The Battle of the Shrouded Straight, as it had come to be called, exhausted the Ironborn's already weakened naval strength, and crippled their ability to meaningfully counter our movements. This isn't to say they didn't keep trying, of course, and sporadic handfuls of longships continued to boldly, blindly hurl themselves at us, but these attacks proved decidedly ineffectual; the impotent death rides of leaderless captains who figured it'd be better to go down fighting. In the end, we voyaged onwards with effective impunity, and some four days after the battle – a month and some change since we first launched – the lookouts caught sight of windswept cliffs, weathered basalt stained white with brine, looming over the horizon.
We'd finally reached the Iron Islands.
Robert, accordingly, called an assembly of his lords and knights, and with a handful of galleys lashed to each other, anchored to the seafloor and bridged by planks, the officers congregated around an enormous map of the Islands, which had been rolled out across the Hammer's deck. The next few hours were a circus, hundreds of grown men rowdily squabbling as they shunted little wooden tokens around, but, eventually, something of a consensus was reached – thanks in no small part to a profusion of liquor. The fleet then dispersed, and the commanders, respective forces in tow, advanced towards their assigned objectives.
Leading a host of stormlanders, Royal Fleet personnel, and miscellaneous sellswords and such, Stannis sailed northeast and assaulted Great Wyk, the largest in the chain, known for its tall mountains and deep mines. Though the main strongholds and settlements, Hammerhorn and Pebbleton and such, folded rather easily, a number of defenders managed to scarper off into the hills, hiding amidst the towering pines, and from there launched savage raids against the invaders – these "bandits," as Stannis insisted on calling them, turned what should've been a quick, clean stroke into a protracted insurgency.
Meanwhile, at the head of those crownlanders who'd even bothered to show up (enduring Targaryen loyalists, the Blackwater nobility hadn't much love for the "usurper"), Barristan Selmy captured Old Wyk, the enemy's holiest site – even from miles away, the miasma of the damn place cloyed like rotting fish, dank and sticky and putrid with decay. Here resided the Drowned God's true believers, the fanatics and crusaders, whose enthusiasm more than made up for any shortfalls in technical skill. House Drumm's seat, the Ossuary, with its cruel black stonework and gibbets crammed with sacrificed thralls, took nearly two weeks to crack; his white cloak fluttering behind him, the aging kingsguard was first through the breach.
Harlaw, the wealthiest and most populous one, was beset by Kevan Lannister and his contingent of westermen – Tywin had elected to stay at home, ostensibly to oversee logistics. Keen to avenge Lannisport, with Clegane at the van, they repaid the Ironborn's brutality in full, raping and pillaging their way to victory; in fiery reflections of what'd been done to the Reynes, they'd herd the locals into a hall or barn before setting it alight, cutting down any who tried to escape. The proud, majestic, honorable lions, their ships stuffed with plundered weregild, leveled the Ten Towers, razed Grey Garden, and on the whole reduced the island to a waste of smoldering rubble.
A small hodgepodge of riverlanders, reachmen, and other disparate leftovers, having assented to the command of the reigning Lord Mallister, occupied Saltcliffe. Theirs was a quiet invasion (as much as such a thing can be), and the island's only castle surrendered without a fight.
Lastly, there was Pyke; all barren moors and boulder fields, heavy rains and howling winds, it was a dark, damp, and dreary place, unequivocally miserable – if I'd been forced to live there, I'd have probably joined a piratical death cult too. Though it may not have boasted any sublime beauty, nor profound sanctity, nor the most lucrative industry or trade, it was, by any measure, the oldest inhabited of the Iron Islands, and the region's (nominal, at least) center of governance.
From their eponymous seat (the actual etymology long since lost to time, whether the castle or island had been named first was an issue of some controversy), the Greyjoys had ruled largely uncontested for nearly three centuries. For however richer, mightier, or godlier some of their vassals might've been, the squids had struck an admirable balance, in no respect particularly lacking, and carried themselves as the staunchest defenders of the Old Way. Indeed, by declaring himself the first true driftwood king since Harren's immolation, Balon (a man of quite a lot of bravery and not much else) had become far more than just a politician – he was now a rallying symbol, the 'Great Liberator' and 'King of Salt of Rock,' he who would restore their nation's lost glory. Lobbing off the head of the proverbial snake, or at least knocking the crown from it, was therefore probably the single most crucial step in extinguishing the Ironborn's fighting spirit, and properly, decisively ending the war.
Besides, as Robert was fond of drunkenly slurring, Westeros only had room for one king.
And so, the king (that is, the one on the Iron Throne) resolved to finish the job himself, and personally led the assault on the island, bringing with him Ned Stark's northerners. Seeing as the west and interior, save for some scattered fishing hamlets, were largely uninhabited, the royalists planned to sail directly for Lordsport, the chain's single largest settlement, and, after capturing it, to march along the east coast; leaving behind a token force to secure the beachhead, the bulk of the army would go south and besiege Pyke Castle, while a few thousand split off north and attacked Iron Holt.
A simplistic strategy, perhaps, maybe even predictable, but a battle this lopsided – and victory this assured – hardly demanded complexity.
The day of the landing was overcast and gloomy, the clouds above stamped a dull, uniform grey. Shoreward winds rippling through our sails, the Hammer setting the pace, around fifty galleys and a hundred transports cruised towards the harbor, with blocks of infantry mustered atop their decks.
Seeing the lot of them in their full kit, I felt compelled, I'll admit, to indulge in a bit of dress-up myself. While the original might've presented herself as a radiant, beatific, virgin mother sort, she was, at her core, very much a war goddess, and had the accouterments to match. Her – now my – favorite panoply was a formfitting musculata, paired with matching vambraces and greaves, and topped with a winged helm, all done in the royal colors of black and gold. Engraved with glowing runes and embossed with a cruciform Erdtree, with a cloak and underlayer of Tyrian silk, the set, altogether, looked the sort of thing that Nero would wear to Bayreuth – so gaudy and overblown that it looped back around to majestic.
I didn't need the armor, not really – certainly not against Ironborn, of all things – but it wouldn't have done to fight a battle and not look the part, no matter how comfortable my usual dress was.
Anyways, digression aside, much of Lordsport's peasantry had fled in anticipation of our arrival, seeking refuge in the surrounding hinterlands, while its extensive dockyards had been garrisoned and fortified; ranks of half-trained conscripts manned jury-rigged barricades, and reams of mothballed ballistae and catapults – the town was the Iron Fleet's primary anchorage, after all, and a noted producer of arms besides – were dug out from storage and liberally sprinkled across their lines.
What they'd cobbled together was better than no defense at all, I supposed, and even looked formidable when eyed from a distance, but hardly seemed capable of actually impeding, much less halting, the sheer weight of men and material bearing down upon them.
As we closed the last couple hundred yards to shore, the Ironborn opened up on us, our ships pelted with a hail of bolts and stones; infantry raised their shields above their heads, and sailors scrambled for cover behind bulwarks and forecastles. The enemy's experienced artillery crews, I could only assume, went down with their fleet, but Stalin had a point about quantity and quality, and those projectiles that didn't whiff past us or skid along the water or ricochet off our hulls caused a fair amount of damage – one carrack, its masts reduced to splinters, sat dead in the water until a missile punched straight through its bow, the shattered remnants sloughing off into the depths. It sank in less than a minute, and the passengers who'd managed to abandon ship got dragged under by the resulting whirlpool.
"Load!" the captains ordered, teams scrambling towards their engines, and with shouts of "Loose!" our ships barraged the shore in kind. Shooting at distant targets from moving platforms, our aim wasn't much better than theirs, but we still destroyed enough of their machines and routed enough of their crews to turn the artillery duel marginally in our favor.
Fifty yards to go, then forty, the Hammer angled slightly to port and ran along the waterfront, before pulling into a jetty and wrenching to a halt. Under the cover of archers and artillery, the royalist infantry clambered down ladders and nets and gangways, then charged across the docks towards the ramshackle Ironborn line; however spirited, the greybeards and boys melted under the northerners' onslaught, ceding ground as their ranks buckled and splintered.
A drydocked hulk – a mainlander galley, by the looks of it, assumedly taken as a prize – anchored the center of their defense, and represented the final bulwark between the harbor and the town proper. Bowmen fired volleys from the deck, axemen formed a shield wall around the keel, and officers and wounded sheltered inside the hold. Rather than storming it, or allowing it to threaten our rear, the royalists bombarded the hulk with torches and fire pots; constructed of timber and tar and other inflammable things, it shortly burst into flames, and charred Ironborn, skin crackling and flesh smoking, screamed as they fled the inferno, the howls of the soldiers trapped inside echoing through the air.
Organized resistance, after less than half an hour, had been all but quashed, so the surviving defenders retreated to Botley castle – an elaborate pine mead hall sprawled atop a nearby bluff – and the attackers spilled from the dockyards into the streets.
Those women and children and other assorted smallfolk who'd refused to evacuate (around a third of the population, if I had to guess) now found themselves on the wrong end of a sack. Some struggled in vain to defend their homes, and met the royalists with heirloom swords and carpenter's mallets, kitchen knives and bare hands; their strikes, born of unskilled desperation, glanced off shields and rang against helmets, to which the invaders responded with strikes of their own – far deadlier ones. Some went to ground, hunkering inside their cellars or huddling beneath their beds, and were dragged from their hiding spots and subjected to all manner of abuses and predations. And some chose death before dishonor, to spare themselves the pain of a crueler demise, slitting their wrists or hanging themselves or jumping into the sea.
The thralls, on the other hand, haggard and gaunt beneath their soiled rags, cheered the soldiers as liberators, embracing them and crying on their shoulders; a few even took the opportunity to even the score, and choked and bludgeoned their former masters.
For their part, the northerners looted everything that wasn't nailed down – and quite a lot that was, too – before setting their torches on Lordsport itself. Buildings packed tight, burning thatch and glowing embers carried by the wind, the blaze soon engulfed the entire town; windows burst and melted to slag, while stone blocks spalled and wood beams blackened. Soon, the flames started lapping at the neighboring hills and then spread to Botley Castle, which snapped and groaned as it collapsed in on itself, taking most of the garrison with it.
Lord Botley himself, to my understanding, his hair scorched and flesh blistered, a half-melted gauntlet fused to his sword hand, staggered dazed into the fields where the Northerners had begun to strike camp, and offered his surrender to the first spearman that he happened upon.
With the defenders routed and the town razed, the transports were free to run themselves aground, and the main body of troops disembarked to secure the landing sites. Offloading supplies, erecting stockades, and shoveling latrines, by twilight, the men had raised a sizeable encampment; they then retired for the night, laughing and singing as they sat around their cooking pots and divided their shares of the spoils – to an unwashed levy, what's the value in brooding?
Parked upwind, we were spared the worst of the smoke, and from atop a ridge, inside the command tent, around a long dinner table, myself, Robert, and the rest of his entourage watched Lordsport burn, the flames glimmering in the starlight. The nobles quietly picked at their meals (roasted salt pork on a bed of boiled peas) and occasionally broke the silence with scattered helpings of stilted conversation – the mood, in a word, was pensive.
"This is my first rebellion, you know?"
I looked up from my plate and fixed my eyes on Robert, who, as per usual, was slouched in his seat, staring dolefully into his cup. He noisily exhaled, shook his head, and set the cup down on the table. "Well, the first rebellion against me, that is."
I raised an eyebrow. "Your point?"
The king pursed his lips, and then gave a slight, bitter smirk. "I thought I was doing a good job. Even fat Ageon had the Greyjoys on his side." A flat snicker. "Just … disappointed in myself, is all." He bobbed his head at me. "You ever have one?"
"What, a rebellion?"
He nodded.
"Yes. Many. Lost count after the first dozen, believe it or not." Unsurprising, really – when you conquer a continent and establish a theocracy, you're bound to have some dissidents. Mind you, by the time I took the proverbial wheel, the Golden Order's hold on the Lands Between was all but absolute, though the original's memories of those turbulent early days, not to mention the perennial enthusiasm of certain prohibited cults (chiefly those devoted to some of the more distasteful Outer Gods, Rot and Frenzy and such), ensured I had more than enough familiarity.
"Some lord would get uppity, or commoner ambitious, or prophet would contrive a grand revelation and seek to spread the good news. There's always a reason to revolt – an inevitable consequence of civilization, the way I see it."
Robert, at that, seemed rather disquieted. "And how'd they go?"
War, by and large, is a nasty, brutish thing (a revelation, I'm sure), and yet, it's hard to think of another field of human endeavor that resonates so profoundly with those primal, foundational parts of our being; I'll admit, I came to rather enjoy it all, the struggle and the triumph, purpose and sincerity.
Wholesale butchery, mind, still left something of a bad taste, tolerated more than appreciated, if only because it sullied the relative 'sanctity' of battle – that said, however, I'll readily concede that hoisting the black flag and salting the earth was often a sensible strategy, even an exigent necessity, depending on the circumstances. While I understood, intellectually, the moral arguments against such conduct, I couldn't really bring myself to care, certainly not in the general sense. Might makes right, after all, so why bow to the bleatings of the great unwashed, shackle myself to the pearl-clutching outrage of those who'll be dead in a few years anyway?
Case in point, when your enemy is a traitorous vassal, and a member of a despised minority to boot, those 'enthusiastic methods,' as it were, more than had their place, both as a means of impelling surrender and improving your own side's morale.
How much of myself, I often wondered, was actually me, and how much was the original's leftovers?
Leaning back in my seat, I turned to study the desolation. By now, the flames had somewhat receded, and backlit the scorched, deserted, hollowed-out skeleton of the town.
"Rather like this one."
The king frowned as he tapped his finger against the rim of his goblet, and I took a sip from my own.
"What did you call them? 'A festering boil on our collective arse?' I've found that rebellions are wonderful opportunities to clean house. If the Ironborn are that big a pest … " I slid my finger across my throat, then shrugged.
Robert eyed me for a minute or so, swirling the cup around, before downing it with a long, deep swig. Brow furrowed in thought, he burped into his hand and absently nodded. "I'll keep that in mind."
V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V
Back during the antediluvian, mist-shrouded age of myth and legend, when men first walked the lands now known as Westeros, the earliest iteration of Pyke Castle was constructed upon a solid promontory, jutting from the island's southeast tip. But over the millennia, as successive inhabitants expanded and enlarged it, the crashing sea took its toll, and the cliff gradually eroded into a cluster of islets and sea stacks, with the remaining keeps and towers – grungy, drafty, weatherworn things bridged by swaying rope – crouched precariously atop them. That last sliver of the grassy headland still connected to the island housed the stables and kennels, and was girded by a great stone wall, bulging like a crescent from edge to edge.
Some ten miles from Lordsport, our army had reached the castle after a only day of marching, and with the Ironborn crowded inside the walls, assembled unmolested in the surrounding fields. Lugging tents and hauling supply wagons, digging trenches and assembling trebuchets, the royalists started to prepare a siege.
Robert, in accordance with the conventions of warfare, accompanied by myself and his handful of kingsguard, raised a white flag of parley and rode up to their wall, stopping some fifty feet from the gatehouse; stout and imposing, massive Greyjoy banners fluttered on either side of a thick iron portcullis.
Rubbing Typhoon's ears – he was a good boy – I snorted. "All this black and gold, it's getting hard to tell who's who."
Sparing a quick glance at my armor, and then the banners, Robert's grim resolve was, for but a second, pierced by slight amusement.
I resolved to try a pun next time – would've gotten me a chuckle, at least.
With a screech and a rumble and the rattling of chains, the portcullis ground open, and a dozen Ironborn marched towards us on foot, halting at a distance of thirty paces. Black iron breastplates over gambesons and ringmail, they gripped tight the hilts of their swords and axes, and the one in the nicest-looking, least-scuffed armor took a few steps forward; he removed his conical spangenhelm, revealing flowing black hair and hard black eyes, his handsome features marred with a scowl.
Robert made a show of lifting his chin and glaring at the twenty-something envoy down his nose. "Who are you supposed to be?"
The Ironborn straightened, narrowing his eyes. "I am Prince Maron Greyjoy."
"Balon's spare, eh?"
Maron clenched his jaw. "His heir."
Robert hummed. "That so? I won't dance around, then. Surrender, and your men's lives will be spared. You and your father, the cunt, will be sent to the Watch – hardly a good life, freezing your bollocks off, but better than no life at all. I'll even be generous, let your kid brother inherit." He leaned forward in his saddle, motioning his head towards the guards up on the battlements. "Keep on with this, though, and there'll be heads on spikes from here to King's Landing."
Swallowing, Maron blinked and frowned off to the side, duty and pride and fear warring in his eyes. After a few moments of tortured deliberation, he took a deep breath, flattened his features as best he could, and met Robert's gaze.
"What is dead may never die."
Brave kid. Stupid, but brave.
Robert replied with a stare, before interjecting with a subtle, almost respectful nod. "Aye, fair enough." He dismissed the 'prince' with a flick of his hand. "Be off, squiddy. Give us your best."
Sparing the king one last glower, Maron replaced his helmet, and he and his party started back towards the wall.
Ever so slightly, I tightened my hold on the reins. "Do you want the castle intact?"
Robert watched the Ironborn depart. "If you wouldn't mind."
Lowering my helmet's gilded face mask, I raised an arm and squeezed my fist, my neighbors' hair standing on end as a burst of grace rocketed onwards; the gatehouse promptly exploded into a billowing cloud of dust and rubble.
Honestly, why bother with a siege?
The debris battered against the castle, but one of my golden barriers spared our side the lot of it. Around the impact, large sections of the wall collapsed, and the six tall watchtowers along its length toppled over, men thrown from the parapets and crushed by falling stones.
I squeezed my knees together and snapped the reins, spurring Typhoon into the breach, while I reached into my soul and retrieved my hammer – a blunt, simple weapon, by any measure, more or less a hunk of rock fastened to the end of a stick.
Say what you want, but there's something cathartic about bashing a skull in.
Coughing and doubling over, caked in powdered stone, Maron paused, then recoiled back, eyes wide, as I galloped up to him and swung the hammer like a polo mallet. His torso reduced to a fine red mist, the remaining bits of him careened off into the distance, and the shockwave finished off his retinue.
Typhoon leapt over the rubble, tore across the bedraggled lawn, and barreled onto the broad stone bridge linking the headland to the main keep. With their barricades wrecked by the explosion, the soldiers stationed there fled deeper into the castle, or cowered against the flagstones, or tried their chances at stalling my advance – those ones got vaporized for their trouble. The archers and arbalists along the ramparts, meanwhile, only managed a single volley before a roiling, crackling sphere of grace blew most of the keep's top off.
By now, the royalists had abandoned their preparations and flooded into the opening, overrunning the remaining sections of the outer wall and slaughtering their way past the stunned defenders. Thoros, of all people, blazed ahead at the fore, clearing the path with a flaming longsword, while Robert and Ned exhorted their men to press on.
Ramming through a makeshift bulwark, I burst into an open-air vestibule, hoofbeats clattering under a vaulted ceiling, and pulled on the reins, circling around to bleed off speed, until Typhoon slowed to a halt; I then dismounted, giving the horse a quick peck on the forehead – a very good boy, indeed – before letting him dematerialize. The great hall's massive double doors had been latched and barred, and the Ironborn on the other side were frantically bracing them with chairs and tables – "Hurry, dammit!" an officer barked over the scrapes and bangs of furniture, "They're coming!"
With a blow from my hammer, the doors erupted from their hinges; the furniture pile burst into shreds, splinters and nails whizzing through the hall, while the doors themselves skipped across the ground, sweeping away fixtures and soldiers alike, until one lodged itself in the far wall, blood pooling onto the floor tiles, and the other careened out a window.
As I strode into the room, the remaining defenders – men-at-arms and titleless lordlings and Balon Greyjoy himself, all clad in heavy half-plate – stopped and stared, flinching with each step closer. The sight of me treading over a body, quite literally mashing it to pulp beneath my feet, was what finally drove them to belt out warcries, flourish their blades, and make one last desperate charge.
Suffice to say, it didn't end well for them – my hammer painted the walls red, while bolts of grace riddled them with sizzling holes – but kudos for moxie, if nothing else.
Balon, the last one standing, crumpled to the floor when I broke his arms and legs. Writhing and gasping and foaming at the mouth, spitting the usual threats and slurs, he made for something of a spectacle, but a burst of malice from the far end of the room wrangled my attention. The Seastone Chair, a hunk of unnatural, greasy black stone hewn into the shape of a kraken – or more accurately, the entity for which the chair served as a conduit – bellowed at me as one would the killer of a treasured pet, or the wrecker of a favored toy, outrage and indignation wrapped in that telltale rotting-fish miasma; I got the impression of a bloated, festering corpse presiding over a watery hall, sustained through spite and sheer tyranny of will.
The screeching grew ever more hysterical as I drew ever closer to the throne, and both Balon and the entity, their emotions one – and wasn't that a can of worms? – caterwauled as I raised my hammer.
Crash!
Golden light spiderwebbed across the malignant black stone.
Crash!
They begged for mercy.
CRASH!
With a horrible wail, the chair shattered, dissolving into frothing puddles of brackish water and oily pus, and with blood spewing from Balon's eyes and ears, the entity scrambled away, its very being ripped in tatters.
Before long, the royalists broke through to the hall. Robert, panting, walked up to Balon and me, and took the time to survey the rubble and viscera strewn about the place; sunlight streaked through the fissures in the roof, bits of masonry crumbling into the sea, and that one door finally dislodged itself from the wall, slamming onto the ground and splitting into pieces.
"Intact?"
I shrugged.
"Relatively."
He turned his gaze to Balon – by now insensate – and winced.
"What happened to him?"
"We had a chat with the Drowned God."
Not that the damn thing was an actual, proper god – more like a Japanese kami, or jumped-up manifestation, infused by … something with repulsive fel energy.
"The Drowned God's real?"
"Unfortunately."
Robert wasn't quite sure how to respond to that; he eventually, after blinking and resting his hands on his hips, settled on "Huh."
We watched the King of Salt and Rock slowly bleed out, and with his final raspy, shuddering breath, Robert lifted his hammer above his head and shouted "Victory!"
At this, of course, the men started cheering.
Robert belted out a laugh, and I took the opportunity to eye him up and down – to appreciate the goods, as it were. From that first night, there existed a certain 'tension' between us, subtle glances and unsaid overtures, touches that lingered just a hair too long.
Now seemed as good a time as any to resolve it.
Wrapping my arm around his waist, I hefted him over my shoulder, and despite his kicks and pushes, my grip remained firm.
"Whoa, whoa, what are you – ?!"
"Celebrating, what else?"
Look, this body had a preference, and the High Fratboy of Westeros ticked a lot of boxes.
"I'm married!"
"Since when has that stopped you?"
The blows petered out, and resigned to his fate, Robert snickered and waved at his men as they whistled and roared in kind – even Ned, straight-laced as he carried himself, gave an exasperated grin.
A petrified servant led us to Balon's quarters; I locked the door behind me and tossed Robert onto the bed, tendrils of grace untying his armor and loosening his smallclothes, and caressing his member until it rose to attention. I stripped, smirking as he loosed a throaty growl, and swaying my hips as I approached the bed.
And when my lips wrapped around his cock, I noticed, from the corner of my eye, a three-eyed raven perched upon the windowsill.
Bloody voyeur.