37

He slipped into meaningless dreams, sleeping peacefully. Recovering. After a few dreams he couldn't remember, it was night and dark around him on the middle of a choppy sea. The wind howled around him and his first mate, as they covered their faces from the gusts with their sleeves, walking from the deck to the ladder below. Lem climbed down first laughing. Aegon always followed chivalry whenever he could, "Ladies first," he yelled to his first mate.

"If there's a lady down there worth fucking," he yelled back through the roar of the wind, "I'll gladly go down. . . first." He laughed, though Aegon couldn't hear it as he descended rung by rung, but he could still see the face he made. The face Lonely Lem always made at his jests.

They reached below deck and discussed the wares aboard Strong Winds with Wet Wendy, Harwin Snow's Inventory Official, or so she called herself. Anything was better than Wet Wendy. Lem turned to his captain. "I thought there was a woman fit to fuck down here?" Elbowing Harwin and laughing at Wendy.

"With the lot of you sots, I'd say anything wet and warm'll do." Harwin wasn't into backstories much, as a captain. "Your past is the only possession you keep to yourself on this ship. Everything else we split." He used to say. All he knew of Wendy was that she was probably from the Iron Islands based on her accent, poor manners, and ease with a rope and sail.

"What can we lose if this storm becomes too rocky, my sweet flower," Aegon asked Wendy, flattering her despite the warts on her face and missing teeth.

"You won't like it the least bit, but nothing we have on board is expendable. If my count's right, and all I've done all day is fucken' count, we won't be none the richer if we lose as much as a sack o' fucken' wheat. I'd say lose the gold, the heaviest fucken' thing down here, but then you'd say-"

"I'd say, 'Then-" Aegon cut her off to say.

Only to be cut off by Wendy and Lem in unison, "What's the fucking point?"

"Exactly. So, then we'll have to shed some crew then," Aegon said in jest.

"You laugh, but if this storm breaks the way it looks, something might have to go. Best we have a plan for it." Lem said.

Harwin Snow had become a greedy bastard. "You decide, Wendy. Whichever of these cunts you think deserves to swim, just say the word and they'll be the ones to go over, until then, let's just make sure we stay clear of that storm."

Wendy set her parchment down on a nearby desk and began to go over the scratched shorthand she used for the count. If Wendy knew any better, she could have been cheating them all out of half the lot, but treachery was not in her nature. Crass, crude, even nasty at times; yes. These were all part of her core values, but deceit, lies, thievery; Wendy was as well built for these as she was for court. She looked up from her pages for a moment. The moment. Aegon saw her face. The expression.

When they climbed below deck, though windy, the storm was still off some ways in the distance. Speaking with Wendy only took a mere ten, fifteen minutes at longest. In the dream, the moment slowed. As the ship shook and the sound of a million splinters cracked, Aegon watched Harwin and thought how?

As the memory continued to play around him slower than real time, each moment ticking by in the span of a held breath, he continued to ponder. How was the ship destroyed? It wasn't the storm. The sound rang loud in his ears like the boat battle. The shards flew in every direction the same too. Was his boat destroyed with the same type of weapon? Was I supposed to be murdered twice over by this new explosive threat?

"You're beginning to ask the right questions, Aegon," a voice said behind him. A familiar voice. A sultry one.

"What is the meaning of all this?" His dream mind asked, as the red woman stepped into the slow-moving scene around him, the memory fading around her as she trapesed through it, scantily clad in the sheerest of red silk and hard erect nipples poking through it.

"You know near as much as you need, but not all has yet been revealed. For this, I say to you, I'm so sincerely sorry. I'm sorry for my transgressions. I'm sorry for your losses. I'm sorry for the things you've made. The things you've built. And I'm sorry for the dreams you've lost forever. Though much will change in the coming days and weeks, this is only your beginning. Long after my part in your story has been opened and shut, your pages will continue to turn. Do not let the fear from your past keep you from fulfilling your future. The world needs you, Aegon Velaryon, though it may never know your name."

He struggled to think, still shrouded in sleep, and not fully in control of his consciousness. He moved toward her, seemingly through the thickest of air. His arms and legs only inched forward, as if they too were stuck in the time slowing. She glanced him up and down, to his surprise, and began to retreat away from him, slowly but still quickly enough to remain out of his grasp. He wasn't reaching to hurt her or grab her, just to sense if she was real. To engage her. To stop her from leaving. He was trying to speak, but couldn't, his throat and jaw stuck in the thick tar of the slowness he was engulfed by.

"I leave you with this. Never doubt what was said. Have you not already been raised as a Dragon King? Continue on your path. Defeat the slavers and stop this man made fire. This world is not ready for men to have the power of the gods."

She evaporated away into a mist and was gone.

Aegon woke up. The sun had reached its peak and he could see its silhouette through the sheer fabric of the tent, like woven silk, but beaded strands. The brindled people said it was the silk of a type of spider on their island, but it sounded as real as the story of the giant god ape that ruled the continent. He crawled out into the light to see he was the first awake, save Lem, whose nose was in one of their packs, chewing.

"Whose shit are you eating," Aegon asked but still walked over to obtain the answer for himself. It was Chekka's. "He's the only one that would probably eat you." Lem looked back at Aegon, his eyebrows raised. "If I let him."

The hahkyeen swallowed the bit of food in its mouth and crept back over to Aegon, ramming into his legs with his shoulder and sliding down as if to be pet.

"I missed you, boy." Aegon said, rubbing the once lost pup. Maybe even twice lost. He was loyal though. As loyal a friend as Aegon ever had. As Harwin ever had.

Aegon opened up his own pack and fed Lem the remainder of his salted fish. He refused to call whatever it was "salt fish" because this was much better than anything he ever forced himself to eat. "Salt fish" implied a bit of grimacing while ingesting. This didn't even take much effort to chew. Lem deserved it though, and he ate it in three gluttonous chomps.

The hahkyeen sat back again on his haunches panting for more from Aegon's pack. "If I give you too much more, you'll force us into hunting, wasting time. You have to be mission oriented." When Aegon spoke to Lem, especially when it was just the two of them, he spoke to him in the common tongue, as he did with his human counterpart.

Footsteps approached behind him. He turned to see Chekka, stretching and yawning his huge carnivorous mouth. Then he asked Aegon, "Who the fuck are you talking to?"

"This fucker here, ser." Aegon responded, pointing to Lem.

"Do all pink people talk to animals as people?" He asked.

Aegon thought most pink men would think of talking to you as talking to an animal. And yes, from horses, to pigs, and especially dogs, pink people talk to animals like people. "Yes. In fact, as I think about it, we all do. Valyrians especially. It's said we had mental links with our dragons."

"You had a dragon? Where is it now?"

"No, not we, like me and them. We like, my Valyrian ancestors."

"We means with you too though, right?" Chekka asked, puzzled. His Valyrian was good, but he wasn't confident speaking it to a purpled eyed pink man.

"Yes. Let's move on. All pink men speak to animals this way."

As the rest of the group rose to a day half gone, they packed up their encampment and gathered seated around Shevrohn and Aegon with a parchment. Shevrohn drew out all the locations and landmarks to show the best map they could produce with the information the previous night from JaHahn.

According to his dying son, JaHarle had condensed his forces into his own personal guard of fifteen of his best warriors, armed with steel and Astapori shields, a secondary force under the control of Zlatan and the slavers around thirty to forty men, and the group of men sent with him that Aegon and his group had already put down. The rest of JaHarle's clan had already been transported to the mines for work assignment.

As for the slavers' forces, he knew much less but not nothing. He knew of three major outposts they were taking up camp and rotating through looking for the Brindled people that fled the orders to report for slavery. Who could blame them? And according to JaHahn, there was a lot that decided to flee.

Zlatan controlled a total of five-hundred or so slave soldiers throughout the seven clans, as well as his personal guard of loyal free soldiers, those sworn to his house or sellswords JaHahn didn't know, but they weren't the typical Slaver's Bay slave soldier. They were free men, and were treated as such. They stayed with him constantly, about twenty strong, but JaHahn had heard that some of them might have been lost in the battle on the bay.

The hardest, yet most important part of the map they were drafting was their destination, the mines. Even Shevrohn could only guess at how far and where abouts they were, himself admittedly completely ignorant to the lands passed the river delta. There were two mines very close to one another. One mine was a bat cave, where slaves collected bat droppings and siphoned out a sparkling powder that was then collected and stored.

This was one of the three essential ingredients, JaHahn said. The slavers called it "salt peter." Though disgusting, their regular pink and tan slaves could survive in this task. That was not where Zlatan was headed. It was organized and run by one of his subordinates, a new man JaHahn had never met. When asked why not, JaHahn replied, "Why would we? The Brindled Men have nothing to do with the bat cave."

Zlatan needed them for the yellow mine. He needed them all. It was the one ingredient they always needed more of, and the dangers it imposed on those that mined it made it almost impossible to accumulate fast enough. With the Brindled Men they had already used, more was being mined every day, but the job was still too harsh and the workload still crippled or killed some of the brindled people who were forced to work it. Zlatan meant to clear the entire mountain if he could. Since starting to use Brindled Men, he'd already harvested more of the yellow powder in one week than he had in four moons with pink slaves and he only lost four of the eighty Brindled slaves. He lost every pink one in less than a moon.

As they strategized together, the seven of them, switching back and forth between Valyrian and their tongue, the beginning of a plan began to take shape. Of all the locations they knew, there was one that seemed most vulnerable. Zlatan's men were focused on rounding up Brindled Slaves, not Aegon and his band of rebels. Slave soldier search parties were mostly concentrated south of their groups current location and they felt they had little chance meeting one accidentally. JaHarle and Zlatan were currently on the move, Zlatan in the ships they all saw leave after the battle, and JaHarle on foot with his guard and another group of Brindled Slaves. So, their personal guard, as well as the main slave forces that followed Zlatan, were all headed in the same direction with a great head start.

No one was looking for them. Not anymore, at least. JaHahn's party was meant to find Ootrihk and the women thinking Ootrahk's Brindled Warriors dead along with Aegon. They could travel mostly impeded until reaching much closer to their intended destination. Except one final battle in a familiar place. Their most vulnerable outpost.

Strategically, the river mouth needed to be manned by some of the slave soldiers to allow for easy passage back to Slaver's Bay. The ports at Zamettar were good enough to house provisions and wares for the journey home, as well as a base to organize goods and slaves before shipment.

But according to JaHahn, Zlatan was told by a witch that his fire boat display had worked and killed all his enemies. He grew confident, lax even, and left a mere twenty slave soldiers lead by one of his elder uncles to guard the port. There were boats there, supplies, weapons, and best of all; food. All they need to execute was one more well timed sneak attack. It had worked for them each time before. Why change the winning formula?

They knew the terrain and the layout. They knew the positioning of the forces and the times in which each watch changed shifts. JaHahn had equipped them with everything they'd need to know to take the port, supplies, and a ship, and begin their way toward the base of the volcano.

As their plan began to make sense, Aegon wanted to make the same sense of his dream. The red woman again. What did she mean she was sorry?

Shevrohn estimated they were a half days hike from the river. They stopped to eat, drink, and relieve themselves, then set off into the brush. The sky beyond the forest was clear and blue, without a cloud as far as he could see. It was a stark contrast from that night his boat was destroyed. Peering out over the cliff to the water, slowly rippling with only a few white caps as far off into the horizon as he could see, he was reminded of the rising swells of that night. The ship rocking up and down, the floor tilting below him. He thought of all he'd lost. He kept thinking of the red woman's words.

As they set off, they figured they'd reach the ridges of the cliff around the river mouth near nightfall. An hour or so later, when the guards of the slavers camp usually changed shifts, they'd have another opportunity to do what Aegon was growing increasingly excited for. Spilling blood.