The Faceless Men had carved an insane network of tunnels beneath their little hill—twisting, crossing, a goddamn labyrinth.
While the rear-guard assassins bought time with hit-and-run attacks, the main group was already slipping away through the tunnels, splitting up and running for their lives.
They were deadly in the shadows, sure, but against an army they were nothing. Traps? Cute little toys. All they did was slow the attackers down long enough for a handful to escape.
Once the full force poured into the temple, soldiers quickly found the stairs to the cellars and charged underground.
On the first level below the main hall they caught a few priests and acolytes who hadn't run fast enough. The poor bastards barely opened their mouths before swords and axes chopped them down on the spot.
A detail stayed behind to strip the room clean. The rest kept pushing to the second level, where a knot of terrified servants waited with weapons in their shaking hands. They'd clearly been left there to die as a speed bump.
Players didn't waste breath. They raised their copper hand cannons and fired a single volley. A dozen servants dropped in a heap. The rest scattered like startled pigeons.
"Kill them! No prisoners!" Bloodbeard's men roared, blades flashing as they chased down the disposable blockers and cut them apart.
The underground tunnels were a maze. Soldiers and players crisscrossed through them for hours. Every so often a desperate Faceless Man would leap from the dark, dropping one unlucky soldier or player before getting blasted apart by a hand cannon at point-blank range.
Pointing-Rat-Calling-It-Duck kept the hunt going from sunrise until the sun was almost down. Only then did he finally call it.
The tunnels were just too damn complicated. Even with two or three thousand men it took forever. When they finally tallied the heads, they only had forty or fifty.
Some Faceless Men had definitely slipped away. Pointing-Rat hadn't expected the entire hill to be hollowed out like a termite nest.
But to the intelligence chief and secret-police boss, those stragglers were just broken remnants. Not worth worrying about.
He thought about burning the whole place down, but the temple housed statues of half the gods in the known world. Torching it would spook the Braavosi citizens and create headaches for Brother Wei. So he let it stand.
The force loaded up every cart they could find with loot from the House of Black and White and rowed back to the mainland.
The severed heads were piled together and burned to ash.
When the last boat left the island, the Sanctuary stood empty—nothing left but bloodstains and silence.
The moment Pointing-Rat reported back, Viserys gave him a new job.
Take the Iron Bank.
Viserys wanted it seized, stripped, and brought under his control—by any means necessary. Even if the Bank hadn't been filthy rich, he still would have crushed it.
He had already seized the gold they were about to ship across the Narrow Sea to fund Robert's war. Robert was dead now, but that didn't change anything. Cersei and Joffrey were still bankrupt idiots. Even if Stannis somehow got the loan, he probably wouldn't use it to sail against Essos—he'd use it to crown himself.
Either way, Robert was gone and Stannis was almost certainly already plotting rebellion to claim the Baratheon throne.
Viserys snorted. Let the two of them fight over it. To me they're both rebels.
He'd known the fat stag would die in a few days. He'd known the loan would never reach the other side. But he still would have seized it.
Even if he sent the money back now, the Iron Bank wouldn't forgive him. And Viserys wasn't the type to sleep with a knife at his throat. He had tens of thousands of troops and the Fourth Scourge at his back. Why the hell should he gamble on the Bank's so-called "terrifying reputation"?
They bragged they could hire an army big enough to sweep the continent? Big deal. He already had one.
First I wipe you out. Then we'll see where you get the gold to hire anyone.
Viserys watched his "head horse" Pointing-Rat walk away, eyes narrowed.
The joint force that had just finished at the House of Black and White was ordered to form up again.
Everyone was exhausted, but morale was sky-high. They'd just hauled back a mountain of loot from the assassins' lair. Most of it would go to the royal treasury, but the House of Black and White was legendary. People said hiring one Faceless Man to kill an ordinary merchant cost enough to pay an entire normal mercenary company for a full campaign.
With that kind of wealth, even split among two or three thousand men, every single person still walked away fat.
So when they heard the next target was the Iron Bank, nobody complained. In fact, soldiers who hadn't gone on the first raid started bitching that they were being left out of the good stuff.
Knowing the Bank would have plenty of hired muscle, Pointing-Rat simply waved them all in. He marched out with five or six thousand troops and headed straight for the Iron Bank.
Banks weren't rare in the Free Cities—every city had one (except Lorath). But the Iron Bank's wealth, fame, and power dwarfed all the others combined.
The Bank lent gold to kings and lords like it was nothing. But if you tried to stiff them—even a king—you'd suddenly find new kings and rebels popping up inside your own borders until the debt was paid.