Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Experimenting with two chapters a week, we'll see how long I can keep this up for.
Seaspeaker did not want to be found, and it seemed we could not force the issue. Even with all the planning and plotting I did, all the strategies I forced Daemon to implement, we could not find hide nor hair of him on the island. The archer that tried to kill me had given us a location in the forest, confirming an early theory that they were hidden within it, but the camp had been long abandoned by the time we got there. Searching the forest for him didn't work either. All my would-be assassin had been able to divulge was that Seaspeaker somehow always knew when we would be coming, where we would be coming from, and our numbers.
A spy in our ranks? That was a possibility, but a relatively remote one. Who would betray House Velaryon to cavort with a dispossessed pirate with a bounty on his head? That would just be pure stupidity. Still, I was left with no clear direction forward. I couldn't even just send all the men into the forest for fear that the Seaspeaker would burn even more of the town without the men there to defend it. He was an interesting foe, that was certain, but Mother refused to countenance moving forward until her husband's murderer had been found, tortured, and placed in a shallow grave.
Needless to say, it seemed we were going to be spending a lot of time here, at least we were going to be here until someone brought up the untouchable subject—the unthinkable idea. Even with things the way they were, no one really wanted to suggest doing what we needed to do. Father had taken this island for the forest. But the forest now hid his killer, and that was an affront we could not stomach ad infinitum.
"Why haven't we burned the forest down?" Laena asked as we listened through the third report from Vaemond in twice as many days on just why they kept failing to catch Seaspeaker.
"My lady?" Vaemond asked; he clearly thought he'd misheard. If only he knew that the words she spoke were the only ones on her mind. She was just as single-minded as I could be. When she chose a path, she stuck it out until the end.
"You heard me, Ser," she said with an arched brow. Laena was far from pleased with how Vaemond had conducted himself just as our father had been about to die. There was a time and place for prosecuting naked ambition, and in her view, the deathbed of a man was not one of them. I felt it was naive thinking in a way. There was no better place for baring naked ambition than at a man's deathbed. Make your final request and be either accepted or rebuffed. It just so happens that his final request had been a grasping one and he'd been appropriately rebuffed for it.
Plus, it was a bit of extra entertainment to see how my cousins gave him a wide berth—Aurion's children, obviously, not his own, as they tried to show us that they were not involved in whatever madness had taken hold of him.
"We took this Island precisely because we needed the wood to build more ships, my lady. I could not sanction burning the forest—it is the most valuable resource to us."
"That was when you had one dragon," she said, gesturing to me.
"Now you have three, and one of them is Vhagar. What more ships could you possibly need? I say we burn down the forest. If the Seaspeaker likes the damn place so much then let him choke on its smoke as it goes up in fire around him," she said, eyes narrowed.
"But my lady—"
"What do you think, Laenor?" She blatantly ignored Vaemond's attempt to reply, instead turning over to me.
"I think you've brought an interesting idea to the table. You're right that the lumber is not all that it's cracked up to be, though. Seaspeaker burned the shipyard. That, not the lumber, was the resource we took this island for, and now it does not exist at all. So one must wonder what use is the timber without the shipyard, especially considering we will not be able to make the investment in both resources and manpower to build a new one and have it producing output for a long time, not while prosecuting this war the way it ought to be. Shipping the ships from Driftmark remains a far more viable strategy, both in the long and short term. The ships will be better quality, there will be more trust in the capacity of the ship to do war since it comes from our own yards, and the ships will be our new models, so that means faster, easier, to crew, many other things. I don't think it's a contest," I said, dropping in my two cents. Both Laena and Vaemond looked at me like I had grown a second head. What? It was a simple pro-and-con analysis.
"Well, I think my son has put it best and I find it hard to disagree with him. Does anyone here?" Mother asked, seeming to have no interest in letting the conversation drag on past this point. No hands went up. Was my analysis just that good or did they just not want to disagree with their future lord? I wondered.
In the end, the decision to burn the forest was made. Was it the right thing to do, or was it just the easy thing? That was the thought that was on my mind as I flew Igneel above one end of the forest. Both Vhagar and Meleys were larger than Igneel by some margin so they could produce more fire. I was sure we burned hotter than they did, but the goal here did not require that heat.
Mother was in position, I could tell. So was Laena. When Mother blew her horn, I moved in almost instantly. Igneel and I banking downwards. "Dracarys!" I screamed our will to the heavens as we began the actions that would seal the doom of my father's killer. Igneel and I were on containment duty. We burned the trees at the end of the line, closest to the town and to the general wilds first. We used our hotter flames in short blasts that incinerated what we aimed at but left little behind to carry further flames or spread the fire further.
We did that in a circle around the forest, creating a simple kill zone. And when we finished, Meleys and Vhagar moved from opposite ends. Even large as Meleys was, Vhagar dwarfed her. Where Meleys had to fly from side to side to get the whole forest in her range, Vhagar just flew in a straight line, casting her flames so wide thanks to her size that it reached the edges of the forest either way. Both dragons met in the middle, having set much of it on fire.
"Have some men go in there and find me the bastard's bones when the flames die. I mean to make a goblet from his skull," I said to the boy that ran up to me with my waterskin as I dismounted Igneel. He nodded, eyes focused on the dragon more than they were on me. I looked at him then—brown hair, violet eyes, fair skin. Dragonseed, most definitely, but not one pure enough to inherit all the looks of old Valyria.
"Tell me, what is your name, boy?" I asked.
"Me ma named me Mance, milord."
"It's 'My lord'," I corrected absently even as I looked at him further. Was it paranoia that had me seeing shadows of Corlys wherever I went? I couldn't find myself failing to think about the possibility that he had left bastards behind, not since I'd seen Willem and Callum. There was a chance they were just random dragonseeds. The blood of old Valyria ran strong among the people of Driftmark. Not as strong as it ran on Dragonstone, but silver hair and purple eyes were far from rare traits in the general populace.
"See to it that Igneel is fed. Two whole sheep for him," I said, deciding that he might as well get a treat. Igneel almost purred in my mind. He'd gotten tired of eating fish all the time and had practically been begging for something else. Of course, we didn't have the resources to see him enjoy sheep on a daily basis, but a treat once in a while didn't hurt. I turned to the side, and Meleys landed, almost sending the boy off his feet. I placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him.
"Well done, Laenor," Mother said, tilting to the side and sliding down from the saddle. The forest was gone now, most of it ablaze and guaranteed to burn in the next few hours.
"When do we head out?" I asked, still not certain that I was pleased with the changes she'd made to my earlier plans.
"Dawn tomorrow. The ships will remain here and Vaemond will depart on the Seahorse to bring the next set of ships here as well as the men to sail them. Once we have those reinforcements, we can look into Torturer's Deep," she said. She had amended the plan to say we would wait for reinforcements before attempting any conquering of our own. She was probably not too keen on repeating the mistakes that had led to her husband's death.
The only issue with that was that the reinforcements were almost entirely unnecessary. Three dragons on our side meant no one stood a chance. We were the greatest dragon-riding force assembled since Rhaenys died outside Hellholt. Sure, neither Meleys nor Igneel were as big as Vhagar or Meraxes had been during the Conquest, and while Vhagar was getting close from all reports and indications, the Bronze Bitch was no Balerion. But then the size of the dragons themselves only really mattered when fighting other dragons. Against a fleet, Igneel was basically as much a danger as Vhagar was. The only difference being that Vhagar would probably finish them off quicker, but what did that matter when dead was dead.
Laena landed some distance away, having decided to do a few laps of the island once she finished our part.
"Come, come, let's go get some food in your bellies," Mother said as Laena began walking towards us. Almost on cue, I felt my stomach vibrate and remembered I hadn't had anything to eat all day.
XXXXXX- BORROS BARATHEON
Borros Baratheon was a simple man. He had one great love—fighting—and considered everything else a secondary distraction and preoccupation from his one true love. He had been born to be on the front lines, to lead the charge, to be the first man over the wall, and the last out of the line of fire. But he'd been born in the longest uninterrupted period of peace in Westerosi history. Even the Dornish had largely stopped their raiding and he'd been forced to content himself with the smallest embers of aggression even as he knew he longed for the fires of war.
War did not come to him in the end, and so he had gone to it. And for all he thought about his father's decision-making, this was definitely the right one, he thought as he leaned just out of the way, allowing the pirate's blade to scratch the nose guard of his helmet. Another scratch in his armor he would bear with pride. He was inside the man's guard before the man could comprehend the danger he faced. To his credit, he lifted a shield in time. A shield would never stop Borros Baratheon. With one mighty swing, his warhammer dug into said shield and he heard the sound of the man's arm break behind it.
The pirate screamed, clearly too weak to bear the pain, and Borros ended his suffering with an eager smile, walking deeper into the cave as he did so. This was the fourth such cave they were clearing in half as many weeks. The pace of the progress irritated him more than anything else. Every cave taken made them bleed for the effort. Every ground of space they took from the pirates, they bled for. These men did not run at their superior training, arms, or supplies. Instead, they seem to revel in the disparity, trying their best to equalize the differences.
Borros was not blind either, he could see just how they were doing it. The pirates were leveraging the tight spaces of the caves to wield their smaller, inferior weapons, and to prevent the cavalry, training, and armor of their foes from mattering as much. It was impressive, but annoying. Oh so annoying. He stepped into the next man's guard, grabbing his wrist to prevent him from shoving his knife into Borros' stomach. The Baratheon Knight slammed his helmet-clad head into his opponent's bare skull. The man tried to stumble backwards in pain but Borros' hold on his hand was too strong. Borros dropped his Warhammer for a second and dragged the man in before using his grip on the man's own knife to shove said knife into his neck. The man fell and Borros picked up his Warhammer again, ignoring the smell of piss and shit.
He was at the front, the tip of the proverbial spear. From here, there was no shortage of men to fight. Skilled and unskilled. Old and young—well what passed as old for a pirate. He hadn't seen a single man old enough to pass as a Greybeard back in the Stormlands but he knew that even men who looked to be in their third and fourth decades were still dangerous. The life of a pirate was not a bloodless one and these men had it worse as they lived on an island mired in constant conflict. This was just the kind of place Borros needed. Now if only they weren't so fucking cowardly.
He stepped deeper again, pushing one man backwards with a swing of his hammer, and blocking another's attempt to skewer him with his shield. The tighter the cave became, the more the men within fought all harder for every bit of ground they gave up.
Borros latched his hammer to his waist even as he huddled behind his shield for a few seconds to avoid being stabbed even as he reached for the short sword sheathed on his waist. It had more in common with a dagger than a proper sword, but it was adequate for this killing.
He stepped backwards. The man stabbing into his shield overextended. Borros dropped his shield, and with a spin and a swipe of his blade, the man's neck was split in two, sending blood splattering all over the place. Borros stepped over the body, and shoved the next man backwards with the face of his shield. Now they were in a wider cavern. More than two men could stand abreast here, and as Borros stepped in, the rest of his men began to file in after him.
It was bigger and darker than he expected so he had to wait for more and more torches to come in for him to get an understanding of where they were. It was like a big hall, the center of the cave, maybe.
"It's a shame the dragon rider did not come with you," He heard the voice and it took him longer than he would have liked to trace it. He had to look up. There were ledges, footholds, and all sorts of things along the cave's wall. So many places to step that there looked to be dozens of men watching them from above. Each one holding a bow aimed right down at them.
"Shields!" He barely managed to yell in time before the sound of whistling arrows was all he knew.
XXXXXXXXX
"Useless. Absolutely bloody useless. How do we lose near five hundred men taking down a few fucking pirates?" Daemon Targaryen's rage was a terrible thing. He tossed things this way and that, he roared like the dragon he rode, and he looked like if he could spit fire he would.
"They planned it well. Led us into a false sense of security with the previous caves. Just a straight line of killing down to the end. We bled for every cave we took, but the bleeding was nothing we could not handle. So we plowed on ahead and ignored the signs that should have told us the geography of the cave was too different. We should have scouted the outside like we did in the first two caves to get a better idea of what the inside was like," Ser Gunther said. Daemon turned his glare in the Knight's direction. Borros did not pity him much. Gunther had grown up with him, his father the former Master-at-arms, but where Borros focused on getting better in the yard, Gunther busied himself with silly preoccupations like reading and learning with the Maester. It was even a surprise that he had volunteered to join them here. He scarcely left that tower of his these days.
"So if you knew what to do, tell me why I just lost a third of my army?" He raged.
"I didn't say I knew this ahead of time. I was merely distilling the lessons we learned from this defeat," The word defeat was harsh in Borros' opinion. They might've lost a lot of men but he had killed the would-be Pirate King. That left only the Burner and the Drowner as active threats on the island.
"Dragons!" He heard a voice shout from outside the command tent. Dragons? He turned to leave to get some idea of what was going on but Daemon had outpaced him to the exit. He left in Daemon's wake, and felt his heart drop into his stomach. What the fuck was that? He asked as his view of the sun was near completely blocked by a creature so large he struggled to comprehend it.
A/N: So we get a look at how things are going in Bloodstone— not so good. It's a much larger island. Each of the pirate kings there has more people sworn to them than any individual pirate king in any of the other islands. Their fighters are more battle-hardened as well. Next five chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)(same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.