After the Dragons Danced (A Rhaena Targaryen SI) -- 14. The Kraken King

DALTON GREYJOY - THE RED KRAKEN

First Moon, 132 AC | The Westerlands

The Kraken King surged through the waters of the Sunset Sea with great speed, its oars rising and falling into the sea with the rhythm of the drums. In the east, the full moon was already in the sky, it’s silver sheen reflecting off the waters as they sailed onward. Westward, the sky was as red as blood, the sun setting behind them and providing an exquisite backdrop for the fleet that was sailing behind him. His own fleet.

Dalton Greyjoy stood at the prow of The Kraken King, his flagship, his arm cradling the pommel of his sword; a great blade made of Dragonsteel that he had named Nightfall. The blade was his pride and joy; having stripped it off the corpse of the corsair he had slain in vengeance for his uncle’s death three years past. That had been the battle that had earned him his sobriquet, the Red Kraken, after gorging himself in blood and glory.

From the distance, the meagre patrol fleet that had been left guarding the shipyards of Lannisport turned to face them. Dalton resisted the urge of laughing. This was going to be a quick and a short battle. The token force the Lannisters had situated off the coast of their city was too small to do any damage to his fleet. A horn-blast signalled them to be ready for battle.

Alongside The Red Kraken was his brother Veron’s ship, Stormdancer. On the other side was his sister’s ship, Sea Demon. Yara was only fourteen, but she had taken to the Old Way almost as well as he did. Veron, to his dismay, did not relish battle as much as he did, but he did his part during their raids and conquests as he was supposed to. His two other siblings were in Faircastle, enjoying the wealth of Lord Farman, wealth they had paid the iron price to obtain. They were too young for battle at now, being only nine.

The oarsmen turned The Kraken King to its side, making sure that they were at an angle that would cause maximum damage to the ship approaching them. His sword was out of his scabbard and in his hand as they closed the distance to the Lannister ship.

A golden lion in the red field streamed upon the banners of the ship as it struggled to turn it’s considerable bulk, attempting to avoid the impending danger that was their longships.

He took a deep breath to steady his beating heart. Over-eagerness would be his undoing.

With a huge crash, The Kraken King raked the side of the enemy ship. There were screams, probably some of the oarsmen meeting their unfortunate ends in a haze of splintering wood. Dalton Greyjoy was first to attack, vaulting over the gunwale and boarding the enemy ship. He would not be like one of those green land commanders who stayed in the rear while his soldiers fought his battles for him. That was not the way of the ironborn.

The puny lions drew back, as all men did, at sight of the Red Kraken armed and armoured, his face hidden behind his crimson helm. They were clutching swords and spears and axes, but only a few of them were wearing armour; and those few had only shirts of sewn scales. These were no ironborn, Dalton thought. They still feared drowning. They were no men at all, either. Most of those had died fighting in the dragon’s war. Only green boys remained.

“Get him!” one of the puny lions purred, “He’s alone.”

Dalton did not deign to issue a reply to that challenge. One by the one they came, and one by one they died. Nightfall’s song was a deadly one. The Valyrian blade sliced past skin and bone and cartilage, severing heads and arms and limbs wherever it found them.

He felt the blow of an axe strike his back, and he turned to face the dead man. Nightfall removed his head from the rest of his body at the nose. Brain and blood sputtered all over the deck, drenching him in blood. Dalton laughed as another foe came at him. His eyes were as big as boiling eggs as Nightfall sliced him open from his left shoulder to his right hip, cleaving his body in two halves.

By then, the other ironborn had joined the fray.

Cousin Aeron “One-Eye” buried his axe into a man’s head. The corpse staggered, before falling into the sea once he wrenched the axe free. He caught a glimpse of his bastard cousin’s, Vickon Pyke’s arrow, penetrate the throat of another green lander. Dalton slew another man, and another. He had severed an arm off another, and was going for the killing blow when One-Eye’s axe went through his back.

His cousin nodded once their eyes met, the sapphire-blue gemstone gleaming in the moonlight. Dalton resisted a chuckle. The man was quite the admirer of the One-Eyed dragon prince. It was understandable. The prince had slain the most dragons in the dragon-war Dalton had been loath to join these past two years.

When he turned to look for another victim of his sword, he spied the other captain across the deck. Harras Harlaw, wielding Red Rain, was marching towards him, but Dalton bellowed a command for him to stay back.

“He’s mine!”

The captain drew his own sword and rushed to meet him, sword high up in the air and a curse on his tongue. Dalton let the blow fall upon his breastplate, before countering with a blow of his own. Nightfall sang a deadly song as it moved through the air, aimed to strike at the man’s collarbone. A shield blocked his strike, but the force and sharpness of Dragonsteel cracked it quite badly.

Dalton gave the man a few seconds to retreat and recover. He was enjoying this. There was great pleasure in toying with weak foes. The man clearly did not have nearly the same skill at arms as Dalton did, and all his sailors were but corpses upon the ship or already consigned to the sea besides.

Charging him again, this time the Red Kraken sidestepped his blow, and in a flash, drove Nightfall into the back of the Captain's leg, the blade piercing sewn scales and skin and bones as a hot knife would cut through butter.

On his knees, the man howled in pain. Nightfall was wrenched free, and blood sputtered everywhere immediately it left his skin. Dalton was bored now. With a lazy swing, the Captain's head was removed from the rest of the body. After a few convulsions that were usual among the headless, the corpse unceremoniously dropped at his feet.

Surveying the deck once more, Dalton ensured there were no foes left to be slain. Per his command, his sailors were to secure all the riches that could be found within the ship. Aye, there might not be as much, but any scrap of wealth they found was rightfully theirs. They had paid the iron price for it.

Upon leaving the enemy ship and leaving it to drown, The Red Kraken bent its oars towards the city proper. The other Lannister ships patrolling the coast had faced a similar fate to this one at the hands of the rest of his fellow ironborn. Dalton smiled at the thought. All along the coast of Westeros would shiver at the mention of them. Too long had they only spoken of their ways of reaving and plunder, even beginning to style it as the Old Way. They would have no Old Way. With the dragon’s dead, it would now be their only way.

The harbour of the city came into view, and with it, the skeletons of the fresh fleet that the green landers had thought to build to repel them. Their task was simple, to destroy everything in sight. Dalton had no interest in the skeletons of fat, hulking merchant cogs that they were trying to make. No, those would only slow him down.

A blast of the horn signalled their arrival, and the beginning of the destruction.

The moon was high in the sky when they finished. It, and the burning ships at the harbour, were the only things lighting up the night. The harbour looked like a dragon’s work, Dalton admitted amusingly. Mayhaps once they became formidable enough, feared enough, he might marry that insipid girl who thought to come to their shores and perform her little mummer’s play for them on her silver dragon. He could have white-haired children who rode dragons. That would be quite the legacy. Or he could take the girl and make her a salt-wife of his. He quashed the thought out of his mind. Those were fantasies of another day.

Tonight, they would bathe themselves in blood and glory. After forming up into a formation he had learned in his days fighting among the sellsword companies of Essos, the ironborn marched into the city. They had sacked Lannisport once already, but the fact that the godforsaken had the resources to even attempt to build another fleet showed that they had not done a thorough enough job of it. That would not happen again. The Lannister bitch might lock herself away in her mountain of gold. She would watch as the entirety of her city turned to ash.

The defenders of Lannisport were again mostly grey beards and green boys. They were easy enough to dispatch. In formation, his ironborn marched through the city, pillaging and seizing whatever they set their eyes upon, and slaying any who dared interrupt them.

The head of the formation was taken by Dalton himself. He led his sailors into the city, most of them with an axe or a sword or a hammer in the other. There were some behind them, who wheeled wagons and carts, to be used to take anything of value they would find, be it jewellery, food, fabrics and clothes, gold, and thralls. There were others who carried with them shields, in case they were faced with any archers, and more with arrows of their own to dispatch any rival archers. And more carried torches, to set fire to the city after they had stripped it bare.

Dalton and his column turned a corner on what must have been the market street, where they were met with resistance. Foes were rushing at him with wild abandon, and they got to work. Nightfall had cut the head off one, the hand off another and stabbed a third through his poorly-made armour into his chest, when he felt a hammer strike him square in his chest, denting his castle-forged armour. It took a moment to collect himself after being winded, and Dalton saw red. With one strike, he stabbed the man through his groin, through his armour, Nightfall surely emerging on the other side.

And on and on they went, for the rest of the night, and the entirety of the next day.

It was a cold morning, two days later, when they were finally finished. Dalton watched with utter satisfaction as the last of the carts was pushed towards the harbour, where the fleet was waiting. This one purely contained glittering jewels, much of it being made of gold that the Westerlands were so famous for; their gold now, he thought. These particular pieces had been seized from the castle that the Lannisters of Lannisport called their home. That castle was nothing more than a burning wreckage now, he knew, and all the Lannisters of Lannisport had been given to the Drowned God as sacrifice.

Peals of smoke rose high into the sky everywhere his eyes looked. In some places, fires still raging. There was scant screaming of people as they died, and others cursed them as the scum of the earth. A statue of one of the green land gods, made of gold and other precious stones, was being hauled towards the harbour; the only true God was the Drowned God, who did not need gold or idols to be made in his image. In that regard, the septs of the city had been burned. These were false gods after all, they did not deserve places of worship.

There was a line of women, chained and shackled, being herded towards the deck. He noticed a particularly defiant one that cousin Aeron “One-Eye” was about to lash. He stopped him.

“Bring her to me!”

Aeron obeyed and pushed the screaming girl in his direction.

“What is your name, girl?” he asked.

The girl did not answer, instead spitting in his face. Dalton laughed. He would enjoy breaking her quite a bit. The salt wives he already had in Faircastle had bored him. When he returned there, he would give them to the Drowned God, and keep this new one for himself.

A gauntleted backhand was needed to calm the girl as she kept struggling to free herself from his grasp, kicking and screaming and wailing.

“Take this one to my cabin,” he told his cousin. It seemed they would begin sooner than he had wanted.

Before they set sail for Faircastle, the entirety of the harbour was put to the torch, not just the ships that were being built. These lions would not dare to sully forth against them for quite a while. And if they did, well, they would get their city destroyed once more.

Dalton eased himself below deck, heading towards his cabin, after the oars began beating once more. As the haze of battle had faded, the pain of his bruises and the blows he had taken had come back to him tenfold.

“What is your name?” He asked one of the newly-made thralls as he opened the door to his cabin.

“Tywin Lannister,” he answered, his tone imperious.

A smiled reached Dalton’s face. Even in captivity, these Lannisters had the gall to act as if they were sitting in the golden halls in their castles.

“Go fetch me the maester, and food to eat. You shall be mine to command from this day forth.”

Tywin’s lips tightened, but he obeyed. That little defiance would be whittled away soon, he knew. It was the same for all thralls.

The woman he had commanded Aeron to bring to his chambers was seated a corner of the room meekly. Red lines were clear across her face, marks made by the backhand he had given her.

“Come,” he beckoned her. The girl only looked at him with fury in her wet eyes, not flinching in the slightest.

“Very well, stay there,” he said, “you’d have starved by the time we get to Faircastle.”

The maester came into his cabin once he was done taking off his armour. The man was old, but not too old that he could not tend to his duties. He had been serving his grandfather since before he was born, and had been a bastard Grand Uncle of his father. The Lord of Pyke during the Old King’s time had asked for his half-brother to be his maester, not trusting in the other grey rats that the Citadel sent to them.

After giving the girl folded in the corner an incredulous look, he helped him out of his armour, the wool shirt underneath and the undershirt beneath it. He proceeded to put his fingers and press different parts of his torso, paying attention to any touched part that made Dalton produce a wince or a groan.

The examination was complete, and the maester declared that all he had were light bruises. His armour had protected him from most of the lethality of most of the blades he had faced. The maester left a light salve for him to apply, and walked out.

“You’re going to live there, aren’t you?” he asked the girl folded in the corner. At no reply, he continued, “You may think you have nothing to lose, but you do. Quite a bit. Here’s what will happen. Every day that you disobey me, you shall lose a part of your body. For refusing to answer a question that I ask, you shall lose a finger. For everything I ask you to do that you refuse to do, you shall lose a limb.”

At once, all the defiance went out of her eyes, and it was replied with overwhelming fear. A smirk painted his features.

“Now, what is your name?”

“Tess, milord,” she replied.

“Good, now come.”

The Kraken King docked on Faircastle a day later. There would be a feast tonight, he suddenly decided. Their victory needed to be celebrated, and his ironborn deserved to be rewarded. A sacrifice to the Drowned God needed to be made too, he thought. Mayhaps he would give away Tess… No… Not yet. He was enjoying her too much for now. Lord Farman’s daughters and Lord Lannister’s bastards would do.

The feast was a hearty affair, prepared from the foodstuff they had obtained from Lannisport during their sack. It had been bought by the iron price.

Dalton was seated in a raised chair at the front of the hall, crafted as a mimicry of the Seastone chair. Tess was on his lap, her hands wrapped around her neck affectionately. The girl was smitten with him now, he was sure. He would be too, if he was her. In front of him, his men lined the benches and tables, all of them feasting, laughing and drinking with their compatriots. Trestle tables were set up on either side of the hall, lined with one course after the other of the heartiest of meals. The prettiest of thralls were turned into their maid-servants for the night, most of them dressed scantily as they daintily skipped from one table to the other, serving his men. Some of them were noble ladies, he knew, but it didn’t matter. Being enthralled to the ironborn was as much a place of honour as they would know in their useless lives.

Tears made his eyes sting as he examined the all. This is what they deserved. This was what the ironborn were made for. For centuries, the fear of dragons had taken their identity from them, turning them into harrowers and miners, when at heart, they were reavers. That identity would be reclaimed for them once more, until the end of time, Dalton swore. With two taps on her breasts, the Red Kraken bade Tess to disentangle herself from him. He rose from his seat, and the hall went silent.

“Ironborn!” he called once the whole hall had his attention, “These past two days we have done a great thing. We have taken what belongs to us, and we have paid the iron price for it!”

There was hooting and hollering at that proclamation.

“Before the dragons came to Westeros, the coasts were ours! The ironborn were known in all the world. The Lannisters, the Tyrells and the Starks shook at the very mention of our name! It is time that the Lion, the smelly Roses and even the Wolf bow before the Kraken once more!”

The cheers were louder this time.

“The dragons have all but fallen! The only one remaining being a little girl doing mummer’s shows for the skies above us! A girl who thinks she could conquer a city!

“For a century, our grandfathers and great-grandfathers have sat around campfires and drank to stories of their ancestors’ heroic deeds! They clink their goblets together, and called the way of reaving the Old Way. As if it was ever gone! Nay, I say!. It is our only way! It is the way of iron!”

“We do not sow! We do not sow! We do not sow!” the chant began in the hall.

After the beat it took for the hall to quieten, Dalton continued, “We have taken all there is to take from Faircastle, and Kayce and Lannisport. That is just the beginning!”

Amid the cheering, the realisation dawned on him. If the little dragon girl could conquer cities of her own, so could they. “We shall take Seaguard, Old Oak and the Shield Islands!”

The men cheered. Why stop there?

“We shall have Highgarden and Casterly Rock and Oldtown and the Arbour! And once we’ve paid for all they have with the iron price, we shall take Westeros! Follow me, and all of you shall be lords of your own high seats! Follow me, and the entire world shall shiver in hearing your name! Follow me, and you shall be glorious!”

The cheers this time were deafening as countless goblets hit the tables, “Kraken King! Kraken King! Kraken King! Kraken King! Kraken King! Kraken King!” the chant continued.

---

Author’s Note:

And we’re back with the story. I have to admit, I had quite a bit of difficulty in crafting the character of Dalton and how I would portray him in his interlude. In the end, he was heavily inspired by Euron Crow’s Eye and Victarion, since the throughline between them is that they want the ironborn want to return to the Old Way and glorify it.

Another thing to notice, Baela claiming Silverwing has made the enemies of House Targaryen even more emboldened with their ambitions in the wake of the Dance, instead of cowering them. That’s going to be a major throughline in this fic. The Dance and so many of their dragons dying has absolutely shattered the aura of invincibility/pseudo-godhood that was surrounded dragonlords. (This is the one aspect of HOTD season 2 I liked). People don’t take the Targaryens as seriously as they used to anymore. As we know, and as it seems the rest of Westeros needs to be reminded, ‘lesser men defied dragonlords at their own peril.’

I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Next up, we have Nymeria Reborn, Princess Aliandra Martell.