Atop the Hightower, seven or eight hundred feet above the ground, Lord Leyton Hightower of Oldtown, Voice of Oldtown and Protector of the Citadel, stood alone by an open window.
The sea wind howled at that height. Leyton gazed into the distance, silently watching the fierce battle below.
Across the ruins of Oldtown and the waters of the Honeywine, drums, horns, and dragonroars came together into a rhythm of battle. This was the decisive clash between the Iron Islands and the Green lands.
Golden quartered banners collided with blood-red banners. The gold belonged to Gendry Targaryen Baratheon the Breaker, while the blood-red belonged to Crow's Eye Euron Greyjoy.
A new generation had surpassed the old. These two banners had never appeared in the history of Westeros before.
Yet now, it was these two banners that had raised endless storms of blood across Westeros, and perhaps across the known world.
"Storm" Gendry and "Crow's Eye" Euron.
"What a spectacle," Lord Leyton sighed. "And I can only hide atop the Hightower and watch it."
It was the cruelest of jokes. Noble Hightower, peaceful Hightower, had bent the knee and surrendered under Leyton's rule.
Oldtown was being played with by Kraken and Stag, forced to live at the mercy of others while the armies of both sides tore it apart.
"How did it come to this?" Leyton poured himself a cup of red wine and drank it with trembling hands. The wine no longer tasted sweet. It was red as blood.
Leyton looked at his old hands. In his youth, he had once ridden in tourneys and lingered in women's arms, only to slowly lose himself in prophecy and magic.
"Was I truly wrong? No. I foresaw the truth that Oldtown would be destroyed by Dragons and fire. I foresaw the age of magic. All I wanted was for Hightower to survive," Leyton told himself.
Yet Leyton felt he was becoming more and more like another man, Rhaegar Targaryen.
Both had been obsessed with prophecies, and both had brought destruction through prophecies gone wrong.
The more one yearned for what could not be had, the farther one strayed.
Through the window, Leyton saw the three multicolored Dragons displaying their might. The black Dragon led the white Dragon and the green Dragon in turn, bringing down the stone beast and the Citadel's two Sphinxes. Oldtown's guardian beasts fell from the sky.
As for the stone beast, Leyton had known roughly that this inferior version could not stand against true Dragons, only hold them back for a while. But to lose so miserably still left him surprised and dispirited.
These guardian beasts had been hidden away in secret, guarded with fear and caution.
Who knew how many generations of Hightower labor, how many golden dragons, how many maesters had gone into them?
A true Dragon was a true Dragon. These stone Dragons were like a joke.
"The war is not over." Leyton thought to himself. Crow's Eye's methods could not be limited to this. He continued watching the battlefield.
Compared with Balon Greyjoy's rebellion years ago, the stinking-water melee now erupting in Oldtown was far bloodier and more brutal.
The Ironborn had nearly come out in full force, with wind and Kraken supporting them. The Iron Throne was not inferior either, having gathered elite veterans from several regions, along with three Dragons.
Survival or destruction. Throne or bent knee.
The fated battle between the blood of Storm and the blood of the Iron Islands had begun again after three hundred years.
The contest between Stag and Kraken.
The Ironborn and the Iron Throne vanguard had already begun killing one another one by one, red blood slowly seeping into the seawater. The hulls of both sides' longships looked like a stew of sisters tangled together on the water, dotted with corpses, broken oars, and men clinging to wreckage.
The three Dragons circled downward, then shot fiercely upward, like swift falcons, like hawks stooping upon prey.
Flames of every color bloomed above the sea. The black-red Dragon was the fiercest of all, and human screams rang out with terrible sharpness.
Dragonfire was bright and cutting. Within it, men seemed to gain crowns of flame, their hair igniting first, then their eyeballs bursting, then their whole bodies.
"Fire! Dragons!" The Ironborn were a society of social Darwinism, but that did not mean they did not fear fire.
Splash. Splash. Some Ironborn even abandoned their longships and leapt into the Honeywine, or even into pools of water.
Otherwise, they were either chased down and killed or melted by Dragon flame.
"The horn still cannot disturb the Dragons. It seems I must take the next step," Crow's Eye Euron Greyjoy thought aboard the Silence.
"The Dragon Horn has failed. It seems to be the work of the red-robed sorcerers. They found some method to shield the Dragons' eardrums," Euron explained.
"The King on the Iron Throne is indeed cunning," the madwoman Malora said without changing expression.
"No wonder the boy dared come to face me. But if he thinks this is enough to defeat the invincible Euron, he is mistaken." Euron Greyjoy walked toward the prow, toward that foolish bastard girl who had long since been bound there.
"Girl, it is a blessing to sacrifice yourself for a king's cause."
Falia Flowers was naked, just like the mouthless maiden on the figurehead. Her smooth belly had only just begun to swell with pregnancy, her once-rosy cheeks had dried, and her mouth had withered from disuse.
The bastard girl had once been a full-bodied, beautiful young woman, but now she was a walking corpse.
When the boys bound her, she did not struggle at all. Her hair hung loose before her face. She had long since lost the strength to resist or answer back.
"Cut open her body. Let her blood drain clean," Crow's Eye said, and the mute sailors stepped forward.
The madwoman watched the bloody scene. Such torture and humiliation would never have appeared in Oldtown before.
But these were troubled times, and even the bloodline of gods could become cruel and cold.
The knives of the mute sailors and the bastards flashed coldly. Sharp blades drew blossoms of blood.
The air field that had gone still began to ripple again. The chaotic sea wind shifted its pattern, changing like a weather vane into a west wind, once more giving the longships the wind at their backs.
"I have killed another of my children, a king's blood," Crow's Eye said with some regret. This unborn child carried his blood, the blood of a king, the blood of the Drowned God, the blood of the First Men. The power in that child's blood would please the sea greatly.
"This is a duel." The madwoman Malora Hightower's eyes were filled with longing. A battle that would decide the fate of Westeros.
Crow's Eye or Gendry. Which one was the true Storm?
Malora believed in her own judgment. Crow's Eye was the true king, the true ruler.
"The stars weep blood, and the constellations have taken their places. A new god will be born, a god like no other." Crow's Eye spread his arms and felt the breath of the wind.
Gurgle, gurgle.
The sea raised waves again. A whirlpool slowly formed, and the water roared. This was the omen of the Kraken's arrival.
"Retreat, retreat, retreat. The sea wind has changed, and the Kraken are coming out again," Lord Jason Melisent said. The Iron Throne's longship fleet began pulling back.
A wrong wind could bring defeat in war. Crow's Eye had begun summoning the west wind again.
Gendry jumped onto a longship, holding "Kraken's Wail" in his hand. The water before him was filled with Ironborn corpses.
Only strength could awe the world.
"Is it coming?" Gendry looked ahead. Crow's Eye could finally no longer resist committing his last main reserve, the Silence and Crow's Eye's lieutenants.
The Iron Fleet pressed forward, while the longships prowled through the flooded ground along both banks.
The royal army sounded its horns again, retreating toward the Citadel.
The King's golden banners stood like a forest. The young king, tall as a giant, could almost still be seen, yet the Iron Throne's army retreated without fleeing beyond the walls.
"They retreat without disorder, steady in every movement." Crow's Eye watched the Iron Throne's army in the distance. "Robert may be dead, but his son remains brave."
"Crushing such an army and such a king will be what creates the Ironborn empire." Crow's Eye drained another cup of Shade of the Evening and laughed loudly.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
The sea wind suddenly began to rise, and waves roared backward into the river.
The waters of the Honeywine swelled again, and the pools across Oldtown's streets began to rise.
The gale howled. The west wind answered Crow's Eye's call once more, and all the Ironborn fleets charged forward together.
They meant to kill every elite soldier of the Iron Throne beneath the Citadel and capture the King and nobles of the Green lands.
"The wind is here, the wind is here!" The Ironborn's morale surged. At last, they recovered their confidence from beneath the Dragons' shadow.
"Now, full speed forward." Crow's Eye gazed at the golden battle banner in the distance and drove ahead with the wind.
Crow's Eye held nothing back now. His whole army. The poor little fool had not even left Oldtown.
The gale would also disturb the Dragons' flight paths. These young Dragons could not gallop through such violent wind.
Once Gendry was dead, the Dragons would still belong to him.
Whoosh.
The Kraken appeared again, stretching out their many arms, black branches covered in slime.
Following the direction of the waves, the Kraken spread their claws and fangs across Oldtown's waterways. Fortunately, many people in Oldtown were already dead, so the Kraken simply dragged corpses from the river to eat.
Most terrifying of all was the whirlpool at the river mouth. From within it, a Kraken that had not appeared before seemed about to emerge. Only a deep red shadow could be seen suddenly moving beneath the water.
The raging wind stormed forward, as if it would topple everything.
"Your Grace," Garlan said to Gendry. "The wind is west now. That is very bad for us. We are fighting against the wind."
"Do not worry, Ser Garlan." Gendry looked at the Iron Fleet wolf pack surging toward them. So you're pressing in? You really are confident, Crow's Eye.
"How far is the enemy from us?" Gendry asked.
"Five hundred yards!" Lothor raised the Myrish lens, sweat even appearing in his palm.
The tide surged. The gale screamed. There were even terrifying Kraken. This was the direction of the tide.
"Four hundred yards!"
"Three hundred yards!"
"Begin."
Gendry opened the stern of the longship. Inside lay a massive stone.
A pale-gray stone, taken from the cliffs beneath Storm's End.
Runes were carved upon it, the runes of "Stubborn Stone."
Gendry laid both hands on the stone, and black-red firelight slowly seeped over his palms.
"Your Grace, your hands." Garlan's mouth fell open. He had seen more than enough strange things today.
At first, he had worried for the King, thinking him only a warrior who looked down on all men.
He had not expected that, when it came to magic, Gendry seemed to understand quite a bit as well.
All the horns sounded again. Every longship hiding a pale-gray runestone cast it into the sea. For a moment, endless splashes rang out.
"Do not panic, my lord," the red priestess said to Lord Jason, who shared her ship.
"Begin," Melisandre said, turning to look at the red priest Moqorro. Moqorro nodded.
The two opened a cedarwood chest. Inside was a pale-gray stone sphere, inlaid with gems, runes, and symbols.
Melisandre looked at the iron plate. "The wind has come again. We can only try."
The red priestess touched the ruby at her throat, then placed both hands on the stone sphere. Moqorro also began to touch the sphere, and the gems upon it shone with a strange luster.
Marwyn also threw the Stubborn Stone from his ship into the sea. "That smell. These are Storm's End runes."
Marwyn suddenly understood. "What a clever Storm. Legend says the evil Storm God let great storms ravage the Stormlands everywhere. Only the giant stone castle of Storm's End stood unmoving as a mountain. It was the runes.
"That little brat actually learned the runes of Storm's End, and these runes are precisely meant to defend against magic."
Qyburn laughed. "Now do you understand why I said His Grace is the one I have been waiting for? He has the potential of a 'god.'"
"The storm is weakening."
"The storm is weakening."
Thunderous cheers rose from the Iron Throne's army.
"Kill the Ironborn!"
"Kill the Ironborn!"
The west wind still blew, but it was no longer so violent that the army could not open its eyes.
The Iron Throne's army formed ranks against the wind and stopped retreating.
Boom.
The Dragons in the sky finally adapted to the slowing wind and roasted the Kraken that dared show themselves with dragonfire.
The Ironborn longship fleet could no longer stop its charge. It rushed into the flooded squares and pools of Oldtown on both banks of the Honeywine. This was the life-or-death clash.
"How is this possible? I..." Crow's Eye roared. "I fed the Storm God until he was full. Why does he defy my will, my call?"
"It is the pale-gray stones." The madwoman raised the green glass candle. It was possible to make out, through the blur, that all the Iron Throne longships were throwing huge pale-gray stones into the sea.
"Storm's End runes. Stones from Storm's End." Crow's Eye flew into a rage. "That brat. How is this possible? No, it cannot be. This is not fair.
"How dare he, how dare he steal my victory? Only I, only I am a god. Only I am the Storm. Only me."
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