Dragons of Ice and Fire

by Diablo Snowblind

There are things hidden in the far north, secrets buried under ice. Jon Snow faces the white walkers early, and stumbles upon a power that could change the world. It forges a new path for him and everyone around him - and a new journey south, a journey as a dragon. The world begins to change - with steel and snow, fire and blood…

31. The Drowning of Oldtown

The Drowning of Oldtown

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The Sphinx

He watched the sun fading over the western edge of the horizon, a dusk like twenty different shades of blood scattering across the sea. And it was from beneath that crimson sun that the invaders came, grim and black and beyond counting.

For hours now, from this balcony half as high as the Wall, Alleras had watched the faint approach of ships coming from over the sea. He had followed their approach as they gathered, congregating like a murder of hundreds of iron crows. At first, they had only been a faint black shadow in the farthest distance, but then they approached and began creeping up the mouth of the bay of Whispering Sound, and it was only now that Alleras could truly see the scale, the magnitude of Euron Crow's Eye's march to war.

There were hundreds of sails, flown by most every variety of ship Alleras could name – the longships, great longships, and small raiding knarrs of the Iron Fleet, then their many captures; cogs, skiffs, merchanters, carracks and trade galleys. There were whalers and fishing gawlers and windclippers, and even captured river vessels, barges and ferries and tows. What were river boats even doing here? Why? Bafflingly, he even saw the barely-seaworthy hulk of a half-completed Lannister galleas, and a few very out of place Redwyne summer pleasure barges. It was as if the Ironborn had brought to war every damn last floatable thing that could be put to sea, not just their own fleet but whatever could be captured from across the rivers and seas of the Reach and the Arbor.

So many reavers, Alleras thought. There must be tens of thousands. How could they have so many?

To that question, there were no easy answers to be had - the Crow's Eye must have mustered far more reavers than anyone could have expected. And that was not Alleras' only worry. He found himself staring at the distant skies, wondering at the chill wind. The day had otherwise been so clear, bright and blue and cloudless. And yet there was now a solid bar of grey cloudbanks farther off to sea, beyond the ironborn's ships, and Alleras could swear the clouds had been growing darker and heavier with every passing hour - as though the promise of a storm had been born out of nothing in mere hours. Strange weather, even for late autumn so close to winter's turning.

But it was a coincidence that favored the Reach's defenders, not the ironborn, any man could see it. If the Crow's Eye attacked, he would not be able to retreat against a headwind.

Why in the name of the gods are the ironborn attacking now? Alleras couldn't understand it. The weather turns against them. His eyes flickered to the shores of the bay of Whispering Sound, and the lands and seas beyond. These were the places where the battle would be fought, offshore by a mile or so from Oldtown and the city's harbours and the mouth of the Honeywine River. It was all garrisoned, bristling with defenses. And all else turns against him too. He sails into the most obvious trap in the history of traps. Why?

For months now, Oldtown had been terrified by tales of over twenty thousand ironborn, a tide of reavers who defied all the lords of the Reach and even dared aim for Oldtown itself. Back then, some lords who had been aware of prewar estimates of the Iron Isles' strength said that there might have even been thirty thousand reavers or more.

However, a million eyes had seen Victarion Greyjoy and the Iron Fleet peacefully passing through the Redwyne Straights, apparently sailing for Essos – no doubt there had been some internal fracture in the ironborn's leadership after their kingsmoot - and Archmaester Benedict had afterwards assured them that Euron Greyjoy had not just less than twenty thousand reavers, but far less, in fact - somewhere between five and ten thousand. However, the rumours still swirled, reality defied predictions, and now, seeing the many hundreds of ships on the horizon, Alleras just couldn't see how Archmaester Benedict's predictions could possibly be accurate.

He doesn't even have the Iron fleet. How does he have these numbers? The Crow's Eye must have mustered every last man of fighting age in all the Iron Islands to sail forth with such a fleet. Just by Alleras' gut estimate, if all those ships were fully manned, the Crow's Eye might be sailing with forty thousand reavers, if not more.

No doubt the lords of the Reach and the Archmaesters were readjusting their battle plans even now, but Alleras was not privy to such debates. Instead he found himself wondering, watching, a distant observer in a land that was not his own, satiating nothing but his own curiosity.

He stood on the lowest terrace of the Hightower, but even from here, he stood over four hundred feet above sea level. The lantern itself was nearly nine hundred feet high. The cityfolk of Oldtown oft said that you could see the Wall from the top, but Alleras knew that was untrue. Within his first month at the Citadel, he had risked sneaking up to the very top of the tower to prove it false. Alleras gripped the stone railing of the terrace, taking comfort in the feel of the old masonwork.

The Hightower was fascinating to Alleras. One of the tallest structures ever built by man, most certainly the tallest in Westeros. From below it looked like a pillar of the earth, an immensity of solid white stone that pierced the sky, but when you walked through the gloomy halls within you could see the mismatched architectures, the patchwork columns and clashing stoneworks, the architectures of many different civilisations layered on one another like some strange onion. Simple from without, complex within.

The Hightower's foundations were unadorned oily black stone, and yet the base on top of that black stone was built of solid granite, inscribed with the runes and sigils of the First Men. The medial levels up to the first terrace bore the gargoyles and sphinxes of distinctly ancient Andal design, with elements of Rhoynar and Valyrian design slipping through now and then, while the upper reaches were all of modern make. A thousand different architects had contributed to the same structure over the millennia, and it had all started from humble beginnings. Alleras had been taught that in the first days of the Kings of the High Tower, it had been mostly a timber tower rising some fifty feet above the original fortress of black stone. But then time had marched on, each generation bringing their new gods and kings and builders, and slowly, piece by piece, century by century, the Hightower rose towards the sky.

Alleras and Archmaester Perestan, who held the copper ring, mask and rod showing mastery over history, had shared a few fascinating conversations concerning the Hightower and its mysteries. However, Alleras had not expected to have the chance to investigate those mysteries for himself; acolytes of the Citadel were rarely allowed into the Hightower in ordinary times, since it was the seat of House Hightower after all. However, the war had changed things, and Alleras had jumped at the chance to assist in the war efforts taking place here. He did not regret it at all. He was a curious person, and he couldn't help but be amazed by the ancient stonework beneath his fingers, the mysteries it held.

However, in the face of the ironborn armada mustering in the Bay of Whispering Sound, Alleras' usual fascination with the tower felt faded tonight, a child's fancy.

For tonight would be the first battle that the Hightower had seen in over a hundred years.

In truth, the Hightower made a poor war castle. The Battle Isle was high above the bay, on its own island. The Battle Isle had sharp cliffs and couldn't be sieged, true, but it meant the Hightower stood removed from the city. It was too big to be easily manned, and many of the halls and rooms suited for war had been left defunct. Some of the lower levels had to be reinforced and filled up altogether as the stone started to creep. The seat of House Hightower was so isolated and large that the community within the walls was essentially a small town, and entry was usually heavily restricted except for kin and trusted allies to the Hightowers. The Lord of the Tower, Leyton Hightower, had not left the upper floors in decades, and it was often said that many of House Hightower lived and died without even leaving the tower's upper reaches. The Hightower was too large and labyrinthine to be easily defended in battle.

A poor castle it may be, Alleras thought, but as a landmark it is unmatched. The Reach rallies to the Hightower in times of war, nearly as much as Highgarden.

Bells from the city were echoing over the water, and horns were sounding from the ships of Tyrell and Hightower and other forces taking formation, Practising their soundings and horn-calls in advance of the battle. Men were aiming bows and crossbows at targets, knights were drilling on the Battle Isle's outer yards.

The fleets were set to defend the harbour all the way up to the rocks of the Battle Isle, where the Honeywine widened into the Bay of Whispering Sound. Beyond that, even the Blood Isle had been heavily garrisoned by Garlan Tyrell's forces, turned into a porcupine meant to dissuade any landings, to distract and punish any ironborn attempt to create a beachhead in the outer bay.

Alleras' eyes flickered east and north towards his second home, towards the Citadel and the soft, gushing water of the Honeywine, drifting through the city in lazy currents before reaching the bay. The Bay of Whispering Sound was a deep harbour, cleaved in twain by the slow, gentle river, its length dotted with small isles and crossed by many high bridges, under which pleasure yachts and river merchants oft sailed. It was just upstream from where the river met the sound that the grounds and bridges of the Citadel could be found.

Normally, an entire river economy would be visible and bustling from Alleras' high perch, with trader's galleys and merchant's cogs arrived from places as distant as the Free Cities overflowing the ports at sea, while in the river there were merchant barges trading up and down the Honeywine and its tributary forks all the way to Honeyholt, Brightwater Keep, and the Uplands.

None of that today, though; no pleasure yachts of young lovers admiring the views, no wandering food barges selling hot apples dipped in honey and caramel to children. Today, the only ships allowed on the water were warships or those requisitioned for the defence of the city. When Alleras had walked the city's streets in the past, it had always been filled with so much brightness, so much life. But now, the streets stank of sweat, smoke and tension.

A strong wind blew from the west, bringing with it the cries of men from the Tyrell's and Redwyne's navy, and the smell of so many torches. As Alleras watched, he saw the ships working to fasten into formation, anchoring themselves and wrapping ropes between them to keep them steady against the wind. There were so many ships that if they had been slightly closer together you could have almost crossed from one side of the bay to the other.

From above, the city was a labyrinth of wynds, crisscrossing alleys, narrow crookback streets and markets, all built of stone, with cobbled roads. King's Landing might have been the most populated city in Westeros, but Oldtown was the largest, and the oldest and richest city of the continent besides. The sights of it all was both so familiar, and so alien. Alleras had walked these mazelike streets and alleyways for years, and thought he had committed to memory all the different moods and turns the city might take, but he had never seen the city like this before, never seen this strange quiet. There were no traders on the docks and piers and wharves today, no merchants with bright sails from lands near or far, hardly even any movement save for around those docks being used for military purposes – the vast majority of the city's docks were nothing but a portrait of grim silence, and rapidly-built barricades facing the sea.

If he walked around to the other side of the Hightower, Alleras would see the great Starry Sept looming over the other side of the city on the bay's opposite coast, its huge marble dome at the heart of the city. Further upriver, there would be the grounds of the Citadel, a miniature city in its own right, a sprawling grounds of buildings and bridges spread on both sides of the water and the Isle of Ravens in between. While most of the Citadel's buildings were built of sleek marble, distinguished and adorned with dragons and sphinxes from the first generations of the Andals, the Isle of Ravens was older still; the Ravenry was the second-oldest structure in Oldtown, a castle built by the First Men, gnarly with moss-covered walls and bearded with vines, with a cloistered inner godswood where a great weirwood grew, red and white and black with thousands of perched ravens.

Alleras was in a melancholy mood, spending so long staring over the city and thinking of all the ancient histories that had passed here. Even now, after years at study, he still felt as though he had learnt only the outer and most shallow edges all those histories. Even now, like a child, he was still fascinated by the tales of the pirate kings that once held the Ravenry as their seat of power, the ruins of the First Men that the city was built upon, and dragons that used to perch on the Hightower. But, of late, his attention had been on older and darker mysteries still…

He heard lopsided footsteps behind him. Alleras recognised the gait of those steps without even turning. "Oi," Mollander called. "There you are, I was looking for you. What are you doing out here?"

Alleras turned, giving his friend a wry grin. "Enjoying the view. It might be the last time I ever see it. My father always taught me to enjoy the moment."

"Please," Mollander scoffed. "We're four hundred feet up, this place couldn't possibly be safer. This won't be like my father and the Blackwater." For a moment, Mollander's eyes went distant, then he grumbled. "Next time, bloody warn somebody, before you go out. Armen has been pestering me to keep the group together, and we do have a task to follow there or it'll be our hides. And have you seen Pate? The pig boy?"

"I have not." Alleras' Dornish drawl was clear against Mollander's clarion baritone of a Reachman's accent.

"He bloody vanished this morning. Nobody seems to know where he's disappeared off to," Mollander said with a sigh. "Archmaester Theobald will have my head - the Seneschal warned me to keep the acolytes together."

"Hmm," Alleras muttered. Personally, he had his doubts about Pate, but he didn't let them show. "How goes it with Benedict?"

"Nearly done, I hear they're winching up the last trebuchet now." Mollander cast a worried eye over the horizon. "What about them? How long do you reckon?"

"I think three hours or so, perhaps," Alleras replied.

"Benedict said four, but he said the same three hours ago too."

"It depends on how fast the ironborn choose to come," Alleras answered. "Archmaester Benedict expected them to come at full sail, as did all the lords, I'm sure."

Mollander snorted. "The Crow's eye is being leisurely with his time, it seems."

Above on the higher balconies, Alleras knew there were lookouts with Myrish telescope tubes, watching the ironborn fleet's movements and relaying messages to the armies below by raven. As it became clearer to the lookouts that the ironborn's fleet was forming up into a system of ranks, the Arbor's ships under Lord Paxter Redwyne's command had answered in kind with their own ranks, and the fleet had long since been ready to meet the reavers with unbreakable walls of wood and steel.

Yes, he is being leisurely. And that's concerning. But Alleras kept his doubts silent, bottled up within. "It will be time enough for the lords to reorganise the harbour's defenses."

"Not much to reorganise," Mollander snorted. "What will they ask us to do next, paint the harbour's walls to greet this madman? The preparations are done, they have been done."

Alleras found himself growing a bit tetchy with his fellow disciple's confidence. "Look out there, Mollander," he said quietly, pointing. "How many ships do you think that is?"

Mollander frowned, staring into the distance and squinting against the sunset's light, only replying after half a minute or so. "If I'm gandering right, I'll guess a thousand, give or take a hundred or two. More take than give, really."

"Does that not concern you?"

"What do his numbers matter?" Mollander's tone was dismissive, then he refocused on Alleras, his smile coming easily. "Five or thirty thousand, that madman is still outnumbered by multiples. The Crow's Eye will fly away like the oversized vulture he is - if he even can fly away in this wind - and then Lord Paxter will meet him at sea and crush him any other coward's vermin. He could have three hundred thousand reavers and it still wouldn't matter, less than one in ten of those ships are suited for battle against a proper warship."

Alleras sent his friend a sharp look. "War isn't just maths, Mollander."

"Eh, perhaps not," Mollander admitted, but rolling his eyes sardonically. "But we hold the walls, and the Crow's Eye is no war leader, not like Lord Paxter or Ser Garlan. What great battles has he won? He's just a pirate, another base raper and savage. Whatever happens, we're safe. The lords have been ready for him for weeks now."

"Yes," Alleras admitted. "We have had time, plenty of it. And isn't that just the strangest thing?"

The threat of a fleet of reavers had loomed over Oldtown not just for weeks, but for long, long months. And now, when that fleet finally did come - it was slow. Weren't reavers supposed to strike hard and fast? Early this very morning, the criers had ridden through the city announcing that the ironborn fleet had arrived, that the Three Towers had fallen and ironborn were mustering past Blackcrown, meaning that the ironborn could have arrived so much sooner than this, perhaps even by midday before the fleet's men had been fully mustered from ashore and prepared for battle.

Over the past weeks, Alleras had heard many men and women confidently declare Euron Crow's Eye a fool. However, Alleras didn't share that opinion. In his experience, it was unhealthy to dismiss anyone as a fool, and you should always rely on the observations of your own eyes.

And yet, if the Crow's Eye isn't a fool, then what is he?

For so many months, the threat of the ironborn had left the city almost constipated with tension and dread. Now, it was almost a weird sort relief to finally see the attack come. The time had given Oldtown time to engage in so many preparations. The fleets of House Tyrell and Hightower had both mustered to their fullest extent, and the ships of so many other houses too, dozens of them great and small. Alleras saw ships of Houses Oakheart, Blackbar, Rowan, Ambrose, Costayne, Bulwer, Tarly, Beesbury, Hewett, Cuy, even the the green and red Fossoways. For over a month, they had been gathering. And then the Redwyne fleet, greatest of all, had returned from King's Landing almost two weeks ago. Hundreds of merchant ships had been mustered and refitted, tens of thousands of soldiers mustered from throughout the whole of the Reach.

"Time enough for us to return to the city, in any case," Mollander said. "They want us to head to the Seneschal's Court with the rest of the disciples, but I… might have other plans."

Alleras raised an eyebrow. "Who is returning?"

"All the disciples, anyone who isn't specifically needed for the ravens or the hospital. Ser Greysteel doesn't want too many maesters about during battle, I hear." Mollander rapped his fingers on the stone terrace's stone railing. "Now isn't that just annoying, after all we've been doing to help? If they don't want us in the way, you'd think they could at least give us a higher terrace out of the way of bothering, and a good casket of wine to enjoy the battle with."

Alleras hmmed noncommittedly. But it was true, Oldtown had such time for war preparations that even the Citadel had gotten directly involved, assisting House Hightower and the other lords however possible.

Archmaester Benedict, who bore the iron rod, ring and mask showing his specialisation in war and siegecraft, had offered himself and the Citadel's students to repair the ancient trebuchets and mangonels that were fixed on the lower levels of the Hightower. Soldiers built poor stonethrowers, Benedict often said, and it took learned men who understood projectiles, tension and motion to do the job properly.

It had been a hundred years since the great trebuchets on the Battle Isle had been last used, Alleras heard. They had fallen into disrepair, and fixing them proved no simple task. It took acolytes and men-at-arms by the dozen to ferry lumber and stones from the mainland, and carry them up the tower. Eventually, under Benedict's direction, they had even built elevators for the purpose. Having so much time in war, Alleras knew it was almost luxurious. There were now so many stacks of ammunition throughout the Hightower, barrels of stones stacked by the hundreds, to service trebuchets by the dozens.

Not that Alleras was complaining; the preparations had offered countless opportunities to inspect the Hightower in depth and at length, so much so that it had contributed towards his iron link on his maester's chain. Practical experience of warcraft, Benedict had called it, as much as a maester would ever get. There will be many students earning their iron links after this battle, Alleras mused.

Ryam, the Archmaester of economy, had been organising maesters to manage stocks and coins, rations and supplies, and all the acolytes, students and scribes were expected to drop their regular duties to assist the war effort. Everything from writing troop movement reports to counting arrows and swords.

Even lesser maesters had volunteered or been 'volunteered' for the war effort, scattered all throughout the logistics chains of the Reach's coalition forces as if they were common scribes.

Unfortunately, some of the maesters whom Alleras would have most preferred to rely on in these times were absent. Marwyn, in particular, had been gone for weeks now. The bullish Archmaester of magic had strode into the city's docks before the ironborn's blockade had fully closed and promptly disappeared, chasing rumours of dragons. Similarly, Maester Desaire, one of Perestan's loyalists, was rumoured to have gone to Slaver's Bay to seek audience with the dragon queen. Even Yandel, specialized in geographies and histories and war, who himself was close to being raised to Archmaester – if the Citadel's scuttlebutt could be even halfway trusted - had also disappeared.

Still, despite the city's mountainous preparations, he couldn't shake this sense of unease. If the Crow's Eye isn't a fool, why is he attacking? It seems the most naked madness imaginable.

"The last ferry will be here in an hour," Mollander sighed, moving with a limp in his steps to join Alleras by the balcony's railing. "But I don't mean to join the others in the Seneschal's Court. Better to wait out the battle in some tavern with plenty of ale. I know just the place, it has a good view of the bay."

I'd prefer a tavern far, far away from the water, I think. Their usual haunt, the Quill and Tankard, was on its own small island on the Honeywine and had been taken over by a garrison. Perhaps Mollander was speaking of someplace else. "Shame," Alleras said idly. "I hear that Archmaester Perestan means to give a special lecture for the students taking shelter."

"Well, that's one way to put us to sleep rather than fret. But I prefer to get drunk." Mollander paused. "It's either that or stand on the walls. I hear Garlan Tyrell has promised a silver for every man that stands with the militia on the wall."

"A silver isn't very much for fighting in a battle."

"Nobody expects much of a battle. Not at the walls, at least. They're defending the harbour, the ironborn will never break that far through. Doubtful the militia will do much, except maybe loose some shafts." Still, Mollander looked excited with the thought of taking part in the battle, even a small part. Mollander could have been a knight, Alleras thought, if not for his limp foot. "What do you say? You're a hell of an archer, Alleras. They could use you on the walls."

"I think not. I prefer shooting apples to men."

"Why? It's an easy silver."

"It is until the men shoot back."

Mollander scoffed. "We'll win, you know. This will be an easy battle, and everyone knows it."

Yes, Alleras thought. And how can you be unconcerned, saying that so easily? Surely the ironborn must know it too?

The ideal time for the ironborn to assault Oldtown had come and gone. After ironborn victories in the westerlands, the Redwyne straits and the Arbor earlier in the autumn, there had been a time where the entire city had been in a state of panic. Redwyne and Tyrell forces had been distracted on the other side of Westeros, the city's defences had been ill-prepared and in such shambles that the city might have actually fallen had the Crow's Eye struck in force. Rumors said that Lord Leyton Hightower himself had been so frightened he had resorted to consulting a book of spells along with his daughter, the 'Mad Maid' Malora – gossip to which all the maesters save for one had scoffed.

Then, within weeks, the militia had been thoroughly raised and a ragtag fleet assembled, and then the panic in the city was relieved when the Lords of the Reach had started to muster for the city in force. An entire month ago, Garlan Tyrell had arrived with thirty thousand Tyrell men returned from the crownlands. And that number had slowly risen more and more in the weeks since, spiking with the Redwyne Fleet's return a fortnight ago from the schism in King's Landing.

All the while the Arbor was being pillaged and razed by the reavers, Oldtown had readied for war. For weeks, knights had been riding down the squares, calling upon all able-bodied men to join the battle and bring justice for the atrocities committed in Ryamsport, Vinetown and Starfish Harbor and all down the Redwyne Straits.

"I hear Benedict wagered Norren good odds that the ironborn will fall back as soon as they see the defence," Mollander continued. "They'd be smart to do so, too. That's the Arbor Queen down there - the greatest ship in the Seven Kingdoms. She's never been beaten at sea."

Yes, the Arbor Queen was a great galleas, a worthy flagship for their defence, no argument. Even compared to the other great warships of the Redwyne fleet, she was gargantuan. She bore three large burgundy sails, triple decks of oars painted white and gold, and decks filled with scorpions and armed soldiers. A hundred great warships of the Redwyne fleet had arrived near two weeks ago and thoroughly reinforced the defences around the city. Archmaester Benedict's battle-lines sketched on his maps for the defender's reference looked so different, seeing them from above like this.

"I hear that ironborn longships are faster."

"Faster, yes. Stronger, no. Most longships are built small and swift, they're meant for raids, not naval battles," Mollander replied eagerly. They had all been studying ironborn warcraft for the past months. "Only a very few of the Iron Fleet's great longships can even compare to the Arbor Queen and the Honour of Oldtown. They're the two biggest warships in Westeros."

Alleras nodded, still thinking quietly. Lord Paxter would command the Redwyne fleet, of course. The Redwyne fleet was mostly made up of galleys, galleases, and dromonds. Ships of the largest classes, all fitted or fittable for war. In contrast to the sleek and powerful warships of the Arbor, the fleets of Houses Hightower and Tyrell consisted of far more carracks, wine cogs, trading galleys and whalers refitted for battle rather than specialized for it, and it was much the same with the lesser houses that had also mustered.

However, Lord Paxter only truly commanded his Redwyne fleet. He would act as the overall admiral in the battle on water, yes, but the Hightower and Tyrell fleets had their own commanders who had agreed to follow Lord Paxter's lead only conditionally, and who could say how quickly or how far battle might test those conditions? House Hightower had not been willing to allow anyone from another of the of the Reach's great houses to command in the defence of their own city, not even Garlan Tyrell, but at the same time, none of Lord Leyton's sons had enough sway to be appointed overall commander over the rest - and not even in this crisis of reavers and invasion had Oldtown's Old Man been willing to descend and take charge of the armies. In the end, the honour of overall command had still been given to Lord Leyton Hightower, but everyone knew it was purely ceremonial.

Ser Baelor "Brightsmile" Hightower, the lord's eldest son, would captain the flagship of House Hightower, the Honour of Oldtown, and would furthermore command the naval reserves of his House and petty lords.

Garth "Greysteel" Hightower, the second son, was the most dutiful of the Hightower heirs by far. Although technically Lord Leyton was to be in overall command of the armies and fleets, and the weapons and stonethrowers on the Battle Isle besides, given his father's circumstances, the Brightsteel had quietly stepped in to be the 'second in command' of the Battle Isle's defences.

Gunthor Hightower, the third son would lead from the city's walls, commanding the harbour, the troops and militia on the eastern beaches.

The fourth son, Ser Humfrey Hightower, was now the talk of gossip throughout all the city's taverns - having returned from Lys a fortnight ago in a state of high scandal and disgrace. Whatever contests for power had been consuming the great lords, he had certainly been among the greatest losers.

As for the other great, mustered lords of the Reach,

The heir to Highgarden, Willas Tyrell, had chosen not to come. In his stead he had sent his brother, Ser Garlan Tyrell, lord of Brightwater Keep. Ser Garlan was leading House Tyrell's fleet and army, in close cooperation with his wife's family, the Fossoways of Cider Hall.

Ser Dickon Tarly and Ser Harristan Hunt were leading the Tarly, Oakheart, Blackbar, and Rowan forces on the northern beaches of the bay of Whispering Sound. (Noteworthily, the 'green-apple' Fossoways of New Barrel had chosen to muster under Ser Dickon rather than Ser Garlan. Even in wartime, the bickering of the two houses of Fossoway was an annoyance).

Tommen Costayne, the Lord of the Three Towers led House Cuy and Mullendore and his Costayne remnants on the Whispering Sound's southern beaches; he had more reason than most to seek vengeance against the ironborn, they had razed his seat and killed or taken most of his family.

Like a bucket of crabs, none of the great lords allow the others to rise. And so we are without a true commander on the eve of battle. Alleras could only shake his head, thinking of it all.

"Mollander," Alleras asked quietly. "Do you worry at all if we have too many commanders?"

"We have sixty thousand fighting men. How can we possibly have too many commanders?"

"That's true," Alleras' voice was low. "Hundreds of houses have mustered, many of the greatest knights and lords in all of Westeros. That requires organisation, yes. But I worry at our lack of a paramount leader. That should have been Ser Garlan Tyrell's role - and don't deny it, Mollander."

For weeks, Alleras had been silently watching these countless lords, jockeying for position, grasping for their rights and privileges and standings beneath the shadow of Lord Leyton Hightower's empty command. Hundreds of mustered petty houses of the Reach, aligning behind one great lord or another, lords and ladies and knights chasing glory. From beginning to end, a collection of armies that denied the most basic principles of military strategy and organisational warcraft.

"What, what about Ser Garlan?" Mollander scoffed. "You worry too much, Alleras."

"Do you not? From my perspective, he should be commanding. He is the sword of Highgarden."

"If there was cause to worry, I would be worrying," Mollander frowned." The maths, the distributions, the defenses. None of it balances in the reaver's favor. You really think House Hightower would give the Tyrells command of an easy defence of their own city? They have appearances to maintain."

Alleras' frown deepened to match his friend's. "Men need to be led in war, Mollander. Do you not also think the lords of the Reach are concerningly… untroubled by their lack of leader?"

"Please," Mollander smiled. "It likely won't even come to battle. You fret over a problem limited to Oldtown itself. The lords are trying to decide who will lead the next stretch of the campaign, the part that actually matters. They have appearances and rights to sort out."

"Don't pretend that's the only reason, Mollander. What does pride matter in war? Rights, inheritance, glory, all of it. And yet, the Hightowers, in their… wisdom, disagreed with that notion. The city's defenses are divided amongst half a dozen of themselves, the sons grasping and reaching for accolades, while their father removes himself to his chambers in the sky, failing to unify anything except by name only." Mollander ahifted uncomfortably, but Alleras barged on. "And who else can we look to? Lord Paxter Redwyne has no interest in commanding from anywhere but the decks of a ship. Lord Leyton command's the Battle Isle's defenses, but how much commanding can truly be done from his chambers eight or nine hundred feet in the sky? House Tarly commands the northern beaches, House Costayne commands the southern beaches, while the Tyrells spread themselves thin in the east and north trying to fulfill every role that the bickering lords can't agree on managing. I don't like it."

Mollander looked baffled for a moment. "What, do you really think House Hightower would let House Tyrell take charge of their own city?"

No, because the Hightowers are practically a paramount house of their own. No, Because they have few expectations for difficulties with this battle – their eyes are fixed on the mission of vengeance said to be coming after. No, because the Hightower sons fret over glories while a strange, strange enemy comes.

"Perhaps they should," Alleras said quietly, which prompted Mollander to raise not just one, but both eyebrows. "What does pride matter in battle? Instead we've got half a dozen different commanders, leading this or that, here or there. For now, they work together, but there's no real unity. As for the Crow's Eye… no. No, I don't think he has to worry about such things, about a lack of unity."

Mollander scoffed. "Of course not. That madman's a petty tyrant, a pirate with more crimes to his name than one can list. But pirates do not make war leaders. He managed to drive away his own brother, and Victarion Greyjoy took half the strength of the Iron Isles with him. The better half. You worry too much, Alleras. The real question is how the lords will handle the purging of the Iron Isles afterwards."

"You think it'll be so easy?"

"If those ships are even halfway manned, he'll hardly have a fighting man left on his isles, hardly anyone but green boys and greybeards left to man the defenses. Like I say, you worry too much."

When Alleras and the others had arrived by ferry to the Battle Isle this morning, he had witnessed the sons of House Hightower, noble knights, captains and commanders all, leaving to command the defenses - all of them dressed for battle and eager to see it come. Young knights of the highest birth, laughing and cheering, assured of victory, and yet Alleras couldn't see any rational reason to deny that pride, that confidence. Only a nervousness, blind and grasping for reason.

The most dangerous command would perhaps be that of the force of infantry established as a beachhead on the Bloody Isle - the smaller isle to the front of the bay - but Ser Garlan Tyrell had shown no sign of shirking that duty. Sharpened spikes and trenches had been dug deep into the sand to resist any longships, while scorpions were raised on the high places of that muddy isle. Ser Dickon Tarly - a young and very-freshly spurred knight, but said to be strong and bold - commanded the forces on the east side of the bay by the Thieves' Market to block any coastal landing, while Ser Mattis Rowan led forces on the western streets near the Guildhalls.

Even with the Lord of the Reach, Mace Tyrell, distracted by the royal schism in King's Landing, an outpouring of the realm's heirs and great knights had assembled at Oldtown. Sixty thousand, Alleras was told - a force he knew that Lord Paxter intended to take north to conquer the Iron Islands themselves after the battle was won or repelled. After the destruction on Redwyne's own seat and people, the isle of the Arbor, Alleras doubted the retaliation would be gentle.

If the ironborn expected the Reach's response to be weak, they were sorely mistaken. Alleras heard tavern talk saying that Lord Paxter would make the Iron Islands pay tenfold for the damage in the Arbor; that he would raise a new isle from their bones.

Sixty thousand, Alleras thought. At least three or four, maybe six to one odds, and the advantage of heavy fortifications besides. Alleras spent a long time staring at the formations assembled around the city, and found little to fault with any of it. The wind coming off the sea was unfortunate - it meant the defence would be fighting into a sharp headwind and the ironborn ships would the edge of momentum on their charge - but Lord Paxter seemed prepared for such. They had set formations on every side to counter whatever scheme the ironborn used; understandable, but Alleras also feared it may leave their forces too spread out.

Mollander was still talking about how swiftly the battle would be won, but Alleras just smiled absently while paying very little attention. His sharp, black eyes never left the clusters of black sails and black flags in the distance. The sun was fading beneath the horizon, and the skies were growing dark with the promise of a storm.

"—is a fool to test Oldtown," Mollander was saying. "I do not know what this Crow's Eye wishes to accomplish here, but he will lose, and lose hard."

"I think he is here to send a message," Alleras said slowly. "He wishes to prove something."

"How small his army is compared to ours, perhaps?" Mollander said, laughing.

"…No," Alleras mused, resting his head over the balcony, hands folded under his chin. His eyes tracked the movements of gulls flapping through the air, rising on the thermals. "He taunted the entire Reach, openly and with warning, and they answered in strength. And now, here the Reach is. He must have known what he would provoke."

"But he will flee," Mollander insisted. "I've said it. Crows are cowardly creatures. He will flee just as Dagon Greyjoy did the last time reavers dared threaten the Hightower." Mollander shook his head. "They have no business even approaching this place, and the lords will see retribution done."

Yes, Alleras thought. All of the maesters - experts in war, mathematics, logic and reasoning - agreed that the ironborn would not, could not break their defenses. Strangely, the thought made Alleras think of Archmaester Marwyn. 'The grey sheep are fools', Marwyn oft said. 'They bleat the same facts over and over again until those facts are all they know. They have all the facts, but so few truths.'

"I wonder…?" Alleras bit his lip. "Do you know of the black stone foundations of the Hightower, Mollander?"

His friend looked at him in surprise. "Huh?"

"The foundations of the Hightower are a labyrinthine fortress of ancient black stone, possibly older than the First Men," Alleras slowly explained. "The entire Hightower is built on that ancient foundation. It's one of the great mysteries; nobody knows who built those foundations, or where they came from, or even what stone it is made from."

Mollander shook his head, grinning. "No, Alleras, I heard Theobald talking about this. The archmaester said the stone is dragonstone - the type the Valyrians used for their dragonroads. The evidence says that the Hightower could have been an ancient Valyrian outpost, eons past. Their empire lasted for millennia."

"No," Alleras disagreed. "There's more evidence to say that hypothesis is untrue. The stones are superficially similar, the maesters agree, both varieties of stone are harder and stronger than steel and black to the eye, but dragonstone is dry and bubbly to the touch, while the black stone of the Hightower feels smooth and greasy, with strange properties. Mold, plants don't grow on it, vermin won't go near it, and large animals caged near it will sicken over a span of years. Some say it the foundations are a strange kind of basalt, but no stonemason has ever found a stone in the earth with both its queer texture and strength. The stone doesn't seem to age either, no matter how many thousands of years of summers and winters it is exposed to - none can even truly guess when that black stone was first laid down. Yandel's World of Ice and Fire shows that the Hightower's foundations bear more similarity to the ruins of Yeen or the mazemakers of Lorath, and the city of Asshai-by-the-Shadow, and those cities… they predate the Old Valyrians by however many thousands of years."

Alleras fiddled with the copper link on the chain. He was a quick study, and he had earned his links in both history and architecture. "I know that Maester Theron suggests a connection between the tower's foundations the mazemakers of Lorath. He visited Lorath, and extensively documented the similarities in construction and style."

Mollander just looked confused. "The mazemakers of Lorath," Alleras continued, still not turning his gaze, "were said to have been destroyed by an army of creatures coming from the sea. By merlings, selkies or walrus-men."

"You believe that?" Mollander laughed. "You've spent too much time with Marwyn, Alleras. You're reminding me of Lord Leyton and the Mad Maid, and that there's no good thing."

"How so?"

Mollander's grin came easily. "You should listen to the serving girls more, I've been hearing them whispering that the Old Man and his crazed daughter are casting spells up in their chambers," Mollander shook his head with a wry grin, casting his eyes to the Hightower's upper reaches. "Such nonsense, such distractions. A shameful jape, if I'm being honest. Archmaester Perestan would strip that copper link from your neck if he heard you saying such."

"I don't know what I believe," Alleras lied. "I just find it curious. The mazemakers of Lorath weren't human - the bones found are closer to giants - and they built some of the greatest ancient cities ever raised. Older than Valyria, older than Ghis. And then they were destroyed, seemingly overnight."

"What does that have to do the ironborn?"

"It's making me thoughtful, I suppose. Did you know that there is only one other example in Westeros of the same black stone used in the Hightower's foundations?"

"Is this a riddle? What?"

"The Seastone Chair," Alleras answered. "The same throne that Euron Greyjoy claims. An ancient throne of oily black stone, built by a forgotten king, for a forgotten kingdom that nobody even remembers. There is some link between the Seastone Chair of Pyke and the foundations of the Hightower, and these far off places in the world, yet nobody in the Citadel can even begin to answer what that connection might be without being laughed at. It doesn't make sense, not to me."

Alleras could see the smoke rising in the distance, dark clouds swirling on the wind. "Nobody knows where the ironborn themselves come from, either," Alleras continued, thoughtfully. "They weren't Andals, there's very little evidence to say they were First Men. Some say they are descended from visitors across the Sunset Sea. The ironborn themselves have been known to claim they are descended from merlings from the Drowned God's hall, a notion which of course, the Archmaesters reject. Maester Theron once posited the existence of a species he called the 'Deep Ones', a race of misshapen fish-men, but he was mocked out of the Citadel."

Mollander looked baffled. "You're not usually this talkative, Alleras. What are you going on about?"

Alleras shrugged. "I'm not really trying to drive at a specific point. If there's answer to these questions, then I don't have it. We're surrounded by riddles going back thousands of thousands of years. Like Nagga's Hill on Old Wyk - was that truly made from the bones of an ancient sea dragon? The best answer anyone here can give is 'maybe'. Or what of the Wall? The children of the forest and the giants? Even the mysteries surrounding Moat Cailin and Storm's End. A maester could tell you every scion and every lord of every major house, but cannot answer how their most prominent castles came to be."

Mollander paused. All around them, they heard bells from hundreds of ships chiming below. "Lazy Leo was right about you," he said finally, still looking baffled. "You earn your name, the Sphinx."

"I just find it curious. The maester order is over a thousand years old, and yet the world is so much more ancient. We have collected histories from all around the world, and yet the maesters still understand so little of these mysteries of the past. We see so far, but we rarely look beneath."

I came to the Citadel to learn, find the truth. But it's like Marwyn said. There is little truth here, only facts and more facts.

The thought made him think again, more deeply, of the absent Archmaester, and not for the first time Alleras wished he had gone with him. Marwyn the Mage left on one of the final ships to leave before the ironborn's blockade, before the harbour was locked. Alleras' time as Marwyn's student had been brief, but… enlightening.

He wondered where Leo Tyrell - Lazy Leo - was now. Probably getting drunk in some dive on the eve of battle. Leo's father, the captain of the city guard, had been insistent that his son should take part in the battle, but that was hardly going to ever happen. Lazy Leo was the outcast of his own family, in good part by his own choosing, who had shunned him into joining the Citadel. Still, for all Leo was a puerile degenerate, unmotivated and infuriating, capricious and arrogant, Alleras did not think he could call Leo stupid.

Quite often, Leo tried to flirt with Alleras, in his own snide and taunting way. He was one of the few who noticed. Alleras recognised the smirks when few others did, the constant teasing comments about Alleras being a 'nobleman's son', and the way Leo's eyes would linger. Leo was perceptive and quick-witted enough to be a fine maester, and yet cursed with a temperament so grating that none but Marywn would take him as a student. Alleras had seen little of Leo since Marwyn left, actually.

Where is Leo? Alleras wondered. And how many glass candles do we have left?

There was a voice calling for them. Armen the Acolyte stood on the pavilion, bellowing at them to move for the docks. "The last ferry is coming in," he shouted. "Get a move on or you're stuck here!"

Armen looked flustered as he ran off again. "We have time," Alleras said lazily. "Linger for now, we'll reach the ferry in good time. I want to watch for a bit longer."

"Perhaps I should stay," Mollander mused, standing up and stretching out his clubfoot. "This place will give us the best view of the battle, better than anywhere in the city, and should they breach the harbour, the Hightower might be the safest place of all."

It was a jest, but Alleras still felt uneasy. No, I don't think this is the safest place at all. Alleras' father had once said that fear and nerves were nothing more than weakness that hadn't yet been purged. Something to be fought against, not heeded. Doubt was debilitation, and panic was a plague. But then again, Alleras mused, my father is dead.

From the Battle Isle, they saw the streets were clear and many of the harbourside buildings had been barricaded, just in case. The cityfolk would be fleeing en masse to take refuge in the Starry Sept for the night, and the Citadel's students and scribes were expected to gather in the Seneschal's Court, but more would be holing up in taverns during the battle. Few would be sleeping, that was for certain. Alleras had heard that many winesinks and whorehouses would be offering discounts.

I wish I had left with Marwyn, Alleras thought yet again.

Mollander was staring at him. Alleras made no rush to move, still leaned over the stone wall. "What is with you?" he asked. "You seem very… distracted."

"It is just nerves, I suppose," Alleras replied. "I feel uneasy."

"Well, understandable." Mollander pursed his lips, but there was a smirk playing over his features too. "But we will beat them. They don't stand a chance, even Benedict says so, and he's the Archmaester of warcraft."

Alleras didn't reply for a good while. He heard gulls chirping - all of the activity in the bay disturbed the birds. He knew the birds wouldn't settle tonight, he could feel it in the air. Come dusk, the skies would be swarming with ravens and crows from the Isle of Ravens.

"Did you hear Archmaester Benedict calling this the War of the Five Monsters?" Alleras said finally, still not taking his eyes off the horizon.

"Excuse me?"

"The War of the Five Kings is over. Once there were five kings, each noble in his own way. The Young Wolf fought for justice, Joffrey fought for his dynasty, Renly Baratheon fought for prosperity, Stannis Baratheon for his rights, and even Balon Greyjoy fought for his independence. Now, all the noble kings are dead - and we're left with a war between five villains and tyrants, each more foul than the last," Alleras explained. "The War of the Five Monsters, this will be called, he says."

"Five monsters?" Mollander frowned. "That doesn't seem right. I mean, yeah, Euron Crow's Eye is undoubtedly a monster; we've all heard of his atrocities in the Arbor. The man is as wicked as they come; he would rape and enslave the world to hear the tales." Alleras nodded, still watching the clouds drifting in the distance. "And yes, the Bastard King in the North is a monster, no doubt."

Alleras nodded silently. They had all heard of the Bastard King, Jon Snow - even amidst everything else, the Citadel, the entire Reach had been abuzz with that news. The destruction of the Twins, the fall of the Night's Watch. Apparently, House Bolton had sent letters requesting aid to every major house in the realm, only to be denied due to all the realm's other troubles, people said publicly. Privately, Alleras had darker suspicions.

"The wildling king that controls beasts and works savage witchcraft - he comes south to pillage and destroy the realm," Mollander continued, grinning. "The Bastard King is another monster, sure enough, but that's only two for your war. Who are the other three?"

"Stannis Baratheon," Alleras said quietly.

Mollander opened his mouth to object, but Alleras cut him off. "Oh yes - a righteous man Stannis once was, according to some. And arguably justified in his rights, depending on which tale you believe. But now it seems Stannis has turned crazed - a madman, a petty tyrant haunting the Narrow Sea and leaving only ruins behind in his desperate war. He is the only contender from the last war still fighting, and it seems he has been left bitter, broken and crazed."

"Alright," Mollander conceded. "That's three. But what of King Tommen? Do you consider the little boy a monster?"

"Not him." Alleras shook his head. "His mother. The Mad Queen."

"Ah." Mollander grimaced.

"The insane woman who holds her own son hostage, along with his fair wife," Alleras explained quietly. "An adulteress and murderess who denies the Faith, and holds siege in the Red Keep. Cersei would see the kingdom burn, if not for Mace Tyrell and Kevan Lannister trying to stop her."

"Point. Then the fifth contender is Aegon Targaryen, I suppose? And yet to call him a monster seems unfair," Mollander noted. "I have heard that the boy is brave and chivalrous. The Young Dragon, some call him."

"I have heard the same. But that assumes Aegon Targaryen is any true king." Alleras shook his head. "No, to the mind of many, this 'Aegon' is naught but a puppet, and the true contender is Tyrion Lannister."

Mollander didn't reply. "Perhaps that makes the Imp the most dangerous villain of them all," Alleras mused. "What could be scarier than the monster that tries to hide out of sight? Tyrion Lannister raised a puppet king and called him a Targaryen, all the while his influence grows. The Imp is both kin and king slayer; malformed and cursed in the eyes of gods and men. If this Aegon is crowned, then it will be the Imp that takes the throne."

"You don't know that for sure."

"I do not. But still, what does the truth matter, compared to what everyone believes? They see Aegon as the Imp's puppet, so he becomes the Imp's puppet. And if it's true," Alleras said grimly, "then no matter who wins, the Seven Kingdoms are doomed."

Mollander barked with laughter, slapping him on the back. "You are too grim, Alleras. It will not happen. Lord Paxter will defeat the ironborn tonight, and Lord Tyrell will force the Mad Queen to yield. Their armies will defeat the Imp's Dragon, and the rightful King Tommen and Queen Margaery will rule, and either defeat or come to an accord with this Aegon. As for the Bastard King, well, I cannot say. Too many rumours and talk; I know little truth of what is happening in the savage north." Neither do I, Alleras thought but he didn't speak. "Regardless, House Bolton is set to defy the Bastard King valiantly, and I doubt his armies will be able to move south until spring. Whatever happens in the north is not worth us fretting over tonight." Mollander chuckled. "Come on, you definitely need a drink. Find a cheap winesink and a pretty girl, and this night will be over before you know," he shook his head, laughing. "But we really must go. The ferry will be coming in any moment now, we should hurry to the tavern. You know the Leviathan's Fancy? It's near the water, with five floors. I hear there'll be a party on the roof, we can watch the battle from there."

Alleras cast one final glance to the horizon, before slowly pulling himself up and rolling his shoulders. His muscles felt tense. A party? No, I do not think I want to be in the streets tonight.

Mollander, seeing Alleras' hesitation, frowned. "If wine isn't to your taste, perhaps steel is?" Alleras cast him a sharp look, but Mollander insisted. "Are you sure you don't want to go to the walls? My father always said you have to face your fears head-on."

"My father said the same."

"Then let's go! We'll have a grand view of the battle, and it'll be the easiest silver you've ever earned. I know that the militia will be bringing wine to celebrate when the ironborn are driven off, and I doubt we'll even need to fire an arrow."

"I think not." Alleras glanced behind him, at the dark clouds swirling over setting sun. There was a sharp edge to the wind. "It looks to be a stormy night."

Mollander shook his head surely. "Norren said not." Archmaester Norren bore the ring, mask and rod of electrum, showing his expertise in meteorology and the weather patterns. The old maester had devoted his life to mapping the wind and clouds. "He predicted a warm easterly wind for at least the next quarter, and good sailing weather up until the final turn of winter. There should be no storms."

"The maesters say a lot of things," Alleras replied. "But I can still see the storm clouds."

---

The Kraken

The world was shaking. The oceans roared, the waves churned, and the wind howled, all the while Euron laughed as he stumbled through the gloomy hull as if he were drunk. He felt giddy, actually giddy. From the deck above, loud voices were bellowing,

He clutched a sloshing skin of leather, filled with liquid as thick as bile and rich as memory. Without even hesitating, he took a long chug, gulping the shade of the evening with such abandon that trails of the blue wine poured down his short beard. It tasted at first of charred, rotting flesh – and then the taste gained new layers of depth as the power in the warlock's wine took hold, and then it tasted of Naath's milk and Qarth's honey and summer wine and of Falia's lips.

The myriad taste of the shade of the evening was a reflection, or perhaps a consequence of its true nature; a drink that helped to… open the mind, for those that had the gift to see. A good drink, a drink that weakened the chains between body and spirit, a catalyst that opened the eyes hidden beneath flesh and bone, and let a man fly towards what lay beyond.

For those unaccustomed to the warlock's nectar, shade of the evening would taste disgusting, at least initially - before calling upon the rich sensations of memory.

Euron, however, had drunk so much of it that it tasted like nothing less than the blood of the world, rich and thick, staining his lips blue. It was an expensive drink to find on this side of the sea, but at this point, Euron had imbibed so deeply of it that his fingers would tremble the longer he went without its nectar. He needed it now, he needed the power and clarity the blue wine brought.

As soon as the wine gulped down his throat, he felt free. He saw through the world, and saw the glorious currents of blue and red and green that lay behind all things. It was like he could see the residue of the heavens above and ash wafting off the hells below.

Euron heard himself laughing, even as his storm raged above. Like the tales he had been told as a boy, of the storm gods of the First Men, shaking their mighty hammers through the heavens and stirring the sky itself to battle. He cast his eye lower, and below him, the waves trembled and quivered. He could see something great and ancient flexing beneath the depths. Soon.

In the darkness, there were eyes. Eyes all around him, invisible in the black, but Euron knew they were there. The world was staring at him. Watching. Reacting. Such was the nature of things, for significant turns in the tides of fate to be seen by those adrift, if they had the eyes to see.

Those eyes, so many eyes. Of course they see the master of the tide. Wherever, whenever they are, they all see. The world is watching me. Euron grinned, knowing them all for the sheep they were. He could sense the fear that lay behind the veil. This is my time. The world itself knows my moment is coming.

He took another swig from his wineskin, suckling at the last drops of blue wine like a baby after its mother's tit - and he felt a rush of… wisdom, awareness, hit him - like suddenly he could feel his place in the universe, see the way forward - but it was gone too quickly, as the last remnants of the shade of the evening faded. I need more, Euron cursed. More wine, more power, more knowledge. There can be no error, not tonight.

The lower decks were flooded, ankle-deep. Water gushed over the sides. Euron splashed through the salty water and clambered upwards, stumbling drunk each pound of the waves. The sound of his laughter broke through screams of his many, many prisoners. His lower deck was crowded fit to burst, filled with stirring men and women, and the raucous clanging of slave's chains and dangling cages.

He saw the restless forms of his crew, lingering in the gloomy lower hull, clutching at their blades. A few of the chained warlocks and mages were whimpering, chained against the wood.

"What is happening?" A large, monstrous man grumbled. Mall the Monstrous was a Norvoshi, born disfigured and given to the bearded priests to train as an infant. Before he even reached puberty, he had been discarded. He was a big, bloated man; his skeleton misshapen and his back hunched, but his arms were thick and strong.

"It will be battle, soon," Euron chuckled, shambling as the ship jerked in the rough seas. "Prepare yourselves."

Other men crowded around him, all eyes dark. Euron was proud of his Grotesques - he considered them the finest killers in the world.

Most of the time, the Silence's Grotesques stayed below deck, watching over the mages and spellbinders. There were Braavosi, Tyroshi, Myrish, Ghiscari, Ibbenese, Yi'Tish, Lhazareen and Sorthoryi among them - a selection of as many freaks and monsters Euron could collect. About half of them were missing tongues, but they were all chosen for their certain… temperament.

Mall the Monstrous had been sold to a freak show near Lys before Euron raided the town, the huge man's lumpy back was crisscrossed with scars. Also among them was an evil, Ghiscari dwarf clutching two daggers that was prone to raping corpses and body parts, an unnaturally tall, skinny Tyroshi man who could contort as if boneless whom Euron stole from a Astapori Master's grotesquerie, an albino Summer Islander with striking red eyes, a couple of eunuchs from the fighting pits of Meereen, a hooked-face corsair with a whip, two Ibbenese brothers with long, hairy arms and crunched faces, one malformed Ibbenese-human crossbreed, and a cone-headed Jogos Nhai rider that Euron found in the blood pits of New Ghis. Not all of them had wanted to join Euron's Grotesques, but there were ways of making them… compliant.

Typically, since the kingsmoot, Euron's newer ironborn sailed the ship above, which was fine, because Euron's mutes, monsters and dedicated murderers had own role to play on the Silence.

In the corner of the hull, Euron saw the disfigured, blistered figure of Falia Flowers, her pregnant belly swollen, her arms and ankles enchained, another prisoner among many. However, unlike the others, she was chained not to the walls or benches but to a swaying hammock of cloth. He had considered gifting her to Mall the Monstrous and the other Grotesques to rape, like he did with the rest of his many failures, but he was reasonably sure that his sorcery had taken this time, meaning that her womb was now a seed of potential. The thought of the festering, tortured ball of hate and cruelty that was gestating inside Falia caused Euron to grin.

"Mall, you are in charge of the lower deck. Prepare the men for a fight," Euron ordered. "You know your duty?"

A twisted, swollen hand pounded against Mall's chest. His left hand was so twisted he couldn't even grip anything. "Yes, Your Holiness."

Holiness. Soon everyone will be addressing me like that, not just my Grotesques . A beefy, hairy figure stood arms folded by the doorway. "Ghrazzac," Euron called. "I appoint you in charge of my hull. Prepare Urgard and my mages."

Ghrazzac made a guttural sound that could only be agreement. The man didn't speak the Common, he didn't have the tongue, but he could understand it. Ghrazzac was of the Brindled Men from the forests of Sothoryos; a man of hoglike aspect, massively muscled and big-boned with long arms, a sloped forehead, huge square teeth, a heavy jaw, and a flat nose almost akin to a snout. His skin, thicker than a normal man's, was brindled in patterns of brown and white, finely furred. Ghrazzac had been a slave once too, before the Silence raided a slave ship around the Basilisk Isles. Euron liked the man; freaks were useful, and Ghrazzac was too dim to be manipulated.

"We will need their power. Give them fire as needed, and see to it they fulfil their role," Euron continued. "Now is our moment, now is everything we have been working towards."

Ghrazzac grinned a bloody smile, his scars twisting. He looked more animal than man.

A wordless war cry burst from Mall the Monstrous, and the Grotesques started moving. The Silence was so crowded that every level was filled with bodies. "And bring me more shade of the evening!" Euron ordered. "Whatever stores we have left, I need it!"

A scarred, burnt mute brought him another satchel, with blue wine sloshing out of the mouth as the cabin lurched. Euron gulped it down hungrily. Colours twisted into shades of red and blue. Euron shambled up the red stairs, and into the storm. The decks were filled with rushing bodies, horn blasts and shouts. Euron had to clutch the guide rope leading out on deck, all the while feeling the grin widen across his face.

He could feel the shade of the evening taking effect. He could see shadows flying through the air below the Silence's decks, ghostly phantoms littering the floor all around him. But they cannot speak, Euron knew. I took out their tongues so that their ghosts could never haunt me. Now, I haunt them.

It was always useful to have a supply of bound spirits, after all.

All around him, the battle was only just getting started. The sound of the Silence breaking through waves was deafening.

Euron laughed.

His crew were rushing, frantically trying to fight the wind. Euron stared, and all of the men around him had no eyes. Blood dripped from their empty eye sockets. Their skins were bloated, corpse-pale and water soaked.

"Captain!" Torwold Browntooth called. Bloody water was gurgling from his mouth and half his skull had been cut open, but the man didn't seem to notice. "Orkwood has fallen. The Bloody Watchman is ablaze!"

"Their numbers?" Euron demanded.

"Four, five hundred vessels," Kemmett Pyke shouted from the prow, barely audible over the wind. There was a phantom arrow sticking half-through the man's skull. "Including a hundred great galleys."

Most others on the ship were dead and maimed too. The shade of the evening allowed him to see their phantoms.

In the distance, Euron saw flames and great burgundy sails. The bright red, greens and purples of their sails and banners clashed with the setting sun.

He saw three spikes breaking the sky, like the prongs on a broken crown. On the coast, the first husks of longships were burning in the shallows. He saw mammoth shapes of the great galleys up ahead, swirling in the black waters.

The Redwyne fleet had finally arrived. And the ironborn were ready.

Lord Orkwood's garrison holding the Three Towers had crumbled under the force of Lord Paxter's galleys. Lord Orkwood's sons had held it valiantly, yet the size of Redwyne's fleet meant a brief battle. Raiding vessels had seen the fleet approaching, but by the time Euron's reinforcements had gathered from Blackcrown, Ryamsport, Starfish Harbor and Vinetown, the battle was already nearly over.

The castle itself was burning in black, smoky flames. Good, Lord Orkwood proved that he was a true ironborn, Euron thought approvingly. He torched the castle before they allowed it to be reclaimed. May Lord Orkwood enjoy his time in the Drowned God's halls.

Around them, the seas were choppy, and the winds howled. The storm that he had been brewing over the Arbor was finally being released.

Yes, tonight is the night. A vision of bloody, churning seas flashed before his eyes. It will be glorious.

"Blow the horns!" Euron bellowed, shambling forwards. His Valyrian steel armour clanked. "All ships. Signal the formation and prepare for assault. Tonight we reap some grapes!"

"What about Lord Orkwood?" A young raider - Steffarion Sparr, he remembered - shouted. He had a spear through his chest. "There might still be survivors held up in the Three Towers."

Who cares? "Lord Orkwood did his duty." The first sacrificial lamb of the night. "We assault the Redwyne fleet. Burning those galleys matters more than a castle."

The shadows of the Redwyne fleet loomed. As they got closer, they could see skirmishes on the beaches of the Three Towers - the last ironborn of the castle fighting against the men of the Reach, even after their longships had been crushed. Euron had no interest in relieving them. Tonight is about killing, not saving.

"We call the fleet! Bring our full force to bear!" Euron shouted.

The men on deck were but half of his tried and tested crew, with whom he'd ranged to the world's edge; the other half were nobles and heirs of the houses of the Iron Islands. Lord Goodbrother, Steffarion Sparr, Dagon Ironmaker and Quenton Sunderly and many others had all been 'invited' to crew the Silence in preparation for the battle, while their fathers or sons led other ships in the fleet.

Euron walked among his men, looking at how each one would die. "Lord Goodbrother!" Euron proclaimed. The aging lord's eyes narrowed. "As is fitting for a man of your experience, I grant you command of my deck and sails. Stonehand - you are in command of the rowers and coxswain. Kemmett Pyke, you man the crow's nest."

"Aye captain!" the Stonehand called as the bodies rushed around him. Ropes strained and wood groaned - it took ten men to drag the black masts in against the wind.

Euron saw a figure with seawater gushing from his mouth, gasping through lungs filled with salt. Euron grinned. "Rodrik Freeborn!" he announced. "I appoint you as hornblower - see to your duty below."

Rodrik Freeborn looked shocked. He was a tall, wiry man clad in the heavy chainmail - a reaver past his prime, but still as hard and as worn as rock. Not one of Euron's true veterans, but among the best of his newly recruited ironborn. "Hornblower?!" Rodrik exclaimed. "I'm one of the best damn spears on this ship, and you're putting me as hornblower? Let me lead the first raid."

"Your duty is with the damn horns, see to it," Euron snapped. "You listen for my command - my command alone - and you blow accordingly. We must rally the fleet - now blow the first horn for them to muster and follow."

The hornblower was a crucial task, but hardly the most glorious one. It was a duty usually fulfilled by squires and apprentices, but tonight Euron couldn't risk any but one of his most loyal men as the flagship's hornblower. The ships of the fleet would be looking to the Silence to lead, and for this battle the Silence had been fitted with five great horns to pass instructions. They were horns of iron, silver, bone or oak, all very different shapes and sizes. The smallest horn was four feet and the largest over seven, but each one had a very distinguishable pitch and tone - the sound of which gave different orders. It was the only way to pass orders through a fleet of hundreds of ships.

He could see the fleet mustering down the Redwyne Straits. The first horn - a long, sullen sound like a whale's cry - echoed over the water. Euron saw flares and signals rise from the longships in response. My fleet has been prepared for this, he told himself. They will be ready.

He couldn't stop his heart from beating. In the distance, the Redwyne fleet grew closer.

"Lord Paxter will be angry," the Stonehand growled, his smile bloodthirsty. He was a short, stout man, the son of a salt wife; his neck, shoulders and arms marred stony black from a bout of greyscale he had overcome as a child. "We razed his lands to ruin and pillaged his villages. He will be eager for retribution. He will sail to meet us, and we will slaughter him."

As it happened, the man was proven wrong within minutes. Even in the distance, they saw the fleet turning into the wind, flying northeast away from the Redwyne Straits. Three Towers was just a dot on the coastline now.

"He flees like a craven!" Quellon Humble snapped.

"Craven? No, it seems Lord Paxter has his wits," Lord Goodbrother called darkly. The lord was a 'guest' aboard the Silence, but a capable tactician. Yes, he will do to command the sails. "He doesn't wish to face us in open water, not when we have more ships than he does. He could lose too many if his galleys are encircled by our longships. Instead, he leads us down into the bay itself so he can fortify around Oldtown. He expects to crush us with the size of his hulls if we dare to follow."

The Stonehand's face twisted. "Then what do we do?"

"We follow, of course," Euron grinned as he stepped forward. "Blow the horns. Sound the drums. Tonight's the night - we break through their fleet and take our blades to Oldtown itself. Come, come, tonight let the Drowned God sing!"

Lord Goodbrother looked nervous. "Your Grace," he said hesitantly. "Those are great galleys. The Great Kraken and the Silence are more than equal to any lesser warship, but most of our vessels are not. Our fleet is primarily longships built for raiding, not battle." He shook his head. "Only the Iron Fleet itself could stand to match the force Paxter Redwyne commands, right now we do not have the ships—!"

"The ships?" Euron taunted. "We are ironborn, we are the storm. We can break them."

Over the horizon, he could see the immense burgundy sails and the three hundred oars of the Redwyne flagship, the Arbor Queen. That ship alone was three times the size of anything in Euron's entire fleet.

The sound of drums and rowers was deafening. The entire fleet was behind him, one of the largest Westeros had ever known. He could see the cliffs come into view as the ironborn fleet spilled into the bay.

The Silence led from the centre rear, alongside the Thunderer and the Dusk. The ships of House Drumm and House Harlaw kept their crews but were now captained by Euron's men, the Red Oarsman and Harren Half-Hoare, now acting as his most trusted captains. Euron had been sure to place his own men and allies throughout the fleet's strategic points.

Command of the Great Kraken, his dear brother's old flagship, had been gifted to Donnor Saltcliffe to lead the starboard rear. The Nightflyer, formerly belonging to House Blacktyde, until its lord had been cut into seven pieces, was now captained by Lord Waldon Wynch to lead the port rear, along with Hotho Humpback Harlaw on the Gargoyle to support him. Germund Botley on the Silverfin and Lord Maron Volmark on the Leviathan's Wail led the front flanks, while the Sparr led the vanguard from the centre aboard the Hatchet's Edge.

Euron could make out the greatest ships of their fleet - the Foamdrinker, the Axe Maiden, the Bone Reaper, the Last Light, the Maiden's Tears, the Forsaken, the Northern Hunter, the Salt Bitch - as they gathered around and formed into the ranks he had ordered. The strongest few of the ironborn great longships were the only vessels that could match the mainlander's war galleys and dromonds; besides that he had a few hundreds of smaller vessels with crews of dozens, filling out his ranks, and beyond that, he had a vanguard of captures, a second sea of captured vessels numbering in the many hundreds, most of which were crewed by less than ten ironborn.

Their ranks were supported with cogs and merchant ships captured from the Arbor, refitted for war and gathered mostly at the front. The largest of which was a towering three-deck galleas they had captured in Ryamsport - its masts still bore the golden lion of Lannister, yet the lion was crossed out in blood. The 'King Joffrey's Valor' had been under construction when the ironborn razed the port, originally a gift from the Arbor to the Crown. It was a two-hundred oar vessel, barely a quarter of which were filled, and the ship had been built by Redwynes and very hastily finished by ironborn. A hulk in truth, barely seaworthy.

Euron had given the vessel to Eldred Codd to command from the front, but he had refused to allow anyone to change ship's name. It made Euron laugh to call her the King Joffrey's Valor.

Mustering the armada from anchor in open water that morning had taken some time, their force by necessity spread across a decent-sized area just outside the mouth of the bay. But Euron didn't rush. The Redwyne fleet attacked Three Towers in the morning, and by late evening the entire force of the Iron Islands was gathering to give chase into the Honeywine. The leading longships moved faster than the galleys, but their numbers were large and Redwyne fleet had too much of a head start.

Lord Goodbrother scattered onto the deck, peering over the prow. Everyone was shouting and running, but the lord looked worried. "My king!" Lord Goodbrother called to Euron. "This is folly! Our fleet won't catch them in time before they reach Oldtown!"

Euron just smirked, and didn't respond. The lord's features were writ deep with worry.

The skies were growing dark and the storm rumbled. The wind was still building in intensity, howling through the Bay of Whispering Sound. Rain splashed, waters churned. We will have the wind behind us, Euron thought smugly.

He ordered the coxswain to beat the drum, and the rowers to begin.

"Crow's Eye!" Lord Goodbrother bellowed once more. "We aren't ambushing them, they are ambushing us! Lord Paxter has joined up with the fleet at Oldtown – he means to crush us in the harbour!"

Exactly. And we will fight straight through them. As soon they positioned themselves at the mouth of the Honeywine and the harbour, the Redwyne's forces would have a significant defensive advantage. Let the grape lord think that he has the upper hand for now.

"King!" Lord Goodbrother shouted again. "Please, stop the oars! Bring the sails in, let us take formation! A blockade, perhaps, or a landing force, but not a charge. We have more ships, but they have far more men - we cannot survive it."

The sky crackled, an enormous growl rumbling over the fleet. This storm is only just getting started. In the distance, a shadow flashed against the intense blue-white light. "Do you see that over the horizon, my lord Goodbrother?" Euron asked, pointing across his ship, grinning. "That is the Hightower itself - one of the Nine Wonders made by man, they say." Euron's grin widened. Lord Goodbrother looked at him as if he were mad. Foolish little minds. "What arrogance that is, don't you think! For there are only Seven Great Wonders made by nature, and it is the arrogance of man to think that they can do two better! Men truly believe that they can spew forth more wonders than nature?"

Lord Goodbrother's eyes were wide. "Please, my lord… if we follow Lord Paxter, the mouth of the trap will close on us. This will be a battle we cannot win. There are other places, other targets—!"

Euron's lips stretched into a mad grin. Blue wine still stained his beard. "I am a force of nature, my lord. I am fury made flesh." He turned and bellowed to Rodrik Freeborn below. "Blow the second horn! We charge!"

The horn blew, a high-pitched screech in the wind. The Thunderer and the Dusk replied first with their flares, but the other ships followed suit. We attack with the storm. We are the storm.

Lord Goodbrother tried to object, and then Qarl the Thrall imposed over him threateningly, eyes dark, fingering two long and slender daggers on his belt. Last thing I want now is discord among the men. "Take him to oversee the scorpions on deck," Euron ordered Qarl. "But if he questions my orders again, throw him overboard." Seas red with blood. "Sound the commands! The plan has not changed. Signal the fleet to form up."

The lord was walked away, his jaw tight and his face pale. "Remember where your sons are," Euron overheard Qarl the Thrall warning Lord Goodbrother.

Above him, the clouds were churning, black and roiling. He could see the great dark storm forming, it was a pillar of the sky, an immense funnel to the gods. His aeromancers were doing good work, it seemed. "Many other captains will have the same doubts, my king," Quellon Humble warned, sticking close by Euron's side, muttering lowly so that only they could hear. "Our men are emboldened now, but their courage will fall when they see the size of what we face. They have multiple armies."

"It doesn't matter," Euron smirked. "As soon as we enter the bay, the wind will be smashing against their fronts, with only land behind; the Greenlanders will be unable to flee even if they try to."

The man stared at him for a moment, eyes wide, before Euron turned to look elsewhere.

The ironborn were starting to chant as the rowers splashed, paeans to the Drowned God echoing over the salt water. The beacons on longships stretched out before him, sea spray crashing against hundreds of ships.

Slowly, without an obvious order, the Silence started to break ranks and fall back slightly. The Silence, the Great Kraken, the Thunderer and the Dusk were all falling back towards their positions at opposite sides on the rear ranks, to cut down any longships that tried to break formation. Hopefully, in the frenzy, few of the other captains would realise that their formations were herding certain ships towards the front.

Euron had his own captains in the most vital positions. His men would destroy ironborn ships themselves, before allowing any to flee.

The excitement didn't fade. He took another swig of shade of the evening, so he could watch the world twist around him. The blue wine dripped from stained lips, it made his head swirl, but he also felt sharper and more focused than ever.

All around them, the wind's howling started to grow into a frenzied shrieking. "This storm!" he heard Ralf of Lordsport call through the air. "Have you ever seen the like of it?"

"Yes," Euron laughed as he walked forward, "in my dreams!"

Euron clambered up the sails, so he could bellow orders from the crow's nest. He clutched the rope tightly, heavy raindrops bouncing of his Valyrian armour, feeling the whole ship shudder below. I will not die. Death cannot take me.

He hung metres off the roaring seas, bellowing and laughing so loud that even the ships either side of him could hear. "Tonight we reap the Garden! Tonight we break the Tower!" he roared. "Forward! Forward, reavers! Slam the drums and man the oars! We bring the Drowned God's fury!"

The war drums were ringing. The ironborn fleet sailed through the storm, each man chanting and singing over the howl of the wind. "By the Drowned God's fury!" the reavers chanted, banging axes against shields. "By salt, stone and steel! Salt, stone and steel! Salt, stone and steel!"

"What is dead may never die!" Euron bellowed.

"BUT RISES AGAIN! HARDER! STRONGER!"

Yes, Euron thought happily. There's nothing like a storm and a charge to build up passions and quench rational thought.

The leading ranks were of all the smaller vessels, captured carracks or cogs or longships of a dozen oars, a fleet of the weak so thick it could blanket the sea. Oars splashed, warriors pounded drums. Every fighter was wearing heavy iron as the rowers swept saltwater to the heartbeat of war.

So many will fall to the Drowned God today, but we are ironborn. Tis a gift.

From the prow of Euron's ship, the Damphair was screeching and wailing madly, but he couldn't make out the words over the sound of the storm. "Bring my brother in from the prow!" Euron said to the Stonehand, like an afterthought. "Poor Aeron shouldn't die yet. He has yet to meet his god."

The Bay of Whispering Sound was screaming. He felt the wind batter the ships, fighting against the current, jerking with every wave. They broke through the bay, sailing up towards the small isles scattering the harbour around the mouth of the Honeywine.

The storm only grew, until every man was struggling to wrestle with the flapping sails.

And in the distance, the blob of lights of Oldtown became clearer. They hoisted up great torches from the docks and walls, but It was too dark to make out any detail in the city. The sky was pitch black, but they could see the shadows of hundreds of vessels of the Reach, highlighted by the pinpricks of torches on their prows. Above them, the great lamp atop the Hightower shone. Like a giant flaming eye in the darkness, brighter than the moon.

The Hightower was huge, a tower fit to scrape the heavens. Over nine hundred feet high, an absolutely gargantuan stone structure, pronged like a crown, the giant lantern atop its precipice glowing a ghostly yellow in the dark.

Bells rung from the city, another chime in the deafening orchestra of the world. The great bell of the tower boomed like thunder.

The solid wall of vessels approached. The city was ready for a fight, and the ironborn rushed to meet them.

"We have the wind on our side!" Queer Qarl Kenning bellowed. "We sail against them and smash them with the force of the storm!"

The lights became close. The lights of a city, and strong walls and defenders filling the docks. "We have the wind." Steffarion Sparr's voice sounded grimmer. "But they have the numbers."

More and more vessels became visible as the isles emerged. The Hightower sat on the Battle Isle, at the mouth of the Honeywine, while the ships streamed out from the harbour.

The ships of the green lands sailed to meet them. Their sails and hulls were covered in bright colours, banners and heraldry, stark contrast to the bleak and grey vessels of the ironborn. The fleet of the Reach pulled their sails in tightly, battering together against the winds and shouting for formation. They fastened ships together with ropes and grapnels to keep tight rank, their sails high and their oars fighting against the waves.

He saw the burgundy sails of the Arbor Queen at the front of the barricade.

Lord Paxter angles his biggest ships in the front of his ranks, prow-first, Euron noted, his eyes passing over the ropes and chains holding Paxter's formations in place through the storm. A wall of ships, to meet us head on. He chooses to use his most valuable vessels at the front.

It wasn't an unwise decision, but it was an exploitable one.

More and more shapes took form from the darkness. Great banners of Hightower, Redwyne, Tyrell, Tarly and Rowan came into view first. The Redwyne galleys hunkered together, forming a solid wall across the harbour while the fleets of Oldtown poured in from the flanks.

Boom. Boom. Boom. The sounds of massive contraptions firing exploded into the air, and then the roars of spray, as sharp as thunder as heavy projectiles hit the water. And then Euron began to see heavy shapes arcing through the air, coming right for the fleet.

The booms were so loud they could have been thunder. From atop the Hightower itself, the arms of immense stonethrowers unravelled, launching projectiles from higher and going farther than any Euron had seen before. He heard the splashes as they crashed into the ocean with the rain; still too early to hit any of their ships, but coming frighteningly near. They are testing their range in this wind.

Barrels filled with stones, Euron guessed. The great stonethrowers on the tower would barely be able aim at all in winds like these, many of the projectiles would scatter in the storm. Doubtless as we get closer they'll be supported by siege weapons from the docks and walls too. He grinned. Excellent, yes, that's the way.

Unfortunately, there would only be a brief window where the Hightower's trebuchets would be devastating - after their ranks collided the greenlanders wouldn't be able to risk firing their siege weapons without hitting their own ships.

"The Stonehouse and Lord Sunderly are raising flares to retreat!" Ralf of Lordsport shouted.

"Ignore them," Euron ordered. "Blow the second horn again. The charge continues!"

The horn's blast sounded strangely forlorn amidst the storm. Euron could feel the mood of his fleet changing quickly.

Oh yes. Euron could only laugh. The weakest of their number would likely break in fear, but his men were positioned to ensure none would stop the charge. My men know their duty.

Around them, the fleet's oars were being pulled by thralls captured in the Arbor. There were thousands of farmers and fishermen that had been captured and put to work, and then whipped until all rebellion died in them. Euron promised that any thrall that could not keep pace to the drumbeat would have their throats cut, then be thrown overboard. Each time a thrall collapsed in a pool of blood and sweat, they were replaced by another prisoner from their hold. All of the oars of the ships moved sharply, frantically.

The ironborn had reaved the Arbor to all hell, capturing tens of thousands of thralls and salt wives. They will speak of the devastation I brought to the Arbor for a hundred years, Euron thought smugly. But it will be nothing compared to what I will bring to Oldtown.

Once the news of his brutality in the Redwyne Straits had spread, it was little wonder that House Tyrell had assembled such a force to face him. Even despite the wars brewing in King's Landing, the Reach must have mustered absolutely every single man and ship they could spare to try to meet him here today. Euron saw banners bearing roses and towers, huntsmen and centaurs, knights and castles, foxes and weasels, cranes, swans and pelicans, butterflies and yellow suns, apples and horns of fruit, golden trees and oak leaves, dolphins, wyverns and lions. More heraldry than Euron recognised, or could ever care to learn.

"How many are there?" Dagon Ironmaker demanded.

"I count a hundred Redwyne warships leading the fleet, another hundred ships supporting their rear," Kemmet Pyke replied from the perch on the mast. "Thirty from House Hightower and Tyrell each. Another hundred assembled ships from other houses. At least two hundred or so from Oldtown's docks fill the ranks, merchant vessels and cogs included. No more than five hundred, I say."

Five hundred enemy vessels then, of greatly varying quality, but most were much far bigger than the standard longship. A ragtag fleet could be overcome, though, the true risk was still the warships. "They have more men than they have ships to carry them!" Lord Goodbrother warned, twitching fearfully. "Each one of their vessels will be overcrowded with swords, it looks like they've even had to seize merchant ships to carry all their men, and it still isn't enough."

Whereas we are in the opposite situation. I have over four hundred ships from the Iron Isles, and even more captures besides, yet not enough fighting men to properly fill them. Not that we lack for bodies.

"It will be the Redwyne ships that will hit us first!" Euron chuckled. "Strong galleys built for war - they will hold like a wall and crush us with their size. I expect Hightower will lead their ships along the flank, to cut through our number while we grapple with the Redwynes. The assorted ships will hold position at their rear; they can't risk such a ragtag fleet ruining their own formation." He scratched his beard. "Yes, Lord Paxter proves himself a capable strategist. He risks taking heavy losses against our rams, but after the charge we will only lose momentum and positioning while they will gain it."

"Look to the east and south!" Steffarion Sparr shouted, voice cracking. "There are hosts of men on the beaches, in formation."

Across the coasts, they could see men on horseback riding along the beaches, following the fleet. Men jabbed wooden spikes into the rocky sand, and raised roses on their banners. The thorns sought to trap them, to hold the coasts while the ships clashed. Lord Meldred Merlyn had wanted to take a force of men on the beaches too, to support the naval assault, but Euron refused. True ironborn fight at sea.

"Aye, the Tyrells mean to stop us disembarking, they pre-empted us in setting a beachhead. If any of our ships go near the coast we will suffer for it," Euron agreed. Not that it matters. I always intended this as purely a naval battle.

"How many men do think there are against us?" Dagon Ironmaker shouted. "Lord Orkwood feared forty thousand."

Euron shook his head. "No, we've made our intentions very clear, and they've met us in kind. I expect sixty thousand."

A sort of dread mumble passed through the men, everyone reacting in their own way. "We will give glory to the Drowned God tonight," the Stonehand rumbled.

Oh yes, yes we will. Nine thousand against sixty. Absolutely perfect. They will remember this as the greatest victory since the Fields of Fire.

There were more booms. The stonethrowers had launched another volley, and this time he heard screams and crashes. Wood shattering under the force of rock. The first deaths of the night, at the fringes of their front rank. Dozens dead maybe, but it wasn't enough.

More and more screams, and Euron could barely make out half of them.

"Garrison on the Bloody Isle! More trebuchets being readied!"

"I see reserves on the wall!"

"There are forces on the starboard and port taking position!" another voice called, cracked with fear. "They mean to trap us in the harbour!"

Euron could see the longbows and scorpions being readied. Then there were horns blown from their rear.

"My king!" Kemmett Pyke bellowed, loud enough to cut through all others. "Lights to our rear! Fifty or so heavy cogs!"

They heard the whine of distress horns to their rear. He saw longships raising red flares. Euron was totally unsurprised, but a ripple of fear started to pass through the Silence. So even my men can still feel nerves. They are only mortal, I suppose. "But of course," Euron laughed. "Lord Paxter has entrapped us. While we chased after his vessels, he left a small but heavy force behind the cape, to follow us as we chased the main fleet. He means to entrap us in the Honeywine."

And yet his trap only serves us. One of Euron's biggest concerns had been if his own ships would desert him in the battle. By entrapping them in the mouth of the Honeywine with a rear force, Lord Paxter Redwyne had happily ensured that no ironborn could escape even if their courage did break. Between the trap and the storm, there was no choice but to fight to the death. That was Paxter's mistake. Men would only fight rationally for as long as they had a way out. Take that away, and the battle was sure to become crazed, out of control. Euron had taken steps to ensure this would be a battle that held nothing back, and Lord Paxter's actions to that end were nothing less than helpful.

A few men gawked at him. "There will be no retreat in this battle," Euron promised, raising his voice to a shout. "But what do enemies behind us matter, when glory only lies ahead? We will be attacking forwards!"

He saw how wide Lord Goodbrother's eyes were, how pale his face was, how his mouth opened and closed mutely. He might have been trying to speak, but the man, himself an experienced captain, could only stammer in fear.

Yes, they are in a good position. Lord Paxter expects a bitter battle, but one that he would win. Lord Redwyne's trap would embolden them to commit as many men as they had into the battle. The Reach's armies and navy intended to slaughter the ironborn soundly and to the last, and so they were holding little and less of their forces back. And thank you for that, Lord Paxter, for my plan only works if both sides clash in full force on the water itself.

Euron had not been sure as to whether or not the defenders would try to hole up in Oldtown. That would have been bad - trying to lay siege to the city would not only go poorly for Euron, it would be pointless besides. Instead, he had needed to provoke them into meeting him with force, into taking an aggressive stance fleet to fleet. He spent his time razing the fields of the Arbor into ash, and taking slaves by the thousands, to provoke the Reach so badly that they would have no choice but to muster an army to crush him. They would not allow him to bring such destruction to their precious green lands, so they had rallied every farmer's boy and greybeard in all the land to fight.

That they were able to gather such a host even despite how occupied Mace Tyrell was in King's Landing… it was a testament to how gravely Euron had provoked them.

It had taken months of planning for this very moment. First, he had to embolden his own army with easy victories in the Shields and the Arbor. Then, he had to make sure there were no rivals to deny him when he ordered to a full-scale assault on Oldtown. All of the objectionable voices in his fleet, his brother included, had been quietly weeded out or made to be distracted.

It had not been easy. Even among ironborn, it had been a tall order to convince nine thousand men to sail into the bloodiest battle of their lives. Euron had no delusions about how many would be surviving.

Let's see… Lord Paxter Redwyne commands the battle from the Arbor Queen, while one of the Hightower's sons leads the rear from Honour of Oldtown. Garlan Tyrell will likely lead the force on either the Bloody Isle or the docks.

There was nothing to be done about the heavy siege weapons on the Battle Isle, they could only be endured. He had seen them gathering in the glass candles.

The Honeywine was a deep and slow river. So many ships blanketed the black, churning waters. The sound of the drums and oars felt like the frenzied heartbeat of an enormous god.

The sky seemed to crack. The rain poured from the rumbling clouds, heavy droplets splashing over axes and helms. The beats of the drums seemed to grow into a frenzy.

"It seems the Drowned God won't allow defeat either! Can you hear him blowing his horn?" Euron shouted as the sky crackled. "The Drowned God has called forth a storm for us! The only way forward is over the ruins of our enemies!"

"This is madness!" Dagon Ironmaker trembled, struggling to clamber against the wind. "They are lining up prow first! We cannot ram against a formation like that!"

"We can. Brave men can do whatever they want."

The first salvo of arrows filled the sky. Euron heard men in the front ranks screaming, clutching shields, trying to take shelter while still rowing.

"Who commands from the front?" Steffarion Sparr gasped.

"That would be the Lords Codd, Sharp and Myre, with Harlaw and Stonetree not far behind."

"Tis a slaughter," the young man gasped. Another boulder fell from the air, and a longship shattered into splinters. The sounds of screams, waves and snapping wood all mixed together in an immense boom.

The front row of longships collided with the Redwyne formation. One after another, like bloated ants trying to swarm giants. The longships looked so tiny compared to the bulk of the galleys. Euron could hear the screams even above the storm as the arrows cut them down. He had given the privilege of leading the front rank to a select few reavers, all of them sons of salt wives or lesser lords.

More and more flares requesting retreat were raised, but Euron didn't return them. They would all look to the Silence for their lead, but the Silence was merciless. "Raise the red banner," Euron ordered. "Make sure every ship knows to keep the charge."

Besides Euron, Quellon Humble shook his head grimly. "It's a bloody slaughter," he muttered. "Longships that size don't stand a chance against ships like that."

"The first rank was never meant to win," Euron smiled. "Only to make Lord Paxter commit."

Lord Goodbrother opened and closed his mouth, staring in horror. Euron's grin widened. The Redwyne ships were slaughtering one longship after another, but he could still see the Redwyne warships hesitating. They are starting to realise, Euron thought happily.

The sounds coming from the breaking longships were not the cries of warriors.

"Do you want to know what every ship I placed in the front rank has in common?" Euron chuckling, his smiling eye shining. "They are all full of slaves. Every single one of them has their hulls filled to the brim with thralls taken from the Arbor."

From ahead of them, he could hear the screams of panic and pain as arrows and bolts and stonethrowers shredded the first rank's hulls to pieces. The Arbor fleet looked to be shifting and shouting - the men on board must have finally noticed that the people they were shooting at weren't enemies.

That wreckage started to fill the bay, shattered husks of longships grinding against the Arbor fleet in the waves. It was a slaughter, but not of ironborn. The churning salt waters began to darken with red.

Hundreds dead, maybe. But this is only just beginning.

"Aye, Lord Paxter is killing more of his own people than he is mine," Euron chuckled, before shouting. "Signal the second rank to assault! All sails forward!"

The second rank was more of the same; there were at least twenty thralls and slaves for every one ironborn. Many ships didn't have ironborn at all; they were just set adrift with the wind, ironborn men leaping by ropes to the ships that weren't meant to be sacrifices. And so his second rank of sacrificial goats advanced. By now, Lord Redwyne's men must be feeling rather unnerved.

Lord Goodbrother stared at him with wide eyes. "This is your strategy… sending ships to the slaughter en masse! All our captures! What are you doing here?"

Euron laughed. "They want blood, I will give them blood. I will send more and more ships at him; until they run out of arrows and their men's courage breaks. Let them listen to the screams of our slaves - let them kill their own smallfolk one after another. If Paxter lacks spine, he'll be forced to break his own formation to rescue the thralls. They are innocents from his own island, after all."

Euron knew that at least a dozen of those longships had been filled solely with children. Even hardened soldiers weren't emotionless. And they're greenlanders. Not ironborn.

If Lord Paxter broke ranks to try and rescue the slaves, he risked greater casualties still. And yet, if he didn't, his men would become more and more distressed, and begin to disobey orders.

Even in the dark, even in the spraying salt, Euron could see it. The hulls of the Redwyne galleys were losing formation, even as the wreckage of dozens of longships and captures drifted against their hulls. Bodies floated thick in the water by the thousands, many of them still screaming, swimming through the storm-tossed waters for the Redwyne's ships. Euron saw slaves and thralls begging for mercy, trying uselessly to clamber up Redwyne's hulls to escape the churning waters. Lord Redwyne himself must know they couldn't break formation to rescue them, but then, that wouldn't be an easy thing for his men to accept.

And that's why he will lose. The city's defenders are many, sprawling, splintered. For how long can he keep his men following his orders, when women and children are begging for aid? His ranks will break, his men care about things like innocence or justice. They will forget discipline, because they are 'moral' and 'good'.

The very thought made Euron scoff. 'Morality', Euron had to stop himself laughing with the thought. He is only mortal. Blood and bone chasing after the shadows of useless ideals. Even if he managed to win the chase, he would find nothing in his hand. I will be something greater.

The men of the Arbor fleet were panicking, losing control. The wind and waves and the wreckage were taking their toll. Euron saw a few ships, the ones closer to Lord Paxter's flagship, the Arbor Queen cutting down the desperate smallfolk fleeing the salt and attempting to climb their decks. But many others broke ranks to rescue as many as they could. Redwyne's formation, his wall of a hundred galleys, began to splinter.

Euron cast an eye behind, just to check. The cogs trapping his fleet in the bay of Whispering Sound were quickly enclosing, entrapping his forces. Good. He refocused on what lay ahead.

"Signal the third rank!" Euron ordered. "Break their formation apart!"

The third rank was smaller in number, but they were all big ships - fifty-two of them, captured galleys and carracks and whalers and so on. Even the smallest of them had at least three masts, and even they hung low in the water under the weight of at least a hundred bodies, some carrying as many as two or three or even five hundred thralls. The first and second ranks had only revealed their cargo of living bodies after being sunk. Not so with the third rank. If the first and second ranks had been his subtle opening, hidden sacrifices meant to draw fire and make the enemy commit to battle, then with the third rank there was no subtlety at all.

The most attractive thralls, women and children were strapped before the bows of each ship, naked, chains and ropes binding them in place just as poor Aeron had been. But this time, there were many of them - dozens of screaming innocents strapped to each and every prow and battering ram as they were sent crashing into Lord Paxter's lines at full sail. Even as Euron watched, the third rank's sparse ironborn crews separated from their ships, retreating via small lifeboats and canoes.

The fourth and fifth ranks were where the bulk of his fighting strength was, while the fifth rank held his core crew, the ones who actually mattered. The Silence sat in the middle of the fifth rank, along with the bulk of his main strength. He could see the battle coming closer. Wreckage groaned against the Redwyne's galleys, and the ships of the second and third ranks were all breaking in the water, being pounded from above by the Hightower's siege weapons - they had never stopped firing, perhaps in this darkness, they had never realised Euron's ploy. That had been a part of Euron's calculations – in this weather, ravens couldn't be used, and commands transferred between commanders could become confused, especially inexperienced ones such as these. Lord Paxter was their only commander whom Euron respected, and he was out on the water.

Soon, Lord Paxter's ships were floating amidst a second sea of corpses, swimming slave's bodies desperately trying to clamber aboard the greenlander's war galleys. His ranks were badly faltering, and Euron still hadn't met him strength for strength.

To the far starboard of the ironborn's flanks, Lord Waldon Winch and Hotho Harlaw were doing a valiant job holding back the Hightower ships moving in, but Euron wanted his true force focused at the Redwyne warships. Like a lance to their shield. Happily, Lord Paxter's rear blockage of the Honeywine behind them was not engaging yet, they must have been waiting for orders. As useful as tits on a boat.

More and more arrows and stones fell from the sky, still falling on the remnants of the second and third ranks. Shafts poured like the rain, great boulders crashed like thunder, and the waters turned red. The men manning the siege weapons must not have been informed yet, they had no clue just who those swimming bodies in the water really were.

The losses to the third rank of the ironborn's fleet were drastic already, but the tide of reavers' slave boats never stopped - as relentless as the waves and growing more and more frantic. Before him, the third rank's slave ships were still being forced into the meatgrinder one after another, while to the flanks of his fourth rank the true fighting was beginning. Euron could feel the air slipping into pure chaos.

"The King Joffrey's Valor is taking the line!" the Stonehand announced, banging his axe against his shield.

"Then let us beat the drums for our valiant third rank's flagship!" Euron cackled through the wind. "Beat the drums! Beat them louder!"

The King Joffrey's Valor shuddered uncertainly in the waves. The huge galleas was wobbling, threatening to keel, sloping at an angle in the rocky water - but its huge sails sent it forwards. It was the largest ship in the ironborn armada, and Euron might have found a use for it – but they had found the vessel only partway complete in its dry dock in Ryamsport when they had raided the Westerlands. It had been rapidly fitted to float by Euron's reavers, and on his orders it had been fitted with the biggest battering ram they could find on the entire Arbor, but it was still but barely even seaworthy. Arrows and scorpion-bolts pierced its hull, even took down its mast, but the galleas barreled straight into the wall of wreckage.

The ship was all oak and solid construction. Even without its oars, the huge sails swept it forward - an unstoppable mass in a straight charge. The captain didn't back down for a second.

Brave Eldred Codd, Euron thought. He knows what is expected of him. "Forward!" Euron boomed. "Their lines will be breaking, forward! Fourth and fifth ranks!"

In the dark, he glimpsed ironborn evacuating mid-charge from the hulk of the King Joffrey's Valor, throwing canoes and parasite boats and such into the churning waters and then throwing themselves in after them. The massive galley was groaning, wobbling, tearing itself apart, but its remaining sails were full and it kept pounding towards one of the Redwyne's great warships, one with yellow and green sails and heraldry that even he recognised: The Pride of the Reach. It tried to break ranks and scatter out of the way of the charge of the King Joffrey's Valor, but Lord Paxter's ranks were too tight and the headwind was against them regardless. Like ants, he could see the men of The Pride of the Reach panicking, and then—

The King Joffrey's Valor crashed straight into The Pride of the Reach.

When the ships collided, even from a half-mile's distance Euron felt the immense thud, a boom that shocked through the sea, greater than any of the third rank's other impacts. Even as the storm raged, he heard screams, panic, the crackling of solid oak splintering into pieces, a cacophony of solid oak splintering under pure force echoing over the water.

He saw the King Joffrey's Valor buckle – its keel was incomplete, and lacked the strength for such a ram. The ship cracked in two, buckling where bow and stern separated. The stern capsized and began to sink, turning over itself as the wind swept up the pieces. The Pride of the Reach broke with damage nearly as terrible, a great rent torn into its side, and then both immense vessels were twisting in the water. Ropes snapped and men desperately leapt overboard, bodies churning in the waves. The bodies of another few hundreds of thralls spilled out into the water, too.

Aboard the Silence, Euron's Grotesques were clanging their shields to the beat of screams, but some of the normal ironborn looked sick. "I don't… you're sending all the thralls to their deaths, why, why—" Lord Goodbrother gasped. "All of those captures…"

"Open your eyes, my Lord Goodbrother," Euron took another swig of the blue wine, and his grin widened when he saw the twisting currents of the world just beyond the veil, how those powers rose into the sky from the bodies in the water. Red fertilizer for a black storm. Yes, Urgard is doing good work. "Do you not see Lord Paxter's ranks breaking? My men know that godliness demands sacrifice, and they obey because I give them victory."

Lord Goodbrother's head turned between Euron and the Redwyne fleet, and opened and closed his mouth like a fish. Euron's eyes flickered over Lord Paxter's broken ranks. Yes, it is time. "Blow the third horn!" Euron shouted. "Their ranks are scattering, it is time! Blow the third horn and let us sail to glory!"

Rodrik Freeborn blew the horn of iron, and Euron's fourth rank unfurled their sails. The fifth rank would wait a little longer.

Unfortunately, the port and starboard flanks of his fleet were enjoying less success. Big vessels, dromonds and galleys flying the banners of Tyrell or Hightower or Tarly were crushing the outer edges of his fourth rank, until some of his bigger ships moved to meet them. All around him… to the portside, he saw the Honor of Oldtown crushing lesser ships into wrecks until the Gargoyle and the Silverfin moved to meet it. He saw The Nightflyer crashing against the Vigil, and the Great Kraken crushing the Lady of the Tower, while the Wise King Urrigon was suffering under the assault of the Huntress. Then, off to the starboard side, the Hatchet's Edge broke against a great Tarly cog with green sails and red huntsman, and more importantly, a spiked ram. Elsewise the Salt's Kiss was being boarded by the Sword of Gardener, and it did not look like it was going well for the ironborn. Only Euron's biggest ships could stand against these greenlander's war galleys in single combat, and he had few of those to spare.

"What even is this strategy," Lord Goodbrother gasped. "This is…"

"My men walk willingly," Euron said with a smirk. "Because I give them something brighter than gold, sharper than steel. What is that, do you ask? Victory, my lord. And victory is always shaped in blood. Better theirs than ours, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes, but this… there are rules, lines civilised men know better than to cross, this is—"

"Civilisation?" Euron laughed. "Oh, my lord Goodbrother, where is the iron in your blood? Civilisation is just the lie, the prayer the sheep agree to tell one another, to deny the existence of the wolf."

"Forward!" the Stonehand bellowed to the rowers. "Faster! Forward! Forward!"

Their flanks were collapsing inwards. His army was left mad with fear, but they would charge forward into the meatgrinder because there was no choice of retreat. The storm and wind howled like a mad beast.

Still, he saw the formation of the Redwyne fleet had cracked, many ships had left their portsides or starboards open for their charge. The Arbor Queen itself was left flailing against the tide of bodies and wreckage. There were men standing on storm-tossed flotsam, hacking at swimming bodies with swords, all the while raining arrows fell into the churning, red waters.

There were some ironborn survivors in the ocean who fought frantically to stay afloat, hands clawing uselessly at the longship's sleek hulls, or clinging for life to scattered bits of wreckage. Euron didn't stop to rescue anyone.

Lord Paxter chose to meet us on the water, his great warships first. Let us make him regret that choice.

"Signal the Thunderer and the Dusk," Euron ordered. "It's time for the fifth rank. Bring us into the battle."

In front of them, the King Joffrey's Valor had split in half. The stern was mostly sunk, while the bow was impaled partway into the side of the Pride of the Reach, dragging the Tyrell ship down with it. Euron gave one last chuckle at the King's Joffrey Valor.

"The port rank is being slaughtered!" Lord Goodbrother screamed. "Hotho Humpback raises a distress flare, and the Leviathan's Wail is taking on water. They're breaking us from the sides."

Damn, I've taken on too many new crewmembers, Euron cursed. There had been no other choice - he had needed spread his loyal and proven men out over the fleet - but in doing so he been forced to refill the Silence's own ranks with normal ironborn. They were all seasoned veterans, it was true, reavers of many raids, but they weren't the men who had sailed with the Silence from Valyria to Ibben to Asshai. My old crew would never be so cowardly.

"And we will break them from the front. I told you; there will be no retreat here, my lord Goodbrother," Euron replied, before turning to the Stonehand. In the choppy waves, he needed to clutch the roping so tight it hurt, even through his armour. "Bring the Silence into the fight. We take down the Golden Antler; signal the Dusk and the Thunderer to charge the Gardener's Glory."

"What of the Arbor Queen?"

"Leave them, let Lord Paxter flail against the headwind. We have done our damage; abandon the assault against the centre and focus on the starboard side."

"'Done' our damage?" Lord Goodbrother shouted incredulously. "We've lost over a third of our ships and for what? Half a dozen of theirs? They're slaughtering us here!"

We broke their formation. In a battle like this, as soon as their ranks break, everything snaps. "Aye, and can you not see how they've cracked? Lord Redwyne is struggling to keep control. We charge the Golden Antler leading their starboard and the Arbor Queen will have to tack to intervene. She'll fall back in the wind, any order they might still have will be lost, and then the Great Kraken will drive in the lance." Euron laughed madly, taking another swig of shade of the evening. "Push through them, turn their numbers into a weakness!"

The wreckage of broken ships bounced off their hull. The black scorpions of the Silence thudded, firing flaming bolts ahead. The ocean was screaming. Some of his men called for ropes to throw to the bodies in the water.

"Leave them," Euron ordered. "We will not rescue cravens, and if they were true ironborn then they would have sunk."

Flailing hands scraped at his ship, bodies trying desperately to stay afloat. One man grabbed a hold of an oar and almost managed to pull himself aboard, until a mute put an arrow in his eye.

Lord Paxter's meticulous defenses of Oldtown were failing. His large galleys were out of position, and not maneuverable in these winds besides. They were bunched too so close and fighting against a headwind, there was no hope of him reforming his ranks – tacking in winds like this risked damaging the masts. So many of his galleys have exposed their sides. As soon as we push through the wrecks, the Redwyne galleys will struggle to turn to face us. Their own ships will block each other as we push deeper into their ranks.

The battle would turn close and bloody, and would initially rely heavily on rams taking advantage of how the wind blew behind the ironborn's sails, but after that, it would be all close-quarters combat. It is time for my Grotesques to prove their worth.

Arrows thudded against their hull. Both the Golden Antler and Gardener's Glory were bracing for the Silence. Another ship, a refitted whaler with green sails bearing a red huntsman was coming into intercept them. The enemy galleys had mass and size, but many of them had exposed their bellies, and Euron's longships had the speed and momentum to drive their rams in like swords. "Bring in the sails and twist to port!" Euron bellowed. "Prepare to ram, prepare to board! Rorq, you're leading the charge over the prow!"

"You would attack prow to deck?" Lord Goodbrother paled. "That is suicide."

Euron turned to Rorq. The Tyroshi was short and scarred, grim and one-eyed. He had a hooked blade instead of a right hand, and a spear in his left. Euron had cut off Rorq's right hand years ago, during a fit of rage.

"What say you, Rorq?" Euron asked. "Do you have any qualms boarding them prow to deck?"

"None, my king," Rorq grumbled, bowing deeply. "For the glory of our god."

"Good man." Euron turned back to Lord Goodbrother. The fat lord was trembling in his chainmail. "There is no fear of death on this vessel, my lord. We are holy men; each one is worth ten cravens."

Lord Goodbrother looked at him, and then at his crew, as if they were all monsters. Euron could only laugh.

The battle's noise had gone beyond cacophony; it was now nothing less than chaos, even as the storm was reaching a fever pitch. Two boulders from the stonethrowers crashed to either side of the Silence, causing it to shudder on the water. Many of the crew were screaming or panicking, but not Euron's men. The Silence's killers were emerging from the hold, mute and scarred men clutching barbed weapons. He saw Mall the Monstrous clutching a warhammer with his one good hand, and booming orders in his grumbling, lispy voice.

The enemy flagship, the Arbor Queen was repeatedly firing orange flares, trying to signal someone, or something through the storm. Euron stared for a moment, then laughed on recognizing the repeated signaling failures for what they were. So, your men disobey you too, Lord Paxter?

It didn't matter. Euron ordered the Stonehand, who held the helm of the Silence to continue the charge and ram the Golden Gardener, their port side was more exposed than the Gardener's Glory. Euron stumbled with the impacts of the waves, still drinking wine, as he pulled himself towards the stairs.

"Signal Ghrazzac," Euron ordered to Mall as he passed. "His time is coming up."

Around them, Euron watched the Great Kraken, fresh off destroying a Tyrell vessel, break ranks and turning portside to meet a cog that had throwers sending flaming pots into the ironborn's ranks. The Honour of Oldtown was shoving its way through smaller ships and into their lines. The ironborn were folding, but there was no retreat. The Stonehand was screaming on deck while the waves rocked. "Brace!" the voice bellowed. "Brace! Brace! Brace!"

The galleys were so close that Euron could hear men screaming the same from the Golden Antler. The mouthless iron maiden cresting the Silence's prow gleamed eerily in the smoky gloom.

Euron went below deck, and calmly took his position hiding under the stairs. He sat down on the wet wood, placed his feet upwards, and braced for impact.

Still, the Stonehand's voice shouted on repeat, growing in pitch and trying to drown out the chaos. "Brace! Brace! Brace!"

Euron took his position clutching to the ropes on the stairway below deck, taking a deep breath in the dark. He had no interest in being on deck for the fighting, not yet. Beneath the stairway, a mumbling gasping shape discarded in the fighting. Euron grinned as he recognised the gaunt figure.

It had taken three men to drag Aeron Greyjoy up from the prow, and after weeks spent there, the man was all bone and rags now. Euron's men must have had dumped the Damphair down the stairs beneath deck during all the chaos. Aeron was a man on death's door, his arms so frail he couldn't even pull himself up.

Euron crouched down, bringing himself closer to his brother. Euron's crouch turned into a sort of bracing kneel, and he wrapped his arms around the Damphair's shoulders, holding him securely and bracing for collision. His gauntleted hand softly stroked Aeron's gaunt cheek. The man tried to squirm, thrash against him, but the Damphair was weak, delirious. Euron's grip was gentle, comforting.

"This is the moment, brother," Euron whispered softly into Aeron's ear. "These are the last days, when the world will be broken and remade. Kneel, bother. I am your king, your god. Worship me, see my divinity, and I will raise you to be my priest."

"You… you…" Aeron wheezed weakly. "You are mad…"

Euron only laughed, but quietly.

The Silence was trembling. He could hear the arrows thudding, the rain pounding and the storm howling. Still, that voice bellowed intensely, "BRACE! Now, brace! Brace, brace, brace… !"

"Just keep your eyes open, brother," Euron whispered. "Watch me and see true power."

You will bow before me. I have seen it.

With that, he yanked Aeron's salt-soaked long hair, pulled his head backwards, and poured the shade of the evening down his brother's throat. The drowned priest sputtered and gasped, and then his eyes began to roll. Why can't you see what I see?

Euron let Aeron fall against his chest, and he cradled his brother protectively. Everything blurred. There was one final, strangled scream, "BRA—"

The boom was tremendous. Euron kept his legs pinned up against the wall, but the impact still nearly snapped his spine.

The ships collided. The impact clapped through the Silence like a thunderclap. First there were screams, and then there was nothing but grinding wood. Yes, Euron could tellimmediately from the sounds of scraping and screaming. We've stabbed our prow deep into the Golden Antler's guts.

Wood buckled, metal screeched, and men shrieked. The two ships were groaning against each other, but the Silence pushed its way through until it jammed halfway through the Golden Antler. The Golden Antler was bigger, but the Silence moved faster and more fiercely.

Euron almost crumpled with the crash, but he was laughing through the pain in his chest. All around him, reavers and Grotesques were bursting out on to deck, and men screeching for more grapnels, more arrows and more shields.

In his arms, the Damphair was wailing nonsensically, like a mewling babe. The sound reminded Euron of his childhood, and the creaking of a rusted iron hinge.

He heard thuds so loud that they drowned out the storm. The Thunderer and the Dusk collided next to them, bringing their main force to bear. The rear ranks of the ironborn had joined the battle with their most powerful ships, and he could feel the Redwyne fleet buckling. Their ranks were broken, and now it was time for the killing.

The ironborn were breaking into the harbour.

All around him, the world was red. With the shade of the evening pulsing through his body, Euron could see so, so clearly. The white veins in the sky were breaking, and the world itself was bleeding.

"More blood," Euron gasped. "I need more blood."

He tripped as he stumbled to his feet, clutching the rope with both hands against the quivering ocean. He had to drag himself up onto the deck, and the Golden Antler was already breaking against the force of the Silence. Euron's Grotesques had been released - every freak, mute and murderer the Silence had to offer, bursting over the deck.

Out on the deck, Euron laughed when he saw that the Silence's figurehead - that mouthless maiden of black iron - had somehow been blasted off the prow and bounced halfway down her own ship's planks, where she was now sitting askew, practically impaled into the red planks beside the stairs. What a hit.

As for the Golden Antler – Euron saw the ram had split apart the ship's entire side, timbers splayed open like the ribs of a slaughtered animal. Rorq's vanguard was already slaughtering the men on the crippled ship. Rorq himself leapt over the Silence's prow for the wounded ship's deck, only to miss horribly and bounce into the water, limbs crushing. The men behind him didn't even hesitate as they jumped after him.

Minutes later, they left the sinking hulk of the Golden Antler behind them. At a certain point, Euron saw Kemmett Pyke crumple out of the masts and thud onto the red decks, with an arrow in his eye. The rocking took his body into the frothing red waves.

The Silence rammed multiple ships, and was rammed in turn once or twice. But even with these winds, there wasn't enough space in the mosh of ships for them to build hull-breaking momentum. But then the Stonehand, who held the ship's helm, found an opening and made a clear line for a Tyrell cog, ram at the ready as they built speed, despite the wrecks and wreckage.

Lord Goodbrother was left crazed in panic, but the Stonehand stepped up. "Raise the sails to starboard, all of them, even the top gallants! Pull tight!" the Stonehand bellowed. "We push through! Through!"

Euron could see the Thunderer ramming the Gardener's Glory, and then some Tarly vessel rammed them in turn. All around him, ships collided one after another, sounds like thunderclaps bursting over the sea even as the storm raged, higher and blacker than ever. The wind had pushed them both fleets eastwards, towards the harbour of Oldtown, forcing the last remnants of the ranks and all order to collapse. The bay became nothing less than a howling frenzy, butchery over red waters and under black skies.

There were no more stones being launched from the Hightower. Not a single ship was more than single yards from another, and they were all either pushing through each other or cracking under the weight.

"The Great Kraken has fallen!" Euron didn't know who was screaming, but the voice was quivering with fear. "The Honour of Oldtown has brought her down."

"Forward!" the shout continued. "Forward, forward, forward!"

The Silence was already breaking through the ranks, and the galleys couldn't turn to stop her. Then the Dusk was through too, and then the Nightflyer, and then the Gargoyle…

"Give them all to the Drowned God!" Quellon Humble bellowed, swinging an axe. "What is dead may never die!"

"But rises again!" the chant was returned, even by the crews of other nearby ships. "Harder! Stronger!"

He saw the Gardener's Glory capsizing in the wind. Warships burning, bodies thick in the water.

"More blood," Euron growled, and then raised his voice. "More blood!"

He drew both his swords. Nightfall in his left, Red Rain in his right. The world was churning, spasming, bleeding.

A refitted merchant cog carrying a Tyrell flag came to meet them. Euron sucked at his wineskin, and cackled as his eyes grew wider and clearer than ever. The two ships scraped against each other, and then soldiers were jumping the gap both ways.

Euron saw bodies crashing into bodies, corpses in the shape of men, visions of the future. He saw bodies impaled, slashed, gutted, strangled and slaughtered, crushed and shot, drowned and drowned and drowned. He strode through a tide of dead men, walked through a labyrinth of visions of death. Their hearts still beat, they still wielded swords that came for him with murderous intent, but they weren't even human to him now, just corpses filled with blood that hadn't yet started bleeding.

Valyrian steel flashed. This time, Euron was at the front of the battle. Two bodies fell, then three, then five, then six…

"More blood!" Euron heard someone screaming. Then he realized it was him. "We need more blood!"

The Tyrell cog was burning, even as white veins pulsed in the sky, beating to the tune of a distant heart. The Tyrell cog was done, but his reavers were left to fall with it. The Silence pushed its way through the wreckage, yet there was another ship to their portside, a galley this time, loosing arrows that scattered in the wind as the Silence pulled away.

The ships and flotsam were so thick that a man might have walked all the way across the harbour, but the water churned violently with the shrieking winds. There were no more battle lines, only a crazed frenzy of butchery scattered across every wave.

He saw a shattered Tyrell dromond burning down to the waterline, even as men still fought amidst the flames. He saw a Reach ship from a house he couldn't name, a galley with blue sails adorned with seven golden suns launching barrel of flaming oil at ironborn vessels, only to have the wind predictably send one barrel crashing straight back to where it came - after which burning men started jumping into the red waters. He saw a couple of Lyseni sellsails (what were they even doing here?) trying to flee from the battle, struggling as they tacked and tacked against the headwinds, only to be destroyed by Garlan Tyrell's ships. Bafflingly, he even saw a particularly brave, fully armored knight on a horse who somehow managed to jump onto a longship with his mount. He took down nearly a dozen men before he was brought down in turn.

The ocean was alive with screams, and bodies floated so thick on the storm-tossed waters that the Silence might as well have been moving through a new kind of sea hitherto unknown to the world, a sea that knew no tide but that of the storm, knew no flotsam but the corpses of the slain, and knew no water but blood.

Euron even saw men swimming in the water, trying to drown one another or flailing blindly with shortswords or knives, the frenzy was such that even drowning, dying men in stormy waters just kept fighting.

"Behind! Behind!" someone called from somewhere nearer to the Silence's stern. "Their rear encirclement! It's coming at full sail, it looks like Garlan Tyrell has seized their command! His men leave the Bloody Isle! They come for us, they come for us!"

"Then they too will walk the watery halls!" one of Euron's Grotesques called back from somewhere to the right, cackling.

Even the most veteran reaver had never, ever experienced a battle like this. There was something in the air, something pressing down on their senses that drove them berserk with panic. Euron saw it in the eyes of the greenlanders too. As if some hidden part of them, some low animal sense in the men that remembered what it was to be prey, could feel that great, black awareness that was now focusing on the surface. As if the men could sense the bloodthirsty edge behind the storm.

But the ironborn's fleet was breaking. To the portside flank, Euron saw The Thunderer split in half at the keel, but its men still fought amidst the pieces, attempting to take over the Hightower galley that had rammed them. Euron glimpsed the Red Oarsman, spear lunging, defiant to the last as he cut a bloody path through Hightower sailors with his spear.

On the Silence's other side, the Gargoyle was burning. Euron heard Hotho Humpback wailing and shrieking as the ship burned, men jumping into the water. Yes, it's time.

"Blow the horn, Rodrik!" Euron bellowed. "Blow the horn!"

Rodrik Freeborn was gasping out of fright, he did his duty only after Euron slapped the veteran reaver with a gauntleted hand. The man scrambled belowdecks, and then the third horn blew. The sounding of the oaken horn echoed over the water. Rodrik's fear strangled the sounding – the horn's call came out strangled and desperate, like the cry of a tortured animal.

The ironborn were losing the battle, and their courage besides, but Euron knew the Silence's men scattered to places of command throughout the fleet would still listen.

Heavy footsteps clambered out onto deck. Euron saw Ghrazzac stepping out as he hoisted a flailing, screaming, legless body. A half-man shorn of legs to make him more obedient, wrestling uselessly against the Brindled Man's bulk. The Brindled Man knew no fear, no disobedience. The man being carried was bald and clad in filthy, shredded blue robes with blue lips, screaming nonsensically. "Pryat, pryat!" the crippled warlock screamed, right up until Ghrazzac tore open the man's throat with his bare beefy hands and threw the thrashing body out into the red water.

There were other Grotesques behind Ghrazzac, each marching mages up from the hull to be slaughtered and given the waves.

Euron had given his men explicit orders; when the time came, they were to kill every mage, warlock and spellbinder on-board (except for the aeromancers) and toss their bodies overboard, one after another. Execute them all until it was enough.

Under an aeromancer's guidance, the death of a single mage was sacrifice enough to bring forth a storm. Euron would sacrifice hundreds to bring forth a god.

The storm escalated, and the sky grew black as pitch as the wind's screaming grew even louder. Ships crashed, careening against eachother. The decks were littered with arrows and bodies. Lord Redwyne had planned this battle for a mortal, sane man, but Euron had given him madness instead. The men of both sides were panicking, frightened, driven berserk. The armies ashore were nearly untouched, but on the water, the battle was making a sea of blood for both sides, the Redwyne fleet suffering losses they had never imagined despite their superior warships.

Euron felt himself howl with laughter as he sucked more on his skin of shade of the evening. The battlefield was becoming a vortex of red lines bleeding into a white sky, as if the storm itself hungered for blood and death. Every shriek of wind felt like a caress against his skin, was as if the storm itself was applauding him. Yes, Euron thought. Aeromancers are useful to have.

"She's keeling!" a voice called. "The Arbor Queen is keeling!"

He saw the burgundy sails of the great flagship ahead. Their masts were tearing trying to fight the wind. "We bring her down!" Euron bellowed. Lightning flashed, so close the booming thunder was instantaneous. The mast of a ship exploded into blazing sparks. "Paint the sea red! We need more blood!"

He stepped to the prow, staring around him. There were crew boats in the water, and fighting on every deck. Waves smashed and ships crashed, and all the while the mad, maniac laughter burst from Euron's throat. Visions of red, black and white swirled before his eyes.

"Can you not feel it?" Euron screamed. "Can you not feel the heavens watching us? The sea is quaking, the earth trembles, the gates of his watery halls are opening! The Drowned God hungers! What is dead may never die!"

"BUT RISES AGAIN!" his Grotesques screamed, answering his call again. "HARDER! STRONGER!"

Bodies wrestling on the deck, arrows falling. Ser Garlan Tyrell's charge into the abyss crashing against his rearmost sacrificial lines. Death and blood in every direction. Lord Paxter Redwyne standing atop the top decks of the Arbor Queen, impassive and grim-faced, watching Euron and Silence from on high, yet so close that Euron felt he could almost laugh in the Arbor lord's eyes.

He heard the Stonehand screaming for the rowers to push forward, to force their way through the wreckage churning in the waves. Tens of thousands of bodies in the water, broken and dying. In the middle of battle and storm, Euron stood and laughed, clutching the mast as he shrieked into the sky.

"We stand at the dawn of a new age! The storm that will break the earth and shatter the heavens! The bleeding star bespoke the end, these are the final days and a gibbering god will be raised from the graves and charnel pits to forth bring their end!"Euron shrieked as his swords swept left and right, each stroke a bloody brush painting the world red. "Feel the beating of the world, feel the waves, feel the wind! Feel the force of all nature itself swirling around us, that is what we give blood for, that is ineffable truth for which we sacrifice our bodies!

"There is no tribute more sacred than that of an axe through a skull! No greater glory than killing and dying for a higher power! No covenant more sacrosanct than the blood of the enemy spilled over earth and salt! Divinity is blood - the gods are built from pain and death and devotion, and we are their architects! That is the purpose of all this, for the thrones in the heavens are empty! Pray for me to succeed, for the drowned priests gave you naught but tales and stories of gods and glories, but I can give shape to myth!"

The warship in front of them was blazing in blood-red flames as the waves swallowed it, men disappearing into the dark water. "For every man that falls into the water, we rise up! Rise up to greater heights, and take another step on our paths! Mortality is a sea of transience between oblivion and eternity, and we stand on the natal shore! The glory of eternity lies beyond the horizon, an eternity that lies beyond our mortal sacrifices! There is no place for fear or hesitation - this is my gift. Follow me, and you will all bear witness to the rise of a god, what is the value of mortal lives compared to that?"

Bodies fell, faster and faster. Euron saw Torwold Browntooth take an axe through the skull. "We have a new destiny before us, waiting for our grasp," Euron screamed, "and we must leap for it! Leap for it and fly!"

He was still screaming maniacally, the words almost nonsensical as another cog crashed into the port of the Silence. The ship cracked, and groaned as the waves and wind wrestled around it.

Then they were all the way through the harbour, pushing against the Battle Isle and right underneath the Hightower itself. The defenders were struggling to force their way through each other to stop the ironborn, but the storm never ceased.

The ocean shuddered as the Arbor Queen smashed through the Nightflyer. Lord Waldon Wynch didn't stand a chance. The flagship was recovering, reclaiming its might. She was a strong ship, twisting in front of the Silence like a leviathan. Even when caught against the wind and attacked from the rear, the Arbor Queen didn't fall - the great galleas was too large even for the Silence to ram.

There was a huge groan, and the Silence shook so violently Euron felt his entire body bounce. Men were swashed off the deck as she jerked, swept away like insects helpless in the elements. The sails, Euron saw. He could see the wood tearing, almost in slow motion. Solid planks rippled like paper. The black sails of his ship had finally cracked, tearing off the main mast. Ropes snapped and the rigging buckled.

The mast collided against the deck so hard the impact rattled his bones, and the whole ship was sloping, the Silence must have been taking on water belowdecks.

His men were struggling to keep control. Ahead of him, he saw the Arbor Queen pushing her way through, making straight for them. To the side, he saw the Shield of Oakheart, the flagship that had been leading the rear encirclement and then commandeered by Garlan Tyrell, cutting a path through his starboard flanks, also aiming for the Silence. For a moment, Euron saw the young Tyrell heir staring right at him, sword raised for his heart, a knight's a promise, an executioner's intent writ in steel.

The Redwyne fleet had suffered in the ironborn charge, but now the longships were losing against the wind too and the fleet of the Reach was rallying. The rocks of the Battle Isle were before them, and the furious currents were beginning to crush ships of both sides against the shallows. The storm was blowing all the ships east, and as space in the bay narrowed, the water was turning into a mosh of blood and battle.

"Crow's Eye!" a voice screamed. "Crow's Eye!" Euron saw Lord Goodbrother, bleeding from a gash across his brow, scattering up towards. The ship rocked so violently the men had to clutch the ropes just to hold on. Trying to fight, sail and hold on for the dear life at the same time. Red oak planks tore like parchment. "Crow's Eye, the battle is lost! We must retreat!"

"Retreat?" The thought was outrageous. Are these mortals really so blind? Why can no one see what I can?

"Retreat!" Lord Goodbrother shrieking, voice cracking. "Rally whatever ships we still can, try to force our way out of the harbour! We have lost!"

Euron shook his head. "How many times must I say it, my lord? There will be no retreat here. Rally the ships to attack, we focus on the Arbor Queen. There is still more blood to be spilled."

The lord's face twisted in pure horror, stammering as he tried to speak. It looked like the lord had soiled himself. "You're - you're… they're crushing us, we can't—"

Euron drew Red Rain and placed it under the lord's throat. The Valyrian steel blade came so close it drew a dribble of blood from his chin. "I told you. We need more blood," Euron growled, but he was still grinning. "Now, I would prefer it if it they were the ones to bleed, but if not your blood will suffice. Do you understand?" Lord Goodbrother's eyes bulged, but nothing emerged from his throat but frenzied gasps. "Now get on with the bloodletting!"

A tremendous boom hit the Silence as the Hightower's stonethrowers pounded the waves with barrels. They nearly hit, but the trebuchets were too hard to aim in this weather. Euron saw a barrel crash straight through the deck of a small windclipper carrying a Tyrell flag, not even a hundred feet distant.

The ship was barely even maneuverable without its mast, but they still had slaves at the oars. The Stonehand forced them to row, and when they made a bit of distance away from the trebuchets, Euron screamed. "Stonehand! It's almost time! The gates are almost open!" Euron's scream turned into a shriek. "Hear me, Stonehand! The time is almost upon us! Hear me, men! His watery halls are opening, the sea will split, and a god shall rise!"

"A GOD SHALL RISE!" his Grotesques answered as one. "HE SHALL RISE!"

He nearly lost his feet as another ship crashed into them from the port side, a Blackbar carrack this time, with silvery white sails like a shield crossed with a thick black line. The ship had been set aflame by a barrel of burning oil launched from the Hightower, and the men didn't board the Silence so much as flee onto it, crazed with fear, eyes bulging, some of them burning like crackling pork even as they fought. Euron fought this time from the front, his Valyrian armor absorbing one blow after another, he only needed to guard his face as his Grotesques swept in from the sides. Another boarding, another butchery, and soon they left the burning hulk behind them.

"Is it time, Euron?" the Stonehand bellowed.

Euron drank again of his shade of the evening¸ and saw the cracking in the air above, the abyssal awareness below that was so, so close now. "Yes, it's time!"

"Blow the fourth horn!" the Stonehand bellowed, louder than ever, his voice carrying even over the storm. "Blow the fourth horn and press together to attack!"

The fourth horn was a signal for Euron's most loyal men, with orders he wouldn't trust even to most captains. The noise rang out as, below deck, Rodrik Freeborn blew the great auroch's horn. It had a sharper pitch than the others, like a knife cutting through the battlefield. The signal for the final push.

Euron heard the boom of horns sounding from the Arbor Queen as well, calling the defenders together. The two flagships were barely five hundred feet apart.

My men know what to do, Euron thought. They are all well-prepared for the fourth horn.

From below the deck, Euron heard the screams from the rowers. There was the sound of axes hacking, feet stomping through the ship, and the thud of dying flesh. Frenzied screams and abrupt silences. The fourth horn was the signal for Mall the Monster to slaughter every single rower on the Silence . One by one, the reavers cut through the chained, helpless men and dumped their bodies into the water.

Similar sounds were coming from other ships. He could see the bodies pouring from their hulls, a waterflow of corpses. Every thrall or salt wife that the ironborn had left was to be slaughtered and given to the waves.

Any man who was no longer contributing to the killing could instead help by contributing to the dying. It was simple maths, really; Euron just wanted to maximise the amount of blood. It did not strictly matter whose.

Lord Goodbrother was shouting, demanding to know what was happening, what was going on, but Euron only laughed. He reckoned that even the Redwyne fleet was left shocked to see the ironborn turning on their own crew and dumping the corpses.

Some ironborn tried to object. There was scattered, confused fighting on the remaining longships, but Euron's killers were all ready. From the Leviathan's Wail nearby, he saw Lord Volmark protesting. His objections died when Left-Hand Lucas Codd, Euron's man, cut his dagger across the lord's throat.

First there were scores, then hundreds, thousands of bodies falling and splashing one by one into the salt. Not enough. I need tens of thousands.

Even in the dark, Euron could see the red water plume outwards.

"MORE BLOOD!" Euron screeched. His desperate pants for air were half-gasps and half-chuckles. "We need… more… blood!"

Somehow, even amidst all the noise, Euron heard Aeron clutching at the railing, chanting to his god in a frantic voice. Soon, brother. Soon.

Euron saw Urgard and seven other mages, aeromancers all being walked out of the hull by Ghrazzac. His circle of rare slaves who had called forth the storm, the last of the last of his slave mages. Urgard gave one final glance towards Euron with sullen, resigned eyes, before bringing a bone knife across his own throat. The other spellcasters did the same, blood weeping from their necks, as they stumbled overboard and into the churning seas, blood pouring, gibbering and hooting bile.

Ghrazzac had not even needed to kill any himself. Euron had put particular attention into breaking the aeromancers. The Silence's fanatics didn't need to be forced, not anymore. They gave their own lives willingly.

Euron was almost sad to see Urgard go. Almost. He felt far more jubilation with the thought of their sacrifice. Urgard knew what was required of him. Ghrazzac was emptying Euron's hull quicker now, dumping bodies until there were none left.

Blood is the only currency the gods accept. The storm growled voraciously and the sky blackened like pitch. The clouds began to twist, rotating in sickening patterns that promised of a coming vortex at sea.

The Silence crashed through a wave as much of dead bodies as it was water, and when the water splashed over the planks, the sea foam was crimson. He saw scores of wrecked ships crashing against the rocks, and corpses beyond counting being stacked into hills by the waves.

Even missing its main mast, even without the rowers, the Silence pushed forward for its final charge. There was no holding anything back this time - Euron was on the front ranks, red and black blades in his hands and laughter on his lips.

The shadow of the Hightower had never seemed so high. Arrows were raining all around them, but Euron knew all of them would miss him. He could see all of the corpses before him, just waiting to die.

The ships crashed. The storm howled.

The Silence buckled, its prow ripped apart. Redwyne men were spilling from the decks of the Arbor Queen, men in boiled leather and armed with rapiers. Men afraid to wear heavy steel. Euron stood at the edge of his sinking ship, clad in Valyrian steel, both swords swiping left and right, high and low, slashing and stabbing as if hacking through vines. They weren't even men to him - the blood just poured out of their bodies like pierced wineskins.

The ocean was thick with corpses. Tens of thousands were dead already - the fighting broke through the harbour and reached the edge of the docks themselves. Men were on the wharves, trying to fire arrows into the churning ships.

Euron saw brave ironborn staggering over bridges made of wreckage, axes in hand as they charged to a frantic, bloody end. The Drowned God took all of their bodies home.

The ironborn fleet was devastated, but the Reach's fleet had suffered for it too. Maybe there were barely a tenth part of the ironborn still fighting, but there were tens of thousands of corpses floating on the waves, and hundreds of wrecks littering the bay.

Nearly there, so close…

He heard Aeron wailing. Lord Goodbrother was left clutching the broken mast's stump, hanging on for his pathetic life. Men's courage broke and their ranks shattered. The sea was screaming, the wounded and the dying squealing like pigs in a charnel pit as they bobbed amidst the corpses, but for all their desperation they were just more blood in the water, blood being brought out to sea as sacrifice to attract the deep dark.

Grapnels hung all around the Silence's railings as the Arbor Queen tried to drag her in. Euron wondered if Lord Paxter was still watching above from the decks, grim-faced, as the Redwyne men overpowered his broken flagship. The thought pushed Euron to move a little faster, swing a little harder, as he danced over the waves and broken planks and cleaved the boarders down one by one…

Just a few more… just a few more…

Red Rain splattered. Blood gushed over the planks—

…

And Euron heard the storm crack. There was a pulse, and then the white veins in the sky burst. A vortex truly took shape in the twisting sky, and in seconds it snaked down to the bay's waters, dragging an entire ship into the sky. Ships quaked with the sound of thunder, thunder from beneath the sea. Like the gates of the Drowned God's own halls, opening in the deeps.

The breath he didn't realise he had been holding exploded from his throat. "Finally!" he felt his heart pounding so hard it might explode from his chest. At last, it is finally—

For a brief second, his laughter drowned out the storm as the sea broke from below.

A wave swelled in the harbour, larger than any before. An immensity without cause, the shadow of a titan that had never known gods, reshaping the ocean itself with its mere presence. For a moment he beheld a curve, a parabola to the sea measured in entire miles. And then—

It reached the surface, and the tidal wave came as destruction's herald.

There was only one brief moment of warning before the tidal wave crashed against the coast, dozens of feet high, scattering the defenders of every army. Lightning cracking from the sky in sheets, hitting the tallest towers. Soldiers were washed straight off the decks of even the highest dromonds, vessels shuddering as the entire sea quaked. The ship was groaning, the wind shrieking, and then suddenly, beyond the screaming of desperate men, there was a louder, deeper roar filling the chaotic waves.

"Rogue wave!" some fool was shouting from somewhere. "Rogue wave—!"

In that moment… in that moment, as Euron was smeared in blood, his heart racing, his hands trembling and he looked out over the sea of blood and storms… in that moment he was a god.

This is my storm. No parasite gods, no rotting crows. This is my storm, my triumph, with my own hands.

Another great wave hit them. Euron dived to the decks, jumping for the broken mast and clinging on for dear life. The whole ship buckled - but few people on deck managed to brace in time, and bodies were washed off by the impact. The Arbor Queen trembled. Euron heard the cries. The Redwyne sailors had to cut the grapnels and try to brace themselves, lest the fierce waves bring them down too.

Even the great Arbor Queen rocked like a toy boat in a bathtub.

The world was spinning. There was no thought, just panic. He felt the bone-crunching crack as the shattered husk of the Silence crunched against the rock.

Each impact threatened to shatter bones. The waves cracked against the broken ship, grinding it again and again. The keel was shattered, prow falling apart, and it was all Euron could do just to hold on. Every time the blows slammed his body against the wood, he could feel the bruises forming on his chest. There was blood in his mouth.

And yet he laughed. Despite the pain and the fear, he laughed and laughed.

There were barely a dozen fighting men left alive aboard the Silence, all screaming and trying to cling to the broken rigging, but the sacrifice of the rest had been so worth it.

Over the dark horizon, at the mouth of the bay, Euron saw the water swell upwards, nearer and closer.

The backwash alone scattered great ships as if they were nothing but flies. The entire fleet of the Reach was being washed wild, scattered like debris, entire ships lifting upwards and crashing into the city's wharves.

The noise, the chaos, the sight of it all… it was beyond cacophony, bedlam incarnate.

Euron could barely hear a thing over the immense booms of the waves as the sea quaked, but he saw Aeron shrieking a desperate prayer to his absent god. The drowned priest would have fallen to his knees, no doubt - if he weren't hanging on for dear life to a rope. Yes, Euron thought happily, I told you that you would bow to me.

"By the God… !" he heard Lord Goodbrother scream.

"Yes," Euron called, voice cracking, air not able to meet his lungs fast enough. "The God indeed… the Drowned God's chosen… they are the true masters of the ocean, not men… !"

The waves were breaking, water gushing over the piers and into the city as a gargantuan shape rose upwards from the ocean, cloaked by a hundred waterfalls. The sea spilled over the beaches, sweeping through the city's streets and tearing through the walls of Oldtown. The men didn't stand a chance. They looked upon it and went mad. Screams. So many screams, but they were as nothing compared to what had emerged, ants before the boot. They all watched in stunned horror, prey before the sea's greatest predator of all.

"The Old Ones!" Euron cackled at first, then shrieked in ecstasy. "I summoned it and it is FINALLY HERE!"

Five great limbs rose up from the black waters, stretching and uncoiling. A neckless, sluglike hill with spiny skin broke over the crests, a head the size of a myth emerged from the crimson waters, than kept coming up and up and up until it loomed hundreds of feet above even the tallest mast. A gaping mouth opened, and the roar it let forth was a thousand storms exploding at once.

The bay of Whispering Sound trembled, men knocked overboard purely by the boom, the force of a roar so powerful it buffeted the bay and blasted away the storm with a greater wind still. The kraken wreaked pure devastation with every slight movement. He saw its body rise upwards, a endless pit of black teeth as its jaws unfolded, huge eyes flickering over the bay, and then it began to reach out with its limbs.

The backwash swept a dozen ships and five thousand bodies straight into the kraken's maw. Hundreds and hundreds of black teeth ground through wood with ease. It was large enough to swallow whole ships and the men onboard in the same way a whale swallowed krill.

Not even the thunderclaps of the raging heavens could compare.

The kraken. The heraldry of the Greyjoys. There was no beast that better represented the Drowned God. The shadow of the heaviest storms, the black ocean itself made flesh.

The people didn't believe they existed - they preferred to think of them as they would giants and dragons, unicorns and basilisks; as something historical and mythical, fit only for the fantasies of children. Perhaps it was just the sense of scale - men didn't want to accept the truth that they shared their oceans with such as this. That they were not the masters of this world. Euron knew better; he knew of the krakens, of the Old Ones in their black depths.

It was Euron's second time seeing such a creature. The first had been eight years ago, on Euron's first journey around the Stepstones. He had seen a Ibbenese whaler struggle to bring in a whale, when a typhoon struck. The Silence had been set to attack the whaler, but then the kraken emerged from the depths, and dragged the entire ship and her whale both under the waves.

Ever since then… the sight of that much pure power… it had inspired him. From Ibben to Asshai, from N'ghai to Leng, from Yi Ti to the Basilisk Isles he had hunted the black lore. The ruins of the mazemakers of Lorath, the forgotten scrolls of dead, cyclopean Sarnath, the barnacled runestones of the Grey King, the humanleather-bound tomes of corpse-city Stygai. The rituals of the chittering flesh-priests of Gogossos, the pagan idolatry of the fishfolk of the Thousand Islands, the black rites of the Sorcerer Lords of Carcosa, the oily hieroglyphs of the Bloodstone Emperor, carved into black stone. The oldest myths of the Pale Child Bakkalon, the Black Goat of Qohor, the Lion of Night and dead dreamer Nyar of the Church of the Star's Wisdom. The scattered points of forgotten lore, drawn together into a line. It had all led to this. A piece of the power of the Old World, of the time before the Dawn.

And that beast he'd seen near the Stepstones had been barely a tenth of the size of this one. A kraken this size must be tens of thousands of years old, older than the First Men, its rust-red skin so hard and rough, smeared in algae and ancient scars. This is what all of those lives have bought, Euron thought in awe. Let no one say that I have not paid the iron price.

Sailors told stories about krakens, in the same way that superstitious greenlanders spoke of ghosts or snarks or grumkins. Maybe one in a thousand ever actually saw one, and fewer lived to tell the tale. The krakens lived in the ocean's blackest depths, hunting leviathans, feasting on flesh and magic and enduring the ages of the world. There were so few of them left in this era, but unlike dragons, Euron knew the Old Ones would sleep rather than die. They could be awoken, with the right means.

Still, during the worst storms, krakens would occasionally come to the surface. Blood in the water could entice them towards the shore. Euron had supplied both the storm and the feast, and the kraken had come. Just as the glass candles had foretold.

Everything he had done, his entire life, all his journeys – all of it was coming together in this moment, here and now.

Euron drank the very, very last of his blue wine, sucking it to the dregs, and then he screamed. "Blow the horn!" he bellowed. Even the Stonehand had been driven silent by the sight before them. "Blow the horn! Blow the fifth horn!"

The huge shape was coming closer, so large the mouth of the Honeywine could barely fit it. Its crest was covered in spines, its skin was greyish-red, its body a solid mountain of flesh. Like an iceberg, only a fraction of the creature was visible compared to what lay in the dark; and even the visible part loomed at least a hundred yards above the water. Its jaws extended circularly, needle-like teeth in rows around the top and sides, and its mouth convulsed to grind ships whole. Euron saw the Honour of Oldtown shattered into splinters by its jaws, men uselessly jumping overboard as the currents rushed into the kraken's maw. It swallowed, but even a war dromond was only a small meal for such a beast. Then it began to drink the sea.

Giant tentacles extended almost leisurely, the kraken stretching its limbs in great arcs across the bay. By its mere presence, even the slightest motions and twitches of its body created tidal wave after tidal wave. In seconds, the kraken captured what might have been an entire tenth part of so of the bay's red waves. And then the feast began.

It was as the jaws of the oceans, or the gates of the Drowned God's own halls were opening. It was in that same way that the kraken fully opened its mouth - a cavernous pit, a cataract of the deep dark that knew nothing but hunger. A huge stretch of the entire bay flowed into the darkness that lay beyond the kraken's rows of needle-teeth, dragging in tens of ships and thousands upon thousands of bodies.

Then, with an enormous gush, the kraken swallowed, and the entire Whispering Sound trembled. Half a sea of water ejected from the great creature's gills - a stream like a dozen rivers fallen into the air, so intense that it split the sky and scattered for miles, like a flood let forth by the Storm God howling above.

The world had been made to remember the shape of chaos of ancient days, and with its coming, order itself died. There was nothing in the men's hearts anymore, nothing but animal panic, prey's desperation, fear flowing like blood.

"Blow the horn, Rodrik!" Euron screamed. "BLOW THE FIFTH HORN!"

Rodrik Freeborn's eyes were bulging fit to burst from their sockets. But Euron slapped him again, and finally, the ironborn reaver listened, scrambling belowdecks.

The fifth horn was special compared to the rest used in this battle. It was no mundane tool of war; it was a relic over seven feet long, fixed in the most secure cabin the Silence had, held in place by thick lashes of black leather. It was solid, ivory white, made of polished bone, and bound in oily black stone. Runes older and darker than Valyria's were etched over its surface, yet Euron had smeared mud over the horn to disguise its significance.

"Cover your ears!" Euron shouted to his men. "Cover your—!"

The horn blew.

Rodrik Freeborn was doing the blowing, yes, but the call that came forth from the relic of krakenbone was greater, somehow more than anything a hundred mortal lungs might have ever sounded. It wasn't a sound; it was a warhammer crashing into the brain, it was a lance impaled through the heart, it was the death-wail of ten thousand damned souls, shrieking through a single throat forged of kraken's bone and man's sacrifice:

...aaaaRREEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…

And, above all else, it was a slaver's calling, a demiurge's wail born of the ineffable dark, so empowered that it split the sky and echoed over sea and city, and kept rolling onwards to the far green hills of the Reach beyond. It was a whip worthy of a dark god, lashing against the heavens and splitting through the world like the dying scream of Nagga herself. That was what the hellhorn's sounding was - a soul-shrieking blast through the world's bones, a boom that seized the waves like the Drowned God's own scream of fury.

…aaaarRRRREEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…

In that moment the horn sounded, the storm seemed to suddenly freeze, as if the rain were blasted away by invisible wings, as if the heavens themselves had recoiled. It blasted out the ears of a hundred men, though Euron already had his ears covered. Men were screaming in pain, clutching their skulls. Belowdecks, Rodrik Freeborn was twisting and convulsing, his body held kissing the horn as unseen, watery fingers squeezed out every breath he might have ever taken for the rest of his life, in exchange for this one sounding. The ocean bubbled, the wind hissed, and men fell.

…aaaaarrrRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEE…

The hellhorn's call went on and on, on and on, on and on, and yet behind it, something began to form. Euron saw a spectral connection creep behind the veil of the world, shadowy and tentative, and then it was pulled into him, channeled into his spirit by his bound relic; a connecting, a binding beyond a normal man's senses. He seized it with all his will, his lips split into nothing less than a fissure of triumph. And in that moment of claiming, the binding began to crystallize with a sorcery harder and stronger than any skinchanger's natural magics. He felt pure power explode into him, channeled by the relic and bound by the dragonsteel he wore. His armour was singing, the runes etched on the breastplate glowing like white fire. Beneath the patch, Euron's bloody eye pulsed.

The kraken convulsed and thrashed. The tidal waves crushed a dozen ships to splinters. The Silence was very nearly swept away, but the wreck of the ship clung to the rocks, grinding with the world's heartbeat.

The hellhorn's call of binding kept going on and on until the eternal ten seconds passed and the sounding finally ended. In that moment, Rodrik Freeborn fell away from the hellhorn, gasping, coughing up salt water from between his lips. Though he couldn't see the reaver, Euron knew that Rodrik Freeborn would die in the next moments, the sea's water filling his lungs without ever even touching the waves.

"I, EURON GREYJOY!" Euron bellowed, and the storm screamed with him. "CROW'S EYE, KING OF THE IRON ISLANDS AND THE OCEANS, SON OF THE STORM, THE DROWNED GOD REBORN! I BIND YOU! BY BLOOD OF IRONBORN I BIND YOU!"

Waves crashing, great red tentacles rising upwards, beating with the storm. The beast was trembling twitching, a strangled roar coming from its maw… "I BIND YOU! I BIND YOU, I BIND YOU, I BIND YOU!"

The kraken's cry broke. The sky split. An immense sound of pain so loud the earth and seas rumbled. The power was rushing around him… he could feel the waves crash beneath his tentacles, the ghost of sensation…

His awareness hammered into something immense beyond mortality; a mind cthonic, an archean beast of flesh and magic that measured the passage of time in eons and moved with the fury of storms. An abyssal awareness that could have hammered the minds of a hundred skinchangers into bloody, gibbering foam.

It was a mind rent by torture, aflame with the agony wrought by Krakenbinder, entrapped in a body searing with the brands of a blood magic ancient and foul, made vulnerable and pliant.

It could not resist.

Suddenly, Euron was larger, more powerful than ever. The world of the mind's scope expanded, the range of awareness stretched. His whole body was trembling, overflowing with might. The kraken was twitching, yet the magicks of the horn scolded his greatness over its skin, binding the immensity of its will to his mind. Ancient runes burnt into abyssal flesh, binding its muscles and its black limbs, tying its very spirit to his own. Two hearts beat as one in the storm.

Euron heard the hiss of steam billowing off the horn. The water around the ship was bubbling. Lightning cracked, and the kraken let forth one final, strangled roar.

And suddenly Euron was laughing again. Laughing louder and sharper than ever. Laughing so hard he might explode from his own body. He was laughing with the kraken's mouth, and the entire world heard it, even those in far off places and times, the cowards watching through the veil, the many silent watchers. You are mine. The God is mine.

Lord Goodbrother's eyes were bulging, but he was left unable to speak, only gasp. Euron couldn't breathe either, otherwise there would have been a snide remark. What? Euron wanted to taunt. Did you really think that I would entrust my only hellhorn to Victarion?

Krakenbinder was one of the five hellhorns that Euron had in his possession, recovered, bought, pirated, tricked, or salvaged from across the world. Euron had allowed the witless Victarion to carry Dragonbinder to its destination, but Euron would never, ever give up his other four.

The great beast stopped moving. The harbour turned strangely silent. There were still scattered screams, but they were less than the buzzing of insects. The rain had stopped, as if the world itself had forgotten to take breathe, as if the storm god himself had paused in horror.

He saw the Damphair fall to his knees.

The Silence was still shuddering too intensely for him to stand, but Euron raised his hand.

In the distance, a great black tentacle rose upwards from the surf at the same time, uncoiling itself slowly.

Euron brought his hand down sharply.

The crash of water rocked the world. Two dozen Oldtown ships were destroyed at once. The tidal waves swept over the entire bay and even reached the Blood Isle. What was left of the garrison stationed there didn't stand a chance, hundreds of Tyrell men were crushed and swept away under the waves.

There were screams, wails. Most of the men in the bay seemed to have collapsed in pure, bloodcurdling horror, but there were a few ships that were trying to flee. But it doesn't matter, they can't escape any more.

Slowly, curiously, the kraken flexed its muscles, twitching gills, squirming its body and fins as Euron experimented with its strength, reaching out with the new scope of his will. Gingerly, the kraken pushed its way forward, its huge underbody scraping against rock and sand. A rust-red wall of mass and muscle extended towards the Silence.

He heard the squelching as its suckers ground over the Silence's red wood. Each suction cup was like a set of teeth biting into the hull. With extreme care, the red tentacle wrapped itself around the Silence, sheltering the ship protectively from the waves. The tentacle was pure muscle, hard as stone. The entire vessel lurched as the kraken pulled it upwards from the rocks.

With another limb, the kraken crushed the Arbor Queen as idly as a child would stomp on a bug. Or perhaps popping a grape and feeling it splat. The ships, the entire fleet of the Reach panicking, collapsing or trying to flee were all nothing before it. Great tentacles stretched outwards, curling upwards from the depths.

There was chaos all around him, but Euron could barely feel it. He could feel nothing but power.

The kraken's lower body scraped over the sands in the harbour, its tentacles flailing and digging as it pulled itself upwards into the shallow harbour. He could see the beast's eyes, huge, black ovoids larger than small boats. Its milky gaze was empty, but Euron knew its attention was all on him.

It took two great tentacles to lift the Silence straight out of the water and shove the ship roughly onto the shallows, away from the waves. Three men fell overboard as the vessel lurched, but Euron didn't care. His entire body was wrapped around the broken mast, but controlling the beast felt like an extension of his will. The runes embedded on Euron's armour shone ghostly pale.

With its other limbs, the monster devastated the Reach's fleet in long, idle swipes. In a single minute, thousands, tens of thousands of men were crushed dead - and yet Euron had to struggle to notice them.

Euron's two gazes turned upwards towards the Hightower. All the bells were ringing, frenzied and desperate. He saw men shooting arrows and scorpions, but even the largest iron bolts were nothing but splinters to the kraken's mass. Stones fired from trebuchets bounced uselessly off the kraken's skin.

And the world watched in stunned awe and horror as the great beast roiled its way forwards. Euron finally let go of the mast, his body aching in pain as he felt the beginning of ugly, deep bruises forming across his body. Still, there was no emotion but elation, no pain of that but victory, as he stepped forward across his ruined ship.

The few survivors were staring at him, eyes bulging so hard they might burst. The kraken dragged its way deeper into the harbour, the Honeywine barely deep enough to cover its gills. From behind, all Euron could see was a spine-covered mountain, black and reddish and barnacle-strewn.

"How arrogant," Euron mused as he stared at the nine-hundred-foot-tall Hightower. "The Nine Wonders made by man. How arrogant to think that man can even compare to nature."

The kraken's body was screaming in pain, in unaccustomed motion, but Euron forced it to into the shallows. He forced its tentacles to shatter the docks, and then the immense mass was heaving itself out of the water. Its body was bloated, flailing and hulking, but strong enough to squirm forward even on land. Tentacles thrashed, crushing houses to try and drag itself forward all the while the monster's body squirmed and twisted like a slug.

Huge limbs crushed the walls of Oldtown with ease, sending stone flying into the storm. From a distance, it looked almost… serene. An act of nature. Euron watched from the far side of the harbour, and wondered what it would be like to be one of all those screaming mortals as the rubble came crashing down.

Men were staring at Euron with horror, but he could only laugh, and laugh, and laugh. Who can doubt my godliness now?

Then, the kraken turned and surged its way towards the Hightower, moving as slowly and as unstoppably as an earthquake, a glacier made of flesh, leaving a flattened world behind. The cliffs of the Battle Isle posed some difficulty, but the kraken's tentacles were strong. Its limbs carved a grip into the cliffs, cleaving into soft stone, and then its whole body was heaving upwards.

Across the horizon, Euron heard the bells ringing, the thunder rumbling, and the sea screaming as four great limbs wrapped themselves as far around the base of the Hightower as they could reach. Then, enormous muscles clenched and heaved, stone strained and cracked, the foundations shuddered, and the great shining Hightower was toppling towards the sea.

---

The War of the Five Monsters

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Contenders:

Jon Snow

"The Bastard King"

His crimes:

Oathbreaker / deserter, Consorting with / arming wildlings, Usurper, Rebellion, Invading the realm, Large number of wildling raids and pillaging, Witchcraft and sorcery (skinchanging).

Strength:

One ice dragon, ~50,000 free folk, approx. 15,000 of which are fighting bodies; The Cult of the Ice Dragon, 500 giants, and fewer mammoths, A few score wargs and skinchangers, The northern coalition; Houses Manderly, Umber, Mormont, Glover, Locke, and Reed, ~5,000 men, Fledgling alliances, The Dragonguard, Skinchanging.

Prominent Enemies:

House Bolton, House Frey, The Night's Watch?

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Stannis Baratheon

"The Broken King"

His crimes:

Attempting to usurping his nephew's rightful seat (accused), Kinslaying (accused), Sorcery, Renouncing the Faith of the Seven and consorting with witches and devil magic, Piracy, Crimes and raids in the Narrow Sea.

Strength:

~500 men (last count), Houses Bar Emmon, Farring, Florent, Velaryon, Celtigar and Massey, His soldiers noted to be extreme fanatics, Less than ten ships (last count), Currently holds Dragonstone, One Red Woman.

Prominent Enemies:

House Lannister, House Tyrell, Jon Snow.

---

Cersei Lannister (through proxy Tommen Baratheon)

"The Mad Queen"

Her crimes:

Assassination and attempted assassination of two High Septons. Murder, Infidelity, Incest (accused), Destabilising the realm, Madness, Supporting necromancy.

Strength:

Currently holds the Red Keep, ~200 extremely valuable hostages, Including King Tommen Baratheon and Queen Margaery Tyrell, ~100 ruthless killers holding the Red Keep, The Mountain's Men, Sellswords, Lord Qyburn, Ser 'Robert Strong' Necromancy and dark arts, The Alchemist's Guild.

Prominent Enemies:

Just about everybody.

---

Tyrion Lannister (through proxy Aegon Targaryen)

"The Imp"

His crimes:

Kinslaying, Kingslaying, Rebellion, Treason, Being a Dwarf.

Strength:

The Golden Company, Less than 10,000 seasoned sellswords, A number of war elephants, Force led by King Aegon Targaryen and Lord Jon Connington, Sellswords from Lys, House Darry, House Stokeworth, Support of the Iron Bank, Support of magisters in the Free Cities, Currently holds Storm's End, Harrenhal, and Griffin's Roost.

Prominent Enemies:

House Lannister, House Tyrell, Cersei Lannister.

---

Euron Greyjoy

"The Crow's Eye"

His crimes:

Rebellion, Kinslaying (accused), Heresy (accused), Piracy, Slavery, Brutality and countless deaths, Sorcery and dark arts.

Strength:

The Iron Islands, All houses sworn to Pyke, ~9,000 men (last count), Fleet of ~400 ironborn ships (last count), plus six hundred plus captures. The Iron Fleet (nominally), The Silence, Collection of mages, warlocks, priests and spellbinders held onboard, The Grotesques - monsters, mutes and murderers, Cult-like devotion from his men, Secrets and treasure plundered from Old Valyria and beyond, The Dragonbinder? Sorcery.

Prominent Enemies:

Houses Tyrell, Redwyne, Hightower, The north, His family.

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The Battle for Oldtown

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Conflict: War of the Five Monsters

Date: 301 AC

Place: Oldtown, the Bay of Whispering Sound, the Reach

Result: Total devastation. Greyjoy victory

Combatants:

~9,000 ironborn, ~35,000 prisoners, slaves, thralls, and salt wives. 400 ironborn ships of various sizes, 600 plus captured vessels of various types. House Greyjoy, houses sworn to Pyke.

The Iron Fleet was not present for this battle.

~60,000 Reach soldiers, including militia. Houses Redwyne, Hightower and Tyrell, houses sworn to Highgarden. 500 ships; 100 Redwyne warships, 60 from House Hightower and House Tyrell, another 100 from various other Houses of the Reach. 200+ refitted refitted merchant and trading vessels. 12 Lyseni sellsails. ~400,000 population of Oldtown.

---

Commanders:

King Euron Greyjoy.

Ser Leyton Hightower (nominal)*, Ser Baelor "Brightsmile" Hightower, Ser Garth "Greysteel" Hightower, Ser Gunthor Hightower, Ser Humfrey Hightower*, Lord Paxter Redwyne, Ser Garlan Tyrell, Ser Argyl Oakheart*, Ser Dickon Tarly (nominal)*, Tommen Costayne.

* Ser Leyton Hightower, the "Old Man of Oldtown" and his daughter, the "Mad Maid" Malora Hightower, have reputedly spent weeks distracted and terrified in their chambers, cloistered in the upper reaches of the Hightower with their servants and their sorceries.

In actuality, to the upper leadership of House Hightower, Euron Greyjoy's invasion was an unwelcome, poorly timed distraction, nothing more. Not all is as it seems in the upper reaches of the (now former) Hightower. The House has been engaged in generational schemes throughout Westeros and beyond, schemes that were bearing fruit and nearly completed prior to Euron Greyjoy's invasion.

There are ignited glass candles in the Hightower's upper reaches, and Lord Leyton has been scrying the pale flames for portents, engaging in lesser auguries and minor sacrifices, managing the Hightower's interests in Westeros and abroad, while at the same time trying to understand the many premonitions the flames are showing him of ice and fire on dark wings, seas of shadows blotting out the sun, men of stone rising from the earth, and, of course, the visions of black tides and falling towers. However, Lord Leyton was not a grand sorceror, merely a dabbler in an artless land without deep traditions in magic. He failed to understand the flame's portents in time. This is not coincidental. Euron Greyjoy knows how to counteract other scryers of fate, even those who hold ignited glass candles.

Now, all the Hightower's ongoing schemes and plans and ambitions lie decapitated.

** Ser Humfrey Hightower, in venturing to Lys, sought to pursue more than one objective. Yes, he sought to hire a navy of sellsails to defend Oldtown and gain glory over his brothers, but he also thought he might reconcile himself with his sister Lynesse, still formally Lynesse Mormont, and bring an end to a long-term source of embarrassment for his family. To bring his sister back into the fold of House Hightower, he was prepared to offer recognition of marriage to her current relationship (if her lover, Tregar Ormollen, would set aside his current wife. Tregar Ormollen is one of Lys' great merchant princes).

This did not go well.

Gunthor and Lynesse are true brother and sister, while the other Hightower siblings all come different mothers (9 siblings total, from 4 different mothers). Ser Humfrey thought he might not only find glory by sailing to Lys and returning with a fleet of sellsails, he thought he might bring his one true sibling back to Oldtown.

He failed utterly, and was subjected with the embarrassment of being literally thrown out of the Ormollen palace by Lord Tregar's guards. He did end up succeeding in hiring a few sellsails of variable quality, numbering at a dozen, on the way back to Westeros – but then he was waylaid by the new 'pirate king of the Stepstones' Aurane Waters, the former Master of Ships of Tommen Baratheon's small council.

His Lyseni sellsails, who weren't the highest quality to begin with and were already frustrated (after being robbed by pirates and then being treated poorly in Oldtown) chose to break and run from the battle rather than fight in Euron Greyjoy's circle of slaughter. They also took the poor Ser Humfrey prisoner. Unfortunately for them, Ser Garlan Tyrell took their breach of contract for desertion, and destroyed their ships by ramming rather than allow them to flee.

*** Ser Argyl Oakheart was too frightened of the chaos that the battle in the Whispering Sound had degenerated into - a storm-tossed, deck-to-deck mosh pit of ships and butchery, devoid of any ranks or effective command - and refused Lord Paxter Redwyne's repeated signaling to join the melee after the ironborn had fully committed their ranks. Ser Garlan Tyrell sailed forth from the Blood Isle to relieve Ser Argyle of command, and executed him on the spot for cowardice. Afterwards, the fifty warships of the rear encirclement joined the fray, only for Ser Garlan's force to be amongst the first victims of the kraken's arising.

**** This was Ser Dickon Tarly's first battle, and though he possessed nominal command of the Tarly forces, true command was in the hands of his 'advisor', Ser Harristan Hunt – Randyll Tarly himself is otherwise occupied as Mace Tyrell's lieutenant outside the walls of King's Landing. Both Tarly men were 'fighting' on the northern beaches of the Bay of Whispering Sound (primarily rescuing Arbor survivors taken as ironborn thralls) when the kraken arose.

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Casualties (prior to the Rising of the Kraken):

~8,000 ironborn. All ~35,000 slaves, thralls and salt wives brought from the Arbor and other shores of the Reach.

~7,000 Reach soldiers in the harbour.

Casualties (after the Rising of the Kraken):

~50,000 Reach soldiers in the harbour and port. Uncountable deaths in Oldtown itself. All Reach commanders dead or missing.

---

Results:

Both fleets almost entirely destroyed. Oldtown devastated. The Hightower torn off its foundations. Eight Great Wonders made by man remaining. Rise of the Kraken God.