"W-What?! What's all this ruckus about?!" asked the disoriented pirate Rake as he woke up with a start and blearily looked around at the sudden commotion around him originating from all the pirates who were lying around him and sleeping just a few seconds but were now looking at something in the distance.
"I asked what the fuck is happening?!" he barked irritatedly at a nearby pirate when he didn't hear any answers while his hands automatically began searching for his Cutlass that he seemed to remember tossing somewhere nearby during last night's revelry.
'Ugh! Damn! This headache!'
Last night had been the hardest Rake had ever partied in his whole life. The Advisor, an aide of the pirate king, had decided to be generous, he had opened up the coffers and distributed liquor freely amongst all the pirates. For what reasons, they didn't know...
Some said that he did it because the alcohol was about to go bad(which he didn't think was possible,) while others said that he wanted them to have one last party to raise their morale before they left the sea surrounding the free cities for a few years to hunt in the waters surrounding the Slaver's bay to hide from Braavos's eyes for a while.
But in the end, no matter the reason, all he and the other pirates cared about was that there was more liquor to go around than any of them had ever seen in their lives and every single pirate took advantage of it by drinking to their absolute limit and some... had gone beyond that, they had puked their guts out and then started anew... so, all in all, it was a very fun party, but now... his head was aching so much and his surrounding were looking so wobbly that he almost began regretting his decision.
"A-A pirate from a nearby campsite came running into the camp shouting at the top of his lungs that some sort of invaders have attacked their camp..." replied the pirate as he finally answered Rake's question while looking towards a gathering near the campfire in the middle.
"What?! H-How? Who? Who is attacking us?!" he asked as he finally got hold of his weapon and began to try and look in the surroundings to see if he could catch anything but in this darkness of the night, only faintly lit by the moon above and a few of the small fires that were still burning, he couldn't see very far "Is it the Braavos?" he asked trying to keep the fear from his voice.
"I-I don't know..." the pirate replied with a shrug making Rake unconsciously grit his teeth.
"Where is that pirate, then?"
"There!" the man immediately pointed at the place fifteen meters away in the middle of the camp where more than a few dozen pirates had gathered in a circle to surround the pirate who had been the cause of the commotion.
Rake nodded and after taking a few moments to get his bearings he immediately made his way towards the gathering, "Let me through, Fuckers!" he growled while pushing anyone in the way and about 50 steps later he reached the centre of the crowd of pirates where a panicked looking man, with eyes wide in horror, was trying to explain something to a bunch of confused, half-drunk, irritated pirates.
"You! What did you see of the attackers? Who were they? How many were there? Did they look Braavosi?"
"N-No! Not the Braavosi, I think... but it was too dark to be sure," The man replied while shaking his head, he was sweating from head to toe showing that he had run all the way from his camp without a single stop, "And while I can't be sure how many they were but they shouldn't be more than 30 men..."
Rake had a frown on his face as he digested the information. He frankly didn't know what to do with it as he had never been much of a thinker, that had been his captain's job but he was out there in the castle along with the others. This meant that he, as a close friend of the captain, had to be the one to give orders to the pirates here to solve this situation.
"Rake, I think they are probably just a few of the idiots from the nearby islands once again," said a 30-something-year-old man who was well-known amongst the pirates as being a kiss-ass, "They must have heard about how our captain looted that Braavosi fleet and they probably got greedy and decided to hit one of our camps to see if they get lucky. I am sure that they are already running away by now after hitting the camp... so we need to move now if we want to catch them all..."
"But what if they are the Braavosi?" nervously asked one of the newer pirates who had only joined them a few months ago, "He did say that he wasn't sure..."
"No, that can't be right. If it was Braavos who was attacking, they wouldn't have done it in the middle of the night, no, they would have wanted an audience to send a message and besides if their warships left Braavos for some reason, our captain would have gotten the news long ago. So no, I don't think it is Braavos..."
'Hmm, he must be right about that,' Rake thought while nodding to himself before he turned to the man, "Very well, Lark. I want you to gather fifty men and go find those fuckers wherever they are and kill them. If you do a good job, I'll be sure to speak to the captain and get you a good reward for it."
"Aye, I'll see to it right away," Lark replied excitedly and then immediately began gathering the pirates from among those who were awake, most of them were reluctant, not wanting to do a job in the middle of the night if the captain wasn't the one ordering, but Lark was a smart man and knew how these pirates think so he easily managed to entice them with some simple promises.
So before long, a group of fifty men left the camp with exuberant smiles on their faces, eager to get to those ambushers and kill some easy prey to make a name for themselves.
"Um, Rake, shouldn't we alert the castle about the attack," said the nervous cowardly pirate once again, "Because I don't think they would have heard the commotion all the way from here..."
"Nah! Don't bother," Rake waved the pirate's concern away, "They probably had some party of their own last night and I don't want to be the one to ruin the captain's sleep and take on his anger."
"But—"
"Argh! Forget about it. I'll tell them in the morning." he interrupted before turning and shouting towards other pirates, "And somebody lights up those bloody fires! I can't see shit out here..."
It was a human instinct to run away from the darkness of the night and seek out the light, so seeing that more than half the pirates were still waking up from their drunken sleep, the pirate's thought of wanting them to light a fire, so as to not let any of the idiots fall on their own sword and die, was not a bad one...
But sadly for him, this idea would be the undoing of all the pirates surrounding him... because in this place on this night, he wasn't the only one who would find it easier to see with some light.
The moment one of the pirates lit up the massive campfires in the middle of the settlement, the surroundings abruptly brightened and at that exact moment, the predators hiding in the dark struck at the bumbling pirates with unerring accuracy.
The first casualty of the battle in this chaotic gathering of about 700 pirates (now 650) turned out to be a pirate who died soundlessly in his sleep with a single arrow in his throat, stunning the few pirates who were near him but before they could do more than blink the next arrow took out another pirate.
The pirates finally woke up from their stupor and screamed noisily as they began scrambling around to hide or find where the arrows were coming from.
"A-Attack! We're being attacked!" some hollered while running around like headless chickens.
"Where the fuck did that arrow come from?!" others cried angrily swinging the weapons in their hands, their eyes furiously scanning the surroundings.
"Find cover! Hide!"
"No! Find the bloody attacker! and Kill him!"
"I-I am running away!"
The pirates responded to the attack in the absolute worst possible way... by panicking.
And the predators hiding in the dark didn't miss this chance so the next attack wasn't just a single shot but a rain of arrows consisting of at least thirty arrows falling upon the bumbling pirates like a hail of death, killing almost twenty of them.
"Argh! Fuck!"
"There! I saw it! They are attacking from there! From between the fucking trees!"
"Come on! Let's Kill them!"
The pirates nearest to the edge managed to catch a glimpse of the attackers hiding in the trees at the border of the campsite and then without waiting for anything, they gathered into a group and charged for the trees while yelling at the top of their lungs.
The attackers managed to send only one more rain of arrows, which only managed to hit 10 men before the pirates got close enough to attack them.
But the hollering pirates who had prematurely rushed consisted of only fifty men, which... while normally would have been enough to deal with those thirty-something cowardly bowmen hiding in the trees, was not in this case as they found to their disappointment that the bowmen came with friends of their own, friends wearing armour and carrying cruel weapons in their hands.
Seeing three hundred sellswords abruptly jump out of the trees all around them halted the pirates in their steps and scared the shit out of them.
"Argh!"
And then, without giving the pirates any chance to respond, the sellswords fell upon them like a pack of wolves fall upon a herd of deer, and as someone would expect from that situation, none of the deer survived the massacre and were completely butchered in a matter of seconds due to sheer imbalance between their numbers.
The pirates who had been left behind in the camp(now numbering less than 550) were still in the process of scrambling to find a hiding place so they were completely stunned by the sudden reversal happening in the distance and for a moment all of them just stood there in their position like statues... unsure on what to do about the emergence of this sudden force.
But then if there was one fact, that pirates all over the world were well known for, it was that they were cowardly curs who were weak against the strong and strong against the weak and that the only battle any pirate would willingly partake in was the one in which they have the absolute numerical superiority.
So the pirates here acted on their ingrained instincts when this sudden scare stuck them, their brains began working rapidly, they only took a few glances to roughly calculate their enemy numbers, and after unconsciously comparing them to their own numbers, they realised almost instantly that they were comfortably in the lead.
And when all the pirates present there realised that fact, they immediately saw red and then without needing any order every single one of them raised their weapons, screamed at the top of their lungs and charged for the enemy with insane bloodlust that they were well known for.
But the sellswords were neither surprised nor scared by their enemy's bloodlust and acted with complete calm.
Not stopping for a single second after they were done with the last of the pirates who had fallen into their trap, the sellswords all simultaneously took a few steps back and then quickly but orderly began rearranging themselves in proper defensive formation with the ones in front raising the shields they had brought.
Their sheer reaction speed meant that by the time the pirates were within attacking distance, the sellswords were ready with a sturdy wall of spears that helped them easily hold their ground against the pirate's reckless charge.
A few seconds later the pirate rush abruptly halted as they got stuck against the shields and each other and then came... the real attack.
The sellswords hiding behind with swords and spears in their hands jumped on the stuck pirates and began killing as many as they could reach. It was a complete massacre... because sellswords with years of experience in killing people weren't the only thing working against pirates at that time.
Everyone who's ever fought a battle on a ship knows that a battle on the sea was a completely different thing than one on the ground.
For one, when you fight on the deck of a ship, it is mostly about keeping your balance while making sure that you dodge all of your enemy's wild swings and eventually your foe will make a mistake and be killed by your sword.
But sadly for the pirates knowing how to keep your balance wasn't as useful in a fight over land as it was over water. And while it wasn't that the pirates never fought on land, because they did. It's just that their usual fare of enemies consisted of old farm hands, young helpless maidens, and fat merchants, so it was safe to say, they were quite unused to facing an opponent with such skills.
And not only were the pirates out-skilled, but they were also out-armoured.
Most of the pirates were still in their half-naked state with no protection on their upper bodies, and then there was the issue of all of them being hungover from their party last night, making it too challenging for them to see properly in the darkness, even with the campfire brightening the night a little bit.
Their heads were pounding from the dying screams of their fellows, some of them were pucking their guts out in the middle of the battle, and then even more of them were slipping on those very guts and then dying to the swords of opportunistic sellswords who had no problem with easy kills.
So it was indisputable that things were not looking very good for the pirates. Their numbers were being culled left and right, they weren't making any dent in the number of sellswords.
But Rake, the pirate who was commanding the attack safely from far behind the pirates, was still very optimistic about the situation. Because he knew that as long as they kept at it, their enemies would get exhausted sooner or later, and then once enough of them began dying, it would only be a matter of time before they got overwhelmed by the pirate's sheer numbers and then the pirates would win... and if a few hundred pirates were sacrificed for the win along the way, who cared.
"KEEP IT UP!" Rake cried, not letting the pirates in front of him have any second thoughts, "Reinforcements could be coming from the castle at any moment. Don't Worry!"
And miraculously, at that exact moment, they suddenly heard the clanging of metals and charging footsteps from behind them, raising a small hope in the pirate's hearts.
But unfortunately for them, while reinforcement did arrive... they came for the opposing side.
Before the pirates could even turn around, they were abruptly hit in the back by a flood of stabs by a new force of enemy sellswords.
This new force jumped on them with even more ferocity than the one in front of them. And that is when the pirates found out to their dismay, that they weren't in a numerically superior position, after all.
In fact, enough pirates had died by now, that the pirates were not only at a skill disadvantage but were also being crushed numerically. Plus, their situation only got worse as their number dwindled and they began to get tag-teamed by more than one enemy at a time.
It was the classic manoeuvre of hammer and the anvil with the pirates being completely routed in the middle of the two groups.
Gared and Oberyn were at the very front of their group's charge and were killing the pirates left and right with each swing of their weapons. It was as if their enemies were nothing more than children with swords... but even then the number of their kills was nothing compared to Jon, whose every arrow was taking a life and by now he had already emptied his first quiver and was halfway through his second one.
But soon enough, the haze in the pirates' eyes began clearing and they finally noticed the carnage all around them and realised that this was a losing fight. And while you could say a lot of things about pirates... brave and self-sacrificing was not one of them. So...
"ARGH! FUCK IT!" a pirate screamed as he lost his shit, trampled over his fellow pirates and ran for the port with all his might. He threw away his weapon and ducked his head while hoping desperately that an arrow wouldn't kill him. And miraculously his prayers were answered and he somehow reached the port safely and even climbed abroad on a ship anchored there.
And just like that, it was as if a dam had opened...
After seeing the successful escape of one of their fellow, the pirates couldn't handle the pressure anymore and slowly but surely one after other they began abandoning the fight.
No one was interested in this losing fight anymore, and as the pirates began screaming and running for their lives... it only made them easier to kill.
This was where all the archers in the sellswords company showed their worth once again. Killing the running pirates seemed as easy as target practice for them.
Since Jon had ordered the archers to focus their fire on the ones running towards the castle first, this meant that more than half the pirates running towards the port survived, while only two pirates among the ones running for the castle were lucky enough to not get pierced by an arrow.
And so... five minutes later the last surviving pirate while begging for his life.
This settlement that boasted almost 700 pirates just last night... was almost annihilated, with less than 120 survivors who managed to safely reach the ships and were now impatiently trying to sail away in the night, hoping that the ones in the castle would soon come to their rescue and defeat these invaders so that they could sail back.
On their end, Jon was informed that their side had incurred five deaths and ten injuries in this battle, which while unfortunate was as much of a win as one could expect from a battle like this considering the numbers both sides boasted.
Jon had been in charge of men for a while now and had long come to accept the irrefutable fact that when you have men under your command in this world... then you would inevitably lose some of them along the way, whether their deaths be to diseases, drowning, animal attacks... or if they die while fighting for you.
So while he, of course, felt guilt due to the deaths... he didn't let it affect him too much as he knew that it wasn't the time to mourn. Even from his distant position in the centre of this settlement, he could see the numerous torches lighting up on the castle...
This meant that the ones in the castle had finally become aware that their precious island was being attacked... so it meant that it was finally time for Phase 3.
/