Mid 271 Summer
"We have a catapult?" I inquired despite the pieces getting assembled in front of me.
"We've been a noble family over a thousand years." Maege hmphed and put her hands on her hips, "We have three."
Indeed, the men running back and forth to the keep for Maege brought with them the pieces of another disassembled siege weapon.
"How did I not know about this?" I asked the woman who shook her head in amusement.
"You've always assumed we have nothing of value except what you have earned sailing your ships to and fro." Maege scoffed, "We fought more wars than you've lived years. You think you're the first Mormont to bring something useful home? Please, boy. We have hidden depths."
"The catapults are the only thing, aren't they?" I stared at my aunt who kept up her stony façade until she finally broke.
"Fine, ya arrogant ass." she huffed, "The catapults are it. Your dad brought them home after the War of Ninepenny Kings."
"You think he'd have at least bragged about them." I mused and Maege laughed.
"He has enough of a stick up his ass to build another." she slapped her thigh in mirth, "He'd have never tried impressing you with his toys. And now we have a little something that no one remembers because of it. Between the watchtower and the walls, we have more than enough time to start hurling rocks at those longships."
"Wait until the Ironborn attack to start. Once they are committed, start putting holes in their ships. Ignore the big one. I don't like the odds that it's made of ironwood." I commanded.
"I know." Maege nodded, "The ones that size usually are."
"I want calvary waiting at the gates." I ordered, "All our horses capable of carrying a man in armor. Once they notice the bombardment of their ships the Ironborn will run to save what they can. When they do so we will ride them down as they flee."
"They could attack harder." Maege countered that line of thought.
"Then we will grind them down." I told her, "Either way, we will come out of this conflict the victors."
"And the fish will feast on squid." Maege grinned in dark satisfaction.
I nodded and took up a place on the battlements with two bags of my javelins ready and waiting to find new homes in Ironborn chests. I planned to one day switch over to the longbow myself, but I wanted to do so after making a weapon capable of benefiting from my incredible strength. Helga would help me with this as she knew how to fashion bows of horn and weirwood, and unless I managed to smuggle some goldenheart wood or dragon bones I wouldn't get better performance out of anything else.
Down in the harbor, the Ironborn ran their ships ashore in the nearest stony beach to the town, as the docks we built couldn't handle vessels of their size, and as I suspected the ships were fully crewed. Just under eighteen hundred Ironborn leapt onto the shore, all of them heavily armored as is their custom when sailing. Axes, spears, swords, maces, hammers, shields. Their fiercely individualistic culture prevented them from achieving great results in battle formations, but as foot skirmishers the veteran Ironborn had few equals, let alone what they could achieve on sea.
A small band of Ironborn approached led by a balding man well advanced into his middle years.
"Where is the Hungry Bear?" the leader yelled, "Is he here?"
In response to this inquiry I shouted back to the man, "Who the fuck it the Hungry Bear."
"You're a tall one." the man smirked from his place well within spear throwing range, "You him? The bear fucker that betrayed his gods for Lannister gold. They must have paid you well for cutting down your god tree, eh? But you did that trade on our ships, so its time to get our cut."
I looked down at them man and noticed his elaborate sword handle and the sheath that revealed a hint of a red blade within.
"You're Dunstan Drumm." I announced, "I'm going to kill you and take Red Rain for myself, then one day soon enough, I'm going to sail down to Old Wyk and kill all the Ironborn men there, I'll take all the women as thralls, and I'll take your thralls as well. Then I'm going to bring Naga's Bones back here and set them up in front of my gate so that everyone who sees it can know, this gate is House Drumm's Folly, where Dustan Drumm thought the foolish thought that he could take from Jorah Mormont, food from the Hungry Bear's mouth, and lost everything."
"Oh, you're going to do all that, are you? I'm so scared." the old man mocked shaking in his boots.
"Then you are feeling the correct emotion." I responded.
"I like that confidence, boy." Dunstan grinned, "Where will it be, I wonder, when we hack down your gates and have you on your knees watching as we plow everyone you love."
"It is good that you have maintained your capacity to dream big, as old as you are. Keep the light of your mind burning brightly, Dunstan, so that it means more when I snuff it out. Now return your men and let the battle begin." I dismissed them and began counting down, "Thirty, nine and twenty, eight and twenty…"
"I'm going to enjoy killing you almost as much as I'm going to enjoy all that Lannister gold I'm going to take!" Dunstan shouted, then returned to his host.
The Ironborn split into to two forces. The first made good on Dunstan's threat, charging though our missile fire to begin hacking at our gate with axes. While they committed to this costly attack - many men falling under my spears - the second force pulled a few fishing vessels up to the wall and hacked them apart before attempting to get them to light with pitch, but we had enough men dowsing their plans that they couldn't get very farther than some scorch marks on my palisade.
Many Ironborn attempted to scale our walls with grappling hooks, but the men who made it to the top were breathing heavily and not hard to throw back over. The old man, Dunstan made sure to stay out of bow range with a handful of his companions, seemingly unconcerned, but all that bravado changed the moment a stone flung over my wall and landed near one of his ships.
Maege shouted a correction for them and the next shot landed, splintering painstakingly worked wood under the mean combination of stone and physics. I ran down the nearby stairs and hopped on my horse at the lead of my two hundred thirty riders. Maege soon had all three catapults landing shots on their ships and Dunstan, after he recovered from the surprise, ordered a retreat. Maege kept the pressure up with the catapults, getting the Ironborn desperate to get their ships away.
She ordered the gates opened and we kicked our horses into gear.
They say when you want to destroy a man, you go after what he loves. For many it is hard to determine what that is, for in truth they don't know themselves well enough to know what they love so you default to their family, friends, wealth. The low hanging fruits of the human condition.
For the Ironborn, to a man, it was their ships.
There are moments when a cavalry charge will absolutely annihilate everything in front of it. Study the military history of earth and you will see those moments quite often where a ghosts or glory charge generates spectacular results. When the Ironborn started running for their ships, we didn't have a moment of opportunity, we had an entire movie scene. Even though the riders of Bear Island are lower lower middle class calvary, we might as well have been the winged hussars charging down that shore.
I lived out a boyhood dream, this was my charge of the Rohirrim. Lances pierced, swords slashed, hooves crushed, Ironborn died.
Behind our destructive charge came the people of Bear Island, Maege leading five hundred warriors, and behind them thousands more. Men and women armed with spears for fighting bears. Unwieldy things, but the perfect tool for ending a man trampled by a horse. When our horses cleared through the mass of desperate reavers I saw Dunstan Drumm climbing into his ship, the Thunderer, and I reached down to my side taking out my axe, and flinging it with all my hate at the man's balding head.
I hit him with the haft, not the blade, but it struck hard enough for the man to slip back into the water. I pushed my horse after him and drove Longclaw into his chest as his few guards leapt out of their ship to save him.
I had to leap out of the saddle when a large man with thick arms buried his axe through the heavy wool barding and right into my horse's neck. I slipped into the water, but managed to pull Longclaw free, using it to create space for me to get back to my feet.
I came up facing the four companions of Lord Dunstan and their taciturn leader, a huge man built like me, but leaner. The men tried to close on me, but I could sweep with Longclaw far faster than they could wade through the shallows, and the footing was treacherous.
The arrival of my riders forced the issue, and the men committed to slaying me to avenge their fallen lord, and had my sword spear been made of anything else they would have succeeded. Each man wore plate armor over chain, but to a Valyrian blade with the massive leverage of my sword spear behind me their armor might as well have been regular clothes. The magical ever sharp blade bit deep with every swing buying me enough time for my riders to slam into them. I thrust my blade into the big man's guts and he reached out for the cross guard trying to pull himself up to me, but I twisted the shaft and wrenched it about, opening the fierce man's belly to the salt water. He growled like a beast until he finally expired.
I dragged Lord Dunstan up to the shoreline and untied the sheath off his belt, transferring it to my own, and I drew Red Rain. The beauty of the sword entranced me. I could get lost in Longclaw's patterned ripples, but the crimson blade called to me, feeling so much more precious. Both a tool of destruction and a masterwork art piece.
I began to laugh due to the euphoria building up in me, and with Longclaw in my right hand and Red Rain in my left I ran back up the beach straight into a gaggle of Ironborn trying to fight off my warriors and get into their vessel. I ran Longclaw right into the back of one, then hacked the man to his left with Red Rain, cleaving his helmet and skull in twain.
I quickly found the groove, and with Red Rain in my off hand I had no reason to fear over committing with Longclaw's thrusts. If anyone tried to rush in on me while my sword spear was lodged in his mate, he'd be met with a lethal crimson arc countering him.
That day I presided over my first true massacre, as not a single Ironborn escaped our furious attack. One thousand seven hundred and eighty men. We bled to achieve it, as even completely routed, the Ironborn fought when cornered like rabid dogs, not giving into despair but screaming their end to the sea and sky as they tried their damnedest to take us with them.
They failed, and instead we took from them. The red sword in my hand, and the huge ships run up on my shoreline. It didn't matter how many died to deliver me this victory. It brought us everything we need to make us a real power in this world.
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I can see the Bolton men from the show screaming 'That's how it feels!'
I believe I did a poor job explaining the poor footing in the last fight, so hopefully Jorah slipping in this one makes up for it. No one went to war back in the day in Nikes. I might go back and edit the last chapter to make it more clear that running over hundreds of people leaking their fluids on a icy and wet shoreline makes it hard to commit a proper infantry charge.
Also for the first time Jorah's enemies couldn't get away. He finally popped his cherry.
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