บท 100: As planned
As planned
Theon POV
I would have smiled if I could. Looking down from the sky, I saw hundreds of men leave the city through the broken and burned-down gates. They were the former slave soldiers of Yunkai. Neither New Ghis nor Volantis cared about the slave soldiers and let them go. It was clear that they didn't think that they would be defeated by me even when losing eight thousand men.
No, their arrogance didn't even think of me. All they could think was that without the slave soldiers, Yunkai was now theirs. The Wise Masters were gone, even if they didn't know it. Volantis will try to swallow Yunkai without any soldiers to protect them before taking their sight at Astapor. It also meant that my hostages would be worthless soon.
New Ghis and Volantis would rather kill the Wise Masters than try to save them. But it worked just fine for me. It would allow me to manipulate the Wise Masters in my hands. Once they realize the others have abandoned them, they will fall into my arms with tears of joy. In the end, it all will work out in my favor.
Satisfied that my scheme worked as planned, I flew into the bay. It didn't take me long to see ships approaching the city, baring the Kraken of House Greyjoy. Dagmer Cleftjaw was faster than I expected. And I could see dozens of new ships built in Astapor with him and about two or three thousand men onboard the ships.
The fools from Volantis and New Ghis had no idea I didn't need the gates they so desperately tried to fix and guard. They had to station a thousand men here to work and defend it, fearing reinforcements would come through any time. In comparison, barely anyone guarded the harbor gates. These fools won't realize who even hit them.
Returning to the pyramid, I flew through the open window. Then I returned to my body. It was time to get to work. It was good that I wrote to Alysanne before leaving for Yunkai so she could prepare to come here. They were a few hours away and didn't know anything was happening in the city. Well, they won't be in the dark for long.
I wrote the first letter to be brought to Bronn, the other to the Tattered Prince, and even though I wanted to get the Company of the Cat on my side, without a guarantee that the Windblown would join me, I couldn't risk it the Company of the Cat to find my plans. From my observations, I could tell that Bloodbeard, the leader of the Company of the Cat, was a man who was quite a savage who only hungers for gold and women. Sooner or later, he would backstab me, so I didn't want to work with him.
Once I finished the last letter to be delivered to Dagmer, I relaxed. Once the reinforcements come, Bronn and his men will help them get into the city, and then the Tattered Prince will have to decide if he will fight against us or with us. Either way, the Yunkai forces are split up with New Ghis Iron Legions surrounding my pyramid and the sellswords surrounding the other occupied pyramids. At the same time, the men from Volantis were protecting the walls and securing the streets of Yunkai.
If the Tattered Prince joins me, it won't be a difficult battle to win. But even without them, I didn't see myself losing. With the reinforcements distracting them, I can break through New Ghis defenses, and join the men from the other Pyramids. They will be in uncontrollable chaos before they realize what is happening, where the Ironborn thrive.
The Tattered Prince didn't know much of my plan either, so it wasn't like he could warn the others. All he knew was that he must choose a side when the fighting began. Mine side promised a victory and an unimaginable amount of gold. Even if I had stumbled with the supreme commander dying and had to bunker down in the pyramids to plan my next move, now everything was ready.
…
If I didn't see it coming, I would be surprised that they decided to attack the pyramids. Still, they could have waited a few more hours until my reinforcements arrived. Oh, well, it wasn't like they could clear our barricades in an hour or two in the first place. And they did forget that we had the high ground. We had plenty of arrows in here to rain upon them.
"How could this be?" The eldest son of the supreme commander asked as he knelt before me.
"To you see this, kid?" He was in his forties, but I had forgotten his name, so I had to come up with something to call him. "They want you dead. They didn't even blink an eye before they decided to get rid of you. I mean, it was only two days since we came here. Even the most immoral lord in the Seven Kingdoms would think a week or a month before trying to kill their fellow lords."
"It is quite fucked up," Anguy agreed as he drew his bow and shot an arrow at the New Ghis Iron Legion. "Another one gone. I am getting close to the one thousand, Theon."
"I probably should kill you since you are my hostage," I ignored Anguy and addressed the weeping grown-ass man. "But I feel bad for you. So, how about we forget our past and start working together."
"You killed my father!" I rolled my eyes at the outburst.
"How many times do I have to tell you I didn't?" I asked, getting annoyed by this baby. If I didn't know that he would be easy to control in the future, I would have already cut his head off. "I even would bet you that your little friends that are trying to kill us all have poisoned your father before I even came here."
"It can't be," The man was really a mess, so I did the only thing I could think of.
"Get hold of yourself!" I yelled as I slapped his face before repeating the action a few more times because slapping him was fun.
"I'm good, thank you," The pain probably woke him up as he quickly backed off me. "And indeed, there aren't any wounds on my father's body. Those bastards have poisoned him long before you have arrived. Now, they had shown their true colors. I will have my revenge for my father."
I couldn't help but tilt my head at the change of the tune. Even Anguy dropped his bow as he looked at the man with his mouth open. Well, I didn't give it a second thought and picked my bow and shot an arrow from the window. My skills with the bow were getting rusty, so such a practice opportunity would be wasteful not to use.
They were pretty wasteful of their men. Even I was feeling like I was wasting my arrows on them. The incline of the pyramid made it easy to see them, and with a few modifications under the window, their arrows could never reach us. I could only imagine how they felt as they tried to get inside and found that only a rain of arrows awaited them.
Their numbers were slowly dwindling down, not fast enough for them to worry, but their men fell to the ground one by one, not to get up again. And if anyone asks, it was all according to my plan. Still, I am starting to feel bad for the soldiers. It probably feels terrible when your commander sits behind you doing nothing and orders you to go and die. Essos' commanders seem to have no love for their soldiers and treat them no better than slaves.
"There, all the ropes we could find," Thoros said, throwing piles of ropes at my feet. "And I am worried that you asked for long enough rope to reach the ground from up here. Surely are not planning what I am thinking."
"Of course not, Thoros," I smiled as sweetly as possible. "There is nothing for you to worry about. Have I ever done anything that would endanger your life?"
"You already died twice before my eyes," Thoros replied without any hesitation. "So, yes, I do."
"And how many times did you die?"
"Zero," Thoros succumbed under my gaze.
"My point stands."
Looking down, I saw that the Iron Legion was still working hard to break into the pyramid. There were about four hundred of us in each of the pyramids, raining arrows at them, so it wasn't easy for them to get close. But they were trying to break through our barricades with shield walls and using everything they could to shield themselves from our arrows.
They probably couldn't imagine that I could still give orders to my men even though we were separated. They will not find a weak link among us. Even though my initial plan failed, I quickly was able to reassure my men by delivering letters to them. Now, our pyramids' first floor was nothing but furniture and everything else that could be used as a barricade.
Even when they break into the pyramid, it will take hours to clear the path. And that is what I am hoping for them to do. I want part of them to enter the pyramids when the time is right so they can't respond to the changes in the battlefield fast enough. To win against superior numbers, I had to divide and conquer.
I have already managed to thin out their forces around the city to the point that it will be almost impossible for them to regroup in time. It was my battlefield to control, and they danced to my tunes. I couldn't help but smile as I imagined them all dead by the end of the night. And the city will belong to us. With it, nobody will be able to stop the rise of my empire.
"Hmm, where the hell is the commander?" Anguy asked in frustration. "Shouldn't he be somewhere among these men?"
That was a good question, but the commander was probably hiding somewhere behind his men, like every other commander in Essos. But it only made them more predictable and easier to find. I found a place to sit down and warged into my bird. Flying over the men trying to enter the pyramid, I soon reached the backlines. It didn't take long to find a person surrounded by well-armored men giving out orders.
Getting back into my body, I smiled. From up here, it would be hard to see who was giving orders, but now that I knew where and for what to look, I could see the commander clear as the sky. Taking my longbow and arrow, I aimed. I could see it, the path my arrow would take. I pulled the bowstring back until it was tight, my hands were steady, and nothing obstructed the path.
My arrows pierced through the wind, letting out a faint sound of whistling. Then, the arrow hit its target in a blink of an eye. There were yells, and then there was chaos as the command of the Iron Legions backed further away from the pyramid. They were so far away that the men from the Iron Legions didn't know what to do anymore.
As I had planned, the command had split away from their forces. We were still under attack, but now the Iron Legions only had one command, and they will never receive another command. This was the start of the fall of Yunkai. No, the beginning was when I entered the city. At this point, there is no turning back. This battle would end with Yunkai's fall or my death, and I was already dead.
"They breaking in!" The man whose name I could not remember cried out.
But unlike him, I didn't care if they broke in. No, I wanted that. If they were getting into our pyramid, then the other pyramids are in a similar situation. Once inside, the Iron Legion was safe from our arrows, so they worked quickly to remove the barricades and get deeper. But it was already too late, as I looked into the city to see smoke followed by fire. I saw that three points in different directions were set on fire simultaneously. This marked the end of Yunkai.
A.N. As always, If you want more, up to seven advanced chapters, you can support me on pa treon. com \ ironwolf852. And if you have any requests for stories, I will only take them on my pa treon.
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