Chapter 18

Tugging at the cloth that was keeping together the make-shift stint on my arm until a maester could get a look at it, I returned to my original task of creeping through the hallways of the depilated prison that I had been placed in, "Out of pure curiosity, how are you still alive? I saw you get thrown overboard."

"It takes far more than a little water to kill me." Gwayne responded as he led the way through the hallways. I noticed that apart from the sword that he was carrying, he was massively under-armoured for a knight, as in no visible armour of any kind.

Hearing his response, I shrugged, I was just happy that things were still looking out for me. That I wasn't being beaten black and blue because some idiot didn't understand that interrogation did not give someone license to beat the living shit out of me.

As we made our way through the darkened hallways that were occasionally lit with torches ensconced into the walls, there was always a niggling worry at the back of my head of someone coming across the body of that Jino fellow that Gwayne had thoroughly decapitated and raising the alarm.

And then from there, we would every damned pirate on the island, if we were on an island, looking for us. That Old Mother bird probably wouldn't be happy as well to having one of my, actually, my favourite underling off of one of her own underlings, probably someone she trusted.

Because really, why would you leave the job of interrogating a royal to someone you don't trust? Especially if said interrogator didn't seem to know anything about interrogating a person.

Yes, I was still very much bitter about what had happened to me back there. Anybody would.

Fucking ass.

We were somehow able to make it to the entrance I remember being half-waking, half-being dragged through before I had been thrown into my cell when I got captured. Gwayne held out a hand to make me stop and I stopped and waited nervously as he peered through the entrance.

He then released three soft whistles that sounded somewhat suspiciously like bird whistles.

No way.

A moment later, three bird whistles rode the winds in reply and Gwayne stepped out into the moonlit opening confidently enough that I just followed him without thinking.

Who could have known that Gwayne wasn't working alone? I wondered who was working with him and whether this person he was working with was equally a badass as Gwayne himself.

Some bushes rustled before his partner revealed himself. It was too dark to see, but as he got closer, I quickly learned two things; one, was the fact that Gwayne's partner was nothing more than a child. Actually, I'm pretty sure that he was like Steffon's age or something.

Second, it felt as if I should know that face from somewhere, although I can't quite put a place as to where I could have potentially met a one-eyed, scarred teenaged boy who seemed like he was ready about to kill everything and everyone at the slightest provocation.

"Ser Gwayne." The youth said, his voice sounded as if it had just started to break and considering the reddish pimples on display on his face, puberty must have just hit him.

Gwayne nodded his head at the teenager, "Samwell."

Samwell? Hold up. I pointed at the teenager, "Samwell Waters?"

Samwell Waters turned his head in my direction and bowed, "The one and only, Prince Aerys. I'm glad that you remembered a lowly cabin boy such as me."

"I remember you being a lot more scrawny the last time we met."

He laughed meekly enough as he straightened himself out, "Working on a ship tends to build some muscles."

I nodded my head as I put the face of the baby faced kid from two years ago with the muscled teenager in front of me at this very moment. Come on, was everyone apart from me getting ripped nowadays? It was so unfair.

"How's your father?" I asked.

Whatever joviality Samwell's face held immediately disappeared only to be replaced by a stone cold countenance, his lone eye burning with a rage of a passion the rest of his face couldn't or was unwilling to meet, "Dead, Your Grace. The Conciliator was the ship accompanying yours back to King's Landing. The pirates hit us first, Father went down fighting with his ship, like a good captain."

"Oh, I'm sorry for your loss, Sam." I really was but by now, Ser Joffrey was certainly not going to be the first man to die for me, or because of me, so the guilt that I would feel any other time was there, but had been compartmentalized enough so that it wouldn't affect me.

He shook his head, "None of it was your fault, Prince Aerys. Father did his duty, so shall I with returning you back to King's Landing."

Gotta give the kid props for the dedication. And speaking of King's Landing, "How are we going to do that exactly? I don't think the three of us are going to be able to sail a ship by our lonesome for the journey." Thankfully, and by some miracle, if we could, we probably had a navigator in Samwell who knew the way back to the capital.

Gwayne took over, "The Old Mother is a fearsome pirate, true, but like most pirates, she doesn't make her living from just raiding ships and taking their goods and wealth."

I sighed as I realised where this was going, "She's also a slaver isn't she?"

The Kingsguard nodded his head, "That she is. Whatever men that were captured when she made her attack on our convoy, she made sure to capture."

I wasn't going to say I was surprised. I supposed in someway, piracy was a business at the end of the day. It was all about the bottom line. There was probably some element of that whole freedom on the seas spiel, or maybe that was me being subtly influenced by One Piece, who knows? Not me at the moment.

And slavery was a lucrative trade going by how everyone in Essos was obsessed with it. So it also made sense for the Old Mother to make sure that her bottom line was padded the way up as many ways as possible.

"Some would say that her men went out of their way to make sure that they captured as many of our own as possible." One-Eyed Samwell grumbled, eyes crossed and single eye staring into the ground.

Well, it was said capturing someone alive was far more difficult than outright killing them in a field of battle, "Their objective was to capture me. Maybe that was the point?" And the others were a bonus as far as they were concerned.

"Plausible." Gwayne said with a grunt, "We should move. Someone might come to check on how you are." He finished as he began to lead the way through the bushes.

My prison had been located at the top of a small hill with one single road that led down into a small looking village. Small as in it could probably hold a couple of families and since I doubted your average everyday family was a thing here, those buildings probably hosted pirates and the captured sailors that Sam had spoken off.

The single road was a quick way for us to get spotted and get promptly captured again and I doubt the Old Mother would be so kind to me as she was before, so Gwayne led us into the village using the dark as cover. Whenever there wasn't a cloud to obscure the light coming from the moon, we would hide in whatever shadows that we could find and wait for a cloud to give us the dark that we wanted.

Once again, stealth really wasn't much for an option for a guy with silver-blonde fucking hair that was coupled along with purple eyes. I stood out like a sore thumb. And apparently, my hair was reflective, thankfully, muck, sweat and some dirt had lowered that particular characteristic to a barely noticeable level.

As we creeped our way towards and into the village, Gwayne and Samwell had explained the plan to me. Sam had been one of the sailors that had been taken prisoner by the pirates, but had been released by Gwayne. From a cage full of captured sailors.

In other words, there was a group of sailors that were currently pretending to be captured just waiting for the signal to go all balls out on the pirates/slavers. And they weren't the only group of slaves or captured sailors that Gwayne had released during the time that he had been skulking around on the island.

Say what you will about the Kingsguard and their sometimes one mindedness to the 'Honour above Reason' rule, but when it came to doing their duty as their honour commanded them to do, they went above and beyond.

Barristan Selmy, I'm thinking of you right now.

"Stay here." Gwayne said as we hid in the shadows of an alleyway, "I'll go give the signal."

I nodded before asking, "What is the signal?"

He smiled, "You'll see it soon enough."

The knight left me and Sam not long after that. We waited in the dark and the shadows they gave us for what seemed like eternity. At some point, it felt like we were going to be discovered by some pirates that were passing through the street that we were hiding off.

But somewhat like stereotypical pirates on land, they were so gone that I was surprised most of them could walk as straight as they did. Even better, know where they were going. Maybe they were just wandering around at a loss of worlds, I mused to myself.

Then the bells and the shouting started.

Me and Sam looked at each in the dark as we could hear people shouting and screaming and of course the bells. Through some unspoken signal, we inched forward towards the edge of the alley and dared to peak as much as possible into the light.

I squinted slightly as I had to wait for my eyes to adjust to the sudden rush of well lit streets, but I could definitely see what the commotion was all about. At the end of the village, away from the dock where the boats were located, several large fires had been lit.

Men were rushing towards said fires with buckets of water, shouting whilst they did so.

Once again, me and Sam looked at each other, "I guess that's the signal then."

The former cabin boy shrugged his shoulders, "I suppose."

Then a new sound was added to the din of the night. The sounds of something I had become quite used to in the past few months. The sound of men letting loose their war cries and the joining of battle.

Gwayne soon made his reappearance after that, along with a fairly large group of men that was probably in it's dozens that was making a head long rush towards the docks. I saw that some of the men were armed with make shift clubs and some even had bladed weapons that seemed to have been recently bathed in blood, "We need to go, now!" The knight ordered.

We didn't need to be told twice as me and Sam scrambled to our feet and joined the rush of men.

I didn't quite understand what was happening. On one hand, I was sure some people were fighting, so who were this lot who were running like mad towards the dock? Well, I didn't particularly care, but if they could sail a ship, then it was all good as far as I cared.

So we ran. Ran as fast as we could.

Then the pirates figured something was up and started chasing us. Well, the ones that weren't fighting, or perhaps these were the ones that had been fighting and had already finished off the poor bastards that had been the diversion to buy us time.

Words were being shouted in a language I didn't understand and they seemed to be pretty angry. I decided it probably wasn't best to be captured again. In other words, that gave me more than enough motivation to pump my legs even more than they were already pumping.

"Get on the ship!" Someone was shouting in basic as they waved the men onto the nearest boat, "Prepare for sail! I don't think anyone wants to be on this blasted rock anymore than they want to be!"

Running up the gangplank was quite the ordeal. Ordeal considering the factor that there was several men running up it at the same time and occasionally, a thought would run through my head that it was going to snap and drop us all into the water.

Thankfully, that didn't happen.

I actually helped when it came to the whole sailing thing. Well, I tried to help, but as surprising as it is, it turns out being one handed doesn't do much for you when it comes to a labour intensive task as running a ship. So I just stood there, dodging arrows whenever they came.

When we started to slowly move away from the dock, a pirate launched himself at the stern of the ship. Knife planted firmly between his teeth, he started crawling his way up like he was Spider-man or something.

Yes, I was one armed, but there was still something that I could do. Grabbing one of the fallen makeshift clubs, I looked over the gunwhale towards the guy slowly crawling his way up.

I was a righty and my right hand was currently out of commission. So my left it was. And it was pathetic.

I sort of hit him, but the throw had been so weak that it didn't do much but cause a slight grunt. Sam's effort was far better than mine as he dropped a barrel straight onto the guys head. I think I head something go crunch.

Ouch.

Looking back towards the dock, I could see a powerful figure, the Old Mother and she didn't look to be all that happy judging by her body language, directing the traffic of pirates towards the rest of the ships, preparing to give us chase.

"This is going to be far more difficult than I thought it's going to be." I mumbled as chaos surrounded me as men worked their stations with as much organised chaos they could muster. I was sure some of the sailors on-board had never served with each other before, so the synergy wasn't as it was, but they were somehow trying to make it work.

"Ships at the bow!" Someone from atop the crow's nest shouted down to the deck.

"More pirates?" Sam cursed as he nearly broke his neck to look at the bow of the ship and into the night where the ships had been spotted.

Hearing that, I sighed as I figured of course it wouldn't be that easy. This was Planetos. Nothing could be that easy.

"I suppose I should prepare myself for another beating then." I said in resignation. And who was to say that the Old Mother would be so lenient with me this time? She might very well cut off my legs to stop me from running away.

Sam's eye squinted into the night in the direction of the ships that were coming at them at full speed, "Somethings off about those ships."

"How so?" Could he make out details? Good for him. Those were some good eyes-eh, eye.

"They are smaller than a pirate ship has any right to be for starters." He licked at his dry lips, "If I didn't know any better, I would dare say they seem more like longships."

Longships? Oh joys of all joys, "Greyjoys." I groaned. I didn't want to deal with Greyjoys and what where the Greyjoys doing here?

The sailors prepared for a fight as the ships quickly closed the distance between them before to their surprising speeding past us and head towards the pirate ships that had been on our tail but were suddenly deciding to cut their losses and run for it.

And yes, they were Greyjoys. The golden, multi-armed beast that was the Kraken had been more than visible enough as it moved past.

One of the longships, this one bigger than the others came beside the ship that we were on, whilst others that hadn't gone chasing after the pirates had surrounded our ship. Some guy stood upon the figurehead of a Kraken all confident like, even as his ship was rocked by the sea waves, that didn't seem to bother him at all.

"My good sers," The man shouted from the top of his lungs, yet it didn't seem like he needed to. His voice was audible enough as it was and carried with it a confidence of someone who knew what he was doing, "I will kindly accept your surrender."

"Lord Quellon, is that you?" Gwayne hailed, suddenly appearing beside me.

"That be I." Quellon replied, "And you are?"

"Ser Gwayne Gaunt of the Kingsguard."

"And what would a Kingsguard be doing on a pirate ship?"

"Why, doing what a Kingsguard always does." Gwayne replied, "Protecting a member of the royal family."