Chapter 6.5- The Seadragon's Roar

But his size did not matter in this situation, because I had something he didn’t— a plan.

A good one, even. We rolled along the ground for a few seconds and that confusion was all I needed to find the dagger strapped to my side and place it at his neck. “Yield?” I asked this time with audible menace in my voice. I was irritated enough at that his first trick to run him through with the dagger if he tried something else. Not through his neck though. Maybe his shoulder. Yeah, that would hurt like a motherfucker and with the state of medicine in this world possibly lose him use of the arm but it wouldn’t give me a reputation for killing people in spars.

“I yield, my lord” He said and I scoffed before pushing myself off of him and onto my feet before I stretched out a hand and helped him up.

“Not completely disastrous” Ben said with a smile.

“But foolish as all hells” Manfred completed, looking down at my mud covered padding. The rains here were constant and even though we could get good footing with our nice boots, diving into the floor had probably not been the best move when considering my clothing. Well, being a Lord had its advantages at least.

—

I stared at the letter, not sure how I felt about it. Corlys’ plan— my plan but with some Seasnake flavored additions had worked. The realm was clamoring for war in the Stepstones and Viserys was only a stroke of a pen away from authorising House Velaryon to move un to pacify the region. Pacify, not annex, he had specified. He was probably disappointed, but I wasn’t. War was long and Viserys was a weak willed man. When we finally won the thing, he’d be hard pressed to stop us from doing whatever we wanted with the damn thing. Besides, we could always argue that annexing the damn thing was necessary to pacify it.

That was not what had me unsure, to be honest. No, what had me unsure was the part where he said he was going to be writing House Baratheon to join in with House Velaryon on the attack. Viserys had given him free reign to seek support within the realm but had specified that he would not be ordering anyone to war in a foreign land. What worried me was that this whole thing stunk. Sure, House Baratheon helping would mean we could wrap things off even quicker than in canon. But if they did then it stopped being a Velaryon victory and became a Westerosi one.

Was that Viserys’ plan? Also, there was no chance that Boremund, prideful old bastard that he was, would sit aside and let us declare ourselves King of the Islands. Not in a world where he’d contributed to that conquest. He’d want his pound of flesh, and he’d arguably deserve it. But them was that enough reason to ask Corlys to step back from asking.

Because we were in it alone otherwise. No Daemon this time, or at least no Daemon yet. We had dragons but I couldn’t see him sending Rhaenys or Laena off to war to be honest. So it would just be me, our fleets, and Igneel. We’d need the Baratheons to be honest. We had ships and men to crew them, but we didn’t have the men to do the fighting. Not enough bodies to burn in that considering our small population and even smaller levies. We’d empty Driftmark and still not have enough men to match the pirates on even footing. Not even with the force multiplier that was a single Dragon. Oh fuck it, I thought and began to pen a letter.

If I wanted to win, I had to change my goals. I wanted the Stepstones for myself. Corlys didn’t. His goal was to get rid of the pirates. And if there was one person that could help with that then we had to at least try. And maybe if the gods were merciful he’d get bored and fuck off to the Red Keep just like he did in canon.