rest. Oldtown would provide twenty warships for the fleet, Hightower promised, and his good friend Lord Redwyne of the Arbor would send thirty. In a stroke, Lord Oakenfist’s fleet had become considerably more formidable.
The Velaryon fleet lingered overlong in Whispering Sound, waiting for Lord Redwyne and his promised galleys. Alyn Oakenfist enjoyed the hospitality of the Hightower, explored the ancient wynds and ways of Oldtown, and visited the Citadel, where he spent days poring over ancient charts and studying dusty Valyrian treatises about warship design and tactics for battle at sea. At the Starry Sept, he received the blessing of the High Septon, who traced a seven-pointed star upon his brow in holy oil, and sent him forth to bring down the Warrior’s wroth upon the ironmen and their Drowned God. Lord Velaryon was still at Oldtown when word of Queen Jaehaera’s death reached the city, followed within a few short days by the announcement of the king’s betrothal to Myrielle Peake. By that time, he had become close to Lady Sam as well as to Lord Lyonel, though whether he had any part in the writing of her infamous letter remains a matter of conjecture. It is known, however, that he dispatched letters to his own lady wife on Driftmark whilst at the Hightower. We do not know the contents.
Oakenfist was still a young man in 133 AC, and young men are not known for their patience. Finally he decided that he would wait no longer for Lord Redwyne, and gave the order to sail. Oldtown cheered as the Velaryon ships raised their sails and lowered their oars, sliding down the Whispering Sound one by one. Twenty war galleys of House Hightower followed, commanded by Ser Leo Costayne, a grizzled seafarer known as the Sea Lion.
Off the singing cliffs of Blackcrown where twisted towers and wind-carved stones whistled above the waves, the fleet turned north into the Sunset Sea, creeping up the western coast past Bandallon. As they passed the mouth of the Mander, the men of the Shield Islands sent forth their own galleys to join them: three ships each from Greyshield and Southshield, four from Greenshield, six from Oakenshield. Before they could move much farther north, however, another storm came down on them. One ship went down, and three more were so badly damaged that they could not proceed. Lord Velaryon regrouped the fleet off Crakehall, where the lady of the castle rowed out to meet him. It was from her that his lordship first heard of the great ball to be held on Maiden’s Day.
Word had reached Fair Isle as well, and we are told that Lord Dalton Greyjoy even toyed with the idea of sending one of his sisters to vie for the queen’s crown. “An iron maid upon the Iron Throne,” he said, “what could be more fitting?” The Red Kraken had more immediate concerns, however. Long forewarned of the coming of Alyn Oakenfist, he had gathered his power to receive him. Hundreds of longships had assembled in the waters south of Fair Isle, and more off Feastfires, Kayce, and Lannisport. After he sent “that boy” down to the halls of the Drowned God at the bottom of the sea, the Red Kraken proclaimed, he would take his own fleet back the way that Oakenfist had come, raise his banner over the Shields, sack Oldtown and Sunspear, and claim Driftmark for his own. (Though Greyjoy was not quite three years older than his foe, he never called him anything but “that boy.”) He might even take Lady Baela for a salt wife, the Lord of the Iron Islands told his captains, laughing. “ ’Tis true, I have two-and-twenty salt wives, but not a one with silver hair.”
So much of history tells of the deeds of kings and queens, high lords, noble knights, holy septons, and wise maesters that it is easy to forget the common folk who shared these times with the great and the mighty. Yet from time to time some ordinary man or woman, blessed with neither birth nor wealth nor wit nor wisdom nor skill at arms, will somehow rise up and by some simple act or whispered word change the destiny of kingdoms. So it was on Fair Isle in that fateful year of 133 AC.
Lord Dalton Greyjoy did indeed possess two-and-twenty salt wives. Four were back on Pyke; two of those had borne him children. The others were women of the west, taken during his conquests, amongst them