Holy Land

With aid from the Infidel all the injured ponies were well enough to leave sickbay after lunch, with the exception of Winter Oat. After making sure the captain was comfortable the two doctors excused themselves. Winter Oat could not get up, and only saw the others from an angled mirror above his head.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Morning Breeze said as he sipped his mug of tea. “I want your help. It’s a shame I had to damage your ship. The Spectre would be much more useful if it’s battle-ready.

“You see, one of my captains has gone rogue. You remember Yellow Jack, right?”

Snowsong nearly dropped her mug. Her surprise was quickly replaced with bewilderment.

“You freed him on purpose?”

“He wasn’t happy about it,” Morning Breeze said evenly. “I was looking for able sailors when I bombed the Baltimare Maritime Prison. I had lots of ships impounded, and not nearly enough crew to move them all. Of course most of the old pirates were happy to get their own ships back, but Yellow Jack almost didn’t come. I was about to give his ship to his first mate. He never forgave me for that, but we’ve put our differences aside for the last fifteen years. He's commanded a fleet of twenty for the past three years without incident. He got the Snow Queen two months ago."

"And what's so special about this Snow Queen?" Snowsong asked. "If it's that big of a problem, maybe you should just sink it."

“I can't sink it," Morning Breeze said, leaning forwards until his face was an inch from hers. "It's physically not possible. The Snow Queen is the decommissioned flagship of the Children of the Night. She’s far larger than anything Equestria has. That hull is impervious to everything short of our heaviest coastal cannons. She's supposed to be sturdy enough to ram right through a line of battle, and I don't doubt it. As part of our military alliance the Children of the Night provided the Snow Queen sans armament so we could learn how to handle their super heavy ships. I had my turn, and then gave her to Yellow Jack. Five days ago I was shadowing him in the Falconeye. We were driving downwind, at eleven knots, when he ran me down. It was no accident. He was sending armed marines to board us even as we sank. In the five minutes before my ship went down they carried off most of my crew and any guns they could find. I hid under the debris so he wouldn’t find me. I had planned to signal the sea ponies as soon as Jack moved on, but then I heard you launching salvage lines. In the fog I mistook you for one of my support ships, and tied one of your lines to that piece of mast I was floating on. That’s how you found me.”

“Why would the Children of the Night enter an alliance with you?” Snowsong asked, her brows furrowed. “They agreed not to support enemies of Equestria.”

“I’m not an enemy of Equestria,” he said. “Just because I killed a few ponies, undid most of the progress I made on the pirate problem and stole a bunch of your ships doesn't make me an enemy of Equestria. I am indifferent about Equestria as a whole, just like the Children of the Night. And I am perfectly okay with most ponies. I am an enemy of Gold Standard and his circle of clowns, and with good reason. The Children of the Night clearly agree with me. And as to what they get out of this deal, the Chain Islands is a strategic location. Their ships can resupply up to two weeks in advance by stopping here.”

“Is that why we don’t see many of their ships in Equestrian waters?” Snowsong asked. “They’re all anchoring here?”

“You can speculate on it all you like,” Morning Breeze said, smiling slyly. In truth he wanted to gloat about his control of Equestria’s trade, but this was neither the place nor the time. “The point is, Yellow Jack has one of the most powerful ships in the world at his disposal, and he’s dangerously close to getting cannons for it. Once he’s armed, he’ll be able to sail right up to Baltimare.”

“And you’ll do the same thing if you had it,” Snowsong pointed out.

“Maybe,” Morning Breeze said with a shrug. "But I don't have nearly as long a history of hanging bits of my enemies from the riggings of my ship."

“Why don't you do it yourself?”

Everyone turned at the sound of that voice. They had forgotten Winter Oat completely.

“You want our help. Why?” He asked. “Where are your ships? You left Baltimare with at least forty gunships, and no shortage of interceptors. Assuming half were lost, and I know you're not that careless, and assuming you have not captured or built anything since then, that still leaves you with a bigger fleet than any Equestria has ever sent out to battle. Use it.”

“Hey, you’re one to talk!” Morning Breeze snapped. “You’re on my ship, eating my food, using up my supplies. You owe me!”

“And what are you telling me to do?” He continued, as calm as can be. “That we should sneak up on the Snow Queen and retake her, right? Why? She was unarmed. Is unarmed. And from what Gingersnap told me, I’ve thought up a few dozen ways you could have taken out the Snow Queen two days ago. So what is it? Why is he still out there?”

Morning Breeze glared at him, chewing his tongue.

“Hornpipe,” he said at last in a low, calm voice. “Throw Winter Oat overboard.”

“What’s your plan?” Snowsong said immediately, stepping between the pirates and the bed.

“You be quiet,” Winter Oat said passively. “Morning Breeze, Hornpipe, don't tell me you're resorting to threats already. We've only been here a few minutes. It's foolish and you know it. You’ll just cause a scene, and at the end of it we’ll come back here looking rather stupid; all of us. So while this is still a private matter, why don’t you speak honestly for a moment? Right now I have no reason to believe anything you say. For one thing, you left Baltimare with about seven hundred sailors. You didn’t have enough ponies to fill even one of your islands as Gingersnap described. And the strange thing is, in all these years you’ve never taken anypony against their will. How did you build and fill an entire city as big as Canterlot in fifteen years?”

“We had help,” Morning Breeze said.

“From the zebras?” Winter Oat asked.

“Several hundred of them, yes,” he said.

"And do a few hundred zebras turn into tens of thousands of grown-up ponies and griffins if you put them on an island for a few years?"

Hornpipe chuckled as Morning Breeze slowly turned red. He thought he was starting to understand how Winter Oat ended up taking in a whole crew of misfits.

"The Children of the Night helped quite a bit too," Morning Breeze admitted. He felt like a rat in a pantry where the light had just been turned on.

“I see,” Winter Oat said, smiling knowingly. “So now we’re at the heart of the matter. How did you meet them? I suppose you ran into their ships often enough, but they’re not known for supporting random pirates. How did you get their attention?”

“I was raiding their ships,” Morning Breeze said. The corner of his mouth twitched. “Even back then ships from Equestria don’t come anywhere near the Chain Islands. At first we set up on some of the southern islands, but that only solved the problem of food. We could survive well enough, but we couldn’t build much. In the first few years we made long voyages to Equestrian waters to take your ships and supplies, and we also had agreements with zebras. The first time I attacked one of the Children of the Night’s ships was by accident. It was a big, well-built freighter. They had fresh food, the best oats, and an armory unlike any I'd ever seen. And they were so close. We caught them off-guard with superior numbers; that's the only reason we captured them at all. We didn’t know who she belonged to until we got a closer look at their coins back on our island.

“After that my hooves were tied. The pirates wanted more. Even my old crew wanted in. For some reason the trade ships just kept coming. They must have worked out some agreement with Equestria at around that time, and to get to Equestria the Children of the Night had to cross the Chain Islands. Their ships were always well-armed, but we managed to catch stragglers often enough to make it worthwhile.

“Eventually they sent a fleet to deal with us. I told my pirates to surrender, and several captains including Yellow Jack agreed. We were sure they would treat this as their own matter and not get Equestria involved. But the crew mutinied and set us adrift as the fleet approached.

“The pirates were overpowered in a few hours. I was worried they would scuttle the Falconeye then, but in the end they showed us mercy. There were about a hundred pirates left in five ships that surrendered.

“Most of my captains died in battle. Just like they wanted, I suppose. But the Children of the Night heard my case, and offered help to build up the Chain Islands. They repaired our ships, and sent us a few of their old ships to replace the ones we'd lost.”

“And in return?” Winter Oat asked.

“In return I gave them copies of my complete maps of the Chain Islands, and access to all the ports at all times without exception,” Morning Breeze said. "They let me run things on their behalf, and made sure the survivors got respectable work. As long as the ports keep running they let us do whatever we want. Most of the ponies I sprang from Baltimare are retired from pirating altogether. One of them even moved to Kelp Town. She's a seamstress now."

“But the Children of the Night won’t be pleased to find out that you lost their old flagship,” Winter Oat said. “They might be masters of the high seas, but they don’t want a fight with Equestria. You're obviously biding your time, but Yellow Jack wants his fight right now. They’ve had you on a long leash, but this might be the last straw.”

Morning Breeze sighed heavily. He hated that mental image of a skinny dog on a leash. When he did look up, it was with a face he had not worn since that afternoon the Sparrowhawk pulled him and his “loyal” captains out of the water.

“I can help you, you know?” Winter Oat said. “With both of your problems. My crew will help you with Yellow Jack, but you have to come back to Equestria with me. Seriously consider it, at the very least. The Children of the Night are not to be trifled with; you should know that by now. Nopony knows their heart except the ones they claim as their own. They don't keep allies. Eventually they'll make you take a side, and you'll either be destroyed or bound forever by their ways. You won’t be anyone's prisoner if you come with me, and I will make sure that you get an audience with Princess Celestia herself before you land. I can do that for you. Trust me.”

Morning Breeze eyed him suspiciously, his anger simmering below the surface. He wanted to argue, but feared that he would say too much. How could he know anything about the Children of the Night? Certainly he had never met them. But the older stallion seemed completely lucid. There was nothing patronizing about his tone, and no sign of trickery.

“Fine,” he said slowly. "But I want you to consider my side of things as well. I want you to see with your own eyes the things I’ve built in the Chain Islands. Consider all the times those stuffy old ponies far away left me and you and every one of your crew for dead, and how they disowned us when we proved them wrong. Try to tell me how the Children of the Night can be worse than that. And think about what all these ponies- millions of ponies- will be losing if Yellow Jack gets his way. I just might go with you, captain, but I won't set foot in Baltimare again on anypony’s terms but mine.”

He was numb down to his chest when he finished, and he realized too late that he was breathing rather heavily. Standing on his own ship, he had been forced to plead his case with his prisoners. But if Hornpipe had any opinion on the matter, the respect written on his face was not a bit diminished.

“We have a deal then,” Winter Oat said. “Now what is your plan?”