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Ch 72 The final Phase Part 2
🕑 Added 2024-09-24 16:28:38 +0000 UTC"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 always wanted to kill a Pirate King..."
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Comments
yogesh sankhla
Yes. By this sunday.
THEREAL_UB94
Is this going to be updated anytime soon?
