"What is this?"
The leading mercenary quickly picked up the exquisite whip and asked, feigning curiosity, "Who is so bored as to make a whip so flashy and impractical?"
But the Pentos spice merchants had their hearts in their throats, and the other spice merchants glared at their Fat Man companion.
"Rogge, I've heard about this!"
The skinny mercenary, held in his grasp, spoke ingratiatingly, "It is said that in the Free Trade Cities, slave owners who keep slaves only use this kind of whip to control them. I've also heard that those slaves only recognize the whip, not the person..."
The skinny man's words immediately made the faces of the Pentos spice merchants turn ashen, and they felt that things were developing in an unexpected direction.
"Is there such a saying?"
The mercenary leader said with a playful smirk, and incidentally let go of the skinny mercenary in his hand.
"Then I'll have to give it a good try!"
The mercenary leader raised the exquisite whip in his hand and said loudly, "Everyone listen, immediately tie up those spice merchants!"
The Unsullied and slave soldiers who had been guarding the spice merchants immediately turned their weapons on them.
"Sir, sir, this is no laughing matter!"
"These slaves have no minds whatsoever. Your joke will make them really stab their weapons into our bodies."
Several Pentos spice merchants scrambled to the mercenary leader's feet, pleading repeatedly.
But at this moment, the mercenary leader no longer had a trace of respectful expression on his face. With a cold face, he kicked the spice merchant closest to him flying.
"Don't try to get close to me, old man! I'm here today to deal with you Pentos intelligence peddlers!"
"Tie them all up!"
"You... you can't do this! We have a good relationship with the Hightower Family. Aren't you afraid of offending the entire Pentos by doing this?"
The mercenary leader, Rogge, directly mocked, "Do you think our Hightower Family, which doesn't even care about the Targaryen Family's nine-headed dragons, would care about a small Pentos?"
The faces of several Pentos spice merchants immediately turned even more ashen and pale.
"You... you Hightower Family are truly insane! The Targaryen Family now possesses over a dozen adult dragons. No force in this world can withstand their direct assault."
"You are truly too foolish. You are about to awaken the Dragon's Rage. The peace of the East and West continents for many years may be completely buried because of you. Your Hightower Family will become the sinners of history!"
However, Rogge was too lazy to continue listening to their boring lectures.
"Gag their mouths tightly, strip them of their clothes and ornaments, and then put them in dog cages. Take all the women, leave twenty slave soldiers to guard the ships, and the rest follow me."
After disembarking, more than a dozen mercenaries carried the caged spice merchants and escorted a dozen beautiful women towards a secluded inn not far from the dock.
Rogge, along with his two hundred mercenaries, 30 newly recruited Unsullied, and 80 slave soldiers, went to search the other ships.
They used the same method to precisely control the ships from Qarth, the Summer Isles, and other Free Trade Cities one after another.
Because the armed forces of merchants from these places were almost all Unsullied or slave soldiers. As long as you seized their slave whips, you could easily take over their armed forces.
Of course, some big merchants also had some powerful gladiators and mercenaries. When taking down these merchant ships, Rogge and his men also suffered considerable casualties.
However, the harder the bone to chew, the greater the reward. After they paid the price of dozens of mercenaries and slave soldiers to capture a Dothraki gladiator alive, they also seized a Valyrian steel Dothraki scimitar from him.
It was this sharp scimitar that allowed this tall and fierce Dothraki gladiator to inflict such heavy casualties on Rogge and his men.
When Rogge and his men were dealing with several swan ships from the Summer Isles, they also encountered tenacious resistance.
These black people from the Summer Isles were not only dark and strong, but also had excellent archery skills, especially their excellent goldenheart wood longbows. Rogge and his men only completely subdued them after suffering nearly a hundred casualties.
Rogge's team had grown to over 500 people in less than an hour, so even if the personal guards of those merchants were strong, they could hardly resist their offensive.
And as more and more ships were controlled by them, their team also grew like a snowball.
All the subdued ships were gathered together by the shipwrights under Rogge's command, and their owners were taken to that mysterious inn in batches.
The first to be brought to the inn were the few spice merchants from Pentos. After the mercenaries sent them to the inn entrance, they returned to the dock.
Immediately, some masked men in black appeared in the inn and led all the spice merchants and women into the inn.
The women were taken away separately, and these spice merchants were pulled out of the dog cages and then led into a room burning with an unknown incense.
In the center of the room sat a woman with a black veil covering her face, and on either side were fully armed masked warriors.
"Time is tight tonight. I don't have time to waste words with you. You just need to tell me if you want to live or die?"
"If you want to live, sign and seal this IOU with your chop! Otherwise..."
As soon as the masked woman's voice fell, the warriors next to her led out two mastiffs as big as calves, snarling and about to pounce on the Pentos spice merchants.
"We'll sign, we'll sign!"
The spice merchants, of course, knew that they were now fish on someone's chopping block, and where did they have any choice?
So they quickly took out a pen and were about to sign the IOU.
"What? Five million gold dragons? And the annual interest is one million gold dragons?!"
The fat spice merchant was stunned when he saw the words on the IOU.
"We are just ordinary spice merchants. Where do we have so much property? Even if we sell all our family's assets, we can't raise that much!"
The masked woman said unhurriedly, "You just sign this IOU. Unless there are special circumstances, we will not pursue the debt from you. And aren't you Pentos people most skilled at selling information? At that time, as long as you can provide us with valuable information, it can naturally be used to offset the debt."
"You don't have to try to prevaricate me with words. I already know your background clearly. Paying 1 million gold dragons annually is not a difficult task for you!"
"The world only knows that the Iron Bank cannot be defaulted on, but you must also know that anything our Hightower Family sets its sights on, you must give!"
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