The King of Winters

Chapter 43

Andrew

He woke up when the sun was well up in the sky. Andrew had spent most of his time in the Fair Maiden by sleeping. His meals would come to him in his cabin, some bread and curry or a broth of some kind. Sometimes he went to the deck to speak with the captain or anyone from the crew. He helped them to tie lines and change sails but he saw Joy in everything he did. 

He saw her sweet smile and her beauty. I loved a maid as fair as summer, with sunlight in her hair. Even sleeping had done him no good. He saw her in his dreams along with mother and father. 

The captain had provided him with the finest cabin and all sorts of luxuries. A feather bed for him to sleep, the finest of his foods and wine and even a supply of clean water. Atleast he provided enough for the silver Andrew had given him. He washed away the sleep from his face with a bucket of clear cold water. 

His blades were there were he had left them before he had gone to sleep. Frost and the bracers were on the table of his room. Andrew had no use for them in the ship, he had learned that as soon as he got onto it. Everyone in the Fair Maiden had been warm to him. From the captain to the scrubber on the decks. He learned new methods to tie easy knots and to raise sails from the crew, taught them the methods he knew. At night the sailors would have some sort of gathering on the deck and sing songs from lands far away. Andrew would join them in the deck some nights but he would leave to his cabin before everyone else does. 

When they had reached the Bite, Captain Moreo Tumites had commanded his men to be alert all the time and be ready for all dangers. Andrew knew that the waters of the Bite was infested with pirates and there were ships taken by the pirates in the Bite. The pirates were only the start of it. The Bite can be dangerous at every seasons around. There were scores of ships which lost in the raging waters never to be seen again. He had worn Frost along his back till the Fair Maiden crossed the Bite. It took a minor hit from the sea and the storms but the ship managed to cross it without any casualties. 

He left Frost on the table but took his bracer in his hand. It was a deadly little thing. No one knew that a common bracer could bring death so swift and sudden. But his bracers had a concealable weapon that was composed of a narrow blade set into a channel on the underside of the bracers below the straps. Controlled by spring-loaded mechanism, the blade can spontaneously extend and retract from its position. He had put on a pressure switch inside the bracers so that he could easily trigger the blade with a flex of his wrist. The blades could be launched with the flex of his wrist and could be retracted with the release of it. Andrew had designed the blades himself along with the help of a master armorer from Braavos. 

He had mostly used them for the means of enacting assassinations rather than for straight up combat. Consisting of a blade that can be discreetly extended or retracted from his bracer, the Hidden Blade's portability and concealability complemented his affinity for stealth and freerunning. It allowed him to eliminate a target while drawing virtually no attention to him, and the techniques developed for its use often ensure near instantaneous death.

He had killed many men with just the help of the blades. He had never seen a weapon more lethal than his hidden blades. There has been times where he had scaled the palaces of Braavos to take out murderers in their beds and there were times where he had opened the throats of monsters in the center of a market amidst a large crowd of people with none seeing him or his victim until the man dropped dead on the floor with the use of his hidden blades. 

It has been long since he had used those deadly blades. He had not used them nor had planned to use them after he met Joy. It hurt to think about her. The wound was still so fresh to forget it soon. He doubted if he could ever forget it or feel love in his life again. All his loved ones from his life had left from this word, leaving him alone. His father had always said that, When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. For once Andrew found that even his father could be wrong at times. He was wrong in it. He had said that the pack survives and the lone wolf dies yet it was the pack which died when the hardest time came and he, the lone wolf somehow managed to live through all the hardships.