“FALL BACK! FALL BACK!”
Alric heard the cry over the clash of steel and gave a short, humorless laugh.
“Fall back to where?” he shouted, loud enough for his own men to hear.
“There is only one place left for you to go—and that is death.”
“Aye! Aye! Aye!” his men shouted behind him.
“Cut them down before they reach the water!”
The ironborn who had survived Elvin’s death were already breaking.
Some hacked at the ropes binding their longships to Alric’s galley.
Others simply threw themselves over the rail into the cold water rather than face what waited on deck.
A few made it into the sea.
Most did not.
“Kojja!” Alric bellowed toward the rigging.
“Any man who swims, put an arrow in his back before the sea gets the pleasure of drowning him.”
“Already doing it, Captain,” Kojja called back.
Within moments, the water around the ships was dotted with bodies.
Some floated face-down.
Others still twitched as they sank beneath the waves.
Davos appeared at Alric’s side, breathing hard, blood on one sleeve that was not his own.
“Two of their ships are trying to cut loose and run for open water, my lord.”
“Then don’t let them.” Alric turned to the nearest galley crew still fighting.
“Ram the one pulling away. I want every hull in this bay burning, broken, or bleeding before this is done.”
He did not wait to see the order carried out.
He grabbed a boarding line and hauled himself over onto the ironborn longship, three of his hardest sailors following close behind.
The fighting began again.
This crew fought with less order than the first.
They had seen their vice commander die screaming on Alric’s deck.
They knew what sort of enemy they had sailed into.
Some still fought, driven by the animal need to survive.
Others had already surrendered in their hearts, though their hands still clutched their weapons.
Alric crushed the first man’s collarbone with a single swing.
The second caught the hammer across his ribs before he had even managed to raise his axe.
Neither screamed for long.
A third ironborn—older, greying, with a scar running down one side of his face—threw down his axe and dropped to his knees.
“Mercy, my lord! I surrender! I have gold. I can pay ransom—”
“Ransom?” Alric stepped closer, laughing.
“You raided my ships. You came here to take gold, women, and slaves. Now that the deck is under your knees, you offer gold to save your own skin.”
He looked down at the old man with a cold smirk.
“You do not like it when the same thing happens to you, do you?”
The man opened his mouth again, another plea rising to his lips.
Alric’s hammer came down before he could finish.
The deck gained another body.
Behind him, a wounded reaver he had stepped past—one Alric had thought finished—lurched up from the boards with a knife aimed at his back.
“My lord!”
Davos’s voice cracked across the deck like a whip.
Alric spun half a heartbeat before the blade would have found him.
He caught the man’s wrist, bent it back until bone gave with a wet snap, then drove his knee into the reaver’s chest and finished him against the deck.
He looked back at Davos, breathing hard.
“I owe you for that one. Fucker nearly got me.”
“You owe me nothing, my lord,” Davos said grimly.
“It is my duty.”
Alric grinned, sharp and without warmth.
“You’ve spent too much time with Maester Cressen. You’re becoming far too proper.”
By the time the sun had climbed fully over Blackwater Bay, six of the eight longships were burning, sunk, or captured.
The other two had tried to flee for open water and failed.
Alric’s faster galleys ran them down before they had covered half the distance.
What followed was not a battle.
It was a slaughter of men who knew they were dead but had not yet stopped moving.
When it was finally over, Alric stood on the deck of his own ship, warhammer hanging loose at his side.
Blood pooled black in the grooves between the boards.
Bodies lay stacked or scattered, depending on how they had died.
The air stank of salt, iron, smoke, and opened bowels.
“Prisoners, my lord.” Davos approached, his voice carefully neutral.
“Nine of them. Wounded, mostly. A few still whole.”
“Line them up.”
The surviving ironborn were dragged to the main deck and forced to their knees, hands bound.
Some bled quietly.
Some stared at the boards.
One was shaking hard enough that his chains rattled.
Alric walked down the line slowly, like a man inspecting livestock before deciding which animal would be slaughtered first.
“Ah,” he said.
“You are not used to standing on this side of the blade.”
He stopped before the youngest of them, a boy perhaps younger than Alric, blood crusted along his jaw.
“Do not worry,” Alric said smirking.
“I will be gentle.”
The sarcasm in his voice was heavy enough to make the boy flinch.
“We could take ransom, my lord,” Davos said quietly.
“Some of these men may be worth—”
“You think I need their gold, Davos?” Alric did not take his eyes from the kneeling prisoners.
“You think so little of me?”
“Not at all, my lord.” Davos swallowed.
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant.” Alric finally looked at him.
“You sound more like Maester Cressen every day. Do you think I do not know what he says about my habits?”
“He is a good man,” Davos replied.
“He wants what is best for you.”
Alric smiled.
“I do not doubt that. But Cressen wants me to become some dull little lord who drinks watered wine, smiles at boring men, and dies without doing anything worth remembering.”
“My lord—”
“Enough.” Alric turned away.
“You are captain of my ships, Davos. Not my maester lecturing me about morals.”
He faced the men holding the prisoners.
“Cut their cocks off. Every one of them. Then throw what remains into the sea.”
He spoke without heat, as casually as another lord might order supper.
“Let the Drowned God decide whether he wants them back as cockless men. I would wager even he has standards.”
Several sailors laughed.
Crude humor had always found a home on a ship.
“All of them, my lord?” Davos asked.
He sounded uncertain.
“Aye. Every last one.” Alric’s voice hardened.
“I want every man on the Iron Islands to know that sailing against me has consequences.”
He was already turning away, thinking of Dragonstone’s harbor, damaged ships, and the lecture Maester Cressen would surely give him, when a sailor called from near the mast.
“My lord. There is one more.”
Alric turned back, expecting another wounded reaver too broken to stand with the others.
Instead, his men parted.
A figure knelt apart from the prisoners—smaller, leaner, with dark hair matted by blood and saltwater.
Her hands were bound tightly behind her back.
A woman.
The sailor who had found her shifted uneasily.
“We did not know what to do with this one, my lord. We cannot exactly do to her what we did to the others.”
Alric laughed.
“Well, that is obvious. Are you sure she is a woman and not some pretty little squid hiding in a tunic?”
A few crewmen laughed.
Alric stepped closer, caught her beneath the chin, and forced her to look up at him.
She stared back with open hatred.
“Quite fierce,” Alric said.
“That is better than begging.”
The woman kicked at him, trying to strike his knee.
He stepped back in time, laughing.
“Good,” he said.
“Definitely not a frightened prisoner.”
“Fuck you,” she spat.
Alric looked to his men with a smirk.
“See? Fierce.”
The crew laughed again, but Davos did not.
Alric’s eyes returned to the woman.
For the first time that morning, his smile faded.