章 64: Asha IV
293AC
She knew that something was wrong when her uncle was not there on the deck, laughing at her as he had been at the arbor.
It set off an instinct in her head that she could tell was shared with her crew.
Still, she grit her teeth, and ordered the boarding lines out they flew with all the precision that the years of training every iron born had could provide, and she closed her visor as they pulled the Black Wind tight against the hull of the silence.
No words left her mouth, but a bestial warcry, more scream than battlecry, roared from her throat, and she dragged herself onto the deck of the other ship. Her sabatons landed with a thud, followed by the boots of her men, who roared similarly in anger.
Like the ship's namesake, however, all that met them was silence and the creaking of wood.
The deck of the great warship was empty, save for a thin sheen of sticky red blood. Her eyes immediately flew to the door to the hold below as one of her men reached down, dabbing his fingers in the substance. "It's fresh, only a few hours old."
She grit her teeth, 'did the madman kill his crew as well?'
The thought sent chills down her spine as she picked up a disgusting smell with her nose, not just blood, but sit and piss and rot. Her head swiveled involuntarily towards the aftcastle, from where the smell emanated.
Shaking steps carried her towards it, and eventually to the door, which she pushed open despite the squeezing protest of its blood-soaked iron hinges.
She heard Tharolf vomit behind her, and she almost felt like joining him.
The room was a grotesque parody of a throne room, more than a hundred skulls lay stacked against an ornate chair, soaked red with the blood of the men who lay there, out of each of their mouths were stretched human intestines, in grotesque parody of tendrils, running in and out of the headless gutted corpses which slumped against the walls of the chamber. In the center of the display sat her Uncle's corpse seated in the throne like a monstrous king, his eyes both uncovered in death and his hair hanging in ragged patches, a rictus grin spread across his face.
It was his own sword she recognized that had run him through, pinning him to the chair like a butterfly pinned to a wall.
'So…' she thought, her blood boiling even as her stomach commanded she relieve herself in disgust at the horrific sight. 'This is how you have chosen to spite me, Uncle.'
She felt her eye twitch, and before she even knew what she was doing she had thrown one of her axes into the bastard's side, it impacted with a gory, fleshy sound, and she marched straight up to him, heedless of the deathly artwork which surrounded her, tearing her ax out of his flesh and setting to work on his body, her axe landed on the dead man's flesh dozens of times, splitting his skull, driving through his bones, splitting him apart all over as his blood splattered over her armor. When her butcher's work was done, she picked the remains of her uncle's corpse from his macabre throne and lifted it onto her shoulder.
"We're leaving. Burn the ship, it's probably cursed anyhow."
Her men nodded at that, and set to work about it even as she carried her Uncle's broken body back onto the Black Wind, she would shove it before the Coral throne, shattered as it now was, and show all those cowards what the worth of the bastard's they had so feared truly was.
As the Silence was lit up, she glanced at the Sword of Baratheon, which had pulled alongside her own ship. She saw the young Prince Arthur on deck, his eyes flicking to the corpse beside her before giving the faintest of nods.
"You got him then?"
"Aye." She said, holding up the head of her bloody trophy. "Though he was already dead when we arrived."
"Really..?" The Prince's eyes narrowed. "Well, this does call for a celebration. Why don't you come and tell me exactly what happened over dinner."
For the first time since the Arbor, the Prince gave what sounded more like an order than a request, and she was almost about to laugh him off when she remembered all they had for meat on the Black Wind was dried sardines, and she had seen that ship loading Arbor Red at Starfish Harbor.
'What's helping the Prince's Ego for a bit of good eating?'
She nodded towards her men before throwing a hook up onto the great warship, repelling herself onto its deck, where the Prince and his captain stood. The Velaryon bastard's looked decidedly unimpressed with her, and she realized after a moment that her armor was covered in gore akin to a butcher's rags.
The Prince himself only rolled his eyes. "Wipe your feet on the mat."
She could only stare dumbfounded after him as he stepped into the enormous and decoratively carved aftcastle. Popping her helmet off she turned to his captain. She was riding the high off of finally catching her uncle, albeit him already dead, and she was feeling gutsy enough to not worry too much about pissing in the Prince's shoes.
"Are you sure he's a Greenlander?"
The man glanced at her for a moment, stroking his goatee. "Prince Arthur is, I think, a singular existence."
She raised an eyebrow, before nodding slightly. "I'd best not keep the singular brat waiting then."
The man frowned but did not move to stop her as she pushed open the door to the captain's, or in this case royal quarters, which was decked in considerable finery. The tablecloth was the yellow of the Baratheons, with a great stag across it, and white and black banners and ribbons covered the walls. A Greenlander servant, something rarely seen on the ocean, was laying out plates and food, and the young prince was already seated at his place, his elbows propped up on the table and his fingers intertwined in front of his face. "Please, sit down. We have a bit of time since we're waiting for the wind to change."
"I wouldn't get blood all over your chair your princeliness." She said sarcastically. Stretching her arms out in her plate. "Perhaps I should just stand."
"No, I insist, doff your armor if you must, but I will only be opening the wine if we do this properly."
That got her attention, and a wicked smile crossed her face. "Well, why didn't you say so, drink's normally all you need to see a girl naked anyhow."
She cackled internally, as she saw the faintest of blushes across the Prince's face before he suppressed it with a scowl. "Not that I'm naked under this of course, much as you might enjoy it."
That said she pulled off her gauntlets, dropping them to the floor with a clatter, which elicited a wince from the servant, but nothing from the prince who was merely boring holes into her head with his gaze. 'Oho, it'll take more than that to break your composure ey?'
"Please be more careful Lady Greyjoy." He said, staring straight into her eyes with his blue gaze.
"Perhaps you should help me take it off then, Greenlander armor is so… complicated after all."
She could swear she hadn't expected him to actually come to help her when she said it, but after a moments thought he stood up from the table, and before she could speak again was already untying the leather bindings that held her pauldrons on. "It is more complex than the chain shirts your people wear yes, but personally I find it fairly relaxing to disassemble."
"Uh…" She said intelligently. 'Damn, he's one-upped me.' The escalation was a game all Ironborn knew, but now he had called her Damn bluff, she had to roll with it, roll with it Damn it.
Then, because he was a precocious little shit, he blindsided her again.
"How did you find your Uncle's corpse."
She stepped back even as her pauldrons half hung from her shoulder, dodging the boy's hands "You sneaky little shite, Where did they teach you this stuff." Her voice was half laughing and half frustrated that the game had gotten so far away from her. "Fuck off."
"Isn't that what you came here to tell me? Now stand still." He went back to it, pulling the pauldrons off of her shoulder as she tried to come up with a witty retort, but found her tongue dry.
"Maybe after I've drunk some of that wine you have there, Princeling."
The boy stopped for only a moment before nodding as her other pauldrons came off in his hands. "Alright, I suppose I can wait for that."
'Thank the Drowned God.' She sighed internally as she started working on her breast and back-plates alongside him, pulling at the belts which held them together.
"So, why do you cut your hair that way?" He asked after a moment, and she almost punched his stupid little nose in right then, then it occurred to her what a poor idea that would be, instead she took to gritting her teeth and answering with the same line she gave everyone who asked why her hair was so damned short.
"It fits better in a helmet."
"Really? My Uncle's minion Ser Loras wears his hair quite long, and he's known as quite the knight. At least from what Uncle Renly has told me"
He let the statement hang for a moment before she bit out an answer, and once again found herself unable to reply properly. "You're a precocious brat."
"I've been told that."
By the time he was done both verbally and literally undressing her and she was down to her tights and undershirt, she was more than happy to sit down at his stupid brat table and tell him about her stupid kinslaying uncle, but not before snatching the offered bottle of Arbor Red and letting the wonderful, sweet alcohol pour into her gut directly from the source, chugging it down like mead at her father's stupid feasts. She could feel the stuff sink into her as she sighed relaxing into the chair.
"Ready to talk now?"
"...Yes," she said finally, glaring across the table at the boy. She hadn't noticed it before, but he was a lot shorter than her, 'heh, that's funny.' The thought helped her fight off the urge to vomit at the fresh memory of her Uncle's throne room. "My Uncle, well, his body was sitting on a chair in the middle of a load of corpses, like some Damn king of the dead."
The boy grimaced slightly, but nodded, his eyes probing her face. "Were the bodies arranged specifically at all?"
"Yeah." She said after a moment. "How'd you know?"
"Educated guess. What did it look like?"
"All the skulls, lots of them, we're piled up around his throne." She pressed the bottle to her mouth again, draining it, which prompted the Prince to nod to the servant, who offered her another. "And in the skulls mouths were their guts, entrails, all hanging out like tentacles of some… monster fucking disgusting." She nodded to wine as the servant uncorked it. "This stuff is really good by the way."
"I'll be sure to tell Lord Paxter that. Would you say the guts were like a Kraken?"
"Nai, there were more than eight, or even twelve like the Krakenspawn that come up in the islands at night, there must have been a hundred of the things, all draped about like your pretty banners."
The boy nodded, "Like banners were there any…" he stopped abruptly, opening and closing his right hand gently. "Can you feel that?"
"What?" She asked, staring at the now empty wine bottle in her hands "when did I-"
"The Air-Pressure's dropping." The Prince was past her shoulder and behind her before she even knew what was happening. He tore open the door shouting "Aurane what's our weather looking like?!?"
"Was air-pressure mean?
Even in her hazy state, she could see the fear in the eyes of the boy who turned back to her, the sun dimming behind him.
"It means a storm's coming."
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