Gold Wins Wars

by Verlax

Chapter IX - Everything's Fine

They needed only two more days to reach Ridge, yet the crew was already tired from the non-stop work. Casimir however, as a mercenary had nothing really to do, and as such he ended up to wandering aimlessly around the deck. The rest of the nobles were under the deck, trying not to die of boredom. They already managed to drain what meager supplies of liquor were on board the Conqueror, and were desperately trying to find something else to do while Twardowsky, who was the most learned of the bunch was trying to build a distiller from what he could find.This of course didn’t sit well with the crew, but they were powerless to do anything about it.

Keeping his eyes on the sun slowly descending behind the clouded horizon Casimir didn’t notice Quick Signal, almost bumping into him. The boatswain wasn’t looking too good, his tired eyes closing and opening sluggishly as he tried to stay awake, large bags under them making his sleep deprivation that more clear.

“Ehm… you speak Equish?” he asked with a tired voice.

“Yes?” the noble answered, a bit surprised by the question. Only after a second did he realise it wasn’t that obvious. Out of their entire group only two of them could actually talk in their barbaric language.

“Ah, good.” Quick Signal smiled tiredly. “Can you help me with something?”

“That depends. What are we talking about?”

Quick Signal sat tiredly on the deck before he started to speak. “I need somepony to replace me. I’ve been working for two days now without a break and I can’t even see straight anymore. Dangit, even your face is all blurry an’ stuff. I need you to go to Winterspell’s cabin and tell him to replace me.”

Dostoyevsky raised an eyebrow at the odd request. “You can’t do it yourself?”

“No.” the boatswain shook his head. “You see, we have a deal going on with the captain: he let’s usgamble on board the Little Conqueror, but his cabin is off limits for the rest of the crew. If I don’t want the boys tearing me a new one for taking away their favorite pastime I need to find a way around the agreement. As I see it, you’re not a part of the crew, so it should be fine.”

“Alright, seems good to me. Give me a minute or two.” Dostoyevsky agreed after a moment of thought and turned towards the door leading to the captain’s cabin. He paused before it though, a thoughtful frown crossing his face.

“To knock, or not to knock?” Casimir thought to himself.

Although it might have seemed strange for an outsider, this was a serious problem for the pegasus noble. He wanted to be really sure he wasn’t breaking any sort of etiquette by doing this. If Winterspell was be a proper Danzig, Plotsk, Stettin or Cracrow noble, he wouldn’t even consider going through with Quick Signal’s request, honoring the captain’s privacy. As it was however Casimir didn’t know if he should treat his fellow pegasus as a noble, or would something like this even matter in his admittedly different culture.

“Bah, screw this.” he finally came to conclusion and pushed the door open without knocking. He was greeted by the sight of a small cabin lit by a single candle attached to a small candlestick. Casimir’s eyes however quickly zeroed on the form of the cabin’s only occupant. Winterspell, sitting in front of his table was in the middle of a meal, though the abrupt entrance of the Danzigian noble left him staring wide eyed at the mercenary, a wooden fork halfway to his open mouth.

“Em...” Casimir swallowed, the realization of just how awkward his entrance really was. “Can you replace boatswain?” Finally he managed, immediately getting to the point while closing the door behind him as he entered. “The poor guy is going to hit the dirt pretty soon… wait, I meant deck.” he corrected himself immediately, a bit tongue-tied at the moment.

Winterspell, who was in the middle of eating a piece of salmon slowly finished what he already had in mouth, his fork landing in his bowl. Casimir noted that the captain had very impassive, downright indifferent facial expression. Pushing aside his bowl the pegasus focused his attention on the noble.

“Soon.” Winterspell finally replied. “I never thought Quick Signal was that smart. Didn’t think he of all ponies would come up with a loophole in our agreement.” he added after a moment, his voice betraying absolutely no emotion. “However, this is the only time I will tolerate any sort of intrusion on my cabin. You can leave now.”

“Is something troubling you?” Despite the order he was given Dostoyevsky decided to try talking to the captain. “You haven’t been looking all that well after… ehm… Fishenheim.” The pegasus noble tried to approach the issue as diplomatically as he could. It might have been nothing, but the way Winterspell tried to get rid of him seemed worrying for some reason.

“I doubt anypony would look good after that.” Winterspell replied evenly, trying to avoid giving a direct answer. “Our failure took a heavy toll on the crew’s morale, and honestly, I can’t blame them for that.”

“Look, I know you took what happened back there really hard, but I guess we did our best.” Casimir tried to reassure him. “There was nothing--”

Winterspell suddenly stood up and slammed his hoof into the table. It almost looked like he wanted to yell at his fellow pegasus, a first indication of any emotion whatsoever, but he resisted the urge and closed his jaw tight. The noble from Danzig backed away a few steps.

“You’re wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.” Winterspell muttered, uttering every word like if it was meant to convey so much more than they meant. “Yes, we failed, and we could do nothing about it. But we didn’t do our best. Or to be more precise - it was me who didn’t do his best. It was me after all who was giving out orders. We shouldn’t have allowed them to leave with the captives. My own foolish mistake.”

“But they would kill them!” Casimir started to protest. “From my point of view it looks like you’re blaming yourself for no real reason.”

Winterspell didn’t answer. Instead he pushed his chair closer to the table and sat down. Casimir waited for a few seconds, waiting for Winterspell to say something, all the while the captain was pondering how to best convey what he wanted to say to the mercenary. For a few moments the only sound in the cabin was that of the crew outside, toiling away in their endless battle with the sea.

“Have you ever seen a convict on a galley or slave?” the captain suddenly asked.

Casimir shook his head in denial.

“I have.” He replied simply, slouching in his chair. Back when I was just a sailor serving on the “Steel of the Fatherland”, a Novigradian galley. It happened during a typical patrol near the coast of Ridge. It seemed to be a normal cruise, but we were maneuvering around one of the islands we almost bumped into a Victual ship. Their galley saw us and immediately started running. Our vessel was far bigger and bettered armed, so our captain decided to give chase.

“At first, the distance between us was growing.” Winterspell continued, a faraway look in his eyes as he recalled the past. “The Vitalian ship was simply faster. At some point our commander was considering breaking pursuit, but it was then that we realised that for some reason, the pirates started slowing down. Soon we were gaining on them, and with each passing second their galley was moving slower and slower. Finally our ships’ sides met and we boarded them. We showed them no mercy. Literally. We killed everypony, even those who tried to surrender. After the battle we checked what was under deck. When we did that, I finally realised why their ship was gradually slowing.”

“Galley slaves…” Casimir murmured, licking his suddenly dry lips.

“Indeed.” the pegasus nodded. “They were ‘old’, at least by Vitalian standards. They were kept captive for at least two years and this was their mistake. The slaves were already completely exhausted when they met us, and it only got worse when they were ordered to speed up. The pirates were whipping them, executing those who weren’t working hard enough, yet none of it worked. No matter how much the Vitalians tried, the rowers couldn’t row anymore. Unfortunately, the end of their captivity was also the end of their lives.”

Winterspell paused for a moment, trying to recall this awful sight.

“There were many ponies - earth, pegasi, and unicorns alike. Most of them young, no older than twenty five. Everypony looked the same however, the same bones visible just beneath their skin, hooves so limp they barely could feel anything in them, unnaturally thin, gaunt even, with muscles that developed in strange, unnatural ways, their eyes tired and unfocused… not all of them survived the chase. A few died from being whipped too much and from the r Vitalian attempts at making them ‘row faster’. The rest… well. They also didn’t make it. Most of them were too tired to move, and when we tried to help them and transport them onto our ship, they died. Lack of food, non-stop rowing and diseases - in the end we saved nopony.”

For a second there Winterspell shuddered, his mind’s eye replaying the horrific sight. The gaunt, starved, sick ponies staring at him with lifeless eyes like living corpses, too weak to move and doomed to die. He doubted they even knew they had been rescued, not that their rescuing helped them in the end. It was... it was a reality check for him, one that he never really forgot.

“Okay… maybe I’ll finally get to the point.” Winterspell said after a moment, getting the shuddering under control. “When Souther grabbed the kid, he manipulated me to think that by allowing them to leave I would be saving their lives. It was no coincidence that he grabbed a child and not anypony else. He knew children evoke the most sympathy and that most wouldn’t risk the life of one. Souther, the sneaky son of bitch actually thought this through and outsmarted me. But the truth is that they were all dead anyway. The miserable life of a rower on a Victa ships is no life at all. Instead of granting them a quick, relatively painless death, I sentenced them to several years of torture and suffering. My foolish mistake was that I forgot about it during this situation and he made me make a wrong decision.”

“How do you know they’ll all die?” Casimir asked through clenched teeth, equally disgusted and angry by both Winterspell’s unhonorable words and by the Victual practices described to him. “Maybe during one of our cruises one of our ships will save them? How can you be so sure?”

“Because, and you have to understand this, we stumbled upon the Vitalian ship by pure accident.” Winterspell answered calmly, closing his eyes and letting out a small sigh. “And even though we took them by surprise, we still failed. Now as a captain I have access to some data gathered by the Legions. And according to them, statistically it’s almost impossible to save captives once they are on pirate ship. I agreed to your idea of intervening in Fishenheim because we had a chance of saving them when they were still on land.”

Casimir tried to say something, but the captain beat him to the punch.

“There is one more thing… as you know I was born and raised in Novigrad.” Winterspell started seemingly randomly, his eyes opening and looking at the mercenary. “It’s a harsh and cruel city, but there is one thing I really admire about it. The Equestrian Codex allows cities of Equestria to impose capital penalties. Most of them are really cruel - the rack, iron chair, brazen bull, stoning… Novigrad also reserves the death penalty for a lot of crimes, but in Novigrad executions do not involve torture. No humiliation, no pain. Swift, quick and relieving death. I’m furious that I allowed myself to forget about this. If I didn’t than maybe I could have granted the Fishenheim peasants a swift death. Instead, I just gave them years of torture. I can’t stand ponies that enjoy the suffering of others.”

Casimir by now realised something. Winterspell was absolutely incredible when it came to hiding his emotions. He was speaking about all these awful and terrible details, yet he was as calm as could be, and besides one sudden movement at the beginning of the conservation and some slight shivering when he recalled that galley he liberated, his voice was almost monotonous.

However, the pegasus also realised something more. Winterspell was not furious, he didn’t lose contact with reality, or anything like that. He was simply sad. And no matter how much he wanted to disagree with him, Casimir had to admit that the captain had his reasons.

And then there was something more, though that came more from observing the cabin the captain resided in than from him talking. Casimir realized that Winterspell didn’t like them. And he wasn’t just thinking about his squad of mercenaries, he was thinking about the whole crew of this ship. For some reason Winterspell didn’t want to abandon his room. But was it because he prefered to be alone, or was it something else? Didn’t he care about them in the long run? Was it that he wanted to face his inner demons without anypony’s help?

Or maybe he was just over analyzing? Yea, this was probably the case...

“Did you even listen to me, Casimir?” Winterspell asked, his voice reaching the noble like through a thick fog.

“I’m sorry.” he quickly recovered, shaking his head. “I was just… thinking. Please, continue.” He added, noticing a slightly irritated look crossing the captain’s eyes.

“As I was saying before, I also failed to realise that in the long run this decision of mine was plain idiocy.” Winterspell continued after he rolled his eyes. “I allowed Souther and his men to run free. How many more lives can they take because of it? Now they can go rampant and burn some other village and kill more ponies. Stupid, stupid, stupid…”

“We killed at least half of their crew.” Casimir interrupted. “I think it will take some time for them to regroup and resupply, not to mention prepare a new raid. Maybe we didn’t eliminate them entirely, but they will not be ready to strike again anytime soon.”

“Oh, the naivety!” the captain snorted. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case. We killed cannon fodder, ponies with literally no brain that were seeking free loot and an easy way into wealth. Killing them was pointless, there’ll be always at least a few ponies that driven by their greed will kill or kidnap somepony. However, when it comes to pirates, the Vitalians exist because of different reasons. Such raids can be established as long as there is somepony competent enough to lead them, somepony skilled enough to navigate the ship, and somepony rich enough to afford it in the first place. Souther wasn’t leading this pack because of his muscles. Souther led this pack, because it was his ship and it was him who was running it.”

“Now...” Winterspell murmured. “You can tell Quick Signal I will replace him in a few minutes. You can leave.”

By now Casimir was grateful that this conservation ended. It was too much for him to take in all at once and he simply didn’t like to think that much about others ponies lives. He uttered a quick and honest “Thank you” and turned to exit the cabin.

“One more thing.” Winterspell said suddenly. The noble stopped right in front of the door and turned his head to face him.

“You did a fine job back in Fishenheim.” he started. “You proved capable despite not listening to my orders. It could end far worse, but I guess I can forgive that. As I said earlier, it was me who screwed up everything in the end.”

“But…” he changed the tone, his voice becoming venomous. “Keep in mind, that if ever a similar situation takes place and you and your comrades will go against my word again, it will not pay off for you. So let me give you a bit of advice - keep your nobles on a leash. Grainwood likes you, but if your rashness will lead you to do something very wrong, I’m going to fire you. Now, you can go.”

Casimir nodded, not really paying that much attention what the pegasus said as he left. He was just happy to get outside. Speaking of which, it was already dark, most of the sailors were already under the deck, but some of them stayed, including the poor, tired boatswain.

“So, how’s the captain?” Quick Signal asked, definitely happy that the noble finally left the cabin. He looked at him with pleading eyes, partially closed from fatigue.

The pegasus thought for a moment, then said.

“Fine.”