Chapter 44: Future Glories - Part 6
The town was bleak and dreary, damp from the sea, yet frozen from the snow. All the wood seemed to be rotting somewhere. Even the houses nearest the mountain pass, furthest away from the sea, they all looked weathered.
These longhouses were built on wooden stilts, as though they didn't trust the foundations underneath them. Vol didn't blame them. Beneath the snow, he could feel the shifting of sands. Besides, from the gradient of the hillside, it was hard to find anywhere flat enough to build without the aid of stilts.
Blackbeard drifted off ahead of them. He hopped off his mule, quite sick of the thing, and scoured an area that by this point was familiar to him. He saw the fading signs hanging by rope in front of shop fronts, and he saw six longboats bobbing idly in the harbour, looking strong, and sturdy.
If everything else in Greymouth was rotting, the ships were one thing that they did right, always. He left his men standing on the mountain path, as he went in search of his reason for coming.
When Moesh tried to follow, Blackbeard motioned him away, shooing him with his hand, and indicating an order with his head. Moesh nodded, as though understanding. It was good that he did, Blackbeard hardly understood the motion himself, but he trusted that Moesh would know to keep the men where they were with that.
He glimpsed amongst them. The newboy was still there, sitting atop his mule, a chilling look in his green eyes. He hadn't cracked a smile the entire time he'd been with them, Blackbeard had noted that. But it didn't matter. He hadn't recruited the boy for company. He'd recruited him for grander purposes.
And if everything went to plan, he'd need all the strong hands that he could get…
Amongst the docks, there were very few people who wanted to be up and about. The tide was it, and it lapped over wooden jetties. That water would freeze come morning, making those jetties all but impossible to walk on, just as they'd frozen the day before. Blackbeard had to walk carefully, lest the ice send his feet away from him.
Only a handful of people came and went amongst the docks. That was always the case come winter. And those that were busy at work were merely doing maintenance jobs. There were no ships coming in, nothing to unload. The only jobs to be done were keeping what they already had and mending what had broken the summer before.
Those were the types of jobs that no one wanted to do, especially not in this cold. They were jobs for young, hardy men.
Which was why it was such an oddity to see an old man scowling amongst them, his hair long, grey and unkept, the baldness of his head shining through on the top, whilst the back and sides grew like weeds.
"You haven't even tarred this rope," he heard the man say, a fierce scowl on his face as he dug into one of the younger workers. "What the fuck use do we have for an untarred rope? The salt will get in that an' ruin it by the end of the week. Are you trying to run my pockets dry?"
"No… sir… sorry," the dock boy said, ducking his head away from Toljorn's fury.
"Sir? Is that what you see me as? Some pissed-up Lordling that doesn't have the first clue what he's doing? Eh?"
"No!" The boy said, immediately, fearfully.
"No, what?"
"No… Toljorn?" He tried tentatively.
"Ohhh, I see now. You think we're friends. You think you can speak to me on a first-name basis like we're equals, is that it? Well now that we've discovered the problem, let us pissin' address it, before we lose all our boats to your thickness," Toljorn said. Blackbeard listened to his tirade for a minute, wearing a grin. The shipbuilder still had not lost his taste for bullying his workers. He was a terrible sort, he was. Sensing a perfect opportunity, Blackbeard called out to him.
"Toljorn," he said.
Toljorn rounded on him with a ferocity. "Oh, we've got another one that doesn't know his place, do we? I'll deal with both your thickness at the same time—" He cut his words off, when he noticed Blackbeard leaning against a roped post, right on the edge of the docks.
The shock on the man's face said more than words would. "I'm back. I assume you've readied me my ship?"
"Gods be damned… How is it that you still manage to live, despite all that you get yourself into?" Toljorn said. He kicked the dock worker in the arse, and motioned for him to piss off somewhere. From the expression, he didn't care where. Blackbeard could relate. It was a motion he'd thrown out himself more than once.
"My ship," Blackbeard reminded him, a little bit of an edge to his voice. Men like Toljorn you had to be upfront with, you had to let them know where you stood. He wasn't a dangerous man, not physically, but he was a more sly dog than many Blackbeard had met. It was best to kick him early, let him know his place.
"You're looking at 'er. Was done by the end of summer, waiting for someone to sail her. I've been waiting for the next summer, so I could sell her on to someone that would finally get some use out of her, but looks like now I won't get the chance," Toljorn.
That was the agreement the two of them had worked out. Blackbeard had paid him 30 golds up front for the initial cost, then, with Toljorn's urging, he'd reluctantly agreed that the shipbuilder could sell it on if Blackbeard did not come to collect it by the following summer. Yet, despite all odds, here he was.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone