With the Iron Fleet destroyed at Fair Isle, King Robert Baratheon carried the war to the Iron Islands themselves. His brother Stannis took Great Wyk, and the king's host crossed at last to the isle of Pyke, seat of the rebel king Balon Greyjoy. The ancient stronghold, its towers perched upon sea stacks above the crashing waters, was thought near impregnable, but Robert's engineers brought their siege works to bear and battered a breach in the great curtain wall.
When the south tower and a length of wall came down in rubble and dust, the stormers went in across the fallen stones. The singers still name those who were first through the breach: Thoros of Myr with his flaming sword, and behind him the young knight Ser Jorah Mormont, whose valour that day would win him honours he could ill afford to keep. In the fighting within the walls Balon's second son, Maron Greyjoy, was crushed to death when the tower came down, his eldest, Rodrik, having already fallen at Seagard earlier in the war. Beaten, bereft of his fleet and two of his sons, Balon Greyjoy bent the knee before Robert and swore anew the oaths he had forsworn. The king spared his life and his lordship but took his one remaining son, Theon, back to the mainland as a ward and hostage, to be raised in the north at Winterfell under the eye of Lord Eddard Stark as surety for his father's peace.