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Ch 52 We got him!! Part 1
🕑 Added 2024-01-27 14:40:56 +0000 UTCThe city of Volantis was often called the First Daughter by the people in Essos and was the oldest and the proudest of the Nine Free Cities. Located at the mouth of the river Rhoyne on the Summer Sea(Sea south of Essos), it is the greatest, richest and most powerful of the City-States, only recently rivalled by Braavos.
Volantis was also the most populous city in Essos and with its humid and hot climate, it was hard even for the locals during the mid-day when the sun is at its hottest... not to mention people from a part of the World where it snows even in summer.
The Four Northerners, with swords at their waist, stood out like a sore thumb on the busy streets of Volantis. They were outside the gate of a luxurious mansion in the heart of the city, and even though all of them were wearing thin and airy clothes popular among the locals, it was starkly noticeable that they weren't local at all.
"Ugh! This heat is fucking killing me!!" Gill panted while pulling his collar as far away as he could. They were standing in the little shade they could find by the wall of the mansion beside the gate. Their exhausted and huddled bodies made a stark contrast with the straight backs of the unsullied guards standing guard at the gate a few meters away from them.
"You should be thankful boy that you're not old enough to have a beard like me," chuckled the oldest one of the four Northerners, "I swear it feels as a fucking bear is sitting on my face," he cursed while scratching his shaggy beard ferociously. The air was hot and heavy here and it almost felt like he was swimming in his sweat
"Then you should have listened to the boss when he told everyone on the ship to get a shave and haircut," teased the tallest one among them who was also the assistant of the Merchant Sam.
"Humph! I'd rather die of heatstroke than look a dandy like this boy," he scoffed while pointing towards Gill, "I don't how he survived in the North with a clean face like this... I bet even the brothel girls laugh their ass off when he enters the door," he chortled and all of three of them burst out laughing.
"Shut Up! You Brute" Gill protested but before they could tease the young boy any further, the man they were waiting for came out of the mansion door and walked towards them.
"We're done here," Merchant Sam said barely stopping in his stride, "Onto to the ships now,"
"Finally!!" the sailor's cum guards grumbled before surrounding the Merchant and his assistant and moving towards the ship in a group so as to fend off the pickpockets.
"We get the full payment, Sam?" The assistant asked as they slowly moved through the crowded streets filled to the brim with people going to and fro.
"We did," Sam grunted absentmindedly.
The hardest part for all of them on these trips was neither the long journey nor the pirates along the way...instead, it was walking through these crowded cities.
The slavery blatantly on show all around them was more than a simple culture shock for these Westerosi, from 10-year-old half-naked boys being made to carry sacks twice their weight on their backs to men and women, with haunted eyes, being sold naked on streets like vegetables. The despair in the eyes of the slaves and the apathy in the eyes of the slaver was alarming, it was as if they didn't even consider the slaves to be of the same species.
Slavery is something that has been outlawed in Westeros for more than a thousand years. It is one of the only things loathed by both the Faith of the Seven and the Old gods. While some people say that smallfolk in Westeros don't live much better than the slaves here... It's not the truth, after all, at least they have the freedom to get up and leave for better pastures whenever they want, unlike the shackled slaves with dead eyes all around them.
All the Northerners had grim and uncomfortable looks on their faces, but the most disturbed was Gill, the youngest one among them. It was his first trip to Volantis, so seeing all that was happening around him was too much for his young mind.
"Fucking slavers," spat the old one with the beard, while glaring at the fat pig who was almost breaking the backs of skinny old men carrying him on a palanquin.
"Stop it! Do you want to get us killed?" the assistant whispered anxiously.
"Why? It's not like these bastards can even understand us..."
"They may understand our tongue but they can surely understand your eyes—"
As the assistant was trying to calm them down something happened in a merchant shop in front of them. A woman slave, with a toddler swaddled behind her, was cleaning a vase when it accidentally dropped from her fingers breaking it into a thousand pieces.
"Ah—"
"You useless wretch!! I told you to be careful with that!" the Merchant shouted and almost immediately the nearby guard handed over a whip to his master who didn't hesitate to lash out at the woman not even caring if he hurt the babe. Thankfully the woman reacted instantly and took the babe from her back into her arms and took the lashes on her back.
"Fucking useless bitch!!" the merchant growled almost tearing the skin of the helplessly crying woman. None of the people walking by so much as stopped...
"Don't!" Sam said firmly without looking back and Gill, the only guard whose hand had instinctively gone towards his sword, froze, "Don't look! Don't hear! Don't Speak! Just Walk!" the Merchant said firmly, his eyes staring straight ahead.
Gill looked helplessly towards his senior who only shook his head silently. Gill gritted his teeth but ultimately didn't disobey Sam's order and walked away with the rest. He knew that the moment he pulled his sword out they would get surrounded by the guards and be killed.
As someone who had grown up an orphan in the streets of White Harbour he knew that life could be unfair but seeing a mother getting lashed while trying to save her son and not being able to do anything made him feel as if someone was twisting his insides.
"Now I understand why the boss never leaves the ship in these slaver cities," Gill murmured to himself after taking a deep breath and letting go of his sword, "I envy him... At least he doesn't have to watch all this..."
'He is always watching,' Sam wanted to retort but held it inside of him.
After all, Jon hadn't behaved any differently from the young boy when he had first entered a Slaver city and laid his eyes on the atrocities happening everywhere. In fact, Jon had reacted even more extremely than what the boy had been thinking of doing with his sword... after all, at least five cruel slavers ended up dying mysteriously because of him which almost caused a riot in the city centre.
If Sam hadn't known better and somehow managed to calm Jon down from his wrath and bring him back to the ship...who knows what would have happened?
Both of them had decided after that trip that it would be better for Jon to remain away from these cities for a while.
"Don't hold up now! Move!" The assistant said patting their shoulders, "We need to hurry back to the ships... Or they'll leave without us, Haha..." he said trying to uplift the gloomy mood.
Volantis is divided in the middle by the river Rhoyne into two parts Eastern Bank and Western Bank. The city spreads widely across the mouth of the Rhoyne and the hills and marshes on both sides of the river. And, at that moment, they were inside the Western Bank, where most of the 'newer' districts resided which was mostly filled with slaves, merchants and foreigners.
The Eastern Bank, also called Old Volantis, is where the so-called Old Blood resides protected by Black Walls made during the Valyrian era. The nobility there considered walking to be something that peasants did which meant that most of them only left their homes on either palanquins or used various kinds of animals like elephant rides.
Thankfully there were very few nobles on this side otherwise the traffic would have been unimaginable with elephants clogging the streets.
Even though they hurried along it still took them about two hours to reach the fishmonger square. The square was filled with a swathe of human bodies suffocating against each other as they rushed along and even though the streets widened as they approached the port, the amount of people increased proportionally with it.
It took them quite a while to cross the fish food market but finally, the buildings gave away and the view in front of them widened until they were at the dock which stretched on both sides as far as their eyes could see.
The Volantis harbour was large and very deep, in fact, they even have a saying that Braavos and all of its more than a hundred isles could sink in here and disappear. While it's not known if it was just the pride of the so-called "Old Blood" speaking here or if it's the truth, one thing no one can deny is that the port was absurdly huge.
But as massive as the port was, it was still filled to the brim with all kinds of ships, some from the nearby cities such as Lys, and Tyrosh, while others from the cities of Slaver's Bay. Finding a ship in this clustered port would be a nightmare even for a Captain who had docked the ship. But thankfully ships from Westeros rarely ever come this far so it didn't take them long to reach the place where their fleet is docked.
The ships seemed to have just been waiting for them to arrive as the moment the sailors onboard caught sight of them, they started pulling up the anchors to prepare for departure.
Merchant Sam made sure that everything was in order and that every sailor was on board and accounted for before giving the order to depart one after the other.
...
A few minutes after they left the port of Volantis, Sam found Jon at the deck watching the city as it disappeared on the horizon.
"We got all the payments from the Merchants belonging to Big Mario and the others and all the ships have also been filled with the local goods..." Sam slowly reported everything while Jon simply nodded.
Jon waited for Sam to finish with his report before asking, "How is Gill?"
"Sullen. But I relieved the boy of his duty and sent him to his room so he should be fine after a good night's rest." Sam replied with a sigh, "They all need to grow up and realise that Slavery is an undeniable truth of this side of the world which wouldn't change no matter how they feel about it," he finished firmly.
"The world will be a very grim place if young people easily accept these kinds of things from the get-go, Sam," Jon said with a wry smile.
"Slavery has been a part of these cities for more than just a few centuries, it is something that has long seeped into the very being of the people here..." Sam said while looking at the melancholy young boy meaningfully, "No Man, no matter how powerful, would be able to abolish it... So the sooner one accepts it the better."
Jon remained silent and thoughtful for a few minutes before he suddenly turned around his face with a thoughtful look "Hmm...Perhaps not a man, but maybe a woman could..."
Jon had begun searching for the traces of the Last Targyreans from the moment he had set foot in Essos but sadly he hadn't had much luck in that yet.
While he was someone who could find anyone's secret given enough time with the use of his abilities. He didn't quite possess the spread-out spy network to find two teenagers amongst the millions on this continent. Especially when they were being meticulously hidden with the help of the infamous whisperer. And he didn't want to make any straightforward enquiries and spook the spider so the only viable option he had at the moment was to wait for them to appear.
"Eh? H-How would a woman do anything about slavery?" Sam asked in a bewildered tone.
"With three very powerful friends," Jon said with a mysterious smile before going away towards his room leaving behind a very confused Merchant.
