Game of Thrones: Viserys the Three-Headed Dragon.

Chapter 209: Blood Sea Battle (Before the Battle)
"The Redwyne fleet has finally arrived." The Ironborn raider Stonehand said excitedly, "West Wind, that's right. It's a pity that the son of Leighton Hightower in Oldtown never came out of Whispering Bay. What a pity."

"Left Hand" Lucas Cawdor laughed evilly. "The Drowned God, the Storm God, whatever god he is, was fed well with sacrifices by the Crow's Eye and became fat." He was a little annoyed. "Words are like wind, only blood has power. If we had known this earlier, we would have restored the former glory of the Iron Islands long ago!"

In the days of the First Men, under the rule of the High King of the Iron Islands, the iron race's sphere of influence extended to the Arbor in the south and to Bear Island in the north. Even the Riverlands were part of the iron race's rule. At that time, the kings of the Iron Islands were divided into the Stone King who ruled the land and the Salt King who ruled the sea.

However, as the power of the King of the Iron Islands gradually declined, they eventually lost the Arbor and were driven out by the Gardener King and the King of the Tower. After Aegon's conquest, the Riverlands were directly cut off.

Being around Euron and seeing his many amazing magical skills, their ambitions quickly expanded.

The more fanatical "Red Rower" laughed, "The glory of the past? King Euron promised us the whole world!"

Torvald Brownfang spat. "Damn it. If I knew throwing sacrifices into the sea would bring victory after victory, I would have done it long ago, regardless of the Drowned God or the Storm God."

"It's not the Crow's Eye, and we don't understand those rituals!"

"So, choosing him as king was the right choice."

After "converting" to Euron, these people are the most fanatical iron plunderers. They don't care what means Euron uses to win, nor do they care whether it is evil or not. They only care about victory itself and the spoils.

And Euron has shown them his strength.

"Bring them up." Brownfang called his crew to escort a group of religious people to the deck. Among these clergymen, there were monks of the Seven Gods, priests of the Red God, priests of the Drowned God, moon singers, and wizards from the East. Clergymen of almost every religion could be found here.

Some of these religious figures had their legs broken, some had their eyes gouged out, and some had their tongues pulled out. The tortures they suffered were different, but the common point was that they were all tortured beyond recognition, with emaciated bodies, pale skin, bruises all over their bodies, and cracked wounds oozing pus.

Under the west wind, these people exuded a bloody and foul smell.

At the bow and stern of the ship was King Euron's new banner: a blood-red eye with a dark pupil, and above it an iron crown supported by two ravens. The red eye looked like the eye of a demon.

Euron said that there is power in the blood of religious people who bleed religious blood.

Euron stood on the deck wearing his Vulcan armor, reaching out to feel the direction of the wind, his one eye showing a smile of satisfaction.

"Your Majesty," Brownfang said, "Now that the priests have been brought here, what do you intend to do with them?"

"All tied to the bows," the king of the Iron Islands commanded. "My brother is tied to my Serenity. You can pick one, and they will dice the rest. One for each ship. It's almost time."

The crew tied up the king's brother, Aeron "Damphair", a priest of the Drowned God, with wet leather ropes and tied a knot, leaving no thread on his body.

Euron never showed any emotion to his brother. He had tried to kill his parents three times, so what was the harm in killing him once more? There was no punishment from the gods in this world. Before hiring the Faceless Men to kill King Balon, Euron killed his other two brothers when he was very young.

At that time, he was very curious about what the god who would come to punish him for parricide looked like, and how he would find him and strike him down.

The first brother Euron killed was Haron Greyjoy, the first son of his father, Quoran Greyjoy. Haron suffered from greyscale and could not make any sound. Euron was only seven or eight years old at the time. He covered Haron's mouth and nose to suffocate him. After watching Haron's eyes die in panic and prayer, Euron went outside and urinated on the sea, waiting for the Drowned God to punish him. However, nothing happened.

After that, after he had some knowledge of the occult, Euron killed Robin Greyjoy, the only son of his father, King Coren's third wife, Lady Piper. The child was weak and sickly, a freak, and no one cared about his death.

Ihlen is the fourth, but he won't be the last.

When Aeron was tied to the bow and the sacrifices of the captains had been distributed, the Crow's Eye gave another order, the black sails were hoisted, the Tranquility took in the anchor, cut the ropes, and slowly sailed under the west wind.

When the fleet of Serenity left, Euron walked leisurely to Aeron's side and said, "Brother, you look so lonely and pitiful. Don't worry, I have prepared a gift for you."

He turned his head to signal, and his two illegitimate sons dragged a naked woman who had been stripped of her clothes to the bow, and then tied her to the other side of the bow. The woman's face was pale and purple, her mouth was bleeding, and she was crying. When the illegitimate sons tied her up, she did not struggle at all, and her eyes were full of disbelief and panic. Her lower abdomen was slightly bulging, and it was obvious that she was pregnant.

That's Euron's seed.

That's right, Euron needs his seed.

The Crow's Eye deliberately impregnated Faria Flowers after he became king, because he needed the power of the King's Blood.

Crow's Eye watched the bastards do all this from the bow, then walked to the side of the ship with satisfaction and looked towards the gray-green sea.

But under the Tranquility, a huge shadow appeared on the gray-green sea as the Tranquility moved forward with its sails hoisted.

He turned his head and saw that the place on the bow where the catapult was originally installed was a black stone tablet stained with dried blood.

Euron nodded with satisfaction. Everything was ready and a new god would be born in the sea of ​​blood.

And this new god who will be born from the sea of ​​blood is named Euron the Crow's Eye.

-

The sky was overcast with thunder and lightning, and the strong west wind made Sir Desmond feel uneasy.

They were gradually approaching the sea area mentioned in the letter sent by His Majesty King Targaryen. The increasingly strong west wind seemed very abnormal. In any stormy weather, the wind direction should be chaotic, but today's storm was blowing from the west, pure west wind.

The wind has always been from the west, blowing from the direction of the Sunset Sea.

Desmond began to believe that there was indeed an ambush coming from the west, because with the wind blowing in this direction, even if the attackers set out from more than ten leagues away, they could arrive at the battlefield at a speed Desmond could not imagine.

He has now followed the king's orders and arranged the fleet heading north to prepare for defense against a surprise attack from the west.

The ship array was changed into five rows, with ten ramming ships with sturdy rams on the far left, and the other four rows were spread out. Inside the fleet were long-range attack ships equipped with crossbows and catapults, and landing ships for transporting troops, and outside were fast boarding attack ships and longships.

Desmond had basically arranged the array so that it could turn to the west to attack at any time, placing the strongest ramming ship on the western side so that it could directly become the spearhead of the charge when an enemy attack was discovered.

But the wind is still blowing from the west
Desmond knew that the ramming boats could not build up momentum for the most effective attack by paddling alone.

On the contrary, if the enemy takes advantage of the wind direction to rush into the fleet formation, it may cause huge losses to the fleet.

And there were storms.

It is never a good idea to raise full sail in a storm.

Desmond couldn't figure out why, if the Iron Men really wanted to ambush, they chose a stormy day when neither side could exert their full strength.

The sea was in a tumult of voices, filled with roars and shouts, the trills of horns, drums, and flutes, and the sound of a thousand oars rising and falling in the water.

"Hold the line," Desmond shouted to the messenger. He found that everyone was very uncomfortable with the current sailing formation. After sailing like this for most of the day, there were several problems with the formation being disconnected or almost causing a collision.

A loud shout came from the ship's lookout: "Commander! I see smoke rising from the bay!"

Desmond heaved a sigh of relief and silently prayed to the gods. In his letter, Viserys asked the fleet to sail all the way until they saw the bay with smoke rising. He wanted Desmond to lead the fleet and pretend to temporarily anchor here to avoid the storm.

If there are no enemies, just wait here for a day.

If you spot the enemy, wait for the east wind to blow before setting sail.

Desmond ordered the fleet to stop and start a new round of deployment. He ordered the warships to turn west and put ten 300-oared and twenty 200-oared rams in the first battle line, each forty yards apart.

The second array behind them was composed of large ships with two hundred oars and some with a hundred oars, commanded by knights and noble captains.

The third row further back were the small, fast longboats and attack ships, each with no more than eighty oars.

The innermost ships still had sails, large merchant ships and bulky cargo ships, supply ships. Sir Desmond's ship was in the second row.

No enemy was seen on the western sea, and the wait was getting anxious. The horns in the fleet blew, and the ships were still moving slowly to their designated areas according to the deployment.

Before the imaginary enemy's ship appeared in the west, Sir Desmond received a report from a longship heading to the bay to find the source of the smoke.

There were no fleets or large numbers of soldiers and horses hidden in the bay, only the king's three-headed dragon resting in the shelter of the bay. The reporter said that the king's dragon was lying under the cliffs of the bay to take shelter and rest, and the smoke of war was rising from the dragon, but the waves in the bay were too big, and the ships going there could not find a place to land and could not get close to the shore to reach the king.

And the king was actually very far away.

Wangshan is a dead horse.

The scout ship that entered the bay didn't know what to do for a moment, so it could only come back to ask Sir Desmond for advice.

Sir Desmond thought for a moment and said, "Then forget it. Let them all return to the fleet. If His Majesty the King has any other requests, he will let us know."

Rumble.

Under the strong west wind, after a round of thunder, dark clouds rolled and finally heavy rain fell.

Visibility at sea suddenly became blurry as heavy rain fell.

Rumble, crackle. Suddenly, the thunder and lightning on the sea became rapid and terrifying.

Sir Desmond suddenly felt uneasy, as if thunder was right above his head. He felt that the warship seemed to have entered a thunderstorm.

As the storm hit, the sky seemed to have fallen into night.

The sky was filled with thunder and lightning with terrifying force, lightning ripped through the sky, and thunder roared like explosions in the ears.

Many people experience constant buzzing in their ears.

Some people even saw white lightning falling on the sea not far from the ships.

Amid the rumbling, Sir Desmond even vaguely heard human screams.

Desmond asked loudly: "What's wrong!"

Soon, someone reported: "A ship on the left wing was hit by lightning and the mast was broken!"

"There was also a ship on the right wing that was hit by lightning!"

"There was a collision with a ship in the first train and the cargo hold was ignited by lightning!"

Desmond felt genuinely uneasy amid the explosions and thunder.

Click!

With a loud noise, the sky seemed to be torn apart, and the thunder fell on the ship next to Sir Desmond's Ocean Star.

With the naked eye, a column of white smoke rose from the deck and was quickly extinguished by the rain.

Rumble, click!

The thunder and lightning were still roaring with terrifying force, making loud noises in Sir Desmond's ears.

Desmond felt as if he had accidentally entered the temple of some god.

There were bursts of thunder and lightning.

How strange and unusual all of this is.

The rain was getting heavier, the lightning and thunderstorms were becoming more unpredictable and violent, and Desmond was terrified as he looked out from the captain's cabin at the wildest area of ​​the thunderstorm.

And that area was on the sea not far from the first array of the fleet.

Desmond felt as if he were in a dream, because lightning struck frequently in that place, briefly forming a forest of electric trees made up of lightning branches in the sky.

Desmond's mouth went dry at the horrifying scene.

The knight attendant beside Desmond asked in shock, his voice trembling: "Sir, what's going on over there?"

Desmond swallowed and said, "Maybe we accidentally entered a thunderstorm." He prayed silently: God bless us.

Desmond couldn't imagine another possibility.

It was as if there were two gods wrestling in that area, out of their sight.

Gradually, I don’t know since when, the thunder and lightning became less frequent, and the rainstorm also gradually became smaller.

Suddenly, the attendant looked up at the sky in horror: "Sir, the clouds in the sky..."

Sir Desmond looked up. As he watched, the dark clouds in the sky were flying towards the east at an unimaginable speed, but what was incredible was that the westerly wind on the sea was slowly subsiding.

Before Sir Desmond could figure out what this incredible celestial phenomenon meant.

Ah, wuwuwu——

Ah, wuwuwu——

Through the surging waves, the sound of horns resounded throughout the fleet. Sir Desmond knew that the order from the ship ahead was a warning of encountering an enemy, which meant: enemy attack.

Ah, wuwuwu——

More than two hundred warships were deployed in a formation that stretched for miles across the bay. Horns blew from one ship to another. The sound of drums boomed.

Although the fleet that had just experienced the thunderstorm was still maintaining its formation, the thunderstorm had hit many of the warships in the fleet, and several of the ships' masts were broken, so the sails were doomed to fail. Now it had caused congestion in the formation.

Desmond was only thankful that he had spaced the ships far enough apart when he had arranged them in battle array. Each ship was forty yards apart, twice as wide as in previous marches. This prevented him from losing his composure when he was caught off guard and faced the enemy.

The flag bearer and the bugler who were in charge of giving orders had already climbed up to the lookout on the mast, and the bugler shouted down, "It's Greyjoy!"

Desmond walked out of the captain's room, went to a high place on the deck, and took out a telescope to observe.

There was no need for the trumpeter to signal him, as he had already seen a large number of ships appearing on the western sea. Their ships all had sails hoisted high, and on their masts were the sea monster of Greyjoy, the blood moon of the Winch family, and the war horn of the Cooper family. These were the family emblems of the Iron Islands.

And they had unknowingly approached, only two miles away from the front line of the fleet.

This is the distance for naval engagement in this era.

Desmond had no time to wonder how the other side was able to march in the storm and why they were able to approach the fleet so quickly.

He could only follow his battlefield instincts and issue an order: "Inform the entire team, prepare to engage the enemy!"

The messenger shouted: "Prepare to engage the enemy!"

Woo-woo-woo. The bugler began to blow the horn.

The flag bearers began to wave their signal flags.

The mate and the boatswain had run onto the deck at some point, and asked in a panic, "Commander, should we order the entire army to hoist the sails as ordered by the king?"

Desmond stretched out his finger to feel the direction of the downwind; the westerly wind was getting weaker and weaker.

Looking up, the clouds in the sky were being sucked towards the east at a very strange speed.

This means that the wind directions on the sea and in the sky are incredibly different at this moment.

Desmond had never seen such a strange situation in his life. He hesitated for a moment, turned his head to look at the bay in the east, and finally issued an order resolutely: "Pass the order down, all troops set sail!"

The messenger roared: "All troops, raise the sails!"

The trumpet sounded again and the flag bearers waved their flags again.

As the trumpet sounded from ship to ship, finally all the ships on both wings received the order.

And as the order spread to the entire army.

Ship after ship hoisted their sails.

The drumbeat quickened.

On the deck, the infantrymen came to their respective positions, some struck their shields with swords, some operated the crossbows, and the archers quickly nocked the bowstrings and drew arrows from the quivers on their waists.

Desmond drew his sword, and suddenly he noticed that the hair of the servant beside him was floating gently towards the west.

Then he saw the flag that had just been hoisted on the bow of the ship rise and fall slightly and slowly change direction.

Desmond stared at the flag intently, watching a corner of the flag slowly turn to the west in the gentle breeze.

The wind gradually became stronger.

The flag was slowly raised, heading exactly west.

There was no time to think about what happened today. Sir Desmond swung his sword and roared, "All troops, attack!"

(End of this chapter)