Theon

The lads took the whole affair to be the beginning of some grand adventure, at first. After catching the look on Theon's face though, or the old tiller's, their boyish bluster blew out in a hurry. I can't go seeking death, Theon thought. I have Asha still to mind, and a certain crow's eye to pluck out. That Euron would plague his kin until all of them were dead or he was, Theon was certain. I must live long enough to peel that shadow off her. This business with the Others is just a bit of getting my sea legs back. The fishwaif's gurgling and prodding the deck where the seawater threatened to leak through had the unblooded young men busy patching up between the boards with tar hot as they dared heat. Better a slick deck than a leaking one. Still, even they were wise enough not to let the flame flicker out in the open, though there was nothing to be done for the smoke. The plumes had stopped to the north and so the light, piddling though it was, was welcome and more. Theon's unease beat within him like a second heart. They will see it, he thought with iron certainty. See the flames, see the heat. Above the waves or below them. There was no roil off in the darkness though, no iceberg cut cleanly through the waves to start hurling light at them. Nobody to kill out here, Theon mused. No wonder they moved on. But what was all that bloody light, then? It grew colder as they continued north, until even the last glimpse of the Lonely Light faded into the endless black. No rain though, he saw. No snow. A break in the darkness that didn't light up the horizon like the rise of a full moon made Theon squint. Another ship? He didn't dare believe anyone else had gotten away, but the closer they got the more evident it became. Not just one, either. Several ships bobbed into view, though Theon could not make out their crew. They aren't all longships, either. Some were decked as the swan ships of the Summer Islands were. When the silence was not broken by the calls and curses of their crew, Theon grimly knew the ships for what they were.

"Dead men?" Kelsie Farwynd asked. Theon nodded, the boys-called-men going wide-eyed as babes in the cradle.

"Hulks don't sail, not really. They simply float along in the wake of an ice-ship, waiting to be flung against the shores of the living. Even in this half-sunk raft, we'll easily leave them behind." He recalled his first tangle with the Others' fodder. Like something out of a bad farce. Pity I lost the candlestick, it was a pretty thing. The memory of the skeleton fumbling about worse than any drunk brought another possibility to mind. He turned back to the hulks, no further or nearer than they'd been now that his own ship had stopped.

"Theon?" Kelsie's voice sounded far away, or underwater.

"We can take them." he said, more to himself than her.

"What?"

"The lads should know who and what we're fighting. A bit of battle will temper the tales in their head with reality, as well." When told them what shuffled about on those far decks, every lad's face went white. "A dead man feels no pain and won't so much as blink if you were to run him through. Nothing's funnier than lopping a leg off out form under him and watching him flop about like a landed fish, though. You want to stop him flopping, give him fire or dash his briny bones to pieces. Or just shove him overboard." His words, he saw, did not bestir a thirst for battle. "It could be those hulks are nothing more than broken hulls. It occurs to me though, that the ships they once were must have carried more than crew. How are we to just let such easy prey drift off? Are we iron or are we suet?"

On their approach the dead men began to crowd the sides of the hulks that faced the living ship. More than one walking corpse reached out too far, slipped, fell into the churning black water.

"They'd walk straight into a wall of fire if it meant getting their hands on living prey." Theon added, the better for the lads to see the dead for what they were.

"We needn't board that one…or that one." The tiller said, pointing to a hulk lagging behind the rest and another kept off them by one of its fellows. "They'll sink before they reach the mainland."

"Right. We'll ignore those, then. No sense trying to clean out a hold that's like to come apart around you. Assuming you don't just go through the rotten boards first." Idly he had the greyhair bring them up alongside one of the dead ships, leaving a gap a jump could cross but a step could not. "Some will make it over." Theon warned, finding nothing less than a barrel lid with which to slap the dead about. "Blind chance serves them only so far, though." he added, stepping over to where the first of the hulk's crew as they were had fallen across the gap, dead hands scrabbling over the cold wet wood until Theon brought the shield down on them. The corpse's pitiable hold broken, it slipped flailing out of sight. After almost a full minute of watching Theon knocking them backward on his own, the lads' fear became fervor and they were on the dead as well. The Farwynd ship had precious little that could be even generously called a weapon, but if it was heavy and ward-wearing it served to send the dead into the water. One boy even had a spare plank, jutting it out like a spear into the faces of the corpses, more oft than not simply splitting their heads in twain and spilling the cold gray mess within everywhere.

"Fuck me, this is working." Theon heard him mutter, as if he didn't believe his own words.

"So it is. Keep going, or you'll have the privilege of scrubbing up all the brains you're spilling on my deck." Theon told him. Before long, the hulk's last stragglers were breaking on the rock that waited for them and Theon gingerly hopped across the gap. Not half bad for a man years too old to man a proper rudder.

"Who do you think they were?" one of the lads asked, following him over. Theon shrugged. The dead men had the look of thawed beef, likely languishing on some lifeless icy shore until the Others found a use for them.

"Maybe they got trapped. Or they froze while fording the northern Sunset Sea, their ship by chance running aground where the Others would find it." Certainly they were no ironborn. I suppose it doesn't matter, Theon thought. Bones look the same the world over.

Then came the looting as it were, though when they made it belowdecks they found only a few straggling corpses unable to climb the broken stairs out into the open air.

"Not a thing…" Theon's companion muttered.

"Not a thing but one less hulk full of dead men for the mainlanders to contend with. Besides, this piece of driftwood is barely floating. Might be we'll get luckier on a ship more recently trapped, less beat to shit by wind and ice."

"Greyjoy!" The tiller's surprised bark took Theon's mind off the hulk's leaking hold. In the few moments' respite he'd gotten from the wind he forgot how quickly it could steal one's breath, and so he spent his first five minutes back on the Farwynd ship forcing breath back into his lungs with all the elegance of a hooked trout. Righting himself, he looked to where the tiller was pointing. Another hulk. So what? he thought, until the old man took them closer. The hulk in truth was no floating graveyard, far from. It was teeming with dead the same as its fellows, but to Theon it looked more like a swan ship than anything what ought be found floating on this side of Westeros. There are no gashes in its hull, either. No cracked mast, no sagging deck. Fucking thing looks more seaworthy than our own sorry ship fresh off a dock! Swan ships needed sails to move, though, and the vessel's lack of those was the lone mark against it.

"What manner of ship is that?" Kelsie asked, looking as dubious as Theon didn't feel.

"The manner I most like. Ill-defended and ready for a worthy hand." They spent the better part of an hour pissing about how to address the strange ship's higher deck, until Theon could wait no more and used a boarding hook to scale the bow, where the dead could not easily reach. Idly he pulled at their reaching arms one at a time, tossing the flailing limbs over his shoulder when they parted from the bodies proper or else sending them down to crack and crumple against the deck of the Farwynd ship. More than once he heard Kelsie shriek, though the lands were more than equal to the task of tearing each corpse to pieces as it descended. Still they came, a prospect as riotous to Theon as it was terrifying. He realized that but for the limitations the ship's dimensions put on their number, they would continue to stagger forward, until the whole of the ship dipped forward with the weight of them and sent all to sea's bottom. But for my aching back and limp arms, I could do this all day. They truly will stagger toward a victim and damn the dangers, from a dragon's breath to the grabbing arms of a single cut kraken.

In time, though, they did stop. The last was writhing feebly under a dozen stomping boots below, leaving the ship void of crew living or dead. Theon's arms felt limp as oiled rope, so it took him looping them around the rail to manage getting onto the deck proper. "What's up there?" someone asked. Theon looked down the length of the ship, seeing twin steps up to the port's high deck frame an open pair of doors, beyond which he heard scrabbling akin to the kind he had on previously plundered hulks. Theon dropped the climbing hook to the deck of the Farwynd ship, ignoring the brawl that broke out to determine who would be first to follow. He stepped toward the doors, the smell of frost, of frozen flesh wafting out as had when the mob had scaled Ten Towers, Theon with naught but a golden candlestick in hand. He tapped the doorframe.

"Anyone home?" he called. The jostling and cracking of stiff frozen bodies was answer enough, though nothing lurched out from the darkness at him. Maybe they're stuck as with the other hulks. He waited until the rest of them were aboard, the fishwaif in particular before proceeding. With so many green ears about he dared not make her croaking words, instead pointing into her bulging eyes and then the darkness. He felt rather foolish pantomiming in view of the others, though the fishwaif seemed to get the gist. She's probably wondering why it is I don't just speak. Well, my lass, it's because I don't need everyone throwing up all over each other. She waddled into the darkness, burbling to herself until Theon heard her give a warble of surprise. The shuffling of the unseen dead did not stop but neither did she give a cry of alarm. Keeping out of reach. Savage things they are, but not stupid. Then there was the sound of a hammer being swung about, the sounds of snapping bone and splintering bodies striking a mad duet with the gleeful warbling of the fishwaif. She toddled back out a few moments later, none the worse for wear. In her finned claw-called-hand she clutched a rock that soon slipped from her grasp, the mush it left behind on her fingers making her burble in displeasure. Theon picked it up, the weight of the rock more than enough to put an end to a few trapped dead men. Even more so, in our fishwaif's claws. To his surprise it nearly slipped right out of his hands, the thing almost wet to the touch. Then someone lit a torch and he dropped it proper, eyes wide. The chunk of silver was almost as big as a man's head, more of the stuff glistening and shimmering in some kind of mushy sand or clay on the ore's surface. Every pair of eyes looked up to the fishwaif, whose own roved slowly across the lot of them. She let out a nervous burble.

They could not get a torch lit fast enough. Once they had, the lads' laughter echoing off the walls of the ship's cabin made it sound as though a thousand had followed Theon onto its deck instead of an odd dozen. Chunks of silver ore glittered merrily in the light of the torch; the stuff piled about so that it would have made the room quite uncomfortable for living in. The furniture had long been gotten rid of, the better for the room to hold more silver. Theon could not believe his eyes. There's so much of it, more than the lot of us could hope to squander if we lived to see our hundredth year.

"Captain." The youngest of the lads, the one who'd caught the salmon in days past, was grinning wider it seemed than his face would allow.

"I stuck my nose belowdecks. There's more dead down there, wriggling as best they can under a blanket of harvested silver. The hold can hold no more, milord, not one handful." His glee was so great he seemed detached, as unable to tie one thought to the next as Theon.

"Good lad." He picked up one chunk, gave it a feel, tossed it aside. "Hmm. No." he said, picking another. Finally he found a real prize, one with a flat side he could almost see his face in. "I do owe you a bit of shine. It's not quite minted coin, but perhaps you'll do me the great favor of considering our account settled."

"Aye, milord." The boy replied as solemnly as he could, as if a hundred stags, a thousand, more, were a fair trade for a few mouthfuls of salmon stew.

"Where did they get it all?" another lad asked, looking around as if he'd only just missed the man with the signpost.

"I've seen its like before." Theon blurted, remembering the day Harlaw was attacked. "The Others had more than dead men to dump on our heads. Tall lanky brutes, nasty-looking, were tearing Ten Towers apart even as the dead crunched 'neath their feet. They wore shirts of hammered silver scale, beautiful, not the sort of thing you'd give your fodder. If the Others are outfitting their allies in the stuff, I can't imagine a whole ship's worth of it is something they're keen to lose. I don't know what happened to the ice-ship leading this particular fleet, maybe it left the slow hulks behind to reach the mainland faster. Or maybe something went wrong. As it stands we've a sound deck beneath us and naught to want for but warm ale and decent sail, so go back over and get the canvas before we part with our former ship." For once the lads did not waste time arguing over whose labor it was, the lot of them pulling down the longship's sail and bringing it aboard while Theon took the time to crack open some of the frozen crates on the deck. One had naught but reams of old parchment written in a language he didn't know. He didn't bother asking the fishwaif, for who would write in ink and paper beneath the waves? Only when he began spotting dragons here and there, the writing more legible if still utterly incomprehensible where the ink was sheltered from the cold and water, did Theon wonder if the black scratches upon the papers weren't Valyrian glyphs. Not some bastard dialect, either. Valyrian for true, written in the time of the Freehold. But why would they be bumbling around in the Sunset Sea?

He was still pondering the aims of the dragonlords when the lads finally managed to get the sail aboard. Maybe the crew were a dragonrider's own hirelings. It would have been easy for some ponce on dragonback to see the silver from the sky, and all it would take was one shipful of the stuff to reach the Freehold for the vessel's crew and owner both to be rich beyond possibility. But what had stopped the ship from making the return trip? Had it iced up, the dead active even then and falling on the crew while their lord fucked off to safety? Or had a wicked storm slapped him from the sky and left the common men adrift? That's not a lesson I need learning, Theon thought. I've stuck most everything I have one place or other it doesn't belong. Small wonder I'm missing a piece or three. In truth, there was so much silver aboard that it made Theon wonder if it would slow their getting to Casterly Rock. When he voiced his concerns to Kelsie Farwynd, she shrugged.

"Do I look like I know the ins and outs of sailing? I need no wood 'neath my feet to get where I want to go." Bugger.

"I suppose we could just toss some of it onto the other ship. It might sink after awhile, but it's not like we lack the means to recover it should we manage to beat the Others back and come looking for our rocks."

"We're out in the middle of the Sunset Sea, Theon Greyjoy. You have no way of knowing how deep it is here and believe it or not there are waters in this world too deep for me by far. Your walking fish, too." That didn't altogether surprise him, though her words scarcely made him feel at ease.

"Wouldn't want to drop a shipload of silver on some sleeping monster's head, I suppose. We'll head south and once we find shallow waters, we'll get to offloading our find where it ought be easier to recover." Parting with the silver wasn't something the lads were very keen on at all, but Theon held firm. "Each of you can keep one, so try and find the biggest hunk of shine you can. The rest goes over. No one's like to steal it out from under us buried beneath a hundred feet of water. Besides, even a single piece is enough for a man with senses 'tween his ears. For now." He grinned and the lads' scowls softened a bit. "Once the Others are dealt with, we'll dredge up our silver and bloody buy the Rock from the lions." That got a round of laughter proper.

"How are we going to get this thing moving in the first place, though? Our sail's cut for a longship, not…" whatever the fuck it is we've found, Theon finished for the boy.

"Crack open every crate, every barrel. With a little luck you'll find spare canvas the original crew brought with them- or should have, else they're bigger fools than even me. Whoever brings me something fit for the mast can keep two chunks instead of one." They were off at once, straining with the frozen-shut crates that sat flush to the bow or darting below to find whatever could be found. Meanwhile, the Farwynd ship continued to drift, soon becoming bemired in the darkness through which no eyes could pierce.

"Here, captain." One of the boys came forth, grunting under the weight of the battel he carried. Once the ice 'round the lid was chipped away and the lid itself pulled off, Theon saw that within sat only more silver. Just in smaller chunks. Not half bad, but silver's not going to clothe our naked rigging. Another lad was gingerly cradling something in his arms, a tightly-wrapped bundle.

"Oh, hells. Careful with that, lad. Valyrian steel's like to lop a few bingers off when handled foolish-like…" Theon warned at once, the lad succeeding in opening the bundle to reveal a long piece of dragonglass, deep red like wine. Or blood. One end bore a silver ring, three stubby legs poking off the band.

"Is it a dagger?" one of the lads asked.

"I don't think so. You couldn't get a grip on it without slicing your palm open." Theon replied, carefully propping the glass to stand on its little legs. Even the fishwaif seemed anxious, ready for something mad to happen. "Well, no harm done. If nothing else, it should fetch a pretty price when you find a maester to pawn it off on, eh?" Only when the lighter crates were opened did Theon find what he was looking for.

"What the fuck?" The lad who'd opened the crate in question backed away hastily, pointing inside and looking pale. Theon dutifully peeked within, to find what for all the gods together looked like sky swirling around within. Grey and angry, a storm ill-hidden. Gingerly he reached in to find the stuff was not some manner of magicked air but cloth, its pattern changing constantly like the sky before a tempest. Carefully he pulled up, the stuff acting no more remarkable than canvas. Were I blind I'd think it silk, Theon thought queasily. Who could guess what manner of sorcery the dragonlords had weaved into it? The more he pulled the more there was to handle, until the lot of it lay in neat round-edged rectangles here and there along the deck.

"Sails." someone muttered.

"Get them flying, then." Theon commanded hoarsely. As before, it seemed the lads' fingers and feet could not go fast enough. Free to fly and dance on the wind the sails, if that's what they were, looked even more eerie.

"Storm clouds, woven into silk. I wonder how well they catch the wind?" Theon mused, putting the old tiller on the ship's wheel with the rudder out of reach. They soon found out, the storm-sails pulling the wind into their embrace rather than catching it the way mundane canvas did. Pity there's no coast to watch roll by, he thought as they started south. I'll wager one could only pass it by faster on bloody dragonback.

"No need for all of us to go sleepless." Theon called, the lads retreating belowdecks but for the two who'd drawn the short lot for first watch. "After a long day of killing dead men and hauling silver, sleep will do us all good. When we're all rested mayhaps we'll wet some lines and see about breakfast." After the snoring began, chunks of silver being used for pillows or else headrests, Theon made for the captain's cabin, the red glass in his hand. "Will you see to yourself, my lady?" he asked.

"I think I'll take a bit of a look around." Kelsie replied, stepping up to and over the deck rail. The splash she made on hitting the water seemed the only sound in all the world but for the snoring and the fishwaif's occasional burbles. Theon spied her cautiously slinking into a crate, pulling the lid over herself. At least she's found a way out of the sun, should the bastard find us. He closed the cabin's double doors, setting the dragonglass absently on a crate while he fumbled with a flint to get a torch lit. As it flickered to life, he couldn't help a smile crossing his face. Cozy. He doubted very much whether a bed of silver ore was at all comfortable, but they were moving faster than he'd ever seen a wood-built ship move and any time they might have lost seeing to the hulks was quickly being made up. I can endure a silver-sore body with the help of a silver-drunk mind, I think. His dreams could not be more different than his circumstances in the waking world. He was in Winterfell again, Maester Luwin muttering at his shoulder while the horn blew incessantly from somewhere outside the castle walls. The sound is moving, though, he thought. Around and around. Getting closer, too. He snapped awake with a groan, pulling a chunk of ore out from under him and flinging it across the cabin. The sound of it clunking against the hull was the only thing to hear, Theon poking his head out onto the deck to see everyone fast asleep. Kelsie Farwynd alone didn't hold a piece of silver near and dear as a newborn babe, laid out on the deck under part of the longship's canvas. More for comfort than to keep out the cold, I should think. I daresay it's colder down there than it ever gets up here. When the Others are elsewhere, anyway. The sound of something breaking the surface of the sea issued from somewhere off to port. Theon waited in the darkness, staring into the night. The sound came again, closer, then something ran neatly beneath the ship. He turned as slowly as he could, afraid even to make the boards beneath his feet creak. Leaning into view came a great grey head, the two eyes fixed on Theon looking like huge black pearls. You are not near so big as the legends claim Nagga was. The sea serpent's head was only slightly bigger than the black dragon's when last Theon had seen him. Drogon had seemed built and powerful then. A willowy flapping thing, all reedy neck and tail. Down there with all that water crushing down, small wonder sea serpents are harder wearing. Its mouth opened, countless black teeth lining its jaws but the heat that pulsed out at him put Theon squarely on his ass. The others, damn them, began to stir, groaning and cursing. The serpent's nostrils flicked. No cold ones here, Theon thought feebly. No dead ones, either. Slow as it had come, the grey head backed into the night, sinking unseen into the water and the stifling wet heat with it. At least I didn't piss myself. It was all Theon could manage to think.

Even Theon Greyjoy could not shrug off a sudden appearance by a sea serpent, so he didn't try to bluster past it when his crew realized their captain was sitting in their midst wide-eyed as if his missing bits had grown back.

"Maybe that was the plume we saw, I don't know. It's not bloody likely to be breathing fire down there, so might be whatever comes out those teeth was too much for the Others' ice ship to handle." Theon mused, after telling them of their visitor. The fishwaif he doubted could much understand the Common Tongue but Kelsie Farwynd turned bright red on hearing his words.

"I went a little further down than perhaps I ought have. Looking for bite, I suppose. But I went no further than a few hundred feet…maybe it spotted me as it was following the hulks and came up for a peek about."

"Well, the hulks are behind us. I'd like to put as much water between us and them as can be managed if it so happens they will incense the beast." Not that it will help, Theon thought. Even with these magicked sails, we're not about to lose a sea serpent.

"Sea monsters and dead men, and a ghost ship with a hold full of silver. Got our time's worth, I'd say." The Reader's tiller said, looking rather relieved he had missed the creature dropping by.

"Our ghost now, greyhair. It's time we put it through its paces." Theon replied. The voyage south more than once brought them upon more hulks, the floating lichyards even poorer sport for the grey-sailed ghost than for the leaky Farwynd longship. There was nothing to be found on any of them (though Theon managed to pull a heavy gold ring off one of the dead men) but the living sent every one to sea's bottom nonetheless. Every hulk they sunk, Theon took note. Thirty fewer dead men. Three-and-fifty. One-and-eighty.

"Oi, captain! Think the Kingslayer will could do with one of these?" One of the lads cackled, holding up a slimy hand wriggling feebly in his grasp.

"No, no, no." Theon replied, tossing it overboard. Then he grinned. "It's his right he's missing. Pick another." Certainly he had no shortage of prospects, they scarcely went more than a few leagues without coming upon new prey. And all the while, we're making time.

"There's just no accounting for it." the tiller was saying one evening as they ate the day's catch (Kelsie Farwynd having dipped below to make sure they were alone). "We've yet to lose the wind."

"Nor will we. This ship is built of wood, aye, but sorcery wrought the silk flying above our heads. I've no doubt if we cared to, we could turn any which way and have the wind caught in our lovely grey sails."

"Is that what we'll call it? The Wind, akin to what your sister's got?"

"Asha's wind is black and dour and brooding as a northman. Ours is grey, a devilish-deft thing lovely as a spilled bodice. Lovelier." And I plan on blowing it straight into Euron's face.