Джордж Мартин - Fire & Blood

Construction had been completed on eight of the ten great warships commissioned by Ser Tyland, so the Hand resolved to begin by opening the narrow sea to trade once more. To command the royal fleet, he tapped another uncle, Ser Gedmund Peake, a seasoned battler known as Gedmund Great-Axe for his favored weapon. Though justly renowned for his prowess as a warrior, Ser Gedmund had little knowledge or experience of ships, however, so his lordship also summoned the notorious sellsail Ned Bean (called Blackbean, for his thick black beard) to serve as the Great-Axe’s second-in-command and advise him on all matters nautical.

The situation in the Stepstones as Ser Gedmund and Blackbean set sail was chaotic, to say the least. Racallio Ryndoon’s ships had been swept from the sea for the most part, but he still ruled Bloodstone, largest of the islands, and a few smaller rocks. The Tyroshi had been on the point of overwhelming him when Lys and Myr had made peace and launched a joint attack on Tyrosh, forcing the Archon to recall his ships and swords. The three-headed alliance of Braavos, Pentos, and Lorath had lost one of its heads with the withdrawal of the Lorathi, but the Pentoshi sellswords now held all the Stepstones not in the hands of Racallio’s men, and the Braavosi warships owned the waters between.

Westeros could not hope to prevail in a sea war against Braavos, Lord Unwin knew. His purpose, he declared, was to put an end to the rogue Racallio Ryndoon and his piratical kingdom and establish a presence upon Bloodstone, to ensure that never again could the narrow sea be closed. The royal fleet—comprised of the eight new warships and some twenty older cogs and galleys—was nowise large enough to accomplish this, so the Hand wrote to Driftmark, instructing the Lord of the Tides to gather “your lord grandsire’s fleets and put them under the command of our good uncle Gedmund, so that he may open the sea roads once again.”

This was no more than Alyn Velaryon had long desired, as the Sea Snake had before him, though when he read the message the young lord bristled and declared, “They are my fleets now, and Baela’s monkey is more suited to command them than Nuncle Gedmund.” Even so, he did as he was bid, bringing together sixty war galleys, thirty longships, and more than a hundred cogs and great cogs to meet the royal fleet as it swept out from King’s Landing. As the great war fleet passed through the Gullet, Ser Gedmund sent over Blackbean to Lord Alyn’s flagship, Queen Rhaenys, with a letter authorizing him to take command of the Velaryon squadrons, “so that they may benefit from his many years of experience.” Lord Alyn sent him back. “I would have hanged him,” he wrote to Ser Gedmund, “but I am loath to waste good hempen rope on a bean.”

In winter, strong north winds oft prevail upon the narrow sea, so the fleet made splendid time on its voyage south. Off Tarth, another dozen longships rowed out to further swell their ranks, commanded by Lord Bryndemere the Evenstar. The tidings that his lordship brought proved less welcome, however. The Sealord of Braavos, the Archon of Tyrosh, and Racallio Ryndoon had made common cause; they would rule the Stepstones jointly, and only such ships as were licensed to trade by Braavos or Tyrosh would be allowed to pass. “What of Pentos?” Lord Alyn wanted to know. “Discarded,” the Evenstar informed him. “A pie split three ways offers larger slices than one cut into quarters.”

Gedmund Great-Axe (who had been so seasick during the voyage that the sailors had named him Gedmund Green-Sick) decided that the King’s Hand should be informed of this new alignment amongst the warring cities. The Evenstar had already sent a raven to King’s Landing, so Peake decreed that the fleet would remain at Tarth until a reply was received. “That will lose us any hope of taking Racallio by surprise,” argued Alyn Velaryon, but Ser Gedmund proved adamant. The two commanders parted angrily.

The next day when the sun rose, Blackbean woke Ser Gedmund to inform him that the Lord of the Tides was gone. The entire Velaryon fleet had slipped off during the night. Gedmund Great-Axe snorted. “Run back to Driftmark, I’d venture,” he said. Ned Bean agreed, calling Lord Alyn “a scared boy.”

They could not have been more wrong. Lord Alyn had taken his ships south, not north. Three days later, whilst Gedmund Great-Axe and his royal fleet still lingered off the coast of Tarth waiting on a raven, battle was joined amongst the rocks, sea stacks, and tangled waterways of the Stepstones. The attack caught the Braavosi unawares, with their grand admiral and twoscore of his captains feasting on Bloodstone with Racallio Ryndoon and the envoys from Tyrosh. Half of the Braavosi ships were taken, burned, or sunk whilst still at anchor or tied to a dock, others as they raised sail and tried to get under way.

The fight was not entirely bloodless. The Grand Defiance, a towering Braavosi dromond of four hundred oars, fought her way past half a dozen smaller Velaryon warships to gain the open sea, only to find Lord Alyn himself bearing down on her. Too late, the Braavosi tried to turn to face her attacker, but the huge dromond was ponderous in the water and slow to answer, and Queen Rhaenys struck her broadside with every oar churning water.

The Queen ’s prow smashed into the side of the great Braavosi ship “like a great oaken fist,” one observer wrote later, splintering her oars, crashing through her planks and hull, toppling her masts, cutting the massive dromond almost in two. When Lord Alyn shouted to his rowers to back them off, the sea rushed into the gaping wound the Queen had made, and the Grand Defiance went down in mere moments, “and with it, the Sealord’s swollen pride.”

Alyn Velaryon’s victory was complete. He lost three ships in the Stepstones (one, sadly, was the True Heart, captained by his cousin Daeron, who perished when she sank), whilst sinking more than thirty and capturing six galleys, eleven cogs, eighty-nine hostages, vast amounts of food, drink, arms, and coin, and an elephant meant for the Sealord’s menagerie. All this the Lord of the Tides brought back to Westeros, along with the name that he would carry for the rest of his long life: Oakenfist. When Lord Alyn sailed Queen Rhaenys up the Blackwater Rush and rode in through the River Gate on the back of the Sealord’s elephant, tens of thousands lined the city streets shouting his name and clamoring for a glimpse of their new hero. At the gates of the Red Keep, King Aegon III himself appeared to welcome him.

Once within the walls, however, it was a different story. By the time Alyn Oakenfist reached the throne room, the young king had somehow vanished. Instead Lord Unwin Peake scowled down at him from atop the Iron Throne, and said, “You fool, you thrice-damned fool. If I dared, I would have your bloody head off.”

The Hand had good cause to be so wroth. However loudly the mob might cheer for Oakenfist, their bold young hero’s rash attack had left the realm in an untenable position. Lord Velaryon might have captured a score of Braavosi ships and an elephant, but he had not taken Bloodstone, nor any of the other Stepstones; the knights and men-at-arms such a conquest would have required had been aboard the larger ships of the royal fleet that he abandoned off the shores of Tarth. The destruction of Racallio Ryndoon’s pirate kingdom had been Lord Peake’s objective; instead, Racallio appeared to have emerged stronger than ever. The last thing the Hand desired was war with Braavos, richest and most powerful of the Nine Free Cities. “Yet that is what you have given us, my lord,” Peake thundered. “You have given us a war.”