291 AC – The Iron Islands
The royal fleet began their invasion on Iron Islands.
Stannis Baratheon led the assault on Great Wyk, the largest of the isles.
"Longships ahead, my lord!" the lookout called from the crow's nest. "Twenty… no, thirty at least!"
Stannis's jaw tightened. "Battle formation. Signal the fleet."
Flags ran up the mast and horns sounded across the water. The royal fleet began to spread out, forming a crescent that would envelop the Ironborn ships.
The Ironborn came on fearlessly, howling war cries, their longships lean and deadly, built for speed and ramming. They charged straight at the center of the line, trusting in their drowned god.
"Fire at will," Stannis commanded.
The first volley punched through sails and hulls. Men screamed as bolts skewered them to their own decks. One longship took a bolt through her waterline and began to list immediately, water pouring in.
But the Ironborn kept coming.
The first longship rammed into a royal cog with a splintering crash. Ironborn warriors swarmed up the sides, axes swinging, faces twisted in battle-fury. They were met by the royal army with spears and shields.
Steel rang on steel. Men screamed as they died. Blood ran across the decks and dripped into the sea.
Stannis watched it all and gave another command. "Archers! Target their oarsmen. Cripple them."
Flights of arrows darkened the sky. They fell like deadly rain onto the Ironborn ships, punching through flesh and wood. Oarsmen collapsed at their benches. Longships lost momentum, drifting helplessly as the royal fleet closed in around them.
"Ramming speed," Stannis ordered.
Fury surged forward, her ram cutting through the water like a blade. She struck an Ironborn longship amidships with a sound like thunder. The longship's spine broke men were thrown into the sea, screaming, dragged down by their armor and weapons and the water started turning red.
All along the line the royal fleet pressed the attack. Larger, heavier, better-armed, they smashed through the Ironborn defense like a mailed fist through parchment. Longships burned. Longships sank. The survivors tried to flee, but there was nowhere to go. The crescent had closed.
By mid-morning, it was over.
The sea was choked with wreckage and bodies. Twenty-three Ironborn longships burned or sank. Nine more went down fighting. Four were captured, their crews dead or in chains.
Stannis stood on his quarterdeck, watching the smoke rise.
"Signal the fleet," he said. "Make for the beaches. We land within the hour."
The beaches of Great Wyk were black stone and grey sand, crowned with jagged cliffs. The Ironborn had fortified them stakes driven into the surf, pits dug and covered with brush and archers positioned on the heights.
It didn't matter.
The royal fleet came in under a storm of arrows. Marines died in the boats, pierced through throat and chest. But for every man who fell, three more took his place. The boats grounded. Men poured out into the surf, shields locked, advancing through waist-deep water.
Stannis was in the first wave.
He waded ashore with his sword drawn, his face set like stone. Arrows hissed past him. A bolt struck his shield and stuck there, quivering.
"Forward!" he roared. "Take the beach!"
His men surged up the sand, shields overhead, roaring their own war cries. The Ironborn met them at the tide line.
It was brutal and incredibly bloody battle.
An Ironborn warrior bare-chested, face painted with ash charged Stannis with a boarding axe. Stannis sidestepped, his sword flashing out in a precise arc that opened the man's throat. The warrior collapsed, blood fountaining.
Another came. Stannis blocked the axe-swing with his shield, felt the impact shudder up his arm, then drove his sword through the man's gut twisting and Pulling it free.
Around him, his men fought, killed and died. The beach became a charnel house bodies piled in the surf, the sand turned to red mud, the air thick the smell of blood.
But slowly, inexorably, the royal forces pushed forward.
The Ironborn line broke.
They fell back toward the cliffs, fighting every step, but there were too many attackers. By midday, the beaches belonged to Stannis Baratheon.
He stood at the base of the cliffs, breathing hard, his armor covered with blood that wasn't his own. Around him, his men were regrouping, tending to the wounded.
"My lord," one of his captains said, breathing hard. "The villages ahead are fortified. They'll make us pay for every one."
Stannis looked up at the cliffs, at the smoke rising from the settlements beyond.
"Then we pay," he said flatly. "But we take them all. No mercy."
He raised his voice so all his men could hear. "Forward! For the king!"
The army moved inland.
Old Wyk – The Holy Isle
Old Wyk was different.
This was the holy place of the Ironborn, where the kingsmoots of old had been held, where the Grey King had ruled in the Age of Heroes. The island was barren and windswept, crowned with the ancient bones of Nagga the sea dragon ribs as tall as towers, bleached white by centuries of sun and salt.
The Ironborn would defend it to the death.
Ser Barristan Selmy knew this as he stood in the prow of his galley, watching Old Wyk emerge from the mist. He was clad in white armor the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.
He was task by Robert with assulting the Old Wyk.
"There will be no surrender," Barristan told his men as the ships approached the shore. "They will fight for every foot of ground. They will die before they yield. But so will we, if we must. The king has commanded it. Old Wyk must fall."
His men nodded grimly for they all knew what was coming.
The landing was unopposed. The Ironborn had pulled back to Nagga's Hill, the sacred heart of the island, where the great weirwood throne stood among the dragon's ribs.
Barristan led his force inland, moving cautiously through the barren landscape. The wind howled across the rocks.
They found the Ironborn waiting at the base of Nagga's Hill.
Hundreds of them warriors in mail and leather, armed with axes and swords, their were determined. Behind them, priests of the Drowned God chanted prayers, their voices rising and falling like the tide.
Barristan halted his force just out of arrow range. For a long moment, the two armies simply stared at each other.
Then an Ironborn champion stepped forward a massive man with a grey beard and an axe the size of a child.
"Come and die, greenlanders!" he roared. "Come and feed the Drowned God!"
Barristan's response was instantaneous. "We have not come to, we have come to end this."
He raised his sword. "Forward, advance slowly. Hold the line."
His men moved forward in disciplined ranks shields locked, spears leveled, crossbowmen in the rear. The Ironborn charged to meet them.
The two forces collided like waves against a cliff.
The sound was deafening steel on steel, screams of rage and pain, the dull thud of axes biting into shields. Men pushed and shoved and stabbed. The front ranks became a grinding meat grinder of violence.
Barristan fought in the center of the line, his sword a blur of steel. He moved with grace of a and precision. An Ironborn warrior swung an axe at his head Barristan ducked under it and drove his sword through the man's armpit, where the armor was weakest. Another came from the side; Barristan spun, his blade taking the man's hand off at the wrist.
Around him, his men held the line. The northmen axemen were terrifying in their fury, their great axes cleaving through armor and bone. The crossbowmen fired methodically, their bolts punching through shields and mail.
But the Ironborn would not break so easily. They fought like men possessed, screaming prayers to their drowned god, throwing themselves at the royal line with suicidal courage.
The battle raged for hours.
The sun climbed higher, then began to descend. Bodies piled up, the ground became slick with blood. Men fought standing on the corpses of their friends and enemies.
And slowly, inch by bloody inch, Barristan's force pushed forward.
By late afternoon, they had reached the base of Nagga's Hill. The Ironborn fell back to the summit, to the great weirwood throne surrounded by the dragon's ribs.
Barristan looked up at the hill, at the last defenders waiting at the top, and felt the weight of his years. He was not a young man anymore. His armor was dented, his white cloak stained crimson. His sword arm ached.
But he was Barristan Selmy, and he had never failed his king.
"One more push," he said to his captains. "We end this now."
They charged up the hill.
The Ironborn met them with desperation. The fighting was vicious, hand-to-hand, no room for tactics or strategy. Just men killing men in the shadow of ancient bones.
Barristan found himself facing the grey-bearded man again. The man's axe came down like a thunderbolt. Barristan caught it on his shield, felt the impact jar his entire arm, then stepped inside the man's guard and drove his sword up under the ribs.
The man's eyes went wide. He coughed blood and fell.
The Ironborn line wavered.
"For the king!" Barristan roared. "For the realm!"
His men surged forward with renewed fury. The Ironborn broke.
Some fled down the far side of the hill. Others fought to the death where they stood, screaming defiance even as swords pierced their hearts.
By sunset, Old Wyk belonged to the crown.
Barristan stood at the summit, beside the ancient weirwood throne, and looked out over the island. Smoke rose from a dozen fires. Bodies lay scattered across the hillside like broken dolls.
His white cloak hung in tatters, soaked with blood some his own, most not. His armor was dented and scratched. He was exhausted, every muscle screaming.
But Old Wyk had fallen.
He raised his sword toward the darkening sky, and his surviving men raised their weapons with him, their voices hoarse but triumphant.
"The king! The king! The king!"
The other islands fell in quick succession.
Orkmont was taken by Lord Tywin Lannister himself, leading a force of Lannister men. The Ironborn defenders tried to hold the main keep, but Tywin had brought catapults that hurled barrels of pitch and burning oil. The keep burned and those who surrendered were put in chains but those who resisted were put to the sword.
Harlaw the second-largest island fell after a brutal three-day siege. The Harlaws were among the oldest and proudest of the Ironborn houses, and they fought with the desperation of men defending their ancestral home. But the royal forces were relentless. When the walls finally fell and the fighting ended island's population largely decreased nearly half was dead or fled.
Saltcliffe was the easiest. The lord of the island, seeing the smoke rising from his neighbors, surrendered without a fight. His people were spared, but his keep was occupied and his ships burned.
All across the Iron Islands, the story was the same. The royal forces were overwhelming.The Ironborn fought with courage born of desperation, but courage alone was not enough.
The islands burned.
And Pyke the seat of House Greyjoy, the heart of the rebellion still stood.
Pyke – Lordsport
King Robert Baratheon saved Pyke for himself.
Not because it was the most difficult target though it was but because he wanted it. Wanted to be the one to break Balon Greyjoy. Wanted to stand over the man who had dared defy him and watch the life leave his eyes.
The royal flagship anchored off Lordsport at dusk on the third day of the invasion. The busy port and trade center of the Iron Islands once thick with longships, merchant cogs, and the shouts of traders lay half in ruins from earlier raids, but the Ironborn still held the town.
Robert stood on the quarterdeck in black armor, warhammer across his shoulders. Beside him stood his childhood friend Eddard Stark.
"They'll fight to the last man," Ned said quietly.
Robert's eyes were hard. "Good. Let them, I want them to fight. I want them to know what it means to defy me."
He turned to his commanders. "We attack at dawn. Do not spare a single Ironborn bastard."
The assault began as the sun rose over the grey sea.
Longboats filled with royal army rowed toward the docks under a hail of arrows. Men died in the boats, pierced through throat and chest, their bodies tumbling into the cold water. But for every man who fell, three more pressed forward.
The boats grounded against the docks with splintering crashes. Men poured out, shields raised with roaring battle cries.
The Ironborn met them at the waterline.
They had nothing left to lose, their fleet was already destroyed and their islands were burning. This was their last stand.
The fighting on the docks was savage.
Men slipped on blood-slicked planks. Bodies fell into the water, sinking in their armor. Axes cleaved through shields, swords punched through mail.
Robert came ashore like a force of nature his warhammer rising and falling, each swing crushing helms and shattering bones. An Ironborn warrior charged him with a spear; Robert batted it aside and brought his hammer down on the man's head. The skull crumpled like an eggshell.
Another came. Robert's hammer caught him in the chest, caving in his ribs. The man flew backward and crashed into two of his fellows.
Ned fought at Robert's side, his sword flashing in deadly arcs. Where Robert had raw power, Ned had precision. His blade sang through the air, cutting through mail and flesh with equal ease.
They moved through the battle like they had at the Trident shoulder to shoulder, an unbreakable wall of death.
Behind them, the royal forces poured onto the docks. Lannister men formed disciplined ranks, their red cloaks bright against the grey stone. Northern warriors howled and swung their weapons with terrifying strength. Knights in plate armor cut through the Ironborn defenders like farmers through wheat.
Slowly, inexorably, the royal forces pushed forward.
The Ironborn line broke.
They fell back into the town, fighting from doorways and windows, turning every street into a killing ground. But there was no stopping the tide. The royal forces had the numbers and the Ironborn had only desperation.
Street by street, house by house, Lordsport fell.
Buildings burned. The smoke rose thick and black, blotting out the sun. Bodies piled in the alleys. The gutters ran red with blood.
By midday, the town belonged to the king.
Robert stood in the market square, breathing hard, his armor drenched in blood. Around him, his men were regrouping binding wounds or drinking water.
Ned approached him with a grim face.
"It's done," he said.
Robert nodded, looking around at the burning town. "I want nothing left standing. I want Balon to see the smoke from his castle and know what's coming for him."
Ned nodded. "As you command, Your Grace."
By evening, Lordsport was gone.
The buildings had been put to the torch. The docks were smashed and sunk. The harbor was choked with wreckage. Nothing remained but ash and smoke and the smell of death.
Robert stood on the highest point a ruined tower overlooking the sea where his banner was planted. The crowned stag of Baratheon snapped in the wind, black and gold against the grey sky.
In the distance, across the churning water, Pyke loomed a cluster of dark towers perched on sea-stacks, connected by swaying rope bridges. The seat of House Greyjoy. The last fortress of the rebellion.
Robert stared at it, his eyes hard, and jaw clenched.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Tomorrow we take Pyke. And we end this."
Ned stood beside him, silent, watching the smoke rise.
Tomorrow, the war will enter it's final phase...