King of The Wall

2021-01-06

Chapter 609 The King of the Iron Island (Part 2)

The Iron Fleet has been at the mouth of Blackwater Bay for a few days, at After raiding the night before and declaring their presence on one of the Daenerys' patrol boats, they continued cruising and demonstrating in the "Gullet" south of Dragonstone, facing sharp horn.

It not only seized the main external channel of Blackwater Bay, but also blocked the route of Dragonstone fleet to attack King's Landing.

The hostilities never cease unless the Queen agrees to a marriage alliance with Euron and voluntarily climbs into bed.

Crow's Eye's plan is very simple and crude, and can be summarized as follows.

Dragonstone sent a patrol ship out of the port, and he sent a long ship to follow and entangle them, eating them one by one; Pull, look for fighters that are out of line with the opponent's formation, take a bite when you take a chance, you won't lose if you don't catch it;
And if Daenerys dares to ignore the existence of oneself and launch a general attack on King's Landing, then Iron Fleet will fight after them. At the moment of weakness, I rushed to Blackwater Rush to copy the Queen's fleet and annihilate the Targaryen Navy in one fell swoop!
If Igor could sneak into Iron Fleet's battle meeting and learn about Euron's plans, he would exclaim: This bastard is not only not a lunatic, but also won the grandfather's sixteen-character essence!

In the face of Euron's conspiracy, the Dragonstone fleet responded quite quickly: after suffering losses in several encounters, they realized that the situation was not right, and immediately stopped the activities of the ships to leave the military port alone, and on the third day In the early morning, the entire fleet was dispatched in a group and sailed out of the military port.

But instead of heading south towards Iron Fleet, it made a half-circle of Dragonstone to the north, then headed west from the secondary channel.

Crow's Eye hurriedly led the fleet to disperse and track the situation, and soon discovered two facts that surprised him: not only did the other party take the ship away, but even the port guards evacuated the pier and retreated into the island As for the entire fleet that left, the course was no trick at all, heading for the port of Duskendale, which was closer to King's Landing.

Dragon Queen's fleet not only gave up the blockade of Blackwater Bay, but also surrendered the sea domination of the entire ocean. Did it simply concede defeat?

This is obviously a fraud. After a large number of ships were dispatched to approach the reconnaissance, Euron quickly figured out the enemy's plan: the Queen's fleet did not give up sea control, but moved to the dock outside Duskendale. , Receive personnel replenishment from the army here, most of them intend to strengthen their strength to deal with the war!
Trouble?
Trouble.

The Dragonstone fleet is sure to become more difficult to deal with after receiving replenishments from the Army.

But that's in Euron's hands.

He came to King's Landing around half the Westeros, not to destroy Daenerys' naval power, but to contain her attack on King's Landing so that she could not use her full power. Unsullied and Land Granters have limited total strength and equipment. Dividing land troops' personnel and weapons to the Navy will greatly reduce the offensive ability of the King's Landing wall. Stannis is a nerd, but no one will deny that he is an excellent defender. Will, the oneself will reduce the pressure on the enemy for him, the greater the probability that he can hold on to King's Landing without losing.

No matter how strengthened the Queen fleet is, it is impossible to be Iron Fleet's opponent, but the time that can be delayed by dispersing the enemy's siege battle strength is real. Although Reach is defeated but still has strength, the attitude of Westerlands and Vale is also ambiguous... As long as it drags on, time is on Euron's side!
＊＊＊

The alarm bell spread within the fleet and immediately attracted everyone's attention. The captains of each ship took up their lenses and looked around, and soon they were in the sea north of the fleet. Traces of enemy ships were found on the plane. Due to the sunny weather, the black red sails, which symbolize Targaryen, are particularly striking against the green sea and blue sky, as if a blood-colored wave is emerging from the sky, and looking at the direction, they are heading towards Iron Fleet - that is, coming from the south .

Euron turned his head: "Send the fleet, turn around, and sail towards the Blackwater Rush mouth at low speed, make sure the little Queen's fleet is in our sight!"

The order was conveyed by the flag To the entire fleet, although this gang of greedy and lustful pigs are annoying in normal times, they are familiar with naval battles. Hundreds of ships start to turn around in a noisy manner. , but in this mess, the ships can still maintain a stable and safe distance, accurate and consistent headings, not only do not interfere with each other, but even consciously vacate the channel for the flagship to go first, which is worthy of admiration.

An unbelievable scene appeared: Iron Fleet, who was roaming the world, was chased by a Targaryen fleet that was half its size.

The reason why Euron did not stop fighting was not out of fear, of course, but intended to lure the enemy to pursue and control the fighting site at Aegon's High Hill in King's Landing... which is what the Red Keep could observe and The piece of Sea Territory looking out.

Stannis' last Royal Fleet is there - if the Queen's fleet attacks King's Landing, Euron will watch and wait for the right moment to intervene; and if Daenerys orders Iron Fleet to die, stay in the Red Keep The Baratheon Royal Fleet in the shadows will never sit idly by.

After all, in case the Queen's fleet defeats the Ironmen, it's their turn.

Euron did not succeed in reaching a partnership agreement with Stannis, but this did not prevent them from having a certain degree of cooperation and advance and retreat militarily - as the Land Granters gained momentum at the Battle of Blackwater Rush Winning it all, they all realized: Daenerys is the biggest rival of any contestant.

 …

The rhythm of naval battles is very different from land battles, and all tactical actions are carried out in hours. They retreated at a low speed, but it still took more than an hour from the time the Sentinels used the telescope to find the Queen's fleet until the two sides approached and could observe each other with naked eyes. Half a day after the Queen's fleet assembled and left the port, when Sun began to incline westward, the two fleets finally arrived at the Sea Territory in the east of King's Landing one after the other, and the outline of the Red Keep could be seen far away.

The Iron Fleet, who arrived first, stopped retreating and began to organize and arrange battle lines in the southern sea off the Blackwater Rush estuary.

"Silence" is in the middle of the first battle line, the left and right are the ships "Great Kraken" and "Nightwalker" that used to be Balon Greyjoy, and the "thunder", "Roarer" and a whole bunch of "Iron XX", "XX King" and a bunch of giant longships named after various real-life or mythological sea creatures that non-inhabitants of the archipelago can't tell the difference... No. The second row is a slightly smaller long ship, the third row is the second row, and the fourth row is a circle larger than the previous row. In addition to the four columns of wide horizontal formations, because of the huge advantage of the number of ships, Euron can also have a large number of small long ships arranged with incredible wings, which can easily flank and break the enemy after the battle begins.

Not far from the Northwest direction of Iron Fleet's great ship formation, Baratheon Royal Fleet, who had already discovered the enemy's situation, also hurriedly arranged three battle formations.

The huge main battleships such as "King Robert's Hammer", "Rage", "Sea Deer", "Stephen Duke" in the first column are flanked by a bunch of "XXLady" , "XXcount", or "XX Princess/Prince" and other names that sound like aristocratic medium-sized warships... After losing control of the Seven Kingdoms and taxes, and without the financial support of the Iron Vault, only relying on With the Crownlands' finances and manpower, Stannis can no longer afford the spectacular fleet that he once led when he was the Master of Ships under his brother Robert, so he can only maintain some medium-sized battleships and auxiliary ships while maintaining the most critical flagship combination as a facade. Decommissioned... or sold many large battleships that transition between the two to city-states.

And the consequence of this cut is: Although the first row of the Royal Fleet today still looks quite decent, the overall imposing manner is simply incomparable to that of the past, so that even Dongpin. The Daenerys fleet, which had come all the way from Meereen, was unable to face it head-on, let alone the Iron Islands after the crazy expansion of the army.

The two fleets were lined up, but not facing each other: Iron Fleet was facing north against the coast of the King's Forest, while the Stannis fleet was backed against King's Landing and facing east, at ninety degrees to each other. At the angle, they all faced the dark blue sea that was temporarily empty without the shadow of the ship.

Under the waiting gazes of thousands of pairs of eyes, the Queen fleet arrived slowly, and finally reached the offensive position before sunset.

Afraid of being completely unprepared when entering the field, the Targaryen fleet with black and red sails had already arranged their formation according to the tactical plan while moving before approaching the mouth of Blackwater Rush. But compared with the other two parties who have already formed a classic naval battle in front of them, the formation of the Queen's fleet is a bit strange... It is also roughly elongated, but the narrow side faces the forward direction or King's Column of Landing. The two fleets that are ready to fight are arranged into three vaguely distinguishable left, middle and right parts, while the Queen fleet is arranged in front, middle and rear.

If Stannis's fleet is charged in this formation, the latter's central army may be under pressure, but the broad flanks can be double-teamed as easy as blowing off dust to encircle the former army. , it can be defeated without Iron Fleet's shot!
Euron didn't know why at first, but after a few minutes of careful observation, he suddenly understood what the opposing commander was planning: the opposing formation looked weird because oneself subconsciously determined that they were To attack King's Landing, but their main goal is actually oneself! Looking at the front, middle and rear formations of the opponent from another angle, they are actually still right, middle and left, but the entire fleet is moving to the right of the formation, so it looks so weird.

Daenerys actually wanted to use dozens of ships on the right flank to contain the Royal Fleet of Stannis, and then use about a hundred ships behind to deal with Iron Fleet of oneself, and the two added up to three. Enemies twice her size go to war at the same time!
This little Queen, her brain was burnt out by dragon flames!
Both Stannis and Euron had this thought in their hearts, but the fleet, which was clearly heading for defeat, didn't even pause for a minute. With the sound of booming cannons, they immediately launched a general attack on Royal Fleet as soon as they were in position.

The enemy made absurd tactical arrangements for some reason, and naturally did not miss the opportunity, Euron haha laughed heartily, and gave an order: "Order, the fleet sails and oars, slowly presses forward, and waits for the enemy. The former army was first entangled by Stannis and then approached!"

——

(end of this chapter)