Khyso, the captain of the Screaming Maiden, was not, by any measure, a man who believed in hard work.
He was a broad-shouldered man with sun-darkened skin, who was going soft around the middle in the way that men do when they have enough gold to pay others to do the hard things for them.
He was lying on a pile of sailcloth on the main deck, his hands around a young woman's waist, who was clearly not enjoying his attention.
The men around him were either jeering at the girl in his hand, drinking and gambling at the deck, or playing fingers, the most popular deadly game amongst pirates.
"Boss! I see them!!" A loud, excited shout suddenly echoed across the ship, breaking the idle atmosphere, as everyone in earshot turned their eyes towards the young lad with three broken teeth acting as lookout on top of the mast.
"Where?" Khyso asked as he reluctantly stood up from his love nest and wiped his mouth, before picking up his ruffled shirt and going towards the front of the ship.
"There! In the Southwest!"
Khyso grunted as he squinted his eyes in the direction the boy had pointed towards, but he could see nothing but blue sea...
"Here," The first mate standing nearby said as he handed him the much-needed far-eye, through which he could finally make out the four ships they had been searching for.
"Perfect." Khyso murmured as he smiled in satisfaction, "Immediately send the signal for the other ships to cut them off."
"Already did, Captain." The first mate replied with a hidden roll of his eyes, grumbling internally, 'The prey would have run off by now if we had waited for your command, you lazy idiot!'
Fortunately, Khyso did not notice his first mate's cheekiness, as he was too busy thinking about the gold he was about to loot.
The man had hunted many a great mark during his half-decade-long stint as a pirate.
Travelling nobles, big merchant galleons with more cargo than they could defend, and even slave vessels; he did not spare anyone.
He had a very good arrangement with his brother where he and his men would scout the port for the softest, fattest sheep and then send him the detailed information about it in a letter, and then he would gather his men and immediately set off from the barren spit of a rock where he kept his fleet anchored, which was just a few hours away from Volantis, and hunt the prey down.
He would then take what was worth taking, sell the goods at a quiet port, sell the captured men and women as slaves along the bay, and split the gold with his brother.
They had already done this dozens of times before, so it was nothing new for him...
But this mark was different... because according to him, if they did everything right this time, then they would make so much gold that they would never have to work a day ever again.
And while Rhiso had been very evasive about the reasons behind this boast, he trusted his brother enough to know that he wasn't someone who would lie about this kind of thing.
But he could still read between the lines and guess that the people abroad must either be very rich or belong to a very important noble family.
"Give me the letter again," he asked his first mate, who immediately took out a piece of parchment from his breast pocket and handed it over to him. "Hm, so we need to take special care with four girls, and a single older man, and make sure that they survive without too much harm," he muttered to himself as he squinted his eyes and carefully read Rhiso's instruction.
"Hear that, you curs!!" he turned around and hollered loudly so that all his men could hear him, "No one is to touch the four girls on the big ship, or I will string you up naked on the mast and have the seagull peck at your family jewels!"
"Ah! Captain! What is with this?" grumbled a large man with a cutlass on his hip, and a very ugly face, the kind that would scare away kids, "That would take all the fun out of it!"
"Aye, Captain." his thin friend nodded in agreement, "We always check the goods before we hand them over, that is our tax, Captain, our motivation! You can't just ask us to do all the work, and not even let us taste the fruits of our labour, can you? That would be too cruel," he whined with a pitiful expression on his face as if he were a kid who had been denied his toy.
The rest of the crew picked up from there and made a chorus of agreement, which pissed off Khyso more than anything.
"You fuckers—"The captain cursed as he opened his mouth to set to right their open rebelliousness, but his first mate stopped him.
"Don't even bother, Captain," The only smart one on the crew said with a shake of his head, "They are all just too pent up to listen to you at the moment, so it is better to let them be, instead of arguing with them just before the fight. Besides, no one's going to know the truth about whether the goods had been touched if we just wash them up and make them pretty before handing them over, right?"
"You—Fine." He said with an irritated huff, "But you will be the one to pay if any of the accidently breaks, and kill one of them, and it hurts our gold."
"Aye, aye, Captain," the first mate replied with very fake enthusiasm in his voice, "Now, come men, let us hunt—"
"Captain! Look!" The lookout boy from before suddenly exclaimed in a shocked voice, "L-Look at the flag!!"
"What?" Khyso asked back in an irritated voice, as he instinctively turned towards the ships in the distance.
The trade galleon's flag had been raised. Or perhaps it had always been there, and he simply hadn't looked at it closely enough before.
It was a snarling white wolf standing on a green field, a very uncommon sight on the sea.
"And what do I care about a merchant ship's flag—"
"It's the Northern Wolf Company!" The first mate exclaimed in a somewhat shocked voice as he lowered the far-eye from his face.
"Which company?!"
"The Bloody Northern Wolf Company! The one from Westeros! The one which decimated the old Pirate King, and his whole fucking fleet," the first mate answered in a panicked voice that contained just a hint of terror in it, "We cannot touch them, captain," he urged with a grave look, "We need to turn back. No pirate has survived an encounter with them out at sea. It would be suicidal to go against them."
"Fuck!" The Captain cursed as he finally realised why his idiotic brother had been so evasive about the information about the target so far, and why he had said this would be the mark of a lifetime if it succeeded, but this... even he had not expected this.
Khyso frowned as he turned the problem over in his head and stared out at the four ships in the distance that were still calmly moving through the seas, even though the lookouts must have noticed them coming by now, but they were acting as if the pirate ships were nothing to be scared of.
Finally, his eyes went towards the lead galleon, where lay the ultimate prize of this trip. A mark so big that he wouldn't have to run here every few weeks just to earn a few hundred galleons.
And the most important thing was that there was no sign of the massive fleet filled with experienced sellsword killers that the Northern Wolf company was famous for; here, there was just a single trade galleon, and three longships, which all in all should not boast more than 50 to 60 combatants, less than three times their fighters.
So after struggling with the decision for almost a minute, he raised his hand with a look of determination in his eyes, "We keep on our course," he shouted, and the men behind him immediately began hollering at the top of their lungs in excitement.
Out here at sea, the pirates were afraid of no one. After all, if a single name and a flag were enough to make them back off, and then all the pirates would have already been out of business, as every single fucking ship out here sailing the seas had a big backer or two out there that they could not afford to offend.
"But, Captain—" The First mate still looked a little queasy about this decision, after all, they had heard so many stories about pirate fleets disappearing overnight just because they got on the wrong side of this company, and those were much larger than them.
"No buts," The captain interrupted his first mate with a firm shake of his head, "Today we fear no wolf, my friend, because out here at the sea, no matter how fierce a wolf's teeth or his claws are... he is still bound to sink out."
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