From White Harbour to Winterfell and Beyond. GoT Season 8 retold

Greyjoy Fate

Jon crouched amidst the reeds and weeds. The water from the river lapped at their feet but they remained out of site in the cover, and they could clearly see the entire ship from where they waited. Within, somewhere, was Dany, so close he could almost feel her. He knew he was hardly thinking straight and had to separate himself from the fear that she might already be dead, to form a plan to get them inside. He turned at once to Theon.

"Do you recall that mid-winters feast when you and I took down Rob and the Karstarks snow fortress, only the two of us?"

"Aye," rasped Theon, "We blitzed them from the back. The look on their faces!"

"We got in very close, and listened until the time was exactly right. Then we struck."

"Aye, that was all your plan, Jon." Theon answered him, "You always had great plans."

"We raid as quietly as we can."

"There is one up on the at the top there." Tyrion joined the whispering, "He'll be the bell ringer. Someone who wakes the rest in the event of an attack. We have to take him out before the rest. Is anyone a good climber? And silent-"

The man he spoke of suddenly slumped into the crowsnest, dead. Howland Reed lowered his bow and asked Tyrion, "What is next?"

"Davos and I will take up a place of rendezvous as you depart from the ship." Tyrion told them, after a long look at Howland Reed. "Jon will lead the raid."

"And I will go after my sister, Yara, once we are on board." Theon added.

"We go for the queen." Ser Jorah nudged Jhorro.

"I am with you Jon." Howland nodded.

Jon grinned, darkly, "Now we fall in, and everyone be as silent as the Night Kings grave."

Smoothly they glided through the water, freezing though it was, and Jhorro said every curse there was in his tongue. The ship was more than equipped to fight and there was a watchful guard at every corner. But the night was late, the darkest of hours had descended, and they could see the ship far better than anyone on board could see them. It was systematic, and focused. Every man fell silently, and with one blow only, first Jorah's curved blade, then Jhorro's, Jon slit the throat of a scabby pirate obliviously picking his teeth, and Howland took down two more with his arrows. One by one they hit the deck, like a ghost of death had struck, until every soul they saw had departed. When they gained the outside of the cabin, Theon continued down into the belly of the ship for Yara, and Jon caught strains of the conversation inside the captains quarters.

"One touch," moaned the voice Jon was enraged to hear. "One bloody poke. Do you know who I am?"

"Leave her!" demanded another voice, thin and whispery, as though many other voices were talking along with it. "She must not be touched."

"Here lies the most beautiful woman in the world... boys, don't you at least fancy a closer look?"

Jon adjusted ever so slightly to peer in through the window, and could see that Euron Greyjoy sat, as though a filthy King, on a shabby throne, and a small distance from him two men stood and glanced at each other at this suggestion. They both were clothed almost like knights, but too gaudy, too flashy for any true fighter's taste. He knew one of them at once, but another site distracted him. Bound and laying still upon a couch was Daenerys, locked in her poisoned sleep. Hovering just above her, was what looked like a diseased and tortured ruin of a man, with a pallid blue colour to his skin, and far too much interest in Jon's queen.

"How do you supposed the Boy in the North fucks her then? On a dragon?" Euron laughed hard. "Ah, I should love to fuck a girl on a dragon."

Jon hissed back to the others what he spied, adding, "I don't believe my eyes but it looks as though that shit-slinger Jon Connington is in there, and probably Harry Strickland the man he spoke so ill of."