You Don't Want the Crown

The Story of the Hound - 3

We don't reach the arctic ice until I'm well past my tenth year of life. I've been on the sea for four and half years. Several ports, and no sights of monsters later. I catch sight of my reflection in the water or the captain's looking glass, and the Hound is looking more and more a man and less and less a quiet prince. My skin is perpetually bronze from the sun reflecting off the waves, and my eyes though flinty green as ever have hard lines around them. My hair is its usual mix of braided and tugged back, uncut since I left home. I'm nearly fitting into the men's clothes and stick to a white shirt if I wear a shirt, and heavy pants. I've gone through three sets of boots and need a new one before we get to each port. Like most of the men, I have a solid gold hoop in my right ear. If I die and wash ashore, that will pay for my burial. A fine burial, for a fine lost prince. I find that amusing and none of them know why, the general likelihood I'll have a paupers funeral somewhere where no one knows my true name.
My appearance and my own manner keep me sane, I study myself for traces of the boy I was. I whisper my family's names. As I go about my chores I plan how I'll tell Lonan of my adventures at sea. I think of how I'll pick my mother flowers from the fields. And I want to show Bran a cutlass and fence him with it and show him the tricks the captain has taught me. And I'll do all those things for I'm going home.
I'm going home.
I sing the old songs that Ita taught me, in the old tongue. The men leave me to it, and I do not care they hear me. For it is all I have that binds me to my past as my present becomes more and more intoxicating.
For in another year I'll have spent just as much of my life at sea, as I did in my homeland. So how can I call it my homeland now when I've been away more than at home?
And how can I leave the sea? I cannot sleep on shore, the rocking of the ocean soothes me. The waves sing me to sleep. The gulls and the dolphins are my favorite guests. And this ship has steadily become my home even as I long for a place I can barely remember.
For try as I might, I squeeze my eyes shut, and I try to draw into my mind, what the path is through the castle. Where was my room? How to get their from the door? What was the road into town like?
I cannot see it anymore.
And worse. So much worse. What was my mother's face? Would I know it after all this time? She'll have changed too. Does she want me home still or has she done mourning me? She surely doesn't know where I am? Does Lonan still live, he got hurt in jousts I know? And what of Bran? Did he live that long after my father's death?
"What song are you singing?" Rush asks, as he watches me on the rigging.
"It's the Ballad of the True Knight and the False King," I say, as I climb down.
"It's getting colder," he holds out a coat, "Here."
"I didn't feel it," I admit, putting on the coat anyway. I stare out over the horizon, "Is that the ice?"
"The start of it, we'll cut along the edge, we can't cut through it," he explains.
"It's beautiful," I say, going to the edge of the ship.
"Aye, till you get up close."
It is beautiful up close. I've long since accepted things that may kill me will also be beautiful. That's just a part of being them. I love a sword for its sharpness not in spite of it. Bran taught me that. I'd always take his knives and I never cut myself. My father would get so cross, but Bran wouldn't even he'd taught me how to be careful even if he didn't want me taking them.
The ice is massive, thick white sheets of absolutely nothing just jutting out into the land.
"It's beautiful as Ulster," I breath, and I hear my own native accent return ever so slightly.  It's been worn away over the years.
"Hound, get to the middle of the ship, one of the men saw something we'll not have you washed overboard," Captain Jameson says, tugging on my hair. 
"What about the ship we spotted behind us?" I tip my head. A ship painted black. Through the spy glass I saw a black flag with a white skull wearing a crown. Pirates the men said.
"It's probably just another fishing fleet," the Captain says,  "Go, get the harpoons you can help the men. But this time you will just watch."
I obey, hurrying to help the men start dragging the harpoons to have at ready. I don't understand their urgency.
Then I see it.
So dark that I can barely distinguish it from the water. Until I realize that the creature is just beneath our ship, twice its size.
"AFT SIDE!!"
I look just in time to see a huge, spiked, scaly black tale, slick as the bottom of the ocean, dark as night, rise into the air on the other side of the ship. The men run with nets and harpoons, jumping into the boats. I'm sorely tempted to leave my spot and go to look, but I don't dare disobey.
The ship rocks with the force of the waves, and the harpoons bury themselves in the monster as the men work to net and trap it, launching harpoon after harpoon.
The huge tail thrashes, and the ship lurches, I fall to my knees on the deck, for the first time thrown down by the waves.
Then the great tail rises again, blotting out the sun above us, before coming crashing down on the ship.
And splitting it in two.
And I'm plunged into the icy cold water. The monster is writhing, caught in the net, as it decimates our ships. I don't really know how this entire hunt was intended to work, but I'm aware we weren't all supposed to die.
A wave from the scuffle crashes over my head. The monster is caught in the net and not dead. Suddenly I feel bad. I remember my father, taking me hunting not two weeks before we lost our lives, he showed me a snap we had set up and I asked how long the rabbit had struggled. He said it didn't matter; it was just animal.
It does matter though.
The thing is suffering. I know we were going to kill it but it's not dead moreover I'll never get onto a raft or anything with the thing thrashing like this. Granted, I'm still probably going to die.
I dive down into the water, kicking as hard as I can towards the creature's head. It's like a lizard, with a fish tail, and two front arms and a big broad head. I draw my largest knife from my boot, I know it can cut this rope. But my hands are so cold. I don't want to drop the knife.
"Shh," I whisper, putting a hand on the monster as I go to work on the ropes.
The creature groans. I start to sing softly, my teeth chattering, and somehow my voice quiets it, the big yellow eye blinks at me as though somewhere in its animal brain it realizes I'm trying to help.
Thankfully, a few cuts are enough. It works its lizard hand into the net and tears the rest.
Then it looks at me one more time, before diving into the depths.
I don't want to let go of my knife, but now my hands are freezing and all I can see is cold water, everywhere. Cold dark water. And I can't feel anything I'm so cold.
I struggle to stay afloat as I rapidly lose consciousness, forcing myself to tread water. There's a bit of wood it's not enough to keep me out of the water but it's something. It's not like a door that even two people could fit on, it's just a board. I hug it and it keeps me a float. I'm shaking I'm so cold and I'm in pain, cold biting through my body. I know if I pass out I'll probably die. But I also can't keep myself up.