Sacrifices & Holy Missions

“Oh thank the Seven,” Ludyn said, not knowing that some things were better kept as italicized thoughts rather than bolded text. “Oh thank the Seven!”

He continued to thank the seven even as Aerys smacked him repeatedly. Thinking he was still burning alive, he let himself be hit, only stopping when Aerys moved his helm around.

Ludyn opened his eyes one at a time. The pan was on the ground, and the spice was everywhere, and the ground was burnt black, but he wasn’t dead. That meant he could still do what the prince asked him too.

“Thank you—” Ludyn paused.

He looked to the soldier. Silver hair, tanned skin, youthful face. He didn’t look like any of the other men in the battalion. It was his purple eyes that stood out the most. They shined like the purple gems Septa Grace used to talk about, amefrost or something like that.

Or, as the smallfolk called them…

“You got dragon eyes,” he blurted out. “Are you new to the battalion? Ain’t ever seen you around before. Not that that’s a bad thing, of course, just the other day ol’ Jim’s brother was swapped out and I was talking to the rookie like he was still Frim!”

Ludyn nodded on with everything Aerys said. It all made sense, didn’t it, since Jim’s brother was always shitfaced. And having dragon eyes meant that this new guardsmen must have been drowning in the cute girls in some of the fancier brothels. Ludyn licked his lips at the thought of it; maybe with this new guy’s help, Mercy Waters could have been in reach!

And then he mentioned the food.

All thoughts of beautiful girls was wiped away as Ludyn looked back to the pan. He swallowed something hard in his throat and bit the fingernail on his thumb. What the actual fuck was he going to do?

“What the actual fuck am I going to do?”

It was amazing.

Ludyn listened to Dragon Eyes and, with his help, they created a meal that smelled better then every soup shop in all Fleabottom. When offered a spoon to taste it, he did so greedily, and it took more than a little restraint to keep himself from gobbling up the princess’s food.

Arranging everything on a dented silver tray, Ludyn hoisted up the platter with pride. Another man would have seen this scene and thought the pride came from having cooked the meal. In reality, Ludyn was prideful for having created another bond of friendship. In the streets, brotherhood was everything. The army was the same.

“What’s your name?” Ludyn asked. He looked at Dragon Eyes as if they had been friends for years.

---

The Morning After the Burning of Dragonstone

Seven souls stood on the starboard side of Legend’s End.

Ludyn was at the end of the line. Twice he had tried to lean on the handmaid to his side, and twice he’d been beaten for it. But his legs were weak; a night of fire, blood, and drowning had robbed the idea of sleep from his memory. Standing here now, for hours on end, his lungs half-filled with water, the weeping cut on the back of his leg itchy and burning, his hands bound behind his back…

This wasn’t how the night was supposed to go.

The Ironborn were more vicious then Septa Grace had ever taught. They fought like demons possessed by the Stranger, and their steel killed so easily it might as well have been sucking the souls out of their victims. Oh, how evilly they fought, the memory of it making Ludyn shake his head. Tears fell on rusted boots. He knew not to cry loudly. Another of the people being forced to stand, an old woman, had sobbed too loud for the Ironborn. They beat her so bad that had to use some kind of stick and rope to keep her standing.

And then there was Dragon Eyes. Tied to the mast of the ship and unconscious. Why had the Devil of the Iron Islands put him there?

A loud clang made Ludyn jump. He looked up and, from below deck, the Ironborn swarmed out. In their hands were steel bars that they were clanging together in some sort of ritual song. They gathered in a great cacophony around the seven. The handmaiden began to cry.

One ironborn took a bucket of bloody water and dumped it over Dragon Eyes’ head before kicking him awake. Ludyn wanted to stop it, but he couldn’t.

The Reaving King was nowhere to be seen.

“He will not answer you,” a voice called out.

The Ironborn looked up and the seven sacrifices cringed and cried. Before Aerys, the great crowd of evil men began to part. Revealed rising from the underdeck was the Reaving King himself, Quellon Grejoy.

He was oblivion to the eye, death to courage, despair of heroes. He was a murderer and a lover and a father and a king all at once. He was ascended and justified and blessed. Every step he took towards Aerys carried with it the weight of a hundred thousand men, women, and children. It shook Legend’s End, or else it made the rocking of the waves feel like horrid earthquakes. His cloak, sable as the Hour of the Wolf, caught the wind violently as it rushed over the ship. His one good eye, half-lidded, was forever looking for violence.

The Reaving King stopped just a few feet away from Aerys. He looked down on him like a father admonishing his son.

“You fought well,” Quellon said. “You killed seven men last night. All seven of them knew you well, Aerys. They had fought beside you when we defeated the corsairs in the Summer Sea.”

With a snap of his cloak, he turned away from his former ward. He walked towards the sacrifice furthest away, the beaten and broken grey-haired woman. She wept as she stared at his feet, silently as trained. Quellon towered over her as a mountain of black metal hatred.

In a flash of steel, he cut her throat. She gasped, grabbing at the red smile as if that would seal it. Before the blood could splatter his face, Quellon kicked her off the deck and into the water.

“Madden, of Harlaw,” Quellon said.

He stepped to the next person. This one was a tall royal soldier with a long, ruddy-brown beard. He opened his mouth and Quellon cut out his throat. The word “Son,” could be heard amongst the bloody gargles, and then Quellon kicked him into the ocean as well.

“Lyonel Pyke,” Quellon said.

And so it went. For each person he cut their throat, kicked them into the sea, and stated the name of one of the seven men Aerys had killed.

And then he reached the last. Ludyn the Unburnt stood there sobbing. There was no subtly.

Quellon looked back to Aerys. He stared him down hard in his amethyst eyes. The dagger in his hand dripped with flesh blood.

He raised it to Ludyn’s throat.

“You paid the Iron Price for these lives,” the Reaving King decreed. “You paid to give the Drowned God seven sacrifices.”

The knife caught the morning sun. Its shine was dulled by blood. Quellon held it in one hand, visible for Ludyn and Aerys and the crew to see. The latter were silent. They watched with detached interest mostly, but some could care less and some were praying for the murders to continue.

Taking a life was such a paltry thing. In cities, it was a great affront. In all civilizations, it was treated as horrible and a necessity all at once. All but in the Iron Islands. Ironborn saw it as a way of life. An Old Way and a true way, perfected over many thousands of years. When you gave a child a brush and told them to make art, eventually they would. So the rest of the world had given the Ironborn the tools to survive, and they had.

Without the Drowned God, most of them thought that impossible. Quellon knew a godless man could not sit the Seastone Chair. The Reaving King was no godless man. He placed the dagger to Ludyn’s throat. He did not cut. His eye never left Aerys.

“Never has a dragon been drowned,” Quellon said.

His ward knew what he wanted. What had been denied to the Reaving King in the storm-shrouded past.

The Reaving King was a monument as much as he was a man. Clad in steel as dark and magical as the holy act of drowning itself. Towering man, mountain upon the seas. To see his sails was to know that death swam beneath your ship with tentacles decorated in the bones of broken armies and cursed sailors. It should have been no surprise to Aerys what happened next.

How he pleaded. How he tried his best to save this soldier who should not have survived the slaughter. Quellon looked at Ludyn with his one good eye and understood who this bald child was. A slumdog. A flea-bitten scoundrel who lacked the wit needed to survive in a world as cannibalistic as Westeros. Aerys Targaryen was much the same. Despite nobles having shat him out in their bloodstone castles. Despite having warded for Lords and squired for royals. Despite having drunken from the teat of Essos. Aerys Targaryen may have believed himself born of royals, but that was a lie, for all men came from the same black womb.

“When a man is drowned, it is because he is desperate.” The Reaving King turned to Aerys. “Non-believers are drowned often. And when they die and return, it is then that they find their faith.”

Ironborn nodded and mumbled in agreeance. All men of Legend’s End were drowned men. At one point in their damned lives they believed themselves atheists or agnostics or heretics. One by one Quellon had watched them sail out into the oceans confident and angry. And then he watched them be smashed upon the rocks of some island, or the steel armor of some knights.

Yes, all men were non-believers before they drowned. That was what made them saints.

The bloodstained knife lowered from Ludyn’s throat. Quellon took one mighty step and reached down. The ropes around Aerys’ arms were cut loose.

Ritual demanded he be drowned underneath Nagga’s bones. But that was only because she was an ancient beast and a symbol of the Ironborn having conquered some great force. Dragonstone’s shadow blackened the waves in which sat Legend’s End. It was a suitable dragon now.

The Reaving King grabbed Aerys by his head and slammed it down as hard as he could into the railing. Royal blood was needed for the ritual to come. If the boy was still conscious, he’d do it again, until the child became dead weight in his hands.