The sea off the coast of Fair Isle was a turbulent expanse of steel-grey waves, churned into a frothing frenzy by the oars of a hundred dying ships.
Stannis Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End and Master of Ships, stood on the quarterdeck of the Fury. His jaw was set so tightly that the grinding of his teeth was audible over the roar of the ocean. He was the anvil of the royal vanguard, and his forces were taking a terrible pounding.
The Iron Fleet, commanded by the fearsome Victarion Greyjoy, had sailed into the straits exactly as Stannis had calculated. The Ironborn, arrogant and hungry for the wealth of the westerlands and the Reach, had seen the Royal Fleet guarding the channel and charged headlong. They were eager for the close-quarters boarding actions and deck-brawls they excelled at.
Stannis had arrayed his war galleys in a tight crescent formation, denying the swift, shallow-drafted longships the room they needed to flank his line. It was a disciplined, methodical defense, but the sheer ferocity of the Ironborn was taking a heavy toll.
Grappling hooks flew through the air in dense, deadly swarms, biting deep into the wooden rails of the royal galleys. Men screamed as they were pulled into the freezing depths, dragged down by the weight of their own chainmail and armor.
"Hold the line!" Stannis barked to his signalman, his voice devoid of panic, resonating with cold authority. "Tell the Sea Dragon to close the gap on the left. Do not let them break the crescent."
A few hundred yards away, amidst the chaos of burning pitch and splintering oars, King Robert Baratheon was in his element. He had insisted on commanding the vanguard galley.
Robert was not a sailor, but once the ships locked together, the wooden deck became a battlefield, and there was no greater warrior on a battlefield than the Demon of the Trident.
Through the smoke and the sea spray, Stannis could see his older brother. Robert, wielding a massive, blood-slicked warhammer, was clearing the deck of an Ironborn longship single-handedly. He let out a booming, terrifying laugh as he smashed a reaver over the side, his antlered helm glinting in the pale sunlight.
But bravery alone could not win a naval war. Victarion Greyjoy's flagship, the Iron Victory, a massive longship bristling with heavily armored reavers, was carving a path straight toward the center of the royal formation.
Victarion himself, clad in heavy plate armor layered with a kraken-shaped helm, stood at the prow, wielding a wicked battle-axe. He was a brute, a force of raw destruction, and he was slowly breaking Stannis's line.
"My Lord!" the captain of the Fury shouted, pointing a trembling finger toward the northern horizon. "Look!"
Stannis turned his cold blue eyes to the north.
The wind had shifted, blowing strong and steady from the Sunset Sea. Riding that wind was a sight the Ironborn had never anticipated, and one that left the Master of Ships in a state of absolute, silent shock.
Stannis Baratheon knew every class of warship in the known world. He knew the sleek Braavosi runners, the heavy Swan ships of the Summer Isles, and the massive, cumbersome galleys of the Arbor.
The ships bearing down from the north were none of those.
They were mountains of dark timber, riding incredibly high and proud above the whitecaps. They did not rely on banks of oars dipping into the water. Instead, they featured massive, triangular lateen sails.
Stannis gripped the rail of the Fury, his tactical mind racing. The wind was blowing from the northwest. Traditional square-rigged galleys and longships could only sail with the wind behind them. But these Northern ships... they were cutting across the wind. The triangular sails allowed them to tack at sharp angles, harnessing the gale with explosive, terrifying efficiency.
It was a technological leap that rendered the traditional Westerosi fleets instantly obsolete.
Fifty Northern Carracks. The Western Fleet of House Stark.
Eddard Stark stood on the high forecastle of the flagship, the Winter's Wrath. The wind whipped his dark grey cloak around him, but he stood perfectly still.
He closed his eyes, extending his consciousness outward. The Force Sense spread across the water, cutting through the visual noise of the smoke and the waves. He felt the chaotic, desperate struggle of the Royal Fleet to the south. He felt the bloodlust and blind aggression of the Ironborn in the center.
"Perfect," Ned murmured. The timing was flawless.
"Lord Stark!" Jorah Mormont called out from the helm, his voice rough with excitement. "We have the wind! The Iron Fleet is fully committed to the straits. They cannot turn!"
"Close the jaw, Jorah," Ned commanded, his voice amplified by a subtle push of the Force, reaching every officer on the deck. "Signal the fleet. Pincer formation. We do not board. We crush."
A deep, resonant blast from a mammoth-horn echoed from the Winter's Wrath, immediately answered by forty-nine other horns across the Northern line.
The Carracks accelerated. With their deep keels and lateen sails, they cut through the rough waters of the Sunset Sea with a speed and stability that rowed galleys could never achieve. They bore down on the exposed rear of the Iron Fleet with devastating speed.
The Ironborn at the rear of the formation realized the danger too late. Men shouted in terror, pointing at the towering wooden fortresses bearing down on them. The longships tried to turn, their oars clashing and tangling in the confined space of the straits, but there was nowhere to go. They were trapped between Stannis Baratheon's iron anvil and Eddard Stark's monstrous hammer.
"Scorpions! Fire!" Ned shouted.
The high decks of the Carracks erupted in a chorus of heavy, metallic thwacks.
Massive iron bolts streaked through the air. They did not just hit the Ironborn ships; they obliterated them. The bolts punched through the thin, clinker-built hulls of the longships with terrifying ease, shattering oars, impaling men, and letting the freezing sea rush into the holds.
And then came the physical impact.
The Winter's Wrath slammed into the rear-guard flagship of the Ironborn left flank. The Carrack's reinforced, iron-capped prow sheared straight through the center of the longship. The sound of rending timber was deafening.
The longship snapped in half, its crew screaming as they were tossed into the churning water. The Carrack did not even slow down, its massive displacement simply plowing over the wreckage.
Across the line, the scene repeated itself. The heavy Northern ships crushed the pride of the Iron Islands under their keels.
---
While the Western Fleet executed a textbook naval massacre, Ned Stark's mind was elsewhere.
He had not come to Fair Isle just to win a battle. He had come to eliminate a future threat at its root. Victarion was a brute. Balon was a fool. But Euron Greyjoy was a danger to the entire world. Left alive, Euron would be exiled, travel the world, learn dark sorcery, and return to Westeros bringing ruin and dark magic to their shores.
Ned closed his eyes, tuning out the screams of the drowning Ironborn and the crunch of shattering wood. He sought a specific signature in the Force. He bypassed the mundane anger and fear of the common sailors. He looked for a dark, twisted void of psychopathy and malice.
He found it.
It was slipping away.
On the far eastern edge of the battle, hugging the treacherous, jagged reefs that the heavier galleys and Carracks dared not approach, a single ship was cutting through the water with unnatural silence.
It was a longship, painted the color of dried blood, and its single, large square sail was completely black.
The Silence.
Euron Greyjoy, seeing the trap close, was abandoning his family and his fleet, slipping away into the shadows to save his own skin.
Ned's eyes snapped open. He pointed a gauntleted finger toward the red hull slipping through the mist.
"Captain!" Ned shouted. "Bring us about! Hard to port! That red ship with the black sails—intercept it!"
The ship's captain, a seasoned Manderly mariner, looked at the trajectory. "My Lord! That puts us dangerously close to the eastern reefs! Our draft is too deep. We will tear the bottom out of the ship!"
"I will guide us," Ned stated, his voice brooking no argument. "Do not slow down. Full sail. Ram that vessel."
The captain swallowed hard but roared the orders. The Winter's Wrath heeled hard, its massive timbers groaning as it broke away from the main line of slaughter and angled toward the rocky shallows.
Ned moved to the very tip of the prow. He reached out with the Force, extending his awareness beneath the churning waves. He felt the jagged coral heads, the submerged rocks, the deadly traps of the shoreline.
"Port three degrees!" Ned yelled back to the helmsman. "Hold! Now starboard!"
He navigated the massive Carrack through a minefield of unseen stone, using his preternatural senses to thread a path that would have sunk any normal captain.
Euron Greyjoy, standing at the tiller of the Silence, looked back. His eyes widened in genuine surprise as he saw the towering Northern warship cutting through the reefs, gaining on him with impossible speed.
The Silence was fast, but the wind was howling directly behind the Winter's Wrath, filling the lateen sails to their bursting point. The gap closed rapidly. Two hundred yards. One hundred.
"Scorpions!" Ned ordered. "Aim for the mast! Bring it down!"
The heavy ballistae on the forecastle snapped. Two bolts went wide, splashing harmlessly into the sea. The third, guided by a subtle, telekinetic nudge from Ned, struck true. It hit the thick wooden mast of the Silence dead center, splintering the timber.
With a sickening crack, the black sail collapsed, the mast toppling over the side and dragging heavily in the water. The Silence jerked to a halt, crippled.
"Prepare to board!" Ned roared. "Grappling lines!"
The Winter's Wrath loomed over the crippled longship. The massive hull scraped against the side of the Silence, showering the deck with splinters. Iron hooks flew from the Carrack, biting deep into the red wood, locking the two ships together in a death embrace.
Ned did not wait for the boarding planks.
Clad in his heavy grey plate armor, a wolfskin cloak billowing behind him, he leapt from the high rail of the Carrack. The distance was over fifteen feet down to the deck of the Silence.
Ned used the Force to cushion his fall, landing on the blood-red deck with a heavy, metallic thud that cracked the floorboards beneath his boots, but left him entirely unharmed.
Behind him, dozens of Northern marines began to swing down on ropes, shouting their battle cries.
But on the Silence, there were no battle cries in response.
The crew of Euron's ship did not shout. They did not scream. They were mutes, their tongues ripped out by their sadistic captain. They fought with an eerie, terrifying silence, their faces twisted into masks of desperate malice.
A dozen mutes swarmed Ned the moment he landed, wielding jagged axes and curved Essosi blades. They fought with an unnatural detachment, seemingly impervious to pain or fear.
Ned reached over his shoulder and gripped the hilt protruding from his back scabbard.
He drew Ice.
The ancestral Valyrian steel greatsword was traditionally an executioner's blade, deemed far too massive and unwieldy for the tight, chaotic quarters of a ship's deck. A normal man would catch the six-foot blade in the rigging or the rails. But with the Force flowing through his veins, amplifying his strength tenfold, the dark, smoky steel felt completely weightless in his hands.
He stepped forward.
A mute lunged with a spear. Ned pivoted on his heel, letting the spear pass harmlessly by, and in the same fluid motion, brought the greatsword around in a tight, horizontal arc. The Valyrian steel sheared through the wooden spear shaft, the man's chainmail, and his torso with zero resistance.
Two more rushed him from the sides. Ned stepped inside their guard. He drove his armored elbow into the face of the man on his left, shattering his jaw, while simultaneously bringing Ice up in a brutal, diagonal slash. The dark steel cleaved entirely through the second attacker's iron-bound shield and the collarbone beneath it.
He did not pause. He did not break stride. He walked straight down the center of the deck, moving toward the quarterdeck. Every time a mute stepped into his path, they died. A single swing. A parry and a thrust. An economy of motion that was brutal, efficient, and utterly unstoppable.
He swung the massive greatsword with the speed of a rapier, effortlessly striking down the armed men in his path. The eerie silence of the mutes was broken only by the wet thud of falling bodies and the sharp ringing of Valyrian steel parting lesser metal.
He reached the steps leading to the raised quarterdeck at the stern.
Standing there, flanked by two massive, heavily scarred mutes, was Euron Greyjoy.
He wore armor of dark, scaled leather, a kraken embroidered in gold thread upon his breast. His dark hair blew wildly in the wind. He had pale, flawless skin and lips that were tinted a faint blue.
He did not look afraid. He looked thoroughly amused.
"Eddard Stark," Euron called out, his voice smooth and mocking. "I must say, you make quite an entrance. You ruined a perfectly good mast."
Ned stopped at the base of the stairs. He looked up at the Crow's Eye. He felt the cold, oily sickness of Euron's presence in the Force. There was no redeeming quality here. Just a dark void.
"Did you come to die here today, Stark?" Euron asked, his lecherous smile widening, revealing perfectly white teeth. He drew his blade from his hip. "Because I can assure you, the Drowned God is very hungry."
Ned did not answer. He had no intention of talking to the pirate.
He walked up the stairs.
The two massive mutes lunged forward to protect their captain.
Ned fed a burst of Force Speed into his legs.
He blurred forward. Before the mute on the left could swing his heavy maul, Ned's greatsword flashed, severing the man's hands at the wrists. He kicked the man viciously in the chest, sending him tumbling backward. The second mute raised a thick iron broadsword, but Ned brought Ice down with overwhelming force, shearing straight through the iron blade and the man holding it.
In two seconds, Euron's guards were dead.
Euron's smile faltered. The amusement vanished from his blue eyes, replaced by a sudden, sharp realization.
Euron slashed wildly aiming a blindingly fast strike at Ned's neck.
Ned stepped into the strike. He brought Ice up in a harsh, ringing parry. The two blades clashed. Euron expected the heavy impact to stagger the Northern lord. Instead, there was a deafening, ringing chime that echoed across the deck.
Ned pushed his Force energy entirely into his stance and his grip. The dark, smoky blade of Ice held perfectly firm, absorbing the entire kinetic force of the blow without yielding a single inch.
A shockwave traveled up Euron's arm, numbing his fingers.
Using the locked blades as a pivot point, Ned twisted his body, stepping entirely inside Euron's guard. With his free, armored left hand, he delivered a crushing, Force-enhanced palm strike directly into Euron's sternum.
The blow caved in the dark leather armor and shattered Euron's ribs. The breath left the pirate's lungs in a violent rush. He staggered backward, his grip on his stolen sword failing entirely, the curved blade clattering onto the wooden deck.
Ned did not let him recover. He spun, generating massive momentum, and brought Ice around in a flat, perfect, horizontal sweep.
The heavy steel bit into the side of Euron Greyjoy's neck. It sheared through muscle, through the spine, and out the other side.
Euron's head spun into the air. The head hit the deck and rolled into the scuppers. The lecherous smile was permanently frozen on his lips, locked in a state of eternal, shocked arrogance.
His headless body stood for a moment, blood pouring from the stump, before collapsing heavily onto the wooden planks.
Ned lowered his greatsword.
He turned and looked down at the main deck. The Northern marines had made short work of the remaining mutes. The Silence was secured.
Ned walked to the rail of the captured ship and looked back toward the straits.
The battle was over. The trap had worked flawlessly.
The Iron Fleet was a floating graveyard of shattered timber and burning pitch. The pincer movement had crushed them entirely. Stannis's galleys had held the line, and the Northern Carracks had ground the longships to matchwood from behind.
In the center of the devastation, Ned saw the Stag's Fury grappled to the ruined husk of the Iron Victory.
King Robert Baratheon was standing on the rail of the Ironborn flagship, holding his bloody warhammer high above his head. At his feet lay the battered, caved-in corpse of Victarion Greyjoy.
Robert let out a roar of absolute triumph that carried across the water, echoing off the cliffs of Fair Isle.
Two hours later, the surviving ships of the combined fleets limped into the small, sheltered harbor of Fair Isle. The usually pristine beaches of the island were littered with wreckage and the detritus of war.
Ned walked down the gangplank of the Winter's Wrath. He wiped the blood from Ice with a rag before sliding the massive blade back into its scabbard, his grey cloak heavy with salt spray.
From down the pier, a massive figure pushed through the crowd of cheering sailors and weary soldiers.
Robert Baratheon was covered from head to toe in gore. His black hair was matted to his forehead, his antlered helm was missing half a horn, and his heavy plate armor was deeply dented in three places. But his face was split in a wide grin.
"NED!" Robert bellowed, his voice hoarse from screaming.
Robert threw his massive arms around the Lord of Winterfell. He picked Ned completely off his feet, crushing him in a bear hug that smelled of blood, sweat, and sea water.
"You glorious, frozen bastard!" Robert laughed, setting Ned down and shaking him by the shoulders. "Did you see it? Did you see the look on the squids' faces when your floating castles appeared behind them? By the Gods, it was beautiful!"
"It was effective," Ned smiled, returning the embrace firmly. "You look terrible, Robert."
"I feel magnificent!" Robert roared, slapping his own armored chest. "I caved in Victarion's breastplate! The big brute thought his armor made him invincible. He forgot about the hammer!"
Stannis Baratheon walked up behind the King. Stannis looked closely at Ned, his eyes analyzing the Northern Lord with a new, intense respect.
"A perfectly executed maneuver, Lord Stark," Stannis said tightly. "Your arrival was timely. And your ships... they sail into the wind. I have never seen such a design."
"We build for efficiency in the North, Lord Stannis," Ned said respectfully, bowing his head to the Master of Ships. "And your line held perfectly. Without your anvil, our hammer would have struck nothing but water."
Stannis gave a short, stiff nod of acknowledgment.
"The Iron Fleet is at the bottom of the sea," Robert declared, throwing an arm around Ned's shoulders and turning him toward the island's keep. "Balon Greyjoy has nothing left but a damp rock and a bad attitude. We sail for Pyke tomorrow, Ned. We're going to knock his miserable castle into the sea!"
Ned looked back at the captured red hull of the Silence bobbing in the harbor. The immediate threat was gone. The dark magic was stopped before it could begin.
"We will, Robert," Ned said. "But tonight, we rest and tend to the wounded."
"And we drink!" Robert cheered, steering them toward the nearest tavern on the island.