Asha
Grief appeared alone at daybreak, her black sails stark against the pale pink skies of morning.
That's the last, Asha thought happily when her men woke her, and said that she was back with a dozen crates and barrels of several things. They had been crossing the Bay of Crabs when a sudden squall descended on them. They had not been expecting that. When the rains moved on, three ships were found to have vanished. Asha had no way to know whether they had foundered, run aground, or been blown off course. There was nothing else to do but move on or wait for them and risk another storm to come and find them.
Silently she thanked the Drowned god for his graciousness and kindness. For once he had not wanted any offerings for his drowned halls. Neither ships, nor any men had been claimed to the watery halls of the drowned god on their long voyage from the Iron Islands to the other end of the Narrow Sea and now on their way back to their homes.
They had set sail from Pyke with fifteen ships, of the fifty ships that had belonged to Lord Balon Greyjoy and Pyke. The finest fleet to roam these seas which was only dwarfed by the Iron Fleet itself, a fleet belonging not to a single lord but to the Seastone Chair itself, captained and crewed by men from all the islands. The ironborn ships were smaller than the great war dromonds of the Seven Kingdoms, but they were still thrice the size of any common longship, with deep hulls and savage rams, fit to meet the king's own fleets in battle.
They had left the Pyke to trade and buy goods and put their ships to the sea. Asha had sailed the Black Wind down the coast, trading along with her eldest brother Rodrik and twelve other ships from Lord Balon's fleet. They called at Fair Isle and Lannisport and a score of smaller ports before reaching the Arbor, where the peaches were always huge and sweet. From there her brother led them all the way around Dorne to the Narrow Sea, where the waters were warm and rough unlike the cold, unpredictable waves of the Ironman's Bay.
It was almost several moonturns past since they had set sail from Pyke. It had still been summer then, when they left. Rhaegar sat the Iron Throne, Balon brooded on the Seastone Chair, and the Seven Kingdoms were at peace. Asha had enjoyed the journey from the Sunset Sea across the Sea of Dorne to the Narrow Sea all the way. She was made for this, to captain a ship and conquer the seas. Rodrik had led them to the far east, as far as the Jade Sea. They had traded and looted more treasures than anyone could ever hope to have. When the pirates bothered them, they sent their ships down to the watery halls and bloodied the sea with their blood. By the time they turned back from the east, Asha was as happy as she'd ever been. Was that six moons ago, or seven? She could not remember now. Summer was a fading memory, and they had been hounded by the autumn winds as soon as they reached the Narrow Sea.
They had been informed of the war and the end of Summer when the Black Wind swept past the Bleeding Tower into Tyrosh harbor. Asha had heard the story from a passing sailor. "There have been storms," he warned her. "Winter storms are worse, but autumn's are more frequent. That's not all though. Westeros is being torn apart by the wolf and dragon."
"Torn apart by wolf and dragon?" Asha repeated, not quite believing his words. "You are certain. Last I know Rhaegar still held the Iron Throne"
"He still holds it," the sailor said. "Though not for long, I'd say. People talk about a legend. A legend of a great warrior, a born king whose family Rhaegar Targaryen betrayed and killed when he was a child. When the slain king arrived in the halls of the Lord of Death, the dark lord himself had been enraged at how he had been treated. He allowed the Born King to return to the world as a vengeful spirit who would save this world from the evil hands of the dragons. His coming has marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter. Winter comes with the man and he is here with the cold wrath of winter. So it is said in Oldtown, and Dorne, and Lys, and all the other ports where we have called."
The Born King, Asha couldn't think if she has heard of this legend before. A fine story, it was but a story nevertheless. But if there was a civil war ripping apart Westeros and the arrival of winter is true. . . there had to be some sort of truth to the story. The first ten days of sail from Myr were calm enough, as Black Wind crept across the summer sea, never out onto the rough waters. It was cold when the wind was blowing, but there was something bracing about the salt smell in the air. The ironborn took strength from the salt and the courage from the scent of it in the spray of sea water. After that, they had eight days and seven nights of clear, smooth sailing. Then came more storms, worse than before. Was it three storms, or only one, broken up by lulls? Asha never knew, though she never really cared. No one would call Asha Greyjoy a craven. The ironborn did not fear the sea or drowning. She had known that better than anyone else. What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.
In the Stepstones they had taken on grain and game and fresh water, after the long voyage along the rough and stony coast of the Crownlands bleak grey peaks of Dragonstone rose up from the sea. There, Asha and her brother Rodrik had won a new ship to the fleet. The Iron Vengeance had captured a fat merchant ship, the great cog Noble Lady, on her way to Oldtown by way of Gulltown, Duskendale, and King's Landing, with a cargo of salt cod, whale oil, and pickled herring. The food was a welcome addition to their stores. Five other prizes taken in the Blackwater Bay-three cogs, a galleas, and a galley-had brought their numbers to twenty one. Fifteen ships had left Myr as a large proud fleet, with orders to join up again off the southern tip of the Stepstones. Twenty one had now arrived in the Sea of Dorne, to the pirate infested islands. All twenty one ships of their fleet had straggled in, chased by the gale and rain. Autumn was a season rife with storms, but that was not all the dangers the narrow sea had to offer. The pirates still made their dens upon the Stepstones and venture forth to prey on anyone who might come their way.
When the first of the pirates had attacked them in the island of Bloodstone in the Stepstones, Asha's axes had slain a dozen of them. And the Black Wind and Iron Vengeance had destroyed both the ships and sent the pirates flailing in the waters. She was more than elated to have gotten past the storms and the pirates without even losing a ship, not even the merchant cogs and trading galleys they had captured.
The last ship to appear before Grief had been the Maiden's Bane, three days before they were planning to leave the Stepstones. Rodrik had planned to set sail from Bloodstone that morning. And so they took to the waters, in four ranks with five ships in each line. Her brother had put the captive Noble Lady and the other two galleys between the ironborn ships in the first line, to act as a defence should anymore pirates try to bother them. The captive ships lumbered along between Iron Vengeance and Black Wind. In the second line Headless Jeyne and Fear before followed along with the rest of the captive ships, then the others behind them. Beneath a cloudless sky they crossed the waters of the Stepstones. Quentyn Greyjoy made up the centre of their squadron with all the ships behind him under his command, guarding their rear from the deck of Salty Wench. Lord Quellon, White Widow, Lamentation, Woe, Leviathan, Iron Lady, Reaper's Wind, and Warhammer, with six more ships behind, two of them storm-wracked and under tow.
"Storms," Quentyn had muttered when he came to them three days past. He was a distant cousin to them, but a Greyjoy still. "We have seen the worst of it behind us. Red winds out of Valyria that smelled of ash and brimstone, and cold winds that drove us away from the north. We could make it back to the Iron Islands in no time if we set sail right away with all the riches we had won."
Asha had thought the same when they met the last of the storms the day they sighted the Stepstones. She thought that there would be no more storm and wind to come across now that they had put the narrow sea behind them. "The storms are done for now," Rodrik had told their cousin. "There might be more ships and pirates waiting for us here. I will have my fleet whole when I return to my father." They had waited in Bloodstone three days since then and replenished the supplies with the things they had won from the pirates.
A monkey on the mast above howled derision, almost as if it could taste some impending danger in the air. It was a funny, noisy beast. Asha had won it from a man in a gamble in the Port of Volantis. The howls rang in her ears, and it made her stay alert.
All twenty ships of the Greyjoys made across the sea, slowly never breaking ranks. Asha knew that Black Wind was swifter than any other ship in her brother's fleet, but she set it slow to maintain the lines. It would be too much to hope for the full strength of the fleet to get back after a voyage of such length through the autumn winds... yet they had come so close bearing the brunt of the howling gales. It would be too big of a loss to lose a ship to the pirates when they had come past the wrath of the Storm god.
She did not fear those pirates. Yet the knowledge of the civil war in Westeros and the legend of the Born King made her wary. Would that we had the Damphair with us, or some other priest, they would no doubt had made a sacrifice to the Drowned God. Asha had made a sacrifice of her own before sailing for the Stepstones though. All those men she had sent to the watery grave, he was welcome to have them. She thought that it worked, how else could have have crossed the treacherous waters and rugged waves of the narrow sea.
They did not have to wait for long to face the first pirates who would come for them. Asha could not say if they were brave or foolishly mad to come preying after the ironborn. The sea was their realm and these pirates would soon learn the truth of it. The sun was high up in the sky as their fleet swept down on the pirates.
Rook had sighted her in the narrows between the Grey Gallows and the rugged hills to the opposite of the island, from the crow's nest atop the mast of the Black Wind. "Pirates," he shouted down from the crow's nest and just like that her men were ready and the Iron Fleet prepared itself for battle. Asha Greyjoy watched her sail grow larger from the forecastle. Soon she could make out her oars rising and falling, and the long white wake splashing from her sides shining in the sunlight as she rode up to meet them, like a scar across the sea. Not a true longship, Asha realized. But a war galley, and a big one. She was bigger than Black Wind, but her longship was far more swifter and more manoeuvrable with a fine crew who's lived most of their life on the sea. The galley would make a fine prize. It would be a shame to break it down. She shouted to her men to give get around and flank it. They would board this ship and take her. Her brother had thought of the same as she saw the Iron Vengeance take up the other side of the pirate galley.
The captain of the galley had realized his peril by then. He tried to pull back and change course for the west, towards the rocky hills that jutted out of the waters where the numbers of their fleet would be of little hope, perhaps hoping to fight them one by one or run his pursuers onto the jagged rocks along the islands. His galley was too slow, though, and the ironborn had the wind and their longships faster. Rodrik sent Reaper's Wind and Red Tide to cut across the quarry's course, whilst swift Lamentation and agile Fear swept behind her. Even then the pirates did not strike their banners. By the time Black Wind and Iron Vengeance came alongside the galley on its flanks, raking her larboard side and splintering her oars, all three ships were so close to the jagged rocks to the west that for a moment Asha thought to disengage for fear of breaking her ship upon the rocks.
Rodrik kept pushing the ship off of rocks and Asha joined in with him. "Oars off and push right," she shouted and the men wedged against the galley, locking it between both the ironborn ships effectively. With the ships locked on, the ironborn started to board the galley from either side. Asha vaulted over the side of the galley and threw her axe at a pirate even before she could get onto the deck. The ironborn started pouring into the galley and the pirates were overwhelmed quickly.
The sea was blue and green and red the sun blazing down from an empty blue sky as they claimed the galley for themselves. Before they could savour the victory however, another ship came for them. Another prize to add onto the Iron Fleet, Asha thought. She quickly set the Black Wind forth to meet them.
This time it was a Myrish cog with purple stripes running along her hull. The second ship made their victory easier than the first one, but it was a fine victory. The cog was full of treasures, with a cargo of carpets, sweet green wines, and Myrish lace. Her captain owned a Myrish eye that made far-off things look close-two glass lenses in a series of brass tubes, cunningly wrought so that each section slid into the next, until the eye was no longer than a dirk. Rodrik claimed that treasure for himself. The cog he renamed Shrike and gave it to Asha's command. Her crew would be kept for ransom, her brother decreed. They would also be given the option to hand an oar in the longship, a great honour by the ironborn tradition. Most of them were free Myrmen and Lyseni pirates, and all of them seasoned sailors. Such men were worth good coin, especially if they had any friends left in the Stepstones. Sailing out of the Stepstones, the pirates brought them no fresh news of the war in the Seven Kingdoms, but only stale reports of the passing of summer, the legend of the Born King, and others things Asha already knew.
That afternoon they met another gang of pirates in the sea yet again. This time they came against them in a pair of galleys, long and sleek and fast. Rolf the Raider was the first to sight them, and the first to engage them. Woe and Forlorn Hope joined the battle against one of the galleys and finally Asha and Rodrik bore down onto the other. Black Wind and the Iron Vengeance proved to be too much for the pirates that they tried to break off the engagement and flee. Asha set pursuit with Woe and Kraken's Kiss. The pursuit didn't last for long, as they boarded both the galleys and took them, after brief but brutal fights. They had been running empty, Asha learned, after claiming the ships. They were desperate enough to attack the ironborn for some supplies and foods and weapons to sustain for the upcoming winter. They had known something more about the battle in the Seven Kingdoms. Winterfell has fallen they said and that Andrew Stark has returned from the dead. Rodrik had told that as a lie and that dead men don't return from the halls of the Drowned God. What is dead may never die again, Asha thought, but rises again, harder and stronger.
Rodrik had cut the heads of the pirates and shoved them off the ship to send them to the Drowned God. Afterward he put their crews to the oars to row the ships they had taken.
When the cliffs around the Stepstones appeared off their larboard bows, they slowed their pace to a crawl. There her brother had a choice to make: should they risk the straits, or take the fleet around the island altogether? There might be still some pirates who might dare to attack them. They don't want to get trapped in the channel between the island and the rocks, while a pirate fleet attacks them from the front and rear. But sailing around the Stepstones would cost them precious days. They discussed about it for the best part of the afternoon. Finally they decided to face the pirates rather than get caught in another storm.
They did not face any opposition for the rest of their journey and by the time the sun was low in the western sky, painting the horizon in a bloody bruise, they had safely docked by the Torturer's Deep, the biggest island on the Stepstones. Asha had agreed with her brother's decision to spend the night there and not risk be in the open where the storms could be devastating.
The wharfs were oddly quiet when Asha got there. She spied another pirates and smugglers everywhere, walking side by side through the fish market and stalls. Everyone looked at them as their fleet docked at the broken docks. The sight of twenty strong fleet entering the old and seemingly strange group of islands. Half the stalls were empty, and it seemed to her that there were fewer ships at dock than she remembered from the time they had stopped here before crossing the narrow sea. Out on the narrow straits, three of longships moved in formation, their hulls painted with half a dozen colours splitting the water as their oars rose and fell. Asha watched them for a bit, wondering if they should worry about them but then decided against it as the three ships began to make their way across the straits and stopped on the far end of the docks.
She saw some pirates huddled together on the third pier, in black woolen cloaks so worn and faded that they looked gray. Behind them, a sleek two-banked galley rocked at her moorings. The Sea Witch, Asha could read the name painted on the hull. The words were written in Valyrian glyphs, thanks to her travels across the world she had learned that on her voyages across the seas.
That night they stayed in an inn amidst the pirates, drinking and singing and playing dice. Two of the guardsmen were dicing together while the third watched them closely, in his hand a leather pouch heavy with coins. Gambling could be seen everywhere in the common room of the inn. The pirates barely paid them any mind as the ironborn entered the inn. They spared a mere moment to look at the new arrivals and went back to do whatever they were doing right away.
Once Asha might have raided these pirates and razed these islands off of the infestations. Once. When we still kept the Old Way, lived by the axe instead of the pick, taking what we would, be it wealth, lands, or glory. In those days, the ironborn did not work mines; that was labor for the captives brought back from the hostings, and so too the sorry business of farming and tending goats and sheep. War was an ironman and ironwoman's proper trade. The Drowned God had made them to reave and rape, to carve out kingdoms and write their names in fire and blood and song.
But Aegon the Dragon had destroyed the Old Way when he burned Black Harren, and gave Harren's kingdom back to the rivermen and the Tullys, and reduced the Iron Islands to an insignificant backwater of a much greater realm. Yet the old red tales were still told around driftwood fires and smoky hearths all across the islands, even behind the high stone halls of Pyke. Asha's father numbered among his titles the style of Lord Reaper, and the Greyjoy words boasted that We Do Not Sow.
It had been her father's long lasting dream to bring back the Old Way once more in the lives of the ironborn. Maybe that dream could not be so far from now, she thought. The Targaryens were at their weakest now without their dragons, and the realm that Aegon the Conqueror had forged was smashed and sundered. This is the season, Asha thought and she knew her father would have seen that as well.
Could Lord Balon have anticipated the war and called the Greyjoy banners already? She wondered. Lord Balon was no fool. He might very well have known that this is his time to strike and lead the ironborn back to their old ways. It wouldn't surprise her should he have known about the war and acted accordingly.
She asked about it to her brother as they supped on a thick stew with crab meat and shrimps floating on the top. The thought did not please Rodrik however. "The Old Way is long done, and lost, Asha," her brother said. "Grandfather knew it better than anyone else and no one could call Lord Quellon a fool for it. There is no future for us by hosting our longships against the Seven Kingdoms."
It might be only a talk of caution, Asha thought. Her brother was just being cautious. Old men were cautious by nature as well. Does that mean their father might stay away from this war? Her father was old now, and so too her uncle Victarion, who commanded the Iron Fleet. Their uncle Euron was a different song, to be sure, but Asha did not think Lord Balon would call his brother back from his exile yet. It's all for the good, Asha told herself. She greatly mistrusted the Crow's Eye.
"If Eddard Stark could win his war against the Targaryens, surely we can win against the dragons as well," Asha told him, confidently.
Her brother laughed. "We are krakens, sister," Rodrik said, "not wolves. Krakens fight in the sea, not in the land. We won't be able to stop them when they land their men on our islands."
"But the men from the mainlands are squabbling among themselves," she insisted. "Rhaegar fights with Stark's son and the wolf and dragon are at each other's throat."
"If it is Andrew Stark he is fighting," Rodrik said in a tone which meant the end to the speculation and the discussion.
They spent the night there in the Stepstones with the pirates and set sail at first light. The sea was rough and choppy, that morning, tall and wild waves breaking upon the rocks. Black Wind rode the flood tide, her sail cracking and snapping at each shift of wind. Iron Vengeance and Lamentation sailed beside her, no more than twenty yards between their hulls. They kept a line that morning as well. Her brother had put the ships that had taken damages in the skirmishes last day in the back while the swift, strong ones took their place in the front lines.
The Stepstones vanished first by the time the sails took the wind, the islands and the wooden settlements grew smaller and smaller in the distance, until it finally disappeared. They had barely left the Stepstones behind them when the ear spiltting sound of a horn chased them above the waters. Pirates, Asha thought at once. They had shown their nature, the backstabbing lot. The bastards must have known they could not stand in a fight against the ironborn and now was content to take them in the rear.
They must have sorely mistaken if they had thought we would go down without a fight. "Out oars," Asha shouted. "Hard turn to port side." Her brother was getting the others ships around to meet the pirates. Rodrik turned half his ships to starboard side, while the other half followed her. They would swing around and smash them from the flanks Asha thought.
Then the horn blew again. So hard was the sound that it cracked it sent the waters flowing towards them and rocked the ships. Asha had to close her ears lest leave her ears to split from the horrific sound. What kind of hell horn could give rise to waves? Asha wrapped her fingers around her axes. "Form line," she shouted and her squadron followed. She gave a nod to her brother in the prow of Iron Vengeance and they both dove straight for their foes.
The galley that led them seemed so small from a distance now grew gigantic. So big it was that Asha had never seen any ironborn longship as big as this one. Not since her uncle had set sail from Pyke to spend his days in exile. She knew at once she saw it: a single-masted galley, lean and low, with a dark red hull. Her sails, fully unfurled, were black as a starless sky. Even after all these years Silence looked both cruel and fast to her. On her prow was a black iron maiden with one arm outstretched. Her waist was slender, her breasts high and proud, her legs long and shapely. A windblown mane of black iron hair streamed from her head, and her eyes were mother-of-pearl, but she had no mouth.
He has returned but why? She never knew. Rodrik had seen it as well. "Slow cruise," he commanded, perhaps not seeing the Crow's Eye as the foe. But their uncle never slowed even as they were going to clash. Silence swept forward, her blade cutting through the choppy blue waters. Lamentation was the first ship to meet it. Her uncle's Silence raked her side so hard that half the boarding party lost their feet. Oars snapped and splintered, and there was no need to even board. The ship was cleaved in half.
"No," Asha shouted. "Port side. Full speed." She turned to see Euron and his pirate friends pushing back Rodrik. "Full speed, full speed." Rodrik can't fight Silence alone. A striped galley came to block her path, but Black Wind hit her hull so hard the she flipped the galley on her side.
They knocked the longship away which had locked onto the Iron Vengeance. Side by side they stood facing against Silence. The Crow's Eye was no where to be seen. Asha saw her brother fighting a man whose skin black as ebony. She vaulted over the gunwale, landing on the deck of Iron Vengeance. Her crew followed her on to the deck of her brother's ship.
"Off to my brother," she commanded, even as Euron Greyjoy's men were coming forth to meet them. She pulled a short-hafted throwing axe from the belt across her shoulder. "The worst of our journey is behind us, my brothers. We survived the storms of the Storm God and now comes my nuncle with the storm of spears, the sword, the axe. This is our last test. Form up. We're going home."
From a hundred throats came roars of "Home!" and "Asha!"
The first man to come at Asha Greyjoy died at her feet with her throwing axe between his eyes. That gave her respite enough to slip her shield onto her arm. "To me!" she called, but whether she was calling to her own men or the foes even Asha could not have said for certain. A hairy man with an axe loomed up before her, swinging with both hands all in total quietness. Asha raised her shield to block his blow, then shoved in close to gut him with her dirk. She spun and found another of Euron's creatures behind her, and slashed him across the brow beneath his helm. His own cut caught her below the breast, but her mail turned it, so she drove the point of her dirk into his throat and left him to drown in his own blood. A hand seized her hair, but he could not get a good enough grip to wrench her head back. Asha slammed her boot heel down onto his instep and wrenched loose. By the time she turned the man was down and dying. Rodrik stood over him, with his longsword dripping and sunlight shining in his eyes.
Her brother lifted her onto her feet and then she was right back at the fighting, laughing wildly. Her laughter drew more of her uncle's creatures to her, and she killed them too. She pushed her dirk into a Summer Islander's naked chest. Asha felt iron scraping against bone as her point slid over a rib. Then the Summer Islander shuddered and died.
Then, she stood back-to-back with her brother, listening to the grunts and curses all around them, but the creatures of her uncle crawled over the decks of their ships in total silence. Another mute drove at her with a spear long enough to punch through her belly and Rodrik's back as well, pinning them together as they died, but she killed him before that. The enemies kept coming and coming.
Somewhere in the ebb and flow of battle, Asha lost her brother, lost Qarl, lost all of her crew. Her dirk was gone as well, and all her throwing axes; instead she had a sword in hand, a short sword with a broad thick blade, almost like a butcher's cleaver. For her life she could not have said where she had gotten it. Her arm ached, her mouth tasted of blood, her legs were trembling. Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder. Asha spun her hand ready to bury the short sword in her assailant's face. She stopped it halfway when she saw Rodrik behind her, black hair matted with sweat and blood covered his face. Streaks of blood dotted his face.
"Asha." He shook her so hard she dropped the sword from her hand. "Asha. Go. Go."
"No," she said shaking her head. "No. I won't leave you."
"You must." Rodrik gave her another shake. "You must go and tell them."
"Tell who? What?" Asha asked looking around at the chaos.
"Father or anyone," Rodrik said cutting down at the hand of a black man in a feathered cloak who swung a spiked club at them and then opened his skull. "Euron. They should know. Go now."
"Come with me," Asha said, grabbing onto his hand.
"I will keep them busy here, sister," Rodrik said and shoved her over the railing of his ship.
She landed onto the deck of Black Wind with a thud. Asha saw her brother smile before going off to fight some man. As the sea crashed around her and the deck rose and fell beneath, she laid on the deck of her ship where she had landed. She saw Dagon's Feast and Headless Jeyne slam together so violently that both exploded into splinters. My uncle's work, she thought. Others were either burning or breaking. Asha saw the Silence cleave into White Widow, breaking it's mast and splintered her oars. The sight of the longship breaking in two was the last thing she saw and then the ships vanished, her brother with them.