Ser Brynden Tully pursed his lips as he stared about him. Alalia had fallen, as might have been predicted, but it had been nowhere near as clean a takeover as even the taking of Myr had been, much less the capture of Pentos, his ideal. Unavoidably so, perhaps, given the circumstances, but it was still unfortunate.

When news of the Battle of Solva had reached the town, the slaves had erupted in rebellion that very evening. Apparently, it had started nigh-spontaneously when the street-sweepers had refused to go into their barracks for the night, but the mutiny of the sweepers had only been the spark that ignited the first flame. The porters had gone to the aid of the sweepers, and that had convinced the laborers and blacksmiths that this was the best opportunity they could ask for to initiate their deeply-laid plans at rebellion. With that the revolt had become general, even among the domestic slaves, and within twenty minutes Alalia had become a battlefield as the rebelling slaves grappled with the garrison and the watch for control of the streets.

The fighting, judging by the evidence, had been savage; from where Brynden sat his horse he could see where the blood had pooled along the street and splashed against the walls of the buildings on either side. The market district, he had been told, had changed hands twice before a concerted effort by the blacksmiths, butchers, and porters had slaughtered or driven out the garrison troops and watchmen who had been holding it. At that point the commander of the garrison, in desperation, had resorted to the use of fire, deliberately torching a swathe of the town in order to buy time for his men to regroup. It might even have worked, if the Royal Army hadn't arrived the very next day.

An assault column of Legion spearmen headed by dismounted knights had entered through the one gate that the slaves had taken and spearheaded the final attack through the town while other companies deployed against the fire. The commander of the garrison and a hundred die-hards had fought to the last man in the manse of the Prefect of the East, who it seemed had been away when the slaves rebelled. The remaining Tyroshi soldiers and watchmen had been hunted through the streets like rats; the last of them had been rooted out and slain not two hours ago. As for the free population of the city, they had suffered terribly during the fighting; less than a thousand people of all ages and sexes had survived, and those were huddling in the Temple of Trade in a state of abject fear. The brutality of the fighting had exhausted the slaves' appetite for revenge for now, but when they had recovered and remembered the masters who still remained . . .

Robert, apparently, intended to let them go free. There were no fit men of military age remaining among them, as the commander of the garrison had conscripted every man who could wield sword or spear, and he didn't expect Tyrosh to hold out long enough for the male children to grow old enough to fight for her. The former slaves might be unhappy about it, but as their one surviving leader had put it, their chains had been avenged enough for now. Brynden shrugged to himself; they would have plenty of opportunity to take what revenge they thought necessary in the near future. Indeed, more than a few of them had enlisted in the Legion. Which would solve the problem of keeping them from committing any more destruction at least.

Which left the problem of Alalia's condition. Almost a fifth of the town had been reduced to ash and the charred skeletons of buildings. Most of the rest had been thoroughly pillaged; the new freedmen had taken the opportunity to plunder and destroy in between fighting the garrison and the watch and tormenting the burghers. Even worse, the municipal granary had been burned on the garrison commander's orders, with the deliberate intent, according to the survivors of the garrison, of denying its contents to the Royal Army. When Brynden had seen the blackened shell of the great structure, the largest single building in the town, he had briefly entertained the notion of hiring a warlock to raise the garrison commander from the dead so that he could kill him again. The Royal Army consumed several tons of food every day, and losing the municipal granary, holding as it did the siege stores of the town and the produce of some of the most fertile fields in Tyroshi territory, had been a blow. And not just to the Army, either; they were now responsible for feeding the town of Alalia and the population of the surrounding countryside as well.

That task, combined with putting Alalia back on its feet as a fully functioning town, would take a great deal of time and effort. And that left aside the mess that the countryside had become.

XXX

Stallen Naerolis, former diplomatic functionary and now a lieutenant in the Army of Tyrosh, swallowed a curse as he beheld the burned-out shell of the farmhouse. There was no point in wasting his breath on empty curses, even if this was the third destroyed farm that he had come across in as many hours of riding.

The slaves of Tyrosh had been restive ever since the Fall of Myr, when the Andals had proven that they and their doctrine of violent abolition had the means and the ability to become a permanent addition to the political and social landscape of western Essos. On Tyrosh isle that new restlessness had been muted due to the fact that the isle's garrison was reinforced with the Tyroshi fleet, with all its sailors and marines. But in the countryside, there hadn't been so large and so obvious a military presence, even after the Peace of Pentos when the Archon had ordered the expansion of the Tyroshi army. There had been few outright revolts, and those that had erupted had been crushed with signal brutality, but the rate of what the Tyroshi justiciars called 'deliberate indiscipline' had risen drastically, as had the number of runaways. This had been met with an increase in the number and strength of military patrols through the countryside, and a new requirement that those patrols visit every estate within their district at least twice a month, but such measures had only abated the problem, not solved it.

And then the war had come, and the majority of those patrols had been swept up into the army. The result had been a predictable increase in escapes, but outright revolt had been averted, probably by the deliberate choice of the slaves themselves. Who could say, after all, but that the masters might not be victorious? But then the Battle of Solva had been fought, and news of the Tyroshi defeat had put the spark to the tinder. The very day after the retreat from Solva ended, no less than four messengers had come galloping up to the army from the nearby estates to report that the slaves had revolted. Captain-General Naharis had dispatched what was left of his cavalry to suppress the revolts, out of necessity, but within two days the cavalry had returned in near-disarray. The whole countryside, they had reported, was aflame with servile rebellion. The slaves from the nearby estates, armed with farming tools and weapons taken from the great houses of the estates, were roaming the roads in hundreds-strong mobs, intent on slaughter and pillage. Even worse, they were being joined by bands of Andal cavalry, providing them with the disciplined core of armored men necessary to fight off attempts to suppress them.

To his credit, Naharis had seen what needed to be done and ordered an immediate retreat towards Aesica. Once over the Turtle River, the army could resupply, replenish its numbers, and prepare to take up the contest again. While the infantry plodded down the North Road towards the bridges at Dubris, the remaining cavalry, and the remains of the Exile Company, as the Myrish among the army were called, were set to patrolling the flanks of the army's line of march. He had also sent off a spray of dispatch riders to rush north to the warn the garrison of Dubris to be on its guard and call up reinforcements. And as someone had apparently told him of what Stallen had actually been assigned to do in Pentos, nothing would do but that Stallen be one of those riders. Any man with the skill and the sand to almost pull off an assassination attempt against Robert the Bloody was clearly the man to carry a vital message through hostile country.

Stallen spat aside as he reined his horse back onto the road. It was flattering to have the Captain-General hold so high an opinion of his skills, but he could have done without being given this assignment. Up till now he had only heard what the Andals and the slaves had done to his homeland, and that had been bad enough. Now, seeing what an Andal invasion and a slave revolt meant with his own eyes, it didn't take much imagination to see these things happening in his own country. Especially since it had already happened.

XXX

Stannis read through the report that had just arrived from Evenfall Hall that morning for the third time, calculating furiously as he did so. Not about whether a war could be justified; that was easily answered. The Peace of Pentos had clearly been breached and he was in a position to fulfill the obligations that such an event imposed on him as one of the guaranteeing powers. It would bring shame on his House and endanger his position as King not to declare war on the slavers who had broken the Peace.

No, what filled Stannis' mind was what he would make war with and what he could expect out of it. He had the two hundred galleys and cogs of the royal fleet of course, and he was reasonably confident that the Braavosi squadron stationed at Evenfall Hall would agree to join the war; it was the Braavosi who had insisted on making freedom of navigation a condition of the Peace, after all. Jon would probably insist on leaving the Vale fleet at home against a counter-stroke, though, and the need to act quickly precluded sending for the Manderly or Redwyne fleets. The New Nobles could be drawn on for marines; even the most horse-bound of them would accept the impossibility of fighting in the saddle when at sea and they held their lands and their positions on condition of knight-service at the Crown's pleasure. And those ships the New Nobles couldn't provide marines for could have their complements filled out by the Knights of the Crown, a new Royal Order with roughly equivalent duties in the Crownlands to those that the Knights of the Sun discharged in Dorne. Like the Knights of the Sun, those of the Crown were primarily younger sons of the nobility and landed chivalry or elevated hedge knights, and would have no trouble at all following a command to serve as naval infantry. Most of them were grateful enough to be in royal service, with all the things that implied for their social status and their chances of making a good marriage, that they would fight however and wherever they were told to, or so one of their officers had said in a report.

That settled the what, which left the second half of the why. One of the sub-clauses of the Peace of Pentos provided for the guaranteeing powers to levy fines and other sanctions against parties in breach of the Peace, but Stannis wasn't terribly concerned with strictly monetary sanctions; ready cash was certainly convenient to have around, but it wasn't the sine qua non of royal policy. He stood up, walked over to the rack of cubbyholes along the wall of his solar, and drew out a certain map which he spread across the table. After weighing down the corners of the map with an inkpot, his dagger, a small plate that held the remains of his luncheon, and an ornamental statuette of an armored knight on a rearing destrier that he hated but couldn't throw away because it was a gift from Cersei, he traced the main shipping routes through the Stepstones with his finger.

The Stepstones were a haven for piracy not just because of the profusion of easily-hidden lairs that they offered but because none of the nearby powers had the strength or the will to effect a cleansing and keep the isles cleared of the sea-bandits. Consequently, goods that traversed the Stepstones were more expensive than they might otherwise be in order to offset the costs of allowing a large and active population of semi-organized criminals to go about their business. But if the Tyroshi could be forced to yield their possessions in the Stepstones, and their selectively blind patrols replaced with men of the proper rectitude and thoroughness . . . Stannis smiled thinly. He could probably convince the Braavosi that it would be acceptable enough for an ally to collect a toll from the ships that passed through the Narrow Sea in return for suppressing piracy, especially if that ally promised to give Braavosi ships a reduced rate. The Braavosi were smart enough to realize that it was better to pay a few coppers in order to secure a steady stream of silver than pay nothing in return for a little gold now and then.

His decision made, he rang a small handbell. "Inform Lord Arryn and Lord Redwyne to meet me in the Small Council at once, if you please," he said to the valet that appeared at the door. "Pass the word for the Grand Maester as well." What Lord Redwyne didn't know about the prevailing conditions in the Stepstones, Pycelle should; Stannis had ordered him to undertake a study of them just last month. As the valet bowed his way back out of sight he re-rolled the map and tucked it under his arm, snatching up the report in his other hand as he did so. Theoretically, he had servants to carry things for him, but Stannis was sure that they had more important things to do than carry such a trifling load. What, did he not have strong arms and clever hands of his own? He shook his head absent-mindedly. The pomp and theatrics of kingship he could understand but the protocol that theoretically prevented him from doing even the slightest manual labor beyond training at arms was simply inefficient.