All across the Iron Islands, men sit around driftwood fires and drink to “the Old Way”. When the Ironborn were feared wherever the waves were heard. When our strength was in our ships, not our stories. I don’t blame them. Drinking to the Old Way is easier than living it. Our ancestors took to the sea because the Iron Islands are shit without the crops that grow from it. Thirty cold, wet rocks off the coast of Westeros and a dozen more cluttered around the Lonely Light deep in the Sunset Sea. But hard places breed hard men.
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The First Men feared the sea. They had walked to Westeros, and even their fishermen never left sight of shore. I wish I could have seen the face of the first watchman to see our ships climb over the horizon. He was not the last. No matter how dark the night or how high the waves, come dawn, our prows cut through the morning mist and struck the beaches and riverbanks. Before the sun reached its height, we vanished again into the sea, our longships filled with gold, food, scared children, and sobbing women. For thousands of years, the Ironborn reaved up and down the Sunset Sea, driving the man of the green lands far inland or into walled castles where they paid us tribute. In the depth of winter, we feasted while the men who had planted and harvested crops starved. Their sons worked our mines, and their daughters warmed our beds.
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The stories claimed that the Old Way died with Harren the Black and his sons in Harrenhal. Our ships and axes were no match for Aegon’s dragons, so our ancestors bent their steel into fishhooks and our kingdom into villages and started telling the red tales around the fire of how we used to be strong and how one day we would be so again.
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Generations later, a young boy listened to them. Dalton Greyjoy, the wild young heir to Pyke, was rowing at five and reaving at ten in the Basilisk Isles with his uncle. By fourteen, Dalton had sailed as far as Old Ghis, fought in a dozen battles, and claimed four salt wives. In his fifteenth year, he avenged his uncle’s death in battle, but he took a dozen wounds and emerged from the fight drenched head to heel in blood. From that day forth, men called him the Red Kraken.
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During the Dance of Dragons, the Red Kraken picked the side that was fighting the Lannisters and fell upon the Westerlands while the Lannisters were off at war. Casterly Rock itself proved too strong once the lady of the castle barred its gates, but the Ironborn burned the Lannister fleet and sacked Lannisport carrying off gold, grain, and hundreds of women and girls, including Lord Lannister’s favorite mistress and all his bastards. The Red Kraken now ruled the Sunset Sea as his forbears had, and his longship once again brought the Old Way to the coast of Westeros. But then the war ended, and the mainland armies came home. The Iron Throne commanded the Red Kraken to stop reaving, and when he didn’t, a mistress opened his throat as he slept. While his sons squabbled, the Lannisters sent their soldiers to the Iron Islands. Thousands of men, women, and children were put to the sword, and scores of villages and hundreds of longships were put to the torch. The glorious return to the Old Way had lasted two years.
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My brother vowed to return us to the Old Way as well. He sat on the Salt Throne and sent our reavers to the shores of Westeros, just as he remembered from the stories he heard as a child. An old way for an old man. But while he listened to the stories, I lived them. It was never the Old Way to me. It was the only way.
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Westeros has Seven Kingdoms, but the Iron Islands have hundreds. Every ship on the waves is a kingdom, and every captain on his deck is a king. Mainlanders will bow to a man whose only claim is dropping out of the right cunt, but the Ironborn spend their lives at sea. We know that if a captain is weak, his men drown. If he’s foolish, his men drown. But if he’s strong, his men carve their names into the world with blood, steel, and song.
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Any man with a ship may claim the Salt Throne, but the rest of the Ironborn have to give it to him in the kingsmoot. Our priests claim the first king of the Iron Islands was the Grey King, who ruled over the sea itself in the dawn of days. He took a mermaid to wife and stole fire from the Storm God and carved the first ship from a demon tree that fed on human flesh. When he died, his hundred sons slaughtered each other until only sixteen remained. Since none could overpower the rest in battle, they came together and chose the strongest to be their king, and so began the tradition of the kingsmoot.
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A good story for children who don’t know the grey is what men become after their strength had fled, or that brothers do not easily submit. Over the centuries, the kingsmoot has raised the greatest of the Ironborn.
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Qhored Hoare, whose word was law whenever men could smell the salt air or hear the crash of waves. He sacked Oldtown and defeated the River King, taking three young sons as hostages. When their father’s tribute was late, Qhored cut out their hearts with his own hands. When the father marched for vengeance, Qhored smashed his army and gave this River King to the Drowned God.
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Harwyn Hoare, born to a king who had a fleet he didn’t sail, and swords he didn’t blood. As an unruly and worthless youngest son, Harwyn was sent away to the east to vanish, and so he did. But when his father died, Harwyn returned to the Iron Islands for the kingsmoot. An elder brother objected, so an elder brother fell off a horse, and at the kingsmoot, no man objected. Harwyn launched his father’s ships for Westeros and took ten times the Iron Islands from its weak lords who never expected to face an Ironborn king as skilled on land as at sea. For Harwyn had reaved with eastern pirates and served with eastern sellswords and learned more of war than the Ironborn could imagine.
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After Aegon and his dragons burned our last king, Harren the Black, and broke our armies, the defeated Ironborn chose my ancestor, Vickon Greyjoy, as Lord of the Iron Islands, not king. For centuries after, the kingsmoot was a joke that the Ironborn didn’t get. When a Lord Greyjoy died, the captains would meet and choose his eldest son to succeed him. Of course, they argued over it just long enough to show they weren’t now like the very mainlanders they despised.
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Once more, we have a true king, my own brother Balon, who had the balls to seize the driftwood crown but not the brains to hold it. He’s the first king the Iron Islands have had in centuries, and the fool would be the last. The kingsmoot once chose him over me. They will not have that choice next time.
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Circling the Jade Sea is the dream of every merchant. On the other side is the Golden Empire of Yi Ti, which was ancient when the Valyrians were still fucking goats. Even its ruins dwarf every city in Westeros and its princes are said to live in houses of solid gold and feast on meat powdered with pearls and jade. Foolish talk! If it were true, I would have visited long ago.
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But a bold merchant will risk two years for one voyage to fatten his holds with spices, gems, and silks so that he never wants for anything again. To be fair, many never do, because my ship, Silence, finds them on their return. Their merchant dreams look so pitiful poured on my decks. Not enough for any lifetime but their own.
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Traders from the Summer Islands make tougher prey. Not even the Silence could run down their swan ships on the open sea. When we take them by surprise, our rams splint and crack against their hulls, carved from rare hardwoods of the Summer Islands, and fitted together without a single nail. Worse, every swan ship carries a company of archers armed with goldenheart bows, which can hurl the shaft hard enough to pierce steel plate. After all that trouble, we often find their holds filled only with maps, fruit, and wooden trinkets. Hardly worth our time and blood, except for their women. To worship their god, all women of the Summer Islands learn to fuck. It’s enough to make a man devout.
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Ibbenese whalers are the most worthless of prizes. The men of Ib are short, thick, and hairy. So are their women. Not even tales of their six breasts can tempt men to take them. But the Ibbenese know how to build ships. Their great bellied whalers can weather any storm and withstand assaults of the largest beasts. In battle, Ibbenese are incredibly strong and even their blood reeks of blubber and oil and their holds are rarely worth scrubbing our decks free of the stench.
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When our holds were full or needed repair, we set a course for the greatest safe harbor of the Summer Sea, the Basilisk Isles, Port Plunder, Sty, Whore’s Gash. No map can find these towns, nor can the laws of men. The slavers keep their captives in caves in the Isle of Tears, pirates trade their goods on Barter Beach and hire fresh crews from the murderers filling every inn. Great piles of old yellow skulls line the shores of one deserted island, offerings from captains who have fresh heads pinned to their masts.
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Once every generation, the Free Cities send fleets to destroy the towns and hang every man they find. They do, and the towns are abandoned to rot and sink back into the slime. But come the next year, another Port Plunder sprouts up somewhere else in the isles, like a toadstool from a new pile of shit.
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For many years, I brought Silence to the Summer Sea. But when I close my eyes, I hear the waves breaking below the bridges of Pyke. I hear the kingsmoot chanting my brother’s name. Merchants pay the gold price, buying their desires with coin. Reavers pay the iron price, taking what we want from the corpses of the men who had it. But for what I dream, no gold can buy and no iron can take. I must pay with fire and blood.
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