[ASOIAF SI] The Gilded Stag: A Ruthless Joffrey Uplift | Chapter 43: INTERLUDE- SILAS II (Public) (Patreon)

The heat of the Summer Sea hung over the water, heavy and suffocating. Sweat pooled beneath the collar of Silas’s boiled leather jerkin, stinging the salt-chapped skin of his neck. He stood in the prow of the longboat, his boots braced against the damp strakes as the oarsmen drove them toward the pristine white sands of the Isle of Birds.

A league behind them, the Grey Gull and a second deep-bellied Braavosi cog wallowed in the gentle swells. They sat anchored in the open water, their sails furled, completely exposed. Lord Aurane Waters had ordered his two massive war galleys to drop anchor behind the towering limestone cliffs of a neighboring atoll, hiding their towering masts from the harbor.

Aurane sat across from Silas on a wooden thwart. The Bastard of Driftmark wore a doublet of sea-green silk left unlaced at the throat to catch the meager breeze. He rested a pale hand upon the pommel of his longsword, his violet eyes scanning the dense, orchid-streaked jungle crowding the shoreline. He possessed the careless grace of old Valyrian blood. Silas knew the danger lurking beneath that calm exterior; the young lord understood the brutal currents of naval warfare.

The keel scraped against the crushed shells of the shallows. A dozen royal marines clad in heavy ringmail vaulted over the gunwales, their iron half-helms baking under the sun. They splashed through the surf, halberds raised, forming a defensive ring on the beach.

From the shadows of the palm trees, the Summer Islanders emerged. Tall men with skin the color of polished mahogany draped themselves in cloaks of vibrant parrot feathers. They drew thick bows carved from goldenheart wood, aiming broadhead arrows directly at the Westerosi marines.

Silas stepped onto the sand. He kept his hands entirely empty, holding them up away from his belt.

"We come under a flag of peace," Silas shouted in the broken Summer Tongue he had learned during his years running smuggled Tyroshi brandy through the Stepstones. "We bring iron for the Prince."

The tension stretched tight. The heavy hum of jungle insects filled the silence. A warrior wearing a cowl of red feathers lowered his bow and gestured toward a wide, open-sided pavilion situated on a grassy rise overlooking the bay.

Prince Xanda Mo waited beneath the shade of the woven palm fronds. The local ruler sat upon a seat of lashed reeds, his dark skin gleaming with scented oils. His guards flanked him, gripping long spears tipped with jagged bone.

Silas walked under the canopy, the sudden shade offering a brief respite from the blinding glare. Aurane Waters stepped beside him, his gaze sweeping the pavilion's defenses with cold calculation.

A servant offered carved coconut shells filled with a milky, fermented wine. Silas drank. The liquid tasted bitter and sharply sour. He handed the shell back and gestured to the two marines carrying a heavy wooden crate from the longboat.

The marines dropped the crate onto the woven floor mats. The wood groaned under the dense weight. Silas took a small iron crowbar and wrenched the lid free. He reached into the dry straw packing and pulled out a single, castle-forged steel dagger. He tossed the blade onto the mat.

The steel clattered sharply. Prince Xanda leaned forward. His island yielded unimaginable wealth in pearls, saffron, and rare woods, but the earth hid no iron ore.

Xanda picked up the dagger. He ran his thumb across the honed edge. A thin bead of bright crimson blood welled up on his skin. The Prince’s eyes widened. He gripped a heavy hardwood club resting near his seat and struck the steel blade against it. The wood splintered deeply. The steel remained unblemished.

"The Westerosi metal has teeth," Prince Xanda said, his heavily accented Common Tongue slow and deliberate. "Your fat ships carry more of these?"

"My cogs hold enough iron to arm a thousand men," Silas answered, his voice a rough rasp. "We bring thick nails to bind your hulls. We bring plowshares to break the roots of your fields. We bring heavy breastplates to turn away the bone arrows of your enemies."

Silas knew the massive profit margins singing in the ledgers back in the capital. The iron had been forged cheaply in the smithies of King's Landing, funded by the massive silver investments of Olyvar of Rosby and Drazenko Rogare. Swapping base metal for raw saffron and pearls would yield a king's ransom.

"What price does the captain ask?" Xanda inquired, setting the dagger down with lingering reverence.

"A barren spit of rock," Silas said. He pointed toward a jagged peninsula that hooked around the eastern mouth of the harbor, leagues away from the inner settlement. "My men will build a walled compound there. A trading post. The land will belong to the Iron Throne, subject only to the King's justice. We will pay you a yearly lease for the ground. A hundred crates of iron nails, fifty plowshares, and fifty steel breastplates delivered every autumn."

The Prince frowned, the colorful feathers of his cloak shifting. "You build stone walls on my shores."

Aurane Waters stepped forward, his boots quiet on the mats. He unrolled a stiff calfskin navigation chart, pinning the edges down with a pair of iron plowshares from the crate.

"The corsairs from the Basilisk Isles bleed your coastal villages, Prince Xanda," Aurane said calmly. He tapped a neighboring island drawn on the vellum. "If you refuse the Crown's steel, we will sail to your fiercest rivals. We will give them the steel. They will cross this channel to conquer you."

Xanda Mo’s jaw locked. He stared at the Valyrian lord, his pride warring fiercely with the undeniable threat.

A commotion erupted near the shoreline. Silas turned. A narrow outrigger canoe scraped violently against the sand. Three Summer Islanders stumbled out of the small craft. They were bleeding, their brightly dyed tunics torn and scorched. A woman collapsed in the surf, weeping hysterically.

The guards dragged the refugees up the grassy incline to the pavilion. They spoke rapidly in the musical, clicking tongue of the islands.

Prince Xanda stood up, his face turning an ashen grey. He pointed a trembling finger toward the southern horizon. A thin, dark smudge of black smoke stained the blue sky.

"Corsairs from Talon," Xanda gasped. "They burned the fishing village at the next cove. They took the young men for the slave pens. The wind carries them here."

Panic flooded the pavilion. The island guards shouted, scrambling to string their goldenheart bows.

Aurane Waters smiled. The young lord drew his longsword, the steel singing a bright, deadly note in the humid air.

"Sign the lease, Prince Xanda," Aurane demanded, kicking a charcoal stick across the mat toward the chart. "Give us the peninsula. The King's ships will break them."

Xanda ultimately could not refuse the offer. He snatched the charcoal and dragged his name across the bottom of the vellum.

Aurane turned to his squire, a breathless boy standing near the pavilion edge. "Signal the fleet."

The squire raised a heavy brass horn to his lips and blew a long, low blast that echoed off the cliffs.

A fleet of Basilisk corsair dhows poured around the southern headland. There were two dozen vessels, their hulls painted the color of rotting seaweed, driven forward by banks of thrashing oars. The pirates saw the two fat Westerosi cogs anchored openly in the bay. The corsairs howled, beating their curved blades against their wooden shields, hungry for a rapid boarding action.

Silas watched the Westerosi naval doctrine unfold.

The merchant cogs dropped their heavy iron anchors, the chains screaming through the hawseholes. Sailors threw thick, tarred mooring lines across the open water, lashing the two massive ships tightly together side-by-side. They became an immovable, floating wooden wall. Hemp netting rolled down the sheer sides of the hulls, draping heavily to the waterline.

The corsair dhows swarmed the cogs. Pirates threw grappling hooks, aiming for the high rails. The iron hooks caught in the heavy netting. Men scrambled up the ropes, only to become hopelessly entangled in the thick hemp mesh.

From the blind spot behind the limestone atoll, Aurane Waters’ war galleys swept into the bay. They rode the windward gauge, their massive sails swelling.

The heavy iron scorpions bolted to the forecastles snapped.

Thick iron quarrels tore across the harbor. They smashed directly into the fragile lateen yards and the wooden steering oars of the pirate vessels. Timber splintered with deafening cracks. The leading dhows spun wildly out of control, their long oars fouling against the ships pressing close behind them. The corsair swarm crashed into itself, paralyzed in the center of the bay.

From the towering heights of the cogs' forecastles, Westerosi crossbowmen stepped to the rails. They loosed their bolts straight down into the open, crowded decks of the dhows. Iron-tipped quarrels punched through boiled leather and flesh.

High above in the fighting tops, sailors tipped clay pots over the edge.

The pots shattered against the pirate decks. Clouds of unslaked quicklime burst into the humid jungle air. The caustic white powder settled on the sweat-drenched skin of the corsairs, finding the moisture in their eyes and lungs.

Agonized shrieks joined the din of battle. Pirates dropped their arakhs, clawing wildly at their own burning faces. Men threw themselves over the gunwales, choosing the sharks over the searing chemical fire eating their flesh.

Aurane’s war galleys closed the distance. The oarsmen drove the heavy bronze rams through the water, crushing the fragile hulls of the paralyzed dhows. Grappling lines bit deep into the pirate timber.

Westerosi privateers, drawing the King’s rations and clad in heavy ringmail, stepped over the rails. They locked their shields, forming an unbroken wall of steel on the bloody decks. Poleaxes and heavy halberds rose and fell in brutal unison. They drove the blinded, coughing corsairs into the sea, clearing the dhows with methodical efficiency.

The harbor waters turned a frothing, murky red. Shattered wood and floating corpses bobbed against the tide.

Prince Xanda Mo stood frozen beneath the palm-wood pavilion. His guards had lowered their bows, staring in absolute terror at the floating slaughterhouse. They had bled against the Basilisk corsairs for generations. The Westerosi had exterminated an entire fleet in a fraction of an hour.

Filled with profound gratitude and shivering fear of the Westerosi war machine, the Prince of the Isle of Birds opened his own royal storehouses. He ordered his servants to bring forth a massive tribute for his saviors. Heavy chests of pearls, tightly bound bundles of raw saffron, and processed logs of goldenheart wood were carried down to the sands.

Silas accepted the tribute with a grim nod. He ordered his men back to the longboats. They left the inner settlement behind, rowing across the wide expanse of the bay toward the desolate, rocky peninsula at the mouth of the harbor.

The heavy merchantmen hauled their anchors and followed. They did not intend to mine local stone or chop jungle timber. Joffrey’s expedition carried its own walls.

Sailors stripped the cargo holds, hauling thousands of heavy canvas sacks onto the beach. Hundreds of men began shoveling wet, packed sand into the bags. They dragged the sand-filled gabions across the narrow neck of the peninsula, stacking them in overlapping rows. Within hours, a thick, solid perimeter breastwork rose from the dirt. Carpenters drove pre-cut, kiln-dried pine beams into the earth behind the sandbags, framing the heavy gates and the inner storehouses.

Aurane Waters commandeered a crew of brawny oarsmen. They unbolted the heavy iron scorpions from the forecastles of the ships. They hauled the weapons through the surf, dragging them up the rocky incline of the peninsula. They secured the weapons firmly to timber mounts atop the newly raised sand-walls. An operational coastal battery now guarded the harbor mouth, its iron bolts aimed squarely at the open sea.

Southpoint was founded.

Torches burned along the gabion walls as night fell over the island. Silas stood within the fortified compound, running the arithmetic in his mind. The eighty-thousand silver stag investment had paid for the ships, the crews, and the cheap iron mongery. He looked at the vast wealth piling up in the storehouses from Prince Xanda's tribute alone. The saffron and goldenheart wood would sell for hundreds of thousands of golden dragons when the cogs dropped anchor in Blackwater Bay. The Royal Bank held a fifty-percent equity stake in this venture. When the cogs returned to the capital, the Crown Prince would claim the lion's share of this exotic cargo, instantly legitimizing the Bank's immense power.

Aurane Waters walked up the sandy incline, wiping a smudge of dirt from his sea-green doublet. The Valyrian looked out over the dark ocean, his eyes reflecting the torchlight.

"The magisters in the Free Cities have grown fat on exploiting the Summer Isles. They will take this trading outpost as a threat.," Aurane murmured, resting his hand on the wooden frame of a mounted scorpion.

Silas pulled his leather collar tight against the humid breeze. He knew the Essosi merchants relied on their control of the shipping lanes to bleed the Westerosi dry. He wondered what the Triarchs of Volantis and the magisters of Lys would do when they realized the Iron Throne had bypassed their ports entirely, planting a fortress at the very source of their plunder.

"Let them come," Silas said, watching a heavily loaded cog bob at anchor. "We will show them our fangs."

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