The Iron Victory swept forwards, her ram cutting clean through the choppy green waters. Oars slapped the sea. Salt sprayed his face.
And ahead, the horizon lay clear.
Victarion felt his fist clench around the handle of his axe. The Drowned God had not fashioned him for fighting with words at Kingsmoots; nor had he fashioned Victarion for hunting furtive foes who'd disappear into reeds and bogs after the first strike. They had fashioned him for war, for the true battle between men. To cross blades with great warriors like the Kingslayer; that was his destiny.
And then the Drowned God denies me that destiny, Victarion thought.
To either side of him, the sea was seething with ships. The Iron Fleet in its fullest glory. Between the hulls the water was white, frothing like a bubbling stew. In the distance, though, was nothing. Have the roses wilted? he wondered. Or do they merely mean to hide their thorns?
Victarion growled in frustration. They had spent months organising their forces, gathering enough ships for a raid on the Shields. Part of him was pleased by the quiet, he could not deny. If they took the isles without a fight Euron's fallibility would be exposed. Euron's wizards aren't quite what he claimed.
Yet part of him knew better. Plunder is plunder, he thought scornfully. Most reavers would choose gold before glory. A bloodless victory might prove worse for Euron, undermining his authority, but it could just as easily serve his ends even better, cementing the loyalty of the Ironborn to the Crow's Eye.
They might actually begin to believe his lunatic lies about dragons. Obedience came naturally to Victarion, as it did to most of them. He'd grown up knowing it was all he could do to serve Balon dutifully in everything. And later he'd come to accept that one day he would be forced to kneel before one of Balon's spawn.
But the Crow's Eye... Kneeling before him brought bile bubbling up from the base of his throat. The wind was raging in his ears, his loins stirring, and the bitter taste of resentment on his tongue refused to abate.
Absent a battle, Victarion surrendered his place at the prow of the Iron Victory to Nute to clamber belowdecks. He needed a drink to wash his mouth of the taste. In his cramped cabin he found Euron's gift to him wet and ready; the dusky girl was always naked for him.
Victarion unbuckled his belt and pulled off his gauntlet, letting the armour clatter on the wooden floor. He slapped the girl, once, twice, then grasped her by the throat as he plunged roughly into her. The girl let out a choked, tongueless moan - all Euron's pets had had their tongues pulled out once aboard the Silence. Her breasts shook as he fucked her, small dark nipples bobbing back and forth on rolling hills of tan flesh. He had her once, filling her, then again, pulling out to paint her.
The bed creaked beneath them. Victarion handled the girl roughly, though never enough to damage her beauty. No need to be nice to Euron's leavings, he told himself. He had never liked having to share his things. His thoughts turned briefly to his old wife, his salt wife, who'd shared her bed with Euron.
"She came to me wet and willing," Euron had said, though she had claimed rape. I beat her to death with mine own hands, even as she begged and pleaded for mercy, Victarion thought. But I didn't kill her. The Crow's Eye killed her when he shoved himself inside her. I had no choice.
But whilst he had contemplated doing the same to the girl beside him now, he had ultimately decided against it. She was ever so pretty. No more than twenty by the look of her, pliant and obedient to a fault. Euron said he had stolen her from the Lyseni, who had kept and trained her in their pillow-houses when she was just a young slave-girl.
It showed. She was skilled in love, ever willing, never refusing him anything. And when Euron had told him that if he did not take her off his hands she would be killed, he knew he could not let his pride stop him from getting such a delicious prize. I took her from him, he told himself, though the thought rang hollow.
He pushed her off him. "Wine!" he bellowed. Obediently, silently, the girl stood, still dripping with his seed, and fetched him his skin. Victarion gulped the sour liquid down, sweating. He pulled the girl into his lap and kissed her, pushing some wine into her mouth with his tongue.
She swallowed, some dribbling down her chin, and then he pushed her head down to his groin. Tongueless, she could not help her ineptitude, though he could not deny that she still put in a valiant effort with her lips alone, gagging and slobbering on his cock, taking it all the way down her throat. Victarion pulled her head off him and dragged her by her hair, throwing her back on the bed before plunging back into her for a third time, his fingers sinking into her breasts.
But even buried in her flesh, he could not distract himself from thoughts of what lay ahead. Euron had sent a dozen longships up the Mander to lure out the patrols into open waters, where the Iron Fleet could do proper battle.
Those ships had yet to return. No word had come. Hell, for all Victarion knew, they may well have vanished. Yet Euron had still ordered the main force to sail ahead to the Shields, convinced they would still be able to conquer the isles. He had not been wrong. The wind was at their backs, billowing their sails, as it had been all the way from Old Wyk.
Euron and his wizards again, Victarion thought. Men whispered when they thought he was not around. Victarion was no fool. He knew what they thought. Euron had ordered the fleet to sail straight south instead of hugging coasts as was custom, and it had worked. The men had been awed by it. It was thought that the Crow's Eye had somehow curried favour with the Storm Gods as well as the Drowned God, offering up sacrifices to somehow appease them both.
The entire venture had been a stunning success. Greenshield, Greyshield, Oakenshield, and Southshield had all fallen with only a handful of losses. The keeps had either been surrendered by cowering septons or else been found entirely deserted. He had received no reports of slain knights or ravaged ladies. No reports of ships sunk or damaged in battle. There was something unsettling about that. Something vaguely sinister. It felt like a trap, like the Tyrells were using the Shields as bait.
But if this is a trap, Victarion asked himself, then who am I to stop the Crow's Eye from wandering in? He had contemplated killing his older brother after the Kingsmoot, after all. If I do not strike him myself, am I still accursed in the eyes of the Drowned God? Victarion feared the wrath of no man, but the gods... He had considered sending a killer after the Crow's Eye, but again he was struck in terror of the Drowned God. But this... was this indirect enough?
And yet, if Victarion suspected a trap, Euron likely already knew. It was his plan, after all. No, Victarion could not rely on the roses to dispose of his problems for him. He would have to find some other way. "Euron's blasphemies will bring down the Drowned God's wrath on us all," Aeron had told him, back on Old Wyk. Victarion remembered Lord Blacktyde's words. "Balon was mad, Aeron is madder, and Euron is maddest of them all."
Lord Blacktyde had tried to sail home after the Kingsmoot, refusing to respect Euron's claim. Victarion, with his damned habit for obedience, had cut off his exit with the Iron Fleet at Euron's orders, and the young lord's ship was seized, even as he was dragged naked before Euron and his mongrels and cut into seven parts. That was the service that had won Victarion the dusky woman as his thrall. The killing of his fellow Ironborn. The killing of his fellow captain.
Victarion finished with a grunt, pulling out at the last second, hauling her off his bed and pushing her to her knees on the floor, spraying the inside of the dusky woman's mouth with his seed, taking another gulp from his wineskin and spitting it into her mouth immediately after. She tried to get the doubtless vile mixture down, but a substantial amount of the murky liquid spilled out again onto the floor, staining her breasts and stomach. Victarion forced her head down, vengeful.
"Lap it up," he ordered. "Not a drop of my seed is to go to waste." The girl obeyed, lips sucking and teeth scraping at the dirty floor, trying to lick without a tongue. For a moment Victarion imagined her humiliation as Euron's, imagined his elder brother on his knees, begging before him, kissing the earth he trod on. The image made his heart sing.
Victarion buckled his belt, lowering himself down to his haunches beside her. "I could kill him," he told her as she fruitlessly rubbed her face on the floor. His hand came down hard on her behind, leaving the beginnings of a deep bruise on her supple flesh.
"I could kill your former master. Though to an Ironborn it is a great sin to kill your king, and a greater one to kill your brother. I could kill him with these very hands." He spanked her again, hard. She let out a little yelp of pain, eyes prickling with unshed tears.
...
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