He had heard the terrifying stories about Euron before.
They said he pleased the Storm God with bloody sacrifices, granting his fleet an inhuman speed, fast enough to circle the Jade Sea and the Summer Sea within a single year, even to reach Asshai-by-the-Shadow.
They said he had no need to hug the coast, that he could find his way through the deepest, darkest seas.
He had always dismissed such tales as sailors' exaggerated horror stories.
But now, faced with this unmistakably supernatural sight, he believed every word.
Fear and awe surged through Waldon's heart.
"Hahahaha!"
Euron Greyjoy threw his arms wide and laughed madly at the sky, as if embracing the gale summoned by blood and dark power.
"Do you see it, you fools? This is true power! Now, let's give those hothouse flowers a proper taste of it!"
He stabbed a finger toward the immense Reach fleet in the distance, his single eye gleaming with bloodlust.
"Signal all ships. Scatter! Circle those clumsy fat pigs like sharks, and use your great crossbows to punch through their hulls!"
More than a hundred blood-soaked longships tore across the sea at astonishing speed.
They slipped effortlessly past the Reach fleet's attempts to block them, racing in wide, sweeping arcs around the massive warships.
"Fire the great crossbows!"
Reach officers shouted themselves hoarse.
Countless bolts flew toward the impossibly fast longships, but their speed and agility rendered most shots useless. The bolts splashed into the sea, and even the few that struck only scraped along the sides.
The Ironborn's counterfire was far deadlier.
Heavy crossbows and harpoon-like great crossbows mounted on the prows were handled by seasoned sailors, who calmly aimed at the Reach ships just above the waterline and fired again and again.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The massive bolts slammed into wooden hulls with terrifying force.
Timbers exploded into splinters. Gaping holes tore open.
Seawater rushed in at once.
One Reach warship after another began to list as water poured into their holds.
Soldiers and sailors scrambled in panic to plug the breaches, but most efforts were futile.
The heavy ships sank slowly. Men leapt into the freezing sea, only to be swallowed by the waves moments later.
More and more bodies bobbed on the surface.
Aboard their racing ships, the Ironborn shouted and laughed wildly, their taunts ringing across the water.
On the Honor of Oldtown, Baelor Hightower's earlier arrogance and contempt had vanished completely, replaced by shock and disbelief.
"Impossible! This is impossible! How can their ships be this fast?!"
Paxter's face had gone gray.
He understood naval warfare far better than Baelor, and that only made the situation clearer, and worse.
He watched as the fleet his house and its allies had painstakingly built was torn apart by longships that moved with unnatural speed and agility.
The wind at sea had also turned strangely erratic.
"They're too fast..." Paxter murmured hoarsely. "This isn't the power of ordinary men..."
Gunthor's eyes burned red as he roared, "We have to force them into boarding actions! We outnumber them!"
Paxter shook his head sharply.
"How? Can't you see it yet? They'll never let us close. Our ships crawl like snails compared to theirs."
Baelor watched another Hightower warship sink beneath the waves. His heart clenched as he screamed,
"No! This can't continue! We'll be annihilated! Retreat! All ships turn back! Fall back to Oldtown Harbor and use the port defenses against them!"
All he wanted now was to escape this cursed stretch of sea.
Paxter nodded with difficulty. It meant surrendering control of the waters to the Ironborn and risking pursuit, but it was still better than being picked off one by one like helpless targets.
The surviving Reach warships began their labored turn. Sailors hauled on the sails, oarsmen rowed with all their strength, and the fleet withdrew in disarray toward Oldtown Harbor.
On the Silence, Euron watched it all through his Myr lens, clearly making out the enemy flagship's movements and the way the whole fleet was beginning to break and run.
The dangerous smile on his face only widened.
"Trying to flee?" he murmured. "Do these fat pigs think they can scuttle back to their pen?"
He lowered his voice, almost tender.
"Too late. The feast has only just begun..."
At that moment, the waters of Whispering Sound, never truly calm, suddenly began to boil and heave.
As if something vast were waking on the sea floor.
The lookout on the Honor of Oldtown let out a scream of pure panic.
"The water! Look under the water, there's something huge!"
Baelor, Paxter, and Gunthor rushed to the rail and peered down.
The sea beneath the hull had turned black as ink.
A shadow moved slowly below the surface, so enormous it defied description, its outline blurred and indistinct.
But its size alone was enough to make any man's heart seize.
Paxter understood first.
He had weathered countless storms and heard the oldest sailors' tales. Terror flooded him in an instant.
"A Kraken!" he cried. "A colossal Kraken!"
Before the words had even left his mouth, a horrific tentacle burst through the surface, studded with massive suckers and jagged, horn-like ridges, throwing up a towering wall of water.
The suckers writhed, reeking of brine and rot.
The tentacle smashed down onto a Reach warship nearby that was in the middle of turning.
CRASH!!!
The ship's keel shattered at once. The hull split, broke apart, and came undone in an instant.
Soldiers and sailors were flung into the air before they could even scream, or else crushed to pulp beneath the tentacle and the collapsing timbers.
Baelor stared, slack-jawed, at the scene like the end of the world. His mind went blank, unable to make sense of what he was seeing.
But the catastrophe had only begun.
More immense tentacles surged from the sea, lashing and coiling in frenzy, crushing the retreating Reach fleet.
Ships were overturned as easily as toys, dragged into the depths, or slammed apart into splinters.
Then the thickest tentacle of all rose and crashed down onto the midsection of the Honor of Oldtown.
Snap—CRASH!!!
Even the Reach's greatest flagship could not endure such monstrous force.
Planks splintered. The keel gave way with a sickening crack.
The enormous ship split clean in two. Masts toppled with a thunderous roar, sending geysers of water into the air.
Baelor, Paxter, Gunthor, and countless nobles, officers, and sailors were hurled into the freezing chaos of the sea, swallowed by waves. Whether any lived, no one could tell.
Aboard the Silence, Euron Greyjoy threw back his head and roared with laughter, savoring the total ruin wrought by the deep-sea beast he had drawn in.
"Now! Faster, now!"
He bellowed at the stunned Waldon and the other captains.
"These deep-sea brutes follow the Storm. They can't tell friend from foe. While they're still feasting on the Reach, full speed ahead! Take Oldtown Harbor!"
The Ironborn snapped out of their shock. In its place came fervor.
They worked the longships driven by the blood-soaked sails, steering wide around the waters where the Kraken raged, and surged toward Oldtown Harbor, its defenses suddenly laid wide open.