Iron Islands

[Captain Enema]

The Iron Keep

 

The world of Ser Harten's dreams was on fire. With a gasp, Ser Harten shot out of his bed and onto his feet with his the familiar feel of his sword in his hand. The room was tossed with shadows and streaks of light as a single fading candle burned on a thick oak plank table that made up most of the far wall of his personal chamber. “Come back to bed Harten,” a groggy voice mumbled from under the heavy covers.

He turned, put his ancient family blade back on the rack on his side of the bed where it normally was set after lovingly being rubbed down with a piece of cloth every single night. Puddles of light wrapped their way around the blade and Ser Harten's keen eye noted the need for a reforging. Repeated sharpening of a blade had that effect on even the best steel. A quiet word would be had with his family weapon's maker in the morning about making a special order of the highest quality steel that could be found. A sigh escaped his lips as he touched the ancient family hilt and he remembered the truism his father told him a just before dying of the flux, “A blade comes and go but the hilt is timeless.”

 

Like most of his departed father's pieces of wisdom the expression didn't limit itself to just swords, but encompassed a great many possibilities. Ser Harten's head touched the pillow and the warm familiar hands of his lover pulled him close as she buried her face into his chest. Possibilities were what troubled him greatly as he was the leader of a family with but a single keep. Castles,, that was where real power was found, the strong walls and the ability to fight off anything short of a dragon.

 

Even a dragon could be beaten from the walls of a castle. Their fire avoided in the deep confines of a keep that launched volley after volley of barbed death at flying tormenters. His own castle, the Iron Keep, was the center of a once powerful sea going empire. An empire brought low by the fates of fortune. A family legend claimed the Iron Throne of their hated enemies came from the one thousand swords of the strongest families of the Iron Islands that died fighting the Royal Dragons hundreds of years ago. Personally, Ser Harten thought the legend was absurd, but quietly ignored it when he heard it.

 

Like he ignored so many other things. The hungry faces of the children, the lean and dangerous looks of his men, and the pressures that had built up from a growing population and shrinking resources. He ignored those things because he had no other choice but to ignore them. The raiding ships of the Iron Islands had once prowled the seas, now they rested on the bottom of the seas. His ancestors were the terror of the civilized world, now they were all but forgotten. Greed had struck them low and now he found himself troubled as he faced the hungry eyes of his people.

 

Before long he drifted off to a fitful sleep. Not much could be done in the early hour of the morning, but as he drifted to sleep the seed of determination borne in the endless years of deprivation and frustration crawled into his mind. Just across the water was land, reports had come back that there was little control over that land. The seed of the determination came from exploiting the ancient family claims to the one of the nearby castles which would give his people a mainland port and keep. It was a thin claim, some would even say about as transparent as a sheet of glass. But if successful, It would give the access to food, to work, to resources needed to strengthen themselves. One day even the combined might of Iron Host would ride again under the wings of the Iron Beast and this made Ser Harten smile just a bit before the smile turned into a snore.