The Stepstones, Throat-Cutting Isle Main Island
It was a serene morning. The sun hung halfway above the horizon, and a gentle breeze brushed the sea's surface, stirring up playful whitecaps. By all accounts, it was a perfect morning to set sail. Yet, beneath this tranquility lay a tightening cord of tension. Snakes, long-lurking in the shadows, were finally preparing to strike their prey.
One hundred leagues north of the Cutthroat Isle archipelago, a massive fleet crept forward across the skyline.
"Hahaha! Come on! Hit me! ...Gah!" "Go for it!" "Harder!"
Aboard a grand galleon named the Queen Lexarino, two men were trading blows with bare fists while the surrounding sailors roared their encouragement. These men all bore weapons at their hips; their snarling expressions and bloodshot, predatory eyes marked them clearly as pirates.
The two combatants were a young man in extravagant finery with a thin mustache, and a burly, middle-aged man with a shaved head. Though the mustachioed youth was taking a brutal beating, he remained nonchalant, occasionally spitting verbal barbs to provoke the bald brute further.
Thwack! Splat!
"Hahaha..."
After a particularly heavy strike, the youth in finery was sent sprawling to the deck, a thick stream of blood oozing from his split lip. He spat the blood onto the wood, but rather than showing anger, he broke into a maniacal, high-pitched cackle.
"Hahaha... That's the stuff! Show some spirit! You're men of the Prince of the Stepstones! Now go! Kill anyone who dares stand in our way!"
"Ooh! Long live the Prince!" "Long live Jack!"
The pirates aboard the flagship erupted in a frenzy at the youth's proclamation. Quickly, the signalmen aboard the flagship began flagging orders. Across the surrounding pirate vessels, the crews caught the spark of excitement.
They hoisted their black sails. They ran the skull-and-crossbones—the Jolly Roger—up the masts. Seeing the black flags, the crews across the entire fleet broke into synchronized roars of bloodlust. The black sail symbolized their fearlessness in the face of death; the skull flag warned their enemies that death had already arrived.
These pirates were a breed apart. They painted their faces in the red and blue of war, their eyes gleaming with a mixture of avarice and cruelty. Most gripped cutlasses and boarding grapples, ready to turn the sea into a slaughterhouse.
"These people are lunatics. Are we truly going to collaborate with them?"
Meanwhile, aboard a massive carrack named the Valyrian, a dark-skinned warrior clad in leather armor and wielding a nightwood shield and a shortsword voiced his complaint to the man beside him—a short-haired Black man dressed in opulent Myrish silks.
"My Lord Saan," the gladiator guard, Stone Lock, continued, "if these madmen lose their minds in the heat of battle, they might start hitting us, too."
"Hahaha! That is simply Jack," Salladhor Saan replied, lowering his Myrish lens-tube. He looked at his guard with a knowing smirk. "He is a fool trying to fill the boots of old Lexarino Reynden. He inherited the madness, but none of the wealth or the skill. A man like that is perfectly suited to be my pawn."
After learning that the "Bloodwitch" Mary had failed her mission, Salladhor Saan finally grasped the true extent of Jon's power. The Lysene-style merchant-pirate from Myr had decided to take matters into his own hands, but even then, he needed a scapegoat to lead the charge.
The Saan family was an ancient line of pirates; their notable ancestors stretched back to the era of Aegon's Conquest. Salladhor had inherited the cunning of a corsair and the slipperiness of a merchant. When he failed to secure a seat on the council in Lys, he gathered his forces to seize control of the Stepstones instead.
Unlike other Saan corsairs, Salladhor wanted a permanent base. The Stepstones—the throat of the world's trade, once held by two different "kings"—was the prize he coveted most.
"We will stay back and watch their performance," Saan said smoothly. "If they succeed, we take our share of the spoils. If they fail, we simply 'join' the victor. We shall see for ourselves today if this boy truly has a dragon."
Salladhor Saan cared little for rumors; he only believed what he could see. While he had been skeptical of Jared Lockner's reports at first, a lifetime at sea had taught him that the world hid many secrets. A dragon might sound like a fairy tale, but Salladhor was too smart not to hedge his bets.
"Stone Lock, pass the word. We are strictly support. If a dragon actually appears, hoist the rainbow flag immediately. I bought these ships with good gold; I have no desire to see them turned into kindling by some mysterious fire."
"By your command, My Lord! Relaying orders now!"
To distinguish themselves from "Mad" Jack's fleet, Salladhor's men sailed in vessels with uniform white sails. The rainbow flags—symbols of peace and parley—were kept hidden in the captains' cabins, ready to be unfurled at a moment's notice.
This was Salladhor's survival strategy: if he could win, he fought; if he couldn't, he surrendered and negotiated. This flexibility had transformed him from a mere slaver into a titan of the narrow sea. Like all merchants of the Free Cities, he believed every problem had a price. If someone was unhappy, it usually meant the bribe wasn't big enough.
Salladhor's sailors wore standardized Myrish naval leather and iron-reinforced wooden helms, armed with crossbows and pikes. They were elites. While pirates might be fiercer in a chaotic skirmish, Saan's disciplined soldiers were far superior in defensive formations and wars of attrition.
As the orders rippled through the fleet, the ships began their final approach toward Cutthroat Isle. They had resupplied at a pirate cove nearby the night before and set sail at the first light of dawn. To avoid detection, they flew no pirate colors, instead using the merchant flags of Pentos.
In two hours, they would launch their surprise raid. Although they were well-prepared, they had left their heavy siege ships behind. Catapult ships and ballista galleys were devastating in island sieges, but Myrish war-tech was notoriously expensive, and the corsairs hadn't wanted to risk the heavy lumber. Most of the advanced weaponry in the hands of these pirates came from Myrish arms smugglers—despite the "Non-Proliferation Treaty" signed by the Three Daughters, officially-backed pirates always found a way to buy the good stuff.
While the heavy artillery was absent, "Mad" Jack's pirates were ecstatic. They viewed battle as a divine right granted by their gods. In this way, they were much like the Ironborn of the Iron Islands—becoming something not quite human when the scent of blood hit the air.
"Let the storm rage! Bring out the blood sacrifices for my Lord!"
"Mad" Jack was a lunatic in battle, but he was no idiot. You didn't survive in the Stepstones—where even a passing bird gets plucked for its feathers—by being a moron.
Jack worshipped the Black Goat of Qohor, a dark and terrifying deity. In Qohor, sorcerers who offered sacrifices to the Goat were said to gain supernatural insights. Jack was a sorcerer of sorts—or at least a half-baked one.
Hearing rumors of a dragon on Cutthroat Isle had initially frightened him. But after praying to the Black Goat, the bloodthirsty god had commanded him to kill without fear. This "divine" backing had bolstered his courage. In the past, Jack's faith had been a mere comfort, but lately, the whispers had become clearer. A few days ago, he had begun to understand the specific instructions of his dark master.
He hadn't come to Cutthroat Isle out of bravery; he had come because the terrifying entity behind him had already laid the path.
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