63

Chapter 63: Ch 53 Next Destination...

Chapter Text

"So you don't want to give up, huh," Jon murmured to himself with an amused look on his face. He shook his head while taking his eyes off the pirate after giving him a small scare. Jon wouldn't even call him a pirate as he looked too... refined to be one, and almost seemed more like a scholar.

Anyway coming back to this pesky problem at hand, Jon wasn't quite sure how to handle this bunch.

Now, if he were really determined to, it wouldn't be that hard for him to straight up annihilate them, even without using Inky. There were other more convenient methods such as poison available to him.

Plus there was that cool new ability that he recently realised Frost possessed which allowed her to give simple orders to birds below her in the food chain (which was most of them) otherwise he wouldn't have been able to warg into so many seagulls at once because, after all, he was not the three-eyed raven.

But he was unsure if just killing all of them was really the most ideal solution to this problem. Not because of any moral dilemma, of course, since he knew that these pirates were almost all pieces of shit who wouldn't hesitate to sell him off to the next slaver.

No, it was because these pirates were like mosquitos, no matter how many of them you kill, it wouldn't stop them. Same as mosquitos, a few dead bodies of their brethren wouldn't scare off the next one from trying for himself.

They were a bunch who already lived on the edge every day, with their lives constantly on the line. They were the kind of people who would eagerly jump into all kinds of dangerous messy situations, as long as there was even a small chance for profits to be made without thinking too much.

So, no, mysterious deaths weren't the way to go when dealing with them. If you want to deal with them permanently, then you need to make a show of force; you need to show them that death isn't just a possibility but a surety if they ever entangled with you. You need to not only brutally destroy them at their strongest head-on but to also leave a few of them alive to serve as witnesses and to spread tales of your infamy.

This was also the method used by the Braavossi fleet.

During their first few trips, they went out of their way to ruthlessly destroy any pirate ships that dared to obstruct their path. This meant that after about a dozen such trips, no pirate ever dared to face them, at least not head-on, which made their future trips a lot cheaper and more peaceful.

Of course, there were still some foolish adventurous ones who would follow their warships from afar but they only ever dared to try to attack them on the fringes or take advantage of any merchant ships who got left behind and accidentally got out of the warships' protection.

So Jon knew that he needed to do something similar to have hassle-free trips in the future.

To achieve that he would need a well-coordinated force of warriors who would be able to systematically follow his orders. Just like the one he had back in Bear Islands, if he didn't have that batch of battle-hardened warriors at his beck and call, he would never have been able to achieve as much as he did, at least not without losing too many people.

He was too lucky that the population of Bear Island was so battle-oriented. While they couldn't be called the best fighters in the realm, he would confidently call them the best average fighters he had ever seen only after, maybe the Dothraki.

The constant Wildling raids as well as the harassment from the Ironborn ships meant that every single man and woman alive on that Island had a massive wreath of experience in life-and-death battles, which made them efficient enough that Jon didn't have much of a problem creating a quick counter force after picking them up from their homes.

'Sadly the same couldn't be said of these sailors from White Harbour,' Jon thought as he looked at all the men aboard his fleet diligently going about their work. Even though Jon could easily take the average person from White Harbour and make them a good sailor with a few years of training. He couldn't accomplish the same with their fighting skills, as that was something which needed a life filled with strife and needed you constantly survive in a brutal environment to make you sufficiently competent.

So Jon couldn't depend on these sailors to fight his battles here in Essos, he would need to get people from somewhere else. Unfortunately, there was no such convenient force nearby with well-organised veteran fighters who would follow his orders—

'Wait! Maybe there is...' Jon's eyes suddenly lit up as a brilliant idea appeared in his mind.

There was indeed one such force nearby, that exactly matched his requirements. They were all battle-hardened with skills forged from constant life and death battles, they would follow his orders and most importantly, he wouldn't have to go too far to reach them. And the name of one such force, which not only matched his demands but was also somewhat related to him, kept jumping in his mind, as if saying, 'Pick Me' 'Pick Me', and Jon was too tempted to deny the voice in his head.

"It seems I need to go on a trip..." Jon said with an excited smile on his face as his brain went over all the possible difficulties he could encounter on the journey as well as all the things he would need to do to achieve his objective.

...

The days were very calm after their close brush with the pirates and a few days later they docked into the always busy port of Braavos. It was noon and their fleet was welcomed with quite a lot of fanfare.

All kinds of small and big merchants were either present at the port or quickly arrived after hearing the news; if the merchants themselves couldn't be there, they didn't forget to send a proxy in their place. Then they all looked towards the Northern fleet with unhidden anticipation in their eyes as the sailors started putting down planks to start disembarking the goods.

No more than an hour later, everything had been unloaded from the ship and by now the anticipation in the eyes of the onlookers had turned to abject jealousy.

They had seen with their own eyes as every single merchant who had been waiting had gleefully gotten hold of all goods on their list (the list that their partners sent from Volantis via raven) with not a single thing missing. This Northern fleet had fully delivered on their promise of a hundred-percent safety guarantee.

Ugly envy reared its head inside the onlookers, all of them felt their insides twist with agony at imagining the profits those Merchants, whom they had made fun of for being reckless in believing the Northern Fleet, were soon going to make after selling these popular expensive goods.

By now even the most sceptical of them had started to believe in the Northern fleet's ability and knew that it was no scam. After all, once could be up to chance, twice could be a coincidence, but when something happens thrice... well there's a reason people say the third time's a charm.

While most of them were dismayed at having missed this wonderful chance to make some money, the quick thinkers among the onlookers were already sneaking away. And it didn't take too long before even the stupidest of merchants started to realise what was happening and began to make a run for it... but not towards the ships, no, they were all racing towards the shops at the port, more particularly the flashiest one in the market.

Their merchant's senses were tingling that the shipping company was surely going to experience a boom in their business, in the near future. After this third successful trip, they knew better than anyone else that there would definitely be a massive price jump for the tickets. So they wanted to be the first ones to book the next ship before the others caught up and the prices increased.

But the scene which greeted them at the shop was completely different from their imagination. Instead of a shop happily selling them the tickets for their next journey they were greeted with the closed door of the shop with a sign hanging outside that said, "No Tickets"

"I-I apologize, everyone for the inconvenience, but there will not be another trip for a few weeks." a young boy was saying to the disgruntled group gathered outside. He was a little chubby in the face, but the burgeoning muscles in his arms as well as the axe on his back let them know that he wasn't a complete pushover, "So please, leave everyone. We will post a notice a week before our next trip so you don't have to worry about missing out—"

"You can't do that!!"

"We are your customers!! How can you just turn us away!!"

"Don't tell me!! Did you make too many losses and that there's actually not going to be another trip after all,"

"Is this true? Are you broke?!!"

The people were slowly starting to get agitated after hearing the disappointing news and as they say, the more people in a horde the less their intelligence and Sam was having quite a hard time managing them, "N-No, we didn't make any losses. We just need some time to do some adjustments to our ships—"

"Then just give us the damn tickets!!"

"I won't believe you unless you book me a place on your next trip!!"

"Yes! We don't care when the next one, you just need to give us some!!"

Sam was sweating more than he did during his exercises, as he tried to come up with a way to handle the aggressive merchants but it was slowly becoming too much for the lad. 'Damn it, when are you going to be here, Jon, please hurry, they are going to eat me alive,' he sent a desperate plea in his thoughts hoping that his friend would catch it and hurry up before he end up taking a beating.

...

What poor Sam didn't know was that his friend, Jon was somewhat dealing with the same thing that he was.

He too had been surrounded by a group of eager Merchants who after getting hold of their goods wanted to quickly jump on the bandwagon and buy a slot for the next trip. And safe to say they were also very disappointed after learning that there would not be another trip for a while.

Thankfully, Jon wasn't the least bit intimidated by the crowd and easily handled the merchants with a calm but firm attitude, without giving them any opening to be aggressive. Still, it was a while before he was able to extricate himself from their midst after refusing all their invitation and requests.

By the time he got back to his ships, they were almost empty, both of the goods as well as the sailors. Only a few men remained abroad and could be seen here and there, either guarding or doing an inspection of the ships to see if they needed any repairs, the rest seemed to have taken off.

Jon took a quick look around and found his target sitting at his usual table in the shade of ships going over some records. Merchant Sam immediately looked up after hearing Jon's footsteps and asked him with a smile on his face, "They finally let you go, eh?"

"They didn't want to but I told them that I need to use the privy urgently..." Jon replied with a mischievous smile, "That cleared them up real fast,"

"Haha, That would definitely work. I'll remember that the next time I am in a pinch" Sam said as he burst out laughing.

"Our sailors also ran away pretty quickly, huh?" Jon asked while waving his hand towards the almost empty ships. He didn't need to think too much to know where all the men had run off to after staying pent up amongst each other on a ship for so many weeks.

"Ah! Don't remind me," Sam said in a grumpy tone, "Once I told them that they'll get the day off after we finish unloading, those scoundrels worked faster than a horse. I've never seen a ship clear up that fast—Ah! That reminds me," he suddenly exclaimed while bending down to take a very heavy red coloured pouch about the size size of a head from the table, "This is all the profit we made from this trip," he said while handing over the bag to Jon, "I took the liberty of converting them all to gold to make it easier,"

"Thank you for doing that. This is definitely lighter than the last time," Jon said while putting the bag in a satchel at his side, "It'll be a lot easier going to the bank now,"

"You're going straight to the bank then," Sam asked and Jon just nodded his head, "A lot of gold must have accumulated in your account by now, what with all the profits we made, not to mention the hefty sum Lord Manderly sent for that Starkhorse business," he mused before shaking his head with a puzzled expression, "I just can't wrap my head around the thought of how you could be so unbothered with leaving that much gold in the hands of this foreign bank, no matter how famous they are."

"Well it's not good to keep this kind of gold in your hands, is it?" Jon replied with a shrug, "Besides the one thing these bankers can be trusted with is to keep your gold secure. They know very well that trust is the only thing that keeps a bank in business, and besides a lot of this gold is going to disappear soon,"

"Huh? Why?"

"For buying new ships for our fleet, of course," Jon said in a matter-of-fact tone, "With the demand we are seeing now and what we will see in the future, we need to add as many ships as we can to the fleet. Speaking of which, on your trip to White Harbour, don't bother bringing any of the local goods from there, since there are already a lot of ships sailing between White Harbor and Braavos, instead try to stuff as many sailors as are willing to come here, because I don't think we would have the leisure for a trip to home like this in the future,"

"Oh! Don't worry about it," Sam said patting his chest confidently, "My son assured me that he was training the boys with all his might, day and night. He boasted so many times in his letter that he's got enough recruits now that he's worried we won't be able to find work for all of them."

"Tell him not to worry about that. With the way things are going, I don't think we'll be out of work for quite a while, especially with all the plans I have for our fleet," He said with a mysterious smile before he suddenly remembered about the warg call with Robb, "And before I forget, you need to pick up two very 'special' people from White harbour. Robb would have already sent them there by the time you reach so you should easily find them at the castle."

"Special people, huh..." Sam said with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah. After all, I can't handle all the workload by myself, especially when the number of ships increases, so I thought why not call in some helpers, and Robb had just the people in mind for the task ready." Jon said with a shrug before his eyes once again went towards the ships, "Do you think you can fit all the goods we have accumulated in the warehouse onto the ships or would we need to make another trip?"

"We have enough space. It should suffice."

During his trips to various Essosi cities, outside of his usual shipping business, he had pilfered little by little all the valuable things he felt would be in great demand back home in Westeros. They were all brought with his own money so he couldn't take too much at once but by now a lot of it had accumulated in the warehouse and it was finally time for him to cash it in.

"We may need to make more of such trips if this one is profitable enough," Jon said with a contemplative look on his face.

It was a well-known story, that the legendary Sea Snake got wealthier than the Lannister during his time all due to the Nine Great Voyages he made from Westeros to Essos, to places as far as Qarth, Yi-Ti, and Leng. That man had garnered a great amount of wealth from Essos and Jon wanted to see if he could do the same in the future.

"Are you jesting with me? If we manage to sell all the goods you've got stacked away in that warehouse, it would be more profitable than all three of our previous trips combined." Sam said wildly gesticulating in excitement before he abruptly stopped and started scratching his head, "Ah! But it would take too long if we need to find the best people to sell the goods..."

"Oh! You don't need to worry about it. I already sent Lord Manderly a letter and he assured me that he'll make the best use of his ability and call all his connections to get me the best price he can." Jon had also told the man to send all the earnings from the deal to Winterfell, as he knew that Lord Stark could use it for all the infrastructure work going over there. "Anyway, when do you plan to sail?"

"Tomorrow."

"What? Tomorrow?" Jon asked with a frown on his face, "But don't you want to take a break for a few days rest? I am sure the boys must have been sick of the sea by now because I know I am! I was delighted that I didn't have to look at anything blue for a while."

"In fact, it's the boys themselves who insisted on not taking a break and leaving the very next day," Merchant Sam said with a helpless smile, "It seems they miss their home and can't wait to get back to the North and to be honest—And I never thought I would say this—even I have started to miss the cold," he finished with a sheepish smile.

"Ah! You're not the only one," Jon said with a little envy in his tone, "There's nothing quite like the Essosi heat to make you long for a little summer snow,"

"That's true, though I've seen that the heat doesn't bother you as much as it does us normal folks," Sam asked with a curious look on his face. It's not just once or twice that he had seen everyone else sweating buckets under the Sun while Jon leisurely roamed the streets just like a local.

"Perhaps it's in my blood," Jon shrugged with a mysterious smile before he said his farewell and left towards the bank.

...

It was almost evening by the time Jon was finished with his business with the bank and was able to find the time to visit the store.

There was nothing outwardly different about the store other than a lot of footsteps on the outside and the fact that the small closed sign outside was a little lopsided. He opened the door to find Sam buried in his books sitting at the counter as usual, though he looked a little dishevelled for some reason.

The former fat boy flinched at the sound of the door opening and slowly looked up with dread on his face, but the fear immediately cleared up from his expression when he saw who had entered.

"JON!! You're finally here!" He exclaimed with a delighted look on his face but before Jon could ask anything, the happy look on the boy's crumbled like a piece of paper and he looked a second away from crying, "Aah!! W-Where were you Jon? I-I thought I was about to die!!"

"Huh? What's wrong? You look as if you've been..." 'Harrassed' Jon wanted to say but didn't, to spare the already very low self-esteem of the boy, "Calm down first. Take a deep breath and tell me what happened?"

"I-I did just like you told me to in the l-letter. I told the merchants that we would not be able to book any ships for a while," Sam started after taking a few breaths, "B-But they would not take no for an answer no matter what I said... A-And there were so many of them, and I-I was very scared that they were going to beat me up..."

"But didn't you explain to them about the upcoming trip that the Iron Bank is sponsoring..." Jon asked with a puzzled look on his face. He hadn't decided to just halt their trips out of the blue, in fact, even if he didn't have to be somewhere else, he would have still stopped the trips for a while because it was time for the Braavos's usual trip with its mighty warships, and Jon didn't want to 'accidentally' cut into the banker's profits...at least not yet.

"I-I did," Sam nodded hastily, his eyes wide and teary, "But they said that they liked ours a lot better... And they were really forcefully, said that they wouldn't leave unless I booked their tickets and they kept shoving their gold pouches into my face, so I..."

"So you..."

"You have to believe me, Jon. They were very scary... I had no choice," Sam explained in a wronged tone, almost on the verge of crying, "I-I gave them the tickets... I am really sorry, Jon, I tried..."

"It's fine," Jon said with a sigh while patting the boy's shoulder.

He knew that there was nothing the boy could do about it... after all, he was still almost a child. A child who had been bullied all his childhood and that too by his own father. Even though he looked completely different now with all his muscles and the sudden jump in height, he was still a scared little boy inside, "What's happened has happened, so there's nothing we can do about it, besides you told them that the next trip wouldn't be for a while, Right?"

"I did. But they didn't care but none of them cared how long it took us... in fact, some of them even left twice and thrice the amount of gold to book trips even more in the future..."

"It's fine," Jon said with a sigh, before he looked at the tomes on the counter and tried to change the subject, "Are you finished with the books here?"

The tomes Jon was pointing towards looked simple enough just a bit worn out and well-read. But there was something out of the ordinary about them; all of the tomes had a seal of Citadel on them. But anyone with even an iota of knowledge about Citadel would know how paranoid they were about keeping their knowledge to themselves and how their books could never leave the Citadel library. Which either implied that they were fake or that they were all... stolen.

"Y-Yes, I am already done with this batch, " Sam's eyes immediately lit up at the mention of the books. "They were really great Jon. I learned so much about all kinds of herbs and potions used in healing and I've read all of them front to back now and I remember almost everything about them," he bragged shyly and the dark circles under his eyes were proof enough for Jon to believe him, "You can send them back now, and if it's alright with you, can you get me some of the more advanced books. I think I am good with the basics now and a-am ready for more complicated ones now..."

"I am sorry, Sam," Jon said somewhat apologetically to the bright-eyed boy, "But you may not be able to read any new books for a while..."

"Why? Is Frost busy somewhere else? Because I can wait—"

"No, it's not that. It's because we are going on a trip..."

"A trip? Where?"

"To the Disputed Lands."

"WHAT?!!"