The fire is dying, so I throw another log.

- “I’m just glad that this stupid mission will finally end tomorrow, fucking waste of time. We lost a lot of coin in this useless trip”.

Adrastos is complain while eating some porridge. I know him for over twenty years and dosen’t matter how much he eats or drinks he still looks like someone who’s been starving for a few years.

He jokes that the Gods have cursed him to always look like a poor man who can’t afford a good meal. He is not wrong; a skinny merchant tends to be look down by many people who think that he must be incompetent, since he can’t put good food on his table.

And people don’t like doing business with incompetent people or someone who looks to be incompetent. But as always, he turned a weakness into a straight, I lost the count of how many people he cheated by pretending to be a desperate idiot trying to make a deal so he could get something to eat.

-“We made a fortune just by accepting the job. We didn’t lose a single obol because the village was being raid by another group. We simply won’t make a extra by selling the inhabitants as slaves. Even then we manage to capture four.”

- “And you don’t think that’s weird that we received so much just to capture some people in the middle of nowhere? I know we had no choice but to accepted, since Thales was the one asking and offering a fortune. But I still think this was a trap for us, a fucking trireme full of heavy infantry was attacking the same place in the same day!”

-“How in the seven hells would they know the precise day we would arrive in the island? I know it’s weird, but is probably a coincidence. We have seeing strange things in these waters before. Besides, the one that saw the trireme and the heavy infantry was Helios. You know that the fucker was desperate to fuck those slaves, he could be lying so he could go back to them.”

-“Helios is a sick bastard, but he’s not a coward. The moron has been trying his best for years to get himself killed. If he said that there was a army in the beach I believe him. Who I don’t believe is that bastard Thales, there is a lot of things he is not telling us about this and I hate it.”

Adrastos is right, this whole thing smells like a trap, why would anyone bother to do all this just to kill us I don’t know. We got luck for stoping in the wrong side of the island and deciding to just walk to the village. If we had met the other ship in the sea or while attacking the village, we would be good as dead.

So many questions and no answers. But I can’t throw oil in the fire and agree with him. The man is vindictive, if he really believes that Thales was trying to kill us, he will try to do something stupid and get some revenge.

There aren’t not many people that I fear, but Thales is on the top of the list. If he really is angry at us is a better idea to just leave these waters and go to another place than try to kill him.

Adrastos doesn’t care about the odds of successes, if there is someone after him, he is going to try to get the person first, the idea of escaping to fight another day is alien to him.

I could dissociate from him or maybe even betray him. But I know myself, I won’t do that after almost two decades of partnership. There is a lot of people that I don’t trust, but there is only one person that I do, I won’t betray or leave him.

The only option that rests for me is to get through his very thick head that no one is trying to kill and this whole thing is just a coincidence.

I don’t believe in coincidences, I knew there were something wrong in this mission from the beginning, but I thought that was something evolving powerful people and not direct evolving us. I always made sure to never piss off important people.

I take a sip of wine, unfortunately I already drunk all the good stuff and only the bad wine is left, closer to vinegar really. I have drunk worst stuff and it’s good enough for a dry throat after a day in the sea.

- “Dosen’t matter what we think, we will make a fortune with this trip. Perhaps it’s time to return to home, we are not getting any younger. Time to get ourselves a young wife and leave behind some heirs to pray for our souls when we go to our forefather’s.”

He looks at me with a complicate face. No point in trying to argue with him about how we can’t get revenge against Thales even if he is trying to kill us. But starting a family? I know that lately he is being worried about having no one to pray for his soul.

-“I know you are just talking about this so I can stop think about that fucker Thales. But I miss home, not that I remember the place, we were just kids when we run. But still.”

I look at him with a surprise face, since when I was so easy to read? He laughs.

-"We have been together for years and you still see me like that youth that was quick to anger and even quicker to draw a blade.”

- “It’s not like you don’t do stupid stuff anymore. Last month you stabbed a guy in a whorehouse because you thought he was looking funny at you! Don’t act all wise now.”

- “The bastard was asking, not my fault. And I lost count of how many times I saved your sorry ass after you slept with the wrong woman.”

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

- “It’s not my fault that I’m irresistible, women can’t get enough of me.”

I laugh while he rolls his eyes but I decide to continue the conversation about going home justo to stop talking about Thales.

- “Are you serious about returning home? The place isn’t very stable right now.”

- “It wasn’t stable when we left and I bet whatever you want, it will never be. But for how many years can we still leave this kind of life? We got lucky this time, but I can feel in my bones our luck running out. I think it’s time to stop, we have enough coin to live a comfortable life and leave something for our kids. What’s the point of taking so many risks when we can’t spend money when we are dead?”

He’s right, we have the funds to retire for years, but we always created some excuse not to. Just by selling the boat we could retire, when you put our other proprieties, we would never be senators, but we would be part of the elite.

- “I can’t believe it, you and me becoming upstand citizens, our fathers are going to role in their graves.”

- “This is going to be our last job? No more excuses Castos, I’m being serious here.”

He looks straight into my eyes with a determination that I didn’t think he still had. Any doubt that I have about retiring evaporates.

- “I’m, we are not selling our proprieties for a couple of ebol’s. But we are selling everything when we return to port. It will take a while but we will return home.”

- “Who said that I wanted to sell everything fast ? We need to make as much as possible so we can live the good life and that takes time.”

- “And we are going back together, without me to protect your back you will be dead in a week. I have aged and my hair is grey now, so women stopped fighting for me a long time ago. But you are still the same idiot that loves to fight.”

He grunts.

- “Stop acting like my mother, I can survive on my own. It will be nice to have a place to call home other than Lebos. The place may have made our fortune, but I will never considerer that hell a good place to raise a family.”

Every city I visited created a slave market. But Lebos is the only slave market that created a city. The whole island lives and breathes the buying and selling of slaves. They earn some coin by selling stolen goods that come from ships or villagers that were raid to get slaves.

You can by an amphora of wine or grain anywhere, but quality slaves of any kind you can imagine? Only Lebos can offer, a paradise for slavers and a hell for most people.

- “You just need to look at Helios to confirm your theory. Born and raised in Lebos, he can only have sex when rapping. And he needs to be the first one rapping her, if he is the second, he won’t get his dick hard.”

-“I’m not a saint and I have done some horrible things that will hunt me for the rest of my life. But the boy is fuckup in the head, but what you could expect from someone raised there. He is not even that crazy over there, I know a lot of people just like him or worst. Do you remember that son of bitch Zopyros?”

- “How could I forget, the bastard would only have sex with corpses that were recently kill by him. If he wasn’t one of the best navigators in Lebos he would never get a ship willing to have him aboard. But he only would stay in a ship for a trip or two before the crew demand that he leaved. He did try working with us a couple of years ago remember? But we refused. I wonder what happened with him?”

-“Died last year. He was fucking a corpse and got stab in the back by the corpse's son or husband, depending on who tells the story. But I think one of the members of the crew did the job, I’m still trying to find who, so I can buy him a cup of wine.”

-“When you find out, buy him two cups, one is on me. We are pirates but having sex with dead bodies? That’s to much even for us and an affront to the Gods.”

-“I don’t think the Gods care about Lebos, most cities and countries may complain about the origin of the slaves, but they send merchants to buy them anyway. I once heard a demagogy from Argos saying that Lebos is evil, but a necessary evil. I heard him say that while buying some slaves to work in his brothel.”

-“I was going to say that you would miss the place in the first month back home, but I know that would be a very big lie. But I think we would be bored out of ours minds without anything to do. We should buy a store and do some business to kill the time.”

-“A store? Now that’s sounds like a good idea. We have many contacts; it would be no problem to found cheap stuff to sell and I need to give something for my kids to earn a living after I die. I would love to buy a farm outside the city, I think I have the coin, but without the right connections would be impossible.”

Like most cities, Styra has very little agricultural land and most of the land is owned by the aristocracy and they would never sell for a merchant. The little that is not own by the aristocracy is owned by fabulous rich merchant that have land just to show how rich they are. They would never sell the land because that would give the signal that they are broke.

Talking about the aristocracy and wealthy merchants, we need to make some connections with them so we won’t have problems when we return.

-What do you think about the slaves that we took?

- “I think the kid and the women are part of the village chief family, too well feed for these parts to be on the bottom of the pyramid. The male looks like has never seen a good meal, maybe a servant? Why?”

- “Since we are going back, it may be a good idea to give the kid to someone looking for Skiritai candidates.”

- “You think he could survive? Most slaves just die during training and they would only own us a favor if the kid survives and graduates.”

- “He is better feed then most of the other slaves who try. Since the training is brutal, most people don’t send very good slaves, why send someone that could be sold in the future for a good profit to certain death? They send a lot of cheap slaves, quantity rather than quality.”

He looks thoughtful.

- “That could work, we could start by feeding him better and given some form of education. Nothing too serious, some gymnastics and teaching him to read and write, that would give him a big advantage to survive. Maybe we could buy some other kids to send together. There’s no point in putting all our eggs in one basket.”

-“That’s a good idea, we don’t even need to hire a teacher, Pyrros can teach him how to read and write and some of our guards can train him in gymnastics. About buying other kids we need to be careful about the costs. Remember how we were planning to sell him for a good price to be a Skiritai candidate? Since so many dies during training, the price of slaves in his age has grown a lot in the last few years with fear of war.”

- “Forget about that, we can’t waste money buying expensive slaves to send to their deaths for free. Maybe we should just train him and see what happens, could be a source of income for us latter, buying slaves and preparing them for training.”

- “A pre Skiritai training school? We should try to buy a couple of other boys if the price is right, not doing anything crazy but if the opportunism shows up...”

-“We are really going home huh? And as rich men, who could believe that such a day would happen?!”

We laugh together and I called for a sailor to bring more wine since today is a day of celebration, the day we decide to return home!