AN: We are now on the first page of the ASoIaF section when sorted by reviews. Thanks everybody!
ooOoo
I stood straight with my hands clasped behind my back, contemplating what I was about to say. The Rhoyne was behind me, the sluggish flow of its current providing a bit of background noise. Above me the sun was visible. We were now in the thin mists on the outskirts of the Sorrows rather than the full overcast of the Sorrows themselves. Leaving that place had been a cause for celebration. Unfortunately, the three men in front of me had not come through the Sorrows unmarked.
These three were the only members of the Sunset Legion that developed symptoms of greyscale, a light but unmistakable dusting of grey on the palm of one man's hand and on the back of the other two's hands. At least, they were the only three who would admit it. I could only hope that nobody had been stupid enough to hide their symptoms. The last thing I needed was magical stone leprosy doing a slow burn through my army.
The three of them had all adopted hangdog expressions and seemed to find studying the ground a lot more interesting than meeting my eyes. The way rumors could spread they probably half expected to be executed on the spot.
"You did well, pushing the Stone Men back from our flanks," I began. "If not for your brave actions, many more lives could have been lost."
They all straightened up a bit at the praise.
"The good news," I continued, "is that you have grey scale. Not the grey death."
They all had very similar puzzled expressions on their faces. To be fair, it's not like I knew the difference before I talked to the maester to prepare for this little chat.
"If you had the grey death, you'd be dead and the rest of us would be infected by now."
I paused for a moment to let that sink in.
"The bad news is that catching greyscale is still pretty fucking bad."
The man on the left gestured back towards the Sorrows. "Are we gonna turn into... them?"
"The Stone Men are what you get when you dump a poor bastard in the wilderness and leave him untreated for years," I replied. "That said, sometimes the treatment doesn't work. Greyscale can be fatal. If you wish it, you will be granted... mercy."
I paused again. None of the men volunteered for execution. I hadn't really expected them to, but it helped to impress the seriousness of the situation on them.
"All right. Here's what you are going to do. Every morning you will be given a clean rag. You will soak it in vinegar and wrap it around the affected area. You will burn the old rag. You will never touch the affected area to any unaffected part of your body. You will never touch another person with the affected area. If you do not follow this directions, you will be executed. I will not have disease spread through this company by carelessness."
I looked them over. That last pronouncement seemed to have shifted them from feeling sorry for themselves to feeling a bit of fear of me. That was probably for the best. History was replete with examples of maesters who had spent much of their lives treating or studying greyscale without contracting the disease by following similar safety precautions. It was also replete with examples of maesters who had caught greyscale thanks to moments of carelessness.
"It wouldn't hurt to pray for the gods to contain the disease," I said. "There's also the option of removing the infected area. I'd recommend you take a few days to think on it before making that choice."
If carefully tended, greyscale progressed by slow expansion from the first affected location. It was possible to cut off a hand and then never see greyscale develop anywhere else on the body. Unfortunately, it was just as possible to cut off a hand and then have another random patch of greyscale appear and begin to expand. Rushing to start chopping off limbs was, according to the maester, not a great plan.
I waited a moment to see if there were any further questions, then dismissed the men. They filed over to the nearby maester to receive their bandage and vinegar rations. He took a moment to give them a little more detail on the proper course of treatment. Really, though, all we could do was try to tilt the odds in our favor. The rest would be in the hands of the gods.
Over the next few days several more men reported greyscale symptoms. I didn't press too hard as to whether they were newly developed or whether they had reported in response to my relatively humane treatment of the first men to come forward. I just repeated my expectations of them and bid the maester to keep an eye on them.
I could only hope that I was doing the right thing.
ooOoo
The advantage that a military galley had over pirates came down to economics. There was no technological edge available. One galley was pretty much like another. They'd all be wielding more or less the same sorts of weapons and wearing more or less the same sort of armor. The difference was that pirates had to worry about profit and loss, while a war galley only had to worry about military effectiveness.
Every member of a pirate crew beyond the minimum needed to overpower merchant vessels was a drain on the money paid out to everybody else. A pirate with truly grand aspirations might be able to overcome that problem by fielding so many ships as to defeat any military challenges and so bring in more profit, but your average river pirate was operating on a hit and run basis. If they tried to make a stand their enemies would be able to flood them with so many ships that loss was inevitable, so there was really no point trying to max out the military power of the ship. Instead, they focus on keeping a relatively small crew that's strong enough to tackle civilian shipping and fast enough to get away from military patrols.
All the math changed when you added thousands of allied sellswords into the equation. Once we passed Ar Noy we took to stuffing the galley full of Windblown soldiers and sending it up ahead of our marching column. The Windblown did their best to stay out of sight and leave the ship looking like an ordinary, albeit bold, pirate galley.
We were two days past Ar Noy when somebody finally took the bait.
I was riding near the head of the army. Ahead of me was a ragtag band of volunteers from the Windblown and the Sunset Legion. They were wearing little more than armor and smallclothes, and the Sunset Legionnaires among them had traded in their pikes for coils of rope tipped with grappling hooks. Many of the Windblown had rope looped over their shoulders as well. Everybody was armed with at least one weapon suitable for close quarters melee fighting. The legionnaires had their bowie knives, while the Windblown sported a motley assortment of gear ranging from axes to daggers to cutlasses to what looked like some kind of whip sword.
The Tattered Prince was big on discipline, but he was no stickler for standardized equipment.
However unusual their appearance, the group had no lack of eagerness for battle. When the telltale sounds of fighting drifted back to us from the direction of the river, they all raced forward. I let my horse out into a trot to keep up.
My heart leapt when the ships came into view. Not only had a Qohorik war galley taken the bait and closed to melee range with our ship, but Jaenor Caengaris had managed to maneuver so that the enemy galley was closer to our shore, and quite close to the shore. The two ships had come to a standstill, apparently run aground in the shallows by the shore. From the sounds of things, the battle was quite fierce. The galleys' decks both sat atop two levels of oars and were a bit too high for me to make out the state of things.
In all likelihood the Windblown aboard the galley should be enough to carry the day. Of course, there was no reason not to try and tip the odds further in our favor. As the ragtag group ahead of me came even with the ships, they turned and ran into the water without hesitation. Those with ropes began to ready to toss their grappling hooks, while those without prepared to follow them up the sides.
One man in Sunset Legion armor had other ideas. When the rope tossers paused to ready their throws, he raced on ahead. With the rowers pressed into battle, many of the oars from the lower set ports were resting on the riverbed. The upper set were largely hanging loose against the side of the ship. The eager legionnaire jumped onto one of the lower oars and raced up it until he reached the side of the ship. There he leaped up and caught hold of the upper oar port, hauling himself into a standing position.
He was searching for a handhold to scramble the rest of the way up onto the deck when an enemy soldier finally noticed what was happening. The soldier leaned over the side and stabbed down at him with a spear. The legionnaire swayed wildly out of the way, then lunged back and caught hold of the spear. He pulled hand over hand on the spear as he ran up the side of the ship, finally taking hold of the enemy soldier and yanking him over the side as he pulled himself up onto the deck.
Something about that guy seemed familiar, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
The rest of the squad hadn't been idle, of course. Using the ropes they steadily made their way up the side of the enemy ship. In the press of battle the Qohorik sailors hadn't kept watch on their shoreward side. The unfortunate soldier with the spear was the only one who even tried to stop our men from boarding. Once they were under attack from both sides the enemy quickly surrendered.
Just like that, our navy doubled in size.
ooOoo
We added three more galleys to our little flotilla before Qohor got wise and pulled back its river patrols. After that, our progress was uneventful. Well, uneventful for us. It was the usual sort of rolling disaster for the locals that an enemy army on the march always is. This far north we were well past the point of being able to ferry in supplies, even if our shipping wasn't tied up by being ready to fight. That meant we were foraging on the go, which in turn meant that we were stealing food from anybody who had it that was in our path.
I honestly didn't feel bad about it at all. Perhaps it was because by local standards we were practically saints. All three sellsword companies enforced a very strict no rape policy. We didn't kill anybody who didn't offer us armed resistance. We didn't even loot valuables. Admittedly that last was for logistical reasons rather than moral qualms, but still. To live in a market town, have a hostile army march through, and only lose the large stockpiles of foodstuffs? That's a pretty good deal.
Having to forage did slow us down a bit, but overall we made decent time. As we marched ever closer to Qohor, I started to wonder at the lack of organized opposition. By now they had to realize that we were coming. Of course, unless they were keeping a sellsword company in reserve it wasn't like they had a lot of options. And after hiring the Golden Company, why would you hire anybody else? If Qohor was busy training up a citizen army it would make sense to hold them back to fight with the advantage of city walls.
It still felt strange, marching on for mile after mile without encountering resistance. In Westeros, every little hamlet was expected to be able to raise a squad of fighting men. Those squads would glom together into regional assemblies to produce local militias. Essos had developed far more specialization. There were professional merchants, professional farmers, and professional soldiers. It was probably more efficient but Qohor was in a tight spot with their professional army gone.
We were less than a week's march away from Qohor proper when we crested a rise and their defensive strategy became visible to us. A line of soldiers stretched from the river on their right all the way to a sheer cliff on their left. The range of hills to our right had been growing more rugged with time. It appeared that the Qohorik forces had elected to make their stand at the point where the hills became nearly impassable. If we wanted to find another way into the city it would involve a lot of backtracking and extended circling around.
A fleet of over twenty galleys was anchored in the river. We wouldn't be getting through that way. If we wanted to keep moving towards the city we were going to have to go through this army.
We kept moving forward. As we drew closer, more details about the enemy forces came into focus. A chill ran down my spine when I finally connected what I was seeing to what I knew. This wasn't just any sellsword company we were going to have to fight past.
Qohor had called out its Unsullied.
ooOoo