GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 420 - Frozen Sea

Lynn had arrived.

Just him. One man, one horse.

No dragons blotting out the sky. No army at his back.

But when his face appeared, that lazy half-amused smile, and every defender on Bear Island saw it, the feeling that swept through them was more reassuring than ten thousand swords at the gate.

Lyanna Mormont's tears finally broke through.

She didn't know if it was joy or grief or simple, bone-deep relief. She only knew that the moment this man appeared, the mountain crushing down on her young shoulders — the one that had been grinding her into the earth , was gone.

Lynn swung down from the saddle and tossed the reins to a guard who was already staring like an idiot. He walked up to Lyanna and looked down at her: the young lady who had refused to let herself sob, and had ended up with tears and snot smeared across her whole face.

He reached out and ruffled her hair. Rough. Careless.

"Well done."

Two words. That was all it took.

"Wahhh—!"

Her composure shattered. She dropped to the ground, wrapped both arms around Lynn's leg, and wailed.

Lynn looked mildly put out, but he didn't push her away.

His gaze moved past the crying girl toward the black fleet closing in on the island.

Hundreds of longships. Wall to wall across the water. Grotesque sea creatures carved into every prow, and on every black sail, the golden kraken of House Greyjoy. The roars of the Ironborn and the blare of their horns rolled together with the crash of the waves into a single bloody tide, surging toward this small, stubborn island.

At the head of the fleet, on the flagship Iron Victory, Victarion Greyjoy stood at the prow.

Black plate armor, heavy and thick. A massive battle-axe across his shoulder. His face wore the look of a man who had already decided what was happening here and found it boring.

He glanced at the wooden fort in the distance and spat.

"This is the place?"

He turned to his second-in-command with a sneer. "No stone walls. Nothing. I doubt the men up there can even lift one of our axes."

He straightened and bellowed across the water.

"Send the order! Prepare to land!"

His voice cut through the sea wind.

"Leave no one alive! Take their women! Take their heads! Prove to King Stannis what House Greyjoy is worth!"

The Ironborn answered with a sound that was more animal than human. Weapons thrust skyward. Eyes burning with greed.

In their minds, this wasn't a battle. This was a feast. A celebration that hadn't started yet.

On the walls of the wooden fort, the defenders of Bear Island watched the fleet come closer and said nothing. Their faces had gone white. Their hands were clenched so tight around their weapons that their palms were slick with sweat.

Lynn was here , and it still wasn't enough to chase away the despair. The numbers were too lopsided. They all felt it.

Lynn gave Lyanna one quiet pat on the back and handed her off to the old maester standing behind him. Then he turned and walked alone to the far edge of the fort, where the cliff dropped straight down to the sea.

He didn't speak. Didn't gesture.

His long black hair whipped in the sea wind, his robes snapping behind him.

To every man on the walls, that lone figure looked thin against the sky.

"What is he... what's he doing?"

"By himself? He thinks he can stop a thousand Ironborn?"

Victarion spotted the solitary shape on the cliff.

"Who's that? Did the Mormont men all die? They're sending a boy out to die for them?"

He picked up a longbow and nocked an arrow. Took his time with the aim.

"Let me give him a send-off."

He was an inch from releasing when,

The world stopped.

No warning. No build. A silence fell that had no word for it.

The sound of the waves vanished.

The sea wind died.

Even the Ironborn's roaring cut off , not faded, not tapered , just gone.

Everything paused.

Victarion felt his ship stop. Not slow. Not drag against something. It simply went from full speed to motionless in a single heartbeat. He stumbled, barely catching himself on the rail.

"What in the—?!"

He got his feet under him and roared for an answer.

Nobody gave him one.

Every Ironborn on every ship was staring straight down at the water with the face of a man who had seen something he couldn't explain and knew he'd never forget it.

The sea had stopped moving.

The deep blue was draining out of it , visibly, impossibly , bleeding away into a flat, dead white.

Crack.

Crack-crack.

The sound came from everywhere at once, a grinding, splitting shriek that set every tooth on edge.

The sea was freezing.

A sheet of solid ice was spreading outward from the island in every direction, moving faster than anything had any right to move. Waves caught mid-crest became translucent sculptures hanging motionless in the air. Oars locked solid in the ice. Ships ground to a halt and tilted, some leaning one way, some another, like insects pressed into amber , hundreds of black longships pinned to what had, moments ago, been open ocean.

A second passed.

Or a century.

When the Ironborn finally found their way back to themselves, there was nothing left in them. The greed was gone. The bloodlust was gone. Something much older and much colder had taken its place.

"By the Drowned God... what is this?"

"The sea. The sea froze."

"Sorcery! Demon's work!"

Panic tore through the fleet like fire.

Victarion dropped his bow. Both hands found the ship's rail. He stared at the ice stretching out in every direction, at the ships of his fleet locked into it, and thought nothing. His mind had gone empty. He was a warrior. He understood axes and blood and dying well. This he did not understand.

Then,

Ohhhh, Ohhhh,

Long, clear horn calls rolled in from behind them. From the mainland. From the North.

Victarion turned.

The coastline was lit with torches, thousands of them, rising like stars. Banners with the direwolf cracked in the cold wind. Northern soldiers poured out of the frozen tree line in a torrent, assembling into formation as they came. The killing intent rolling off them was thick enough to feel.

At the front: a young commander on a white horse, and a woman with a morningstar and murder in her eyes.

Robb Stark.

Maege Mormont.

They had made it.

When Robb and Maege rode to the coast of Bear Island at the head of their vanguard, the sight stopped them cold.

An entire fleet. Frozen whole. Locked solid in open sea.

This was...

"Lynn!"

Maege's voice shook. She thrust her arm out toward the cliff on the island, pointing. "He did this!"

Robb looked where she pointed. He saw the familiar figure.

He had pushed his men hard the whole way, afraid of what they might find when they got here. That fear drained out of him now. He had no time to stand here and wonder how it had been done.

The enemy was right in front of him. Trapped. Helpless. Waiting.

"All troops!"

Robb drew his sword and leveled it at the frozen battlefield.

"For the North!"

He drove his heels in and was the first one down the bank, the first boot on the ice.

"FOR THE NORTH!"

Thousands of voices answered him. The Northern army came down like a flood breaking its banks, crashing across the ice toward the Ironborn.

For the Ironborn, the battle was a nightmare from the first moment.

They were wolves on the sea. On land, on ice slick and dead and offering nothing to grip, they were less than sheep. Men jumped from ships and went straight down, sprawling, and never got back up before a Northern blade found their throats. Their throwing axes, the weapons they were proud of, were useless on flat, open ice. Worse than a spear. Worse than a stick.

The Northerners were different. They had grown up in this. Snow, ice, cold , it was their floor, their home. Every one of them had found their footing on worse than this.

The slaughter began immediately and didn't stop.

Blood spread across the white ice. The roars of the Ironborn were replaced by screaming.

Maege Mormont moved like a she-bear who had found the men who killed her cubs.

She drove straight for the ships flying Greyjoy banners, morningstar swinging. Every arc ended the same way: a skull caving in. Skulls burst like melons under her. She didn't slow down for any of it.

"Victarion! Get out here and die!"

Her voice carried over the whole battlefield.

Victarion watched his men going down one after another. The sight of it finally broke him out of his stupor.

He would not lose. He could not.

"Hold the line! Form up! Form up!"

He leaped from the Iron Victory. His heavy armor hit the ice and held. He swung and took two Northern soldiers apart , shields and all , in a single stroke.

"We are Ironborn! Sons of the Drowned God! Pick up your weapons! Make them remember us!"

Something caught in the men around him. The best of them , the hardest, the most experienced , began pulling together around the flagship. They stacked the bodies of the fallen under their boots for grip and locked their shields.

The killing around the Iron Victory grew close and ugly and did not stop.

Up on the cliff, Lynn watched the ice below go red.

Leave the rest to Robb. They had the ice armor for a safety net. Think of it as training.

Victarion was still fighting. Whatever else the man was, he wasn't finished. His axe kept moving and no one near him lasted long. After beating a Northern knight back with a heavy overhead swing, he straightened and sucked in a breath.

His eyes drifted to the cliff.

He found Lynn.

The man who had stood there the entire time. Watching. Still. Cold.

Him.

That was the one. That was the demon who had turned the sea into a tomb with some foul sorcery.

The rage that hit Victarion had no bottom to it.

He raised his axe , blood and worse dripping from the blade , and pointed it at the cliff with every ounce of strength he had.

"AHHHH—!"

The sound that came out of him was all fury and no hope. Pure, helpless rage.

Lynn looked at him. At this Ironborn lord screaming at the sky from the middle of a lost battle on a frozen sea.

The corner of his mouth twitched.

He raised his hand. Aimed it lazily in Victarion's direction.

And snapped his fingers.

➤ Next: Euron Has Come