Chapter 6
The ruddy jaws of sunset were slavering over the horizon when the raven, flying northwestward, reached Seagard. Jason espied it from out of the window where he was dining with Marianne and the children. The sight pleased him little. It might be some ordinary proposal from his peers or vassals or instruction from his liegelord, but he suspected it would be more word of the war in the east, or of the war in the west. Robert Baratheon had long been enthroned, and yet war was still raging all about them.
Jason and his peers had hoped it might be different, when they rose in arms against Aerys Targaryen, years ago.
He was smiling as little Patrek eagerly recounted his training in arms. That tale was rudely interrupted when Maester Edmyn burst into the room. "Good heavens, man, have you no patience?" Jason exclaimed. "I did tell you that our family dinners are not to be disturbed. I will deal with whatever it is once we have supped."
The thin young man had the grace to look a little sheepish. "I beg your pardon, my lord," he said. "You'll want to see this."
Maester Edmyn thrust a letter at Jason, who plucked it and moved it further from his eyes. Lately he had found it hard to see things that were so close. Holding it there, he saw the seal.
Gods.
"Alyn, see the children to their beds, if you please," Jason said. "Marianne, I'd have you remain. We must speak."
His children protested. "I'm not a baby! I can hear, I'll be good!" cried Bellena, the oldest, but Alyn was an old hand with children and ushered all three of them out.
Perhaps he would tell them a story. This was the second generation of Mallisters the old manservant had helped to raise. Jason hoped he would. It would distract them from the worries of their lady mother and lord father.
"How ill are the tidings?" Marianne asked him. "Another reverse in the wars, I take it, requiring more of our aid. As if the occupation of the Arbour weren't humiliation enough… Go on, open it. Let us see what more Riverrun would have of us."
"Not Riverrun," Jason said. "King's Landing."
Marianne blinked. "Mother be merciful."
No good news had come thence for a long time now.
Jason broke the crowned stag seal and held the paper to the candlelight. He read it, then read it again, incredulous. His blue-grey eyes went wide.
"The attack on Dragonstone," Marianne guessed. "Has it failed?"
"I cannot say," said Jason. "I do not jape, I… I am invited to ride to court, whereupon I am to lead a fleet against the ironmen and serve His Grace as master of ships."
"The ironmen? The ironmen? Surely there is some mistake. Doesn't he mean the boy Targaryen?"
"I would have thought so. It seems not. The king's letter says Ser Eldon Estermont failed in his duty at Dragonstone—I'd believe that, that prickly proud old fool—yet there's no mention of attacking the place. And moving the royal fleet away from King's Landing, now that it's been so painstakingly rebuilt… Madness," Jason fumed. "Robert should not rest easy till every single one of the Mad King's brood is freezing in the seventh hell where they belong."
"Mayhaps King Robert merely wants the taste of victory."
"Mayhaps so, but it is folly nonetheless. He means to fight the weaker of his foes, ignoring the threat of the stronger. At this rate, there will be another uprising in the crownlands by the moon's turn."
"And Rivermen's blood will be spent to crush it," said Lady Marianne.
Her lord husband nodded grimly.
"What I do not understand is why me," he said. "There are other men well-placed for that duty. If Eldon Estermont has lost royal favour, why not Lord Grafton, the natural successor? His late cousin's allegiance in the war, I suppose, though he himself fought valiantly for us… but if that, why not Wyman Manderly, who served under Ser Eldon when I didn't?"
"Jason my sweet," Marianne said, "I fear you are blind to truths you don't want to see. You are Lord Hoster's bannerman, and Mallister held true to Tully when the Mad King was overthrown. And Lord Hoster is the lord Hand's goodfather. Consider the master of coin, the master of laws, and the men they have appointed. Each and every one owes fealty to Lord Jon or his goodfather. With your calling, Lord Jon need only make a new master of whisperers and then nigh all of Robert's court will be his."
"But why? Lord Jon is playing with fire. I doubt the Stormlords will be pleased. They are already deprived of a lord in their ancestral seat and ruled from King's Landing, since the king had a quarrel with his brother who ruled them for years. Ser Eldon was one of theirs too. This cannot go on; the king needs to intervene."
"Why else? Power. The lord Hand may tell himself that everything he does he does for the good of king and realm, but I daresay he likes the taste of it."
"Mayhaps he does, but he makes that too plain to other men's eyes. This dismissal will sow bitterness, I'm sure; and if I'm Ser Eldon's successor I'll be in the midst of it all."
"So do not go," she urged him. "Plead inexperience. Seagard is vulnerable, and the whole of the lands of the Trident are guarded from the ironmen here. If it should be taken, the Trident will be open to the same reaving that has befallen the Reach since the Arbour fleet sank and the Shield Islands fell. Lord Hoster might well support you for the safety of his dominion."
"All of that is true. I'll have to make Ser Harrold my castellan."
"Harrold Shellfoot is a good man, but he is not a Mallister and he is not a lord, nor does he know how to be. I'd let him lead a battle, certainly, but not a campaign. It is not the same."
"It isn't," Jason agreed. "Yet I must do my duty."
Marianne awaited him at the portcullis at morn on the next day. They had argued fiercely, and she was not reconciled; yet when she bade him farewell in her long white dress, pale and lovely, she was dry-eyed.
"Gods speed, my lord," she said to him. "I will pray for your swift and safe return."
"If the Warrior should grant," Jason said. He could not help but add to her, "Take care," before he rode away.
The royal fleet set sail a few weeks after his arrival at King's Landing. It was bound for the Arbour, to liberate the island from the ironmen. That was a fair day; the breeze was gentle and the sun was shining. A cheering crowd of cityfolk awaited Jason and his men as they put out to sea. Nobody was fond of ironmen. They had been stealing ships, raiding the coast and harassing King Robert's realm since almost the moment his reign began, when Balon Greyjoy had crowned himself and set the docks of Lannisport aflame.
Lord Balon had won himself no friends with his excess of indiscriminate cruelty, attacking Reachmen and Westermen alike. At this very moment, a great host, led by Lords Hightower and Tyrell, was encamped in Oldtown, ready to retake the Arbour as soon as the Iron Fleet was no longer in the way. Those Houses were hardly the greatest allies of the new dynasty; against the Mad King's dogs, Jason would trust them no farther than the distance of a boot to a face; but that would not stop them from lifting their swords against the ironmen when the ironmen had seen fit to attack them. If they were victorious, Fair Isle would be the next target, linking up with the fleet of House Lannister, and then they would go to Pyke and teach the ironmen a lesson they would not soon forget.
House Targaryen in the Battle of Dragonstone had possessed more ships of war than House Greyjoy did right now, if Lord Varys told it true, and House Targaryen had been defeated. On land and sea alike, King Robert's men had the numbers. Nonetheless, Jason was uneasy about this campaign, not for fear of Lord Balon but for the circumstances in which he had acquired it.
Jason had never liked Ser Eldon Estermont, but he had been astonished to learn that Ser Eldon had actually won the battle. Going by that, the king's dismissal did not seem fair, it seemed like petty spite. That was more than a little concerning. If one master of ships could fall to a capricious royal whim, why not another?
If his fate was to be like Ser Eldon's, he would simply go home, and he would see Marianne and Bellena and Patrek and tiny Lysa again. He would be glad of the respite. But if that was how the king rewarded men who won battles for him, Jason shuddered to think what it would be like if he lost.
His heart was lighter when they were further from King's Landing and nearer to their goal. The ironmen were a worry, but a worry of a different sort. All folk of Seagard knew exactly what to do about ironmen, as Jason's lord father had taught him and his father had taught him and his father had taught him back to nigh the dawn of days. 'A good ironman,' the old saying went, 'is an ironman with iron in his throat.'
Jason was no fool new to the sea, blundering about blindly with the fullness of his strength. Before he came to the Arbour, he stopped off the coast near Starfall—taking care to remain alert, in case the Dornish should prove even more treacherous than they were reputed, such as to help ironmen against honest folk—and he sent forth some of his smallest, swiftest ships. They were to scour the sea around the Redwyne Straits and the Whispering Sound, from the shoreline to as far from it as any man dared sail, looking for ironmen. It would not do to be surprised by an unexpected enemy. Ironmen were never clever, men said, nor were they ever wise, but the more dangerous of them could sometimes possess a certain low cunning.
Eight out of nine of his scouts returned, and when they informed him of what they had seen, Jason's lips stretched into a smile. He summoned his captains to his flagship, the Lady Lyanna. "In their greed the ironmen have blundered," he said, and told them the word he had received. "They have no more than a hundred-and-fifty longships. They've put their strength to menace the Westerlands and the Reach at the same time, too far from one another. If they were less ambitious, more sensible about the limits of their strength… but no. If so, they would not be ironmen."
"We should attack at once," urged one of his captains, Lord Branston Cuy. Jason had attempted to raise men of several of the Seven Kingdoms, not just the Trident and Vale; the king's councillors could be fair and respectable even when the king and his Hand were not. "Strike hard and early while they have not yet noticed we are here."
"No," said Jason. "They know we're here. One of our ships did not return. It could be bad weather, of course, or Dornish perfidy, but it would be unwise to count on that; if we were wrong, we'd face catastrophe. We must assume we have been seen, and act accordingly."
The royal fleet of House Baratheon put out to sea and headed for Oldtown, staying far enough from shore to avoid the rocks but close enough that their galleys were not at too terrible risk from the tempests that ruled the far open sea. As they drew near, Jason stood on the deck of Lady Lyanna, speaking orders for strong-voiced men, acting in turns, to relay to the fleet. The waters of the Whispering Sound were as foggy as they ever were. The Smith had blown his breath kindly; the winds were favourable today, taking them north as they wished.
Before aught else, the shining spires of Oldtown came into view. There were audible gasps across the ship. It was the most beautiful work of mankind that Jason had ever seen, wrought all in stone, not timber, and much of it of fine white marble. Towers and septs soared into the sky. Above them all the mighty Hightower rose like a white leviathan a thousand feet tall, dwarfing the lesser towers like a knight to a babe. From its peak issued a dazzling orange light that defied the fog and set the whole city aglow.
Jason and his fleet sailed on. As they came close, they espied the narrow forms of ironmen's longships, gliding in front of the port like a swarm of locusts. So they came, Jason thought. He had feared that they might not. The ironmen were outnumbered. If they had allowed the royal fleet to take Lord Tyrell's army to the Arbour, the army's task would be much easier but finding and destroying them would be more difficult.
Some of the sailors punched the air and cheered at the sight. The enemy was caught and trapped. Lord Jason remained impassive.
"Send word to the Whitewing, the Smith's Servant, the Arrowswift and their squadrons. Have them count the enemy's numbers and retreat if they come near. I will not venture forth blindly. I must know whether they have the same number of longships as the scouts thought—truly their longships, not other ships painted in Greyjoy colours while the real ironmen lay in wait for an ambush."
That sober warning drew the excessive exuberance from his men. Let us not count our chickens before they hatch. They waited.
When his small swift ships reported back, Jason could hardly believe them. He had not imagined that the fearsome Greyjoys who had been menacing the realm for so long could truly be stupid enough to do something like this. The ironmen lived their whole lives at sea. Surely they ought to know that for a smaller fleet to get stuck in a narrow inlet that left it unable to flee from a larger fleet, yet not narrow enough to prevent the larger fleet from deploying its full numbers, was the worst tactic they could use.
Yet it appeared they did not.
"Approach carefully and retain formation," Jason ordered. "Keep them penned between us and the city. If we give them space to escape they might still be bothering us for years." He thought of the two failed assaults on Seagard, of the men that he had slain there and the men that he had lost. None of his own kin, few as they were, but good and honest men sworn to his service. Today you'll be avenged. "This ends. Here. Now."
The Lady Lyanna swayed beneath his feet as the royal fleet sailed down the Whispering Sound.
In the distance the longships grew. They were lesser in numbers than the royal fleet, and small, too, compared to King Robert's warships. They tried to sail to the edges of the sound, perilously near the shore, but Jason's captains barked commands all across the line and the royal fleet fanned out, blocking the ironmen's escape. Every royal ship faced forward, intent to kill ironmen.
Nearer. The longships grew so large in Jason's sight that he could make out the shapes of their sea-monster-sculpted prows.
Nearer. He began to hear the ironmen's shouts to one another in their desperation, a babble drowned out by the noises of the sea.
Nearer…
A lookout's voice rang out from the mizzen-mast of another ship, clear as a whistle. "IRONMEN FROM THE AFT!"
Jason whirled around. "Aft ships turn!" he roared. "Aft ships turn! BRACE! Brace for impact—!"
Within minutes, thin daggerlike shapes slid out of the fog. As they came nearer the light of the Hightower pierced their disguise, revealing hundreds more longships arrayed across the horizon, banners of many colours whipping back and forth in the wind above.
Jason's heart leapt into his mouth.
No, he thought, no, no, no, it can't be…
The royal ships were still turning. The two enemy fleets—and this must be the whole strength of the Iron Islands, not just the Iron Fleet of House Greyjoy—crashed into the royal fleet like a hammer and an anvil. Facing away from the main strength of the ironmen, too spread out to confront an enemy of strength so close to their own, well-prepared to fight a completely different sort of battle, the ships of King Robert were caught awry.
"No," Jason said aloud, unable to surmount his shock. I was so careful, I took every precaution, I checked all but the far deep, there were no reinforcements within the distance any ship made by man can sail from shore…
They closed the gap. The ironmen's ships struck his own and ironmen poured off them. Big bearded brutes they were, with maces and axes and, for some of them, plate armour.
Plate armour. Who in the gods' names wears full plate on a ship? Who does not fear drowning?
An infestation of ironmen boarded the Lady Lyanna. With a cry of defiance, Jason drew his sword and rushed to them. He came against a burly ironman, huge even for that race, with a vicious axe and expensive plate painted with a kraken.
Their leader, Jason thought with desperate hope, a Greyjoy, I must slay him, this day must be turned around…
Jason was a skilled swordsman. The young Greyjoy was strong as an ox but he was nowhere near as practised and nowhere near as fast. Jason danced about the man's skull-crushing blows, darting in with cuts to the elbows and knees where one part of the plate armour joined another.
A sharp pain erupted in his back.
Jason fell to his knees. The agony was unbearable. He wished to be anywhere but here, and thought of home, of Seagard, of the family waiting for him. Marianne, I'm sorry.
The great Greyjoy brute grunted like an animal, eyeing him with some surprise. For all of Jason's best efforts, he seemed little-hurt. "You should not have done that," he rumbled. His voice was deep as an ocean chasm.
"Victarion, since when have I paid any heed to what you think I should not do?"
Dainty footsteps tapped around Jason's fallen body and a wet red right hand lifted his face. Jason caught a glimpse of his killer. For a moment he hardly believed it. It was a pale, slender, handsome man with a wide smile that he almost would have thought kind, until he looked into the eyes: one blue, the other black and glittering.
"You tried to be careful. You were afraid," said Euron Crow's Eye. "But not nearly afraid enough."