Chapter Ninety-Six: The Arrival of Happiness

Old Pompey was a native son of Dunkirk Port. His ancestors had lived there for who knew how many generations, and his family had watched the place grow from a miserable, godforsaken fishing village where even the birds could not be bothered to stop, into the empire’s third-largest harbor and the only ice-free port in the empire’s northern seas.

When he was young, Old Pompey, too, had a taste for fists and knives. He spent two years hauling cargo on the docks, and because he had a decent pair of fists, he was taken in by a small violent gang made up of porters. As naturally as anything in the lives of the young men of Dunkirk who loved a brawl, and because he happened to be a strong swimmer, Old Pompey became a small-time pirate.

He followed an old captain across the seas for several years, living those wonderful days of wind and spray, of gorging on meat and drinking deep from great bowls, of changing girls every night. Then, like the other hot-blooded sons of the coast, he met a girl he truly loved. And so Pirate Pompey vanished from the world, replaced in Dunkirk by Pompey the tavern-keeper. As the years went by, Pompey the tavern-keeper naturally became Old Pompey.

The same man who once preferred to speak with fists and daggers now had three sons who were even more eager to make trouble than he had ever been. Clearly, his little tavern could not be divided among three unruly heirs. It could feed one family, but never three.

Old Pompey did not want two of his sons to follow in his footsteps, drifting and struggling for a living on the sea, only to be killed someday in some far-off stretch of water and dumped into the ocean like refuse for the fish. So he took out everything he had saved: all the profits he had earned from nearly ten years of hard labor at sea, plus every copper his tavern had brought him over the decades, a total of ten thousand glittering gold coins. He poured every last coin, with one desperate gamble, into the Trident Whale-Hunting Company and into the Sea Windmill, the whaling ship then under construction.

Proudly made a minor shareholder in the whaling company, Old Pompey waited in anxious suspense for two years. At last, the Sea Windmill was completed and launched. And if the ship brought home any reward this hunting season, then one good catch would be enough for every shareholder to recoup his investment. After that, all future earnings would be pure profit.

Old Pompey’s plan was simple, and honest. In the first year, he would recover his capital. After that, each year would bring him profits equal to the total sum he had invested. After taxes paid to the empire, ten years would leave him with nearly one hundred thousand gold coins in assets. That money would be enough to buy a decent parcel of land in Dunkirk and open a respectable inn of considerable size.

A little tavern could not support three sons and the families they would one day have, but a tavern plus a good-sized inn would be more than enough to support five sons and all their households. Old Pompey wanted his boys to walk the straight path, and never again tread the reckless road he himself had taken in his youth.

Early one morning, after hearing rumors at the harbor that the Sea Windmill was already coming in, Old Pompey hurried to the docks. He was deeply puzzled. Why should the ship be returning today? According to the hunting schedule, she should not have been back for at least another seven days.

Had fortune been unusually kind this year, and had the Sea Windmill struck a fine prize the moment she cleared the harbor?

Or had luck been so poor that the ship had run into some terrible mishap?

With a heart full of unease, Old Pompey stood quietly amid the crowd and waited. But when the Sea Windmill finally eased into her berth, the first thing he saw was the enormous hole in her stern, a wound torn open by brutal force, with cracks and scorch marks spreading across the surrounding steel plates.

Old Pompey’s vision went dark. Had the ship run into serious trouble after all?

It was as though he could see his ten thousand gold coins sprouting ten thousand pairs of tiny wings, fluttering away from him. He could almost see his three sons swinging axes and cleavers as they robbed merchant ships on the open sea, only to be shot full of bolts by mercenaries escorting the convoys and left looking like hedgehogs.

Though he had never actually seen a hedgehog in his life, that did not stop Old Pompey from imagining the creature exactly as it ought to be: his three sons, all piled together and bristling with arrows, a perfect living imitation.

A sweet, metallic taste rose in his throat. Blood seemed to gather there, ready to spill.

At that very moment, Old Pompey spotted Blackbeard, that formidable figure of great weight in Dunkirk. He also saw Lyn and Blackbeard embracing warmly, and heard Lyn say, with utmost nonchalance, that he and Enzo had worked together to bring down a prey.

Old Pompey’s heart tightened.

A prey?

If it was a one-horned rampaging whale, then the matter was not yet disastrous. This year he might at least recover part of his investment. Even after adding the cost of repairs to the Sea Windmill, Old Pompey could still hope to return to his little tavern with a few coins in his pocket.

But like every anxious shareholder, Old Pompey felt a surge of irritation toward Lyn. Only one prey, and you still sent the Sea Windmill back? Only one prey, and you managed to cause this much damage? The repair bill for a ship of this size would be horrifying. Just that single hole, roughly two meters across, would take at least tens of thousands of gold coins to mend.

And then, at that moment, the joyous representatives of the small shareholders rushed forward. They stood on the bow and lifted high the golden horn, its surface ringed with grooves, more than four meters long, its base as thick as an ordinary man’s waist.

That unique luster, those unmistakable rings, that length far beyond any ordinary one-horned whale’s horn, told everyone on the dock the same thing: Lyn and Enzo, those distinguished young masters, had hunted a Whale King.

A Whale King worth ten, perhaps twenty times as much as an ordinary one-horned rampaging whale.

Old Pompey’s heart thudded violently. Hot blood surged through his veins and rushed again and again into his mind, washing through every part of his body. He embraced everyone around him with fervor, shouting incoherently, waving both arms with all his strength.

He seemed to see a brand-new inn already standing before him. He seemed to see his three sons with beautiful, sturdy wives. He seemed to see grandchildren running and crawling all over the floor.

Happiness had come so quickly, so suddenly, that tears poured down Old Pompey’s face. He threw back his head and laughed at the sky. “Young Master Lyn, Young Master Enzo, they truly are...”

Lacking words, Old Pompey hesitated for a moment, then roared, “Young Master Lyn, Young Master Enzo, you are men among men!”

The nobles and dignitaries on the docks burst into laughter, nodding in wholehearted agreement. Nothing could have been more fitting.

Lyn and Enzo, dignified and restrained, bowed repeatedly to the frenzied crowd on all sides, and everyone was tightly wrapped in an atmosphere of pure delight.