Chapter 70: Chapter 70: Galley Slaves

“Arrgh!” A pirate ran at Braydon from behind, sword raised above his head, while he was dealing with another in front of him. Apparently nobody had told him that if you yell it gives away the surprise. And he was then surprised to find that Braydon turned around and stabbed him in the chest before he could bring down his own sword. 

“Haha!” The one that Braydon had been fighting with laughed as he saw the opportunity to attack Braydon now that he had a pirate stuck on the end of his sword. The man took a wide swing at Braydon and his face made a wide smile when he heard the sound of his sword hitting flesh.

“Idiot.” Braydon promptly kicked him in the shins, whilst his guard was down. The pirate looked up in confusion to see that his sword was stuck in the arm of the pirate that Braydon had just killed, used as a meat shield. Braydon let go of the shortsword that he had stolen, still in the chest of a dead pirate, and unsheathed his longsword, decapitating the pirate in one smooth motion.

Over the course of the battle, Braydon found that he had made his way closer to the captain’s quarters. Since most of the fighting was over, he looked towards the door which now lay open. ‘Crap!’ 

“Nela!” He rushed into the room to see the corpse of a pirate slumped over the bed, the point of an arming sword poking through his back. Braydon rushed towards the corpse and pulled it up to see Nela underneath, unharmed.

“Are you alright?” Braydon asked, not many noble ladies could say that they had experience fighting off pirates personally.

“Do I look hurt? He was just too heavy.” Nela’s reply set him at ease, at least she wasn’t traumatised. Apparently she had managed to kill her assailant, but had been trapped under his corpse. The pirate’s shortsword lay on the floor a short way from where Braydon had found Nela and the corpse, it was clean.

“How long have you been forced to lie here?” If the pirate’s sword was clean then he could not have taken part in much of the fighting. They had been fighting for over an hour at this point, only after tens of minutes had they finally outnumbered the remaining pirates. It was just that the remaining pirates were much better fighters than those that had died at the start, the battle had slowed down towards the end, until there were enough men to fight against the better combatants in groups. 

“Since almost the start, killing somebody who underestimates you is surprisingly easy.” Nela was once again wearing her sweet smile, proving to Braydon that there was no end to how scary that sweet smile could get.

“Everyone alive in ‘ere?” Captain chose this moment to walk through the door, also getting scared by Nela’s smile once he saw the corpse on the floor and the arming sword through his stomach.

“Everyone that matters at least. Your boys done out there?” Braydon cracked a joke trying not to think of the smile he had just been shown.

“Aye, just chucking their corpses overboard now, though it seems we missed one.” Captain said whilst eyeing the arming sword that Nela was now pulling out of the pirate’s stomach. Braydon had refused to turn around when he heard Nela doing something with the corpse, there was something much more creepy about a pretty lady doing the killing with a sweet smile than a normal soldier or sailor.

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“Any idea why they had such good combatants?” Braydon asked as the three of them left the captain’s quarters, Captain now carrying the pirate over his shoulders. The crew could search the body for anything important, he would be sleeping with the fishes sooner or later.

“Well, to be pirates in these waters they would need to have some good fighters. They'd have been eaten for breakfast by the navy patrols otherwise. But they are using a galley, not exactly the ship of choice for pirates. They normally chose merchant vessels, makes for a better disguise and you aren’t going to get attacked by some country’s fleet for possibly being the enemy.” Captain also found it odd, had they been in a merchant ship or a fast moving one then he would have understood. Pirates tend to want to get away from navy ships and attack independent merchant ships instead.

“Perhaps we might find something on their ship? Something that might clue us into who they were and why they were here.” Nela made a suggestion, that was quickly agreed to by Braydon and Captain.

“You lot, stop looking lazy. Go search their ship for anything that might tell us who they were. If you can’t go question the slaves rowing the damn thing. One of them must know something.” Captain shouted at the crew, who were slowly making their way through the pirates to loot what little valuables they had on them or collecting the corpses of the pirates and fellow crew members into separate piles. Several stopped what they were doing before getting up to go and look through the now ownerless galley.

“Slaves are used to row galleys?” That was the first Braydon had heard of it, there would not be enough slaves in Fiveria for the Dukes to have fleets of the scale that they did.

“Not in Fiveria, or most countries for that matter. The practise fell out of favour when the number of ships outstripped the number of slaves, hundreds of years ago. Now it is peasant levies or hired men. But pirates are not as restricted in that measure, they spend their time attacking merchant ships and raiding coastal villages. Of course they have a ready supply of ‘slaves’. Not the kind that are legally recognised of course, just people who they have captured. It’s why merchants are particularly afraid of them, both their wealth and freedom gets taken at the same time.” Captain said, Braydon and Nela both looking disgruntled at the fact. There was no slave in Ezaes who was legally held forever, only indentured servants and war captives. 

Indentured servants were people who had failed to pay their debts and had to sell themselves to make up for it. The length of their servitude depended on the country and amount they owed, but there was nowhere in Ezaes that had indentured servants that were still slaves after ten years. War captives were just that, those who had been captured in a battle between countries. Most of the time they were given to ransom brokers or returned directly to their village if they were a levy or low ranked soldier. Though elite soldiers were sometimes taken as war slaves, who had to fight for the lord who took them for a certain period before they became free.

“Is this common?” Braydon could not help but ask, there weren't many pirates in the south so he didn’t know. But in the north…

“Well most pirates use ships that don’t require rowing so they have no need. But there are a few larger pirate groups that use galleys like you just saw. Not really common but enough to make a nuisance of themselves. Of course any women taken as slaves have a worse fate, I hear that they have different attitudes to slaves in Atan. And they pay handsomely.” Captain’s words made them both shudder at the thought. Atan was very rarely a topic of conversation in Ezaes, the only country that had any real contact with a power from Atan was Leigh. Even then, it was only in the context of the northern islands.

“Captain, we found something!” Their conversation was cut short by one of the sailors coming out of the captain’s quarters of the pirates’ ship. He was holding what looked to be a letter.