章 16: Aerys I
291AC
It had sounded a cushy deal at first, sign up for the young lord's classes, learn to read and get paid to do it. Indeed it was a cushy deal, too good in fact.
Because once he learned to read he couldn't go back to being a fisherman.
Oh, he had no doubt some men could, some of his friends had even, gone back better fishermen, but fishermen still, but he read the paper. He saw the Lord Arthur's new ships glide out into the sea like daggers propelled by the wind, their bright white sails bulging as they flew over the waves. He heard of the opportunity in the new "company" the young Lord had made for men who could captain a boat, and he had taken to the job with relish.
Now, he was captain of his own ship, well, the company's own, but he was still her captain.
The Wave-Dasher, she was named and his pride and joy she was, to the point his wife had gotten jealous, heh. The boat lived up to her name, the seventh of her kind. She had some small improvements over her kin, and he was sure she could beat any Tyroshi Cog from King's Landing to Volantis thrice over before the cog made one full trip. She may have lacked cargo space, but you simply couldn't beat that speed.
No, he was quite sure that there wasn't a ship in the world outside the company that could even hope to match her in that regard.
And now, far from his trials sailing about the bay at Dragonstone, he was finally being given permission to run her free on the coast. The company had given him the charter to run a circuit from King's landing to White-Harbor, and all the real ports in between.
At each stop, the company had an office, and the men there would ensure he got high-quality goods at a reasonable price, and sell off what he carried from the last port. He and the crew even got a cut of the profit, and the profits ought to be excellent given what speed they could carry them with, especially when split over a crew of only fifteen.
The Captains of those "Galleons" the young Lord was working on at the new shipyard might have more things to sell when they hit the water, but whatever they made would be split over thirty or forty men, perhaps more. He would take his odds with his smaller crew.
It all seemed right clever to him, this whole company business. Everybody won, the sailors got a better cut since there wasn't a need to pay oarsmen. The captains got the best damn ships he'd ever seen, and the company took a bit of money out to build more ships. A tidy arrangement if ever he saw one, and his father was a merchant.
Well, he wasn't a great merchant, else his son wouldn't have had to become a fisherman to take care of him in his old age, but still, a merchant nonetheless.
He toyed with his hat where it met his braided silver hair. And to top it all off he had gotten a bonus for just being a captain. They'd dressed him all up in a nice leather coat and boots like he was some sort of lord or a knight at least.
He smiled as he saw the reefs coming in the distance, the water shallow near their top. To a normal ship, they would be terrifying, but he spied them in the distance and felt the wind caught in the sails as he turned the ships-wheel, the light vessel swerving to the side with grace and speed as he tacked around the obstruction, the breeze of the Northern Blackwater captured even at an angle in the triangular sails.
'Aye, If every man had a boat like this, then every man'd be happy.'
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