Chapter 196

The Riverlands, 300 AC

Axel Arryn

I took great pride in what the Vale was slowly becoming: economically, socially, politically, militarily, all of it suited me fine. But there was one field where, no matter how much effort I poured in, the Vale still lagged behind the world's leading powers: shipbuilding. It had no real fleet to speak of. What passed for one now could not meet the standard, could not defend my region's interests. Enough to see off a stray band of pirates, perhaps, but any real naval power would crush us.

Númenor had been an island kingdom, and its fleet had been developed to a staggering degree. As a Commander, I had, whether I liked it or not, been drawn into that field, but between the gaps in my memory, only a couple of useful tricks had stuck with me. The barquentine was the one vessel whose design I could actually recall. A six masted ship combining good speed, enormous cargo capacity, and a relatively small crew. Build ten of those, and the Arryns would rule the seas for a long while to come. Except the whole project had stalled after the very first prototype: the flora of Arda is not the flora of Planetos. Put simply, the materials did not hold up, and the ship turned into a useless heap of timber.

I held complete control over Gulltown, the region's main port, but sadly one cannot simply throw a hundred thousand gold at Desmond and expect a happy result. Let's be honest with ourselves: every power along the northeastern reaches of Essos watches the Vale's future fleet with a distinctly unfriendly eye. Braavos and Pentos especially; a vast fleet belonging to the Sunset Kingdom sits in their throats like a bone.

I had failed to give the matter its due weight, and, banking on friendly ties, had turned to the Sealord of Braavos for help. He put me in touch with a shipwright the city held in high regard; for a princely sum in gold, the merchants agreed to help me set up shipbuilding and train sailors. It took a full year before it became clear that these sea bastards had never intended to hold up their end. By the letter of the agreement, everything was in order, but in spirit we had been thoroughly swindled, taught to build outdated ships using outdated methods.

That little trick did not sit well with me at all, and I set about digging into exactly what had happened. In answer to my note of protest, the Sealord sent his own representative, who laid out and explained the details of the agreement struck between Braavos and Gulltown. That cooled my anger toward our eastern ally somewhat, but it sharpened my dissatisfaction with Desmond's competence considerably. The eternal philosophical question: who deserves the blame, the man who lies, or the man who lets himself be deceived? Desmond had let himself land in exactly that situation. In short order, nearly the entire warfleet we had built was converted over to merchant use; it was the only way to salvage even part of the loss.

Desmond would still have to answer for it once my campaign through the Riverlands was done, but that would not conjure up the war fleet my region needed. After several days of hard thinking, an unexpected idea occurred to me: turn to the powers of Westeros itself. The Manderlys were first on my list, but they politely turned me away, saying they would not lift a finger without an order from Winterfell. Jon Snow, acting lord of Winterfell for the time being, agreed, though at an eye watering price, one I could not stomach. The pirates of the Three Sisters styled themselves as sea lords, but they had not moved far past what Braavos had used a century ago. After a fairly long stretch of searching, I found allies in the last place I expected: the ironborn. King Balon Greyjoy proposed we hold talks through his representative and reach terms of mutual benefit.

I had long suspected that Westeros was headed for a "parade of sovereignties," and I was not wrong, though not quite on the scale I had expected. The Greyjoys were first to declare their independence, the Old Way and all the rest of it. Second came the Martells, announcing they would answer to no one but a Targaryen on the Iron Throne, and nothing beyond that for now. I had personally wagered on the North, but it had gone suspiciously quiet on the matter. Even my spies could not piece together a coherent picture of what was happening in that wild country.

The meeting with the representative of the Iron Islands took place near Seagard, a castle that had held out for months against the pirates' assaults. Some forty kilometers from the fortress, near a captured village, out in an open field (a precaution against ambush). To my surprise, they were already waiting when I arrived, though a good half hour still remained before the appointed time. And the man who greeted me held a rather interesting standing among the islanders.

"Rodrik, you old devil!" I pulled into an embrace one of the very few ironborn I had no wish to cave the skull in of. "Here I thought you'd have died over some book of yours by now, and look at you, livelier than the living." Chuckles rose from his retinue; apparently I was not the only one thinking it.

"You've grown, my lord," the unflappable Harlaw said, looking up at me.

I had first met Lord Rodrik Harlaw during Greyjoy's rebellion. He was nothing like the rest of his people: clever, well read, level headed, the polar opposite of the typical ironborn. We had met under strange circumstances; I had been readying myself for a bloody assault, and Rodrik had simply handed over his castle. A shame, in a way, but it had won me a pleasant conversationalist, one I had genuinely enjoyed spending time with.

"Ha! That it is." I had been fifteen when the rebellion broke out; since then I'd grown a fair bit taller and broader in the shoulders. "Been waiting long?"

"We arrived last evening."

Unexpected. I had braced myself for the usual theatrics: showing up late, putting on airs, sending some lowborn negotiator. Instead, here was the model approach: arriving early, showing every courtesy, sending none other than the king's own good brother. Every fine point of protocol had been observed.

"Well then..." Such behavior from pirates struck me as faintly suspicious. "I won't keep you waiting any longer. Let's begin. How many craftsmen is King Greyjoy prepared to send to Gulltown, and for how long?"

"Two hundred, for two years, and every one of them ready to train two more of your choosing."

"Price?"

"Three hundred gold apiece, though paid in goods: timber, hemp, food, wool, horses."

"Too steep. Fifty gold a head. There's no way to haul that volume of goods to the bay." Mile long caravans in wartime were, frankly, a poor idea.

"Two hundred, same terms, but horses take priority, at market price." A single offer, and Greyjoy's ambitions became perfectly clear.

"Pre-war price?" Horses were fetching a fine sum these days.

"Naturally," Harlaw confirmed, unruffled.

"Done." I had a considerable surplus on hand regardless. "Then the shipwrights teach the designs, and train at least four others each."

"Agreed," my counterpart conceded easily.

We talked for a full three hours, ranging across every subject, haggling over any number of points concerning the future. I personally came away having learned a great deal, chief among it that the Greyjoys meant to reclaim all the "ancestral territories," which was to say, conquer the Riverlands and then hold them. Ambitious, but theoretically achievable. Even if Renly somehow managed to defeat the Dothraki, and the lions, he would simply have nothing left in him for anything further, and the same held true for the rest of Westeros. Amusingly enough, the only two parties left standing ahead in this war so far were the Vale and the Iron Islands, which meant Balon stood a real chance of pulling his plan off.

The Vale and the Islands had nothing to quarrel over; there was no blood feud between us to speak of, and our spheres of influence lay far apart. So I lent a hand to the ironborn growing stronger with an entirely clear conscience: weapons, supplies, horses, instructors (their cavalry being sorely weak), the surrender of certain territories I had occupied, "unexpected" strikes against those who displeased the new powers, and, most crucially, help in taking Seagard. Yes, this would make the Vale and the Riverlands blood enemies for good and all, much like Dorne and the Reach, but did I care? A strong Greyjoy made for an excellent scourge of the entire western coast. And in return, I stood to receive a good deal of what they managed to plunder from the West and the Reach.

A good deal, and a profitable one at that, was all well and fine, but the particular way they treated me throughout kept nagging at me. At the end of the talks I asked Rodrik outright what lay behind it, which set off a fit of laughter in him. The Old Way, it turned out, was not merely a set of traditions and rules, but a whole philosophy of life among the pirates. And I happened to fit the criteria of a "good ironborn" rather precisely: I had made war, plundered, put men to the sword indiscriminately, stripped my enemies bare, sworn fealty to no one, and generally comported myself in exemplary fashion according to the Old Way. That had earned me no small measure of respect on the islands, and it smoothed over every rough edge left in our bargain. So, to guard against any deception, it was agreed the ironborn would be the first to fulfill their end of the obligations. I had insisted on that point myself, and Rodrik accepted it without argument.

The deal with the islanders was struck, and the satisfied negotiators went their separate ways. Rodrik, to report back to his king. I, to prepare my army for the taking of Seagard.