The long-handled shears stretched over two feet, handles black and gleaming, blades honed to a cold, deadly edge. Crusted black blood still clung in the gaps.
The thrall about to be punished was forced onto a bench, twisting and bucking like a fish dragged onto shore.
"No! No! Please, mercy! My lord, mercy!"
The man pinned to the ground screamed in terror at what was coming.
The executioner didn't flinch. The sharp blades lined up with the tendon bulging at the man's heel. A single icy scrape made him jerk hard, then thrash even harder.
Crack. The tendon snapped clean. Not much blood, but a milky-white cord flecked with yellow popped out of the heel with a wet sound.
The men holding him let go. The thrall with the severed tendon rolled on the dirt, howling.
The man with the shears looked at the gaunt, dead-eyed thralls around him. "Next one who runs gets the same."
A whip cracked across the man's back. Another guard snarled at the rest, "Get back to work!"
The terrified thrall-serfs scattered, hurrying back into the rows of low tea bushes.
This was Hall Plantation on Harlaw—one of the Iron Islands' biggest. Tea, fruit trees, wheat. All tended by thralls snatched from the Westerlands, the Riverlands, even passing merchant ships.
Skilled thralls had it easier. Shipwrights were worth their weight in iron. Everyone else became pure slaves.
On Harlaw they were plantation thralls. On Great Wyk they mined. Same chains, different dirt.
The man with the cut tendon lay there as a warning—and the executioner's mercy: one afternoon's rest in exchange for a lifetime of limping.
By evening the sea wind turned cool. The man woke, the wound crusted black-red. He tried to stand, tried to see his foot, but the pain told him the truth. He was crippled now.
After a long while he found the courage. He smeared dry dirt on the wound, tore strips from his rags, and bound it tight.
One careful step. The leg wouldn't bear weight. Despair swallowed him whole.
He'd only been here a few months. Just a dockworker hauling cargo, saving every coin for passage to the Reach where wages were better and safer. The war in the Riverlands had loosened the lords' grip, so he'd taken his family and sailed from Seagard.
They never made it. Ironborn longships took them barely out of the harbor.
Half a year a thrall now. He hadn't seen his wife or children since landing. Word was they were at Ten Towers on Harlaw. The longing had finally broken him. He ran.
He never expected the traps.
Limping back to his grass hovel, he had almost no will left—except for his family.
Then, from the distance, faint shouts of battle.
Fires bloomed from every direction, cutting the darkness like a blade between sky and earth.
With the flames came war cries. Thralls poured from their half-dugout huts and stared.
Armored knights on horseback charged out of the night.
"Westerosi?"
The tendon-cut man whispered it like a prayer.
One rider fought like a demon—ten feet tall in the saddle, lance unstoppable. The plantation guards tried to form up, but their line was looser than an apple pie. The rider shattered it alone.
More and more thralls poked their heads out.
They saw the big-bellied giant who broke the line.
"Long live Duke Stark!" he roared, casually spearing a guard who tried to block him.
He showed no mercy to runners. The lance punched through one man's back and snapped his spine in an instant.
There were more like him—knights in bright armor pouring from the dark, agile foot soldiers among them. Three thousand well-armed men against a plantation with barely three thousand total (most of them thralls) was over in minutes.
Many knights just rode a circuit and the fight ended before they saw an enemy.
Jon didn't even command personally. He left it to Rickard, only setting the pace and direction.
When it was over, Sandor rode up to Jon, mask firmly in place.
"My lord, I killed eleven!"
Total haul was fifty-two. Sandor alone got eleven while most soldiers saw over three hundred enemies. True first blood.
"Good. But you charged too hard. As we raid deeper on Harlaw the Ironborn will be ready—stronger resistance. Wild charges get you hurt. Your deed's noted. Charge like that again and I'll punish you."
"As you command, my lord."
Sandor knew it was only a warning. Then he noticed the others watching and flashed an odd smile.
Since getting the mask he smiled more. Not the old terrifying grin from his burns, but one trying to look gentle.
The plantation fell. Under a hundred guards, nearly half dead. The overseer was dragged before Jon.
After learning where the stores and ledgers were, Jon had him hauled away.
At first light, in front of the thralls, Jon marched every overseer and manager onto the execution platform.
To the watching acolytes and bastard/second-son knights he said, "Harlaw has nearly eighty thousand thralls. We're not just burning plantations—we're making them know we exist. Execute them."
The fifty men were bound and shoved toward the watching thralls.
These thralls were the "execution tools" Jon had prepared.
At first many hesitated, staring at the terrified, piss-soaked men on the ground.
The tendon-cut man looked at the dead guards and the overseer, then at the young noble surrounded by armored knights. He screamed and lunged at the man who had cut his tendon.
"No! Don't!"
"Please!"
The man stayed silent. He bit, clawed, gone mad with rage. The other thralls finally understood. They piled on.
Screams sprayed from between thrall bodies like snakes and rats roasted over fire. Someone gouged out an eyeball, held it high on a string of bloody flesh like a trophy—then swallowed it.
Blood and screams flew together. The cries faded, but the thralls didn't stop.
Jon watched in silence. The thralls showed pure revenge-madness and blood-lust.
Soon he saw a few who regained their senses first. He had them brought over—including the tendon-cut man.
"My lord, have you come to free us?" the man asked.
"I can't free you. But you can free yourselves."
Jon spoke to them alone. Soon the Ironborn lords would react. A big battle was coming here.
He would crush their army on this island.
If they wanted to live, they needed to take up arms.
Jon knew the Iron Islands still had forty thousand men, but after old and weak, barely over ten thousand fighters. The hundred-thousand-plus thralls here would become his strength.
For now they had to stay on the plantations, spread the word.
Before leaving, Jon took over two hundred strong thralls into his ranks—plus the cooks who had been enslaved with them. They wouldn't fight, but they could handle logistics. After thirteen or fourteen hours of daily labor, they had the stamina.
Jon used Hall Plantation to show the bastard and second-son companies what was possible. Then he split his three-thousand-man army into three. Jon led one, Rickard another, the "lazy" Leo the third.
He gave Rickard and Leo full autonomy—they could split further as needed.
A war the likes of which Westeros had never seen was unfolding fast.