A few hours later, they reached the shore with the morning sun brightening up the sky, but since Jon had told Bran, Gared's son, to lead the company to the nearest coast he could find, there wasn't a proper dock here, so all their ships were anchored in the distance in the shallow waters and were not sending small rowing boats turn by turn to pick up sellswords to take them back to the ships half a dozen at a time.
Jon, Gared and Oberyn were standing underneath a tall coconut tree on the shore some distance away watching the ships slowly get loaded up with the warriors.
"So how far are we from Stepstones from here?" Gared suddenly asked curiously.
"Hmm... about five days if we take it slow and don't move during the night," Jon answered with a shrug, "That should give all of my sailors as well as your sellswords enough time to rest and prepare for the upcoming battle,"
"Ah! That's good then and it will probably also give some of the young ones who haven't been on a ship before, some time to assimilate to the sea..." Gared murmured with a nod.
They fell silent for a while after that before Oberyn finally asked the question that had been bothering him all this while, "So how are we actually going to do this? What is your attack plan? Are we going to take them down one by one? Employ hit-and-run tactics or what?"
"Hmm, Guerilla tactics are fine and good... but only if we wanted to defeat them ship by ship but my plan is much simpler," Jon replied in a calm voice, "We attack their base at night when they are all gathered together on the island... take them off guard with our full might when they least expect it and then... annihilate every last one of them."
"...That's it?" Oberyn asked back with an incredulous look on his face, "That's your whole plan,"
"Yes. That is right," Jon nodded with an interested expression on his face, "Why? Do you think it won't work?"
"You do know that you're about to fight the Ravager fleet, right?" Oberyn asked, somewhat confused with the nonchalant way the boy was taking all this, "The fleet of the notorious pirate king who has been hunting in these waters for the last decade or so. He probably has more than 100 ships under him not to mention the number of pirates... there must be something like 3000 to 4000 pirates waiting for us on that island ready to defend him." he said with a raised eyebrow, "How exactly do you expect us to defeat them with just these 15 ships, five hundred sellswords and what 150 of your own sailors? We will be completely and utterly destroyed if we meet them in a battle and that is a fact." He had expected that the boy had some kind of intricate plan, like the one he had used to bring down the Company of Cats, but this...
"First of all, they don't have 100 but 70 ships in that fleet," Jon replied in an unperturbed tone, "And secondly, I know exactly where that man is, where all his pirates are, what he is doing at the moment so he is just like sitting duck to me... and if we are done with him, the rest of his pirates will be just like headless chickens waiting to be slaughtered..."
"You make it sound so simple," Oberyn said with an exasperated sigh, "Even if the information you have is correct they still have about five times the number of ships that we have, and that Ravager is not some small-time crook who will run away at the sign of a fight... Last I heard about him, he even had the guts to loot from Braavos and do you know what they did about it? They placed a bounty on him of about 100,000 gold dragons, because they knew that even they wouldn't be able to easily catch someone like him with all his ships if he decides to fight or retreat..."
"And everything you are saying is correct... but once again these things only matter if we are going to go against them head to head in sea warfare which we are not... so the number of ships they have wouldn't matter," Jon said before a mysterious smile appeared on his face, "Besides I have a secret weapon under me which is going to make things a lot easier for us..."
"What?! What weapon?"
"Now for that... you will just have to wait and see," Jon replied with a playful smile, "After all, isn't that what you're here for," Jon said before leaving towards the boats which were just about finished with delivering the last group of sellswords.
Jon, of course, knew why the man was so frustrated, after all, anyone in his situation would have been if they didn't have the whole information that Jon had. But it wasn't like he could tell him all of the juicy secrets...
Besides, even if he could, Jon wouldn't want to because as they say the lower the expectation the higher the shock value and the more impact it would leave on him when things go out of his expectation...
Oberyn had an irritated look on his face as he watched the boy walk away arrogantly(in his opinion).
He was unsure if he should believe in the Northerner and take this huge risk or if...
"What about you? You don't have a problem with this?" He asked turning to the one man who was taking a much bigger risk than him with the existence of his company depending on it.
"Hey, I told you before, didn't I? I just believe in him and don't think too much about it..." Gared shrugged nonchalantly.
After all, the company commander had already seen the boy accomplish quite a few unbelievable things since the day he had met him, so he had faith in him...
"But if you are really not sure then how about another bet, huh?" Gared asked with a cunning smile, "I could always use some more gold, Haha,"
"You incorrigible?" Oberyn shook his head with a helpless smile, "Let's just go before they decide to leave us here,"
What Oberyn didn't know was that if he had asked Jon this exact question about his plans just a few days ago, then his answer would have been a lot similar to his own suggestion and something along the lines of hit-and-run. But thanks to something that happened three nights ago... his plan changed completely, as he got the surprising 'secret weapon' out of nowhere... as if the old gods were sending him their gift.
...
Three Days ago...
"Chii! Chii! Chii!" came a cute squeaking squeak from somewhere below her but Ice Pheonix ignored it just like she always did and kept on leisurely riding along the wind, "ChiiI!"
'Come now, Frost. Don't go so fast... you know that Tweety can't handle the cold like you." came the familiar soothing voice inside her head making Frost roll her eyes and huff in annoyance but slowing down her speed nonetheless so that tiny stupid bird hiding between her chest feathers and taking a free ride, didn't just freeze to death (not that, that would too much of a loss)
Frost preferred to fly far above the normal atmosphere where the air was cold and thin, with the freezing wind, helping instead of hindering her, making her almost twice as fast. But sometimes the pleasing cold winds could become somewhat life-threatening for her passenger.
'...I think we should be reaching the island just about now,' Jon said while ignoring his oldest wargs murderous thoughts about the younger one, 'You can lower yourself now, Frost,'
Jon saw through his blue eagle's eyes as they sped through cloud after cloud before they were finally low enough that the air started warming up and he began to see a tiny island located directly in the ocean below them.
As Frost slowed down, the island got magnified in her eyes and Jon was able to make out dozens of smoke plumes rising in the air from campfires scattered all over the island making it quite clear that the pirates were not staying in a single place together.
'I think this is far enough, Frost,' Jon said when they were just a few hundred meters away from the island, 'It's your job from here on, Tweety,'
"Chii!!" squeaked the tiny colourful bird as she exited the fluffy home she had made inside Frost's chest and after flapping vigorously a few times to thaw her cold feathers she took off after a final salute to her ride and flickered down towards the island as Jon shifted his focus from the bigger bird to the smaller one.
The position of the sun in the sky showed it was about 6 pm at the moment and since it was summer and it was an island, it meant that there were still a few hours of light left, but the pirates down there seemed to have already begun their dinner preparation.
Jon spent an hour wandering the island in Tweety's body, he scouted all the different parts, observing all the various groupings of the pirates, taking note of where the leaders were, what they were cooking, how many times the ships were patrolling the nearby waters, which group was bigger and which was smaller, on the which side of the island the concentration of the pirates was bigger and which side had fewer pirates... he noticed everything.
And, of course, it wasn't his first time doing this. In fact, Jon had been here constantly every other day for the past week and a half and in that time he had taken note of all the changes that were happening on this island and that led him to conclude one thing...
'It wouldn't be poison all of them at the same time...'
Not only were all the camps randomly scattered, but all of them also bought their own rations and everyone also ate at different times so even if he managed to poison a few groups, it would still mean that they would easily raise a ruckus and manage to alert the other groups before Jon's company could have any kind of significant advantage... so it would make poison not as potent of a weapon here. And while it wasn't devastating information, it would still become an obstacle to his plans.
Tweety circled for the last time and then took off towards the run-down castle in the centre to work on the next part of scouting.
He started from the top, from the room of the pirate Captain Ravager, and then worked down the ladder towards the other main captains.
Jon had already gotten most of the useful information about the fleet so he was mainly here to see if he could get lucky and eavesdrop on some important information or get a handle on some kind of weakness that could make the upcoming fight easier on the sellswords but alas... he hadn't had any luck yet.
Jon stayed outside the window of the pirate captain for a very short few seconds before leaving, not because he wasn't in there or anything but because if he saw that bastard's face for too long then he wouldn't be able to stop himself from poisoning that bastard right there and be done with all this.
But death by poison was too good... far too merciful for that bastard... just remembering the things that the young lad Gill had to go through because of this bastard sent Jon's blood boiling...
Anyway, he slowly went from one room to the other to see what the other smaller captains under him were doing, and who they were talking with, who had how many ships under them. And thankfully, it wasn't too much of a hassle as most of the higher-level captains were all living in the castle as they were too pompous to stay with the other low-level pirates.
On the way, he of course came across many pirates performing all kinds of unthinkable acts of atrocities that made him sick to the stomach but this only made his resolve, to butcher these bastards, stronger.
The last room on his list was that of a man named Advisor, and he wasn't the last because he was the least important, no he was the last because Jon felt that he was the one person on this shithole of an island that he wouldn't mind letting go alive as at least he behaved like a human unlike. In fact, Jon once even saw him save an underage girl from a life of misery by taking her under his care.
So even though he had only briefly noticed him during his scouting, he felt that he was better than the others.
'Huh? Where is he?' Tweety tilted her head while standing on the windowsill of an empty room.
The room was a mid-sized one with an empty bed, a chair, and a desk in the middle with some books on it, but there was no sign of any man in there.
'Hmm, that is weird, he would usually be here at this time, and why is his door locked from the inside—Wait! Tweety, No!! What are you doing?' The little bird squeaked excitedly as she zoomed straight for the table on which lay a plate filled with berries of all kinds, the colourful kind that just happened to be the tiny bird's version of a feast.
Jon usually never took full control of his wargs as that was not only cruel to his friend's minds but also inefficient in the long run. Instead, he kept a very tiny hint of control on them just to share their senses and made most of them work through communicating his desires with them, and while it worked perfectly most of the time, on a few occasions like this one when their emotions were heightened, they did things... out of his control.
'Ah! You stupid birdbrain! Why are you always so impatient,' Jon's exasperated voice echoed inside the tiny critter's brain but the bird just ignored him and kept her focus entirely on merrily sucking the juices out of the succulent berries, 'Ugh! It's not like I don't feed you enough—Swish!"
The bird's head was abruptly and forcefully turned around towards the wooden window she had come through only to see it be slammed close by the hand of the very man Jon had been here to scout.
"You can't imagine how long I had to hide in that awkward position to meet you," the man named Advisor murmured with an exhausted but pleased look on his face as he stepped out of the shadows of the window he had been hiding in.
'It was a trap,' Jon growled in his thoughts but didn't panic too much as he had a backup prepared for cases just like this and he knew that as long Tweety managed to stall for a few seconds then everything would be alright... and considering the bird's speed that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
"Oh! You don't need to worry too much," The man said with a smile while taking slow measured steps towards the chair beside the bed as if trying not to scare off the bird intently looking towards him, "I don't have any bad intentions as I only closed the window because I was afraid of you taking off and I wanted to have a chance to talk to you... to make a deal with you."
If a bird could make a stunned expression then that would be what Tweety's face would look like at that moment.
The man had a nervous but relatively confident expression on his face while talking to Tweety making Jon almost certain that he wasn't just insane but actually knew that Jon was inside the warg... which should have been almost impossible for him to know. So Jon was quite curious...
'Frost! Wait out for a while. I want to see where this leads,' Jon sent the words to stop his backup, who was on her way to smash through the windows to rescue him, before turning towards the Advisor.
"Are you Jon Snow?" the man asked after a few seconds of silence when he saw the bird not fleeing away but instead standing there calmly looking at him with an absurdly humane expression on her face, which finally dispelled the last of his doubts that there really was something supernatural involved here and he wasn't just being a paranoid idiot, "I am only asking because I am not sure if you yourself are the legendary Skinchanger I heard about or if you have one under you—Ah! So you are Jon Snow," The man exclaimed when the bird bobbed her head in answer, "Then that should make it easier,"
Jon was mighty interested to know how this man on the other side of the world managed to find out that he was a warg when he shouldn't even know what a warg was, plus he was also quite interested in what the deal he was talking about was. Besides if at any point he didn't like what the man was talking about then... well, there were always ways to deal with it.
"It isn't the first time I've noticed you, um, your bird, in fact, I have known that you have been scouting the island for quite a while, Ah, but don't worry too much, I only found out about you because I was actually looking for you. I don't think anyone else suspects anything," The man said waving his hands, "Anyway, It was very obvious from all that scouting, that you... are about to launch an attack on this island... on our fleet,"
Jon was quite surprised at how nonchalant the man was about being attacked as if he was talking about someone else's problem. And that only made him more nosy so he decided to go all the way and nodded his head to confirm that he indeed was going to launch the attack.
"Oh, That's good then," an almost relieved smile appeared on the man's face before he adopted a serious expression, "I am sure a man with your... powers should not have too much of a hard time dealing with our fleet but If I assure you that if you have my help... then the battle would become even simpler for you,"
Jon didn't reply and just stood waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the other end of the deal and sure enough the man wanted...
"And in return, I ask you for one thing and one thing only... to save my Son," he pleaded with a desperate expression on his face.
///