Chapitre 156: Ch 73 The Treasury? Part 2
Gared, Oberyn and all the sellswords tensed simultaneously while raising their weapons, ready for a fight, but the next scene they saw in front of them left them completely dumbfounded.
"Jon Snow?" asked the man, who looked a little too well-groomed to be a pirate, as he opened the heavy door and came out cautiously.
"The Advisor, I presume," Jon greeted him with a smile while raising his right hand for a handshake, "It's so nice to finally meet you face to face."
"The pleasure's all mine," The advisor replied with a hint of relief on his face as he completely came out of the room, "You look a lot younger than I imagined."
"You are not the first one to tell me that..."
"What in the actual fuck?" Obara's stunned whisper perfectly articulated the state of mind that all the people there were in.
"Just... go with it, daughter," Oberyn said with a wry smile while patting his daughter sympathetically, "Just go with it,"
Gared similarly nodded sagely at her after getting over his shock before he put his sword back in its sheath and made all the sellswords do the same.
"Ah, right." Jon abruptly stopped his whispered conversation with the Advisor and turned around, "Oberyn, Gared, this is Advisor, a man from Volantis that Ravager abducted to make him work for him. He was very instrumental in our plan to bring down this pirate crew."
"Nice to meet you," Gared greeted while Oberyn simply nodded his head.
"Good, now that we are acquainted," Jon nodded before turning back towards the door with a frown, "Shall we go in?"
"Of course. It's just..." The Advisor said hesitatingly while glancing at the door behind him and almost immediately all of them standing there caught sight of a few faces peeking out the door with scared expressions on their faces. Among them was a young child that Jon knew as Rostch, the Advisor's son.
"Don't worry. None of them will be hurt as long as there are no pirates inside."
"There aren't, it's mostly slaves and normal workers in there. I have had them holed up in here long before your army was even near the castle when Ravager didn't even know about the attack." Advisor said before opening the door and going inside.
With Jon in the lead, the rest of them also entered the door, and the first thing Jon noticed was the smell of sweat and piss.
From what he knew, it had not been that long since these people had been deposited in here but somehow the smell in there was so overpowering that it felt as if these people had been trapped here for days.
But it only took Jon a single look into the wavering fearful eyes of the men and women in here to understand the reason.
Listening to the constant sounds of fight and the screams of men dying outside, while not knowing their future... it would have broken anyone. So it wasn't too far-fetched that some of them were scared to death and pissed themselves.
The room was quite wide and there were almost fifty people in there, and they were roughly divided into three sections... probably by the Advisor himself.
On his right were twelve people, mostly men and two old women who looked like they were cooks and washers, and the other workers that Advisor was talking about.
Standing in the middle were twenty men in chains... some had defiant looks in their eyes while others looked exhausted with dark circles under their eyes, as if they had been worked day and night.
These were probably the slaves that Ravager was going to sell to slavers during his trip to the slaver's bay.
And finally, the last group, the one on the left, was the one that engaged Jon the most.
They were all women barely wearing any clothes and all of them showed clear signs of having been abused... repeatedly.
Most of their eyes were dead as if they had given up on life, their faces showed neither fear nor hope only a deep-seated fatigue.
These were probably the women that the pirates had kidnapped for their own pleasure, and it was hard to imagine all the torture they had to endure and how long they had been kept captive.
But what set Jon off the most was that hidden in between the older women, there were three little ones who looked barely older than ten and from the marks on them... these monsters didn't even spare them.
He knew that this world was cruel and that there were no rules here that constrained these animals but seeing girls who weren't older than his own sisters in these deplorable conditions just broke something in him and left him shaking in wrath.
"Pirates don't have morals, boy," Gared said in a grave tone while squeezing Jon's shoulder bringing him out of his thoughts.
He looked up and noticed that the women were getting uncomfortable with his intense stare, so he looked away and took a breath to calm his emotions.
Knowing that most of these animals were already dead or dying was a small bit of consolation for him but still, until that human trash of a pirate captain was still alive... Jon didn't think he would be able to rest peacefully.
"Obara! I will leave these people to you," Jon said turning to the woman who was standing behind him and looking around with a vigilant expression on her face, "None of them are pirates, so you don't need to be rough with them. When the castle has been fully cleared, I will send you a message and you can get them outside. Uncle Sam is already on his way with our ships so he will take care of the rest."
"Understood," Obara nodded with a serious expression on her face before turning to order the sellswords to help her.
"Good, let us go then," Jon said before turning around to lead the way back out of the room, towards the stairs, but this time their group of three was joined by a new member in the form of Advisor.
The four of them silently climbed the two flights of stairs until they reached the ground floor and on that floor, they came across the second team who was in charge of cleaning the upper part of the castle of infestation.
With Bran in the lead, this party of sellswords consisted of at least twenty warriors with all of them were sporting all kinds of minor injuries and blood stains but from the satisfied expression on their faces it seemed things had gone relatively smoothly for them too, and they didn't have any casualties on their side.
"Since you're already coming down, I assume you've already dealt with all the pirates," Gared immediately asked his son with a raised eyebrow, "Or did you also come across a closed room that you can't open."
"No, no closed room up there. We just already cleared all the floors," The young boy said with a hint of pride in his tone, "There is not a single pirate alive up there, we rooted all of them out."
"Really?" Oberyn asked with a raised eyebrow, "Then does that include the captain of the pirates too? You know, the man called Ravager..."
"Er, no," Bran replied while scratching his head with a confused look on his face. "We never found someone with the features that Jon had described..."
"What do you mean? Are you saying that he wasn't in the castle at all?"
"That's the thing. We questioned quite a few of the pirates we came across in the castle, and almost all of them mentioned seeing their captain along with two of his lackeys running into the castle and towards the upper floor, but no matter how much we looked, we just couldn't find them... it's as if they have disappeared,"
"Well, they can't just disappear into thin air," Gared said while shaking his head, "This is a small castle, not red keep and we have our force completely surrounding it, so have to be still in here... they are probably just hiding somewhere,"
"Hmm, I am not so sure about them still being inside," Oberyn said with a frown on his face, "After all, even if small... it is still a castle we're talking about and one that was previously used by a Targaryen prince, so..."
"What do you mean?" Gared asked with his head tilted in confusion, "Are you saying there is a hidden escape route somewhere which they could have used to escape,"
"It's not completely impossible." Oberyn shrugged.
"What do you think?" Jon turned to the Advisor, "Do you know if there is any such path inside the castle."
"I have never personally heard about such a thing but if there is indeed such a secret route, then I am sure that it would be inside the Captain's room or somewhere near it otherwise it wouldn't be convenient... so all we need to do is go there and search for it."
"Let's do that then," Jon nodded before waving the advisor forward, "I am sure you know the way best,"
Leaving Bran and his team of sellswords, the four of them climbed up two flights of stairs before they moved into a side corridor that led them to a different narrow staircase and only after climbing two more floors from there did they reach the correct floor.
"This is it, this is the room," Ravager said as they approached the room at the very end of the corridor.
Jon nodded before slowly pushing the door and surprisingly, it immediately swung open, "Someone forgot to close the door behind them in their haste," Jon murmured while stepping inside the room.
"Oh, it seems someone liked living in luxury," Gared snorted while looking at the extravagant furniture placed all around the room that would have looked more appropriate in red keep or in the room of Sealord of Braavos, than in the room of a pirate captain.
But it didn't impress Oberyn and Jon much, as everything seemed to have just been cobbled together from all kinds of places, they were all made with different designs and colours so nothing matched, and when added together it all clashed horribly and left a bad taste in the viewer's mouth.
"What are you doing?" Oberyn asked with a raised eyebrow as he saw Gared kneeling on the floor with his head underneath the bed.
"Hehe, just wanted to be sure that the rat wasn't hiding under there," he grunted while getting up as he saw nothing but dust and cobwebs down there.
"I don't think even a pirate is stupid enough to do that," Jon said while placing his hand on the only door in the room except for the one they had entered from, "Where does this door lead to? Do you know?" he asked while turning towards the Advisor.
"It's the treasury as far as I remember," The advisor replied with a shrug, "Though I have never been in there myself but every time Ravager managed to get some good loot from his ventures he would have two of his most trusted pirates bring the valuables, to place them in there."
"Then this seems like it could be a good lead," Jon said before he pushed the door but unfortunately this time his luck didn't help him and the door remained steadfastly closed to him.
"Should we try breaking it open," Oberyn suggested after seeing that there was no other place the escape route could be, except for the door they were standing in front of.
"That would be futile... because from what I understand, this door is even hardier than the one in the basement we had seen before, so unless we somehow find the key to this room, or if someone from inside opens the door, it would take us too long to get in and by that time, Ravager could have been long gone... if there is indeed a secret getaway as we think there is behind the door."
"We don't want that, do we," Jon murmured as he took out a thin pin from his pocket before inserting it into the keyhole and then he began fiddling with the handle as if trying to force it open, "Give me some space, will you."
"What are you trying to do," Oberyn asked in a confused tone.
"Hmm, it is a lock opening trick I learned from a thief I met in Braavos," he said while turning the needle left and right with a concentrated expression on his face as if he was an expert thief working his art, but what the three onlookers didn't notice was that a very small shadow abruptly flashed out of Jon's pocket and ran along his pants before disappearing into the small gap under the door, "He assured me that I could open any lock in the world with his skill,"
"Are you sure you were not just scammed," Oberyn said sceptically as he saw the boy repeatedly messing with the iron pin while pushing the door as if praying the door to open, "I do not think whoever taught you this... skill was genuine,"
"What?" Jon exclaimed exaggeratedly without stopping his hands, "That is absurd, after all, I paid almost twenty gold dragons to him to teach me his ancestral skills."
"Then you were definitely scammed," Oberyn said with a sigh, "Let us just call a few of the sturdy sellswords and try breaking—"
But before the Dornish prince could even finish his sentence they heard a loud click and the door into the treasury suddenly swung open leaving the man completely slack-jawed.
"Ah, looks like it worked," Jon said simply with a casual expression as if he had expected nothing else, "Come, let's see what treasures this pirate king has accumulated..." he said as he pushed the door open and entered the small but well-lit room with a small window on the opposite side.
"Don't worry about it," Gared shrugged at the incredulous expression on Oberyn and Advisor's faces before following Jon.
"Well... this is a bit disappointing," Jon said as he looked around at the treasures piled inside the treasure room.
The room was crammed with all kinds of different loot from boxes filled with gold female jewellery to expensive silk dresses and robes that were probably stolen from merchants and there were even a few sacks filled with spices and sugar.
While it was undeniable that everything in here was expensive... it was just a bit disappointing for a pirate treasure vault.
"Why?" Gared asked confusedly as he looked around at the pricey stuff with a wide smile unlike the others, "Isn't it all quite good? If we somehow manage to sell these to the right people, we could have at least a hundred thousand gold for all of these and that is not to mention the actual gold in that chest," he said pointing in the middle where laid an open chest filled with a small mountain of gold, "In total, this could all be worth almost 150,00 gold dragons... isn't that good enough?"
"No, he is right," Oberyn said as he picked up a gold jewellery with an unimpressed expression on his face, "As a self-proclaimed Pirate King who ruled over this part of the sea for a decade, he really should have a little more than this,"
"And he does," The Advisor interjected with a confused expression on his face, "While I am not sure about the exact amount since Ravager never let anyone near his wealth, I am sure there should be a lot more than this here..."
"Well, then perhaps this is not the real treasure vault after all," Jon murmured as he looked around with narrowed eyes.
A few minutes of inspection later Jon abruptly went towards the corner and kneeled down before he began moving his hand over the piece of red-coloured carpet that covered the floor beside the wall and a few seconds later his hand suddenly touched upon a hidden handle.
"Aha! Found it!" Jon's eyes immediately lit up and he immediately called, "Gared! Come help me with this."
"Hmm?," Gared nodded distractedly as he came to stand beside him.
"Pull that side for me, will you,"
"Sure." Gared nodded before touching the corner of the carpet and with Jon's signal both of them pulled simultaneously, and with a little bit of resistance the carpet abruptly came off, and the moment the four of them saw what was hidden underneath all of their eyes widened in surprise, "Oh..."
There laid in the very corner of the room was a square-shaped slab with handles on its top.
With just a single nod from him, Gared pulled up the slab and what appeared in front of them was a deep hole with a ladder against the wall leading down into the darkness.
"Looks like we finally found their hidey-hole..."
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