Chapter 52: Victarion IV
Victarion felt his blood sing.
This was right. To his port and starboard were ships of the Iron Fleet as far as the eye could see. Atop the prow of the Iron Victory he stood, axe in one hand, half-empty wineskin in the other. The drums beat a steady rhythm for the oarsmen. Ahead, Starfish Harbour awaited, a token force of Manderly ships sat floating in the way - no more than two-dozen - to deter an approaching fleet more than a hundred strong.
Several had warned him to stay back, that a king's place was not at the very front. And thus far he had heeded them. Yet the Crow's Eye had not fallen in battle, had he? And the gods had not fashioned Victarion for words, after all. It was enough that Harlaw was his hand, to mind the little matters back in the Shields. No, his place was here. To sweep aside whatever token resistance the greenlanders could muster, to drape himself in enough glories to make all envious.
Besides, there had been scant danger when they last probed the Arbor's defences. His legitimacy was built, at least in part, upon his strength at arms. If he sat behind his men now, like a woman, it would not bode well for the strength of his claim to the Seastone Chair.
Yet not all was well. The sea breeze was flighty behind them, with none of Euron's sorcery to bring the winds to heel. One moment they would billow the Iron Victory's sails, granting them a fresh surge of speed, and the next it was absent, and the next it was pushing back, as though urging the Iron Fleet away. Above, dark clouds were gathering. With the salt spray from below, Victarion could not tell if it had yet started raining, but either way it would not be long now.
As ever, the Storm God tried to frustrate the servants of the Drowned God.
Victarion paid it no mind save a quick prayer. Even if Euron's mongrels had offered him their services to bring the sky to heel, he would have refused. Such heresies were beneath his regard. He had more pressing matters to contend with; the ships before him began to approach, twelve forming a line in front of the mouth of the harbour, masking a dozen behind and what looked like several smaller vessels - fishing boats and barges and trade vessels - scattered between them.
Is this all? Victarion wondered. Even in his wildest hopes he had not imagined such a meagre defence. The Reader had said the Redwyne fleet was off in the Narrow Sea, but had no other Reachlords the wherewithal to defend their fellow greenlanders? Or were the Redwynes the victims of some plot? It seemed likely, given the vessels clogging the Honeywine and Mander.
Yet just as Victarion readied himself for a ramming, the line of ships turned and scattered, half left and half right. A smattering of fire arrows set the small ships alight, bobbing in the waves as they were carried by the current to his starboard. Victarion cursed as he watched near one-third of his fleet tack away to avoid the flames. Yet still some damage was inevitable, and a small handful of carracks caught aflame.
Still, even now, chaos would not persist. Victarion gave his consent for the ships to give chase, and watched as sixty-odd ships peeled away from his fleet to hunt those Redwyne ships fleeing battle. If this was the extent of the Arbor's present naval might, crushing it now was a task worth completing.
Still, even with a shrunken force, Victarion felt confident. The path to Arbor lay undefended, and once their foothold had become entrenched, taking the rest of the Redwyne land would become trivial. The Isle of Pigs and Stonecrab Cay had already fallen to their hands without much blood spilt. Starfish Harbour would doubtlessly be a more difficult prospect, but Victarion had come prepared.
He left his place at the prow, barking orders at his crewmates. The Iron Victory sailed too deep to approach the coast, but his men had rowing boats aplenty to make their way to the beach before the town, bristling with quays and outstretched docks, stripped bare of all ships save a few barges. Aboard they clambered, oars heaving, disturbing water till now almost perfectly still save the occasional pockmark of rain. The land grew nearer and nearer with every passing second, a swarm of rowboats descending on the beach like a silver tide of herring. Eventually they gained ground, leaving their rowboats ready in the sand like lampreys hooked onto flesh, in spite the insistence of the lapping waves.
With an almighty cry, and Nute now by his side, Victarion led the charge, a shower of arrows prickling the sands below their feet as they scrambled for solid ground. Makeshift defences had been erected to fend them away, seemingly half-heartedly. The troops behind the barricades turned and fled the moment Victarion's axe splintered their shields. Fellow reavers at his side, he leapt over sandbags and hacked away. Two fell in panicked flight to the blade of his axe, seven or eight more to his guards.
All across the shoreline, he could see through the rain similar scenes. Some had opted for the beach directly, as he had, whilst others had pulled their boats into the quays and were fighting their way across the docks. His fellow captains struck the defensive lines hard, like the Drowned God's fury made manifest, sending the greenlanders fleeing into the thicket of the town ahead, into narrow streets and alleys and around corners and out of sight. Victarion commanded his men forwards, kicking down the door to the nearest house, intent on slaughtering all its occupants. Yet beside some coins there was little of note to be found. The next house was much the same. All around, he could see discipline wavering.
The taste of victory was already in the air, thick and intoxicating. Men hesitated at doorways, split off into alleys, some already with fistfuls of loot and bags ready to be stuffed with far more. Those defenders who had fled into the town were likely heading for the roads into the forests on the hills above, away from them. Going by the precedent of all the battles they had fought so far, few would remain to oppose them.
Yet even the most craven greenlanders would fight fiercely for their homes. So why were these men so ready to turn their tails? I must tell the Reader when I return, Victarion thought. If there is some rupture in the Reach it could change our prospects again for the better.
Still, rupture or no, now was not the time to begin looting. He rallied those men he could and plunged into the alleys, cutting down all they stumbled across. A few penniless vagrants, the stray town guard. Through deserted streets they charged, a fresh sense of unease growing in the back of Victarion's mind with every step. The sea went in and out of sight as they climbed the gradient, thousands of ironborn flooding the rain-sodden streets like water through a ruptured hull. Yet there was little to find. No women for saltwives, no men for thralls, no children. Starfish Harbour seemed to have been stripped bare of most everyone.
The greenlanders have learned they cannot fight, so instead they flee, Victarion wanted to believe. But he had fought at Pyke. At Lannisport. He had seen how brave a greenlander knight could be. So where are they now?
Starfish Harbour was no trifling settlement to surrender. It hosted many of the shipyards of the Arbor, and was perhaps the third- or fourth-largest settlement on the island behind Ryamsport and Vinetown. If the lords of the Arbor intended to fend off the ironborn, then this town would be central to their efforts. He had presumed till now that there was some grander strategy at play - that the greenlanders were surrendering their peripheries to marshal an insurmountable defence at their core.
Yet perhaps the greenlanders had not been so soft, so craven, as he had believed. Perhaps they had simply been watching, waiting, learning.
Victarion didn't even notice when it first happened. Just a thud. A gurgle. The clatter of armour on stone. He whirled around, and was greeted by the sight of Nute thrashing on the ground, a bolt through his throat, panic exploding out as the ironmen rushed to scatter. Troops seemed to emerge from every crevice and crack. Knights surrounded them, bereft of heraldry, murder evident in the bold anonymity of their approach.
A trap, Victarion thought bitterly, even as he swept his axe in a wide arc before himself, cutting the air in a warning to all around him. What once was a company of more than four-score ironmen dwindled in a matter of moments to half that size, the stench of blood overpowering. From terraces and windows came the crossbow bolts, punching clean through plate and mail. For once the element of surprise seemed to oppose Victarion, and he hated it.
Before long, the clean sweeps of his axe were gone; frenzied slashing and hacking took its place. Air became blood and steel and bone. His shoulder ached as he worked, wrenching free the blade of his axe from a man's ribcage before bringing it immediately back down on another's shoulder. But it was all in vain. Men died with weapons still sheathed, pierced by blades from unseen hands. A spear jabbed at Victarion's side and scraped off his gorget, but the follow-through was too slow. He caught the haft, tore it free, and shattered the shaft across his knee. His axe sang again, biting into flesh, felling another - but for every one he struck down, two more seemed to take their place.
A horn sounded from the rooftops.
Not ironborn, Victarion knew instantly. A signal.
Another volley of bolts screamed down from above. One punched through the throat of a boy from Harlaw, who fell without a sound. His blood joined the puddle growing on the stones, mixing with the rainwater and turning the gutters red.
"Fall back!" someone shouted - he didn't know who. Another man took up the cry, then another. The ironmen were scattering, fear and confusion spreading out like a prairie fire. Not a retreat, not yet - but the chaos frayed their unity like sails in a squall. Victarion roared, cleaving through a knight in a patched cloak, but even he could see it: they were being herded.
Driven into tighter, narrower streets.
A dozen of his men tried to push back toward the coastline, only to be cut down by fresh troops spilling from a concealed alley - silent and grim, armed with axes, swords, spears, maces, cudgels, whatever could punch through mail. There was a trained ease to their movements that betrayed the truth.
Victarion fought his way to a doorway and slammed his shoulder into it. It splintered. He hauled three of his remaining men inside and slammed it shut behind them. They were breathing hard, dripping seawater and blood, faces pale.
A moment's peace.
Then the flames came.
He saw the glow before he smelled the smoke. A street over, the thatch was burning. Another horn, higher this time. Signal fires? Smoke drifted down the alleys and windows, obscuring his vision of battle. They're going to burn us out, he thought. Or blind us. Even if it means burning their own town. Drive us into the open and kill us where we stand. Yet the growing blaze seemed to distract the onslaught as much as it did the ironmen enduring it. Perhaps it is our fire more than it is theirs.
He felt the old rage building in his chest.
"Ironborn don't die like rats lured by cheese," he growled.
One of the men - a squat fellow from Orkmont - nodded. "We still have the boats, if we can get back to the shore. But we're surrounded."
"Then we carve a way," Victarion said.
He clambered up the steps to the highest floor, breaking open a window with his axe. Thunder rumbled far off. Rain conspired with smoke and haze to obscure his vision. But when the wind blew hither and thither, the smoke parted to chart a course. He stumbled back down the steps just in time to see the door be reduced to shreds by a storm of blades and boots, and rushed out the back entrance into an alley, his remaining men at his back.
Columns of smoke curled like eels through the alleys as Victarion pressed forward, axe in hand, boots splashing against the sodden stones of Starfish Harbour's backstreets. His men trailed close behind, gathering stragglers as they went, a grim clutch of ironborn hardened by salt and slaughter. The storm had turned to a steady downpour now, soaking through cloaks and padding, but the fire still burned - choking, oily, clinging to everything it touched.
They fought through intermittent bands of greenlanders and ironborn, emboldened by the chaos, cutting across streets and through alleys and houses. Victarion led from the front, carving a path with steel and fury. A knight in half-plate barred the way in a fishmonger's alley, sword raised in challenge. Victarion did not slow, exhaustion and injury banished by rage. His axe caught the man's blade mid-swing, forced it wide, then crushed his helm like a crab shell. The body fell twitching into the mud.
The alley opened, and suddenly the sea was before them.
And everything was wrong.
The mouth of the harbour - through which he had sailed in triumph mere hours ago - was now blocked, a far larger force than the one that had initially stood against him gutting his hopes of escape. Fire had caught some masts, ironborn sails disappearing in smoke. His ships, a hundred strong, meant for the vast reaches of the sea, were caught in a pond, swarmed by boats both big and small. The Iron Victory stood at the heart of the maelstrom, its sails still proud, its decks crawling with ironmen and reachmen locked in mortal struggle. What ships of his remained free, hunting the meagre fleet he had let slip in his rush to plunder and glory, would not return in time to provide relief - that was if they returned at all.
Victarion staggered forward in disbelief.
A line of soldiers - a dozen at least, shields locked - were advancing across the dock down which he had hoped to escape. From the water's edge, black silhouettes fought back: his men, few now, hard-pressed. He could make out one of his reavers, axe in each hand, bellowing curses as he threw a greenlander into the water. But the rest were falling, and the greenlanders were beginning to sweep the beach.
"No," Victarion said aloud. "No."
One of his men dropped to a knee beside him, blood running from a cut across his face, panting, exhausted. "We're too late."
Victarion clenched his jaw. He was conscious of a throbbing in his shoulder where a stray crossbow bolt had slipped past his notice and through his mail and embedded itself in his flesh. As the rage faded the pain came. The Victory - his flagship, his glory, his home - was floundering in an orgy of steel. And still the greenlanders came, knights and men-at-arms flooding in as if from their seven hells, crossbowmen littering the windows and terraces above.
He was caught between the beach and the blaze. There would be no retreat.
Not by sea. Not by this sea.
The only way out now was back through the streets and up into the hills. Through a wall of greenlanders armed with steel and hate. Then through the forests. Through the inland roads his men didn't know. Through the one place his prayers could not be heard.
Victarion turned to his few remaining reavers, numbers down to scant more than a score. "The Victory is lost," he said, the words tasting like bile on his tongue, dread twisting his stomach. Surrender could still save them, but Victarion knew he could not bear that shame. "Yet we are not. We go back. To the woods. We fight for our freedom, for our way, for our lives, or we die with our axes red."
Someone gave a ragged cry of defiance. Another just nodded. The weight of their situation was settling in now.
Victarion took one last look at the Iron Victory, readied his axe, recited his last rites, and then turned his back to the sea.
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P.S. May be subject to a rewrite or edits in the future