NOVEL NEXT Chapter 6: Who Needs Friends
Early 269 Spring
"Three sons in two years…" Joer marveled as the boys came to Mormomt Keep for the first time.
I looked down on my father, not metaphorically, but physically. I landed on the Spring of 269 six and a half feet tall and beefy like only a continuous steroid cycle like puberty could make happen. Barrel chested, bull necked, it looked like my traps wanted to eat my ears and my arms and legs were doing their best impression of flesh colored tree trunks. Between my thicc bod and the thick black hair growing from my head to my toes I completed the standard Mormont transformation into a bear in record time.
"What'd you'd expect with me stuck inside on all those cold winter nights." I chuckled as he admired the babe in the crook of my arm.
Kodlak was another smooth pregnancy and easy delivery, not as shockingly swift as Galmar's, but another tally for 'a really nice pair of testicals' being a legit super power.
"I'd expected the hard work we've done in the yard to have kept you from much else." Joer snorted and hesitated to take my youngest boy from me.
I handed the kid over and took him back when he started crying.
"Finally old enough to not like anyone but Mom, Dad, and Milk Tits - I mean Brandy, the wet nurse." I corrected and a wide smile split Jeor's face.
"How that girl hasn't put out a bastard in the years she's lived with you is a testament to your restraint." he laughed darkly, "Teats like that almost make me rethink my desire to swear off women."
"Only almost?" I goaded the man and he shook his head.
"The idea of living the rest of my life within a hundred miles of my sister makes it an easy choice." he flatly denied.
Any further conversation halted with the blowing of the signal horn, and I felt fingers crawling in my guts when it blew again for inbound Ironborn raiders.
"I'm surprised it took them this long." Jeor muttered as he rose to arm himself for battle.
We hadn't seen Ironborn in years. Quellon Greyjoy cracked down on reaving Westeros after the War of Ninepenny Kings, converting the Ironborn to pirate hunters under his rule. This made their 'Iron Price' - the custom of a man's primary income being from plunder - a positive, as it made the Ironborn dogged in their pursuit of sea based outlaws.
Of course, the laws of the Lord Reaper are not universally loved or carried out, not even within his own family.
Anxiety gripped me as I passed off my son and donned my personal equipment in the keep. A long gambeson and coat of chain, with a coif, mittens, and chausses. Over that a suit of gomel lamellar with splitmail bracers and greaves and my visored spangenhelm.
Ultimately heavy as hell and not as good as full plate armor, but far cheaper to both make and maintain as the skill level of the armorer required is minimal, and ultimately the level of protection to weight difference is not so much that I feel overwhelmed with envy of all the second and third sons in the Reach riding around on gorgeous horses in their parade armor.
I just burn with envy. Not overwhelmed.
Despite my heavy protection minimizing the need of it, I still took my kite shield and winged spear so I could fight in a shield wall without compromising the formation. For my secondary arms a flanged mace and a rondel dagger - the dagger hilt and pommel shaped for better leverage with armored hands.
With a deep breath I put on my game face walked back to the courtyard where men assembled rapidly from both the keep and the nearest villages. We had fifty men at arms who wore full chain armor, and kept more equipment stored in our armory of lesser quality for the arming of levees. Thinner gambesons and shirts of chain rather than coats, basic spangenhelm, but the kite shields and winged spears each man took were standard issue.
"Where are we marching?" I asked my father when he emerged from the keep.
"They're coming right down the harbor." Jeor announced, "Five ships."
Five ships meant anywhere from a hundred and fifty to five hundred 'reavers', and with the confidence to come straight down the harbor - to our seat of power - implied either great confidence or great arrogance.
Considering Jeor, Jorah, and Maege made it to canon implied which, but there are no guarantees in combat, and the Ironborn are notoriously hard as nails.
The early warning from the western watchtower at the mouth of the harbor, the only tower with a Myrish eye on the Island, meant that we had enough time to bring all the fishing boats in and get the people in the villages behind the earthen palisade of the keep.
We marched down with over five hundred at the ready men and took up positions along the gravelly beach and with fifty men covering the wooden docks in case they tried to get tricky. Most of the bay is too rocky for landing any kind of boat, even the versatile longboat.
Despite seeing us completely ready, the five square sailed longboats continued straight for us.
Which was madness considering I estimated the ships couldn't carry more than seventy men a piece.
Despite the insanity of it, the Ironborn rode in with the tide and brought their shallow bellied ships right up to the shore, leaping off the side of their ship and slogging through the cold water to engage us in glorious melee combat. Every single man in a chain hauberk and helmet, some with even more armor such as scales, lames, or breastplates.
They ran right to our shield wall, not seeking any kind of advantage in footing but instead seeking to be the first to the fight. I stood in the van of our formation and engaged one such eager man before his feet left the water. I jabbed with a classic high low combination, raising his guard with the first stab, then quickly changing levels for the next. As expected he battered aside the stab towards his neck, but failed to ward the lower follow up and my spear sunk into his thigh below the hem of his hauberk.
I wanted to finish him with a strike to the neck as he fell with a stifled scream to ensure I ended him, but behind him came another man who I got with the same attacks. The third needed an additional upper attack, but he went down with a spear in his neck rather than in his thigh, so he got the worst of his for his better reflexes.
I felt a thunk on my shield as a bearded axe hooked onto the rim and pulled it down. The wielder thrust a sword over it that skid across the lames of my shoulder guard. He ducked his head under a spear thrust from the man beside me who he stood in front of and went for a second stab.
I dropped my spear as my head rattled a bit in my helmet from the attack and took my mace in hand. When the third stab came I smacked the mans hand with the head of my mace and he winced in pain but still managed to dodge another spear strike.
I had to parry an attack from a man in front of me otherwise his longaxe would have put me in a world of hurt from its overhead swing. The man abandoned his axe and flung himself at my shield, his arms coming over the top and he took a grip of my chainmail aventail with one hand and drew a dagger with the other in a near suicidal attack with a big smile across his face.
I smashed his teeth in with a pommel strike and caved his helmet in with a follow up that dropped the grinning man like a ragdoll.
The man beside me went down with an axe in his face and I found myself engaged with the man whose hand I broke. He blocked my mace strike with the axe he pulled from my comrade's head and possessed an uncanny evasiveness. It wasn't till I pumped two feints in a row that he over reacted and I managed to pop him with my shield and break his shoulder with a mace strike. Down both arms the man tried to head but me, but got brained like the last man.
The sheer tenacity of these men matched the worst of the Wildlings I'd fought, but they had effective armor, weapons, and skill. For the first time I felt like I was in true battle. Not slaughtering idiots, but fighting real men.
And I liked it. I liked the feeling on edge as I pit myself against another, putting to the test our bodies, skills, courage, and comrades. I didn't just like it, I loved it.
"You fucking cowards!" I heard distinctly over the roar of battle as one of the longships on the end of the row pushed back out to sea, the men who disembarked scrambling to get back onto it.
And just like that, this wonderful thing I'd come to love ended. This craven act dominoed into a full route as all the Ironborn attempted to flee. Our men charged into the water after them, slaying them with a wild glee. My mace came down again and again with repeated overhead strikes that crushed the bones of all they landed upon. Punishing them for quitting the fight. With an angry yell I pulled myself up onto the nearest longship and crushed the head of the first man I encountered as he tried to lift one of his comrades up.
The six men on the ship rushed me with daggers and axes, but I'd found my rhythm and none of them possessed the reflexes of man with the axe and sword or the fearlessness of the man with the longaxe. My mace kept swinging until only I still still stood.
"The ship is ours!" I shouted and raised my bloody mace into the air, "To me, men! To me!"
I reached over the side of the ship and started pulling my men on board. We soon had a full crew and began rowing after the fleeing ships, overtaking and capturing two more who took off in a haste with barely enough men to get the ships moving.
The first two ships that fled got away, but three longships captured were more than I could have hoped for. Who needs friends when your enemies bring you exactly what you need? Ships, armor, weapons, and let's not forget… chum. We'd sent them to their Drowned God as fish shit.
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And another big piece of the puzzle fits into place. We'll see a little of who these men were and why they committed to such a stupid attack in the next chapter via Jorah's observations of them. These will be Jorah's speculations, not the objective truth as this is narrated in the first person. Jorah's observation will match the truth in this case, but it might not in the future.
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