Chapter 11.5- The Seadragon's Roar

The entire room seemed to straighten up after he spoke. The celebratory mood that. Had entered the room with my arrival had left just as quickly. Which was fair, to be honest. We weren’t in the ame situation that we would have been if the pirates had never attacked— we were in a worse on. We’d just managed t gt ourselves close to our intended starting point. There was nothing to celebrate about that. Not when every step we took after this one would be much harder.

“Daemon and the rest of the fleet will still be sailing towards Bloodstone in a matter of days. We are weeks behind on our effort to control the seas to ensure tear safe passage, so this is where desperate measures must come in.”

“What if we didn’t control the entire sea?” I found myself blurting out.

“What?” Corlys turned his eyes to me.

“We need to give them safe passage to Bloodstone right? We know what route they’ll be taking. Why not establish dominance over a fixed corridor and clear that for them to pass through when they arrive?” I asked.

“We’d be broadcasting our plans to them if we did that. Anyone with a brain in their skull would see through the plan, and while our numbers are somewhat respectable, we should not court battle with the larger pirate fleets needlessly for the time being” He said.

“Besides, a small corridor like that one would not be sufficient for our plans because while Daemon takes Bloodstone, we will establish dominance over Grey Gallows” He said with a smirk on his face, moving the figurine of his flagship towards the second most notable of these islands.

“Grey Gallows? I thought our plan was to constrict the pirates to their islands while Daemon and the storm lander knights go from Island to Island wiping the scum out?”

“Yes. That was our plan but now that we can be certain that our plan has been leaked to the enemy we must adapt and do what they all not expect us to.”

“We don’t have the forces for a landing.” Vaemond said.

“We have a dragon. Besides the plan is still much the same. We split the pirates’ attention b taking Grey Gallows when they surely would have expected us at Bloodstone, and then we move from there” He said. Just like with most things, it was clear that Corlys was not going to be changing his mind on this one so I nodded along with everyone else while I began thinking of what that would mean for the broader strategy. We had two gals here that completion of which would signify victory in this war: One, total control of the narrow sea, the area around the Stepstones n particular. Two, removal of undesirable elements from every single one of these chunks of rock. As long as Corlys’ plan was taking us closer to hose objectives, then I didn’t have any objections.