Guided by Roro Uhoris, the fleet pressed northward.
Four captured rowboats were handed over to the Dragon Soul Guards, trailing close behind the flagship.
The vessels had taken a severe beating in the earlier clash—their planks split, gunwales crushed, like old sharks stripped of their teeth.
Roro winced at the sight of his own worst-damaged rowboat. "Lord, these ships… especially my 'Cobblecat.' After this voyage, it'll need a full overhaul. Otherwise, it won't survive another run."
He pointed to the gaping hole torn into the vessel's side. "Don't be fooled by its size. She's still faster than the other three when she runs."
"Cobblecat?"
Lo Quen's eyes lingered on the battered boat, his brows knitting as a buried name stirred in his memory. "What's your connection to the Blind Bastard' Roro Uhoris? You share the same name, and even the same ship."
Roro stiffened, his chestnut beard shadowing a face that grew hard to read. After a pause, he muttered, "He was my father. Over ten years ago, the Night's Watch hanged him at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea… Since then, I've kept his ship's name alive—the Cobblecat."
"You want revenge? But your father broke the laws of the Seven Kingdoms."
Lo Quen caught the flash of hatred in Roro's eyes and spoke without pretense.
That "Blind Bastard" Roro Uhoris had been a notorious smuggler and pirate in the Narrow Sea, selling arms to the wildlings until the Night's Watch fleet seized and executed him.
Roro's beard lifted as his eyes hardened with defiance. "To hell with the Seven Kingdoms' laws. He was still my father."
...
As they spoke, the sky grew heavy.
A deep indigo veil pressed low, gull cries torn apart by the sea wind.
Jagged black reefs loomed ahead like the fangs of monsters, surfacing silently in the channel.
The Stepstones teemed with scattered isles and hidden reefs; to those who didn't know the waters, grounding and wreckage were almost certain.
Roro straightened, calling out to sailors familiar with the passage, steering the fleet as if threading a needle—slipping past trap after trap.
When a solitary stone pillar rose into view, seventy or eighty feet high and caked in thick, dark guano, Roro pointed to it. "Lord, that's the Bird-Droppings Pillar. Torturer's Deep lies just beyond."
"Drop sail, hold the ships," Lo Quen ordered at once. "We wait until the night deepens."
The fleet drifted like ghosts on the dark sea, from sunset's "hour of the bat" into the dead stillness of "hour of the wolf."
The night hung thick as grease, starshine smothered by heavy cloud. Only thin shards of moonlight pierced the gaps, scattering broken silver across the waves.
The steady thump of water against the hull droned low and dull, veiling the violence to come.
"Move." Lo Quen's voice carried clear and firm among those at his side.
Under Roro's guidance, the fleet slipped past the stinking Bird-Droppings Pillar until Torturer's Deep bared its face.
Before them, two immense black cliffs soared hundreds of feet high, sheer as if split by a giant's axe.
Millennia of waves and wind had chewed their inner walls into a chaos of cracks, jagged ledges, and honeycombed holes, leaving only a narrow, twisted fissure.
That fissure was the sole channel into Torturer's Deep.
Across it, massive winches pulled thick iron chains taut, forming a crude but solid gate.
From the stern of the Swan, Lo Quen fixed his gaze on the chasm's swallowing dark.
Then he turned to Roro, a smile tugging at his mouth. "Roro, want to save your family? This is your chance."
Roro froze, his chestnut beard trembling. "Lord… what are you saying?"
"Your four ships will lead. I'll go in with you and my men," Lo Quen said, his tone leaving no room for doubt. "At the gate, tell the Crab Claw crew you've returned heavy with spoils, and that you 'found' a fat merchant ship adrift. Convince them to lower the chain. Do it well—your tongue now carries the lives of your family, your Tyrosh sailors, and yourself."
The color drained from Roro's face, but in its place surged a reckless, cornered ferocity.
He understood—this was the only path forward.
Drawing a long breath, he straightened his hunched back, eyes flashing with the cunning and ruthlessness of a man with nothing left to lose. "…Understood, Lord! I'll make that fool Crab Claw open the gates himself!"
A disguised merchant vessel was quickly chosen.
Lo Quen boarded the first rowboat with Roro, Jaelena, and all the Dragon Soul Guards, leaving Janice to guard the rest.
The Dragon Soul Guards wore sailors' garb over their armor and hung a few captured, ragged merchant flags as marks of "spoils."
Roro stood at the bow, forcing his breath steady, smothering his fear as he tried to summon the arrogance of a pirate captain.
Several pirate rowboats hugged close behind the Cobblecat as they glided noiselessly toward the channel.
At the entrance, jagged as a beast's fangs, the Cobblecat rose and fell with the waves.
Roro Uhoris stood at the bow, his heart hammering.
He shouted into the dark fissure with a triumphant, excited bark, his voice warping and echoing off the rock walls:
"Hey—are you blind up there? It's me, Roro Uhoris! The Cobblecat! Open up! Open the gate!"
He paused, the voice dropping into a hoarse, mock-grieving rasp. "Bloody hell, this run got nasty. We ran into a pack of tough ones, lost a lot of brothers—the Cobblecat's nearly in pieces!"
Then his tone leapt up, fizzing with delight. "But damn, it paid off! Fat haul—spices! Silk! And dozens of crates of Westerosi golden dragons!!"
He slammed the hull with a heavy hand, the sound dull and hollow, then turned to the shadows and mimed an exaggerated crate-lifting motion.
"And we even scooped up a stray fat sheep—a Lysine spice ship hit the reef. Crew's scared stiff! The ship's going down, but the cargo's intact, right behind me!"
He pointed at the vague silhouette of a ship in the darkness. "Open the gate, let us in! The lads are bleeding out, the hull won't hold much longer! The seas are rough—delay any longer and the ship sinks, the gold feeds the fish! Move! Shares for anyone who shows up!"
The Tyroshi sailors on board answered with tired, excited whoops, waving the Lys flag they'd hoisted.
Atop the narrow rocky ledge above the channel entrance, the horn blasts and shouting roused a handful of pirate sentries.
A scarred man with a leader's bearing squinted into the faint reflections and torchlight, studying the scene below.
"That's Roro's voice, no doubt…" one guard muttered.
"It's the Cobblecat, but…" The scarred man's gaze sharpened, hawkish. He pointed to the terrible gashes along the Cobblecat's hull near the waterline. "Those wounds don't sit right. They look like ram marks. How could a merchant ship cause that? And the ship behind is too quiet. Wait—look at the waterline… these ships are sitting awfully deep. Either they're packed with cargo… or with people."
Suspicion flared. The scarred man snapped at a subordinate, "Quick—run and tell the boss. Say Roro's back with a 'fat sheep,' but the Cobblecat's oddly wrecked and sits too deep. Let him decide."
The subordinate scrambled toward the passage cut into the rock.
The scarred man leaned out and shouted down, "Roro! The boss'll be here soon. Hold steady—rough seas!"
He was buying time.
...
Deep inside Torturer's Deep, in the huge sea-eroded cavern they called the Hall, Crab Claw had just been roused and was angrily gulping cheap liquor.
The scarred man's breathless runner burst in. "Boss! Roro's back with a fat sheep, but… the Cobblecat's badly damaged, like she's been rammed. And there could be a lot of people hidden inside—it might be a trap!"
Crab Claw's drunken haze vanished; a savage light ignited in his eyes.
He sprang up, the tattoos on his shaved head seeming to pulse. "That brat Roro… thinking to double-cross me?"
A cruel grin split his face. "Fine. Let's see what tricks he's got. Order the chains lowered—let them in."
"Position every archer in the caves and on the walkways high above the channel," he barked. "When they're all inside, wait for my signal—then shoot them to pieces. Not a one left alive. I want to see which fool dares scheme against Torturer's Deep."
...
[Upto 50 chapters ahead for now]
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