Chapter 30: The Price of Iron

Chapter 30: The Price of Iron

289 AC, Month of the Red Crane

The royal army that descended upon the island of Pyke was a force of continental retribution. It was the combined might of the Seven Kingdoms, a great beast of steel and anger, come to punish the hubris of the Kraken. The landing was a monumental feat of logistics, a bridge of boats Alaric himself had orchestrated, disgorging thousands of knights, archers, and men-at-arms onto the bleak, stony shores. The air was cold and sharp with the taste of salt and the promise of blood.

The fortress of Pyke itself was a formidable challenge. It was not a single castle, but a series of grim, grey towers perched precariously on stone stacks, lashed by the sea and connected by swaying rope bridges. It was a dragon's teeth, designed to be taken at a terrible cost.

In the final war council, held in King Robert's windswept pavilion, the great lords debated the method of assault. Robert, his eyes blazing with battle-lust, was for a direct, overwhelming assault on the main gatehouse. Lord Stark counselled a more cautious approach, while the other lords offered predictable strategies of siege and attrition.

Alaric, as had become his custom, remained silent until the others had exhausted their options. He then stepped forward to the map table, not as a boy of twenty, but as the acknowledged Grand Strategist of the war.

"Your Grace," he began, his voice cutting through the bluster. "Pyke is a fortress designed to break armies against its walls. A frontal assault is what Balon Greyjoy expects. It is what he wants. He wishes to bleed us on his rocks, to make his defeat so costly that it feels like a victory."

He pointed to the largest of the sea-stacks on the map. "The Great Keep. The seat of his power. It is his strongest point, and therefore, it is his greatest weakness. He will concentrate his best defenders there." He then tapped a series of smaller, seemingly insignificant cliffs on the far side of the castle complex. "But he will not expect an attack from here. The cliffs are sheer, the waters below treacherous. He believes them to be impassable."

"They are impassable," Lord Mallister grunted.

"Not for men who are properly equipped and motivated," Alaric countered. "I propose a coordinated, multi-pronged assault. The main army, under the King's personal command, will indeed attack the main gate. You will be the storm, Your Grace, the glorious thunder that draws all eyes and all swords." He was again giving Robert the battle he craved, using his vanity as a strategic tool.

"While the Ironborn are focused on the gate, my Onyx Legion will execute a covert assault. They are trained climbers and infiltrators. They will scale these cliffs under the cover of the main battle's chaos. They will bypass the outer defenses entirely. Their objective will not be to take the castle, but to seize the Great Keep itself, capture Balon's family, and cut the head from the serpent while the body is still fighting."

It was another of his signature plans: audacious, complex, and reliant on the elite professionalism of his personal army. It minimized casualties for the main host while promising a swift, decisive end. After a brief debate, the sheer tactical brilliance of the plan was undeniable. The King, roaring with delight at the prospect of smashing the main gate, gave his enthusiastic approval.

While the great army prepared for the bloody work of the siege, Alaric's own operations continued unabated, a silent, parallel war being waged in ledgers and coded messages. In his command tent, a space of stark, organized efficiency, he met with Nervo, who had accompanied the expeditionary force as its paymaster and chief logistician.

"The final shipments of timber and iron have been delivered to the royal shipwrights at Lannisport," Nervo reported, his finger running down a column of figures. "After our fees and the cost of materials, our net profit from the royal contracts is just over three hundred thousand golden dragons."

Alaric nodded, a flicker of cold satisfaction in his eyes. He had armed the King's war effort and made a fortune doing so. "And the reconstruction loans?"

"Our agents are already in place at Lordsport and on Harlaw," Nervo said. "The lesser Ironborn lords are ruined. Their villages are burned, their longships sunk. They will need capital to rebuild. We will be the only ones offering it. The terms are… steep. Within a generation, half the Iron Islands will be in debt to House Blackwood."

Alaric was not just defeating an enemy; he was executing a hostile takeover of their entire economy. He was ensuring that even in defeat, the Ironborn would serve his interests.

His other, darker work also continued under the fog of war. The battlefields of the campaign had been fruitful. His maesters, loyal men he had personally selected and funded, had discreetly collected a gruesome harvest. Vials of blood from powerful Ironborn champions, strange scrimshaw idols found on the bodies of Drowned Men, fragments of oily black stone from the foundations of their septs. These were now crated and marked as "geological samples" or "anatomical curiosities," waiting to be shipped back to the true laboratory, his sanctum beneath Serpent's Head. The war was a feast, and he was picking its bones clean of every arcane morsel.

Even his family life was a managed, long-distance asset. A letter arrived from Lynesse. He read it in the quiet of his tent. Her script was elegant, her words full of the proper sentiments of a wife missing her lord husband at war. She wrote of the continued growth of Blackport, of a new tapestry she had commissioned for the great hall. And she wrote of their son.

Tyber grows stronger every day, she wrote. He has your eyes, my lord, and your determination. He knocked over a stack of blocks yesterday and did not cry, but simply began to build it again, more carefully this time. He will be a worthy heir to all you have built.

Alaric folded the letter. He felt no warmth, no fatherly pride. He felt only the satisfaction of a master craftsman inspecting a key component of his great machine and finding it to be functioning perfectly. His heir was strong and intelligent. The dynasty was secure.

The assault on Pyke began on a storm-lashed morning. Great siege engines, built with Alaric's timber, hurled massive stones against the castle walls. King Robert, his warhammer a brutal extension of his will, led the charge against the main gatehouse. The fighting was furious and bloody. Thoros of Myr, his flaming sword a terrifying spectacle, was the first through the breach, his red robes a beacon in the chaos.

While this glorious, predictable slaughter unfolded, the Onyx Legion began their silent work. Led by Ser Damon, they used grappling hooks and rope ladders to scale the treacherous cliffs beneath the Great Keep. The Ironborn, their attention fixed on the main battle, never saw them coming. They moved up the rock face like black-spiked insects, a tide of silent death.

They gained the ramparts with barely a sound, slitting the throats of the few lookouts. They did not raise a war cry. They moved through the inner passages of the keep with the ruthless efficiency of a hunting pack, their short swords and disciplined shield-work devastating in the narrow confines. They captured the kitchens, the rookery, and then stormed the main tower.

In the Lord's solar, they found their prize. Balon Greyjoy's wife, Lady Alannys, and his two younger children, Maron and Asha, were seized before they could even raise an alarm. The heart of the castle had been taken without a single horn blast.

When the news reached Balon Greyjoy, who was still defiantly commanding the defense of the gatehouse, his will broke. His castle was overrun from within, his family hostage. With a final, bitter curse, he surrendered. King Robert, cheated of his chance to personally hammer the Kraken king into submission, accepted the surrender with ill-grace.

The final act of the war took place in the smoky, battered Great Hall of Pyke. Balon Greyjoy, a gaunt, proud man even in defeat, knelt before King Robert and swore an oath of fealty, his words tasting like ash in his mouth. Robert, in a moment of political wisdom likely counselled by Jon Arryn, showed a degree of mercy. Balon would remain Lord of the Iron Islands, but his last surviving son and heir, the young Theon, would be taken as a ward and hostage, to be fostered by Eddard Stark at Winterfell.

The other lords then stepped forward, making their claims for glory and plunder. Alaric remained silent, a patient predator waiting for the feast to end. Finally, King Robert turned to him, his mood expansive and generous in victory.

"And you, Lord Alaric!" the King boomed. "The architect of this victory! What reward do you ask? More land? More gold? Name it, and it is yours."

Alaric stepped forward and gave a slight bow. "Your Grace, you have already rewarded my house beyond measure with the lands of the Blackwater March. I have no need of more land, and my own coffers are sufficient."

The assembled lords looked on, surprised by his apparent humility.

"My men in the Onyx Legion," Alaric continued, his voice resonating with sincerity, "fought with great courage. In the naval battle at Fair Isle and here, on these islands, they faced the fiercest of the Ironborn captains. As per the right of salvage Your Grace granted me, they claimed the personal arms of their defeated foes as trophies of their service. Among these trophies are two blades of Valyrian steel: the sword Nightfall, taken from the Harlaws, and the sword Red Rain, taken from Lord Drumm himself."

He let that sink in. He was not asking for the swords; he was stating his possession of them as a matter of prior agreement.

"I ask for no new lands. I ask only that Your Grace place the King's seal on my right to these artifacts. That you formally decree that Nightfall and Red Rain are to be the new, recognized ancestral blades of House Blackwood of Serpent's Head, to be passed down through my line forever. It is a matter of honour for my men and my house."

It was a move of pure genius. He was asking for something that cost the King nothing. To Robert, they were just old swords. But to the realm, a royal decree would transform them from plunder into legitimate, noble heirlooms, granting Alaric's new house a level of prestige that would normally take centuries to acquire. He was converting the spoils of war into the currency of ancient honour.

"Swords?" Robert laughed, relieved. "Is that all? By the gods, boy, you are a strange one! Of course! It is done! Let the maesters draw it up! The swords are yours!"

Alaric had won. He had played the game perfectly. He had profited immensely from the war, tested and blooded his army, acquired priceless magical reagents, and now, he had secured two Valyrian steel swords, their ownership sanctified by the King himself.

As his fleet sailed from the bleak shores of the Iron Islands, leaving the defeated Krakens to their ruin, Alaric stood on the deck of The Serpent's Kiss. In his cabin below, locked in an iron-bound chest, lay Nightfall and Red Rain. The war was over. His contribution had been decisive, his reputation was unparalleled, and his ambition was utterly misjudged by every other lord in Westeros. They saw his modest claim as a sign that he was content.

They had no idea.

He looked east, towards his own lands, his own fortress, his own waiting son. The Greyjoy Rebellion had been a stepping stone, a profitable, educational, and ultimately insignificant diversion. He had used it to sharpen his claws and build his nest egg. Now he could return to his true work. The long, patient consolidation of power, the quiet plumbing of magical secrets, and the wait for the next great chaos he knew was stirring in the North, and beyond the Narrow Sea. The game of lords was over for now. His own, much deeper game, was just getting started.