Rodrik the Reader had been reduced to this. Here he was, the Lord of Ten Towers, sat on a stool, flaying the flesh from the fingers of a dead man. It had started a few days before. He had been sick at first, every time that he looked at the decaying, cold flesh. The expulsions had nearly stopped since then, but not completely. They would never completely stop. What he was being made to do was unnatural.

He looked up at the face of the man whose skin he was peeling away. His hair was grey and sparse. His face was wrinkled, and covered in the dried blood that had run from the wound that had killed him. In life this man had been Dunstan Drumm, a proud man and a strong captain. Now he was reduced to this. There was no pride in what he had become. There was only disrespect and dishonour.

Euron had insisted that all the Drumm men that had been killed in his massacre have the skin of their right hands flayed away, to leave their hands skeletal, just as the sigil that the Drumms had once born on their flag. There were no male Drumms left. The house was dead. Euron had wiped them from existence.

He had also taken the ancestral Drumm sword, Red Rain, from the walking corpse of their former lord. He carried it at his waist now, the monster king of the Iron Islands. What was he King of now? Hardly any houses had survived the man's massacre. The Saltcliffes and Wynchs had been eradicated. One of Lord Goodbrother's sons had survived the massacre, but Euron had since killed the boy in a rage. The two Botleys that had been with them had both been killed, but there was still some of them with Asha, mayhaps.

Euron had killed Rogen Saltbeard atop that peak. He had been the only dead man not to rise again. Rodrik wasn't sure why the man had been spared such a fate. Bralon Blacktyde had fallen to his death, along with Aeron Damphair, who was the last of Euron's brothers, and had been one of his captives.

They hadn't left the camp yet, which confused Rodrik. What was Euron still doing here. He knew that the Crow's Eye was planning an attack on Stannis Baratheon at Winterfell, but what did he gain from delaying. All he was doing was allowing Stannis to bring more men to his cause. Euron had an army of dead men. What more could he want?

Rodrik remembered a book that he had read one, written by some Maester that had long since been dead, about the burial and funerary habits across Westeros. The Ironborn were unique in their way of disposing of their dead. They sent them off to sea, where they would join the Drowned God in his watery halls.

Some Ironborn wetnurses told tales about the dead walking at the bottom of the sea. Had they been prophetic stories? Rodrik had seen the impossible. He had seen the dead emerge from the seas. His two sisters had both been buried at sea after Euron had them killed. Would they be somewhere in this army?

He shuddered at the thought, and tried to put it to the back of his mind. He would not go looking for them, and tarnish his memories of Gwynesse and Alannys.

Instead he looked around at the two other men seated nearby him

Another was Little Lenwood Tawney, who had been close friends with Bralon Blacktyde. Lenwood kept shooting Rodrik dirty looks. He blamed him for Bralon's dead. It was Rodrik's betrayal that had prevented them ever rising up against Euron. He didn't remember why he betrayed his brother in arms. Euron had a queer way of getting into your head. The man was a monster, but persuasion was one of his most dangerous skills.

And then there was Left Hand Lucas Codd. He and the Red Oarsman had been spared the fate of living dead, but they may as well be. They did Euron's bidding with never an objection. Their eyes were empting, and they were shambling husks of the men that they had been before. The Codds had used to boast how all men did despise them. Lucas had helped leave far fewer Ironborn with the free will to hate his family.

There had been Codd men amongst those that Euron massacred. There were Humble, Wynch and Sunderly men too. They had all supported Euron achieve his power, and yet all of them were dead. Dead men and dead houses. The Codds may live on through Lucas, but they may as well not. There was no man left in his body, let alone Ironborn.

There had been other survivors, but Euron never allowed for them to be more than three together at any one point. His other cousins, Harras and Hotho, would be in their own cages, set up in one of the tents. Harras had managed to hide Nightfall before Euron took them, at least, which meant Euron needed him alive should he want possession of the Valyrian Steel sword.

Maron Volmark was another survivor. The young lord of Volmark had become Euron's new plaything ever since his brother Aeron had fallen to his death. Rodrik wasn't sure what Euron was doing to the boy, but he heard whimpers and screams coming from the tent that held Volmark and no others.

Two others had survived truly. There was the two women, who Rodrik now knew to be Malora Hightower, who Euron had taken when they had sacked Oldtown, and Falia Flowers, the bastard of a southron lord that Euron had taken as a salt wife. The girl was broken and capable of little more than babbling speech now. Rodrik didn't wish to know what unspeakable things that Euron had done to her.

Some more of Dunstan Drumm's flesh fell to the floor in the mocking ritual of House Glover. Harras swore that he had done three of Drumm's sons the day before. Most of the men had been thralls, bastards, and other members of the smallfolk. Some of the corpses were even bloated and wet from the sea. They had still been aboard the Drumm ships when they had been sunk.

He dragged the knife down the bone, flaying more of the flesh away and allowing it to drop to the floor. There was a bucket sat next to him, in case he needed to retch. Euron made them clean their buckets at the end of the day, so it was worth it to not retch too much. It was the sound of the flesh hitting the ground and the smell of the decaying dead that caused him most of the trouble.

He moved the knife to the bone again, but the motion was interrupted by the sound of commotion a few feet away from him. He looked up, and saw Lucas Codd on the floor, a throwing dagger plunged deep in the back of his neck.

Lenwood reacted to the attack faster than Rodrik, rising to his feet and turning the blade he held in the direction that the dagger had been thrown from. No new projectiles came. Instead, a figure charged out from the nearest bush. He was lithe and strong, quick on his feet and agile. When Lenwood launched the dagger at the oncoming man, he managed to duck and roll in time that the dagger missed and Lenwood was left unarmed.

And then the man flew into Lenwood, taking them both to the ground. Suddenly, a new dagger was in the hands of the assailant, and it was looking like he was going to plunge it down and end Tawney for good.

"Stop! Don't kill him!"

Rodrik stepped forward, pushing the body of the man who had once been Dunstan Drumm aside. He held his own knife in his hand, something which their attacker clearly noted.

"I didn't expect to see you working for the Crow's Eye, Reader. Your niece would be ashamed if she could see you like you are now. Nothing more than a slave."

"You know Asha?"

The man turned his face towards Rodrik, who took a step back when he saw it. Half the face was marked by the burned flesh and singed hair that had once been there. The flesh was red and raw, with a knife scar cutting through the right eye. The colour had drained out of the other side of his face, though at least there the sandy hair covered the pale complexion, and the brown eye. He knew this man.

"Do I know Asha? She was my lover, Reader. She was my captain. I followed her to these forsaken lands and look what it cost me. They called me Qarl the Maid once. Now they must call me Qarl the Hideous. I came here for the Crow's Eye. I came here to kill him and all those who follow him. I came here for Asha."

The Maid had been one of the more ferocious members of Asha's crew, Rodrik remembered. He wasn't the largest man on the Islands, but he was quick and fearless, or at least he had been. What had happened to the man that this ghoul was all that was left of him?

"We do not willingly serve the Crow's Eye. He enslaves us, that is true. He intends to destroy Stannis Baratheon, and everyone else after that. You must help me. Help us, Qarl."

"You dare to demand anything of me, Reader? If Euron desires to destroy Stannis Baratheon and his fire worshipping cunts then he can feel free. I would happily watch each and every one of them torn apart."

The man was angry, that much was clear. He seemed to have every right to be. Rodrik couldn't imagine what he had gone through at the hands of those men, though should Euron destroy Stannis then he feared for the rest of them. The Crow's Eye had promised him a Kingdom once, but that had been all lies, not that it had been the power that had swayed Rodrik.

"I do not demand. I beg. Save us and take us away. Me, and Lenwood, and my cousins too. Save us and I will take you to Asha. I will return you to her."

That caused Qarl's ears to prick up.

"You know where Asha is?"

"That I do. I will only tell if you help though."

Qarl glared at the ground for a few seconds. Well, as much as a man can glare with only one good eye. He then looked up, a fierce determination in his eye.

"Very well, Reader. I will do this. Not for you, but for your niece. I will recover your cousins and bring them to you. I will go alone though. You should run for two leagues east. There you will find a small camp. Wait for me there and I will bring you your kin."

And so Rodrik and Lenwood ran, leaving the body of Left Hand Lucas Codd to rot. For two leagues they ran, away from the ocean and the saltwater which the Ironborn called home, and towards the camp that Qarl the Maid had said they would find. When they got there, they found what was promised. The camp was small, with a fire that was still smoldering from the last time that it had been lit. There was a spit, though the meat that had been on it had been stripped away, and a small pile of bones lay nearby. A hastily created tent stood in the snow, a lot of which had been cleared away into banks at the side of the camp.

"Of all the people that should have survived this, Reader, you are not the one who deserved it. You are a traitor, who cost the lives of many good men by betraying us to the Crow's Eye. How many of them would still be alive had you not betrayed us?"

"The Crow's Eye knew of our treachery before he summoned me to those rooms on the Arbor. I did nothing but confirm what he already knew. I would have supported Asha if I could. I did what I did to try and keep us all alive."

Lenwood snarled. He may have been a little man, but he was fearsome on the attack. He spat in the snow, a look of disgust upon his face.

"How did that work out for you? Sunderly, Drumm and Goodbrother were massacred by those dead monstrosities. Bralon died trying to right your wrongs, and he took the Damphair with him. How many dead men are on your conscience, Reader?"

Was Tawney right? Had he caused that massacre on the Stony Shore by working with Euron? He had hoped that he would be able to turn on the Crow's Eye when the time was right, and put Asha upon the Seastone Chair. His plan had backfired. Asha was missing, maybe dead, and Euron had succeeded in all his plans. He had destroyed the Ironborn fleet, and turned their troops into these monsters of the dead. Asha's little brother, Theon, was somewhere in the North, and Euron's brothers, Aeron and Victarion, were both dead. Euron was the last true Greyjoy. There was no one who could replace him now. He had won, though at what cost?

Rodrik had always believed himself to be a smart man. The rest of the Islands had thought him a craven, hiding away in his library at Ten Towers, but he had studied the wars of the past, and there was something about what Euron had done which sounded familiar to him. There was a legend that the Ironborn held, of a sorcerer king who brought the souls of the dead up from the Drowned God's watery halls. Was that what Euron was doing now? Was he the sorcerer king reborn, intent on bringing death and destruction on the world? It sounded like something that the Crow's Eye would do. And he had been the one who facilitated it. How would he ever be able to forgive himself?

"When you think of their faces, remember who it was that sent them to their deaths, Reader. Just you remember."

Just as Tawney lambasted him one more time, there came the sound of running feet crunching on the snow. Tawney picked up an axe that had been discarded onto the floor. Rodrik looked for a weapon for himself, but there was none to hand. If it was the Crow's Eye coming for them then they would be dead. There was no way Lenwood could fend off the army of the dead with a single axe.

The first figure came around the corner, followed by another, and another, and then another. They all had weapons drawn, and the last one to come around held two axes. He used one of them to cut down a decayed corpse who was attacking him. The first man to the camp was Rodrik's cousin, Boremund Harlaw. He was panting, with a single axe drawn. There was some blood on the blade.

The rest of the four came next. The group was made up of Boremund's brother, Harras Harlaw, as well as Maron Volmark and Qarl the Maid, who was the man holding two axes. There was no sign of any of the other men that Euron had taken. Harras walked over to Rodrik. He was out of breath also, and he wore a sword at his belt, though it was an axe in his hand.

"I recovered Nightfall before we ran, but Hotho was killed by a group of those dead things. We freed the girls too, but the Hightower girl ran north instead. She said she had a destiny to meet that way. The bastard just collapsed and refused to go. We had to leave her behind."

"The important thing is that you got yourself out. We are free of the Crow's Eye, for now at least. We have to move."

"No. We stay here."

Qarl was wiping one of his axes clean of blood when he spoke. He had seated himself on a tree stump which had been lightly covered in frost.

"If we head north or east then we risk falling into the clutches of Stannis Baratheon, who will likely just throw us in a cage, if not burn us alive. There is nothing to the south, and to the west is Euron. We camp here and wait for Euron to march against Stannis. Then we head west, find a ship and return to Pyke and return to Asha."

"And what if Euron finds us? You want us to sit here like ducks for the kill?"

Harras turned on Qarl. Rodrik's cousins were both fighters, but Harras was a knight, and more intense than his brother.

"We are six Ironborn. If Euron comes for us then we fight our way to safety. I have seen worse than the Crow's Eye in my life, and I do not fear him or his legions of the dead."

Harras and Qarl shared a brief glaring match, but eventually the knight backed down. Rodrik was surprised. He went over to his cousin, who had taken his own seat, and sat beside him.

"We aren't truly free of the Crow's Eye until he is dead, cousin. You know that. I would have killed him then if I could, but he was nowhere to be found. We killed the Red Oarsman, but there was no Euron. I wondered where he had gone, but none of the others cared."

"Wherever he is, we are not safe from him, Harras. You are right. Until he is dead we will never be safe, but I would rather be here than in that camp. Don't you agree?"

Harras grimaced. Rodrik didn't know what Euron had done to his two cousins, but he would rather not think about it. The Crow's Eye had a mind filled with horrors.

"Qarl saved us from Euron. He brought us here. Let us put our trust in him. Should the time come however, let us remember that we are family. And family is what is most important."