“Why wasn’t I informed of this much sooner?” the king demanded. His advisor contemplated taking the fall and then decided against it. Prince Alf wasn’t worth it in his eyes.
“I believe that His Highness was told of the pirate crew fairly early on, Your Majesty. Before they met up with this other crew they have joined with. He chose not to do anything about them.” The advisor felt a little bad about throwing Prince Alf to the dogs but nothing could really be done about it. It was better Prince Alf then him, especially since the king wasn’t likely to punish his own heir to badly.
“Send for Alf,” the king ordered one of the servants who bowed and went running out of the hall. When the king gave an order it was best to show speed, he sometimes had a short temper.
Prince Alf clearly didn’t seem to care about his fathers love for having his orders followed quickly. When he finally did arrive in the throne room it was at a slow saunter that turned his father red with anger. This wasn’t a new occurrence however, it was generally agreed that Prince Alf had grown immune to his father’s anger through repeated exposure.
“You wanted me?” Alf asked, casually standing in front of his father.
“You got a report about some pirates a while back and didn’t do anything?” the king asked.
“Yeah, some all girl crew I think, they attacked one of our scouts, why? They didn’t sound that impressive, I figured they would give up in a few months and go home.”
“They haven’t given up yet,” said the king glaring at his only child. “You better take responsibility for this mess. They’re getting to be a real problem.”
“So what do you want me to do about it?” asked Alf.
“I want that crew to stop existing and since you could have taken care of this mess before it became this large, you can go as the person in charge of taking down the pirates,” the king decreed. Prince Alf bowed, and without another word marched out of the room.
Alwilda and Kadlin were on watch when they saw Prince Alf’s ship on the horizon. That didn’t mean anything of course; ships were slow enough that they could prolong a chase for days if they felt like it. It did spell new prey for the bored crew however and Alwilda instantly called everyone to the oars. She expected a chase, most ships ran these days when they saw her ship, she was gratified to see the other ship continue to head in their direction. This meant a fight, and fights were one of her few forms of entertainment these days.
For a while her life had been full of conflict, the men of her crew hadn’t fallen under her leadership easily, there had been a lot of resistance. That has made life interesting, but after she had beat even the most stubborn of them into submission life had grown dull. Now everyone in her crew did as she commanded at a moments notice, and she was disturbed to note that most of them listened to her with full confidence as well. They actually trusted her, and thought she would do what was best for the crew.
To be continued...
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