Chapter 112: The Battle of the Palisade
On Gallows Islet, the fires of war devoured everyone. Over the sea, Gallows Islet would be razed to the ground. The island was smaller than Bloodstone, and taking it proved even easier.
Above the waves, the Iron Throne's fleet and the Redwyne Fleet crisscrossed the waters. With their fleets burned, the pirates were nothing but turtles in a jar.
"Level the island to the last stone; kill any who refuse to surrender. Record the pirate head-count and plunder, register rewards and punishments. Anything of historical value or bearing strange runes comes to me first. Then regroup with me on Bloodstone." Rhaegar ordered Ser Brynden and Bronze Yohn to push the line to the bitter end, then mounted his dragon and flew for Bloodstone.
Silver Dragon, Purple Dragon, and Black Dragon shrieked joyfully high above, racing across sky, sea, and battlefield—far freer than in the stinking, cramped Dragonpit; the dragons had never liked foul, crowded King's Landing.
The Silver Emperor's wingspan was about thirty-six feet, and breaking forty this year looked very likely. The other two wyrmlings were only a foot or two smaller.
Rhaegar actually wanted to see the Summer Isles and Sothoryos, but the dragons needed more tempering before braving those perilous lands.
Bloodstone lay within a single dragon-flight. Rhaegar soared above the island and surveyed the field: Bloodstone had become a city of palisades, its edges studded with rows of wooden stakes, ugly black shipwrecks hammered haphazardly into the ground. The pirates' own barrier to block the channel had become the trap that sealed them in.
He saw that on the beaches some sections of the palisade had advanced a dozen metres, others forty or fifty, thrown up without plan—crooked, overlapping, anything to block the way. Yet those uneven, ugly stakes now ringed Bloodstone completely, turning it into the pirates' nightmare as they watched the fence inch forward and knew themselves doomed inside.
From Bloodstone rose a roar like storm on the sea; pirate shadows poured out like storm-clouds, charging every passage for a last desperate stand.
At first the dragons had burned every pirate ship, but many pirates still escaped onto Bloodstone, worsening its food shortage. If the siege dragged on, cannibalism would follow.
The pirates and Lysene exiles could endure no more; they would stake everything on one final charge.
The Iron Throne's troops were veterans of pirate assaults. Under shield-wall, pike, and arrow-storm, the attackers simply left heaps of corpses. Yet this time the pirates came in force, and the Iron Throne answered with even greater numbers.
Per Rhaegar's order, the Targaryen black-helms, Ser Kevan Lannister's red-cloaked lion-helms, Lord Steffon Baratheon's antlered men, and Lord Mace Tyrell's green-cloaks each sealed a sector, while Prince Lewyn Martell led the Dornish yellow-cloaked light lancers in flexible support. At sea, warships could ferry reinforcements wherever needed.
Some canny veterans even scraped up sand-dunes on the beach, raising earthen mounds on their own shoreward side so they could strike from above. Arrows, scorpion bolts, and javelins stood ready; bloodshed would make the soldiers colder and craftier still.
Ragged, sallow-faced pirates and Lysene exiles charged the wooden stakes in ragged bands. Calling them beggars would be no insult. Staying in caves and forts meant slow starvation; charging out offered only final torment and a sliver of hope.
The pirates' desperate rush could not break the palisade wall; they only left heaps of corpses, trapped between advance and retreat.
War-drums and battle-horns sounded.
"Dragons—dragons are coming!" the pirates screamed in terror.
"Dragonflame!" Rhaegar commanded Silver Emperor, Balerion, and Balerys to sweep over the stakes, great gouts of fire spewing from gaping draconic maws.
Silver, purple, and black fireballs burst among the pirates, leaving only rolling, shrieking men. Under the bright blue sky, the pirates' remaining scorpions and crossbows could not reach the nimble dragons, and the starving, swollen-faced men could hardly aim.
Rhaegar led the three dragons in spiralling dances of death across the field, climbing and diving like hovering hawks, leaving the pirates a fiery baptism—yet they were no dragonlords and could not endure the heat.
Between draconic strikes and the soldiers' fury, pirate corpses littered the palisade, burned, arrow-pierced, or speared, never even reaching close-quarters combat.
After this battle, Bloodstone had little strength left.
The Battle of the Palisade had been inevitable, yet it ended abruptly, leaving only heaped corpses, lingering shadows, and black smoke curling skyward.
"Ser, I'll leave this in your hands for now!" Rhaegar said to Ser Barristan Selmy, then called to his dragon and plunged into the heart of Bloodstone Island.
The wooden keep on Bloodstone had been leveled; the remaining pirates and Lysene fugitives now cowered inside stone caverns and refused to show their faces.
"Kral Rheen of Lys—coward, beggar—come out and face me!"
"Kral Rheen of Lys—coward, beggar—come out and face me!"
"Kral, aren't you the King of the Narrow Sea? Come out, Kral! Skull in a stone hole."
Rhaegar soared above Bloodstone on the Silver Demon Dragon, silver hair streaming, violet eyes blazing like fire. His voice rang out, hard as steel and loud as steel. The dragon echoed him with a thunderous roar; man and beast trumpeted their might over the island.
At the core of Bloodstone, the pirates' stronghold of stone sank into a deathly hush; no one dared answer dragonfire with words.
Truth forged by flame and force is still truth; those who had defied it now lay charred among the palisades.
Coward, Rhaegar thought with contempt. At his height he held the entire Stepstones yet accomplished nothing; Kral Rheen was now but dry bones in a tomb.
Bloodstone had become a place of the dead—a walled-off, silent city.
After the last embers of the palisade battle were quenched, Rhaegar brought his dragon down onto the great flagship. Around the folding table on her deck stood the war's most powerful men: King Aerys II Targaryen of the Iron Throne, Lord Tywin Lannister of Casterly Rock, Lord Steffon Baratheon of Storm's End, Lord Mace Tyrell of Highgarden, and Prince Lewyn Martell of Dorne. With Ser Ormund Yronwood, Ser Brynden Tully, and Lord Yohn Royce, all but the North and the Iron Islands were represented—an army raised at vast expense.
Yet the war had ended swiftly and well; the prince had won again, bringing news of victory at the palisade, and every lord wore honest smiles. Rhaegar reckoned the triumph glorious when measured in time and blood; otherwise the fight might have bogged down for years and swallowed a mountain of gold.
"Prince Rhaegar's courage, wit, and knightly virtue I might yet match, but the beauty that makes him look a true dragon—those gifts came from parents and ancestors, and I can't catch up." Lord Mace Tyrell spoke so grandly that all the table laughed.
The Stepstones campaign was one of the few bright spots in Lord Mace Tyrell's martial life; already he styled himself savior of the isles beneath Rhaegar's conquering banner.
Rhaegar studied Mace's broad grin and even broader girth. He and Lord Corlys Velaryon should form a mutual-praise troupe—both loved flourish and fanfare—though at least Lord Corlys could still lead a fleet, while Mace's talents were modest.
"My lords, beneath the palisades the Lysene and pirates have bled heavily. We must end this war quickly, before fresh troubles sprout. Gallows Islet is taken; Bloodstone is all that remains." Rhaegar lifted off his helm and reported.
"You mean Lys and Myr, Your Grace?" Lord Tywin Lannister asked. "The Lysene and the Myrish are proud; they will not watch the Stepstones fall. The Tyroshi have quarreled with Lys, else they too would interfere—but the dragons appeared, and the war ended before either city could act."
"What? With my son and three dragons, would Lys and Myr dare send fleets? This war was begun by Lysene exiles and pirates and has cost us a million gold. We have three dragons; I will make those pirate scum and the bed-slavers of Lys and Myr kneel." King Aerys II blazed with sudden fury, drunk on the sweet taste of martial glory; he would not share the cup.
Rhaegar thought his father the first of the inflatable fish; schemes to widen the Wall or build a grand fleet to humble the Titan of Braavos sounded fanciful in a child, yet in a king they were simply foolish.
"I will ride dragonfire and flatten Bloodstone. If we strike swiftly, Lys cannot react in time; we fight fresh while they tire." Rhaegar's word settled the council. Victors speak loudest; his siege-and-relief tactics and sea-borne forts had already worked wonders, to say nothing of his three mighty dragons.
Rhaegar held unquestioned authority in action, and every lord agreed.
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