The dragonflame that destroyed Harrenhal put a fiery end to King Harren’s dreams, the domination of the riverlands by the ironborn, and the “black line” of House Hoare.
THE GREYJOYS OF PYKE
The death of Harren the Black and his sons left the Iron Islands kingless and in chaos.
Many great lords and famous warriors had been serving with King Harren in the riverlands. Some died with him in the burning of Harrenhal, others when the riverlands rose against them. Only a few reached the coast alive, and fewer still found longships waiting, unburned, to carry them home.
The arms of House Greyjoy (center) and some houses of note, past and present, (clockwise from top): Greyiron, Goodbrother, Wynch, Botley, Drumm, Harlaw, Hoare, and Blacktyde. (illustration credit 121)
Aegon Targaryen and his sisters paid little heed to the Iron Islands in the immediate aftermath of Harrenhal. They had more pressing concerns, and powerful foes to defeat on every hand. Left to fend for themselves, the ironborn immediately fell to fighting.
Qhorin Volmark, a minor lord on Harlaw, was the first man to claim the kingship. His grandmother had been a younger sister of Harwyn Hardhand. On the basis of that tie, Volmark declared himself the rightful heir of “the black line.”
On Old Wyk, twoscore priests gathered beneath the bones of Nagga to place a driftwood crown on one of their own, a barefoot holy man called Lodos who claimed to be the living son of the Drowned God.
Other claimants soon arose on Great Wyk, Pyke, and Orkmont, and for a full year and more their followers fought each other by land and sea. Aegon the Conqueror put an end to the fighting in 2 AC when he and Balerion descended upon Great Wyk, accompanied by a vast war fleet. The ironmen collapsed before him. Qhorin Volmark died at the Conqueror’s own hand, cut down by Aegon’s Valyrian steel blade, Blackfyre. On Old Wyk, the priest-king Lodos turned to his god, calling on the krakens of the deep to drag down Aegon’s warships. When the krakens failed to appear, Lodos filled his robes with stones and walked into the sea to “take counsel” with his father. Thousands followed him. Their bloated corpses washed up on the shores of the isles for years to come, though the priest’s own body was not amongst them. On Great Wyk and Pyke, the surviving contenders (the king on Orkmont having been slain the previous year) were quick to bend the knee and do homage to House Targaryen.
But who would rule them? On the mainland, some urged Aegon to make the ironborn vassals to Lord Tully of Riverrun, whom he had named Lord Paramount of the Trident. Others suggested that the islands be given to Casterly Rock. A few went so far as to implore him to scour the isles clean with dragonflame, putting an end to the scourge of the ironborn for all time.
Aegon chose a different course. Gathering the remaining lords of the Iron Islands together, he announced that he would allow them to choose their own lord paramount. Unsurprisingly they chose one of their own: Vickon Greyjoy, Lord Reaper of Pyke, a famous captain descended of the Grey King. Though Pyke was smaller and poorer than Great Wyk, Harlaw, and Orkmont, the Greyjoys boasted a long and distinguished lineage. In the days of the kingsmoot, only the Greyirons and Goodbrothers had produced more kings, and the Greyirons were gone.
Exhausted and impoverished by years of war, the ironmen accepted their new overlord without demur.
It took the Iron Islands the best part of a generation to recover from the wounds inflicted by Harren’s fall and the fratricidal war that followed. Vickon Greyjoy, enthroned on Pyke on the Seastone Chair, proved a stern but cautious ruler. Though he did not outlaw reaving, he commanded that the practice be confined to distant waters, far beyond the shores of Westeros, so as not to provoke the wroth of the Iron Throne. And since Aegon had accepted the Seven as his gods and been anointed by the High Septon in Oldtown, Lord Vickon allowed the septons to return to the islands once again to preach the Faith.
This angered many pious ironborn and provoked the wroth of the priests of the Drowned God, as it always had before. “Let them preach,” Lord Vickon said, when told of the unrest. “We have need of winds to fill our sails.” He was Aegon’s man, he reminded his son Goren, and no man but a fool would dare rise against Aegon Targaryen and his dragons.
These were words that Goren Greyjoy would remember. When Lord Vickon died in 33 AC, Goren succeeded him as Lord of the Iron Islands, putting down a clumsy conspiracy to restore the black line by crowning Qhorin Volmark’s son in his stead. He faced a more serious test four years later, when Aegon the Conqueror died of a stroke on Dragonstone, and his son Aenys was crowned king in his stead. Though amiable and well-meaning, Aenys Targaryen was widely perceived as a weakling, unfit to sit the Iron Throne. The new king was still on his royal progress when rebellions began to break out all across the realm.
One such revolt convulsed the Iron Islands, led by a man claiming that he was the priest-king Lodos returned at last from visiting his father. But Goren Greyjoy dealt with it decisively, going so far as to send the priest-king’s pickled head to Aenys Targaryen. His Grace was so pleased with the gift that he promised Lord Goren any boon that was within his power to grant. As sage as he was savage, Greyjoy asked the king to give him leave to expel the septons and septas from the Iron Islands. King Aenys was forced to agree. A century would pass before another sept was opened on the islands.
For long years afterward the ironborn remained quiescent under a succession of Greyjoy lords. Eschewing further thoughts of conquest, they lived by fishing, trade, and mining. All the width of Westeros lay between King’s Landing and Pyke, and the ironborn had little and less to do with affairs at court. Life was hard upon the islands, especially in winter, but that was as it had always been. Some men still dreamed of a return to the Old Way, when the ironborn were a people to be feared, but the Stepstones and the Summer Sea were far away, and the Greyjoys on the Seastone Chair would allow no reaving closer to home.
THE RED KRAKEN
The better part of a century would pass before the kraken woke, yet the dreams never died, for the priests still stood knee deep in the salt sea preaching of the Old Way, whilst in a hundred wharfside brothels and sailor’s taverns old men still told tales of days gone by, when the ironborn were rich and proud, and every oarsman had a dozen salt wives to warm his bed by night. Many a boy and young man grew drunk upon such stories, hungry for the glories of the reaver’s life.
One such was Dalton Greyjoy, the wild young son of the heir to Pyke and the Iron Islands. Of him Hake writes, “He loved three things: the sea, his sword, and women.” A fearless child, headstrong and hot-tempered, he is said to have been rowing at five and reaving at ten, sailing with his uncle to the Basilisk Isles to raid the pirate towns for plunder.
The Red Kraken’s reavers. (illustration credit 122)
By the age of ten-and-four, Dalton Greyjoy had sailed as far as Old Ghis, fought in a dozen actions, and claimed four salt wives. His men loved him (more than can be said of his wives, for he tired of women quickly). His own love was his blade, a Valyrian steel longsword he had taken off a dead corsair and named Nightfall. In his fifteenth year, whilst fighting in the Stepstones as a sellsail, he saw his uncle slain and avenged his death, but he took a dozen wounds and emerged from the fight drenched head to heel in blood. From that day forth, men called him the Red Kraken.
Later that same year, word of his father’s death reached him in the Stepstones, and the Red Kraken claimed the Seastone Chair as the Lord of the Iron Islands. At once he began building longships, forging swords, and training fighters. When asked why, the young lord replied, “The storm is coming.”
The storm he had foreseen broke the next year, when King Viserys I Targaryen died in his sleep in the Red Keep of King’s Landing. His daughter Rhaenyra and her half brother Aegon both laid claim to the Iron Throne, and the orgy of bloodletting, battle, rapine, and murder known as the Dance of the Dragons began. When word reached Pyke, the Red Kraken is said to have laughed aloud.
Throughout the war, Princess Rhaenyra and her blacks enjoyed a great advan
tage at sea, for amongst her supporters was Corlys Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, the fabled Sea Snake, who commanded the fleets of House Velaryon of Driftmark. Hoping to counter that, the green council of King Aegon II reached out to Pyke, offering Lord Dalton a place on the small council as lord admiral of the realm if he would bring his longships around Westeros to do battle with the Sea Snake. It was a handsome offer, and most boys would have leapt at it, but Lord Dalton had a shrewdness rare in one so young and elected to wait to see what Princess Rhaenyra might offer.
When her missive came, it was much more to his liking. The blacks did not need him to sail his fleet around Westeros and give battle in the narrow sea, a chancy proposition at best. The princess asked only that he attack her enemies. Amongst those enemies were the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, whose lands were close to home and vulnerable. Lord Jason Lannister had taken most of his knights, archers, and seasoned fighters east with him to attack Rhaenyra’s allies in the riverlands, leaving the westerlands thinly defended. Lord Dalton saw opportunity.
Whilst Lord Jason fell in battle in the riverlands and his host staggered from battle to battle under a succession of commanders, the Red Kraken and his ironborn fell upon the westerlands like wolves upon a flock of sheep. Casterly Rock itself proved too strong for them, once Lord Jason’s widow Johanna barred its gates, but the ironmen burned the Lannister fleet and sacked Lannisport, carrying off vast amounts of gold, grain, and trade goods, and seizing hundreds of women and girls as salt wives, including the late Lord Jason’s favorite mistress and their natural daughters.
Further raids and depredations followed. All up and down the western coasts the longships sailed, raiding as they had in days of old. The Red Kraken himself led the attack that captured Kayce. Faircastle fell, and with it Fair Isle and all its wealth. Lord Dalton claimed four of Lord Farman’s daughters as salt wives and gave the fifth—“the homely one”—to his brother Veron.
For the better part of two years, the Red Kraken ruled the Sunset Sea as his forebears had done of old, whilst elsewhere in Westeros great armies marched and clashed and dragons wheeled across the skies and met in bloody battle.
All wars must end, however, and so it was with the Dance of the Dragons. Princess Rhaenyra died, and then King Aegon II. By that time most of the Targaryen dragons were dead as well, along with scores of lords both great and small, hundreds of valiant knights, and tens of thousands of common men and smallfolk. The remaining blacks and greens agreed to terms, and Rhaenyra’s young son was crowned as King Aegon III and wed to Aegon II’s daughter, Jaehaera.
Peace in King’s Landing did not mean peace in the west, however. The Red Kraken had not lost his appetite for battle. When the council of regents ruling in the name of the new boy king commanded him to cease his raiding, he continued as before.
In the end, it was a woman who would prove the Red Kraken’s undoing. A girl known to us only as Tess opened Lord Dalton’s throat with his own dagger as he slept in Lord Farman’s bedchamber in Faircastle, then threw herself into the sea.
The Red Kraken had never taken a rock wife. His closest heirs were his salt sons, young boys fathered on various of his salt wives. Within hours of his death, a bloody struggle for succession broke out. And even before the battles began on Old Wyk and Pyke, the smallfolk of Fair Isle rose up and slaughtered those ironmen who still remained amongst them.
In 134 AC, Lady Johanna Lannister took her revenge for all that the Red Kraken had inflicted on her and hers. With her own fleets destroyed, she persuaded Ser Leo Costayne, the aged lord admiral of the Reach, to deliver her swordsmen to the Iron Islands. Embroiled in their own war of succession, the ironborn were taken unawares. Thousands of men, women, and children were put to the sword, scores of villages and hundreds of longships put to the torch. Ultimately Costayne was slain in battle, his host largely scattered and destroyed. Only a portion of his fleet (laden with the spoils of war, including many tons of grain and salt fish) returned to Lannisport … but amongst the highborn captives they brought back to Casterly Rock was one of the Red Kraken’s salt sons. Lady Johanna had him gelded and made him her son’s fool. “A fine fool he proved,” Archmaester Haereg observes, “yet not half so foolish as his father.”
In other lands, a lord who brought such a fate upon his house and people would be justly reviled, but such is the nature of the ironborn of the isles that the Red Kraken is revered amongst them to this day and counted as one of their great heroes.
THE OLD WAY AND THE NEW
From that day to this, the Lord Reapers of House Greyjoy have ruled the Iron Islands from the Seastone Chair on Pyke. None since the Red Kraken has posed a true threat to the Seven Kingdoms or the Iron Throne, but few can truly be described as leal and faithful servants of the crown. Kings they were in days gone by, and even the passage of a thousand years cannot erase the memory of a driftwood crown.
A full account of their reigns can be found in Archmaester Haereg’s History of the Ironborn. Therein you may read of Dagon Greyjoy, the Last Reaver, whose longships harried the western coasts when Aerys I Targaryen sat the Iron Throne. Of Alton Greyjoy, the Holy Fool, who sought new lands to conquer beyond the Lonely Light. Of Torwyn Greyjoy, who swore a blood oath with Bittersteel, then betrayed him to his enemies. Of Loron Greyjoy, the Bard, and his great and tragic friendship with young Desmond Mallister, a knight of the green lands.
Near the end of Haereg’s great work you will come to Lord Quellon Greyjoy, the wisest of the men to sit the Seastone Chair since Aegon’s Conquest. A huge man, six and a half feet tall, he was said to be as strong as an ox and as quick as a cat. In his youth he earned renown as a warrior, fighting corsairs and slavers in the Summer Sea. A leal servant of the Iron Throne, he led a hundred longships around the bottom of Westeros during the War of the Ninepenny Kings and played a crucial role in the fighting around the Stepstones.
As lord, however, Quellon preferred to walk the road of peace. He forbade reaving, save by his leave. He brought maesters to the Iron Islands by the score, to serve as healers to the sick and tutors to the young; with them came their ravens, whose black wings would tie the isles to the green lands tighter than ever before.
It was Lord Quellon who freed the remaining thralls and outlawed the practice of thralldom on the Iron Islands (in this he was not wholly successful). And whilst he took no salt wives himself, he allowed other men to do so but taxed them heavily for the privilege. Quellon Greyjoy sired nine sons on three wives. His first and second wives were rock wives, joined to him with the old rites by a priest of the Drowned God, but his last bride was a woman of the green lands, a Piper of Pinkmaiden Castle, wed to him in her father’s hall by a septon.
In this, as in much else, Lord Quellon turned away from the ancient and insular traditions of the ironborn, in hopes of forging stronger bonds between his own domains and the rest of the Seven Kingdoms. So strong a lord was Quellon Greyjoy that few dared speak openly against him, for he was known to be strong-willed and stubborn and fearsome in his wroth.
Quellon Greyjoy still sat the Seastone Chair when Robert Baratheon, Eddard Stark, and Jon Arryn raised their banners in rebellion. Age had only served to deepen his cautious nature, and as the fighting swept across the green lands, his lordship resolved to take no part in the war. But his sons were relentless in their hunger for gain and glory, and his own health and strength were failing. For some time his lordship had been troubled by stomach pains, which had grown so excruciating that he took a draught of milk of the poppy every night to sleep. Even so, he resisted all entreaties until a raven came to Pyke with word of Prince Rhaegar’s death upon the Trident. These tidings united his three eldest sons: the Targaryen were done, they told him, and House Greyjoy must needs join the rebellion at once or lose any hope of sharing in the spoils of victory.
Lord Quellon gave way. It was decided that the ironborn would demonstrate their allegiance by attacking the nearest Targaryen loyalists. Despite his age and growing infirmity, his lordship insiste
d on commanding the fleet himself. Fifty longships assembled off Pyke and bent oars toward the Reach. The greater part of the ironborn fleets remained at home to guard against Lannister attack, for it was not yet known whether Casterly Rock would side with the rebels or the royalists.
Little and less need be said of Quellon Greyjoy’s final voyage. In the histories of Robert’s Rebellion, it is no more than an afterthought, a sad and bloody business that had no impact upon the final outcome of the war. The ironborn sank some fishing boats and captured a few fat merchantmen, burned some villages and sacked a few small towns. But at the mouth of the Mander, they met unexpected resistance from the Shield Islanders, who sallied forth in their own longships to give battle. A dozen ships were seized or sunk in the fight that followed, and though the ironborn gave worse than they got, amongst their dead was Lord Quellon Greyjoy.
By that time the war was all but done. Prudently, his heir Balon Greyjoy chose to return to his home waters and claim the Seastone Chair.
The new Lord of the Iron Islands was Lord Quellon’s eldest surviving son, a child of his second marriage (the sons of his first marriage all having died in youth). In many ways, he was like his sire. At thirteen he could run a longship’s oars and dance the finger dance. At fifteen he spent a summer in the Stepstones, reaving. At ten-and-seven he was captain of his own ship. Though he lacked his father’s size and brute strength, Balon Greyjoy had all his quickness and skill at arms. And no man could question his courage.
Yet even as a child, Lord Balon had burned to free the ironborn from the yoke of the Iron Throne and restore them to a place of pride and power. Once seated on the Seastone Chair, he swept away many of his lord father’s decrees, abolishing the taxes on salt wives and declaring that men taken captive in war could indeed be kept as thralls. Though he did not expel the septons, he increased the taxes on them tenfold. The maesters he kept, for they had proved themselves too useful to forsake. Whilst he did put Pyke’s own maester to death for reasons that remain somewhat obscure, Lord Balon immediately petitioned the Citadel for another.
The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire) Page 32