Four years had turned a shivering ten-year-old boy into a lean, broad-shouldered youth of fourteen.
Where others saw a young man growing into his frame, Robin saw an improved physical platform. Four years of relentless training, hard labor, and clean, nutrient-dense food had forged his body into a weapon of quiet, disciplined endurance. beside him, his sister Lyra was now six years old—a healthy, bright girl who knew no fear, surrounded by the warmth of the glasshouse and the fierce loyalty of a town that treated her like a princess.
Flint’s Finger was no longer a mere keep; it was a fortress of commerce and steel.
The five hundred men of the Flint Sea Guard were now veterans of endless naval maneuvers. Five heavy Sentinel-class patrol ships—high-sided, double-hulled, and fronted with massive, iron-capped timber rams—patrolled the coastal approaches day and night. Across the narrow throat of the inner harbor stretched a massive, hand-forged iron boom chain, anchored to stone winch-houses on either side of the bay.
Then, in the year 289 AC, Balon Greyjoy crowned himself King of the Iron Islands and declared war on the Seven Kingdoms.
The warning came not by raven, but by the fire-brazier of the West Signal Tower.
Robin stood atop the stone battlements, his heavy woolen mantle snapping in the bitter sea wind. Beside him, Ser Bran adjusted his leather helm, squinting through the sea haze.
"Eighteen longships, Lord Robin," Ser Bran reported, his voice tight. "Flying the Kraken and various reaver banners. They’re coming up from the south, riding the tide. They think we’re a soft port town full of merchant silver and fat sheep."
Robin picked up a brass spyglass—a recent creation assembled by fitting polished glass lenses into a telescoping bronze tube—and brought it to his eye.
Through the glass, the Ironborn longships looked like predatory sea-serpents. He could see the reavers sharpening axes, beating their shields, and grinning with the arrogant confidence of men who believed the sea belonged to them alone.
Target assessment: Robin calculated internally, his mind instantly organizing the tactical spatial geometry. Eighteen light vessels. Approximately eight hundred reavers. High mobility, zero heavy armor, reliance on terror and rapid boarding. Counter-strategy: Funnel into a kill zone, deny mobility, leverage structural height and ranged kinetic force.
"Signal the town," Robin ordered calmly, his voice dropping into the cold, level tone that always made his men sit up straighter. "Raise the harbor chain. Lock the earthwork gates. Muster the citizen militia to the ramparts, and tell the Sea Guard to clear for action."
The Ironborn captain leading the vanguard was a grizzled reaver named Dagmer Salt-Hair. As his longships rounded the rocky headland of Blazewater Bay, he laughed aloud.
Before him lay the white-washed buildings and stone docks of Flint’s Finger, gleaming in the pale morning sun.
"Row, you dogs!" Dagmer roared, raising his broadaxe. "There’s gold on the docks and soft women in the streets! Take the harbor before their lords can even buckle their mail!"
The eighteen longships surged forward, oars biting into the dark ocean water like centipede legs.
Then, a deep, grinding roar echoed across the bay.
Two massive iron winches inside the stone watchtowers began to turn, driven by heavy wooden gear networks and counter-weights. From beneath the ocean foam, a massive iron chain—each link as thick as a man's thigh—pulled taut, rising three feet above the waterline across the harbor mouth.
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The lead Ironborn longship, driving forward at full speed, hit the chain at a terrifying velocity.
The sound was like thunder. The iron links bit into the longship's shallow wooden bow, instantly shearing off the prow and flipping the vessel onto its side. Men, oars, and shattered timber exploded into the sea. Two longships directly behind it crashed into the wrecked hulk, piling into a chaotic jam of snapping oars and drowning reavers.
"Chain!" an Ironborn helmsman screamed in panic. "They’ve blocked the harbor!"
Before the reavers could reverse their oars, five shadowed leviathans glided out from behind the Eastern Watchtower, blocking their retreat into the open sea.
The five Sentinel warships moved in a tight, disciplined wedge. Their massive wooden hulls loomed ten feet higher than the low-slung Ironborn longships.
On the raised forecastles of the Sentinels, twenty mounted wooden scorpions creaked as they were ratcheted back by crews of trained Sea Guards.
"Target their oars and hulls!" Robin’s voice rang out from the deck of the flagship, The Sentinel. "Fire at will!"
The scorpions released with heavy, metallic thuds. Heavy, six-foot iron bolts punched through the air, shattering longship oars like dry twigs and impaling iron-clad reavers through their shields.
"Board them! Board them!" Dagmer screamed, trying to maneuver his longship alongside The Sentinel.
The Ironborn threw grappling hooks, but the high, slick wooden walls of the Sentinel gave them no handholds. As reavers tried to climb the ropes, Sea Guards lining the upper decks fired shortbows point-blank into their faces, or leaned over with long pikes to thrust them back into the icy water.
"Full row!" Robin commanded, standing beside the ship’s master at the helm. "Engine target: their lead vessel."
The Sentinel picked up speed, its heavy oars beating a fast, precise rhythm.
Its iron-sheathed ram, carved in the shape of a blunt, heavy turtle head, pointed directly at the flank of Dagmer’s flagship.
"Brace!" Ser Bran shouted.
The Sentinel struck the Ironborn longship broadside. The heavy oak frame of the longship crumpled instantly under the sheer kinetic momentum of the two-hundred-ton warship. Planks snapped like kindling, the hull split in two, and the vessel folded in half, sucked beneath the Sentinel's bow as the heavy warship drove straight through it.
For four hours, Blazewater Bay was turned into a calculated slaughterhouse.
Trapped between the impassable harbor chain and the high-sided Sentinel ships, the Ironborn longships had no room to maneuver. The Sea Guard fought with absolute, cold discipline—using grappling nets to tangle reavers, scorpions to smash their hulls, and heavy shield-walls to sweep the few longships that managed to come alongside.
By afternoon, six longships rested at the bottom of the bay. Seven were captured, their surviving crews dragged ashore in chains. The remaining five managed to turn and flee into the open sea, battered, bloody, and broken.
House Flint's casualties were astonishingly low: three dead, twelve wounded.
When the sun began to sink below the horizon, painting the churning waters of Blazewater Bay in shades of crimson and gold, Robin stepped off the Sentinel’s gangplank onto the cobblestones of the dock.
The townspeople and off-duty militia stood along the quays in dead silence, looking at their fourteen-year-old lord. He was covered in sea-spray and dried salt, his face dark with smoke, but his eyes were completely clear, cool, and unfrightened.
Then, a single Sea Guard raised his pike into the air.
"FLINT!" the guard roared.
The cry swept through the docks like a wildfire. "FLINT! FLINT! LORD ROBIN!"
Peasants, stone-masons, and hardened veterans alike shouted until their voices blew out against the sea wind. They had not just survived an Ironborn raid; they had utterly destroyed a reaver fleet without a single enemy setting foot inside their town.
Robin held up a hand, and the roaring crowd fell silent instantly.
"Clean the docks," Robin ordered quietly to Ser Bran. "Salvage the iron and timber from the wrecked longships. Tend to our wounded, and ensure the widows of the three men we lost today receive their pensions before nightfall."
"At once, my Lord," Ser Bran bowed, his eyes shining with unshakeable pride.
Robin walked up the cobbled path toward the keep, his smallboots striking firm against the stone.
He knew this was only the beginning. Balon Greyjoy had lit a fire that would burn the Western coast for months, and eventually, Lord Stark and King Robert Baratheon would assemble a massive fleet to smash Pyke.
When the Lord Warden of the North called his banners, House Flint would not just offer a handful of old men and broken spears. They would sail to war as an iron wall of the sea.