Bloodstone Isle
The wind off the Narrow Sea carried the scent of brine and tar across Bloodstone Isle as Prince Aegon Targaryen surveyed the half-finished harbor from the rocky rise above it. Men bustled below, Velaryon sailors unloading timber, hired craftsmen shouting orders, and a scattering of smallfolk laborers dragging ropes across the sand. The temporary port House Velaryon had raised was little more than a cluster of rickety piers and half-rotted pilings.
Aegon studied the scene with faint irritation. The location was excellent, the anchorage deep and sheltered, but the structures themselves… even a Dornish fishing village would have been ashamed of such work.
A grey-bearded craftsman hurried toward him, clutching a roll of vellum so crumpled it was scarcely recognizable as a blueprint. "Your Highness," he said, dipping his head, "the ground here is level and firm, and the waters reach a deep draft even close to shore. With proper work, we can raise a great port, one fit for warships and trade galleys alike."
Aegon accepted the drawing, glanced at the lines and circles scrawled across it, then clicked his tongue softly. To his eye it resembled a maester's fever dream rather than a plan.
"I care little for the process," he said, handing it back. "Only the result. Bloodstone Isle's future hinges upon this harbor. Every trade galley and every warship meant to secure the Stepstones will dock here. If this port fails, everything fails."
The man swallowed. Aegon's gaze, though calm, carried a weight he seldom realized he bore, a quiet, cold authority beneath the surface of a youth's face.
"You are the master of this work," Aegon continued. "See that you act like one. I am responsible for paying, and you-", he tapped the man's chest lightly, "-are responsible for building. If I am displeased in the end, I will not be forgiving."
Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, "But if the port is worthy of the Stepstones, there will be rewards. Coin is the least precious thing I possess."
He spoke the words idly, but the craftsman straightened as if they were a royal decree.
"Rest easy, Your Highness," the man said, beating a fist against his breast. "I have raised harbors from Oldtown to Gulltown. Thirty years' work, and never once a failure."
"See that this isn't the first," Aegon replied. "Now go. The sooner you begin, the sooner this island becomes something worth having."
The craftsman hurried back down toward the shoreline, shouting for his apprentices.
Aegon turned his gaze once more to the sea. The Stepstones lay scattered across the horizon like broken teeth. He felt, quietly, almost privately, a sense of inevitability settling over him.
This place will be mine. Fire and blood will make it so, if labor and coin cannot.
*
A hundred miles north of the Stepstones
A fleet stretched across the waves like a drifting city, greatmasts blotting out the morning sun, sails swelling with the steady northern wind. Banners snapped in the breeze: the crowned tower of House Hightower, the shark of the Westerlands' minor lords, the falcons and stags and bears of lesser lineages. Beneath them drifted merchant cogs repurposed for war, supply ships heavy with timber and grain, and the long, low hulls of escorting galleys.
A man in Hightower grey and green stepped to the prow of the lead ship. The sailors called him Kraken Hightower, a name earned not from Oldtown but from the years he had spent hunting reavers in these very waters.
"My lord," his first mate said, approaching with unease. "We are within a hundred miles of the Stepstones. And more pirates gather behind us with each league. Some have drawn close enough to taste our wake. They grow… impatient."
Kraken Hightower's expression did not shift. He watched the fragmented silhouettes trailing them, longboats, skiffs, patched-together raiding vessels, all creeping forward like carrion crows after a dying animal.
"Let them come," he said. "Keep our course, and increase speed. Those wretches think us prey, but they have never faced knights of the Seven Kingdoms, not even second sons with something to prove."
The mate snorted. "Second sons with everything to prove."
It was true. The fleet bristled with young noblemen without inheritance, boys and hardened men alike, seeking land, titles, purpose. The Stepstones promised all three.
Prince Aegon, newly named Lord of the Stepstones, had neither bannermen nor sworn vassals yet. The islands were barren but not worthless, they could yield tolls from passing trade and harvests from the more fertile rocks. For a landless knight or a forgotten son, even a sliver of stony earth was better than a lifetime spent as a sellsword.
Opportunity, real opportunity, hung thick in the sea air. And every man aboard felt it.
No wonder they were restless. A knight who returned with pirate heads to lay before Prince Aegon might well return with land or even a minor title. The pirates trailing them did not realize they hunted men hungrier than they were.
And soon enough, the sharks scented blood.
The moment one pirate longboat surged ahead and angled toward the fleet, restraint shattered. Like wolves falling upon a wounded stag, raider vessels broke formation, paddling furiously toward the trailing supply ships.
The fleet responded at once.
Signal horns blared. Sailors shouted. The outer ring of ships shifted into a tightening circle, placing the cogs with armored knights on the outside.
From above, the movement looked like a cast net drawing tight.
The pirates came screaming, longboats knifing through the waves. Grappling hooks arced upward, catching railings with the thud of iron on wood.
"Brothers! Riches and women await us!" cried one pirate as he clambered upward.
"Brothers!" a knight bellowed from the deck in answer, "glory and land await us! Kill them, and carve your place in the Stepstones!"
Their voices crashed together like waves.
The first pirate hauled himself up, grinning, until he saw what waited for him... not terrified sailors, but a wall of Westerosi knights in plate and mail.
His grin died.
"Run," he croaked, the blood draining from his face. "Run!"
But the men behind him heard only their own feverish hunger, and they surged onto the deck in a frothing mass.
"Enough," growled an elderly knight at the forefront. His sword sang from its scabbard. "Cut them down!"
Steel rang out as he charged, and the deck dissolved into slaughter.
Blood splashed across boards as bright as the seafoam. Knights in gleaming armor carved through ragged pirates like reapers through a summer field. The raiders' chipped blades clattered harmlessly off steel plate; in return, the knights' longswords split bone and flesh with brutal efficiency.
Minute by minute, the bodies mounted.
Then the true threat arrived.
The sea darkened beneath the shadows of larger hulls. The pirate fleet, those who had hung back, waiting, drove their heavier ships toward the struggling cogs. Thick planks crashed against the Westerosi hulls with echoing booms. Better-armed reavers vaulted across the gap with axes and iron-bound shields.
The slaughter became a battle.
Blood trickled across the decks, down through the scuppers, staining the blue waves red. Beneath the surface, dark shapes circled, drawn by the carnage.
Balkan and Bars, brothers from the Crownlands, who had once tended villages for indifferent lords, stood shoulder to shoulder near the starboard rail.
Balkan split a pirate cleanly from shoulder to waist. He did not pause. "Bars!" he barked. "A true knight kills three common men in ten breaths. You hear me?"
Panting, Bars drove his blade through another man's throat. "I hear you! And I'll manage it soon enough!"
They had come seeking land, titles, a future no one had granted them. Here, amid screaming men and clashing steel, they were earning it inch by bloody inch.
Balkan turned to shout another warning, and froze. His eyes widened.
"Down!" he roared.
He tackled his brother just as a crossbow bolt hissed past, grazing Bars's arm. Bars grunted in pain; Balkan hauled him to his feet.
"Keep your wits," Balkan snapped. "Save your breath for killing these fools."
The brothers stood back to back once more, blades flashing.
All across the fleet, the fighting intensified. The shriek of tearing wood, the crash of shields, the guttural roars of dying men blended into a single chaotic storm.
And then-
A sound tore the sky open.
"HISSSS!"
The roar rumbled across the sky, shaking every mast and helm. Men froze mid-swing. Pirates glanced upward in terror. Even the knights paused, breath held.
Tessarion burst through the clouds like a shard of living sapphire, her wings blazing in the sun, her scales shimmering with deep cobalt and glimmering copper. The Blue Queen dove, trailing a streak of firelight behind her, the wind keening along her wings.
Her arrival blotted out doubt.
It meant one thing,
The Targaryens are here.
--------
A/N: Aegon's ambition has begun to stir.As his power grows, so do his foes, traitors, and enemies rising with blades already drawn.
Will he truly succeed… or be crushed before he can claim it all?
If you want to find out, read ahead on Patreon.19 advance chapters available, the first 2 are free.
patreon.com/Captain_Lag