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Ch 51 Getting Famous Part 2
🕑 Added 2024-01-20 17:17:08 +0000 UTCBy the time Frank heard the news and came to the port, it was already too late. Jon's fleet had already left the port of Bravoos... it was like a death sentence for him, as he knew that there was almost no hope for their ships to catch up to them even if he went to his Captain with the information immediately.
Frank hesitated for quite a while at the port about whether he should go back to his captain at all because he knew that his Captain was a man of his word and that he wouldn't have anything good in store for him if he heard the bad news. But then the face of his nephew appeared in his mind... he still remembered the rainy day when his poor fat sister had handed the boy off to him to take care of before running away.
After an hour of agonizing he finally gritted his teeth and decided that he had to at least try and save his nephew.
And just like Frank had predicted, his Captain wasn't happy with the news at all...
"You Fucker!! I told you what would happen if you failed again, didn't I?" he cursed while kicking the pirate so hard that he almost broke his back, "And you still had the gall to come back here empty-handed while spouting nonsense excuses... What did you think, Huh? That I'd be merciful and forgive you again? Do you take me to be a sisy now?"
"Argh!! P-Please, C-Captain!! I t-tried my best b-but by the time I arrived at Bravoos, the fleet had not only completed their trip but had also started another one." Frank hurriedly explained himself when the Captain stopped kicking him for a moment to listen, "The ships in that fleet are abnormally fast, Captain. They completed the whole trip from Bravoos to Volantis in just three weeks—"
"And here I was thinking that you were finally going to say something useful..." The Captain scoffed and resumed kicking the pirate with renewed ferocity, "Are you kidding me? Do you think I am stupid enough to believe something like that? What will you say next, that their ships can fly in the sky or that all of them ride on their pet whales, Huh?"
"Wait a second, Captain," The clean shaved advisor, who had just been silently watching so far suddenly interrupted and stopped the Captain from killing the pirate in his anger, "Tell me the truth, Frank. Is what you said about them completing the trip in just three weeks true?" he asked the groaning pirate.
"Y-Yes! I-I swear to R'hllor, " Frank replied in a feeble voice filled with agony, "Y-You can ask anyone at the port of B-Bravoos, all of them saw the same thing..."
"You can't be seriously believing in this bullshit? This bastard is probably just making up shit to save his worthless ass."
"Most probably," The advisor shrugged in reply to the Captain, "But it would not be very hard to verify it, and if it turns out that he is telling that truth..." he trailed off as his eyes suddenly got an interested look in them, "I need to see this through with my own eyes."
...
Travel between the Essos's free cities was quite fast as long as the Stepstones were not between them so it didn't take the Advisor too long to reach Bravoos by renting a merchant vessel.
The Advisor was a very thorough man and liked to verify his findings from multiple sources to be sure. So he didn't go back until he had seen the ships complete a full trip in front of his very eyes and only after he was done finding everything he could about the shipping fleet did he return.
But when he arrived at the pirate's camp, Frank and his nephew were almost half dead. They had been locked into cages and were barely being given any food and water to sustain themselves; both of them were sickly thin and filthy and seemed to have had a particularly miserable time.
"Release them." was the first thing that the advisor said after shaking his head at the condition of Frank and his nephew.
"What? Don't tell you're feeling sympathy for these lying pieces of shit." spat the Captain while chugging cheap ale recently looted from a merchant ship.
"They were not lying." The advisor said with a quiet sigh.
"What? What do you mean?" Captain Jack asked in a puzzled voice.
"They were right about that Westerosi fleet being able to complete a round trip to Volantis in just under three weeks, and by now they should have had three such successful trips under their name, each one equally fast," The advisor explained calmly while taking a seat beside the Captain in front of the campfire, "The ships belong to a new company called Northern Wolf Shipping hailing from the North in Westeros and it is owned by a Westerosi and a Banker."
"What? How could that be possible?" The Captain asked in a bewildered tone, his drunkenness leaving him very quickly, "Do they have some new kind of ships with new designs that are very fast? How many sails do these ships have to be so quick..."
"That's the thing... the ships in the fleet are all the common kind. They have four cogs and three trade galleys, but their is nothing outwardly different about them and I would go even as far as to say that they are quite old and on the slower side."
"T-Then how the hell did they accomplish it." The Captain asked frustratedly, his head almost spinning from trying to come up with a way for it to be possible... the only thing he could think of was that there was some kind of magic involved.
"Well... there were mainly three rumours amongst the smallfolk at the port in Bravoos as to how this Northern shipping fleet can achieve this feat. The first one is that it is just a very elaborate scam... they say that the fleet is not really going all the way to Volantis, instead they are stopping at some place mid-way where they exchange Bravoosi goods for the ones from Volantis and Lys with some land merchant who is in the scheme and then they turn back...
"That doesn't seem very likely..." The Captain said with a frown
"I too believe it is the least probable one as it is too complicated and costly... and I can't see any kind of clear motivation as to why someone would do this..." he said while shaking his head, "Anyway the second rumour is an even more absurd one... the people think that the captain, a Westerosi named Jon, knows some kind of Dark Magic and that before every trip he sacrifices a hundred virgins to his heathen god to get a blessing of swift winds to help him at sea."
The Captain scoffed, "As if a hundred virgins would be enough for something like this..."
"But I believe the most probable one is the third one." The advisor continued while ignoring the Captain's comment, "Some people think that Captain Jon knows some kind of Ancient Westerosi navigation method in which one uses the position of the Moon and the stars in the night sky to navigate the open sea."
"I... have never heard of a method like that," The Captain said with a thoughtful look in his eyes before he shook his head, "But even if that were true and even if they were able to travel day and night... it is still too absurd to believe that they could complete the whole trip to Volantis in just under half the time."
"Hmm... Have you ever seen the position of Bravoos and the Stepstones on a single Map," The Advisor abruptly asked out of nowhere.
"No... I don't think so."
"Well... A trip from Bravoos to Stepstones drawn on a map looks somewhat like this..." he said while drawing a crooked semi-circle on the sand using a nearby stick with Bravoos on one end and the Stepstones on the other, "Normally all the ships traverse the sea hugging the coast... which means that they travel something like this," he said while moving the stick along the circumference of the semi-circle, "But if someone was able to sail directly from one end to the other..." he used the stick to join the two ends in a straight line, "then they would be able to cut the trip drastically short."
The Captain scratched his fiercely trying to understand what the advisor was saying with weird shapes drawn on the sand but no matter how hard he tried he was coming up short. But it wasn't his fault as he had never hundreds of books like the advisor had... Now he knew why his father valued this man so much and why he sent him with him when he left...
"If what you say is true then it must mean that this Captain Jon is a very rich man..." Jack said with a greedy grin on his face, "I can't wait to get my hand on his ships..."
"You're thinking of this too simply my Captain," The Advisor said while shaking his head disappointedly, "It is no longer a matter of just gold anymore... If we are somehow able to catch this Jon alive and force that method of navigation out of him..." even the normally calm eyes of the advisor suddenly shook with excitement at the notion, "Then forget being rich, we could become completely invincible at the sea. No one will be able to compete with us anymore... Not Salladhor Saan, Not the Crow's eye and not even the mighty fleets of Bravoos and Volantis would be our match, We could become the next Sea Snake... maybe even better than him," he took a deep breath before turning to the Captain with a serious look, "It is a lot bigger than you think, Captain, so the best option right now is for you to tell your father about this and take his help—"
"No!" The Captain said as he abruptly stood up, "You will not call my father in... I will be the one to catch this Jon and present him to my father as a gift..."
"But—" The Advisor tried to say but stopped after seeing the rare stubborn gleam in the Captain's eye, "Fine! But it won't be easy catching this Westerosi fleet since detecting them at open sea is absurdly difficult and considering that they only stop at the big cities, attacking them while they are at the port would also be suicidal..."
"I know that it would be hard or almost impossible for the average pirate to catch them, " The Captain nodded, "But I have you... You've sailed beside my father for more than a decade... so I am sure you've got a plan or two on how to catch them."
"Maybe..." The advisor said with a thinking frown on his face before he suddenly turned to the uncle and nephew in the cage, "But first release them..."
"Ugh! Do we really have to release these fuckers?" The Captain said with a disgusted look on his face, "It's not like they are particularly good at anything besides eating..." And he felt a bit uncomfortable just releasing them after all the torture he had inflicted on them over the past few weeks.
"Yes, it's important to release them, since..." he said with a sinister smile, "I've got just the perfect job for them."
