ASOIAF: Celestial Conqueror - Chapter 9 (Patreon)

Bloody Invasion

POV: Maron Greyjoy

Maron Greyjoy stood proudly at the prow of his longship, the cold salt wind tearing at his dark hair as the fleet pushed up the moonlit river. Spray clung to his face, stinging his eyes, but he didn’t blink. Behind him stretched forty longships, their prows cutting the black water in a line that wound through the current like a serpent.

They were smaller than the great warships of the Iron Fleet, and far more crowded than they were ever built to be. Yet they pressed forward, one after another, as if the river itself had no choice but to bear them.

More than two thousand men filled those decks, crammed shoulder to shoulder. Every one of them bore steel, every one of them eager to claim spoils the Ironborn way—by the Iron Price.

The timbers groaned with the strain, hulls scraping against the slow current of the Fever River.

Here the passage was narrow, nothing like the freedom of the open sea, and the ships crept forward in a stretched-out column. Sails hung half-lowered, oars rising and falling in steady rhythm, splashing against the dark water.

Arround them the air was thick with the stink of sweat, pitch, wet leather, and the faint rot of river mud. A few men grumbled under their breath, cursing the river and muttering that true Ironborn didn’t belong here.

Their place was the sea, not rowing upriver like common fishers. Maron heard the whispers but ignored them. Complaints meant little. Warriors could spit and moan all they liked, but when the time came, they would fight.

And if they succeeded, the rewards would be beyond imagining. All of Westeros would lie open to them, its lands ripe for pillage.

Greenlanders would be taken as thralls and salt wives, their wealth seized by the Iron Price. It was a vision Maron clung to, one that burned inside him hotter than the wine he had drunk on the crossing.

Of course, he wasn’t blind to the danger. Holding back an enemy host of forty thousand with only two thousand men—anyone else would call it madness, even suicide.

But that was exactly why the prize would be so rich. Victory through impossible odds meant eternal glory.

This was his chance. At last, a chance to step out of his brother’s shadow, and out from beneath his uncle’s as well. Let them lead the great fleets against Lannisters, Royal ships, and the strength of the Reach. That was their role.

His was here, holding the Northmen in place, denying them the freedom to march south. If the Northerners were trapped, unable to aid the other kingdoms, then the whole realm would fall piece by piece.

His brother would break the Riverlands fleet at Seagard. His uncle would shatter the royal ships and sweep the Reach from the seas. Nobody could match the Ironborn once the waves were theirs.

With the fleets of the Seven Kingdoms destroyed, the land would be defenseless, ripe for plunder.

And while the Northern host wasted its strength at the siege of Moat Cailin, Ironborn raiders would strike freely at their undefended holds. Every raid would force the Greenlanders to choose—keep sieging Maron’s force at Moat Cailin or protect their homes.

Either choice would bleed them dry. The kingdoms would fracture, armies scattered, and not a single one of them would be able to threaten the Iron Islands.

Maron’s grip tightened around the railing. His heart pounded with the thought of it: the songs, the feasts, the glory. At long last, his name would stand beside the greatest of the Greyjoys.

The riverbanks began to widen, green wilderness rising high on both sides. They had reached the point where the longships could go no further. Ahead lay Moat Cailin, no more than twenty miles away, and not a single Greenlander suspected their approach.

When the first ship scraped against the muddy bank, Maron straightened and shouted across the deck. His voice carried over the crash of oars and the creak of wood.

“All right, you salt-soaked bastards, get moving!” he roared. “Take the supplies, the arrows, everything we need to hold that cursed Moat. These Greenlanders won’t know what struck them!”

Men jumped to obey, slinging bows and bundles of provisions across their shoulders. More ships bumped against the shore one after another, until the whole fleet pressed against the riverbank like teeth in a jagged grin.

“Don’t leave a single thing behind!” Maron added, his voice sharper than the edge of his axe. “The fools will come for our ships first, so be ready. Once we hold the Moat, they’ll bleed themselves dry trying to take it back!”

He stepped down from the prow, boots sinking into the damp earth as he joined his men. The night air was heavy and damp, but to Maron Greyjoy it smelled only of opportunity.

Glory was close enough to touch.

———

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

Where was the glory in slogging through mud and choking wilderness, forced to watch every single step like frightened children?

Maron clenched his jaw as frustration twisted in his chest. Had the enemy known they were coming? But how could that be possible? He searched for another explanation, yet none came. The only answer that made sense was that the Greenlanders had somehow prepared for them.

Their march had slowed to a miserable crawl. What should have been a swift advance from the Fever River to Moat Cailin had turned into a nightmare of mud, roots, and shadows.

Every patch of ground had to be treated as though it might kill them. Every tree could hide another trap. The forest seemed less like a stretch of land and more like a battlefield already claimed by the enemy.

While the Ironborn were men of the sea. Forests, swamps, even mountains—they had fought on all of them before. None of that should have been a problem.

But these lands… these cursed northern lands were different. Every step forward was like walking into the teeth of a beast they couldn’t see.

It started the moment they crossed into the trees. One of the men had stepped on a rope cleverly hidden beneath leaves and moss. The snap of twine was followed by a sharp swish above their heads.

A massive log came swinging down from the branches, its surface studded with jagged stone blades.

The screams came a heartbeat later. Several men were sliced open before they even had time to raise a shield.

Three were impaled outright, their bodies pinned like fish on a hook. Blood sprayed across the mud, and panic spread down the line before Maron could even shout for order.

That was only the beginning.

The further they pushed into the woods, the more hellish the march became. Sometimes it was another log, packed with sharpened stone blades, swinging out of nowhere.

Other times crude spears of stone and wood, with these strange Swords acting as Spearhead, rained down from above, tearing through armor and flesh alike.

There were pits too—deep holes hidden by a thin cover of branches and leaves. The unlucky men who stepped onto them dropped straight down onto beds of stone swords, their cries echoing as blood pooled at the bottom.

Even the ground itself betrayed them. Blades were buried upright in the soil, just their tips showing, waiting to split a careless foot open.

What made it worse was the insult of it all. These so-called swords were useless as real weapons. The stone shattered after only a few clashes with true steel. But as parts of traps, they were perfect.

Cheap, sharp, and cruel. Whoever had set them had done so with patience, and with the clear intent of slaughtering anyone foolish enough to walk this path.

By the time the Ironborn had even come close to sight of Moat Cailin, more than a hundred men were already dead.

Twice as many groaned with wounds—some light, others so severe that they could barely be carried. The ground behind them was littered with blood and broken bodies, a trail of misery leading straight back to the river.

It was obvious now. The Northerners had known they were coming. The traps had been laid days ago, maybe even weeks. It didn’t matter if they tried to take a different route.

Every path was riddled with danger. The enemy had planned for this, and the Ironborn had walked straight into it.

Maron forced himself not to look at the dead as he pressed on. His excitement, the fever of glory that had burned in his veins back on the ship, had cooled into something heavier.

A gnawing unease sat in his stomach. His men felt it too. The Ironborn, who were so loud and eager at sea, now marched in grim silence, their morale rotting with every step.

But turning back wasn’t an option. Not for him. Not now.

If a few traps in the woods were enough to break him, then what right did he have to dream of stepping out of his brother’s shadow? How could he even dare to hope of succeeding his father at the next Kingsmoot?

Failure here would mean more than death. It would mean humiliation. If he abandoned this task, he could never show his face on the Iron Islands again.

They would laugh at his name. Maron Greyjoy, the fool who fled from wooden traps and stone blades. His shame would be carved into the history of their people.

That thought alone made his blood boil.

No. He refused to be remembered that way. He would endure, no matter how many of his men bled in the mud. Moat Cailin was waiting, and he would see it taken.

It was no surprise that Maron felt a wave of relief when, at last, walls rose on the horizon. They appeared just as dawn broke, after the Ironborn had dragged themselves through an entire night march, their cover of darkness fading with every step.

Finally—shelter, fortifications, something solid. His tired eyes narrowed, straining against the morning light. But the longer he stared, the more his relief turned into confusion.

Wait… walls?

Moat Cailin wasn’t supposed to have walls. Everyone knew that. The old fortress was nothing but three ancient, half-collapsed towers standing in the middle of a swamp. A ruin. A choke point made dangerous by terrain, not by masonry.

Yet what loomed before him was nothing like the crumbling fort he had expected.

A massive circular wall of black stone rose from the earth, tall and unyielding, stretching across the land like the spine of some buried giant. Towers jutted from its surface, thick and heavy, with looming gatehouses in between.

From a distance, the walls looked no less imposing than those of King’s Landing, or any other great city of Westeros.

And that wasn’t the worst of it.

Even from afar, Maron could make out the shapes of siege engines along the ramparts—scorpions, trebuchets, engines of war ready to hurl death down upon any attacker.

His throat felt dry. “Since when…?” he muttered under his breath.

Since when was there a fortified settlement here? Since when did Moat Cailin grow into a walled city?

It was supposed to be abandoned, a ruin no sane man would bother defending, yet the truth stood tall before him in stone and timber.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t even Moat Cailin itself. The real fortress lay further south, its three towers visible beyond a deep trench that cut across the northern side.

Whoever had built this new settlement had chosen its position well—it shielded the ruined fort and made the choke point even harder to assault, no matter which side the enemy came from.

For a brief moment, Maron cursed his luck. If Moat Cailin had been truly abandoned, his men could have marched in and taken it without spilling a drop of blood.

The ancient towers were supposed to be their anchor point, the key to holding the North in place. Instead, he now faced something far more complicated.

Still, there was hope. His sharp eyes picked out the defenders on the walls. They weren’t armored knights, nor even proper soldiers. He saw leather jerkins, mismatched scraps of gear, and clumsy movements.

Most of them looked like smallfolk pressed into service. The way they handled their weapons made it painfully clear they weren’t trained fighters.

Farmers, fishers, townsfolk dressed in armor they barely knew how to wear.

So that was it. The Greenlanders had rushed to garrison the place, but their commander was clearly incompetent. No scouts had been posted in the woods. No riders had been sent to watch the river.

Even the lookouts on the walls were lazy, leaning on their spears and chatting with one another as though an enemy host wasn’t hiding only a short march away.

Maron almost smiled. Fortune had not turned its back on him after all.

How such a town had risen here remained a mystery, but in truth, it might be an even greater blessing. If he could take it and secure Moat Cailin behind it, the Ironborn would have everything they needed to hold the North in check.

With those siege engines turned around on the walls, even the largest northern host would bleed itself dry against their defenses. And if the walls ever fell, his men could simply fall back to Moat Cailin, forcing the enemy into a killing ground where arrows rained from both sides.

The distance between the wall and the fort was too short for any army to stand safe. Any force that tried to besiege one would be torn apart by the other. It was a perfect setup—if only he could seize it.

Their problem was simple, and brutal. How to take the city with as little resistance as possible?

As the sun climbed higher. The defenders still hadn’t noticed them. The gates of the black-walled town stood wide open.

Farmers and wagons trundled in and out, hauling sacks of grain and baskets of vegetables, most likely preparing for the long months of a siege.

His men crouched in the trees behind him, watching in silence. A few spat in the dirt. Others shifted nervously, muttering curses under their breath.

Finally, one of his captains leaned close and whispered harshly.

“What now, Maron? We aren’t ready to siege a whole gods-damned Greenlander town.”

The words hung heavy in the morning air, carried on the damp wind that swept across the marsh.

That much was true—they still had one advantage left. The element of surprise.

Maron raised his hand to quiet the whispers around him, his sharp gaze fixed on the walls ahead. “Look at them,” he muttered with a cruel smile. “Greenlanders in leather scraps, holding swords and crossbows they barely know how to use. Farmers, not soldiers. Killing them will be easy. Our only problem is catching them off guard so we can slip into the—”

A long, deep horn suddenly blared from within the city. The sound cut through the morning air, echoing across the fields and swamps until it felt like even the trees were shaking from the noise. Maron’s words died in his throat. His chest tightened.

They had been spotted.

“Damn it,” he hissed, slamming a fist against the trunk of a tree. “So much for that. I was planning to wait until nightfall, sneak to a gate before they closed it, and take them unprepared. That plan’s dead now.”

Below the walls, chaos broke out. Farmers abandoned their carts, spilling sacks of grain and baskets of crops into the mud as they sprinted for the gates.

Livestock bleated in panic, wagons overturned, and the whole area became a mess of shouting and running feet.

“If only we had horses,” Maron growled. “We might’ve rushed them before the gates shut. Now…” He clenched his teeth. “Now it’s too late.”

Or so he thought.

A loud creak split the air. The heavy metal gates shuddered as they swung inward, but then one side gave way with a sharp crack.

Chains snapped, hinges tore free, and with a metallic clang that carried across the field, half of the gate collapsed onto the ground. Dust and splinters burst upward, leaving one side of the entrance yawning wide open.

Maron’s eyes widened.

Through the gap and dust, he could even make out buildings inside the settlement—streets and rooftops exposed like an unguarded wound. The defenders scrambled in confusion, shouting orders, rushing along the walls, shoving arrows into crossbows.

Had they caught the Greenlanders in the middle of building this place? Were the gates not finished?

Perhaps the fools had rushed the work and now paid the price. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter. It was an unexpected stroke of luck, and Maron wasn’t about to waste it.

“This changes everything,” he whispered to himself, before his voice rose to a roar.

He stepped forward, planting his boot firmly into the damp earth, and bared his teeth in a grin that was half triumph, half madness.

“Men, get ready for the charge!” His voice thundered over the restless crowd of Ironborn, snapping their attention to him. “I know you’re tired. I know the march was hell. But look at those walls! Look at those green-blooded whelps shaking with fear up there! They’ve never seen a real battle in their lives. A few of us will fall to their crossbows, but their gate is wide open for us to take. And take it we will!”

The men shifted, their exhaustion replaced with a rising wave of anticipation. Axes clanged against shields, curses and laughter mixing together as the old fire returned to their eyes.

“Tonight, we’ll drink in their halls!” Maron bellowed, his voice carrying like a war drum. “We’ll claim their wives and daughters as salt wives, and tomorrow—we’ll fuck the North itself, and with it, the rest of the Seven Kingdoms!”

The answering roar from his warriors shook the trees.

“CHARGE!”

He didn’t hesitate. Maron surged forward first, his blood pumping like fire in his veins. His men followed close behind, nearly two thousand Ironborn in chainmail and leather, boots pounding against the wet ground. Rage and hunger for vengeance carried them forward—vengeance for the nightmare march, for the traps and the blood spilled in the forests.

Today, the Greenlanders would pay the Iron Price.

Arrows rained down from the walls fired from hundreds of crossbows. The shafts hissed through the air, striking shields, glancing off mail, or biting into flesh. Screams erupted, but the Ironborn didn’t falter. Not a single step slowed.

This was their chance. If they stopped now, if they lost momentum, there would be no second opportunity. Siege was impossible. Victory lay only in the charge.

And so they ran, roaring, towards the broken gate and the city beyond.

Maron squinted through the chaos of arrows and shouting, just in time to catch sight of figures moving along the wall above the gate. Several of them heaved strange ceramic jars over the side, letting them crash onto the ground in front of the opening.

The containers shattered with sharp cracks, and almost instantly, thick smoke began to spill out, rolling across the mud like a living fog.

“What is this now?” he muttered under his breath, baring his teeth. The acrid scent stung his nose even from where he stood.

‘Do they think a little smoke will stop us? Do they really believe Ironborn can’t find a gate just because of some haze?’

He scoffed in his mind and pressed forward, ignoring the few arrows that struck his chainmail and glanced off harmlessly. The men at his back roared louder, the ground trembling under the pounding of hundreds of boots. This was the charge that would break the Greenlanders, and no trickery would change that.

Abandoned carts lay scattered before the gate, overturned in panic when the peasants had fled. Maron leapt over one, pushing closer, close enough now to make out the defenders clearly. His eyes narrowed.

At the very front of the wall’s defenders, among the scrambling farmers in mismatched leather, stood… a child.

He blinked, disbelieving. A boy couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. Yet the way he gestured, the way the others obeyed his words—it was clear. That child was giving orders.

“A child leading them?” Maron growled aloud, fury and confusion twisting in his gut. “What Greenlander madness is this?”

Their gazes met for the briefest heartbeat. The boy’s eyes were cold, sharp in a way that no child’s should be. Maron answered with a vicious grin, raising his axe as he plunged into the thick smoke.

Behind him, he could still make out more than fifteen hundred Ironborn driving forward, their voices thundering like waves in a storm. A few hundred pressed closest, right at his heels.

Victory was within reach. It was theirs.

The smoke swallowed him whole, stinging his eyes and choking his lungs, but Maron forced his way through, teeth clenched. His axes gleamed in the dim light as he prepared himself to claim the first kill inside the gates.

Then the haze thinned, and he stepped out the other side.

His blood turned cold.

Instead of streets and open ground, there was nothing but a wall. A wall painted to look like buildings. His brain struggled to make sense of it for a heartbeat, but then the truth slammed into him.

“A trap…” he whispered, just as his eyes widened.

It was too late.

The men charging behind him didn’t have time to stop. They slammed into his back, knocking him off balance.

Maron toppled into the mud, the weight of Ironborn boots trampling over him as more and more warriors spilled out of the smoke, confused shouts turning into panicked roars.

His head jerked upward just in time to see them. On all sides—north, south, east, and west—towering walls loomed. Dozens, no, hundreds of crossbowmen aimed down at the trapped Ironborn, their arrows already loaded, the deadly points glinting in the morning light.

The only exit was a narrow closed side gate to the left, cleverly hidden behind the false gate they had rushed.

A deafening boom shook the ground from behind. The noise was like thunder crashing far too close. Men screamed in alarm, shoving and stumbling.

Maron twisted his head to look back through the smoke and saw it—an iron portcullis had crashed down behind them, sealing the way out.

He barely pulled his legs clear. The spiked grate slammed into the earth with such force it made the ground tremble. A dozen men weren’t so lucky. Some were sliced clean in half, others crushed against the steel, their blood spraying across the mud.

The Ironborn froze. The furious roar of their charge dissolved into silence, broken only by ragged breaths and the pitiful cries of the wounded. Every man there realized the same thing at once.

They had walked straight into a killing ground.

Maron lay in the dirt, mud clinging to his face, eyes wide. His heart hammered against his ribs. His dream of glory, of carving his name into Ironborn history, was crumbling before his eyes.

Then a voice rose above the silence.

It wasn’t the roar of a hardened commander, nor the gruff tone of an experienced veteran. It was a boy’s voice—high and young, yet cold enough to freeze the marrow in Maron’s bones.

“Finish them.”

The word echoed across the enclosed space like a death sentence.

A moment later, hundreds of crossbow strings snapped in unison.