Heron Hall sat trapped within the low mud-flats, the damp air thick with the heavy stench of rotting reeds and river silt.
Sawane Botley drained the last drop of stolen ale down his throat, the liquid sharp and hot as it burned down his chest.
He slammed the heavy pewter flagon onto the rough timber table, the metal striking the wood with a dull, heavy thud. "Curse Gorold Goodbrother to the depths."
That fool from Hammerhorn had deployed his alliance with Victarion Greyjoy to secure the high command of the Greenfork fleet, choosing to send a true lord of Lordsport into this poor, isolated corner of the realm. Gorold had assigned Sawane Botley to strip these scattered, penniless villages where a man could not find a single chest of silver or a proper woman for his cot. Sawane still remembered the open, unvarnished mockery on Gorold's face when he spoke of digging out rat-holes in the brush. Every sailor with eyes could see the strategy for what it was, a calculated effort to isolate his house, denying them the true glory and wealth of the grand expedition.
The heavy leather curtain of the tent was ripped back with a sharp click of iron rings. "Lord Captain!"
Two broad-shouldered ironborn stepped through the threshold, dragging a broken, half-dead shape between their boots. The man was unable to hold his own feet, his toes tracing two long, wet ruts through the dark mud of the floor.
"The picket found him shivering along the reeds, my Lord. He belonged to young Harlon's oar."
The young sailor who had been dragged into the light was shaking like a dry leaf in an autumn gale, his clothes soaked through and caked with black grease and dried blood. Beneath his torn leather jerkin, a deep, jagged gash stretched from his collarbone down to his ribs, his teeth clicking together with a frantic weight.
Sawane lifted his eyelids, a dull, weary irritation flaring in his gray stare as he recognized the face. The boy was an ordinary oarsman, but he had spent his time following his eldest son's stirrup, answering his every whim. "Eymund?"
"Where is Harlon?"
Sawane's voice was a low, rough rasp, his mind tracking the boy's state with a growing discomfort.
"Where has my clever son taken his oar this time?"
Eymund snapped his chin up, his face caked with grime, his wide eyes full of an absolute, unmoving horror. His lips parted, trembling violently, but no words cleared his throat.
Sawane felt the air in the tent turn cold. He slammed his palm against the oak table, sending a pewter cup spinning into the dirt. "Speak your text!"
Eymund finally forced two short words through his teeth. "Dead... all dead."
The simple phrase seemed to empty his frame of its remaining breath, his spine going loose as he collapsed flat onto the mud, his limbs twitching with an uncontrollable tremor.
"Captain Harlon... he is down! Every axe was broken in the grass!"
The pavilion went perfectly quiet, the stillness absolute. Sawane Botley sat frozen in his high chair, his features fixed in an unreadable mask. He looked as though he had not received the script, or perhaps his mind refused to validate the accounting.
Slowly, the lord of Lordsport lowered his gaze to look upon his own hands resting flat against the oak. They were large, calloused, and marked by a dozen old steel scars, hands that had choked the life from a hundred green-land men. Now, those fingers were shaking.
He spoke again, his voice dropping into a soft whisper that barely cleared the canvas. "Repeat the words."
Eymund scrambled to press his palms into the mud, his phrases frantic and disorganized. "We... we stepped our boots across the border... into Willowdale..."
"The smallfolk cutting the wheat... no! They were not plowmen! They were monsters of the soil! They hoarded ringmail and long blades behind the hedges! They swarmed our shields..."
Sawane did not wait for the rest of the story. He slowly retrieved the shattered remains of his flagon, his large, weathered gauntlet closing tight over the metal.
The heavy pewter collapsed beneath his grip, the sharp edges cutting deep into his palm. A mixture of sour ale and dark blood dripped through his fingers, hitting the mud drop by drop.
A violent, burning fury erupted in his chest, hot enough to pain his lungs.
An ordinary son could be replaced easily enough, he held a dozen boys in his hall and more bastards scattered across the rocky shores of Pyke than the maesters could count. But Harlon was different. He was the chosen heir, the strongest seed he had raised, a wolf who carried his own fierce likeness.
Yet, in this hour, the dominant weight in his thoughts was not grief, but a profound, bone-deep humiliation. An absolute, deep insult to his name.
His firstborn, a Botley, a future master of Lordsport, had allowed his axe to be broken in a muddy ditch, put to the sword by a company of common farmers who lived on the grass.
If that report reached the longships at the Twins, if that story found the ear of that fool Gorold Goodbrother at Hammerhorn, Sawane Botley and his entire lineage would become a standard tavern jest for every drunken sailor from Great Wyk to Old Wyk.
His voice turned cold as the deep water. "Lift the rat."
The two ironborn crudely snatched Eymund from the floor, lifting him by the leather like a wet chicken. Sawane rose from his seat, his massive frame casting a long, heavy shadow over the shivering sailor.
He stepped across the mud, using his uninjured hand to clamp down on Eymund's jaw, forcing the boy's face up to meet his stare. "Look upon my eyes!"
Eymund stared into the gray flame of the lord's fury, his breath failing.
"Deliver what your eyes marked, down to the letter. If your tongue drops a single lie to clear your name, I shall drag it from your throat and shove it down your breeches."
Completely undone by the terror, Eymund emptied his mind, delivering every detail of the slaughter. He described how the plowmen had donned their ringmail within minutes, how they had held their lines against the charge without a foot of retreat, and how they had laughed while harvesting the heads of the crew to tie along their belts.
His voice rose to a sharp, high shriek as the memory took hold. "Lord Captain! They... they are more savage than any crew on the sea!"
"They ignore the steel! Their eyes are green with the hunger! They looked upon our axes the exact way a hireling looks upon a gold dragon or a fresh woman! They are ironborn grown on the dry grass!"
The muscles along Sawane's jaw twitched. He listened to the wild text, the suspicion hardening behind his eyes. The cowards of the river, those soft creatures who turned the dirt for their masters and knelt before the septons, those sheep who soiled themselves the moment a gray sail cleared the bar, had suddenly produced warriors more ruthless than the longships?
It was the excuse of a coward, a pathetic story invented by a survivor to hide his own flight from a simple field.
"Enough!" Sawane cut him off, his voice flat as he released the jaw. He turned back to his chair, retrieving a scrap of wool to methodically wipe the blood and the ale from his fingers.
A cruel, mocking sneer broke through his beard. "The green-land smallfolk do not breed the lances you describe, rat."
"Harlon is down because his mind was green. He chose to treat the field like a fair, and a company of rustics with dung-forks caught his shields in a corner."
"And as for your person, Eymund, you are a stain upon the oar. A pathetic coward who watched his captain fall and chose to burrow in a ditch to save his own skin."
Sawane had no further use for the breath. Every line the boy delivered merely added to the insult his house had received.
He gave a slight wave of his hand to the two guards, his tone devoid of human color.
"The iron price does not shed ironborn blood."
"Take this shivering dog down to the longship and hang his bulk beneath the hull."
"Let him join the Drowned God early, and let him ask the depths if there is a place in the halls for a piece of offal who lacks the courage to hold his edge."
"No! Lord Paramount! The words are true! The grass is hot!" Eymund screamed, his hands claws as he fought the leather, but the two guards carried him through the threshold without a word of negotiation. "The text is whole! The Drowned God watch me!"
The shouting stopped abruptly outside the picket lines, turning into a short, choked rasp before the camp went quiet once more. Inside the canvas, only the heavy, rhythmic breath of Sawane Botley remained. The ledger required an accounting.
The vengeance had nothing to do with the boy's skin, it was for the standing of the Botley name among the high seats of Pyke. The account could not remain open. He would use the blood of these plowmen to wash the mud from his shield.
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