Jocris's younger brother, Bamkris.

He had crossed the Narrow Sea drunk, and his ship was small, and his cabin was smaller, but the captain would not let him go on deck, and the shaking of the planks under his feet made his appetite uncomfortable, and the bad food smelled even worse than when they were vomited, and how could he ask for corned beef, hard cheese, and bread crawling with worms when he had wine as his company? The wine was red and sour, and the taste was very strong. Sometimes he spits out the wine, but that's always better.

"The world is full of wine," he muttered in the dark cabin, drunkards were of no use to Chris, but who cared?

During the war of the Chriss, the fleet he commanded was routed by the royal family, and then he was caught by the royal family, but he was drunk and secretly let go.

Below deck, unable to tell the difference between day and night, Bamkris counted the time back and forth by bringing him food to and from the waiter, who always carried a brush and a bucket to clean up.

"This is fine wine?" Bam Chris once asked him, as he pulled out the stopper from the wine bag. "It reminds me of a certain poisonous snake I knew, a quirky fellow, until a mountain weighed on him."

The boy didn't answer, he was an ugly boy, but he was much more handsome than some dwarf with a half-nose and a scar that ran from his eyes to his chin.

"Did I offend you?" As the boy mopped the floor, Bamkris asked. "Did someone order that you weren't allowed to talk to me? Or did some knight cheat on your mother? He still didn't answer. Where are we headed? Tell me. "Bamcris thought of all directions in the Adriatic, but still didn't know which one it would be." Is it to Dubrovnik? An island? Or a vacation spot? "Bamkris would rather go to Dubrovnik, right! Not as a captive, but as a knight!

But he knew that this direction was definitely not Dubrovnik, they were originally going to arrest him and go to Dubrovnik, there was no reason to go to such a big time.

But he clearly remembered that the Chriss' fleet he commanded was completely finished.

The boy damp the brush and scrubbed vigorously, "Have you ever been to Dubrovnik's Fengyue place?" Bamkris asked. The boy had thrown the brush back into the barrel and left.

It's alcohol that confuses the brain! Bamcris never fell asleep easily, and on this ship, he barely slept, although he tried to make himself faint from time to time, but he didn't dream, he had dreamed too much in his short life, he had dreamed of all kinds of silly thoughts of love, justice, friendship, glory, and he had dreamed of winning the final victory in the sword duel, and he had dreamed of helping the Chris family become famous, but everything was a pipe dream, and Bamcris now understood that at least his side had failed

He found an uncorked wine bag and snorted greedily, sour red wine running down his chin, soaking the dirty coat he had worn since he was imprisoned, and the deck under his feet shook violently; He tried to get up, but the deck leaned sideways, throwing him on the other side of the bed. Storm, he thought, was either I was drunk more than I knew I was. He vomited, but he lay still, wondering if the ship was about to sink. Is this revenge? This is what the loser deserves!

By the time he could move again, his head seemed to crack. The boat was still spinning dizzily, even though the captain insisted they had landed. Bamcris told him to be quiet, and what was waiting for him in the hold was an empty keg, a stubby keg that he could hear outside when the barrel was hoisted, and his head hit the bottom of the barrel with each impact. The barrel rolled downward, and the world spun as the world spun, and a sudden jolt stopped the barrel and made him want to scream, and another barrel slammed into it, this time Bam Criss bit his tongue.

Although it lasted only half an hour, it was the longest journey of his life, rolling and stopping, turning upside down, and rolling and rolling, and through the walls of the barrel he heard the noise of people outside, and at one time the neighing of horses not far away, and soon the pain made him forget the roar in his head.

The end of the journey, like the beginning, was accompanied by a dizzying roll and a jolt, outside, an unfamiliar voice was conversing in a language he did not understand, someone began to tap on the top of the barrel, and suddenly the lid opened, and the light poured in, and the cool air, Bam Criss gulped greedily, trying to straighten up, only to knock over the barrel, and then roll onto the hard muddy ground.

A strangely obese man appeared above him, with a yellow mustache and a mallet and an iron chisel in his hands. His robe was wide enough to make a tent for a jousting tournament. But the loose belt spread out, revealing a fat white belly and a pair of heavy breasts, and the breasts drooped so badly that they looked like two bags of fat covered with yellow coarse hairs.

The fat man looked down and smiled, "It's a drunken knight!" He said in lingua franca.

"A rotting knight." Bamcris spit at the fat man's feet with a mouth full of blood, and they were in a deep cellar, with vaulted roofs and stone walls covered with saltpeter groupers, surrounded by barrels of wine and ale, enough for a drunkard to survive tonight – or this life.

"You're arrogant, but I like arrogant knights." When the fat man laughed, his flesh shook so violently that Bamcris feared he would fall.

"Are you hungry, knight? Sleepy? ”

"I'm thirsty." Bam Criss struggled to his feet. "It's still dirty."

The fat man sniffed. "So, let's take a shower and get you some food and a soft bed, okay? My servant will do it. "The owner of the house has set aside the mallet and the chisel." My house is your house. As long as I am a friend of my friend on the other side, I am a friend. That's right. ”

As long as it was "his" friend, but as for who he was, Bamcris couldn't guess.

At least the fat man did a good job of taking a bath, but as soon as Bamkris had soaked in the hot water and closed his eyes, he quickly fell into a deep sleep, and when he awoke he was lying naked on a feather mattress bed. The mattress was thick and soft, and it felt like he was wrapped in clouds, and he only felt that his mouth was parched, and it was as hard as an iron rod, and he rolled out of bed, and found a night pot, and groaned with satisfaction.

It was dark in the room, but the golden sunlight shone through the shutters, and Bamcris shook off the last drops of urine and limped on the patterned carpet, which was soft like new grass in spring. He climbed into the chair by the window and lifted the leaves to see where the gods had sent him.

Under the window are six cherry trees, with slender brown branches bare, enclosing a marble pool. Standing in the water was a naked boy holding an assassin's dagger in a fighting stance. He was handsome and elegant, no more than sixteen years old, with shoulder-length blonde hair, and Bamcris realized after a while that it was just a lifelike painted stone carving, but the reflection of the knife seemed to come from a real steel blade.

On the other side of the pond stood a twelve-foot brick wall, with a row of iron thorns at the head of the wall, and beyond the wall was the island, and a sea of flat-roofed houses next to each other surrounded a harbor, and he saw some square brick towers, a large red temple, and a compound on a hill in the distance, and farther away, the sun was dancing on the surface of the deep sea, and the fishing boats were passing through the harbor, and the white sails were waving in the wind, and he could even see the upright masts of the big ships on the shore, and one of them must have been going to Dubrovnik, or to some other island, But he couldn't pay for the boat, and maybe he could promise some benefits

He was still guessing where he was, the air here smelled different, the cold autumn wind smelled of strange spices, and he could vaguely hear the noise wafting in outside the walls. It sounded like some kind of language, but he could only understand a few words intermittently, and he deduced that it was somewhere in the sea, the bare branches and the chill in the air, all he knew was that he had never been there.

When he heard the door open behind him, Bamkris turned and saw the chubby host. "This is the domain of some pirate king, right?"

"That's right, or where else?"

Well, this is not Dubrovnik, that's all that can be said.

"Is there anywhere else I can go?"

"We have plenty of time tonight to talk about it. Join me for dinner, a great wine, and make great plans, right? ”

"Yes, my fat friend," replied Bamkrish, who wanted to make a profit from me, and all the pirate kings cared about was profit.

His father had contemptuously called them "a den of thieves and robbers."

A light breeze caressed the pool of clear water, rippling around the naked swordsman.

A steward invited him to tour the house, and he found some clean clothes in a chest studded with lapis lazuli and mother-of-pearl, and as he laboriously slipped them on, he realized that the clothes were a little musty, but of good texture, but the legs were too long and the sleeves were too short, but at least there was no stench of vomit.

Bam Criss began his tour from the kitchen, where two fat women and a waiter watched him warily as he ate some cheese, bread, and figs himself.

"Good morning, beautiful lady," Bamkris said, bowing.

Bamkris left the fat woman with the dough and jars, and turned to search the cellar where he had been released last night. It's not that hard. The cellar was full of wine to keep him drunk for a hundred years, sweet red wine from the river bay, sour red wine from the island, one with a faint amber color, another honey wine with a faint turquoise, and more than thirty barrels of golden wine here, and even some from the legendary East, from the woods near the Shadowlands.

Bamcris finally picked a barrel of spirits, which was soft in the mouth, but full of power, with a deep purple color and almost black in the dark cellar. Bam Criss poured a glass, then filled another pot and prepared to take it under the cherry trees to taste.

He had gone out of the wrong door, and he could no longer find the pond he had seen from the window, but it didn't matter, the garden at the back of the house was just as pleasant and much more spacious. He wandered around the garden with a glass of wine. The courtyard walls would dwarf any real castle, but the ornamental iron spikes on the walls were eeriely sleek without the embellishment of human heads.

With a rope and a grappling hook, he should be able to climb over the courtyard wall. His arms were strong, and he should be able to roll over, as long as he didn't nail himself to those iron spikes. He decided to go find a rope early tomorrow morning.

As he wandered, he found three gates with the main entrance to the guardhouse, the back door next to the kennel, and a garden gate hidden behind a clump of pale green ivy. The gate was chained, and the other two gates were guarded. The guards were plump, with faces as smooth as a baby's buttocks, and each wore a bronze helmet with thorns. Bam Criss recognized the eunuchs at a glance, and rumors told him what kind of people they were, and according to legend, they were painless, fearless, and loyal to their masters to the death. If I had a few hundred of them, I could make good use of them, he thought. It's a shame that I didn't think of this before I became a beggar.

He walked down a verandah, through a pointed arch, into a flat courtyard. A woman is washing clothes by the well. She looked about his age, with dark red hair and a wide face with freckles.

"Would you like some wine?" He asked. The woman looked at him quizzically.

"I don't have a wine glass for you, we have to share a glass." The washerwoman continued to wring the clothes and then hung them up. Bam Criss sat down on a stone chair with a flask in his hand. "Tell me, how much can I trust the King of Pirates?"

The name made her look up. "Is that all you want to say?" She chuckled under her breath,

"Whatever they had in mind for me, I was disgusted. But how can I refuse? Maybe you can take me out? I will be very grateful to you. Oh, I'll even marry you. I've already married two wives, so three doesn't matter, does it? Ah, but where do we live? He smiled at her, the most charming smile he had ever had.

The washerwoman hung up a coat, large enough to make two sails, "You're right, I'm ashamed of such evil thoughts." ”

The washerwoman took one last look at him, and took her basket and left, and I didn't think I could have a wife for long, Bamcris thought, his jug was empty at some point, and perhaps I should stumble back to the cellar, which had already dizzy him, and the stone staircase leading to it was steep.

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