Chapter 326: Tulleus, Give Me Back My Fleet
Lynn lowered the hand that had just cast the Axii Sign, breathing a sigh of relief. It was a good thing he hadn't given in to greed and kept that anti-magic medallion; if he had, things would have been much messier.
"Put the tray down and leave. Forget everything you just saw."
The guard, entranced by the Axii Sign, obeyed like a puppet on a string.
A normal Axii Sign wouldn't have been able to achieve this, of course, but Lynn's was far from normal. His Signs were already at the Master level, and with the Magic Burst feat and the benefits of the Griffin meditation method, his Signs were no longer mere tricks. They had reached a level on par with a sorcerer's true spell, the Glamer, and that was why he had achieved such an effect.
Once the guard had left, Lynn wasted no time. He quickly stripped the elegant uniform from Count Tulleus's corpse, tossed the body out the window, and put on the uniform himself. Finally, he used the Amulet of Deception to take on the count's appearance.
There were quite a few bloodstains on the shoulders of the uniform. Lynn poured the water from the teacup on the table over them, but it was no use. It didn't matter. He would just make up some excuse later. After all, he was now the commander of the entire squadron. Who would dare question him? They wouldn't want to get discharged for stepping on the wrong part of the deck once they got back to port, would they?
Lynn touched the Amulet of Deception hanging around his neck, thinking that Fringilla had truly given him a great gift. Most magical items became useless in the presence of anti-magic metal, but there were a few rare exceptions.
The Amulet of Deception was one of them.
What came next was simple. As "Count Tulleus," Lynn issued a command to the entire squadron: all ships were to turn around and return to the port town of Ashton in the Duchy of Curved Coast.
At the town magistrate's mansion in Ashton, Lynn used Axii to control the magistrate and made him issue a command allowing the Nilfgaardians to "requisition" a large quantity of supplies from the town, including but not limited to food, herbs, tools, weapons, armor, iron ore, and more.
With official permission, the Nilfgaardians didn't hold back. Most of the soldiers had privately agreed that their raid on Skellige had been a failure. If they didn't want to go home empty-handed, they would just "shoplift" here. Still, since the Duchy of Curved Coast was technically an ally, the Nilfgaardians left some things for the locals, not taking everything.
By the time the magistrate woke up from the effects of the Sign, horrified by the command he had signed and the chaos he had caused, the Nilfgaardian squadron was long gone.
A few days later.
A guardsman came to the captain's cabin.
"My lord, we've arrived."
Lynn nodded and followed the guardsman out onto the deck. He squinted as he looked into the distance and saw an uninhabited harbor a few hundred meters away. But Lynn didn't rush to give any orders. Instead, he looked from side to side, as if searching for something.
Finally, at a conspicuous high point in the harbor, he spotted a boulder. On it, someone had painstakingly carved the shape of a snarling bear's head with a sword.
With that, Lynn felt confident.
"Order everyone to disembark."
"Yes, my lord!"
Though he was puzzled by "Count Tulleus's" order, the guardsman still relayed the command to the other ships. Just like before, the ships dispatched longboats to ferry the soldiers back and forth between the harbor and the ships anchored in the sea. This continued until all the soldiers had been transported to the harbor.
"It's about time they showed up," Lynn muttered to himself.
"My lord?" the guardsman asked.
Just as the words left his mouth, a deafening war cry erupted from the direction of the harbor. Countless Skelligan warriors rushed out from unseen places, completely surrounding the Nilfgaardian troops who had just landed and hadn't even had time to form a proper battle line.
It wasn't just on land. From a blind spot on the side of the harbor, over a dozen Skelligan longships suddenly appeared.
"My lord, we've been ambushed!" The faces of the guardsmen gathered around Lynn went pale. Even the most steadfast among them were now trembling.
The only people left on the flagship were a handful of personal guards; the rest of the squadron's soldiers had all gone ashore. While the Skelligan longships weren't numerous, they had a major advantage: they were fast and agile. There were only a few men left to control their flagship, and there was no way they could escape. And the Nilfgaardian soldiers who had gone ashore couldn't possibly get back to their ships on the longboats under the longships' interception.
No matter whether the Skelligan longships attacked the flagship or ambushed their troops on land, their fate was sealed.
But the guardsman didn't have to worry about that for long. In the next instant, he found himself flying through the air. His headless body remained standing on the deck.
Killing a few unprepared guardsmen was no trouble at all. At such close range, they didn't even have a chance to react before Lynn had cut them all down.
Afterward, Lynn removed the Amulet of Deception, reverted to his true appearance, and changed back into his Wolf School witcher gear.
Seeing that all was lost, the Nilfgaardians ultimately chose to lay down their arms and surrender instead of making a futile last stand.
After this battle, the Skelligan forces reaped a bountiful harvest: thousands of intact Nilfgaardian weapons and sets of armor, the various supplies "requisitioned" from the Duchy of Curved Coast, and an entire Nilfgaardian squadron of ships. While these Nilfgaardian warships were different from the Skelligan longships and didn't fit their combat style, making them useless to the islanders, they could be sold to Temeria or Redania. Both of those kingdoms were currently focused on building a powerful navy.
Count Torgill, Crach, and "Madman" Lugos were all beaming. They had gained far more from this venture than from any of their previous raids. They didn't order the captured Nilfgaardians to be killed. Instead, they took Lynn's suggestion and used them as laborers, their work serving as the price for their lives.
Lynn didn't know if these Nilfgaardians would ever have a chance to return to their homeland. But as invaders, they couldn't expect much more than just staying alive.
If the Nilfgaardians had won, they would have let the prisoners live, too, but their fate would have been to be handed over to the Merchant's Guild and worked as slaves until they died.
(End of Chapter)
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