Chapter 13.2- The Seadragon's Roar

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We rode at dawn the next day. There was no point chasing them into an unfamiliar forest when the sun was about to set, was how Vaemond had justified the delay. Corlys had just waved it off, clearly not caring all that much. What could a pirate King achieve, forced into exile from his territory and grounded on land? Not much, as far as my father was concerned so he was fine leaving the entire thing to us while he worried about the logistics of getting more ships from Westeros, moving shipwrights to this Island to see if the shipyard could be expanded and improved to our standards. He thought it could, and so did I, but it would be best if actual professionals got a good look at things.

Vaemond, on the other hand, was keen to catch them, but not so keen as to become careless— the perfect balance as far as I was concerned. They’d left on foot as we’d checked. They diode’;t have any stables or things of the sort, so they could not have kept many if any horses. That meant they’d ben walking since last night. If they had any sense, then they would have walked all through the night to build as much of a lead as possible, but then there was the fact that they were pirates. Vaemond and every experienced Knight with the army agreed that they wouldn’t have the discipline for an overnight march. That meant they would have stopped to make camp at some point. Once we found that camp, it wouldn’t be all that hard to chase them. We had hounds to dip the tracking for that.

We rode for about an hour before the hounds started to pick up a scent and we turned with their noses. Another ten minutes of riding led us to the remains of a camp. Relatively fresh remains of a camp, even. The ground was still warm, the shit still stunk and looked far from drying. Examining how long it had been since pirates made camp in a random clearing in a forest by looking at their shit was not something I would have put on this year’s bingo card, but here we were.

“The dogs are saying the scent leads backwards” One of the Knights whispered.

“Back to the village?” I asked.

“Aye, my Lord”

I looked at Vaemond, and it was clear that he was beginning to come to the same conclusion. “We’ve been played.” He said.

Played by pirates was the bit he did not add, but we all heard it the same. It was one thing to be outsmarted, but another to be outsmarted by pirates of all people. We turned our horses, and began the ride back to camp, following their route with the dogs dogging their scent. Huh, dogging.

The only issue with that being that they seemed to have chosen the worst route for horses possible. Upturned roots, confusing, winding paths, trees in places where they should not have been, just all sorts of chaos.