he left this world with his eyes wide open in confusion and anger.

Oberyn looked up to find that almost all the rest were also done with their targets, in fact, half of their group were just standing idly by as this camp they had attacked only had forty-something members in it, not nearly enough for everyone to get a shot.

They had been deposited on the shores by ships led by Merchant Sam about an hour ago and this was the third group on their list of targets, and so far every single kill had gone smoothly, so smoothly in fact, that it didn't even feel like they were killing humans and not just crushing some ants.

"Does any of you need a break?" Oberyn asked in a low voice, just for the sake of it and just like he expected all of them shook their head.

He was quite sure that the slow measured walk up to this camp had burned more of their calories than this short culling had and besides they were all experienced sellswords and not amateurs who would begin breathing heavily at the sight of blood, "Let us move on then."

Oberyn led his team of warriors through a slim well-trodden path laid between thin cover of tall tropical trees. He had a small piece of paper in his hands that he was frequently checking under the light of the torch that a young sellsword was carrying and was using it to navigate their path.

'A left from here and then we come up to a clearing,' he mumbled to himself before putting the paper back in his vest and then gesturing to the men behind him to get ready while raising his own spear.

They then slowly moved towards the aforementioned clearing where they were supposed to find their next target, a medium settlement of about 60 pirates, but when they came out they found that all of them were already dead, with their killers standing over their bodies looking at Oberyn's group with wide smiles.

"Haha! You finally came, Viper. I was getting worried for a while there," Gared guffawed in a low voice, but even that was too loud for the stealth operation in Oberyn's opinion but since all the nearby pirates were already dead, it didn't matter too much.

"I thought we were the ones who were supposed to take care of this camp," Oberyn asked with a raised eyebrow as he came to stand in front of the Rose commander.

"Ah! Well, you were just taking too damn long and since we were done with our part, I thought... why not give you a helping hand," he said with a very smug grin on his face as if bragging that he had gotten more kills than Oberyn making the Dornishman roll his eyes at the childishness.

The reason the sellsword commander was faster than him was quite easy for Oberyn to guess.

He just knew for sure that unlike him, Gared must have rushed from one camp to the next completely trusting in the instructions on the map with no hesitation or precautions, which the Dornishman just couldn't do no matter how much he had begun to believe in Jon's abilities and his claim of this information being ironclad. This meant that Oberyn had taken the cautious approach causing him to be a bit slower as he believed in his experience that there was no information in this world that was 100 per cent accurate(and just because he was wrong this time doesn't mean anything,).

"Fine. Thank you for your help, then," Oberyn replied with a wry smile on his face before shaking his head, "Then shall we move on to the next part or do you need to rest..." Since they had already taken care of all the seven campsites on this part of the island, they would now have to move through the trees to the opposite shore for the next portion of the mission.

"Of course not, as I said I was just waiting for you so we are ready." Gared nodded and then immediately began leading the way out of the clearing with the men following after him without hesitation, "Let us hurry a bit from now on. After all, we don't want to be late for when the real party starts do we?" he asked the viper with a smirk who also nodded back with a hint of excitement in his eyes.

Normally, one would assume that walking through a forest on a pirate-infested island in the middle of the ocean would be a very stressful affair but somehow it just wasn't...

The night had a very peaceful feel to it, the moon was shining brightly in the sky, the trees around here were sparse enough that it wasn't so dark, and since there were no dense shrubs they didn't have to struggle too much to walk, so, all in all, if you discount all the dead bodies they were leaving in their wake, this could almost be considered as taking serene night stroll.

They reached their destination, marked crudely on the map, about half an hour later, and at that point, they split up once again to continue on to their respective target camps.

On Oberyn's side, everything initially had gone as smoothly as before, he and his team carefully sneaked up on their first camp on this side and after assigning every sleeping pirate to a warrior, they had all struck at the same time... easily sending the drunk asleep pirates to their death.

The second pirate camp had also gone the same way but when they were about to attack the third camp... an accident occurred.

Maybe, it occurred because they were unlucky, or maybe they had just been incredibly lucky so far and now their luck ran through... but for whatever reason, on the third campsite, a pirate just coincidently happened to get the urge to pee at that exact moment and happened to catch sight of them sneaking up on the camp, and after a brief moment of shock, the now completely awake pirate began screaming his lungs out, "ATTACK!!! We're being attacked!! Wake up, You FUCKERS!!!"

"Ah! Shit!" Oberyn cursed, having grown a bit complacent after the continuously successful ambushes, he hadn't thought to scout ahead before getting close so now they were completely caught off guard but the milk was already spilt and there was nothing Oberyn could do except yell, "Kill Them!!" he then immediately sprung on the disoriented pirates who were just coming around with the full force of his team.

The fight wasn't much harder than the others so far had been and was still a massacre with no casualties on their sides.

The main reason for that being that the pirates were still very much outnumbered and they also weren't given any time to come to their senses or even pick up their weapons.

But sadly it would probably be their last easy fight because even though they were so quick about it, one of the pirates had managed to get away and was now hollering at the top of his lungs about invaders attacking, while running towards the middle of the island where the castle was located.

"Should we chase him?" one of the older sellswords asked Oberyn while looking at the place where the runaway had disappeared with an unsure look on his face as the screaming voice went away with time.

"No, let him go." Oberyn shook his head as it was already too late for it to be of any use even if they captured him, as the commotion he had created by now must have already alerted quite a few pirates on the island.

Thankfully it wasn't a completely lost situation as, if nothing had gone wrong with the other group then, by now there must be only one more settlement left in this area that had living pirates, so it didn't matter too much even if they managed to get away as Jon had prepared measures for a situation just like this.

"Men! We need to move to the next gathering point immediately. Let's go!" he ordered in a firm voice and immediately dashed into the trees with his team not far behind him. They had completely forsaken any idea of stealth by now and were moving through as fast as they could while ignoring everything else.

And so not even five minutes later, they entered the small clearing, that was their next meeting point, to find the others gathered there as expected.

"A man got away from us," Oberyn grimly said the moment he caught sight of Gared.

"I know, I heard him well enough," The sellsword commander replied with an unconcerned shrug, "It was only a matter of time before someone caught up but it doesn't matter too much... we were almost done with here anyway. And besides this just means that the next part will be a bit more interesting. Don't you think?"

"Hmm, perhaps you're right about that. I was indeed getting a bit bored with all this sneaking around." Oberyn replied with a quick smile on his face.

Knowing Jon, they must have been done with their side of the things too, which meant that at this moment almost all the small groups of pirates (that is about half of them) on the edges were dealt with, leaving only the two settlements in the middle as well as the pirates in the castle.

"You lose any of your men?"

"Of course not, what do you take me for? Ten-year-old initiates could have done this job let alone me and my men." Gared replied with a proud smile.

"Perfect, then I think we should get a move on." Oberyn said and after one final check to make sure everyone was ready, they began to move, "It's time for phase 2."

///

 

[oscar e Sampedro Lopez]

Thanks for the chapter. Great story

 

[ATP]

Well,if they killed sleeping drunkards,it must be easy.Now,he would take some loses,but finish others.What next? everybody with few brain cells must be aware now,that he is warg.

How he plan to kill Mountain without leaving signs,if people knew that he is warg,and that he was nearby?

 

[LazyWizard]

"W-What?! What's all this ruckus about?!!" asked the disoriented pirate Rake as he woke up with a start and blearily looked around at the sudden commotion around him originating from all the pirates who were lying around him and sleeping just a few seconds but were now looking at something in the distance.


"I asked what the fuck is happening?!" he barked irritatedly at a nearby pirate when he didn't hear any answers while his hands automatically began searching for his Cutlass that he seemed to remember tossing somewhere nearby during last night's revelry.


'Ugh! Damn! This headache!'


Last night had been the hardest Rake had ever partied in his whole life. The Advisor, an aide of the pirate king, had decided to be generous, he had opened up the coffers and distributed liquor freely amongst all the pirates. For what reasons, they didn't know...


Some said that he did it because the alcohol was about to go bad(which he didn't think was possible,) while others said that he wanted them to have one last party to raise their morale before they left the sea surrounding the free cities for a few years to hunt in the waters surrounding the Slaver's bay to hide from Braavos's eyes for a while.


But in the end, no matter the reason, all he and the other pirates cared about was that there was more liquor to go around than any of them had ever seen in their lives and every single pirate took advantage of it by drinking to their absolute limit and some... had gone beyond that, they had puked their guts out and then started anew... so, all in all, it was a very fun party, but now... his head was aching so much and his surrounding were looking so wobbly that he almost began regretting his decision.


"A-A pirate from a nearby campsite came running into the camp shouting at the top of his lungs that some sort of invaders have attacked their camp..." replied the pirate as he finally answered Rake's question while looking towards a gathering near the campfire in the middle.


"What?! H-How? Who? Who is attacking us?!" he asked as he finally got hold of his weapon and began to try and look in the surroundings to see if he could catch anything but in this darkness of the night, only faintly lit by the moon above and a few of the small fires that were still burning, he couldn't see very far "Is it the Braavos?" he asked trying to keep the fear from his voice.


"I-I don't know..." the pirate replied with a shrug making Rake unconsciously grit his teeth.


"Where is that pirate, then?"


"There!" the man immediately pointed at the place fifteen meters away in the middle of the camp where more than a few dozen pirates had gathered in a circle to surround the pirate who had been the cause of the commotion.


Rake nodded and after taking a few moments to get his bearings he immediately made his way towards the gathering, "Let me through, Fuckers!!" he growled while pushing anyone in the way and about 50 steps later he reached the centre of the crowd of pirates where a panicked looking man, with eyes wide in horror, was trying to explain something to a bunch of confused, half-drunk, irritated pirates.


"You! What did you see of the attackers? Who were they? How many were there? Did they look Braavosi?"


"N-No! Not the Braavosi, I think... but it was too dark to be sure," The man replied while shaking his head, he was sweating from head to toe showing that he had run all the way from his camp without a single stop, "And while I can't be sure how many they were but they shouldn't be more than 30 men..."


Rake had a frown on his face as he digested the information. He frankly didn't know what to do with it as he had never been much of a thinker, that had been his captain's job but he was out there in the castle along with the others. This meant that he, as a close friend of the captain, had to be the one to give orders to the pirates here to solve this situation.


"Rake, I think they are probably just a few of the idiots from the nearby islands once again," said a 30-something-year-old man who was well-known amongst the pirates as being a kiss-ass, "They must have heard about how our captain looted that Braavosi fleet and they probably got greedy and decided to hit one of our camps to see if they get lucky. I am sure that they are already running away by now after hitting the camp... so we need to move now if we want to catch them all..."


"But what if they are the Braavosi?" nervously asked one of the newer pirates who had only joined them a few months ago, "He did say that he wasn't sure..."


"No, that can't be right. If it was Braavos who was attacking, they wouldn't have done it in the middle of the night, no, they would have wanted an audience to send a message and besides if their warships left Braavos for some reason, our captain would have gotten the news long ago. So no, I don't think it is Braavos..."


'Hmm, he must be right about that,' Rake thought while nodding to himself before he turned to the man, "Very well, Lark. I want you to gather fifty men and go find those fuckers wherever they are and kill them. If you do a good job, I'll be sure to speak to the captain and get you a good reward for it."


"Aye, I'll see to it right away," Lark replied excitedly and then immediately began gathering the pirates from among those who were awake, most of them were reluctant, not wanting to do a job in the middle of the night if the captain wasn't the one ordering, but Lark was a smart man and knew how these pirates think so he easily managed to entice them with some simple promises.


So before long, a group of fifty men left the camp with exuberant smiles on their faces, eager to get to those ambushers and kill some easy prey to make a name for themselves.


"Um, Rake, shouldn't we alert the castle about the attack," said the nervous cowardly pirate once again, "Because I don't think they would have heard the commotion all the way from here..."


"Nah! Don't bother," Rake waved the pirate's concern away, "They probably had some party of their own last night and I don't want to be the one to ruin the captain's sleep and take on his anger."


"But—"


"Argh! Forget about it. I'll tell them in the morning." he interrupted before turning and shouting towards other pirates, "And somebody lights up those bloody fires!! I can't see shit out here..."


It was a human instinct to run away from the darkness of the night and seek out the light, so seeing that more than half the pirates were still waking up from their drunken sleep, the pirate's thought of wanting them to light a fire, so as to not let any of the idiots fall on their own sword and die, was not a bad one...


But sadly for him, this idea would be the undoing of all the pirates surrounding him... because in this place on this night, he wasn't the only one who would find it easier to see with some light.


The moment one of the pirates lit up the massive campfires in the middle of the settlement, the surroundings abruptly brightened and at that exact moment, the predators hiding in the dark struck at the bumbling pirates with unerring accuracy.


The first casualty of the battle in this chaotic gathering of about 700 pirates (now 650) turned out to be a pirate who died soundlessly in his sleep with a single arrow in his throat, stunning the few pirates who were near him but before they could do more than blink the next arrow took out another pirate.


The pirates finally woke up from their stupor and screamed noisily as they began scrambling around to hide or find where the arrows were coming from.


"A-Attack!! We're being attacked!!" some hollered while running around like headless chickens.


"Where the fuck did that arrow come from?!!" others cried angrily swinging the weapons in their hands, their eyes furiously scanning the surroundings.


"Find cover! Hide!!"


"No! Find the bloody attacker! and Kill him!!"


"I-I am running away!!"


The pirates responded to the attack in the absolute worst possible way... by panicking.


And the predators hiding in the dark didn't miss this chance so the next attack wasn't just a single shot but a rain of arrows consisting of at least thirty arrows falling upon the bumbling pirates like a hail of death, killing almost twenty of them.


"Argh! Fuck!!"


"There!! I saw it!! They are attacking from there!! From between the fucking trees!!"


"Come on!! Let's Kill them!!"


The pirates nearest to the edge managed to catch a glimpse of the attackers hiding in the trees at the border of the campsite and then without waiting for anything, they gathered into a group and charged for the trees while yelling at the top of their lungs.


The attackers managed to send only one more rain of arrows, which only managed to hit 10 men before the pirates got close enough to attack them.


But the hollering pirates who had prematurely rushed consisted of only fifty men, which... while normally would have been enough to deal with those thirty-something cowardly bowmen hiding in the trees, was not in this case as they found to their disappointment that the bowmen came with friends of their own, friends wearing armour and carrying cruel weapons in their hands.


Seeing three hundred sellswords abruptly jump out of the trees all around them halted the pirates in their steps and scared the shit out of them.


"Argh!!"


And then, without giving the pirates any chance to respond, the sellswords fell upon them like a pack of wolves fall upon a herd of deer, and as someone would expect from that situation, none of the deer survived the massacre and were completely butchered in a matter of seconds due to sheer imbalance between their numbers.


The pirates who had been left behind in the camp(now numbering less than 550) were still in the process of scrambling to find a hiding place so they were completely stunned by the sudden reversal happening in the distance and for a moment all of them just stood there in their position like statues... unsure on what to do about the emergence of this sudden force.


But then if there was one fact, that pirates all over the world were well known for, it was that they were cowardly curs who were weak against the strong and strong against the weak and that the only battle any pirate would willingly partake in was the one in which they have the absolute numerical superiority.


So the pirates here acted on their ingrained instincts when this sudden scare stuck them, their brains began working rapidly, they only took a few glances to roughly calculate their enemy numbers, and after unconsciously comparing them to their own numbers, they realised almost instantly that they were comfortably in the lead.


And when all the pirates present there realised that fact, they immediately saw red and then without needing any order every single one of them raised their weapons, screamed at the top of their lungs and charged for the enemy with insane bloodlust that they were well known for.


But the sellswords were neither surprised nor scared by their enemy's bloodlust and acted with complete calm.


Not stopping for a single second after they were done with the last of the pirates who had fallen into their trap, the sellswords all simultaneously took a few steps back and then quickly but orderly began rearranging themselves in proper defensive formation with the ones in front raising the shields they had brought.


Their sheer reaction speed meant that by the time the pirates were within attacking distance, the sellswords were ready with a sturdy wall of spears that helped them easily hold their ground against the pirate's reckless charge.


A few seconds later the pirate rush abruptly halted as they got stuck against the shields and each other and then came... the real attack.


The sellswords hiding behind with swords and spears in their hands jumped on the stuck pirates and began killing as many as they could reach. It was a complete massacre... because sellswords with years of experience in killing people weren't the only thing working against pirates at that time.


Everyone who's ever fought a battle on a ship knows that a battle on the sea was a completely different thing than one on the ground.


For one, when you fight on the deck of a ship, it is mostly about keeping your balance while making sure that you dodge all of your enemy's wild swings and eventually your foe will make a mistake and be killed by your sword.


But sadly for the pirates knowing how to keep your balance wasn't as useful in a fight over land as it was over water. And while it wasn't that the pirates never fought on land, because they did. It's just that their usual fare of enemies consisted of old farm hands, young helpless maidens, and fat merchants, so it was safe to say, they were quite unused to facing an opponent with such skills.


And not only were the pirates out-skilled, but they were also out-armoured.


Most of the pirates were still in their half-naked state with no protection on their upper bodies, and then there was the issue of all of them being hungover from their party last night, making it too challenging for them to see properly in the darkness, even with the campfire brightening the night a little bit.


Their heads were pounding from the dying screams of their fellows, some of them were pucking their guts out in the middle of the battle, and then even more of them were slipping on those very guts and then dying to the swords of opportunistic sellswords who had no problem with easy kills.


So it was indisputable that things were not looking very good for the pirates. Their numbers were being culled left and right, they weren't making any dent in the number of sellswords.


But Rake, the pirate who was commanding the attack safely from far behind the pirates, was still very optimistic about the situation. Because he knew that as long as they kept at it, their enemies would get exhausted sooner or later, and then once enough of them began dying, it would only be a matter of time before they got overwhelmed by the pirate's sheer numbers and then the pirates would win... and if a few hundred pirates were sacrificed for the win along the way, who cared.


"KEEP IT UP!!" Rake cried, not letting the pirates in front of him have any second thoughts, "Reinforcements could be coming from the castle at any moment. Don't Worry!!"


And miraculously, at that exact moment, they suddenly heard the clanging of metals and charging footsteps from behind them, raising a small hope in the pirate's hearts.


But unfortunately for them, while reinforcement did arrive... they came for the opposing side.


Before the pirates could even turn around, they were abruptly hit in the back by a flood of stabs by a new force of enemy sellswords.


This new force jumped on them with even more ferocity than the one in front of them. And that is when the pirates found out to their dismay, that they weren't in a numerically superior position, after all.


In fact, enough pirates had died by now, that the pirates were not only at a skill disadvantage but were also being crushed numerically. Plus, their situation only got worse as their number dwindled and they began to get tag-teamed by more than one enemy at a time.


It was the classic manoeuvre of hammer and the anvil with the pirates being completely routed in the middle of the two groups.


Gared and Oberyn were at the very front of their group's charge and were killing the pirates left and right with each swing of their weapons. It was as if their enemies were nothing more than children with swords... but even then the number of their kills was nothing compared to Jon, whose every arrow was taking a life and by now he had already emptied his first quiver and was halfway through his second one.


But soon enough, the haze in the pirates' eyes began clearing and they finally noticed the carnage all around them and realised that this was a losing fight. And while you could say a lot of things about pirates... brave and self-sacrificing was not one of them. So...


"ARGH!! FUCK IT!!" a pirate screamed as he lost his shit, trampled over his fellow pirates and ran for the port with all his might. He threw away his weapon and ducked his head while hoping desperately that an arrow wouldn't kill him. And miraculously his prayers were answered and he somehow reached the port safely and even climbed abroad on a ship anchored there.


And just like that, it was as if a dam had opened...


After seeing the successful escape of one of their fellow, the pirates couldn't handle the pressure anymore and slowly but surely one after other they began abandoning the fight.


No one was interested in this losing fight anymore, and as the pirates began screaming and running for their lives... it only made them easier to kill.


This was where all the archers in the sellswords company showed their worth once again. Killing the running pirates seemed as easy as target practice for them.


Since Jon had ordered the archers to focus their fire on the ones running towards the castle first, this meant that more than half the pirates running towards the port survived, while only two pirates among the ones running for the castle were lucky enough to not get pierced by an arrow.


And so... five minutes later the last surviving pirate while begging for his life.


This settlement that boasted almost 700 pirates just last night... was almost annihilated, with less than 120 survivors who managed to safely reach the ships and were now impatiently trying to sail away in the night, hoping that the ones in the castle would soon come to their rescue and defeat these invaders so that they could sail back.


On their end, Jon was informed that their side had incurred five deaths and ten injuries in this battle, which while unfortunate was as much of a win as one could expect from a battle like this considering the numbers both sides boasted.


Jon had been in charge of men for a while now and had long come to accept the irrefutable fact that when you have men under your command in this world... then you would inevitably lose some of them along the way, whether their deaths be to diseases, drowning, animal attacks... or if they die while fighting for you.


So while he, of course, felt guilt due to the deaths... he didn't let it affect him too much as he knew that it wasn't the time to mourn. Even from his distant position in the centre of this settlement, he could see the numerous torches lighting up on the castle...


This meant that the ones in the castle had finally become aware that their precious island was being attacked... so it meant that it was finally time for Phase 3.


///

 

[oscar e Sampedro Lopez]

Thank for the chapter

 

[ATP]

Well,castle could hold,if pirates there do not made any dumb move.But - i bet,that MC did sometching to made sure to win there,too.

 

[LazyWizard]

The castle standing in the middle of the island of Grey Gallows was a small one, at least according to Westerosi's standards.


It was only made as a small outpost by Daemon Targaryen after his conquest of Stepstones, but considering the kind of man the Rogue Prince was, even as an outpost this castle wasn't too shabby.


Sleeping in the top-most room of this castle, the one that a few centuries ago hosted the likes of Targaryen's royalty, was the pirate king Ravager.


Deep in his sleep, he was lying alone on a massive, luxurious bed when he was abruptly woken up because of an urgent knocking on the door.


"Captain! Captain! Wake Up!!"


His eyes immediately shot open, as an alert Ravager looked towards the window, only to see that it was still completely dark outside.


Now wide awake, the pirate slowly got up from his bed and immediately picked up the sword lying by his bedside table.


With a frown on his face, Ravager silently walked up to the door but stopped just shy of it.


He stood there completely still for a few seconds with his ears to the door, before the frown on his face deepened and he abruptly opened the door with his sword raised and alert.


Three men were standing outside the room with anxious looks on their faces, two of them were the pirates who were supposed to guard him during the night, while the last one was an ugly man who he vaguely remembered as the aide of one of the pirate captains under him.


Even standing at the door, Ravager could hear the raised voices and loud commotion coming from afar in the castle, which implied that something had gone horribly wrong. But still, most of the tension had left his body at the sight of familiar faces so Ravager slowly lowered his sword and asked tersely, "What happened?"


"A-Attack! Captain! The island is under attack!!" The messenger hurriedly replied with a panicked look in his eyes.


"What?! Who told you that?" Even though he had expected that something bad had happened considering the commotion, he still hadn't anticipated that someone would dare to attack his island in the middle of the night, "Who is attacking us?" he asked angrily.


"I-I don't know, Captain." the messenger answered nervously shaking his head, "B-But Captain Blackheart and the others are gathered in the meeting hall, waiting for you..."


"Fine, then! Wait, here," he ordered briefly before going back into the room and closing the door behind him.


When Ravager opened the door a few minutes later, he was dressed for battle and was wearing his characteristic armour, a decent quality chainmail he had looted from a merchant a few years ago, and had a sword, and a dagger at his side, "Lead the way," he ordered curtly and the messenger nodded immediately as he began leading him while the guards fell into steps beside him.


They walked two corridors and one floor down from his room before they reached a massive wooden door, behind which one could already hear loud raised voices arguing with each other.


The captain didn't wait for a single moment and slammed the door open and with a single glare of his, the crowd of rowdy pirates inside the room fell silent.


"Who was the one who dared to attack us? Was it from the nearby islands again?" he growled out loud while walking around the table to stand at the head.


"It is an unknown group, Captain," replied Blackheart, he was a tall skinny pirate with a thin beard and was one of the most trusted commanders under Ravager, "We don't know much about the attackers, and the only thing we do know at the moment... is that they attacked our eastern settlement half an hour ago..."


"How the hell could someone reach all the way to our settlement and attack us without us knowing?" Ravager asked furiously while slamming his fist on the table, "What the fuck were the scout ships doing? Why were we not alerted?"


"We don't know, Captain," replied Hark in a deep voice, a large black man with a flat nose, "We only heard about this news half an hour ago from the two pirates who narrowly escaped the attackers. According to them, these unknown men appeared out of nowhere and fell upon the camp from two sides. The attackers were skilled and well equipped and managed to almost annihilate the camp with only a few managing to escape towards the ships on the shore. And since there had been no news from the scout ships even after all this while, we can only assume that either all of them fell asleep at the same time or..."


"So the scout ships are also gone..." Ravager said with gritted teeth, "Who the hell do these people think they are?" The pirate king hadn't suffered a humiliation like this in years, so his tolerance for anger was quite low, "Hark!! Send a call out to all of our pirates! We will show these bastards what happens when they attack the Ravager!"


"Yes! Captain—"


"I don't think that's wise, Captain," a voice calmly interrupted the pirate's enthusiastic response, making everyone turn their eyes towards the door only to see the man who was known as the brain behind the rise of this pirate fleet, the Advisor.


"Finally!" shouted Ravager with a somewhat relieved look on his face, "Where the hell were you?"


"I was gathering information, Captain," The Advisor replied with a small nod towards the door, "The minute I got news of the attack, I sent pirates in all directions of the island as scouts to find the condition of all camps big and small, and if they can, then lead them towards the castle as soon as they can..."


"Good! Good!" Ravager nodded with a pleased look on his face, "If those trashes are quick about it then we may not have to wait long before punishing those who dared to attack us,"


"That... may not be possible, Captain," The advisor replied cautiously, raining on the Ravager's parade.


"What?! What do you mean,"


"The scouts reported that all of our people in those camps and settlements are... dead,"


"What?!" "No! That can't be!!" "How is that possible!!"


Almost immediately exclamation of shock and denial rang throughout the room as the pirate leaders took in the unimaginable news that in just a matter of few hours, their Pirate fleet had lost so many pirates.


"Is this true? Do you know for sure?" Ravager asked with a stunned look on his face.


"Yes. I sent the scouts twice just to be sure," The Adviser replied grimly, shaking his head, "But the result was the same... In the North, in the East, and in the West, all of our camps were filled with nothing but dead bodies. The only place still unharmed is our settlement near the west port..."


"B-But that... that is absurd," Hark stuttered out with a scared look on his face, as he tried to imagine the kind of force that you would need to do something like this... and that too silently, "For someone to be able to do this... to kill more than a third of our forces with us not even getting a whiff of it... they would have to have, I don't know, ten times the fucking numbers as us... which makes no sense."


"It doesn't matter how they did it. What matters is... what should we do now?" Blackheart interrupted in a tone of forced calm.


"Obviously, we should run away," said one of the other pirates, "We need to take our remaining force and leave for the seas immediately..."


"What?! You coward? How can we just run away?"


"Then what?! Do you want to fight them?! When they can have ten times the number as us." The cowardly pirate retorted back angrily, "It would be foolish to stay here and wait for this enemy to attack us when we know nothing about them... As long as we survive we can fight them another day." he urged.


"Even if we do that, we'll surely be bled dry all the way to the port... and who knows what kind of fleet these people have, because don't forget they managed to easily take out all of our scout ships... so running away may not be a better option."


"Well! What other choice do we have, you fool!! Do you want us to just—"


"Silence!" Ravager barked with a frustrated look on his face, halting the rowdy pirates from arguing uselessly, before turning back to the Advisor, "What do you think? Do you also believe that... retreating is the best choice for us?"


"I don't think that would be necessary, Captain," The Advisor said calmly, "Besides I already called all the remaining pirates back into the castle."


"What?! Why?"


"For their safety and... to protect you."


"Protect Me?! What do you mean?"


"From what I have noticed, the enemy leader is a competent individual, so I would guess that the only reason those two pirates managed to escape... was that they were let go deliberately, so that they could bring the message to us, forcing us to leave the safety of the castle, to flee towards the port... and from there they can easily attack us on the move, and get to... you."


"But why do you think they are after the captain?" Blackheart asked confusedly.


"For the bounty, I would guess," he shrugged and almost immediately a gleam of realisation occurred in the eyes of the pirates. Most of the pirates present here had already heard that the Braavos had put a bounty of 100,000 gold on the head of their captain while quite a few of them were tempted by it, all of them knew that even if they somehow succeded, it would be cold day in hell before Braavos would give money to a pirate... "But that's not important, what's important is that if we leave the castle, we will be out in the open giving them exactly the opening that they need..."


"But we can't just stay here and do nothing, right," one of the pirates said hesitatingly, not wanting to sound like he didn't care for their Captain's safety. "Because then we'll all be killed when they attack the castle..."


"Not necessarily,"


"What do you mean?" The Captain asked turning to the advisor with a frown on his face, "Do you know something?"


"You are all speculating from the feats that they have accomplished during the last few hours that they have a lot of men on their side but... that may not really be the truth," The Advisor replied calmly, "I had sent one of the sneakier scouts to the east camp after getting the news of the attack and he managed to catch a glimpse of the forces gathered there, and from his estimates, there are not more than five hundred to six hundred fighters in their force... Not a small group, sure, but also not something we have to be fearful of."


"B-But then... how could they have killed so many of our pirates?" asked Blackheart with a frown.


"Likely though ambushes, I would presume.... But that doesn't matter, what matters is that they are not so strong as to be able to overwhelm us now that they have lost the element of surprise, so I don't think we need to be hasty in any of our decisions, because as long as we have the protection of the castle, I don't think they would be stupid enough to attack us."


"So you want us to just sit here in the castle waiting for them..."


"Yes," The Advisor replied to the cowardly pirate's inquiry, "Whether it be to attack or to defend, everything would be better once the night passes. Because when the sun rises in a few hours, they would lose all their advantages and then the momentum will be on our side and we'll be the ones to decide whether to fight them or not..."


"But what if they don't attack and just decide to wait outside o-or lay a siege to the castle? What will we do then?"


"That would be even better for us... because then we'll have the advantage with all the ration that we have stored here, but I don't think they would do anything like that." The Advisor shook his head with a smile, "They have neither the men nor the time for that because if you recall, we are on an island in the middle of Stepstones, the biggest stronghold of pirates in Essos. They know for sure that if the pirates on the other islands get a whiff of their whereabouts... then they'll be the ones who are trapped in here with us... So all we need to do is just wait and prepare..."


....


"They are going in," Bran whispered while squinting his eyes to see as much as he could in the light of the moon.


"I can see that boy," Oberyn replied to the obvious observation from the son of the Sellsword Captain.


Both of them were acting as scouts for the company and were hiding in thick bushes on a small hill about two kilometres away from the castle.


At that very moment, hundreds upon hundreds of pirates were hurriedly, but with vigilant looks on their faces, heading into the castle.


These pirates were the ones from the settlement of the Western shore, the only pirate camp still left unscratched from the company massacre during the night.


They were estimated to have about 750 men according to Jon, from what Oberyn could observe that was an accurate assessment... which meant that they had abandoned the camp and now every single one of those pirates was racing into the castle to hide from their company.


"Wouldn't now be a good time to attack them, Prince Oberyn," Bran asked in a low voice, his voice tinged in confusion, "Why are we just letting them easily get away into the castle? Why aren't we ambushing them like the others?"


"Because now... they know that we are here and that we are attacking the pirates on this island, which means that any attack we go into... would not be an ambush but a proper battle," Oberyn explained calmly, "And battles mean heavy casualties, and from what I know of your friend, Jon Snow, he doesn't like them very much..."


"So then are we not going to... fight them anymore? Because if we are then wouldn't it just be harder to attack them when they are all inside the castle..." The boy asked in a baffled tone.


"Of course, we are still going to fight, otherwise everything until now would have been pointless... As for how we are going to do that..." Oberyn shrugged with a helpless smile, "Only your friend Jon knows that..."


"Oh! That should be... fine then."


At that moment the last of the pirates had gone inside and the large wooden door of the castle was finally being closed, so Oberyn took one last look at the walls and whispered, "Let's go."


Bran nodded his head as the two of them slowly but silently stood up and began backtracking their way through trees and thick foilage towards the camp near the shore where they had left the rest of their company.


It only took them twenty minutes to reach the camp and what they saw surprised them quite a bit...


Only about an hour must have passed since they parted from the company, but the pirate settlement looked completely different from the condition they had left it in...


For one thing, all of the dead bodies of pirates they had killed had been cleared off and dumped into a massive pit dug some distance away to ward off the smell and the company sellswords also seemed to have done some nominal cleaning to open up a huge space in the clearing, where most of the sellswords were lingering at the moment.


Other than the ones who were on watch duty, most of the sellswords had already let go of their vigilance and were now in complete rest mode. Some were cleaning their weapons, others were chatting with their friends, and a few of the older ones had already gone to sleep...


If one just sees the peaceful atmosphere that the company was in, then they would find it hard to predict these people had fought a brutal battle just an hour ago, that they were still in the middle of a pirate-infested island, and that there were still enemies on this island waiting to kill them... because from the looks on these people's faces, it felt as if they were sitting in their backyard and not in enemy territory...


Oberyn shook his head at the absurd situation after absurd situations he had found himself in ever since he had joined this company.


But so many of these situations had happened that by now Oberyn felt that he had built some immunity to it.


So when he came to the middle of the camp to find Jon and Gared sitting on the ground conversing nonchalantly about different types of swords, he didn't act like a panicked greenhorn began badgering them with questions like what they were doing or if they were in their right mind...


Instead he just calmly and nonchalantly took a seat beside them and asked, "You're not planning to set up home here, are you? Because you look entirely too comfortable on this pirate island..."


"How did you know I was thinking the exact same thing?" Jon replied with a wide smile on his face, "Don't you just love how peaceful it is here... and not to mention how beautiful and unique the view of the night sky here..." he said while pointing towards the sky filled with millions upon millions of stars that looked so clear and close that one feels as if they could touch them... just by raising their hands. "One doesn't find views like these just anywhere,"


"Sure! Sure!" Oberyn nodded sarcastically while rolling his eyes.


"So did you see them?" Gared suddenly interrupted with a raised eyebrow.


"Yes. Jon here was right about his information however he got it," Oberyn replied a bit reluctantly while taking a deep swig from a pouch of ale placed nearby, "All the pirates from the last settlement entered the castle a while ago and from the looks of it, none of them have any intention of coming out anytime soon. So it seems that there is no need for us to worry about them for a while..."


"Do you mean that 'you' don't need to worry about them?" Gared asked with an amused smile on his face, "Because as far as I recall you were the only one who insisted that we absolutely need to scout the castle because Jon's information could be wrong..."


"I just wanted to see it with my own eyes to be sure... or else I wouldn't have been able to sleep." Oberyn replied while ignoring the amused expression on Gared's face, "I mean what was I supposed to do to when Jon here tells me that..." he waved his hand at the Northern Bastard, "that he wants all of us to take rest and go to sleep right here, right now."


"Not all of us, you know," Jon interrupted while pointing towards the attentive lookouts.


"Yes, yes," Oberyn mumbled sarcastically, "Can't forget about the five sentries now, can we?"


"My father always told me that a meal and a few hours of sleep can be the difference between a veteran warrior and a stumbling greenhorn," Jon said with a small smile, "So the few hours we have left before the sun rises would be very useful for us to rejuvenate ourselves from the exhaustion of all the battle and ambushes we went through during the night... And thankfully none of our fighters here are novices, so I don't have to worry about them having trouble falling asleep in this foreign environment due to nightmares(from all the killing,) or something else..." he said while looking at surrounding sellswords, most of whom were already deep in their sleep, snoring loudly.


"You think I don't know the importance of rest for an army," Oberyn scoffed while looking at the sky, internally agreeing that the night sky on this pirate island really was quite beautiful, "Because trust me I do... it's just that I was worried that the pirates might get some ideas and would want to launch an ambush of their own to take revenge..."


"Trust me, they won't," Jon said factually as if he had complete confidence in his own words, "They will pass the night alert in the castle, waiting for us to attack but they won't launch an attack of their own," he said calmly while finding a flat place nearby and then he immediately laid down on the ground as if he was ready to sleep.


"But what if they did..."


"Then I'll know long before they even leave the castle," he replied with a mysterious smile, the same one that he always had on his face whenever he was sharing information... as if he knew something that no one else did, and it frustrated the Dornish prince to no end.


And he hated that a part of him immediately began to feel relieved at that smile as if he had already begun to unconsciously place his trust in the boy's words as if he knew deep down that if the boy said there was no danger... then there would probably be no danger.


"Ugh! Fine, then. But know this, if I die in my sleep... then I am definitely going to go haunt that wasteland you call home for eternity," Oberyn threatened before shaking his head and making a place of his own on the ground to sleep.


"People who live in the desert should really not comment on other people's homes, you know," Jon retorted making Oberyn snort as a small smile appeared on his face.


Things went silent after that as the conversation around the camp went down and all the exhausted sellswords gradually fell asleep under the night sky.


....


"It seems your prediction turned out to be right..." Ravager murmured as he stood upon the wall of the castle gazing at the horizon as the first rays of morning fell upon the island driving away the gloominess of the night, "They never did attack us during the night..."


All around him stood pirates with bloodshot eyes trying hard to keep their eyes open, so that they don't miss anyone attacking them.


Even though the advisor had told them that they wouldn't be attacked during the night, Ravager didn't dare to let the pirates under him fall asleep. He had kept more than half the pirates awake at all times as a precaution, and no one could fault him for it, considering the number of pirates they had lost because of carelessness in a single night.


"Of course, Captain." The advisor nodded with a calm expression on his face, "I can easily imagine the kind of person their leader is... he must have been so sure of his plan that he probably kept all of his men awake and ready to attack us for the night, they must have been waiting impatiently for us to leave the castle so that they can fall upon us all this while. Hehe, it must frustrate him to no end that we didn't play into his hands..."


"I am sure it did," Ravager said as a satisfied expression appeared on his face at the thought of frustrating his unknown enemy, "All the work they did, all the pirates they managed to kill was all useless because, I am still here, alive and well, having lost nothing more than a few worthless pirates.... pirates I can easily replenish with a few raids at any time. But all their hard work must still be rewarded and when I find out who they are..." his eyes gleamed with a burning rage, "I'll be sure to pay them back a thousand times."


"We may not have to wait for long to do that, Captain..."


"Hmm, What do you mean?"


"If I am assuming it right, then all those attackers must have been quite exhausted by now, their eyes weary with sleep, their limbs aching from the exhaustion of the fights during the night. So if I were their leader, then I would be looking to cut my losses right about now and preparing to leave the island... so if we time it right, we can hit them in the back, exactly like they wanted to do to us."


"That... is not a bad idea," Ravager nodded slowly as a hungry expression appeared on his face, "Good! Very Good!! I'll get the pirates to prepare... we should leave immediately then lest they manage to run away..."


"Don't worry, Captain. I've had the cooks woken up early so they should be done preparing the food by now. With a simple meal to rejuvenate us, we'll be ready to go after them properly..."


"Perfect! This is a chance to finally show those bastards why they call me..." he said with a savage smile on his face. "The Ravager."


///

 

[oscar e Sampedro Lopez]

Thanks for the chapter. Great story as always

 

[ATP]

Simple meal...let me guess,entire pirate army would shit themselves to death before batte start?

 

[LazyWizard]

"Where is the advisor?"


"I don't know, Captain. The last time I saw him..." Blackheart replied with a hint of pity in his eyes, "He said he was going to the privy..."


Almost all of the leaders had little chance to get sleep last night, but the Advisor had the worst of it. The man had been running to and fro, the whole night trying to keep everyone awake and alert... so it was understandable that his stomach was now rebelling and giving him a hard time.


"Fine, just get someone to bring him to me as soon as he comes out..." Ravager ordered distractedly as they exited the inner castle, "So is everything here prepared then? Are they all ready to move?" he asked as he saw hundreds upon hundreds of his pirates standing under the shades of the castle walls.


They were divided into seven different groups each having a leader of their own who were currently barking orders at the rowdy crowd of pirates trying to get them to behave.


Only a small percentage of his pirates had armours of their own, the rest of them either had to snag them from someone else or were left going into the fight unarmoured, which wasn't a new thing for the pirates as they mostly participated in naval battles where armour was more of a bane than boon.


And, their choice was coming to bite them in the back, but it was too late to do anything about it now... so they could only sharpen their blades while praying that they manage to kill their enemy before they get killed themselves.


"Yes, Captain." Blackheart replied while nodding towards the pirates gathered in front of them, "They have all already been fed and are now bursting with energy, raring to have a chance to take revenge for last night's embarrassment... I must say, Captain. It was a brilliant idea of the Advisor to have the cooks prepare porridge so early on. Just seven of those huge pots filled with that simple and filling meal was enough for everyone here... it was the perfect feast before our battle."


Ravager of course hadn't eaten with this rabble. He ate a different meal in his own room provided by his personal cook filled with all kinds of meats and dry fruits. But knowing that his underlings were filled with energy satisfied him because he knew the more vigorous they were the more enemies they would kill.


"But Captain..." Blackheart suddenly said hesitatingly, "One thing has been bothering me about the ambushes last night..."


"What?"


"I just feel... that it was really unrealistic how this new force, who has most definitely arrived on our island for the first time, was able to kill so many of our people in such a short time and that too during nighttime... the only way something like this could even be remotely possible was if they had a very precise map of the island, with the location of each of our settlements marked beforehand, which would indicate that we have a... spy in our midst."


"Do you think I didn't think of that?" Ravager replied back in a low voice while glaring at Blackheart, "There is no doubt in the fact that there is a spy amongst our midst... and he is not some grunt either as he is most definitely someone in a high position... but even if we know this, there is nothing we can do about it... Taking drastic actions will only cause panic among them, so for now we can do nothing but wait..."


"But Captain... wouldn't this mean that the spy could be sharing every single detail about our action at this very moment and that would mean that the enemy could already know about our plan to ambush them from the back."


"Don't worry! After our meeting last night, I had the rookery watched by ten of my personal guards every single hour... Even a hint of someone trying to so much as send a single word would reach me immediately and then when I catch this spy.. I would make him wish for death..." Ravager said with a cruel look in his eyes before shaking his head, "But that is all for later... for now we just need to deal with these attackers,"


"You're, of course, right Captain." Blackheart nodded with an admiring look on his face.


"So are all the pirates here then?" Ravager asked changing the subject.


"Yes, Captain. Most of the pirates are here, except for the few who would be left behind to guard the castle in our place. And I have also had all the blacksmiths, slaves, prostitutes and other workers locked in the storage underground. It is a bit stuffed in there, but at least they won't be able to create any problems behind our back..."


"Perfect." Ravager nodded with a satisfied look on his face. "Then I think it's time. I want you to send out our best scouts in all directions of the island. I want them to find those bastards as fast as possible. And the moment they get even a whiff of the enemy's location, I want us to be ready to move out and—"


"Oi! Oi! Look! Look at that!!" "What?!" "What?! Let me see!!"


A loud commotion abruptly interrupted Ravager's conversation with Blackheart, and both of them looked up to see that the pirates standing atop the wall were pointing their fingers and staring at something in the distance with distressed looks on their faces.


"Go! See what the problem is," Ravager ordered with a frown and Blackheart immediately nodded and complied with the request as he ran towards the wall while barking loudly, "What the fuck is going over there Mickey! What are you all panicking about?!"


"Captain!! T-They are here." The man replied while pointing towards the distance with an alarmed look on his face.


"Who is here, you idiot!! What in the world are you getting so hysterical about—"


"The enemies!!" The lookout impatiently interrupted Blackheart uncaring about him being a leader, "They are here! Right outside our castle!!"


"What?! What are you..." Blackheart's eyes widened as he finally managed to comprehend the message and when he turned to look at Ravager, he saw his own surprise mirrored in his face.


And then without waiting for a single moment, both of them hurried to climb the stairs leading to the wall.


By the time they reached the top, the commotion had spread throughout the wall, and by now there were more than a hundred pirates all over the wall looking towards the distance with scared looks on their faces.


And when the two leaders finally managed to catch sight of the land beyond the castle... they realised that the lookout was indeed not wrong—The enemy was here.


Coming towards the castle in a tight formation made of seven rows divided into two parts was a disciplined army filled with men wearing well-maintained armours and sharp gleaming weapons in their hands.


And them being in a formation only made it easier for all the pirates to count their numbers. It only took them a few moments to realise that the numbers on both sides of the conflict were almost equal... which made it very clear this would be a fierce battle with a lot of casualties.


In addition, considering how they were on land and how well-equipped their enemy was... it was safe to say that things weren't looking good for the pirates.


"B-But didn't the Advisor say that they wouldn't dare to attack us in the castle," Blackheart stammered in an appalled voice, "He said that it would be—"


"Where is he?!" Ravager interrupted him while gritting his teeth in anger, "Where is that damn Advisor?"


"I-I-I—"


"Don't just stand there, you idiot! Go find him, and bring him to me!!" he hissed at the pirate who hurriedly nodded his head before scurrying away.


Ravager grimaced as he turned back to the pirates, and saw how quickly the panic was spreading amongst them.


He knew that he had to do something very quickly or the upcoming battle would become nothing more than a rout.


And being an experienced pirate Captain, it only took him a few seconds to come up with a solution.


After taking in a deep breath Ravager began, "HAHA!!" laughing at the top of his lungs.


Almost immediately he attracted the attention of all the pirates on the wall, "This is just the best... Here we were working so hard to find these bastards and now... these idiots decided to come to us on their own, Haha!! How generous of them to have decided to spare us from doing all the work..."


The pirates exchanged confused glances at that, wondering why their captain was happy that they were being attacked by the same force that had managed to devastate their fleet to less than one-third of its strength in just a single night.


"Men!!" he bellowed with all his might, "There is a saying that one needs at least ten times the men as the ones inside a castle to take it... Come! Let's see today if that checks out! Haha!"


"..."


"T-That's right! We have the castle on our side. There is nothing to be afraid of!!"


"You're right!! With the protection of the castle, they can do nothing to us,"


"Haha, Most of them would probably die bashing their heads against the walls, long before they even reach us!!"


"Definitely! This battle is going to be an easy one,"


"Good! Good!! Let them come! I'll show them the reason they call me the widow maker, Haha!"


"No one calls you that, you idiot!!"


All over the wall most of the tension seems to have left the pirates with just a few words from their captain. Their fear had turned into anticipation in a matter of seconds... showing that pirates really were simple-minded folks...


"Quickly, now, Men! Gather on the walls!! Defend against the enemy" Ravager shouted at the ones still standing below before turning back to the ones beside him on the wall, "I want the archers to the front and all the warriors... if you can then change your weapons to spears!!"


There was loud commotion and disarray among the pirates as they rushed to follow Ravager's orders.


Some were rushing to get their spears while others were trying to borrow some arrows from their comrades. But soon, enough pirates had managed to climb the walls so that they covered almost the whole wall facing the enemy force.


And while all this was happening, the sellswords had gotten a lot closer to the castle.


But then abruptly they just... stopped.


They halted just outside the distance that the arrows from the pirates could reach them, but they were now close enough that they could cover the rest of the distance in a matter of minutes if they were quick about it.


"Wait! Why did they suddenly stop?"


"Huh, Maybe they got scared?"


"There's no way that's true, you idiot!!"


"I think... they are waiting for something,"


"Waiting? Waiting for what?"


"Maybe they are waiting for us to come out and meet them in the field..."


"Do they think we are stupid or something? Why would we do that?"


Ravager was also quite confused by the strange decision of their enemy to abruptly stop so close to their target, as this does nothing but give his people more time to prepare, 'So why in the hell are they...'


"Captain!! Captain!!" Ravager irritatedly turned his head around and saw Blackheart shouting while climbing the stairs towards him.


"What?!"


"T-The Advisor!! He is not there!"


"What do you mean he is not there..." Ravager repeated while getting a sudden sinking feeling in his stomach.


"I checked the privy and his room and even asked all the ones in the castle but no one has seen him in the last hour,"


"What? Where could he have gone—"


"Oi! Oi! What are you doing? What the fuck's wrong with you?!!"


All eyes on the castle abruptly turned towards a pirate who was shouting while holding his friend in his arms trying to wake him up.


The man in the pirate's arm was a thin almost malnourished pirate and he was currently shivering as if he was having a seizure, his eyes had rolled back into his head and no matter how hard his friend slapped him, he wasn't showing any signs of waking up.


"What happened?!" Ravager growled as he rushed to stand behind the pirate.


"I-I don't know, Captain." The pirate answered with a panicked look on his face, "One second he was standing there laughing with me and in the next, he suddenly started behaving strangely and then he just fainted and became like this."


Ravager grimaced but decided that now wasn't the time to be thinking about this so he decided to make an excuse to get the pirates back on track, "He was probably just a greenhorn who was nervous about the battle and fainted because he couldn't handle the pressure. Alright, men. Leave him for now—"


"But Captain, look!!" Blackheart interrupted Ravager with a horrified look on his face while pointing towards the fallen man, "Look at his mouth! He's throwing up white foam... isn't that a sign of p-poisoning."


"I-I... He must have eaten—"


*Thud*


Before Ravager could even make more excuses they were all distracted by the sound of a scream and a loud slam that came from the very front.


When they all looked towards the front they saw that everyone was looking towards the ground in front of the wall with a horrified look on their faces... Ravager gulped and followed their eyes only to have his worst fear realised as he saw one of his pirates splattered on the earth with his limbs twisted and his skull cracked... completely and irrevocably dead.


"H-He fell! He just fell!!" stammered a pirate who was standing beside, the now-dead pirate, just a few seconds ago.


And just like that it was as if a dam had burst open... all around him pirates began showing signs of nausea, fainting, and stomach aches.


Some had their faces turning green while others were shivering uncontrollably as if they were standing in the middle of the snow. The symptoms all around him were completely random as if someone was playing a game of death with them...


"Argh! It hurts! My stomach hurts!!"


"Ugh! I am seeing stars all around me,"


"My legs! They feel like jelly. Damn it! I can't stand!!"


As he looked at the chaos around him, Ravager's stomach sank even lower, and a horrifying realization began to rise in his mind as he asked, "Blackheart! Where is Rostch?"


"Eh? Rostch? The advisor's son? I don't know... Probably with the rest of the trash in the basement storage. Why?" Blackheart answered distractedly, preoccupied with all the commotion happening around him.


But that was the last straw as all the puzzles in Ravager's mind fell into place, all the suspicious things that had been happening since last night, and all the strange coincidences began aligning in his mind.


'There is probably a spy amongst our midst, Captain...' 'The spy must be in a high position..' 'Don't worry, Captain. I've had the cooks woken up early to cook food...' 'I don't think we should run away, Captain...' 'The enemy won't dare to attack us in our castle, Captain...'


"Captain! Captain!!"


"Huh?" Ravager came back to his senses due to Blackheart's scream.


"What should we do, Captain?! This is getting really dangerous! Our men are falling left and right and our enemy is right in front of us. We need to do something or else we'll all die!!"


"R-Right!! You're right." Ravager nodded with a forced smile on his face, "Don't worry, I know the exact poison that is affecting all of them and it has a really simple antidote. Blackheart! You! I am leaving you in charge of the wall while I go and prepare the antidote for all of us! It shouldn't take me too long. So you need to hold the wall with all your might. Understand!!"


"Really! T-Then I won't let you down, Captain!" he nodded with a nervous expression on his face before he immediately went to corral the pirates who weren't showing the symptoms of poisoning...yet.


"Look! Look" "They are coming!" "The enemy is coming!!"


"What are you panicking for, you idiots!" Blackheart cried in a booming voice, "MEN!! Gather on me! We'll show these bastards what pirates are made of!!"


After sending one last resentful look at the army of sellswords charging towards the castle, Ravager decisively turned around and hurried down the wall and into the castle... leaving all his men to fend for themselves.


....


"I-Is that an apple I see in your hand?" Oberyn asked with an incredulous look in his eyes, "Where in seven hells did you get an apple from, boy?"


"Oh, this..." Jon asked while raising the half-bitten apple in his hands, "It's from an orchard in Pentos..." he replied, shrugging nonchalantly before taking another bite, "I know it's quite shocking but there are apparently quite a few of those in Pentos, all of them owned by a wealthy magister..."


All three of them, Oberyn, Gared and Jon were standing a few meters in front of their company's army.


Gared had a far-eye in his hands and was watching the pirates on the wall while Jon was casually eating an apple and standing a few steps behind him along with Oberyn


"I know that there are orchards in Pentos," Oberyn replied, his eyebrows twitching wildly, "What I don't understand is how an apple from... an orchard in Pentos, managed to reach your hands all the way here in Stepstones, and that too in this fresh condition as if it has just been plucked last night."


"Umm... Oh, that! Well, I found it lying around this morning so it... probably just fell from the sky..." Jon replied with a lame excuse.


Frost had this habit of bringing along whatever fruit she saw along the way whenever she went on a hunt during the night and considering that her speed was faster than even the commercial aeroplanes from his previous lives, Jon gets quite a varied choice in his breakfast every other morning.


"How is that even—You know what." Oberyn stopped before taking a deep breath, "Forget about it. Just tell me why we are stopped here..."


"We're waiting..."


"Waiting for what?" Oberyn asked with a raised eyebrow, "For them to come down out of the castle and fight us here... because I don't think even these are stupid enough for that."


"Now, now, don't go swearing on that Oberyn... You can never put a limit on the stupidity of pirates,"


"If you say so..." Oberyn replied while rolling his eyes.


"And to answer your question, I am waiting for one of them to... fall off, hopefully," Jon answered while squinting his eyes as if he could actually see the pirates standing on the wall in the distance, "Hmm, according to Sam the effects should start getting visible right about now..."


Initially, Jon's plan hadn't involved poisoning at all, but due to his sudden luck in finding a man on the inside at the last moment, he had decided to send Sam a letter asking him to make as much of his special solution as possible.


And while Sam came through with his request, he also said that it was somewhat of a rushed job involving a lot of different varieties of stuff that he had lying around, so he told him that the effects could be erratic, with some showing adverse reactions while others with a more robust constitution having little to no effects. Sam wasn't even sure what those effects could be... just that they would be very harmful to the victims.


"Waiting for one to fall?" Oberyn asked in a confused voice, "What in seven hells are you talking about? And what does Sam have to do with this when he is all the way back in—"


"Oh! Look! One of them really did fall off..." Gared interrupted in a mildly surprised tone while pointing towards the castle in the distance.


"What?! Let me see," Oberyn blurted before immediately snatching the Far-eye "Oi!" from the Sellsword's hand and placing it on his own eye.


Almost immediately he could see a body lying on the ground in front of the wall and from its twisted position, it really did seem as if the body had fallen from the wall.


And not only that... all over the wall, pirates were behaving strangely, some were clutching their stomachs and kneeling on the ground, while others were holding on to their heads moving around drunkenly as if they couldn't see straight, all over the wall the pirates were showing signs of being... poisoned.


"So this was your plan all along, huh," Oberyn breathed out in an amazed tone as he lowered the Far-eye and turned back to look towards Jon with his eyes wide in astonishment.


Jon's only reply was to wink mischievously, before he turned towards the sellsword Captain beside him and said, "Let's go, Gared. It's time for your men to earn your keep, and... try to make it quick, will you," he said before shielding his face from the sun's piercing rays that were getting hotter with every minute, "I want us to be done before the sun really starts beating on us..."


"You hear that boys!" Gared bellowed while taking his longsword out of its sheath, "We need to make this a quick one or else our pretty boy's face will be ruined... and we don't want that, Do we?"


"NO!!" The men replied with a snicker while preparing themselves, making Jon shake his head with a wry smile but it was his own fault for giving Gared such an easy opening.


And then after a last-minute check, Gared bellowed without any fanfare, "ATTACK!!" leading the charge of his sellswords army from the very front along with his son Bran, and Oberyn right beside him.


"Attack!!" "Kill those pirates!!" "Save the pretty boy!!"


Jon almost stumbled in his step when he heard someone shout that last part but quickly shook it off and followed along with the army, but he wasn't in the front along with the others instead he was in the middle with all the other archers.


And the moment they reached an appropriate distance from the castle he ordered the archers to halt while the rest of the army kept going.


A few seconds later all the archers, amounting to thirty men, raised their bows simultaneously and began firing at the scattered pirates on the wall.


The pirates being in disarray made them easy targets so the archers were taking lives with every other arrow or in Jon's case with every single arrow out of his quiver and that was when he was shooting at almost twice the speed as others.


Now, usually, this would be the time when the enemy archers replied back with their own volley to hold them off... but sadly for pirates, they didn't have that convenience on their side... as most of their archers, which weren't too many, to begin with, had already succumbed to poison and they were now too busy trying to not fall off the wall, to shoot any arrows...


It was probably the easiest path any attacking army had taken to a castle wall in this world's history... It was so effortless, that every single sellsword managed to reach the wall without a single casualty and that too in just under five minutes...


But when the Sellswords began to put the two ladders, that they had prepared beforehand, on the wall... they finally faced some resistance.


A skinny white man called Blackheart by his fellow pirates, was leading all the healthier pirates, who weren't showing signs of poisoning, towards the ladders and was trying to throw back the climbing sellswords and was being an all-around nuisance to them...


But sadly his efforts, while valiant, didn't amount to much as it only took Jon's momentary notice of his antics for his next arrow to go directly through his chest, killing him and shocking the pirates next to him.


With Jon in the lead, the rest of the archers also began focusing their arrows on the pirates standing near the ladders and in only a matter of seconds, that small bit of resistance from the pirates died in its infancy...


And just like that, a few minutes later, the sellswords managed to gain a stable footing on the wall making it easy for the rest of the army to climb.


Jon also decided at that moment that it was time for them to join in the effort, "Let's go," he ordered before leading the archers towards the wall and when they reached the ladder, the sellswords standing in front immediately made way, letting his small force climb first.


After reaching the top, Jon took a few moments to survey the battle and from his short survey he was satisfied to find that things couldn't be better for them.


On the left side, the forces led by Gared were holding the wall stably, not letting a single pirate come near them while on the right, Oberyn was leading an aggressive attack against the pirates and was now almost halfway towards the stairs.


Both men were experienced and were calmly relaying orders without giving into the atmosphere and were not letting their subordinates break rank in their haste to score a kill.


"Shoot the ones near the wall!!" Jon ordered the archers as they all lined up against the wall, protected on both sides by sellswords, and began bombarding the pirates in the courtyard with arrows.


It was a complete massacre...


The pirates ran like headless chickens as they were shot dead left and right... In just a matter of minutes a massive semicircle had opened around the wall the archers were shooting from, causing it to be filled with nothing but dead bodies...


Without any command, both Oberyn and Gared knew what to do next as they simultaneously began sending their men down the stairs to take command of the gate...


It took them a while and this was also where they faced the fiercest resistance from pirates as they lost almost ten of their men during this skirmish in narrow stairs, and that was considering the fact that most of their enemies were weakened by poison...


Nonetheless, a breakthrough was achieved eventually as the men were successful in opening the front gates of the castle, and not a moment later, a flood of sellswords rushed into the castle screaming their heads off, vying for pirates' blood, with Obara leading the charge from the very front.


And that was the final straw for the pirates as seeing the rush of man after man wearing armour pouring into their castle, it felt nothing short of a nightmare to them... and it broke most of their wills to resist.


Some tried to surrender, some ran away while others got even more aggressive in their attack going completely suicidal... but it didn't matter what they did as the end result was still the same... Death.


Barely fifteen minutes later the screams began dying down...


Except for a few small pockets of resistance still holding out here and there, most of the pirates were already lying on the ground breathing their last...


It was an easy battle overall... and why wouldn't it be, more than a third of pirates were already down before the battle even began and the rest were also considerably weakened, not to mention the disadvantage they had in terms of skill as well as equipment.


Most importantly the pirates had no one here to lead them, so they fought like loose sand... and scattered enemies like these were the best food for experienced sellswords...


Coming up empty when he tried to take out another from his quiver, Jon finally put his bow away before taking a deep breath. Taking one last look at the devastated courtyard in front of him, Jon slowly began to walk down the stairs only to find Oberyn and Gared taking a small rest.


"Is that a new scar I see your face, Prince Oberyn," Jon said with an amused smile as he came up to them while pointing towards a very thin line of blood on his cheek, "Your paramour isn't going to be angry with me for ruining your face, Is she?"


"What are you talking about? Women love scars, don't you know that..." Oberyn said while wiping the line blood from his face, "Oh, right! I forgot! You're still a boy so you wouldn't know anything about women, would you..." he quipped with a smirk making Gared laugh loudly.


Jon rolled his eyes but didn't bother with a retort as he knew that the Dornishman was somewhat of a legend when it came to comebacks and he would only be hitting himself in the foot by getting into a banter with the Viper.


"Where's Obara?"


"She's out there hunting the last few pirates who managed to sneak away..." Gared answered before Oberyn could, "Bran is also with her. We left them to it as it could be a learning experience..."


"Good for them," Jon replied while nodding his head.


"And when they are done, it will be over... finally," Gared said while heaving a sigh of relief, "I must say, boy, you're getting your money's worth by making me work this hard..."


"Thank you for that compliment, Gared," Jon replied with an amused smile, "But we're not quite done yet... After all, it's not over until we deal with the biggest fish in this pond."


"Ah! That's right..." Gared said shaking his head before standing up with a grunt, "There is still that bastard who was a no-show for the fight..."


"Then let's go," Oberyn said while picking up his spear, as both he and Gared followed the young Northern boy for their last fight on this island. "I have always wanted to kill a Pirate King..."


///

 

[oscar e Sampedro Lopez]

Thanks for the chapter. Great story as always

 

[ATP]

Well,i hope that Ravager do not manage to hurt Advisor son.He should be smart enough to try to use him as hostage.

 

[LazyWizard]

"So are we going up or down?" Oberyn asked curiously while casually tapping his spear against his shoulder.


They were inside the caste at the moment, standing in front of two stone staircases with walls on both of its sides boxing it in, the one on the right was going up while the one on the left had steps leading down.


The path the three had taken to reach here had been a complete breeze, as they had encountered not a single pirate on the way.


This probably meant that the clean-up by the young ones was going smoothly, though from the intermittent screams they heard now and then... it seemed that it was still an ongoing process.


"Well... our target is probably somewhere on the upper floors, but..." Jon answered before moving to the left stairs, "Before we go for him, I need to pick up a friend... so let's go down first."


'Pick up a friend?' Oberyn mouthed the question at Gared with a confused look on his face, but the Sellsword Captain just shrugged in answer before following after his young client.


They went down two flights of stairs before they reached the first lower floor, but one look into the corridor revealed that it was a complete dead zone.


There were blood stains all over the floor and dead pirates were lying here and there in front of every other door along the corridor, but the absence of any kind of sound made it very clear that this floor had already been 'cleared' by their advanced team and that they would find no one here.


"Hmm, not this one..." Jon said barely stopping in his steps as he went down the stairs once again and as they had expected only a few steps down they began to hear loud shouting and banging sound coming from the floor, signalling that a fight was probably still going on there.


After a quick glance at each other, Gared decided to take the lead as he was the most well-armoured amongst them.


And it turned out to be a good precaution as the moment the sellsword was on the last step, a spear lunged at his face like a snake from around the corner making him instantly back up...


But fortunately, it didn't turn into a battle from there... as when the assailant finally revealed herself, she turned out to be from their side.


"Oh, it's you, people," Obara said in a mildly surprised tone while lowering her spear.


She was wearing leather armour filled with nicks and cuts, and the colour of the leather had also turned to a muddy brown because of all the pirate blood she had spilt. Her short hair was in disarray and the dried blood on her face implied that she had taken a blow to her nose.


One wouldn't be able to guess that she was the daughter of a prince in a hundred years considering her current condition.


"Obara! How are you doing?" Jon asked, in a tone that was far too cheerful as he came down the stairs.


"Umm, fine." The sand snake answered while looking at Jon strange look on her face, for asking that question considering the circumstances.


"So how goes the clean up?" Oberyn asked as he came to stand beside his daughter.


"As good as it could go, I suppose," Obara answered while wiping a hint of blood from her face, "We faced some resistance on the previous floor with pirates laying ambushes inside a few rooms, but it wasn't anything a few fully armoured sellswords couldn't handle so we were able to clear it with nothing but a few small injuries."


"And this one?"


"Well, we cleared most of this floor easily too, but at the end... we hit a snag," she answered with a somewhat frustrated look on her face, "In fact, that was why I was on my way up to call for you, as we were stuck here and it doesn't look like there would a solution very soon..."


"What snag?" Gared asked with a curious look on his face.


Their victory over the pirates was absolute, they had almost completely annihilated the enemy and except for a few of the younger pirates, number around thirty, who had surrendered and were spared on Jon's orders, there wasn't supposed to be any significant force left on this side, so he was confused about the difficulty Obara had encountered.


"It will be better for me to just show you," she said before turning around and leading the way into the castle corridor.


Gared and Jon looked at Oberyn in confusion but Dornishman just shrugged and followed after his daughter.


They passed room after room with some having their doors broken, some were empty while others had a few dead pirates inside them.


Most of the rooms on this floor seemed to have consisted of a living room with blankets lying around inside as if each small room had been stuffed with a dozen people.


It was only at the end of the corridor that they finally understood the snag that Obara was talking about.


Right in front of them was the final room of the corridor and standing in front of a wide door were ten fully armoured sellswords making the loud banging sounds that they had been hearing so far.


The sellswords were standing in front of the huge sturdy door made of old hardy wood that looked to have been reinforced with iron plating and were taking turns coming up with ways to break through the door but didn't seem to be having any luck so far.


Some were trying to hack with their axe, while others tried to use their hammer, and a few others were trying to bang their way in using a cylindrical make-shift pillar that they had been using as a door breaker so far.


"This is the snag that I was talking about..." Obara explained the obvious, "It is a solid fucking door. We have been at this for almost fifteen minutes but have barely made a dent in the door..."


"Oh! Commander, you're here."


"Hmm..." Gared nodded at the sellswords who immediately stopped what they were doing and made way for the leader, "Perhaps instead of going for the door, It will be easier if we can break the surrounding rock and get to the hinges from the side..."


"If you say so," Obara replied with a shrug, "But from the sounds that I heard coming from inside, it seems like quite a large group is holding on in there, so even if we break in we will need a lot more than just the people currently here..."


'Huh? Were there still that many pirates left alive?' Gared mused but before he could voice his question out loud, Jon suddenly left their group and began walking towards the door confusing all the ones standing there.


"Tell me, have you tried talking to them?" Jon asked with a mischievous smile on his face, "You know... asked them to kindly open the door?"


"Oh, No! Why didn't we think of that?" she said sarcastically while rolling her eyes, "We could have us a lot of time if we had just asked nicely instead of spending so long breaking all those doors before this..."


"You never know... After all, being polite never hurts anyone," Jon said with an amused expression while raising his hand to knock on the door, "Good evening! I am Jon Snow. Can you please open the door?"


For a few seconds, every single person just stood there with a dumbfounded look on their faces then one after the other, all of them burst out laughing.


Most of the sellswords were trying to make a token effort to suppress their laughter since Jon was their client, but Obara, Oberyn and Gared had no such reservation and were laughing heartily.


"Pfft! You don't really think that the pirates inside know your name, do you?" Obara said while trying to control her laughter, "I hate to burst your bubble, Jon but I don't think you're quite that famous yet—" but the rest of her words got stuck in her throat and her eyes widened comically as all of them suddenly heard the unmistakable clicking sound of someone opening the door from the other side.


"Wha-How-Oi! Get back!" Obara shouted in an urgent tone while raising her spear, "There could be an ambush on the other side!"


"Don't worry about it," Jon replied with not a hint of worry on his face, "Everything's fine."


"What?! What are you—"


But it was too late by then as the door was already being opened.


Gared, Oberyn and all the sellswords tensed simultaneously while raising their weapons, ready for a fight, but the next scene they saw in front of them left them completely dumbfounded.


"Jon Snow?" asked the man, who looked a little too well-groomed to be a pirate, as he opened the heavy door and came out cautiously.


"The Advisor, I presume," Jon greeted him with a smile while raising his right hand for a handshake, "It's so nice to finally meet you face to face."


"The pleasure's all mine," The advisor replied with a hint of relief on his face as he completely came out of the room, "You look a lot younger than I imagined."


"You are not the first one to tell me that..."


"What in the actual fuck?" Obara's stunned whisper perfectly articulated the state of mind that all the people there were in.


"Just... go with it, daughter," Oberyn said with a wry smile while patting his daughter sympathetically, "Just go with it,"


Gared similarly nodded sagely at her after getting over his shock before he put his sword back in its sheath and made all the sellswords do the same.


"Ah, right." Jon abruptly stopped his whispered conversation with the Advisor and turned around, "Oberyn, Gared, this is Advisor, a man from Volantis that Ravager abducted to make him work for him. He was very instrumental in our plan to bring down this pirate crew."


"Nice to meet you," Gared greeted while Oberyn simply nodded his head.


"Good, now that we are acquainted," Jon nodded before turning back towards the door with a frown, "Shall we go in?"


"Of course. It's just..." The Advisor said hesitatingly while glancing at the door behind him and almost immediately all of them standing there caught sight of a few faces peeking out the door with scared expressions on their faces. Among them was a young child that Jon knew as Rostch, the Advisor's son.


"Don't worry. None of them will be hurt as long as there are no pirates inside."


"There aren't, it's mostly slaves and normal workers in there. I have had them holed up in here long before your army was even near the castle when Ravager didn't even know about the attack." Advisor said before opening the door and going inside.


With Jon in the lead, the rest of them also entered the door, and the first thing Jon noticed was the smell of sweat and piss.


From what he knew, it had not been that long since these people had been deposited in here but somehow the smell in there was so overpowering that it felt as if these people had been trapped here for days.


But it only took Jon a single look into the wavering fearful eyes of the men and women in here to understand the reason.


Listening to the constant sounds of fight and the screams of men dying outside, while not knowing their future... it would have broken anyone. So it wasn't too far-fetched that some of them were scared to death and pissed themselves.


The room was quite wide and there were almost fifty people in there, and they were roughly divided into three sections... probably by the Advisor himself.


On his right were twelve people, mostly men and two old women who looked like they were cooks and washers, and the other workers that Advisor was talking about.


Standing in the middle were twenty men in chains... some had defiant looks in their eyes while others looked exhausted with dark circles under their eyes, as if they had been worked day and night.


These were probably the slaves that Ravager was going to sell to slavers during his trip to the slaver's bay.


And finally, the last group, the one on the left, was the one that engaged Jon the most.


They were all women barely wearing any clothes and all of them showed clear signs of having been abused... repeatedly.


Most of their eyes were dead as if they had given up on life, their faces showed neither fear nor hope only a deep-seated fatigue.


These were probably the women that the pirates had kidnapped for their own pleasure, and it was hard to imagine all the torture they had to endure and how long they had been kept captive.


But what set Jon off the most was that hidden in between the older women, there were three little ones who looked barely older than ten and from the marks on them... these monsters didn't even spare them.


He knew that this world was cruel and that there were no rules here that constrained these animals but seeing girls who weren't older than his own sisters in these deplorable conditions just broke something in him and left him shaking in wrath.


"Pirates don't have morals, boy," Gared said in a grave tone while squeezing Jon's shoulder bringing him out of his thoughts.


He looked up and noticed that the women were getting uncomfortable with his intense stare, so he looked away and took a breath to calm his emotions.


Knowing that most of these animals were already dead or dying was a small bit of consolation for him but still, until that human trash of a pirate captain was still alive... Jon didn't think he would be able to rest peacefully.


"Obara! I will leave these people to you," Jon said turning to the woman who was standing behind him and looking around with a vigilant expression on her face, "None of them are pirates, so you don't need to be rough with them. When the castle has been fully cleared, I will send you a message and you can get them outside. Uncle Sam is already on his way with our ships so he will take care of the rest."


"Understood," Obara nodded with a serious expression on her face before turning to order the sellswords to help her.


"Good, let us go then," Jon said before turning around to lead the way back out of the room, towards the stairs, but this time their group of three was joined by a new member in the form of Advisor.


The four of them silently climbed the two flights of stairs until they reached the ground floor and on that floor, they came across the second team who was in charge of cleaning the upper part of the castle of infestation.


With Bran in the lead, this party of sellswords consisted of at least twenty warriors with all of them were sporting all kinds of minor injuries and blood stains but from the satisfied expression on their faces it seemed things had gone relatively smoothly for them too, and they didn't have any casualties on their side.


"Since you're already coming down, I assume you've already dealt with all the pirates," Gared immediately asked his son with a raised eyebrow, "Or did you also come across a closed room that you can't open."


"No, no closed room up there. We just already cleared all the floors," The young boy said with a hint of pride in his tone, "There is not a single pirate alive up there, we rooted all of them out."


"Really?" Oberyn asked with a raised eyebrow, "Then does that include the captain of the pirates too? You know, the man called Ravager..."


"Er, no," Bran replied while scratching his head with a confused look on his face. "We never found someone with the features that Jon had described..."


"What do you mean? Are you saying that he wasn't in the castle at all?"


"That's the thing. We questioned quite a few of the pirates we came across in the castle, and almost all of them mentioned seeing their captain along with two of his lackeys running into the castle and towards the upper floor, but no matter how much we looked, we just couldn't find them... it's as if they have disappeared,"


"Well, they can't just disappear into thin air," Gared said while shaking his head, "This is a small castle, not red keep and we have our force completely surrounding it, so have to be still in here... they are probably just hiding somewhere,"


"Hmm, I am not so sure about them still being inside," Oberyn said with a frown on his face, "After all, even if small... it is still a castle we're talking about and one that was previously used by a Targaryen prince, so..."


"What do you mean?" Gared asked with his head tilted in confusion, "Are you saying there is a hidden escape route somewhere which they could have used to escape,"


"It's not completely impossible." Oberyn shrugged.


"What do you think?" Jon turned to the Advisor, "Do you know if there is any such path inside the castle."


"I have never personally heard about such a thing but if there is indeed such a secret route, then I am sure that it would be inside the Captain's room or somewhere near it otherwise it wouldn't be convenient... so all we need to do is go there and search for it."


"Let's do that then," Jon nodded before waving the advisor forward, "I am sure you know the way best,"


Leaving Bran and his team of sellswords, the four of them climbed up two flights of stairs before they moved into a side corridor that led them to a different narrow staircase and only after climbing two more floors from there did they reach the correct floor.


"This is it, this is the room," Ravager said as they approached the room at the very end of the corridor.


Jon nodded before slowly pushing the door and surprisingly, it immediately swung open, "Someone forgot to close the door behind them in their haste," Jon murmured while stepping inside the room.


"Oh, it seems someone liked living in luxury," Gared snorted while looking at the extravagant furniture placed all around the room that would have looked more appropriate in red keep or in the room of Sealord of Braavos, than in the room of a pirate captain.


But it didn't impress Oberyn and Jon much, as everything seemed to have just been cobbled together from all kinds of places, they were all made with different designs and colours so nothing matched, and when added together it all clashed horribly and left a bad taste in the viewer's mouth.


"What are you doing?" Oberyn asked with a raised eyebrow as he saw Gared kneeling on the floor with his head underneath the bed.


"Hehe, just wanted to be sure that the rat wasn't hiding under there," he grunted while getting up as he saw nothing but dust and cobwebs down there.


"I don't think even a pirate is stupid enough to do that," Jon said while placing his hand on the only door in the room except for the one they had entered from, "Where does this door lead to? Do you know?" he asked while turning towards the Advisor.


"It's the treasury as far as I remember," The advisor replied with a shrug, "Though I have never been in there myself but every time Ravager managed to get some good loot from his ventures he would have two of his most trusted pirates bring the valuables, to place them in there."


"Then this seems like it could be a good lead," Jon said before he pushed the door but unfortunately this time his luck didn't help him and the door remained steadfastly closed to him.


"Should we try breaking it open," Oberyn suggested after seeing that there was no other place the escape route could be, except for the door they were standing in front of.


"That would be futile... because from what I understand, this door is even hardier than the one in the basement we had seen before, so unless we somehow find the key to this room, or if someone from inside opens the door, it would take us too long to get in and by that time, Ravager could have been long gone... if there is indeed a secret getaway as we think there is behind the door."


"We don't want that, do we," Jon murmured as he took out a thin pin from his pocket before inserting it into the keyhole and then he began fiddling with the handle as if trying to force it open, "Give me some space, will you."


"What are you trying to do," Oberyn asked in a confused tone.


"Hmm, it is a lock opening trick I learned from a thief I met in Braavos," he said while turning the needle left and right with a concentrated expression on his face as if he was an expert thief working his art, but what the three onlookers didn't notice was that a very small shadow abruptly flashed out of Jon's pocket and ran along his pants before disappearing into the small gap under the door, "He assured me that I could open any lock in the world with his skill,"


"Are you sure you were not just scammed," Oberyn said sceptically as he saw the boy repeatedly messing with the iron pin while pushing the door as if praying the door to open, "I do not think whoever taught you this... skill was genuine,"


"What?" Jon exclaimed exaggeratedly without stopping his hands, "That is absurd, after all, I paid almost twenty gold dragons to him to teach me his ancestral skills."


"Then you were definitely scammed," Oberyn said with a sigh, "Let us just call a few of the sturdy sellswords and try breaking—"


But before the Dornish prince could even finish his sentence they heard a loud click and the door into the treasury suddenly swung open leaving the man completely slack-jawed.


"Ah, looks like it worked," Jon said simply with a casual expression as if he had expected nothing else, "Come, let's see what treasures this pirate king has accumulated..." he said as he pushed the door open and entered the small but well-lit room with a small window on the opposite side.


"Don't worry about it," Gared shrugged at the incredulous expression on Oberyn and Advisor's faces before following Jon.


"Well... this is a bit disappointing," Jon said as he looked around at the treasures piled inside the treasure room.


The room was crammed with all kinds of different loot from boxes filled with gold female jewellery to expensive silk dresses and robes that were probably stolen from merchants and there were even a few sacks filled with spices and sugar.


While it was undeniable that everything in here was expensive... it was just a bit disappointing for a pirate treasure vault.


"Why?" Gared asked confusedly as he looked around at the pricey stuff with a wide smile unlike the others, "Isn't it all quite good? If we somehow manage to sell these to the right people, we could have at least a hundred thousand gold for all of these and that is not to mention the actual gold in that chest," he said pointing in the middle where laid an open chest filled with a small mountain of gold, "In total, this could all be worth almost 150,00 gold dragons... isn't that good enough?"


"No, he is right," Oberyn said as he picked up a gold jewellery with an unimpressed expression on his face, "As a self-proclaimed Pirate King who ruled over this part of the sea for a decade, he really should have a little more than this,"


"And he does," The Advisor interjected with a confused expression on his face, "While I am not sure about the exact amount since Ravager never let anyone near his wealth, I am sure there should be a lot more than this here..."


"Well, then perhaps this is not the real treasure vault after all," Jon murmured as he looked around with narrowed eyes.


A few minutes of inspection later Jon abruptly went towards the corner and kneeled down before he began moving his hand over the piece of red-coloured carpet that covered the floor beside the wall and a few seconds later his hand suddenly touched upon a hidden handle.


"Aha! Found it!" Jon's eyes immediately lit up and he immediately called, "Gared! Come help me with this."


"Hmm?," Gared nodded distractedly as he came to stand beside him.


"Pull that side for me, will you,"


"Sure." Gared nodded before touching the corner of the carpet and with Jon's signal both of them pulled simultaneously, and with a little bit of resistance the carpet abruptly came off, and the moment the four of them saw what was hidden underneath all of their eyes widened in surprise, "Oh..."


There laid in the very corner of the room was a square-shaped slab with handles on its top.


With just a single nod from him, Gared pulled up the slab and what appeared in front of them was a deep hole with a ladder against the wall leading down into the darkness.


"Looks like we finally found their hidey-hole..."


///

 

[ATP]

So,slaves rescued,Advisor too, smaller part of treasure captured - now all they need is rest of it,and Pirate King.
Oberyn probable would be dissapointed by Boss fight.

 

[LazyWizard]

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! How the hell did it all come to this!" Ravager cursed frustratedly as he trudged through the damp dark tunnel under the light of a small torch held by the guard leading the way.


His neck was aching fiercely from having to lower his head so much, as whoever made this secret tunnel didn't seem to have a man his size in mind.


After seeing no hope for his pirate crew to win the battle, Ravager didn't waste any time and left immediately.


He picked up two of his most loyal guards, and after ordering his lackeys to hold the enemy for as long as they could, he disappeared into the underground passage hidden inside his treasury that even his most loyal subordinate didn't know about.


Of course, he had to make sacrifices in his haste and had to leave all the treasures in the treasury, that he had spent so long to accumulate, for his enemies to take advantage of.


But while he felt regretful about it... he didn't hesitate for a second because he knew that he had to be very quick if he wanted to survive, and if those superficial things bought him even a little bit of time, then it was worth it.


Ravager was the most vulnerable that he had been since he made his own pirate crew after stabbing his previous captain in the back more than a decade ago.


Nothing mattered more to him at the moment than his own safety...


He didn't care how much money he had to sacrifice or how many of his men died for him to survive because, at this moment, he couldn't trust anyone other than himself.


In fact, he wouldn't have even brought his two guards with him if he didn't know that they wouldn't be able to betray him no matter what...


'After all, the Unsullied are one of the most expensive slaves in the world for a reason...'


About thirty minutes after they had climbed down that fifty-meter-long ladder into the ground and walked along the winding secret cave, they finally reached the end of the tunnel where laid another ladder going up.


Sighing at the long climb ahead, Ravager turned to the unsullied guards standing behind him silently, "White Worm, give him your luggage and climb up to the top to see if there are any enemies out there,"


The unsullied on his right nodded his head with a frozen expression on his face as he gave the sack on his back to his fellow guard and after tying his spear on his back he slowly began climbing the ladder... uncaring if death was waiting for him up there.


'Ugh! How did it all come to this...' Ravager thought frustrately, for the thousandth time since he had seen the army at his gates.


It had been going so well...


He had gone up against the mighty warships of Braavos and won one of the biggest victories of his life.


He had looted a big haul from those merchant ships and made enough money from it that he could have bought himself a small slave army and even then he wouldn't have to worry about money for years.


And it wasn't like he had been arrogant and reckless after that...


No, he knew that it was going to be dangerous after offending Braavos like that so his vigilance had been the highest and he had been keeping a close eye on Braavos to watch their every single move.


He had even made plans to go to the Slaver's Bay and stay low for a few years to be on the safe side.


But then... in a single night, it had all been destroyed.


'But this is not the end of Ravager...'


Thankfully, he had always been a prudent man who believed in never having all his eggs in a single basket.


So while most people, including his own pirates, assumed that most of his wealth lay in that vault inside the castle... that was just for the show as his real funds lay inside a secret stash that only he and two of his personal guards knew about.


He had deposited a massive amount of wealth in there and as long as that cache was available to him, then it wouldn't be too long before he was able to make a resurgence once again.


'I will definitely come back... and make all of them pay in blood,' he swore to himself with gritted teeth, 'Especially that damn Advisor and whoever was behind him,'


At that moment, a circle of bright light appeared above his head and Ravager looked through the shade of his hand to see that the Unsullied guard had opened the cover to the exit and was now climbing out.


There was a tense silence for a few minutes before the guard came back and looked down into the hole.


"It is safe, no one is here," The guard replied in a heavily accented voice, instantly putting Ravager's worst fears to rest.


"Good," Ravager replied with a sigh of relief as he immediately put his legs on the ladder and began climbing up, "Follow after me," he ordered the other guard who was carrying the small sack that contained their ration and water for the next few days.


As long as he managed to reach one of the nearby pirate-friendly islands, Ravager could jump on one of their transfer ships and easily sail to the mainland with just a few gold coins.


From there he could start anew, and he was sure that with all his experience, it wouldn't be too long before he managed to reach his previous height... and perhaps he may even surpass that.


Ravager's daydream halted when he finally reached the top of the ladder after an exhausting climb, and the moment he rose out of the hole, he was hit with the full force of the sun... which after the lengthy walk in the dark, seemed particularly glaring.


"Ugh!" He groaned as he shielded his eyes, "Help me up, you idiot," he barked at the guard who was just standing there with a dumb look on his face.


"Yes," the unsullied nodded as he put down his spear and knelt down to pull his master out of the hole.


The opening of the secret passage had led them out into a small clearing filled with swaying grass.


In front of them, a mile away was the forest of tall trees that led one towards the centre of the island where his castle was, and behind him laid a tall slanting cliff that ended on a hundred meters drop into the ocean.


They were at the northernmost part of the island at the moment, and with both the ports located simultaneously on the east and west side, and with the ocean nearby being incredibly treacherous, there was very little chance that any ship could reach here.


But still, on the off chance that they managed to somehow find the secret path in the Treasury, and then reach all the way here in time, Ravager decided to take some precautions...


"Close the hole and place that rock on it!" Ravager ordered his two guards while pointing towards a massive rock almost half his height.


It took them about five minutes of back-breaking labour but the guards eventually managed to roll the rock over the exit and completely cover it.


"Good. Now, come," Ravager grunted and then without giving them any time to rest, he took off along the side of the cliff towards the east.


The three of them ambled for at least fifteen minutes on rocky ground before they came across a small naturally formed cave burrowed into the side of the cliff.


The cave was unnaturally dark and slanting downwards.


Its entrance was barely enough for an adult man to crawl through and if one wasn't specifically looking for it, it would be almost impossible for someone to notice it.


"Go, get the chest. Hurry!" Ravager ordered Whiteworm while jerking his head towards the cave.


The guard nodded and, after placing down everything he was carrying including his spear, he laid down on the ground and then without any hesitation began crawling into the dark smelly cave.


The unsullied could not even see his own hands a few seconds after entering the cave, and he could feel all kinds of worms and critters crawling all over his arms and his face.


Any normal man would have screamed and bolted by now, but the Unsullied guard never even flinched and continued going down.


It was only after he was almost two meters deep that the guard finally reached the end of the cave, and the only reason he even knew that was because his hands were touching a cold metal box at the moment.


After fumbling around for a few moments, the unsullied finally managed to catch a latch with his right hand, and from there began the gruelling process of slowly crawling backwards while dragging the very heavy metal chest with his hand.


It took him almost thrice the time to crawl out than it had taken him to crawl in, but eventually, his legs felt the air and from there his fellow guard was quick to pull him out of the cave.


"At last," Ravager sighed with a hint of impatience in his voice as he finally saw his precious dark metal chest being pulled out of the cave.


He wasted no moment snatching the chest from his guards and then kneeled down beside it.


"Go! Keep a lookout." he barked at the unsullied while hastily wiping any soil and dirt that had accumulated over the surface of the chest as well as inside the small keyhole.


It had only been a few weeks since his last visit to this place when he came to add another piece of treasure to this small chest, so he knew that everything in it was definitely safe, but he still wanted to check one more time for his own mental peace...


He took off a thin thread necklace wrapped around his neck, which had a small key attached to the end of it.


He slowly inserted the iron key into the keyhole and then turned it clockwise two times before he heard a loud click signifying that the chest was unlocked.


Without waiting for a single second, Ravager immediately raised the lid of the chest, exposing the contents of the treasure chest.


Placed inside the chest were less than ten items, but each object was so distinctive and famous that any one of them could lead to a small war, and each had the capability of single-handedly raising a dirt-poor family into a rich noble one.


The simplest thing inside was a big intricate key laying on a small piece of paper written on which was a unique 12-digit number.


This key and paper were the entry pass to a security vault in the Bravoosi bank, which had a deposit of almost 300,000 gold dragons according to the last count.


This was one of those secret vaults that anyone could make without having to give any name or identity which also meant that anyone with this key and the number could get access to all the gold inside no matter whether it was theirs or not.


This meant that it was quite a risky endeavour, but as a pirate, this was one of the best ways he could store his gold.


But this key was just a part of his wealth and was not even the most expensive item in there.


On the leftmost side of the chest were two daggers the size of an adult's forearm placed inside intricate sheaths adorned with small gems.


But these were not just normal daggers, as their blade was made from one of the rarest and most expensive materials in this world— Valyrian steel.


You could take these daggers to any noble in Essos or Westeros and easily sell them for thousands of gold dragons, without any problem.


Other than the daggers, there was a specially treated oil cloth, filled with at least ten pieces of paper, each of which corresponded to a piece of property such as a shop, house, or even an inn.


Some of them were in Pentos, some in Lys, and even a few in Tyrosh, but the one thing common among them was that each was situated in a prime location with their prices exceeding at least a thousand dragons each and these prices were only increasing every single year.


Alongside these property papers were identity papers belonging to a made-up name under whose name these properties were.


There was one other such oilcloth placed on the right side, and this one was filled with an old leather-bound diary.


This was the most simplistic-looking thing in this chest, but it still cost Ravager a very hefty sum. Not many people knew about it and there were only three such copies in the whole world, the other two belonging to his fellow pirate kings.


There were a few other expensive trinkets like a bag filled with emerald jewellery, a Valyrian glass candle that the citadel would sell half of their acolytes to buy, and even a magical ruby choker that Ravager had been told belonged to a red priest of R'hllor, though he had never been able to verify that.


Converted into gold, any of these items could buy one an army of slaves, the most beautiful prostitute of Lys, and even a rank of nobility in Westeros... one would be set for a lifetime with these.


But even among these precious items, there was one item that was in a league of its own...


Lying in the very centre on a plush cushion made of silk, was an oval-shaped rock the size of a child's head. Its surface was covered in hardened black iridescent scales that shimmered like polished gemstones with each scale overlapping slightly, creating a natural armour.


It was an object that was wanted everywhere in this world, from Shadowbinders of Asshai to the Red priests of Rhollor', from Old Blood of Volantis to Nobles of Westeros, but there was no more supply.


It was a legacy belonging to history's most powerful kingdom, it was fire and magic... it was a Dragon Egg.


This chest contained the essence of all the wealth Ravager had managed to accumulate over his decade-long life as a pirate, it contained all the blood and sweat he had spilt of countless men, women and children across Essos.


And he had gotten none of these items by luck, each of them had been carefully searched for and then bought from both willing and unwilling Nobles, Merchants, and Warriors from all across the world.


Whenever he felt that he had accumulated enough gold, Ravager would turn it all into the smallest but most expensive piece of item that he could find, and he did all for this day... so that he could carry this small chest and make an escape at any time.


And now his prudence was coming through for him in his dark dark times...


After being satisfied with checking the state of his treasure, Ravager closed the chest and locked it once again.


"Whiteworm! Do you remember where that backup boat is stowed away? Good, I want you to row it here and remember to be on the lookout for—"


*Thuck!!*


Ravager's words abruptly halted in his throat as he heard a dying cry that immediately made his heart drop to the bottom of his stomach.


His head turned slowly and mechanically, only for his eyes to bulge out as he saw the scene he dreaded the most.


His loyal unsullied slave, the one who had served him for a decade, the man who would follow any of his orders even if it meant death... now had a sharp arrow sticking out of his chest, gurgling and failing with a stunned look on his face.


With his face deadly pale and his eyes trembling, Ravager followed the direction the arrow came from and what he saw there left him in complete despair.


There, standing at the very edge of the forest, were four men who had come for his head...


Three of them were warriors, each carrying a different weapon, one had a spear, one a long sword and the third one was a young man with a bow in his hand which he had used to shoot the arrow.


The last one, standing behind the three, was the man Ravager hated the most in this world—the accursed Advisor.


In the next moment, Ravger's eye caught the young man reaching for another arrow and, almost immediately it jolted him out of his stupor.


'Run! Run! RUN!!' his mind screamed at his body as he stumbled up to dash up the hill while holding the chest in his arms.


"Cover me with your body!!" he roared at his other guard who was just standing there dumbly with his spear raised as if that was supposed to somehow deter the attackers.


'How the fuck did they even find me!!'


...


"How did you even know they would be here?" Gared asked in a vexed tone as he saw Jon placing his second arrow through his bow and like clockwork, this one too was right on the dot and pierced straight through the back of the second guard who was trying to save the Pirate King, Ravager.


After they discovered the hidden exit inside the treasury, all four of them debated on whether to immediately climb down the ladder to follow after the pirate captain to catch him.


But both, Oberyn and Gared, had shaken their head and said that it was too dangerous...


Not only could there be traps and ambushes in there, but there was also a very high possibility that by the time they reached the end, the pirates would have had plenty of time to completely block the exit, turning their journey into a complete waste of time and giving their target plenty of chance to run.


But then Jon had once again come through for them and said that he had some idea about where the secret tunnel could be leading.


And then without telling them anything further, he had taken them out of the castle, and then through the forest filled with tall trees, until they finally reached the end and caught sight of their targets... just like he had said that they would.


"It's just simple logic," Jon replied with a shrug, as he lowered his bow and put it back around his shoulder, "They would either head towards the Northern or the Southern part of the island because both the East and West sides have ports and are too risky for escaping. So I just took a gamble that had half the chance of victory... and it seems to have paid off."


While both Gared and Oberyn wore sceptical and suspicious looks on their faces at this explanation, considering how easy it had all been... they couldn't exactly find any fault in Jon's argument so they could only let go.


But the newest member of their group was different as he had a little more information than the others.


He knew of the powers that his new captain commanded, and he knew that it was a simple thing for a man like him to find a single person on their small island, no matter where he was hiding.


"Shouldn't we catch him? He is getting away..." Oberyen asked with a raised eyebrow, pointing his finger towards their target who was at the moment frantically running up the hill, "Why not shoot him too?" he asked when he saw the carefree look on Jon's face as he put away his bow as if he was in no apparent rush to chase their target.


"That would be too comfortable of a death for a man like him," Jon replied while leading the way towards the small hill where the last remnant of this massive pirate fleet was bound to die.


It took them almost five minutes of leisurely hike before they reached the place where the second guard had died.


A few seconds after that they were finally able to see the face of the man known as the pirate king, and to be honest, both Oberyn and Gared were a bit disappointed...


The man had a scowl on his face, his shifty eyes kept looking all over the place as if looking for a way to escape.


In his right hand, the man tightly held a small chest of metal, while his other hand, holding the sword, was shaking fiercely as if he hadn't had a fight in years...


It was just pathetic.


His tall and burly build told them that he could have been a formidable warrior in his prime... but now he was just a fat coward who couldn't let go of his life. It just goes to show what can happen to a man once you get too comfortable and let go...


Ravager had gone through a lot of options in the few minutes leading up to his enemies walking up the hill.


He had contemplated fighting to death making his last stand right here...


He had considered darting straight towards them while looking for a chance to break through and make an escape but with the bow in that young man's hands... the chances of survival were too slim.


For a few seconds, he had even deliberated jumping into the icy waters of the narrow sea behind him, but when he turned around and actually looked at the deadly drop with enormous waves dangerously crashing into the cliff with the force of a thousand hammers... he just couldn't do it.


Whether it was the ocean behind him or the attackers in front of him, he knew in his heart that both of them would surely lead to his death, and he just wasn't ready to die yet.


With just a single chest in his hand, he was one of the richest men in this world and could easily live the life of a king...and it was too much for him to lose it all like that.


So in the end, he was too much of a hesitating coward and ended up doing nothing but agonize over his choices until...


The four bastards came over the hill and reached his position, leaving him with just one choice...


"Who are you?" Ravager asked the young man who seemed to be the leader of the group, a question that he was dying to know, his voice barely able to hide his hate and loathing, "Why the fuck did you attack my pirate group? What did I ever do to you?"


"I am Jon Snow," Jon answered simply, and almost immediately a hint of recognition lit up in the eyes of Ravager as he realised where the enmity between them had spawned from, "You sent your men to hunt for me, and when they couldn't find me, they went after my man and tortured him... something they should never have done,"


"T-That's it?!!" Ravagers in a disbelieving tone, "Just for that?!! Just for you one man, you killed my men!! You destroyed my whole fleet! Just for a single boy who didn't even die!" he screamed as if he was on the verge of going crazy, "Are you fucking insane?"


'Considering who his ancestors were... I wouldn't be too surprised if he was some kind of insane,' Oberyn thought snarkily.


"Maybe I am, maybe I am not... Who knows?" Jon said as a dark look appeared on his face as he remembered the look of pain in that young boy's face as well as the condition and sufferings of the girls he had encountered inside the castle, "But that doesn't change anything about your situation, does it? So tell me, Pirate King, Ravager... how would you like to die? Because I promised my man that you would die at his hands... so it would really help me if just quietly surrender."


Ravager gritted his teeth at the casual way the young brat was speaking to him...


If it had been him from a few days ago, he would have already had his arms and legs cut off for this transgression and made him suffer for at least a year before giving him the mercy of death... but alas, he was not in the position to able to do that anymore, so he took a deep breath, buried his anger, and said, "I have a proposition for you..."


"Hmm?"


"The chest in my hand contains more wealth than any of you have ever seen before," Ravager calmly said while slowly raising the tightly held metal chest in his hands, "I am willing to share half of this with you if you are able to get me on a boat and let me leave this island safely," he said looking into the eyes of Jon, Oberyn and Gared while ignoring the Advisor, "Otherwise, I'll just throw this down and it will sink to the bottom of the ocean... useful to no one. So what do you say, will you—"


He was hoping that the allure of money could somewhat affect their cohesion and if he could get one of them to hesitate and betray the others and try to kill them to keep silent about it, then he could take advantage of it. But the result...


"No. I would rather not," Jon said simply with a shrug while Oberyn and Gared remained silent, not even entertaining his question with a response...


"What?!" Ravager exclaimed in a flustered manner, "I-I don't think you understand how much money I am talking about here... the price of items in this chest exceeds more than half a million gold dragons," he said enunciating each of his words clearly while forcefully patting the chest in his hands, "It is enough money for a city in your Westeros to survive for years, the wealth in the treasury you saw before in the castle is nothing compared to what is in it. So you need to think carefully—"


"As I said tempting, but still no."


"Y-You!!" Ravager gritted his teeth with an incensed look on his face, but he knew that his efforts were fruitless as he wasn't able to see a single hint of greed in the faces of any man in front of him.


"You all will regret this!! You Filth!!" he let out an enraged scream as he finally lost his patience, "This won't be the end of me!! I will come back and I will definitely kill each one of you!!! I am going to destroy everyone you hold dear!! I swear this!!"


After sending out his last words as if they were a curse, Ravager decisively jumped backwards without taking his hateful gaze off of the four people who had cornered him so much.


He knew that his chances of surviving were slim, that even if he somehow survived he had little chance of escaping... but even in death, he at least wanted to take away his enemy's chances to seize his life's treasure.


"Well... that was a letdown," Oberyn murmured with a disappointed look on his face. He had hoped for a good fight from the so-called King of Pirates, but it seemed that man's crew and his reputation was the only thing going for him.


"Ah! I so wanted to see what was in that treasure box," Gared let out in a regretful tone, lamenting the lost chance to get his hands on a Pirate King's treasure, "Do you think he was telling the truth about that small treasure box having so much wealth..."


"Most Probably..." The Advisor replied with a hint of a smile on his face. He was quite happy with the outcome. While it was a loss about the treasure, he was relieved as long as his hated enemy and kidnapper Ravager was dead.


"Don't worry so much. I am sure the treasure will turn up sooner or later," Jon said with a smile as they turned around to go back towards the castle.


"How? Do you have some kind of plan?" Gared asked with a lit-up expression on his face.


"Just an intuition," Jon said with his typical mysterious smile that frustrated Oberyn and Gared to no end.


...


As Ravager fell into the stormy sea with rapid waves crashing thunderously onto the cliff, the only thing in his mind was hatred and a fierce determination to live.


He struggled with all his might against the current, continually throwing his hands and legs along the waves to slowly move away from the cliff.


Ravager still held onto the chest tightly in one of his hands, and while it was making it hard for him to swim, he wasn't ready to let it go.


Thankfully, the chest was quite light, so he was able to make do as he was quite a good swimmer... which was an essential skill in the profession of piracy.


Just as the waves began slowing, and a faint hope began to rise in his chest that he may just survive this...


It all came crashing down when something suddenly grabbed his legs and abruptly yanked him down into the deep ocean.


At first, Ravager assumed that it was a reed or something, and so he fiercely struggled against it.


His breaths began to come in ragged gasps, each one filling his mouth with seawater and his muscles burned as he struggled but no matter how he thrashed his hands and legs, the rope holding his legs just wouldn't let go... it felt like fighting against the pull of a mountain.


But just as he was flailing left and right, the water in his surroundings abruptly cleared for some reason, and his eyes were finally able to see what the thing holding his leg was...


A shadow rose from the depths, an enormity that completely blotted out the light filtering through the water's surface.


His body, his mind and his heart all simultaneously halted as a deep-seated terror filled every inch of being...


It was an instinct buried deep inside of his body and it knew that the moment he moved even an inch, the predator in front of him would kill him ruthlessly.


'No, no, no!! This can't be right, I must be fucking hallucinating!! Because they can't be real! They just can't!!' he screamed internally but the being in front of him never faded away, no matter how much he tried to deny it.


It was... The Kraken.


Its body was vast... a writhing nightmare of coiling tentacles that seemed to stretch endlessly, each limb undulating with a malevolent life of its own.


The Kraken's eyes loomed like twin abysses, massive and unblinking, reflecting no emotion. They glowed faintly, a sickly yellow-green that seemed to pierce through the water, locking onto him as if it could see straight into his soul.


In the next moment, a second tentacle emerged in front of him and latched onto his other leg, and then they went for his hands.


In just a matter of seconds, Ravager trudged up by all of his limbs in four different directions like a helpless starfish, unable to even exert a small bit of force.


He felt utterly powerless, a mere insect caught in the grip of a god.


In the next moment, those tentacles applied just a small bit of their crushing force... and as if he was just a small toy in the child, he was completely crushed. The flesh and bone in his hand and legs were twisted and mashed into a paste.


A scream tore from his throat, muted by the water, its vibrations swallowed by the vast silence of the abyss.


All his thoughts left him, leaving him with only the sheer agony of having his limbs ripped completely and that was not the end of his suffering as the Kraken began to pull its tentacles and his limbs were torn from his body... excruciatingly slowly.


The pain was just too much, Ravager wanted to die, die so bad... but, unfortunately for him, his death didn't arrive immediately.


It was only when his body had been broken and his mind completely shattered from the pain, that he finally breathed his last.


In the last few seconds of life, Ravager experienced more pain than most people had suffered in their entire life, it was a cruel end that most from Earth would not even wish upon their hated enemies.


But Jon was no longer a man from Earth, he was now of Planetos, and he had realised that some men deserve to suffer the most brutal form of torture before they were given the mercy of death...


So he had given his friend, Inky full freedom to dishing out the punishment as she wished... and she had come through for him.


And so died the mighty Pirate King who had terrorised these seas for more than a decade... at the hands of an actual Sea King.


///

 

[oscar e Sampedro Lopez]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[ATP]

Well,Jon could propose deal to Ravager - fight Oberyn,and he could go free if he win.
That aside - thanks for good chapter,Jon now would get more money and dragon egg.Since he knew how to hatch it, he could do that,but where?
There is no place safe enough for that in North,and even if it existed,he could not hide for few years when dragon would be vulnerable.

 

[MovingTarget]

Well,Jon could propose deal to Ravager - fight Oberyn,and he could go free if he win.
That aside - thanks for good chapter,Jon now would get more money and dragon egg.Since he knew how to hatch it, he could do that,but where?
There is no place safe enough for that in North,and even if it existed,he could not hide for few years when dragon would be vulnerable.

Click to shrink...

He has 300k dragons he just took off that pirate lord, thats more than enough to buy a isolated manor in bravos with an attached goat farm then pay one of his loyal men to look after the dragon while it grows ( looking after would be " dump a goat down a chute to the dungeon once a day" kinda deal) he does spent alot of time in bravos.

Hell he could probably get Oberyn to do it for free as that dragon is an instant win ticket for his revenge

 

[ATP]

He has 300k dragons he just took off that pirate lord, thats more than enough to buy a isolated manor in bravos with an attached goat farm then pay one of his loyal men to look after the dragon while it grows ( looking after would be " dump a goat down a chute to the dungeon once a day" kinda deal) he does spent alot of time in bravos.

Hell he could probably get Oberyn to do it for free as that dragon is an instant win ticket for his revenge

Click to shrink...

Good idea,Oberyn could do that.