The ship stinks.

"I'm going to throw up." The Pirate King said to a pirate that they were waiting for the ship's owner to appear, and the deck under their feet was steaming with a stench under the roasting heat.

The ship's owner finally showed up, accompanied by two hideous-looking crew members, who greeted the Pirate King with a smile on his face, who had planned to play the role of a merchant selling alcohol.

Tall and fair, with blue-green eyes, light brown hair shining in the sun, lean and handsome body, the captain swaggered towards him, with confidence that bordered on arrogance.

"How fast is your ship?" The Pirate King asked.

"No faster, my lord, my ship is fast enough to catch up, tell me where you want to go, and I'll get you there at once."

"Two of my entourage and I want to take a boat to Dubrovnik."

This made the captain hesitate, "I am no stranger to going to Dubrovnik, I can find that city, tell me, my merchant friend, what attracts you there?" Or maybe you're going to make a big deal, and I've heard that the counterinsurgency war is going on there. ”

The Pirate King replied with a story they had made up beforehand, "Wine is our family business, and my father, who has a vast vineyard on an island, wants me to open up new markets. I hope the people of Dubrovnik will enjoy the wine I sell. ”

"Wine? Wine on the island? "The captain was not convinced." The counterinsurgency war is going on, don't you know? ”

"It's the Chriss who are at war, and we've heard that the Chriss' territory is still some distance from the Adriatic."

"But there's no guarantee that the Chris family won't go into the waters around Dubrovnik again."

"Whatever you want, I'm in the wine business, not the war, and the people of Dubrovnik will pay a good price for my wine."

"The dead don't care what they drink." The captain twisted his beard. "I'm not the first captain to deal with you, and I don't think it's the tenth."

"It's not." The King of Pirates admitted.

"So how many? Twenty? ”

Almost, the Pirate King thought to himself, you are the victim of the twenty-first.

The Pirate King began to consider whether this plan would succeed, and their men would be in ambush on the sea route to Dubrovnik, but at least his plan would not attract unwanted attention, and informers were everywhere.

The Pirate King gave the captain his most reassuring smile, "To be honest, I don't count the cowards who rejected us, but in the vast expanse of the sea I have heard that you are the kind of brave man, the kind of man who dares to risk anything for the sake of enough gold. ”

A smuggler, the king of pirates thought so, this is what the other merchants in the inn called this captain, he was a smuggler and a slave trader.

The captain asked, tweaking his thumb and forefinger. "How much gold do you think is enough for such a voyage?"

"Three times as much as you usually go to Dubrovnik."

"Each of you?" The captain bared the teeth in his mouth, probably intending to make a smile. But that made his narrow face look even more fierce. "Perhaps, I am really bolder than most men. When do you want to go? ”

"Tomorrow will be fine."

"Deal. Come back an hour before dawn with your friends and wine, so that no one will come and ask us such a troublesome question as where to go. ”

"It's decided, an hour before dawn."

The captain smiled even more, "I'm glad I can help you. We're going to have a great trip, right? ”

"I'm sure of that," said the Pirate King, the captain calling them ale, and the two toasted their adventures.

"A sweet guy." The Pirate King stepped down the docks and said to the other pirates, their eyes narrowed as the weather was hot and the sun was so strong that they all narrowed their eyes.

"It's a sweet island."

Sweet enough to rot your teeth. The neighborhood is full of beets, which are added to almost every dish, and the people in the neighborhood use them to make a cold soup that is sticky and thick like honey, and their wine is also sweet.

"I'm afraid our happy journey will be short, and maybe that sweet guy doesn't really plan to take us to Dubrovnik either. He promised to come down too quickly, and no doubt he would be paid three times the usual fee, and as soon as we got on board and left land, he would slit our throats and take what was left of our gold. The Pirate King judged with his vast experience as a pirate.

Their coachman was waiting for them at his caravan, which here might be called the ox cart, and the pirate king preferred to walk, but the inn where they stayed was a little far away.

Their coachman was a slave, a small man with wheels tattooed on his face, naked with only a loincloth and a pair of sandals, his skin the color of teak, and his eyes like shards of flint. "The inn," the Pirate King told him, "but walk along the docks." "Aside from the pier and the waterfront, the streets are hot enough for one to drown in one's sweat, at least on this side of the river.

The coachman shouted something at his beast in the local language, and the beast began to move, its nose shaking from side to side, and the cart jolted behind him, shouting at the sailors and slaves alike to get out of the way.

The other day when a ship docked on the coast of the disputed place, the pirates boarded the ship in the pre-dawn darkness, and the crew repelled them after paying the price of twelve lives, and then the sailors began to strip the boots, belts and weapons from the dead pirates, divided their money, earned gems from their ears, and took rings from their fingers, and one of them was so fat that in order to remove his ring, the ship's cook had to cut off his finger with a meat chopping knife, It took three crew members to roll the body into the sea, and the other pirates were thrown overboard after him, without any prayers or rituals.

Their own dead were treated more seriously, the sailors wrapped their bodies in canvas and tied ballast stones so that they could sink faster, and the captain of the ship led his crew in praying for the souls of his dead companions, "Before handing them over to the sea, one of you should say a few words for your dead." The captain said so.

"I'm willing to sell my mom for a little breeze." The Pirate King said as they made their way through the crowd around the docks. "It's like a virgin's private place, and it's not yet noon, and I hate this island."

The two pirates felt the same way, the heat and humidity drained their strength, made them feel uncomfortable, and worst of all, they could not be relieved even at night, but they had to endure for the sake of the pirates' cause.

As the caravan creaked and jolted along the iron-framed wheels, the steaming heat of the street created a dreamy sense of their surroundings, and between the warehouses and the docks, all sorts of shops and stalls crowded the seashore where fresh oysters, chains and handcuffs, ivory and jade carved chess pieces could be bought, and there were also temples where sailors came to worship the gods.

At the entrance to the sea, the streets curve in an arc, and along the bends many animal vendors gather to sell gem lizards, ringed pythons, clever little monkeys with spotted tails and dexterous pink hands.

"Maybe we should get a monkey too?" The Pirate King muttered.

Through the wide blue river, he could see the black wall built by the people here, which was nothing more than an outpost: a large oval lava stone was two hundred feet high, and thick enough on top of it for six four-horse chariots to chase side by side, and free men were not allowed to enter the black wall unless invited by the inhabitants inside.

The traffic was even more congested here, and they were near the westernmost end of the long bridge that connected the long bridge that had been divided in half, and the streets were crowded with carts and wagons, and everyone came and went from the bridge, and slaves were everywhere, as many as cockroaches, scurrying about the business of their masters.

Not far from the fishmonger's square and the inn, from a crossroads there was a commotion, and a dozen spearmen, dressed in ornate armor and tiger skin cloaks, came out of nowhere, waved them aside so that the beast in which the priest rode could pass through, the priest's beast was a gray-skinned behemoth, covered with delicate glazed armor, which made a soft rattle as he moved, and was so tall on its back that it scraped to the top of the arch as it passed under the ornamental stone arch.

"The priests were considered so honorable that they were not allowed to touch the ground with their feet during the year of their tenure." The Pirate King told his men. "They go everywhere in such beasts."

"Clogging the streets and leaving a pile of feces for people like us to bear." A pirate said.

"The priests were revered by the people, and they were said to be the closest to the gods." The King of Pirates said.

When their caravan reached the edge of the fishmonger's square, their beast raised its nose like some kind of great white goose, chirped, and reluctantly stepped into the crowd of carts, sedan chairs, and the surging crowd ahead, and their coachman poked it with his heel, urging her on.

The fishmongers, who were shouting hard about their morning catch, saw cod, sardines, buckets of shells and clams, eel hanging from the front of one stall, and a huge turtle with legs strung together in chains and as heavy as a horse. Crabs scratch inside wooden barrels filled with brine and seaweed, and a few vendors sell fried fish steaks with onions and beets, or fish soup sprinkled with pepper stewed in small iron buckets.

In the center of the square, under a statue of a deceased priest who had cracked and headless, a crowd gathered to watch some gnome perform, the little man put on wooden armor, the small knight prepared to ride a horse and joust with a spear, and the pirate king saw one riding a dog and the other jumping on a pig...... Unexpectedly, he slipped down from the right side again, bringing a little laughter.

"They look pretty happy." The King of Pirates said.

Four-storey inns towered over the harbor area, surrounded by wharves and warehouses, and was populated by merchants from all over the sea and islands, travelers, and even people from Dubrovnik and other territories.

When the Pirate King disemarmed from the caravan, he could feel the heat of the stone slab beneath his feet even through his shoes, a table propped up in the shadow outside the inn, decorated with blue and white striped flags, waved in the wind, and four stern-eyed mercenaries sat lazily around it, shouting loudly to every man and boy who passed.

One of them yelled at them.

"I'm not going to say your words." The Pirate King replied that they could understand it perfectly, but they had to pretend they didn't understand.

After that, the two mercenaries began to sing, shouting the lyrics of a certain folklore that the pirate king could understand.

"If our people are there, we can kill them." One of the pirates whispered.

"Ignore them." The Pirate King said that as they squeezed through the door of the inn, the mercenary gate shouted at their backs, mocking them for bloodless cowards and frightened girls.

Their future plans also need to find out the distribution of combat power on this island, so naturally they can't cause unnecessary conflicts, which is the consciousness of being the king of pirates.

As the king of pirates who is not ranked high among the pirate kings, he knows that he is more cautious and low-key, especially during the critical period of the Dubrovnik counterinsurgency war, a pirate king he knows has been captured by George, the captain of the royal fleet, no one knows which island he is locked on, and the territory of the pirate king has also been captured by the people of the royal fleet, all because he is too high-profile and public.

What pirate king is not ostentatious and domineering? He had told himself so, but over the years, the practices of certain pirate kings had forced him to reconsider the issue.

Even their pirate kings, who were several times stronger than me, began to hide their strength, and what kind of cheek did a backward person like me have to provoke those troubles?

Therefore, he had a new plan for burning, killing and looting, that is, using the trade routes of the liquor sellers, robbing the captains of the ships, who disguised themselves as merchants who sold liquor and blended into other islands, quietly, killing the captains of the deceived ships on the vast sea, robbing them of their money, and then destroying the corpses and leaving quietly, no one could catch them.

However, this time the king of the island sensed some trouble, and the captain he met this time promised them too quickly, he must have treacherous thoughts and wanted to rob us pirates in turn?

Thinking of this, the Pirate King couldn't help but snort coldly, that captain would definitely go find some help, but he probably thought that there were only three of us, and he had a way to deal with such people.

He has grown from an unknown pirate to the king of pirates in the sea, he has many subordinates and retinues, everything is his own step by step, he believes in his own power.

The man who could rob pirates was probably not born yet, and a smile appeared on his lips......