"So you don't want to give up, huh," Jon murmured to himself with an amused look on his face. He shook his head while taking his eyes off the pirate after giving him a small scare. Jon wouldn't even call him a pirate as he looked too... refined to be one, and almost seemed more like a scholar.
Anyway coming back to this pesky problem at hand, Jon wasn't quite sure how to handle this bunch.
Now, if he were really determined to, it wouldn't be that hard for him to straight up annihilate them, even without using Inky. There were other more convenient methods such as poison available to him.
Plus there was that cool new ability that he recently realised Frost possessed which allowed her to give simple orders to birds below her in the food chain (which was most of them) otherwise he wouldn't have been able to warg into so many seagulls at once because, after all, he was not the three-eyed raven.
But he was unsure if just killing all of them was really the most ideal solution to this problem. Not because of any moral dilemma, of course, since he knew that these pirates were almost all pieces of shit who wouldn't hesitate to sell him off to the next slaver.
No, it was because these pirates were like mosquitos, no matter how many of them you kill, it wouldn't stop them. Same as mosquitos, a few dead bodies of their brethren wouldn't scare off the next one from trying for himself.
They were a bunch who already lived on the edge every day, with their lives constantly on the line. They were the kind of people who would eagerly jump into all kinds of dangerous messy situations, as long as there was even a small chance for profits to be made without thinking too much.
So, no, mysterious deaths weren't the way to go when dealing with them. If you want to deal with them permanently, then you need to make a show of force; you need to show them that death isn't just a possibility but a surety if they ever entangled with you. You need to not only brutally destroy them at their strongest head-on but to also leave a few of them alive to serve as witnesses and to spread tales of your infamy.
This was also the method used by the Braavossi fleet.
During their first few trips, they went out of their way to ruthlessly destroy any pirate ships that dared to obstruct their path. This meant that after about a dozen such trips, no pirate ever dared to face them, at least not head-on, which made their future trips a lot cheaper and more peaceful.
Of course, there were still some foolish adventurous ones who would follow their warships from afar but they only ever dared to try to attack them on the fringes or take advantage of any merchant ships who got left behind and accidentally got out of the warships' protection.
So Jon knew that he needed to do something similar to have hassle-free trips in the future.
To achieve that he would need a well-coordinated force of warriors who would be able to systematically follow his orders. Just like the one he had back in Bear Islands, if he didn't have that batch of battle-hardened warriors at his beck and call, he would never have been able to achieve as much as he did, at least not without losing too many people.
He was too lucky that the population of Bear Island was so battle-oriented. While they couldn't be called the best fighters in the realm, he would confidently call them the best average fighters he had ever seen only after, maybe the Dothraki.
The constant Wildling raids as well as the harassment from the Ironborn ships meant that every single man and woman alive on that Island had a massive wreath of experience in life-and-death battles, which made them efficient enough that Jon didn't have much of a problem creating a quick counter force after picking them up from their homes.
'Sadly the same couldn't be said of these sailors from White Harbour,' Jon thought as he looked at all the men aboard his fleet diligently going about their work. Even though Jon could easily take the average person from White Harbour and make them a good sailor with a few years of training. He couldn't accomplish the same with their fighting skills, as that was something which needed a life filled with strife and needed you constantly survive in a brutal environment to make you sufficiently competent.
So Jon couldn't depend on these sailors to fight his battles here in Essos, he would need to get people from somewhere else. Unfortunately, there was no such convenient force nearby with well-organised veteran fighters who would follow his orders—
'Wait! Maybe there is...' Jon's eyes suddenly lit up as a brilliant idea appeared in his mind.
There was indeed one such force nearby, that exactly matched his requirements. They were all battle-hardened with skills forged from constant life and death battles, they would follow his orders and most importantly, he wouldn't have to go too far to reach them. And the name of one such force, which not only matched his demands but was also somewhat related to him, kept jumping in his mind, as if saying, 'Pick Me' 'Pick Me', and Jon was too tempted to deny the voice in his head.
"It seems I need to go on a trip..." Jon said with an excited smile on his face as his brain went over all the possible difficulties he could encounter on the journey as well as all the things he would need to do to achieve his objective.
...
The days were very calm after their close brush with the pirates and a few days later they docked into the always busy port of Braavos. It was noon and their fleet was welcomed with quite a lot of fanfare.
All kinds of small and big merchants were either present at the port or quickly arrived after hearing the news; if the merchants themselves couldn't be there, they didn't forget to send a proxy in their place. Then they all looked towards the Northern fleet with unhidden anticipation in their eyes as the sailors started putting down planks to start disembarking the goods.
No more than an hour later, everything had been unloaded from the ship and by now the anticipation in the eyes of the onlookers had turned to abject jealousy.
They had seen with their own eyes as every single merchant who had been waiting had gleefully gotten hold of all goods on their list (the list that their partners sent from Volantis via raven) with not a single thing missing. This Northern fleet had fully delivered on their promise of a hundred-percent safety guarantee.
Ugly envy reared its head inside the onlookers, all of them felt their insides twist with agony at imagining the profits those Merchants, whom they had made fun of for being reckless in believing the Northern Fleet, were soon going to make after selling these popular expensive goods.
By now even the most sceptical of them had started to believe in the Northern fleet's ability and knew that it was no scam. After all, once could be up to chance, twice could be a coincidence, but when something happens thrice... well there's a reason people say the third time's a charm.
While most of them were dismayed at having missed this wonderful chance to make some money, the quick thinkers among the onlookers were already sneaking away. And it didn't take too long before even the stupidest of merchants started to realise what was happening and began to make a run for it... but not towards the ships, no, they were all racing towards the shops at the port, more particularly the flashiest one in the market.
Their merchant's senses were tingling that the shipping company was surely going to experience a boom in their business, in the near future. After this third successful trip, they knew better than anyone else that there would definitely be a massive price jump for the tickets. So they wanted to be the first ones to book the next ship before the others caught up and the prices increased.
But the scene which greeted them at the shop was completely different from their imagination. Instead of a shop happily selling them the tickets for their next journey they were greeted with the closed door of the shop with a sign hanging outside that said, "No Tickets"
"I-I apologize, everyone for the inconvenience, but there will not be another trip for a few weeks." a young boy was saying to the disgruntled group gathered outside. He was a little chubby in the face, but the burgeoning muscles in his arms as well as the axe on his back let them know that he wasn't a complete pushover, "So please, leave everyone. We will post a notice a week before our next trip so you don't have to worry about missing out—"
"You can't do that!!"
"We are your customers!! How can you just turn us away!!"
"Don't tell me!! Did you make too many losses and that there's actually not going to be another trip after all,"
"Is this true? Are you broke?!!"
The people were slowly starting to get agitated after hearing the disappointing news and as they say, the more people in a horde the less their intelligence and Sam was having quite a hard time managing them, "N-No, we didn't make any losses. We just need some time to do some adjustments to our ships—"
"Then just give us the damn tickets!!"
"I won't believe you unless you book me a place on your next trip!!"
"Yes! We don't care when the next one, you just need to give us some!!"
Sam was sweating more than he did during his exercises, as he tried to come up with a way to handle the aggressive merchants but it was slowly becoming too much for the lad. 'Damn it, when are you going to be here, Jon, please hurry, they are going to eat me alive,' he sent a desperate plea in his thoughts hoping that his friend would catch it and hurry up before he end up taking a beating.
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