Chapter 26: Alton Greyjoy I New View contentPersianPrince696916/11/2025NewAdd bookmark#62122 AC
Volantis was an interesting city – one their kind had never raided before. In the old days, dragons and mighty fleets had guarded it; after the Doom, it was too far, and the Ironborn too weak to reach it.
The sea was too calm. That was the first offense. It didn't fight the ship; it just lay there, flat and lazy like a fat man sleeping off a feast, carrying them straight into the humid stink of the Rhoyne. Volantis – the oldest, the grandest, they said. To Alton's eyes, it was just too much, too soft, and far too hot. Give him the biting spray of the Sunset Sea any day over this heavy, stagnant air.
The harbor was a stew of masts – Dornish dromonds, Tyroshi galleys, Qartheen pleasure barges dripping with silk and gilt. You could smell the gold and sweat from a league away. And above it all loomed the Black Walls. They didn't look like stone to him, not like the gray rock of Pyke, but like congealed blood hardened by age and arrogance. They towered higher than anything in Westeros, and Alton knew every man inside them thought himself a king.
Below those walls sprawled chaos – not the honest roar of battle, but the endless bleating of commerce and chains. Slaves everywhere, more than all the thralls of the Iron Islands together, faces branded and painted, dragging silk and spice, jewels and wine. Not men who fought for worth, but cattle bred for obedience. Volantis had no grit, no iron, only wealth gone rotten. The Drowned God would spit on it.
But not all hands aboard Seawraith saw it that way.
Old Torvin, who'd never sailed past the Westerlands, stood gawking at the Great Temple domes, whispering that this must be where the gods themselves resided. A few green boys – fresh from burning fishing villages – were worse. They saw the harbor's golden light and swore it was the Watery Halls.
"Captain, look at the size of it!" one of them gasped. "This is how the Drowned God feasts – surrounded by all the riches of the world!"
Alton knocked the awe out of him fast enough. "That's no god's feast," he growled. "It's a cage built by men too fat to row and reave. The Drowned God's Halls are made of coral and drowned ships, not stolen gold and sweat."
He turned and looked to his nephew – Dalton, son of his elder brother Alron. Sharp lad, barely ten, already hungry for blood and glory. But the boy's eyes weren't wide with wonder; they were narrow with calculation, fixed on the Black Walls. He was measuring their height, judging the garrison, counting the ships at berth. That was the difference. The others saw splendor; Dalton saw opportunity.
Alton felt a grim pride and rested a hand on his shoulder. "See it well, boy," he murmured. "See how much they have, and how little fight they've left to keep it. This is the Iron Price."
Then his gaze fell on his other nephew – Imlerith, a strange name for a stranger child. Son of his late brother Auron – at least the only one he knew of. An Ironborn with dragon's blood. Four years old, and already near Dalton's height.
He had a dragon, too – Fetanahuir. The black beast perched at the stern, wings folded like great sails. Alton had seen Targaryen dragons before, but this one was wrong. Its wings were too large, rear limbs too long, talons like knives, eyes red as fresh blood. Four years old and already strong enough to carry its rider into the air.
Together, the pair were a menace. Most days, they hunted fish, seals, and dolphins – but sometimes they took thralls. Alton found it amusing, and so did his brother, Lord Greyjoy. The boy might look Valyrian, but inside, he was salt and iron through and through. He'd begged to come on this voyage – not to see his mother, but to see blood and fire.
He wanted to learn how the Ironborn raid and kill. And, most of all, he wanted to see how the Dothraki fight and die.
After the landing, everything moved faster than any of the Ironborn expected. They had sailed half the world only to nearly miss the war entirely. The Volantenes had been preparing to march upriver; Alton's fleet arrived just as the last of the city's soldiers were mustering beneath the Black Walls. One more day of delay and the Greyjoys would've been forced to chase the army up the Rhoyne like beggars behind a caravan.
Instead, they were welcomed – not warmly, but with the cold respect reserved for dangerous allies.
For a week, the Ironborn remained in Volantis as guests of the Triarchs. "Guests," meaning slaves served them wine, food, music, and flesh in endless waves. Volantis knew decadence like the Iron Islands knew storms. Alton had expected softness, but the sheer excess was its own kind of violence.
The city itself was monstrous. It stretched wider than anything he had ever seen – as if someone had taken eight King's Landings, stitched them side by side, then left them to bake under a killing sun. It was a maze of colonnades, bridges, screaming markets, bathhouses, temples carved from stone the color of dried blood, and alleys filled with the clatter of chains.
Dalton nearly got lost twice; Imlerith disappeared daily, returning with some new trophy the slaves swore he claimed himself. Fish bones, broken spears, a severed monkey's tail – harmless enough, until he brought home a flayed boar hide and the dragonling proudly roasted it in the courtyard. Volantis learned quickly not to interfere.
By the time the week ended, the war plan had been hammered into final shape. Heralds rode out. Scribes filled scrolls. Gold changed hands. The Tigers preened, the Elephants sulked, and the Ironborn grew restless.
When the time came to sail, Alton understood the problem before anyone spoke it aloud: the Volantenes had no room on their own ships.
Their war galleys were already packed to the rails with engines Alton had never seen – towering contraptions of bronze, iron, and rope. Some looked like siege towers laid on their sides; others had great curved arms like scorpions, or drums wound with chains thicker than a man's wrist. One ship carried a device as wide as a hall, covered with tarps, and guarded day and night.
Alton didn't bother asking what they did. The Volantenes loved their secrets as much as they loved their slaves.
Because of that, nearly two thousand of their footmen were forced to board Ironborn ships. The Greyjoys grumbled at the weight – not out of fear, but because the holds that carried proper reavers now carried barefoot Essosi with sunburnt shoulders and too much perfume. Still, promise was promise, and the alliance stood.
At dawn, the fleet finally moved. Volantene galleys glided ahead like dark, predatory fish; the Ironborn longships followed, swift and hungry, cutting into the Rhoyne's broad waters. Behind them, the Black Walls shrank until they were nothing but a bruise on the horizon.
They finally reached the city.
The Volantenes they had spoken with along the Rhoyne had dismissed Selhorys as a "mere town," a tributary hardly worth defending. Yet when its walls rose into view, even Alton felt his disdain falter. The place was larger than any Westerosi city he had ever seen and stretched along the riverbank like a coiled serpent. Only now did he truly grasp the scale of what the Old Freehold must once have been.
They disembarked.
And then Alton noticed the work.
From the barges poured thousands of slaves in chains. Within moments they started digging – long, deep trenches cut into the soft earth, pits wide enough to swallow a horse whole. Others followed, lowering sharpened stakes into the bottoms before covering the traps with woven branches and fresh turf. When they finished, the ground looked untouched. A rider at full gallop would only see grass.
Hundreds of pits became thousands.
Next came the siege engines.
Alton had never seen anything like them. Vast wooden shapes rose from the bare earth. The Wandering Bastion, the Volantenes called it: a massive, two-story mobile defensive wall designed to neutralize the Dothraki's speed and missile advantage by establishing an immovable, elongated barrier on the open plains. It is essentially a fortified, wheeled palisade meant to form a section of the main Volantene battle line.
The Bastion stands approximately twenty-five feet tall. Its body is a continuous, heavily reinforced wooden wall, built from thick oak and elm timbers. The structure is mounted on numerous heavy log rollers and large wheels, designed for continuous, slow movement rather than rapid maneuvering.
The walls are constructed with a deep profile – an inner core of thick timber faced with overlapping, hardened leather, and reinforced with copper or iron bands to prevent piercing.
The entire structure is coated in the specified mixture of tallow, alum, and sand to repel the Dothraki's fire arrows, ensuring the wall remains a functional barrier.
The Bastion is propelled by slaves turning massive capstans and levers housed within the lower deck. Its propulsion is slow and steady, allowing the entire defensive line to adjust position or inch forward against the enemy's formation.
The lower deck is a fully enclosed first story that forms the impenetrable base of the defensive line, but with a critical tactical modification.
The continuous wall is deliberately segmented by narrow, heavily armored openings spaced every thirty feet or so. These visible chokepoints are not for friendly troop movement but are tactical flaws designed to exploit Dothraki aggression. A Dothraki rider will instinctually charge the visible weakness rather than attacking the solid wall.
The ground immediately leading to and beyond these openings is where the deepest wolf-holes and densest concentrations of caltrops are placed. Any rider attempting to charge through the gap is funneled into a pre-made killing zone, met by concentrated spear and arrow fire from the Unsullied and troops stationed behind the openings.
Aside from the gaps, the walls are designed to absorb cavalry impacts and protect the valuable Unsullied or primary foot soldiers staged directly behind it.
The second story functions as an elevated fighting parapet that provides a clear vantage point over the battlefield.
The top of the wall features thick battlements with firing slots, offering excellent protection for the operators.
This deck is the primary weapons platform, featuring multiple Polybolos. The height advantage allows these engines to accurately target mounted riders and horses at long range, disrupting the cohesion of the Dothraki charge before it can even reach the palisade and fire at rapid rates.
It is a deadly, deceptive shield. It forces the Dothraki to break their skirmish patterns and commit to a costly, frontal assault against an elevated, heavily armed fortification, specifically funneling the most aggressive riders into its designed traps.
Alton listened to the merchant-general drone about the logistics, feeling the familiar, heavy disgust settle in his gut. The main Rhoyne, six miles wide, was too much even for their gold. So they turned to the Selhoru tributary – a "mere" mile and a half of water. To Alton, a mile and a half was still a vast expanse.
The plan was not based on courage, but on deceit. It was a massive, soft-wooded trap. Hundreds of flat-bottomed barges – the fat, useless vessels that hauled spices and silk – were already sitting across the tributary. They bobbed innocently, but Alton understood their purpose instantly: ships made into a road. A terrible, unforgivable waste of seaworthy wood.
The true rot, the sickness of the Volantene strategy, lay beneath the water. Heavy chains, oiled and sunk low to evade the eye of any scout, linked the vessels. These chains were the key, a bridle on the river itself, waiting for the slave crews in the hidden shore camps to winch them taut. The barges would not sail; they would be violently rotated into line, transforming the fluid water into a rigid, temporary path over a mile long.
The pre-fabricated timber road – the geralbar qelbar azantyr – was ready to be slapped across the decks, built wide and strong to bear the weight of their cataphracts.
Alton felt a cold, grudging respect for the sheer scale of the lie, but no admiration. It took a mountain of gold and the bending of hundreds of good ships to pull off a flanking maneuver. It would be deadly, yes. It would allow the gilded cowards to stab the horse lords in the back. But they use ships to do it, he thought, his knuckles white.
The final preparations for the battle were underway. They had 15,000 slave-meat to absorb the initial charges and haul the siege engines. Not warriors in any sense – just bodies meant to die. Old and sickly, crippled and broken, all shoved into the front ranks. Behind them stood 30,000 footmen, 4,000 cavalrymen, and a few hundred war elephants. Another key for the fight were hundreds of large onagers with rounds of what locals called "Valyrian Fire".
Among the footmen, the Volantenes had brought 7,000 of their own soldiers, supported by 5,000 mercenaries of every imaginable kind, grouped into colorful batches that marked the different companies they belonged to. There were 5,000 fighters from the slave pits, of wildly uneven quality; as one Volantene explained, no sane pit-owner would send his best champion to die in a field when he could earn coin in the arena. And then there were the 10,000 Unsullied, the backbone of the infantry.
With Alton's own 3,000-strong Ironborn contingent, the host – by sheer numbers alone – was strong enough to conquer any of the Seven Kingdoms if taken one by one.
The cavalry formations were impressive as well. 1,000 heavy cataphracts stood ready, joined by 1,000 Westerosi mercenary knights, together forming the heavy cavalry so beloved by Andal lords. Beyond them were 2,000 riders of mixed medium and light cavalry.
But the most fascinating sight was the line of 250 war elephants, each clad in heavy armor, massive tower-houses mounted on their backs. Blades of every shape adorned them – spikes and spears on the legs, sword-blades strapped to the tusks, hooks and scythes fitted to the trunks. Alton had always imagined elephants as a means of travel for the wealthy; he had never seen them in war, nor could he previously picture the devastation they might cause.
It would be interesting to see how such a force would fare against the Dothraki horde – 70,000 half-naked screamers, the largest khalasar of the age. The Volantenes claimed the only greater host of recent memory had been that of Tarlan the Lame Iron, who had raised an unthinkable 300,000 riders and nearly scoured all of Essos during the Century of Blood. Some even claimed that in one of those battles, the Dothraki had managed to kill a Targaryen dragon fighting on the side of Pentos. But Alton saw dragons, he couldn't even imagine them dying.
Soon, the battle would start. The Volantene had already deliberated and sent envoys to call Rakho the Flame-Mane to a fight. Award ReplyReport34PersianPrince696916/11/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 27: Vezhar Son of Fire I New View contentPersianPrince696919/11/2025NewAdd bookmark#82Disclaimer: I think this is the best shit I have ever written. Enjoy, guys! And please leave your feedback!
122 AC
Vezhar sat in his father's yurt, playing the Ahesh and entertaining the Khal and his brothers. It was then the kneelers sent their cattle-envoys. Khal Rakho, his father, listened just long enough to honor custom – then ordered molten iron poured down their throats, as was the ancient way. Everybody knows it.
Vezhar lowered his gaze to the instrument in his hands.
The Ahesh was not made from the pale, soft woods of the lamb cities, but from a dark, hardened timber – light enough to carry on the saddle, strong enough to survive the wind and dust of the Grass Sea. Its body was lean and pear-shaped, a curved shield of polished wood that nestled effortlessly into a warrior's arm.
The neck was long and slender, built for speed and force, not the delicate plucking of kneeler musicians. It had two strings of cured horse-gut; simple in form, complex in voice. A good Ahesh could be heard over the crackle of a campfire – or the distant thunder of a khalasar on the move.
But its most defining feature was the blackened circle burned into its soundboard. That burned mark gave the Ahesh its haunting, unmistakable voice.
Vezhar remembered when his father – then only a rider and not yet a great khal – gifted it to him along with its tale.
In the days when the Grass Sea stretched endless beneath the Great Stallion's sky, a fearsome dragon descended upon the khalasar of Khal Moro. It did not simply burn the grasses; it hunted the Dothraki themselves. One day, in a torrent of fire, it snatched the khal's favored and only son from his saddle.
Grief-mad, Khal Moro swore a terrible oath:
"Any man who speaks the words that my son is dead will have molten gold poured into his mouth."
The Dothraki whispered in terror. The khal knew the truth in his heart, but pride and oath bound him in silence.
Then a boy named Haqq, famed for his mastery of the Ahesh, stepped forward. He did not speak. He sat before the khal and began to ammemat – to tell the truth through sound.
The Ahesh wept for him. Its strings screamed with the terror of the dragon's shadow, wailed with the sound of the ko's last breath, and trembled with the deep sorrow of a father's loss.
Khal Moro listened, tears cutting lines through the dust on his face. When the last note died, he pointed silently at the instrument. Haqq had not spoken. His life was spared.
But the khal kept his oath in a different way.
He took the boy's cherished Ahesh and commanded his bloodriders to pour molten gold into its sound hole. The gold burned through the wood, leaving the dark circle all Ahesh now bear.
From that day, every Ahesh carries the fire of the dragon and the pain of a khal's broken heart – singing truths no Dothraki dare speak aloud.
Vezhar was the youngest son of Rakho the Flame-Mane, and for that, the most beloved. His older brothers – those still alive – already rode at the heads of their own khalasars. Vezhar, though still a young foal, was destined to inherit his father's. That was the way of the Dothraki.
He had heard that Andals were different. There, everything went to the oldest son, and the younger ones received nothing. Lamb people were foolish. Why should a grown son wait like a useless ornament when he could carve his own khalasar? Why should the youngest – who had the least time before his father joining the Great Stallion – be given no help at all? Vezhar never understood the lamb-men.
His father, the Great Khal, had ordered his people to prepare. He could not refuse an open challenge. That was the way. Everybody knows that.
They arrived at the future battlefield in a few days. But instead of open plains, they saw a line of massive wooden towers rising before the first settlement. Selhorys, the kneelers called it. The Great Khal ordered the attack at once.
Vezhar's oldest brother, Hahhakh the Gray Stallion, led the first assault. The first string of riders approached at full gallop, bows drawn, and loosed the opening volley before wheeling away in a smooth retreat. The second string followed, then the third. Twenty lines of thousands of riders made ten such circles, arrows falling like rain drops. Soon the wooden structures bristled like hedgehogs beneath a forest of shafts.
Their own arrows had claimed many lamb-men, but the kneelers fired back with equal fury. Too many riders fell to javelins, bolts, and stones hurled from the strange fortified walls.
Rakho, seeing the losses, ordered the arrows to be set aflame to burn the wood. His riders obeyed. Thousands circled again, each releasing ten volleys of fire-tipped arrows. But when Rakho looked upon the smoldering Bastions, he grew furious: the fire bit at them, but the towers did not burn.
He summoned Hahhakh and gave the order to charge and trample the kneelers.
The oldest son obeyed.
Thousands of riders thundered forward as the first wave. Many died beneath the withering storm of missiles. But the true devastation came from the earth itself. The cowardly lamb-men had prepared traps. Horses plunged screaming into deep pits masked as solid ground, impaled on hidden spikes. Riders toppled after them, snapped like twigs under their own dying mounts.
Rakho immediately ordered his brave warriors back. "Do not die foolishly and without honor." Signal horns blared. The retreat was swift, and their losses were not catastrophic.
A counting slave arrived soon after, trembling, and reported that one thousand riders had perished since dawn.
The Great Khal was enraged.
He ordered a halt and commanded the cattle-folk to be brought forward – the useless, the sick, the crippled, whether men or women, young or old. All of them. Thousands were dragged from the women's camp within hours.
Rakho ordered that the slaves be driven into the traps.
Vezhar never cared for such people, yet even he felt a flicker of pity when he saw them whipped into a run toward the hidden pits. They were to fill the ditches with their bodies, so that the mighty warriors could ride over them. Their last act, their final usefulness. In its own way, an honorable death for cattle.
Some khals objected, not from mercy but from belief: allowing slaves to die in battle made them warriors, and warriors who died on a battlefield were, by ancient custom, granted freedom. It felt wrong to grant cattle such an end.
The kneelers saw the ploy and focused their fire not on the riders but on the slaves, desperately trying to prevent them from reaching the ditches. Panic broke the cattle's last strength. Some fled for the mountains, others toward the river. Some begged the riders behind them. Women, young and old, threw off their clothes, trying to seduce their tormentors in a final plea for mercy. None was spared. Such was the doom of the weak. Ahead lay spikes and pits, behind them whips and arrows; to one side the jagged mountains, to the other the angry river. Death surrounded them on all sides.
Rakho asked the counting slave how many cattle had been brought.
"Twenty thousand," came the answer.
The Great Khal thought for a moment, then ordered the riders to drive the slaves faster and more savagely, or they would run out of bodies before the ditches were filled.
Finally, the slaves reached the ditches. One after another they tumbled in, screaming, bones snapping, bodies piling atop bodies until the pits began to fill. The kneelers in the wooden fort shouted in their weak, bleating tongues so loudly that even the Great Khal could hear them from his war-seat.
Other khals laughed and praised Khal Rakho for his cunning.
The kneelers could do nothing but fire more frantically. Yet when the last of the slaves were whipped into the pits, the ditches still were not full. So Rakho ordered more to be brought. The same repeated. And after the second wave of meat and bone, the plain was finally leveled again.
Rakho then ordered his fired-up riders to assault the wooden walls once more. Hahhakh led the charge. But then something unexpected happened.
To break the momentum of the charge, the lamb-men mimicked the Great Khal's tactics and drove forward their own useless slaves. Naked, unarmed, terrified. Many perished in seconds, hacked apart or crushed beneath hooves – but they did what they were meant to do.
The charge slowed.
And as soon as the riders' power and speed faltered, the seedless warriors surged out with their crooked and hooked pikes ready. They rushed the riders on foot, seizing reins, grabbing legs, dragging mighty men from their saddles in a frenzy of desperation.
Rakho roared for the retreat, horns blaring. But the damage was done.
Hahhakh fell in the melee, and with him three thousand riders.
The Great Khal was driven mad with fury. He ordered his carpenter-slaves and thinker-slaves dragged before him. When they appeared trembling in the dust, he commanded them to look upon the defenses and devise a way to breach them – or be impaled on the shafts of the stallions of the riders who would charge next.
Terrified beyond reason, the slaves obeyed and began devising tools.
They came up with mangonels meant to smash the wooden structures before them. They had no timber or materials at hand, so the Khal ordered 10,000 riders to split into bands, raid the nearby villages, and bring back whatever could be used. By the end of the day they returned with the spoils, and the slaves were immediately set to work. Thus ended the first day.
By the morning of the next, the slaves had finished. What they produced were small, simple mangonels – crude, but in theory enough to batter the wooden towers.
The mangonels fired, striking some of the structures, but their accuracy was abysmal. The Khal prepared to wait, watching with irritation. When the third tower finally crumbled, something unexpected happened: the remaining towers began to move. Slowly, almost mockingly, they crawled forward across the plain.
The mangonels became useless. They couldn't reliably hit a still target, much less one that moved – even as slowly as a turtle.
The ditches the Great Khal had filled with slave bodies were now being walked over by lamb-men.
Then the towers advanced into arrow range and unleashed a fierce barrage of their own missiles. The slaves operating the mangonels fled or died on the spot. Some riders were killed too. Once the mangonels were no longer a threat, the towers pulled back again.
After that, it turned into a strange contest of patience. Vezhar and the other khals found it almost amusing.
The slaves manned the mangonels and fired.The lamb-men advanced their crawling towers.The towers reached the mangonels, fired, and scattered or killed the slaves.Then the towers retreated.And the slaves returned and fired again.A ridiculous circle, repeated again and again. They laughed at the sight – the misery, the futility, the absurdity of it.
But Khal Rakho did not laugh. His fury grew, for he believed they were laughing at him.
Rakho the Flame-Mane summoned the khal who had laughed the loudest – Khal Mordo. He ordered him to take 20,000 riders and storm the wall. Drive the riders into the gaps. Trample the kneelers. And do not return without victory.
Khal Mordo swore he would either die or win. Then he charged.
The towers did not move. The kneelers did not send slaves ahead this time. Instead, they formed a solid line of seedless warriors – a wall of silent, expressionless men braced behind shields and pikes.
The clash was horrific. Thousands died in the first seconds. Lamb-men were shot and trampled beneath thundering hooves. Riders impaled themselves on pikes and died locked to their saddles, their horses collapsing under them.
The battle dragged on for two blood-soaked hours. Mordo charged, pulled back, then swept in a great circle to strike again. The riders' arrows tore gaps in the enemy line, but the seedless warriors simply stepped forward, replacing their fallen without a word or scream.
The ground before the moving wall – and the gaps between the towers – filled with bodies. Bodies became heaps. Heaps became mounds. Mounds became mountains of bleeding flesh.
By the time it ended, 20,000 riders lay dead, Khal Mordo among them. But the lamb-men had paid heavily as well.
The khals grew wary and began whispering behind the Great Khal's back.
"Perhaps the Great Stallion no longer rides with Rakho," some muttered.
"He angered the ancestors by giving a warrior's death to cattle," others said.
Some even approached Rakho's elder sons, speaking openly of betrayal. Two days of fighting, and still they had not broken through. Rakho knew all of it. He summoned Vezhar.
He told him that tomorrow they would ride with the whole army. If they faltered again, his khals and even his sons would kill him – and such a death would bar him from the Starry Khalassar forever.
He told Vezhar that if the battle turned, he must flee with a part of his khalasar. Rebuild strength. Avenge him. Continue their bloodline. Vezhar protested that he did not wish to flee, but his father insisted. The youngest son must survive.
On the morning of the third day, the counting-slave was summoned before the Great Khal. Out of the 70,000 riders they had begun with, 23,000 had perished; only 47,000 remained. Rakho divided what was left of his host into two forces. One would charge in the morning, the second in the afternoon. The morning assault was to be led by Khal Faroq – the loudest of the conspirators.
Faroq was made to swear an oath before all gathered. Then he was given 20,000 riders and ordered to break the wall or die. He accepted the charge proudly and rode forth.
The circle-charges repeated – but this time the battle was nothing like the day before. So many bodies from both sides now carpeted the plain that neither the riders nor the lamb-men could manoeuvre properly. The piles of dead riders, dead seedless warriors, and dead cattle-folk ruined both speed and formation. The ground itself had become treacherous.
The river told its own tale: yesterday it had turned pink from the blood. Today, all the rotting meat and fresh slaughter turned it a deep, gory crimson. Men died like insects. For a time, the lamb-men began to falter – they had almost exhausted their colorful mercenaries and their seedless warriors. So they unleashed the elephants.
The battlefield became the Burning Khal's domain on earth.
Despite terrible losses, brave riders surrounded and brought down almost all the elephants. But the riders themselves were nearly depleted. And then, new warriors joined the fray – strange, armored men who leapt down from the moving towers. An Andal slave had explained earlier: Ironborn. A people similar to the Dothraki, but instead of riding horses, they rode ships and raided wherever there was sea.
They fought well on the corpse-hills. Where seedless warriors slipped and fell, and where riders' horses stumbled, the Ironborn found footing easily, as if they had been born to fight atop shifting decks and uneven ground. Their axes opened paths through the dead. They climbed and killed with savage precision.
After Faroq fell, the Great Khal called his warriors back and ordered them to rest, to regain their strength for the final charge.
They rode forward as noon shifted. Thirty thousand riders – the last strength of the mighty khalasar.
The defenders did not look much better. They had precious few troops left. The small band of scouts stationed atop the mountain ridge claimed the kneelers had only six to seven thousand warriors remaining. The elephants were nearly gone. Even the moving wall, once proud and towering, now looked mutilated and monstrous.
Rakho chose to abandon straightforward charging. A proper cavalry sweep across a valley filled with mountains of rotten corpses was impossible; the horses would break their legs long before reaching the enemy.
So the Great Khal divided the remaining 30,000 riders into many smaller war-bands, each under its own small-chief. Those chiefs were ordered to maneuver freely, each choosing their path based on the terrain before them, supporting one another where needed.
Vezhar, like many young warriors, was placed in the rear wave of the horse-tide. From where he rode, he could not see the battle's shape – only dust, smoke, and shadows – but he understood one thing clearly: the bloodletting had begun.
When the first lines reached the kneelers, the lamb-men unleashed something unexpected.
They had packed the towers with explosives, and one by one the great structures erupted in bursts of fire and splintered timber. The battlefield plunged into total chaos. Horses reared and stumbled; riders fell screaming. What had been two armies became dozens of isolated pockets fighting atop shifting piles of corpses.
Slowly – painfully – the riders began to edge forward through sheer numbers and ferocity. Victory seemed possible.
But then the final surprise came from the river.
Strange barges appeared in a straight line, gliding like silent beasts. In moments the barges smashed together and formed a makeshift bridge. Across that bridge poured thousands of fresh kneeler cavalry.
Khal Rakho stared and could not believe what he saw.
By the time he ordered a counter-charge, it was already too late. The enemy horse had crossed, assembled, and now charged at full force. The battle shifted from chaos into slaughter. And then came the last blow.
From the horizon descended a massive white dragon, wings gleaming like polished bone. It poured fire across the battlefield. The already unbearable stench of metal, blood, and rot became far worse. Vezhar felt bile rise in his throat. The heat scorched his face even from a distance.
His father was shouting at him – Vezhar could see Rakho's mouth shaping his name – but he could no longer hear anything.
The dragon soared overhead, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, in mere minutes, burning riders, horses, slaves, and corpses into ash.
Vezhar did not see how the battle ended.
His war-band had pushed too deep into the corpse-mountains. From atop that heap, a massive Ironborn in heavy armor leapt down on him. The reaver's iron-shod boot slammed into Vezhar's skull.
The world vanished into darkness. Award ReplyReport35PersianPrince696919/11/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 28: Alton Greyjoy II New View contentPersianPrince6969Tuesday at 11:52 PMNewAdd bookmark#90122 AC
The bloody battle was finally over. Out of the three thousand Ironborn who had sailed with him, barely one thousand remained. The Volantenes fared even worse. Still, Alton had to give credit where it was due. Without the ingenuity of Volantene engineering, they might well have lost the day.
Yes, the final stroke had been delivered by the dragon – but without the preparations and engines of the locals, the beast alone would have changed little.
Now the Volantene nobles debated their next move. They had won, true, but the survivors on the field told a different story. The Ironborn now made up the largest and toughest part of the remaining host. No wonder the soft Essosi lords were uneasy. They feared the Ironborn. They feared the Greyjoys. They feared Alton himself.
And Alton savored every moment of it.
At last the perfumed men finished their muttering and reached some sort of conclusion. They announced a grand feast, to be held in the main square of Selhorys, and invited every surviving soldier. The cooks of the entire city were already at work, emptying pantries and boiling vast cauldrons of food.
Alton had just turned from the council when two men approached him – Maro Maerion and Harad Zalquicorys.
Maro was the one with true influence, tied by marriage to the mother of Princess Viserra Targaryen, the dragonrider. Harad, meanwhile, was hailed as the hero of the war, respected by both Tigers and Elephants; after all, the strategy of the battle had been his.
The third, though unsung, hero was Hyrryko Archymerys, the city's siege-master – a man Alton found himself particularly curious about.
The fourth was Princess Viserra, the Moon Dragon, daughter of the Last Dragon. Her father's recent reforms had finally convinced the old slave cities and the Daughters of the Freehold to accept the Targaryens as what they had always claimed to be – the prodigal sons of Old Valyria.
And the final hero, though he had not asked for the title, was Alton Greyjoy himself. Unwittingly, he had slain many of Khal Rakho's sons – and captured the youngest, Vezhar, alive.
The square of Selhorys writhed with the chaos of preparation – slaves hauling barrels of wine, butchers hacking apart carcasses, musicians tuning reed pipes. Survivors from a dozen companies clustered around fires, laughing too loudly, eating too quickly, desperate to outrun the memory of the last three days of slaughter.
Alton Greyjoy stood apart from them, watching the city with that cold stillness that made even the Tigers uneasy. He smelled their fear as plainly as the roasting goat.
Maro offered a polite bow, the kind Essosi nobles used to greet men they admired but did not trust.
"Lord Greyjoy," he began, "your Ironborn fought like a force torn from some old tale. Even our captains were stunned. Few men stand firm on ground as treacherous as yesterday's field, yet yours seemed… at home."
Alton grunted. "We fight on ships. The sea shifts under your feet every breath you take. A heap of corpses is steadier than a deck in storm."
Harad gave a short laugh, though nothing about his eyes suggested humor. "Aye. And because of that, we wished a word – before feasting and wine dull everyone's wits."
Alton did not move. "Speak."
The two nobles exchanged a glance, as if confirming they would proceed.
"It is no secret," Harad said, "that Volantis survived only by the skin of its teeth. Our mercenaries are thinned, our slave legions butchered, our war elephants nearly gone. What remains is a shell of our host."
Maro stepped closer, lowering his voice. "We will be tested soon. By Lys, by Tyrosh, by pirates, by every upstart bandit smelling weakness. We want warriors at our side who do not bend, who do not break, who do not fear death. Strangers to comfort."
He paused, letting the thought settle.
"We want Ironborn."
Alton's expression barely twitched. "You want men of salt and steel to guard your pink palaces? I thought Essosi preferred their soldiers soft and obedient."
"We want neither softness nor obedience," Harad replied. "We want savagery. Bloodlust. The kind that terrifies rivals into caution."
Maro continued, "We intend to form a standing corps – an elite band of reavers sworn to the Triarchy. Not slaves, not sellswords, but a company with its own customs, its own character, its own honor. They would be paid well… but more importantly, they would be given a license."
Alton's brow rose. "License to do what?"
"To raid," Maro said simply. "With our blessing rather than our complaints."
Harad's voice followed smoothly: "There are pirate dens along the Summer Sea that harass our ships. Pentoshi coastal towns fat with silver. Tyroshi galleys ripe for taking. Towns and villages that refuse tribute. Islands that shelter rebels. Those who join your – our – new corps would spend their years doing what the Ironborn do best: sailing, burning, taking."
Alton's jaw set like stone. "The Drowned God teaches us to scorn gold-hoarding fools and live by strength and the sea. You think coins will lure reavers across the world?"
Harad shook his head. "Not coins. Opportunity. Your men fought here because they sought blood and glory. There is blood aplenty in Essos to drown hundreds of fleets. We are offering – formally – what no Westerosi lord ever will."
Maro nodded. "Any Ironborn who wishes to join may apply. No chains, no forced service. Only a contract and a place among the finest killers in the known world."
"And if they choose to leave?" Alton asked.
"They leave," Harad said. "With whatever they've earned, taken, or carved out for themselves."
Silence settled between them. Behind Alton, a column of Ironborn carried captured Dothraki weapons toward a growing pile, laughing in their harsh, salt-bitten way. One had a severed braid looped around his belt. Another whistled at passing slaves as if the battle had been a tavern brawl.
Finally, Alton exhaled through his nose.
"You're afraid of us," he said softly.
"We respect you," Harad corrected. "Fear is only the first taste of respect."
Maro added, "We want your kind fighting with Volantis, not testing its walls."
A grin tugged at the corner of Alton's mouth. "Wise of you."
"So you accept?" Maro asked.
"I'll tell my people," Alton said. "I'll tell my brother and cousins. If reavers come, they'll come for blood before gold."
"Then we are in agreement," Harad replied. "Volantis has a need of men who thrive in storms. And the Iron Islands," he added, "have men who hunger for a wider sea."
Alton nodded once, the closest he ever came to courtesy.
The sea soothed him.
After choking dust, the stench of cooked flesh, and the shrieks of dying horses, the open waters felt like a return to sanity. Waves slapped gently against the hulls, wind filled the patched sails, and the longships cut a clean path southward toward the Basilisk Isles. Toward the Isle of Tears. Toward the dead city of Gogossos.
A place the Drowned God himself might have shunned.
The Volantenes called it cursed. The Qartheen whispered of evil sorcery. The Summer Islanders spat and said the ground bred sickness and disease. To Alton Greyjoy, that only meant the place was fit for spoils.
The Ironborn ships rode lower than usual – their bellies heavy with plunder. Much heavier than he'd expected.
The Dothraki carried little gold. Hardly surprising. Horse-lords didn't eat from plates or count coins; they traded daughters, mares, and slaves. Their khals decorated themselves in bells, not silver. Their saddlebags held meat and sour milk, not treasure.
Still, the Ironborn had stripped the battlefield clean. They always did. What the screamers lacked in coin, they more than compensated in everything else.
Silks – bright, patterned, thin as spider's thread – taken from the tents of minor khals and the private stores of their bloodriders. Fine hides and cured leathers – dozens of kinds, many Alton had never seen in Westeros – ready to be worked into armor, reins, or trade goods.
Pouches of precious metals – small, but gleaming: beaten bronze, weathered copper, odd bits of silver hammered into crude shapes.
And jewelry – gaudy trinkets shaped like horses' heads or coiled snakes, heavy chokers of bone and gold, bangles from far Sarnor or the Shadow Lands. Not refined work, but eye-catching enough to make good barter.
But the true wealth was iron. Rusty, chipped, poorly forged iron… yet mountains of it.
The Dothraki were not smiths, but they were killers, and killers had a lot of weapons. The field had been carpeted with arakhs, crude spears, hooked knives, and piles of misshapen armor scraps. Most were bent or blood-slicked or cracked by the Volantene machines – but iron was iron. Melt it, beat it, shape it again. Alton's men had taken every piece they could carry, stripping the dead as if plucking fruit in an orchard.
But none of that compared to the greatest plunder of all. Slaves. Cattle, the Dothraki called them. Thralls, the Ironborn called them. Property, the Volantenes called them. Future tools, the princess called them.
The numbers still startled Alton. Twenty-five thousand were taken by the Ironborn. Men, women, children. Some screaming, most silent, a few too numb to understand who now owned them.
The old Iron Isles could not have fed so many. But Alton's brother, Lord Greyjoy, would find a use – salt-wives, servants, dock-hands, miners, farmers, rowers, laborers for every island. Thralldom had been dying lately among their people; now it would return in full force.
And then there were her slaves.
Princess Viserra Targaryen, the Moon Dragon herself, had taken fifty thousand.
Fifty thousand souls – escorted by dragonfire – destined for the broken ruins of Gogossos. Why she needed so many… Alton did not know. He suspected she did not intend to tell him. Their private bargain was simple:
He would not speak a word of her share. To anyone. Not the Ironborn. Not the Volantenes. Not his own men.
To the outside world, she had merely flown as an escort – her white dragon driving off pirates so the trade fleet could pass unharmed. An innocent story for naïve ears. Yet the truth sailed with them.
Her slaves were carried mostly by the merchant fleets of Houses Maerion and Rhaelys – her mother's kin – and by other great trading families of Volantis, eager to curry favor with the young dragonrider.
Alton's ships bore only his own plunder: the Ironborn's thralls, their silks, their iron, their hides, their malformed treasures. And the quiet weight of a secret he had agreed to keep.
Now, as the fleet curved southeast, he stood at the prow of Seawraith, watching the horizon where jungle storms brewed. The Basilisk Isles were near. The sky already had that rotten-green tint he remembered from old stories – the color of heat, disease, and ancient things that should never have been woken.
Behind him, the oars thumped as the slaves rowed, their chains clinking softly in the wind.
"South," Alton murmured to himself. "To the Isle of Tears. Let's see what ghosts still linger there."
The seas swallowed his words, and the ships sailed on.
P.S. Sorry for the break, will try to continue posting chapters every other day or two! Award ReplyReport37PersianPrince6969Tuesday at 11:52 PMNewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 29: Joselyne Redwyne I New View contentPersianPrince6969Yesterday at 2:45 PMNewAdd bookmark#93122 AC
The Red Keep, King's Landing
The hall glowed like a great jeweled lantern. Hundreds of candles swayed in tall iron branches above the feast, their flames trembling with every shift of music or murmured speech, turning gold plates and wine-dark banners into a shimmering haze. Even after decades of court life, Joselyne Redwyne had to admit – Maegor's Castle knew how to dazzle.
But as always, she looked first not at kings or dragons or lords of storied names.
She looked for her own.
Her sons stood together near the great vine-woven Tyrell tapestry – tall men, broad of shoulder, with the unmistakable Redwyne coloring: wine-dark hair, sun-bronzed cheeks, freckles that no title nor marriage had ever scrubbed away. They were speaking with Lord Tarly and Ser Gryffyn Peak, voices low, postures easy. Good. They held themselves well.
Their children huddled near them in a loose knot – the bright young Redwynes of this generation, half a dozen laughter-prone cousins who moved through the hall like a school of red-haired fish, always circling back to one another.
Seventeen, fifteen, fourteen – ages that made nobles wary and matchmakers drunk with plans.
Joselyne studied them with something between pride and apprehension. They were beautiful, all of them, with that effortless Reach warmth that made people smile back without thinking. Her eldest son's boys stood taller than some grown knights, while the twins – her second son's children – looked every inch the mirrored pair Fate had intended: same auburn hair catching the candlelight, same green-gold eyes full of restless intelligence.
Her heart softened. Let the realm call dragons, wars, kings, elections – this is my line, she thought. My work. My pride.
But her glance slipped, as it always did, toward the empty place at their cluster's edge.
Her youngest child should have been here – her daughter, the gentle one, with quiet smiles and hands that smelled of crushed lavender. Instead she was far away in Highgarden, already a wife at sixteen, already bearing the weight of alliances old as the soil they ruled.
Joselyne exhaled. She worried – of course she worried – though she tried not to let it root itself too deeply.
Her daughter had been married only a year, and had given Lord Tyrell no children yet. For some mothers that was cause for whispered panic; for Joselyne, it was more a soft ache behind the ribs. The Tyrell to whom she was wed – the only son of the late Matthos Tyrell – was a gentle man, soft-spoken, with the soul of a poet and fingers more suited to harp strings than lance grips. Kindness flowed from him like water in the Mander; Joselyne had seen it in his greeting, in the way he touched his bride's hand with the reverence one reserves for precious tapestries.
A child would come when it chose. The gods were not clockmakers.
Still… she missed her girl tonight.
The music swelled, drawing her focus back to the hall. The new bride – Joselyne's own granddaughter by her second son – now stood beside Prince Aegon, also known as Aegon the Elder, though he was barely more than a boy still polishing at his edges. Aegon looked stiff, restless; the girl looked graceful, almost serene beneath the weight of so many watching eyes.
She carries herself well, Joselyne thought, pride threading through her like warm wine. Better than I did at her age, gods help me.
Servants poured Arbor wine with frantic devotion – as they should, considering half the court preferred it over the Reach red stocked in the cellars. The smell of roasted boar and honeyed pears drifted through the hall. Somewhere a lute hesitated, then found its tune again.
Joselyne pressed a hand to the polished table before her, grounding herself. Her husband was home on the Arbor – frail, fading, slipping into forgetfulness most days. Once a proud lord of the vintage, now a dim candle in a room full of smoke. Age and drink had hollowed him. Some days he did not know her name. Others, he mistook their granddaughters for her younger self. It mattered little. Her youngest son, ever dutiful, remained behind to govern and to watch over the old man. Their absence sat heavy, a quiet shadow at her shoulder.
Because of her lord husband's condition, Joselyne had been the acting head of House Redwyne for years already, whether the court recognized it or not. And tonight – tonight proved it.
The music swelled again – harps and hautboys echoing beneath the high vaults of the Red Keep – and Joselyne Redwyne forced herself to smile with the other ladies as her granddaughter danced her first steps as a princess. Lyana's gown of pale wine-silk fluttered like a petal in the draught, and the candlelight made her hair glow a warm red-gold, as though the Seven themselves had laid a blessing upon the child.
Lady Lyana Targaryen, she thought, the words warm as spiced wine in her chest. The first of her line.
Around her, courtiers clapped. Lords raised their cups. The whole hall simmered with polite joy. But beneath Joselyne's own smile, calculation moved as surely as a tide.
Her gaze slipped upward toward the royal seat, where Viserys reclined like a man trying to look younger than his bones would allow. He laughed at something Daemon said, though she doubted he heard half the words these days. Still, the king had known what he wanted when he summoned her into the solar weeks ago. Or rather – he had believed he was the one choosing.
Joselyne's lips curved.
She remembered the meeting sharply, the smell of beeswax and parchment, the Hand standing over the king's shoulder like a carved sentinel. They had expected a nervous grandmother making a plea for advancement. Instead they had been faced with a woman who had already weighed the Reach, the Arbor, the Crownlands, the ambitions of the princes, and seen the shape of the future before any man in the room had.
Aegon wants to be close to Arbor, Viserys had said, laughing. For its wine.
Foolish boy. He wanted more than wine – he wanted escape. Freedom from court, from his mother's and grandfather's watchful eyes, from the burden of expectations. A soft, warm place to fall. And Joselyne had offered him exactly that.
A fertile tract of Arbor land, located in the South-West of the isle. A few castles – not the largest, yes, but well-kept and defensible. Vineyards newly expanded, orchards ready to harvest. She had placed the map in front of the king with a steadiness that brokered no doubt. The dowry she offered was rich enough to shame half the Realm. Viserys had blinked, surprised. The Hand had leaned forward.
"Your Majesty," she had said calmly, "A dragonrider needs room to grow. My granddaughter will give him that. And in time… they will plant a new branch of House Targaryen upon the Arbor itself."
Plant. She had chosen the king's own word deliberately.
Viserys's eyes had softened, the Hand's grown keen. And the agreement had been struck.
Now, as Lyana twirled beneath the chandeliers, Joselyne felt the weight of that future settling into place. Not just a marriage. Not just a match of wine and dragonfire. A new house forming at the edge of the Arbor – a union of her blood and the blood of dragons. A house that would answer to her lineage first, and the Iron Throne second.
House ________.
She did not yet know the name Aegon and Lyana would choose. Something new. Something fitting the foundation they would lay together. But she knew this: their children would command dragons. Their banners would fly over the vineyards she herself had tended. Their strength would rise from soil she had bargained into their future.
And when the next Great Council convened – whether in a decade or three – this new house would stand as a power equal to any other. With dragons.
She lifted her cup and let the Arbor gold settle on her tongue. The hall blurred for a moment – red, gold, firelight, jewels – and her heart swelled not with tenderness but with triumph.
Around her, the hall swelled with every great name in the realm… and she cared for none of them.
The Hightowers preened like peacocks near the high tables. The Arryns sat stiff-backed and cold. The Lannisters glittered obscenely, drowning in gold thread and lion motifs as if afraid someone might mistake them for merchants and not lords. The Serrets, Flints, Royces, Tarlys, Manderlys, Blackmonts, Stokeworths, and all the rest – the whole parade of Westeros' proudest, each reminding the hall of their lineage by how loudly they existed.
Names, banners, long histories… none of them mattered today. Her eyes slid toward the real players. The Targaryens.
Rhaenyra was seated among her sworn Crownlands loyalists – Celtigars, Scales, and Velaryons forming a pale-haired circle of old Valyrian hauteur. They sat like living monuments convinced the rest of Westeros existed only to carry their spears and pay their debts.
Rhaenyra… the Realm's Delight no longer. Childbirth had taken its toll – softening her figure, dimming her glow, leaving something tight and tired around her eyes. Her three youngest babes were far too small and young for such a gathering, but her older boys stood nearby.
Jacaerys and Lucerys.
"Strong boys," Joselyne murmured to herself, lips barely moving. And indeed they looked it – brown-haired, brown-eyed, pug nosed, handsome, and tall – proud in their black and red. Dragons of their own. Those would make them harder to ignore in the years to come.
But her attention drifted again. Daemon.
There he stood – near the King but not near his niece-wife. Not tonight. He hovered like some coiled, restless blade at Viserys' side, speaking low with the Blackwoods. The moment the Brackens noticed it, they scuttled toward Otto Hightower like flies to ripe fruit, eager to counter whatever nonsense the Blackwoods whispered.
Typical Riverlands bickering. Eternal. Petty. Tiresome. Her gaze moved on.
Queen Alicent, young Prince Daeron, and poor Princess Helaena occupied a table nearby. Helaena stared at her plate as if she saw one for the first time. Her fingers darted in odd little patterns along the tablecloth. Poor witless girl. A tragedy. And a useful one.
Many had once expected her to marry Aegon. "Tradition. Valyrian purity," they said.
But Joselyne had been faster. She had struck while others hesitated. And now her granddaughter sat crowned in pearls while Helaena sat alone.
Aemond Targaryen drew her eye next. The one-eyed prince was in a circle wholly unlike the rest of the royal family – a strange assortment of Essosi merchants, Ironborn reavers, and foreign lords from the edge of the world. Viserra Targaryen sat beside him, composed and gleaming as moonlight on water. At her feet lingered her son – Imlerith Greyjoy, the dragonling prince of the Iron Islands. A boy with a strange face and a cold stare, whispering something to the monstrous Ironborn who crowded around him.
The Greyjoys, Drumms, Wynchs, Harlaws, Saltcliffes… all in one place. A bizarre sight, this mix of Essos' merchant princes and Westeros' wildest raiders. But they had fresh victory behind them. Everyone spoke of the Volantene campaign, the battle on the Selhorys, and the burning of the Basilisk Isles.
Perhaps, she thought, this "expansion" was good. Corsairs from the Isles were a worse plague than Ironborn ever were. Though not by much.
...