In the clear skies above Dragonstone, Danaerys circled around the great island, the sheer exhilaration of flight causing her to forget her many worries for a few brief moments. The ships containing most of the Unsullied had arrived without trouble, the surviving Dothraki and Jon's armies were marching south, there would be little trouble in uniting both to march on King's Landing. Below her, Rhaegal followed his mother and brother, when he suddenly emitted a piercing squeal. Danaery's head whipped around.
A massive barbed bolt protruded from Rhaegal's throat, and another lodged in his chest even as she watched with horrified eyes. With a cry that chilled Danaerys' heart, the dragon fell into the sea below, nearly swamping one of the Unsullied ships.
The Iron Fleet's vanguard emerged from the rocky island that had screened their approach. From the prow of each ship another ballista fired death at the Dragonqueen.
With a screech of rage and grief, Danaerys sent Drogon into a dive, but the flurry of bolts pushed her back. Her heart heavy as lead, she pulled back to the safety of Dragonstone.
Euron Greyjoy grinned savagely as the ballista depressed, pointing straight at the anchored ships of Danaerys' fleet. The Iron Fleet pressed on at full sail, raining death before them, ripping through the hulls and sails of the defenseless Unsullied ships. Each ship's crew was singlemindedly concentrated on their task.
With an unearthly roar, the air off the Silence's starboard stern split open, vomiting a monstrous longship that continued moving, landing level with the flagship with a colossal splash. Euron snapped around, his jaw dropping.
"What the fu-"
The hideous maw of the longship's figurehead opened and snapped close on the prow of the Silence, bringing both ships to a juddering halt. The wooden dragon's neck twisted, bringing the two ships side by side. Straightaway its enormous crewmen leaped aboard the Silence, screaming bloody murder. The Ironborn, though taken aback at first by the surprise attack and the size of the boarders, responded with the fast instincts of lifelong pirates, and both sides were quickly locked in brutal melee, ignored by the the rest of the fleet. Both captains were quickly in the thick of it, roaring encouragement and threats.
"Fight you sons of whores, fight or I'll rip something else from your heads!"
"More blood, you dogs! Show these river-raiders that the Norsca are masters of the seas!"
Euron looked at the plate-covered giant exhorting his troops, who looked up at that moment. Staring at each other without fear, they closed on each other, Euron grabbing a boarding axe and a cutlass in his hands, his foe carrying a sword and shield adapted to his size.
"A neat trick, sea-rat, a biting ship! After I feed you to it I think I'll keep it for my own!"
"The name's Wolf, rust-born, and I would almost stand down for the pleasure of seeing you try! Would you like me to cut off an arm and a leg to give you a fair chance?!"
"No need, whoreson, you'll probably do that to yourself soon enough, I'm surprised you know which end of the sword is which!"
"I could say the same of yours! Is every man of the Iron Islands so flipper-handed that they cut out their tongues while shaving, or am I talking to a man who surrounds himself with incompetents to make his lack of skill seem less noticeable?"
Euron's eye twitched, but he rallied.
"You do anything but talk, or do you use that sword of yours for something other than widening out your holes so your sailors have an easier time going in?"
"I certainly do! Let me show you!"
The Wolf lunged forward, his blade flashing. Euron sidestepped the first blow and struck the giant in the shoulder, but the Wolf turned, a chained skull nearly slapping the axe out of Euron's hand. Before the barbarian had finished turning, Euron thrust out with the cutlass, this time nicking the back of his head.
"Was that it? My father hit me harder the time I stole his sword and killed the neighbor's best ram!"
Euron smirked despite the danger of the situation. The giant was far faster than his size should allow, and his jibes seemed to resonate in the mind.
"I imagine killing sheep is about all you're good for, ginger!"
The Wolf opened his mouth to reply, but Euron continued.
"And even then, only old sheep, blind in one eye and lame in three legs so you have less of a chance of getting hurt! Bigger they are, the bigger the coward!"
"But the smaller they are, the lesser the courage!"
The blades clashed, the Wolf's monstrous strength knocking Euron's sword out of his hand. Euron spared it a glance before stepping to the side, the Wolf's blade splintering the deck.
"Who the hell are you? It would've been known if a sow had given birth to a piglet in the shape of a man!"
"I am many things, iron-spawn, but for now, you may view me as your divinely-appointed end."
Euron spat.
"Gods? You know what I think of gods?"
"I know what you think of them. In fact, I share your opinion of them."
Euron looked up sharply, stepping back to avoid a thrust and countering with a two-handed blow that screeched against the giant's armor.
"However, it is not your weakling gods, petty things of wind and spray and ember, that brought me here. I serve gods of blood and thunder, of metal and courage."
Euron's axe smashed against the giant's pauldron, more annoyed than he cared to admit that the Wolf's conversational tone was getting under his skin.
"They tasked me with finding one who was as close to me as I could in this world. I'm glad to find we have so much in common."
"Common? You know who you're talking to, you ugly bastard?"
"Oh yes, Euron Greyjoy. Like me, you are a wanderer, a pirate, a raider, you've sailed from one end of the world to the other, you murder the priests of false and puny gods..."
The Wolf paused, though from his expression it was for effect and not from lack of words.
"We've both, for very different reasons and a different number of times, been inside your mother..."
Despite the blatant falsehood of the statement, Euron lunged forward, his axe clanging against the Wolf's shield.
"I will rip off your beard and use it as a featherduster!"
"I imagine you have great need for one, given how little you move around! I've seen less fat on a whale and more activity in the bed of Harald-Hundred-Years during his seventeenth wedding night!"
Euron swung wildly, the Wolf turning his head to allow the weapon to continue its course.
"Missed! Your crew have no tongues in their heads, are those glass eyes in yours? I wonder if you get that from your mother, she too would probably have had trouble recognizing the man who spawned you... if indeed he was even a man, and not a well-endowed donkey!"
Unaware of their captain's predicament, the remainder of the Iron Fleet was opening the distance between them and the Silence, the flagship's bulk hiding the longship from their view. Euron threw a glance behind him, but the Wolf seemed to catch his intention.
"Oh of course, how rude of me, attacking without waiting for you to have hundreds of men at your back! It's always good to see a man unafraid to admit his weakness and his reliance, no, his dependence on others! Did you get that from your fath- your mother's husband letting every passing sailor drop anchor in her harbor, in the hopes that she'd finally know what a real man feels like?"
Snarling, Euron hacked viciously with his axe, a chip of metal flying off the Wolf's shield.
"I will not even kill you, I will cut off your tongue and your cock and reduce you to be the ship's whore!"
"Aha, I knew it was my cock you were after. So it really is true what they say about you Iron Islanders: Your fleets are powered by rotgut, buggery and floggings!"
Euron's axe hooked across the top of the Wolf's shield. He pulled sharply down, intending to bull into his opponent, but to his horror, the shield did not move an inch.
"Well, sea-slime? No strength in your arms? You should try pulling an oar or pushing a tiller once in a while, it builds muscle faster than touching yourself, and in both arms too!"
Cursing, Euron jumped back as the Wolf's sword came swinging down. Neither man lost his footing despite the roiling sea, but the Wolf was delayed when a mute and one of his own crewmen wandered in front of him, too engrossed in their own duel to pay attention to their surroundings. Euron took advantage of the distraction to jump across the gap to the Wolf's own ship, which was riding slightly lower in the water than the Silence.
"Get back here, fishbait, rats aren't meant to flee ships until they start sinking!"
Ignoring the taunt, Euron nearly tripped over an enormous chain, thick as a man's leg, one of several that radiated out from the mast in an eight-pointed star, passing over the gunwale and under the hull, bringing to mind the tentacles of some monstrous kraken clamping around a stricken ship. The taut chains trembled as if shaken from the other end, a stronger tremor telling him the Wolf had followed him overboard.
Euron grinned. Putting one foot on the chain, he vaulted from one to the other, slashing his axe through an astonished marauder's throat before the warrior could react. He approached the snarling dragon's head, a wooden eye rolling to glare at him, and he jumped the gap again with ease, rotating the Silence's prow-mounted ballista to face the longship.
As he'd expected, the heavily-armored giant had not yet caught up with him, having to pick and climb his way over the chains where a leather-wearing man could move faster. He pulled a bolt into place and pulled back the levers, the Wolf looking up as he cleared the chains, his shield at his side.
"What a long hard shaft you have there, rust-born! A shame the one between your legs has more in common with a dead squid than a-"
Euron pulled the trigger. The bolt shot forward, slamming into the Wolf's shield, deflected from its course to impale a marauder at the stern of the Silence. Even as he recovered his balance, the Wolf continued his taunts.
"So you can't aim either? When you drain your balls in your first mates' arse, does it end up in his mouth?"
Euron twitched, but slid another bolt into place as the Wolf took another step forward. The bolt struck the shield head-on, and there was a horrid screech as the metal wrapped around the arrow. Dropping the warped shield, the giant lunged forward, clearing the gap between the ships without hesitation.
"Those are expensive to fix, wave-rat, I hope your holds have enough metal in them! Or perhaps I'll drain your blood a pint at a time for a year to get the iron I need?"
Euron had slotted another bolt into the ballista, but it was too late: the Wolf's sword was already at his throat, the giant's arm pulled back and ready to thrust it into and through his neck.
"So, how-"
Euron leaped over the Silence's side, breaking the surface with barely a splash. He opened his eyes, and nearly lost what breath he had left. Under the monstrous longship, a pale serpentine shape as long as the ship itself was struggling to escape the enormous chains holding it captive. So hideous was the thing's appearance that Euron didn't notice the bigger splash behind him, and only when a metal-clad arm closed around his throat did his predicament come back to his mind.
His prey firmly in hand, the Wolf powered his way back to the surface, clearly accustomed to swimming even when clad in thick metal plate. Gripping a rope tossed to him by a marauder, he hauled himself up the Silence's side, dropping the sodden Euron to the deck next to the ballista and resting his hand on Euron's head, thumb and fingers applying just enough pressure to make it clear he could close them with little effort.
"Come now, rust-born, don't go spoiling the surprise!"
The Wolf bellowed something to his warriors. Instantly the surviving marauders fell back from the battle, lining up and crouching behind their shields, with the exception of one busy furiously bashing an Ironborn's head against the gunwale, indifferent to the splatter of bone and brains splashing his face. An irritated expression flew over the Wolf's face.
"Gunnar!"
The marauder showed no sign of having heard, the thankfully-dead Ironborn's brains staining the gunwale.
"Gunnar!"
Still the madman went on, despite his victim's skull now resembling a shattered pot of berry preserve.
"GUNNAR!"
The giant snarled as the berserker remained oblivious to everything but what remained of his enemy's head.
Grabbing the unshot bolt in his empty hand, the Wolf lobbed it like a throwing axe at the frenzied marauder. The impact broke the man's arm and knocked him off his feet, and he got up with a dazed look, seemingly unaware of his ruined limb. The Wolf yelled an order at him, and he joined his fellows behind the shield-wall.
The mutes of the Silence looked to their captain in some confusion. Twisting his head, Euron saw the Wolf looking thoughtfully at the massacre in the distance.
"Sven!"
Euron watched as a scarred old man clothed in wolf furs and raven feathers stood at the longship's prow, who started reading aloud from a glowing scroll in his hands. The Wolf nodded to the crew still onboard the longship, who immediately undid the massive chains attached to its mast, pulling out iron pins the length of a man's hand. The ship bobbed up as though freed from a great weight, and a pale shape shot forwards from beneath it, leaving a long wake as the sorcerer continued to chant.
"The fuck was that thing?"
The Wolf answered, dragging Euron's head to face the island without taking his eyes off the wake which was closing on a ship of the Iron Fleet.
"Merwyrm."
"Hasn't eaten for a week."
The wake disappeared, and there was no noise save for the sorcerer's continued chants. All eyes were on the Ironborn ship in the distance, which suddenly jolted as though it had rammed a reef at full sail. Then it slowly tilted to the side, panicking crewmen flailing as they were hurled overboard. They did not surface.
The crash of timber could be heard from the shoreline, and the Iron Fleet's assault ground to a halt as they tried to make sense of what was happening. Some sailed towards the stricken ship, others continued shooting at Danaerys' ships, others still turned back when they noted their flagship's absence.
"You know, sea-swine, I don't think this is going to work. Would you like us to start over?"
Euron looked startled. Of all the things the Wolf could have said, this was the least expected.
"... What?"
"You. Me. Holmgang."
"I will let you fetch whatever weapons, armor and trinkets you think will give you an edge, and we will fight each other, one-on-one. If you don't want to, well, I came here to kill you, and I can do that right now and save us both a lot of time."
Euron remained silent, goggle-eyed.
"Certain death now, or possible death later? Man to man, winner takes the loser's ship and crew. The Seafang for the Silence."
The Wolf's eyes darted towards Dragonstone and the Iron Fleet.
"Best decide quickly, while you still have a fleet."
In the distance, another ship keeled over and sank beneath the waves.
Glaring hate at the Wolf, Euron called out to his own crew.
"Alright, you bastards, stand down! Captain's making a deal here."
The Wolf smiled, showing a mouth full of fangs rather than teeth.
"Madman, but not witless."
The Wolf's hand released its pressure on Euron's head and pulled away. He turned around, barking orders at his crew. The shield-wall broke up, and several of the marauders jumped back aboard their ship.
Eyeing the boarding axe he'd dropped earlier, Euron briefly considered his chances at striking the giant while his back was turned, but from the way one of the helmeted marauders on the longship hefted a harpoon casually pointed at him and the way the Wolf's hand never left the skull that served as his sword's pommel, any desperate attempt at freedom was doomed from the start. Grinning sardonically at the harpooner, Euron merely stood up and disappeared into the Silence's cabin, the Wolf's roar audible even from belowdecks.
"HOLMGANG!"
A dozen marauders disappeared into the longship's hold and returned, each carrying a thick wooden plank reinforced with iron bands and long nails protruding from either end. The Wolf bellowed something that vibrated unpleasantly in the mutes' teeth, and the living prow untwisted slightly, leaving a gap of a dozen feet amidships. The crew laid the planks down across the gap to form a square platform between the Seafang and the Silence.
Euron re-emerged from the Silence's hold. His chest was covered by a breastplate of Valyrian steel, bearing a large battleaxe, and wearing a driftwood crown on his head. The Wolf nodded in satisfaction.
"Akkarulf!"
One of the Wolf's larger marauders dropped his harpoon and stepped up. Unlike the rest, who wore leather or furs, his head and torso were clad in metal armor, covered in runes like the Wolf's.
"Get me an oar-ring! Einarr!"
A bald sailor came forward as the hulking warrior stepped over the shieldwall. The Wolf gave him an order as Akkarulf bent over an iron ring embedded in the timber of the longship, muscles bulging as he used both hands to pull it out. There was a sound of splintering wood. The Wolf looked annoyed.
"Without breaking my ship, Akkarulf!"
"Yes, you clumsy oaf, be careful with my future property!"
The Wolf's head snapped around at Euron, who seemed quite satisfied with his jibe. The return of the Wolf's henchman bearing a length of chain provided a distraction, although the Wolf sighed on holding it up.
"það er of lítið!"
Akkarulf handed the oar-ring, a circle of metal fitted with a spike, to his captain, eyes downcast at the rebuke. The Wolf took the oarring and pushed it through the middle of the platform, leaving only the ring protruding from the wood.
The bald marauder having given him a longer chain, the Wolf threaded it through the ring. He gave the end to Einarr, who quickly wrapped and knotted it around his captain's waist.
"Chains? Good thinking, ginger! Dense as your head is, your corpse'll sink as soon as it falls overboard!"
"Oh, it's not for me, squidborn. Usually, it's accepted that neither fighter would shame himself before the gods and run, and might in fact take offense at the implication that the chains were even needed. But seeing as you show the same resolve as a newborn rabbit..."
The Wolf nodded once. Two marauders grabbed Euron's arms from behind, while a third tied the chain around the struggling Ironborn's waist. Then the two captains were left on the platform, their respective crews forming semicircles behind them.
One marauder banged a sword against a shield, which Euron took a the signal to begin.
He considered the situation carefully. The chain between them was slack, but he still had to be careful not to get it caught on the handle. The Wolf had only a sword in his hand and wore no helmet, but he was covered in armor that looked as thick as that of Cersei's monstrous bodyguard.
Behind the giant, his marauders were chanting his name, when he raised a hand, silencing them.
"Now, now, let's not be rude, the other side needs their turn! Shake the very sky with your cheers, Iron Islanders! Let us hear the name of your captain roared so loud the seas tremble, that your god might hear the name of his champion from beneath the waves!"
Depressing silence filled the air, broken only by the far-off echoes of the merwyrm's rampage. Euron felt a fresh burst of hatred as the Wolf turned his head, cupping a hand to his ear and screwing up his face as if struggling to hear a far-off sound. One or two of the Silence's crew looked pointedly at their captain for a second.
"Glad to see you know how to make a point, ginger! Is that the only way to make the collection of inbred idiots behind you understand anything?"
"Oh no, they understand when spoken to... and can even answer, unlike certain others I could name! An entire crew crippled just because you don't have the authority to stop them from backtalking? Was being a mediocre fighter not enough, that you need to prove yourself an piss-poor seaman as well? I wouldn't trust you to be captain of a rowboat!"
Behind the barbarian, the marauders were making obscene gestures involving tongues and fingers. Something in the Wolf's voice pushed Euron to justify himself, even as he could feel it to be a mistake, sheer indignation choking him and removing any dignity from his reply.
"Med-Mediocre?! I killed a dragon!"
The Wolf seemed no more impressed than before.
"Oh yes. A dragon."
The Wolf's sword slashed horizontally, but the blade left no mark.
"Singular."
The Wolf grabbed at the haft of Euron's axe, preventing it from splitting his skull in half, then pushed it back, aiming a thrust that glanced off Euron's breastplate, the Valyrian steel showing not even a pockmark from the impact. Irritation flashed across his features for an instant, but he quickly recovered.
"And what a battle it must have been, a mere man pitting his strength against teeth the size of swords, steel against scale, wits against fire, truly a tale worthy of the sagas- oh, I'm sorry, I'm thinking of the way I fight dragons. But I'm sure your way counts for something, shooting it from ambush using a machine designed by a smarter man and paid for by a richer woman. Is there even a single achievement in your life that you and only you are responsible for?"
The sardonic tone triggered something in Euron, and before he quite realized what he was doing the words had already left his mouth.
"I killed a king!"
"Did you now. With poison or paid assassins? And in his sleep, no doubt, just to be safe."
Euron lunged, punctuating each sentence with a swing of his axe.
"I killed him!"
"In single combat!"
"I took from him!"
"The crown!
"That should have been mine!"
"From the start!"
The Wolf actually looked pensive as he deflected each blow with his sword.
" Already slightly better. I knew a man who had to kill his eight brothers to clear the way to the crown, then his father when the message didn't quite get through... A shame he didn't show the same drive over the rest of his life, the gods might have spared him his unenviable fate. You didn't kill your father too, just to be safe?"
Euron struck at the Wolf's leg, a timely parry preventing his axe from burying itself fully in the armored kneecap. He wrenched the weapon free, but the Wolf continued talking as though the Ironborn was the only one fighting for his life.
"That said, from what I hear the ranks of kingslayers in this world include a one-armed man, an old woman, and a pig."
The Wolf smiled.
"Quite the exalted company you belong to."
The look of amused contempt the Wolf gave Euron was such that he lunged, axe held high, swinging it in a heartfelt attempt to silence the barbarian's taunting. The Wolf wrapped the chain around his hand and pulled hard, bringing the Ironborn crashing to the deck mid-leap and slamming his cheek painfully against the oarring. Euron tasted blood from his own tongue.
"Can't even keep an even keel at sea, rust-born? Were you born this clumsy or did you take lessons? Give me the name of your teacher in idiocy so I can congratulate him on the summits his pupil has reached in the art of being a clown!"
The Wolf released the chain. Cheeks and eyes burning with hate, wiping the blood from his mouth, Euron stood up and backed away, his axe held ready to parry a blow.
"Easy for you to say, coward! You sit there playing at being a better fighter just because your mother fucked a bear! In a fair fight I'd already have had your tongue pulled out from a hole in your throat!"
Without breaking eye contact with Euron, the Wolf took four steps back and planted his sword in the wood at his side. He spread both hands wide and stepped forward until he was directly over the oar-ring separating them.
"Far from me the idea of denying a man the opportunity to prove himself. As you said, you are small and weak compared to most men, let alone a Norscan. This fair enough for you, or at least sufficiently unfair in your favor?"
Euron hesitated. It had to be a trap.
"Come on then, you short streak of fish-shit, I have no weapon, you're not going to get a better chance than this! No balls to back your boast, maybe?"
"Or are you just hiding your lack of skill behind your lack of courage? Do you prefer the shame of cowardice to the glory of a warrior's death?"
Euron's hands trembled as he hefted the axe, but a thought occurred to him. He swept the handle low, rewarded by the clink of metal, and lunged, swinging the axehead down, flinging a loop of chain over the Wolf's head and around his neck.
"What are-"
Dropping the axe, Euron dove between the Wolf's legs, turning around mid-landing to grab both lengths of chain. A wet coughing noise came from high above, and he pulled harder, his feet pushing against the Wolf's calves.
"What was that, slut-born? You'll have to speak up, I can't seem to hear you from down heeaaaaaaa-!"
The Wolf's knees bent, and he violently sat on Euron's midriff. Feeling the breath driven from his lungs as his stomach seemed to collapse under the weight of man and armor, Euron's hands pushed desperately against the crushing mass of steel.
As the choked gurgling reached a fever pitch, the Wolf tranquilly lifted himself off the Ironborn and went to pull his sword out of the planks, giving Euron time to roll into a crouch and retrieve his weapon, one knee still on the wood, axe held low, his breath ragged and his vision blurred from lack of air, yet clearing by the hatred he felt for the insolent barbarian.
"Tired already, rust-born? Must run in the family, I know your mother sweats like a pig when she sucks my-"
The Wolf's sword smashed down, just as Euron's axe swung upwards, pushing himself from the ground. There was a clink of metal from both blades as the sword cleaved through the chain and the axehead sliced into the Wolf's cheeks, then stopped in mid-swing as his jaws snapped shut.
Euron tugged, but the axe did not move. Instead, the Wolf inhaled deeply, and clamped down on the axe. A deep growl came from the back of his throat.
To Euron's horror, cracks appeared under the fangs, snaking their way outwards, and finally the blade shattered. Spitting shards of twisted metal mixed with blood, the Wolf spoke.
"Well, I'd say that answers the question. The Silence is mine."
Looking up, the Wolf's gaze swept the deck of his new ship.
"The Silence is mine! Any of you don't like it, jump overboard right now, you'll save us both a lot of time!"
There was no objection from the tongueless Ironborn. Plucking the circle of driftwood from Euron's head, the Wolf turned it over in his hand.
"Make this yourself, rust-born? I suppose your hands aren't completely useless. Maybe we'll put you to use in the pigpens, you might meet one of your half-siblings!"
At an order from their captain, two marauders grabbed Euron, wrapping the remains of the chain around his arms.
"Now, before I send you to meet your god, you're going to be useful to me in other ways. Fortunately for you, it only involves treachery, cowardice and, if I've been told truth, sleeping with a pox-flecked whore. Knowing your mother, that last part shouldn't be too hard."
The Wolf called out. Euron, and quite a few of the sailors from both crews, stared at the creature who emerged from the longship's hold.
The newcomer barely wore more clothes than a temple girl in the last stages of a veil dance, but that was not what caused their leering gazes.
The being's left side was that of a fair-haired youth, only a short time into manhood, a full blond beard covering a sharply-defined jaw and muscles rippling beneath the smooth skin with every movement, with a bare chest that looked strong enough to stop a bull mid-charge.
The right side was that of a stunningly beautiful woman, with a single breast barely covered by a band of cloth so tightly wound it might have been painted on. A face decorated with glittering cosmetics disappeared beneath a cascade of golden hair.
A silken loincloth hid the rest of its body from view, as all over its skin, glowing tattoos shaped vaguely like tilted arrows pulsed in time to the swinging of its hips.
The androgyne's gaze swept the decks, both halves of its face flushing as the crews stared, some gulping, others groping themselves.
"Akkarulf, stop staring, you'd think you never saw hir before."
The marauder started from his hypnotic fascination.
"Get this disgrace to sea-raiding down there. You know what you have to do."
As Akkarulf left to obey his captain's order, the Wolf stopped him.
"Wait."
He plucked the horned helmet from the marauder's head. There were shocked sounds from the Silence's crew at the sight, but Euron did not see them or their cause, still staring at the sinuous man-woman.
"Now you can go."
The outlanders picked up the Ironborn, followed by Akkarulf and the androgyne. The Wolf yelled out another order in his strange language. As he was frogmarched below, Euron caught a last glimpse of the sorcerer, who was making coiling motions with his hands and repeatedly pushing them downwards.
A short while later, the remains of the Iron Fleet raiders had pulled back from the harbor and whatever it was that had sunk half a dozen of their ships, leaving only a pitiful few of Danaerys' transports still at anchor.
From the Silence's cabin emerged Euron Greyjoy wearing his usual seaclothes, unchained and followed by the two marauders carrying his breastplate. A tiny pink symbol, the exact replica of those on the man-woman's body, still hovered over his forehead, then seemed to sink into his skin.
"Well?"
"Quite a change, but I could get used to this, Ser Wolf."
The Wolf's eyes narrowed.
"Er, yarrl."
"Hmph. Get this pile of flotsam to the rest of the fleet and pick up every survivor you can. Lock them up in the holds until I get back to you. Keep the fleet out to sea until Sven sends you a message."
"Yes, yarrl."
"And wear this."
Euron took Akkarulf's helmet, then gave the Wolf a questioning glance.
"Say it's a trophy."
"Ymar, hold that up..."
One of the marauders held the breastplate at arm's length as the Wolf hefted his sword in both hands.
"HrrrrAAAAAGGH!"
The Wolf dealt the armor a terrific blow that sent it smashing into Ymar's face. The marauder stumbled back two steps before collapsing on his back, his nose a broken ruin flooding his face with blood.
Paying no heed to the sailor's plight, the Wolf examined the fallen armor. There was still not even the slightest dent or scratch to be seen on it.
"Hmph. Good steel they make here. Greyjoy."
"Yes, yarrl."
"Keep it, in case the Dragonqueen's minions get overzealous."
As the marauders returned to their own ship and the Silence's crew looked to their captain in some confusion, Euron put a hand on the mast, looking out towards Dragonstone.
"Get the nets out, we're going fishing!"
The dragon prow released its hold on the Silence, then turned and surged forward as the Seafang's rowers moved it behind the rocks that had hidden the Iron Fleet from Danaerys' sight.
Euron took a last look at the Seafang, its crew reattaching the chains to the mast. With a bellowed order from his captain, the sorcerer at the prow continued chanting, but now repeatedly brought his hands back towards him. The Seafang disappeared behind the island, and Euron turned his thoughts to the Wolf's assignment.
Missandei gasped as she surfaced, struggling to grab onto a spar. Around her, other shipwrecked members of Danaerys' army held grimly onto whatever floating wreckage they could.
Rough hands grabbed at her hair and arms and hauled her aboard a rowboat, retching and coughing. When she had regained her composure and was sure her lungs held only air, she looked up.
"Thank you, I-"
She stopped immediately on recognizing the sailors who had rescued her, the one who'd pulled her out binding her legs to her arms.
The Ironborn said nothing as they continued dragging men and women from the water, returning them all to the Silence.