Sharing Success
Sixteenth Day of Ikomi-eza (Ikomi Ascendant) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)
Over the next six days the weather remains if not fair than at least mild with the virtue of these southern waters in spite of Afke's misgivings. Not that you can blame the poor man for being shaken, he is far indeed from a warrior and only captain by the fickle hand of fate. Twice now he has seen his fellows, his friends, die just as his former lord had. All at the hands of Anwari pirates, men not all that different from much of Marcella's crew he must now be reminded as the longships sail slowly along the two larger ships like wolves tamed into the guise of guard hounds.
Though if those are hounds they must be three footed ones. Men who had never steered so much as a fishing boat in all their lives had now been made captains of reaver ships even as you keep careful watch every eve for the sight of more pale sails on the horizon. Only two of the five ships had been lost in the battle and while the survivors would not be unscathed, they are certainly still perilous to meet on the open sea.
Inge stays up later to listen to the sea birds, though that might be because her days are most often spent around the great brass cauldron brewing with salt and steam, with the humors of fish and other even less palatable things, making healing potions to restore your supply. When you had asked how much they would cost you had been at first surprised to hear that one might buy perhaps a one third stake in a longship at the amount, though you had as soon recalled how those same potions had saved the lives of sailor and soldier alike.
Idly it occurs to you that if Zaia was to return to the land of his birth by some unfathomable chance then he could sell his elixirs for a king's ransom to any lord at war for himself and his kin. Like a man who had grown used to avoiding an open hearth in his path you flinch from the thought and the memories it conjures, as naked flesh from fire, but the pain of it is less than you thought it would be, less than you remember. The worries and the hopes of the here and now crowd it out, that in itself is cause for a sigh.
"So how have the men been holding up?" you turn to the man at your side, gaze clear as ever, mustache unruffled. Catching the odd look in his eye you pause and start again in another tongue. More than once these past days you had caught yourself speaking not Norman French, nor even English but Anwari, a habit you had gotten into for the sake of those who do not speak either tongue, but which you now mostly keep to even when there is no need.
Part of you wonders if there will come a day when the tongue of your fathers will slip from your mind wholly, if in some distant evening of your life you would look back on your life and wonder if this is the truth and that had been a dream.
"About as well as can be, Mi'lord, as well as can be..." he nods, as much to himself as to you. "Training hard, eating well and sleeping right, all a fighting man needs."
"I think you missed drinking hard somewhere in there," you laugh.
"Mayhap I did, but they won't," he shoots back, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. "How..." he cuts himself off, likely as not realizing that he was about to question how you spend your time. Once you might have counted that an overstep, but the Fellowship of Saint Nicholas is not the guard of Roland de Verley, a fact which you do your best to illustrate with deed and word for you have every hope that you will be hiring more on soon.
"Learning a new tongue is not as easy as you might think, especially Engur and Anwari. They have less in common than Latin and Greek..."
Tom does not reply and for a moment you wonder if it's confusion at the simile, but then he explains, clearly uneasy. "I was going to ask how much you think the ships might be worth, some of the men were wondering as well."
"Two thousand Icari between them if we are lucky, these aren't ships for the Blue Sea," you reply. "The weapons and armor as well as the silver we found on the raiders are probably worth half again as much taken together."
"And the rest of it?"
It takes you a moment to realize he means the enchanted things, large and small. You had never actually considered selling the maul or the drums, for all you are uneasy about using them.
What do you do with the enchanted objects?
[] Write in
OOC: Sorry this took so long. I wanted to present the prince's fighting style in here as well, but it just would not fit unfortunately so I just left it as Tom and Roland character piece as they find their footing in changing circumstance. 
