He opened his mouth, struggling for breath.
Veritis had already collapsed to the deck in terror, his trousers soaked, the stench acrid and foul.
"Engage... fight..."
Salladhor forced the words out through clenched teeth, hoarse and rasping, every syllable torn from his throat.
But in this death-ridden sea of fire and panic, his command was pitifully faint.
The Valyria shuddered as another panicked allied ship slammed into her stern, the hull groaning under the strain.
From the rear came greater chaos. The twenty-five burning hulks had finally plowed into the already frenzied center and rear of the fleet.
Fanned by the wind and fed by oil, the flames spread as though alive.
One warship after another caught fire, sails blazing like torches, masts snapping with thunderous cracks before crashing down into the inferno.
Smoke billowed in choking clouds, blotting out the sky.
The narrow channel had become a boiling cauldron.
Pirates scorched by the flames shrieked as they hurled themselves into the freezing currents, only to be swept away in an instant.
In their frenzy to escape fire and collision, ships rammed and shoved each other harder still, some even smashing allies aside and driving them onto the deadly reefs.
"Board them! Force the grapple! Break through!"
Salladhor's eyes blazed red, like a gambler gone mad. Waving his sword, he bellowed until his voice broke.
It was the only move left to him, his final desperate gamble.
But the answer was not the pounding of oars. It was the shriek of death from ahead.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Bolts thick as a child's arm, their barbed tips glinting, and stones the size of millstones tore through the smoke from the wall of ships before them. They slammed into Salladhor's vessels crammed tight at the front.
Thud! Crack!
A medium warship's flank was smashed by a boulder, its thick oak planks splintering like kindling, a gaping hole torn wide as seawater gushed in.
Squelch! Aah—!
One massive bolt ripped through three pirates pressed along the gunwale, skewering them like candied fruit before nailing them to the deck in a spray of blood and viscera.
Boom!
Another stone slammed into a ship just ahead of the Valyria. Its mainmast snapped with a report like thunder, crashing down with its rigging to crush the sailors below into pulp.
Lo Quen had never intended to board.
He stood cold and unmoving on his quarterdeck, his gaze cutting through the smoke and chaos of the battlefield.
His orders rang out clear and sharp. "All heavy ballistae and catapults—fire into the densest part of their fleet!"
The gap of a few hundred yards was a chasm the Salladhor fleet could never cross.
Lo Quen's fleet obeyed with merciless precision. Bolts whistled, tearing through the air. Stones traced arcs of ruin, reaping lives and smashing hulls without pause.
The ships clustered at Salladhor's front had no chance to strike back.
They burned, shattered, and sank.
The Valyria, battered again and again by allied ships crashing into her stern, rocked and tilted like a dead leaf in a storm.
Each strike came with the groan and crack of timbers splitting apart.
"Lord... the stern keel's cracking..."
A bloodied officer staggered onto the sterncastle, his voice breaking in despair.
Salladhor's face had drained of all color, his lips trembling. Any trace of composure was gone.
Only one thought remained—escape.
"To shore! Now! Get the boats to shore!" he screamed, his voice ragged and broken.
But the command was needless.
His men, consumed by terror, were already leaping into the icy sea like dumplings into a pot, swimming desperately toward the slick, mossy rocks along the cliffs.
Survival drowned out all else.
His loyal guards dragged and shoved him into a small boat, barely big enough for a handful of men.
The oarsmen rowed like madmen, forcing the craft through drifting wreckage, burning slicks of oil, and the bodies of the drowning.
Frigid seawater splashed over them, stinking of blood and charred flesh.
Salladhor turned back. His once-mighty fleet, the foundation of his rule over the Stepstones, was nothing but a graveyard adrift in fire.
Smoke swallowed the sky. Flames writhed and devoured. Ships broke apart and capsized. Screams, explosions, and the crackle of fire blended into a dirge of the end.
It felt as if a cold hand clutched Salladhor's heart and tore it apart, bleeding him dry.
Half a lifetime's wealth and power—all gone in an inferno.
The small boat finally scraped onto a strip of rocky, uneven mudflat at the base of the cliffs.
Salladhor stumbled ashore, drenched and filthy, icy mud flooding his silver-trimmed boots.
He staggered upright, staring at the devastation. Pain and fury raged so fiercely within him he nearly fainted.
But just as despair threatened to swallow him whole, a new horror arose.
From the towering, jagged shadows of the black reefs on either side, a piercing, inhuman scream erupted without warning.
The sound was sharp and brief, filled with the terror of imminent death, drowning out the ragged breathing of the survivors on the mudflats.
Salladhor and his guards snapped their heads around like startled rabbits.
From the seemingly lifeless shadows of the reefs, countless figures surged forth, clad in dark Valyrian armor.
Their movements were perfectly in step. In the haze of smoke and firelight, the Valyrian steel swords in their hands gleamed with a chilling, merciless light.
They came in overwhelming numbers, flooding across the flats in an instant.
These silent warriors were the Dragon Soul Guards Lo Quen had hidden here.
They burst out from the darkest corners like flawless instruments of slaughter, descending upon the pirates who had only just crawled ashore, dazed from terror, some still unarmed.
Squelch! Squelch!
The sound of blades slicing flesh and shattering bone fell thick as a sudden storm.
Screams rang out in waves, turning the small stretch of shore into a slaughterhouse.
The dozen hardened veterans guarding Salladhor roared like trapped beasts, drawing steel in a final, desperate stand.
But their blades struck the rippling dark armor of the Dragon Soul Guards only to throw off sparks, leaving not the slightest mark.
Every swing of a Dragon Soul Guard's sword claimed a life with precision.
On land, they were unstoppable.
In strength, speed, and defense, they were leagues beyond the pirates.
The guards fell like brittle stalks, swallowed whole by the silent tide of death.
The screams ended abruptly, leaving only the wet crunch of steel through flesh and the thud of bodies hitting the ground.
In only a few breaths, not one of Salladhor's men was left standing.
The stench of blood choked the air.
He stared in horror as the silent Dragon Soul Guards advanced step by step.
Terror gripped his heart so tightly it nearly burst.
"It's over!"
The thought thundered in his mind like a death knell.
Before he could react, a flash of steel burst across his vision, swelling in his fear-dilated eyes.
Squelch—!
A dull, wet sound, like a ripe melon splitting open.
The world tilted and spun.
The last sight his eyes beheld was his own headless body, clad in a velvet coat of deep wine-red, toppling forward into the blood-soaked mud.
His tall, bleached leather boots, traced with silver vinework, twitched once before sinking into the muck and gore.
His once-ambitious head, frozen in a mask of shock, terror, and bitter regret, rolled among the black reefs—only to be crushed under the blood-stained boot of a Dragon Soul Guard.
Prince of the Narrow Sea, Salladhor Saan, was dead.
The last scattered pirates, still resisting, saw their lord—once to them a god, invincible—fall in an instant, his body and head parted. Whatever will to fight remained guttered like a candle in the wind, and went out.
Clang! Clang!
Weapons hit the ground one after another.
The survivors, pale as corpses and trembling like leaves, dropped to their knees in the freezing mud and blood, raising their shaking hands.
"We surrender! We surrender!!"