The Far Shores

[Dirty Chai]

The ships reined in on the beachline, the reavers leaping from the gunwhales into the cold water, wading up the sandy shore.

Sargon pointed his sword and commanded the raid unto the fray, as he would normally;
"Take the tower!" he yelled.

The men and women he knew surged forward with him, striding up the beach to a small bluff where a grassy knoll rose high to a tower, shaded by the distant sun behind it..

Sunlight.. There is no sun here.
Yet the hills cast shadows and the world is lit.
The world is grey, like the steel of a crude blade, like the stone of the kraken throne, like the walls of Ten Towers.

The young Harlaw stopped, balking, squinting.
"What?"
He looked about him at his companions, his followers, the retainers and warriors of Harlaw..

They moved without emotion, their skin deathly pale, just like the shore and the hill and the tower and the sky.
"Halt!" he called.
Could they not hear him?
"Halt.."

A blink.

Who is this?
A shadowed figure stands upon the knoll, upon the tower, upon the rook.

Another blink.

Hands stretch across Sargon's shoulders.
The earth shakes, the waves crash, wolves howl, men scream, all creating a remarkable sound in cacaphony: a voice.

Sargon fell to his knees, gazing upon his hands, which seemed like the paws of the dead, long fatless sticks, pale and veiny.
His gaze turns then upwards, and a pain shocks him to the sand, coughing, this gray vision fading.

[Dirty Chai]

"He's alive, pa"
"Aye."

There two faces looking down on the coughing Sargon, obscured by waking vision and painful expulsion of seawater.

"Where.. what.." come out, partially between coughs.

"You're on the ill' of Pyke."
The two faces come into focus, one an old fisherman and the other a poxy boy.
The old one pointed, looking out over the waves.
"Your ship went dow'n'flam', ou'n the drink."

Sargon Harlaw turned his head, his eyes catching the empty, foggy horizon, bordered by the dark water parallel with him.

Another voice appeared, refined;
"You have been drowned before, boy? You are Ironborn?"

Sargon nodded absently.
A new face appeared as he turned his gaze back upwards, and the other two faces retreated.
This one was bearded and hooded. A Drowned Man.
He smiled cockishly.

"You've been handpicked, boy. Did you see the Far Shore?"
Sargon's expression changed slightly, from a lack of to confusion.
The Drowned Man cackled. "Yes! A fine catch he has, a noble born."