Ivar Drumm knew he had not been invited to the launching of the Kingdom's newest warship because of anything he had done. He had just finished his first term of duty as a prospective officer and was now officially a commissioned officer of His Grace's Fleet, albeit one of the most junior ones and one that had yet to see a sea-fight that consisted of more than two or three ships that were, at least officially, nothing more than pirates. At least he had seen combat; the idea of getting this far and only having escorted merchants and couriers up the coast to Pentos and Braavos was almost physically painful.
No, he was here because His Grace's government wanted to make this an occasion with a suitable degree of spectacle, which meant an appropriate number of officers in their best armor standing at parade rest along the side of the slipway as Septon Jonothor and a priest of the Drowned God blessed the new ship and Lord Victarion and the Lord Captain of the Port made speeches to the assembled people. Since Ivar was currently between assignments, he was surplus to requirements at Ironhold, and had been dispatched upcoast to help make up the numbers. At least it was a pleasant day to stand beside the sea, with the salt-laden breeze preventing the heat from becoming overpowering. And King Robert would be holding an informal reception afterwards, and while the promise of free food and drink was certainly appealing to a man who had to contribute a portion of his pay to the budget out of which he and his fellow officers were fed, even more valuable would be the opportunity to show to advantage not only before Lord Victarion and Lord Captain Franlan but the King himself. A man always did his duty, of course, but all things considered it was best if that duty was done under the eye of those who could best reward its being done well.
And he wasn't entirely disinterested in the proceedings, either, although Lord Captain Franlan's speech was, in his opinion, overlong even if it extolled the Fleet. Although there would always be a special place in his heart for the longship, he had to admit that the new ship was a beauty. To be sure, she was larger than every other galley in the Fleet, being almost two hundred feet long and fifty feet wide as opposed to the more usual hundred and sixty and thirty feet, but she was clean-lined and likely to be able to keep pace with the smaller galleys despite her greater weight. The pair of masts would certainly help the ship's thirty oars, each meant to be handled by four rowers, to maintain a fighting speed. But what truly caught the eye was the sextet of scorpions that she had been fitted with, two in the forecastle where they could shoot over the bows, one on each forward quarter, and one amidships on either side. It was a heavier complement of artillery than almost any other warship in the world was capable of carrying and was meant to cripple the smaller galleys of the slaver nations and soften them up for a boarding party. Ivar approved; whatever was said about the Lyseni, the ones who went for pirates were a wily bunch, and as dangerous as any animal you cared to name when brought to bay. And if he was running the Lyseni fleet, he would be shipping men on those pirate vessels, in order to season them for the war that everyone knew was coming down the pike.
Ivar flicked his eyes over to the line of civilian spectators and concealed the urge to smile. Lord Captain Franlan might be a bore of a speaker, but getting the opportunity to look at his lady wife made up for it. Even with a baby in her arms and still carrying the marks of pregnancy she was beautiful enough that the rumors that she had been the loveliest pleasure slave in Myr before the Sack were probably not far off the mark. Down, boy, he told himself sternly; starting an affair with the wife of such a high officer as the Lord Captain would be an exercise in idiocy of the first water, especially for a junior lieutenant. Whores would have to suffice, until he made his name and became a lord himself.
The Lord Captain finally stopped speaking, only to hand over the podium to King Robert. Ivar braced himself for another interminable speech, only to find his preparation wasted as the King's entire speech lasted no more than ten minutes. This time he didn't bother concealing the urge to smile; at least the King knew that there were some things that didn't need to be chewed to death. King Robert, having thanked the shipyard workers for their industry, praised the Fleet for its bravery, and declared his confidence that the Kingdom would grow ever stronger on the waves, stepped back from the podium and strode over to the prow of the ship, where the Lord Captain handed him a bottle. The king accepted it with a nod, then turned to the ship. "I name thee Tara!" he cried, and threw the bottle at the prow, where it broke in a shower of glass shards and a spray of wine.
Ivar's smile grew as he joined the cheers as the shipyard workers eased the great galley down the slipway to the water. The business with the bottle, he had heard, was a Braavosi tradition, and fitting enough, in his mind; only a fool did not respect the sea, and a ceremonial libation to it could only help. As the ship slid into the water and the gathering began to break up into the less restrained atmosphere of the reception, Ivar put his best smile on and went forth to make his bows. A fighting man expected to earn advancement by his deeds in action, but it never hurt to give your superiors the respect they were due.
XXX
Urrigon Greyjoy had rarely known a more peaceful place than the deck of his longship, the Sea-Hound, under a starry sky on a clear and balmy night in the southern latitudes. But all the outward tranquility was worth nothing when there was no peace in his own mind.
All his life he had trimmed his sail to follow the headings set by others. As a boy he had followed Aeron into mischief, then Victarion into adolescent devilment when they could steer clear of Euron, and then Balon into more settled service to their House and the legacy of the Lord Reapers. He had held to that loyalty through the long years since he came to manhood and became captain of his own ship. When Victarion had sailed east Urrigon had wanted to sail with him, but Balon had taken him aside and convinced him that there would be no glory in the train of Robert the Brief, only inglorious defeat and unmanly death as the Andals wasted the lives of good Ironborn in their mad quest for glory.
Even when Harras Harlaw had returned to the Isles, laden with wealth and honors such as no Ironborn had ever possessed, Urrigon had kept faith with his brother. He had been at his side through every hour of planning for the rebellion, the glorious rising that would see the Iron Throne broken and the Ironborn restored to their rightful place as kings of the sea. It had taken Aeron's death to shake his faith in his brother. Driven from Fair Isle, no longer confident of victory, he had gone to see the one man who might, might, be smarter than Balon, and pled for advice. The Reader had, quite calmly, told him that the Ironborn were doomed, and then told him how to best escape it, asking only that he take Asha with him. Once again he had followed orders, and seen them fulfilled.
And from that day forward, nothing had gone right.
Viserys had accepted his alliance, but the required payment had soured the taste of it in his mouth. He would never, he knew, forget the look of utter betrayal on Asha's face as he handed her over to the Young Dragon's court; he had not had the heart to tell her that she would never set foot on a ship again unless it was to return to Westeros and the Isles. It had taken one of Viserys' men-at-arms to carry her from the hall, cursing him for a traitor the while in language that no girl of her years should have known. She had broken one of the maids' fingers when they had tried to escort her away, before rounding on him with an accusation of selling her for the favor of a sisterfucking dragon. "This mummery does not amuse us, my lord," had been Viserys' sole comment when order had been restored. Ser Arthur Dayne, who had been most eager for the alliance, had regarded Urrigon as he might regard something unwholesome he had found on the sole of his boot.
It had been the need to wipe out the stain of that embarrassment that had driven him to the Basilisk Isles; Viserys would forgive much of a man who brought a fleet to his banner, especially one made up of the corsairs, notorious across three oceans for ferocity and cunning. His father, and Balon after him, had maintained contacts among the four corsair lords who effectively ruled the Basilisks, and if even one of them could be swayed then even the handful of longships under Urrigon's command could prove decisive
The plan had faltered almost from the outset. No sooner had Urrigon landed at Port Plunder than he had learned that Tomas Vane, the most highly-regarded of the corsair lords, had been murdered by his bastard in a quarrel over the division of loot, his fleet tearing itself apart between the bastard and Vane's first mate, a black-masked man named Roberts. Redbeard Rumblood, second among the lords, had welcomed Urrigon with a feast, heard out his proposal for alliance . . . and then delivered a calmly scathing appraisal of the chances the fleets of the slaver cities would have against Braavos and her allies. Even the corsairs respected the purple sails of the Titan's galleys, and now that they had every forest in Westeros at their disposal . . . Rumblood had made a counteroffer to take Urrigon on as one of his officers, if he would forswear his loyalty to Viserys and renounce all respect for law. Urrigon had, respectfully, refused.
His last hope had been Chang the Immortal, the most notorious pirate to ever sail from Yi-Ti. Chang was famous for audacity, earning his title by seeming to survive every disaster that his bold stratagems landed him in, somehow managing to hack his way free of lost battle and sinking ship alike only to rise as swiftly as he had fallen. Half mad and all bloodthirsty, he had plundered his way across the Jade Sea for twenty years before he made those waters too hot to hold him and took his fleet to the Basilisks; he would have been the perfect ally. He had even been receptive, nodding and making approving comments throughout Urrigon's appeal, until Yama Swiftspear, Chang's daughter and heir-apparent, had spoken, reminding her father of the failure of Balon's rebellion and Urrigon's desertion. Surely, she had declared, such a coward did not deserve to be the ally of the mighty Chang, who had never run from a fight.
Urrigon had been escorted from Chang's hall by the eunuch swordsmen that guarded Chang's concubines that very hour, and by the time the Sea-Hound was ready to leave port every other ship that had followed him to the Basilisks had abandoned him for one of the other lords. He had not dared approach the shadowy self-proclaimed Pirate Queen; to be scorned by a woman at that juncture would have caused his own housekarls to cut his throat.
He had needed a new plan, and desperation had given him one. The Summer Isles were rich enough that even a single ship with a skeleton crew could make a worthy reaping, and the Islanders were arrogant enough that they likely wouldn't consider a single, obviously undercrewed longship to be a significant threat. It helped matters that Rumblood had given him enough gifts, hoping to sway his allegiance, that he could claim to be a trader until the time was right. And the crew of the swan ship that had intercepted him off the coast of Walano had certainly seemed to fall for it. The captain had even offered, with some gentle mockery, to loan him a hand or two of crewmen, in case they came upon a storm. Urrigon had refused with as much dignity as he could muster, but the laughs of the Islanders had still rankled. When the time came for axe and brand, he had rued, he would do his best to see that captain fittingly paid for his jests.
What he had found out in Lotus Port had driven such thoughts out of his head. None other than Jaime Lannister, of all people, was in the Isles as an ambassador for Robert of Myr, doubtless seeking to sway the ships and spears of the Isles to his king's cause. Surely, Urrigon had reasoned, the Drowned God was offering him an opportunity for redemption. The fame of killing the Black Lion would wipe out, in an instant, all the humiliations he had suffered in the Basilisks. Reavers and pirates the world over would flock to his standard, eager to bask in the reflected glory of the man who killed one of the greatest champions of the age. And Viserys would give anything, anything, he was sure, to the man who laid the skull of his father's murderer at his feet.
So he had sent a message bearing his defiance and his challenge to Tall Trees Town, with orders to place it in the hands of Jaime Lannister and none other. He would take revenge for Tywin's destruction of his people, restore his honor, and deal a blow to the enemies of his new king, all with the same stroke of his sword. And if, as the God might will, he died . . . well at least he would make a line in the Black Lion's song, which was a fate any man of worth could be happy with.
XXX
Jaime had never considered himself a likely drunkard. There had been times, when he had served on Aerys' Kingsguard, that he had needed a glass or two to put Queen Rhaella's screams out of his head, but he disliked the fuzziness and lack of control that came with drunkenness. And even in a life as pain-filled as a knight's, a hangover was something special.
That said, he had never been in a situation quite like this before.
There were, it had turned out, very specific rules about who could fight who and under what circumstances in the Summer Isles, except in the rare duels or in war. The rules that applied to an emissary, such as himself, were so restrictive as to preclude even sparring, lest an accidental injury be inflicted on a person as tapu as an ambassador.
Jaime bared his teeth slightly; that bloody term again. There were times it seemed like you couldn't throw a stone without hitting something considered tapu.
And it hadn't been like there had been anything else for him to do of any worth. The contribution of the Islanders to the wars would be commercial and naval, both of which were safely in the hands of Ser Wendel Manderly and Roryn Pyke. All there had been for Jaime to do was show his face at the seemingly endless procession of banquets and audiences with the Princess and the slightly-less-formal meetings with her senior advisors, mind his manners, and occasionally relate an anecdote or two of his experiences in the wars. The one bright spot had been when Urrigon Greyjoy, of all people, had shown up at the Isles, whether to raid or to trade was anybody's guess, and he had demanded satisfaction from him for the destruction his father's men had wrought in the Iron Isles. Not that it had been a particularly bright spot; Urrigon might have been a fine seaman, but his sword-craft would have been laughable had it not been so pathetic. The preliminaries had taken longer than the actual duel. At least the Princess had appeared suitably impressed.
If only Urrigon hadn't accused him of causing Lysa Tully's suicide right before the duel began. There were, it seemed, two different kinds of tapu, one that came with connotations of reverence and respect and one that came with connotations of revulsion and fear. Provoking a suicide, it transpired, was a surefire way to land in the latter category. Before the duel, he had been somewhat popular with the younger warriors of Tall Trees Town; the very next day, none of them would join him as he watched the Islander warriors at practice on one of the city's training fields, as had become his habit. A few of them wouldn't even look at him. To make matters worse, Ser Wendel had contracted some strange disease and died suddenly (much to the consternation and embarrassment of the Islanders, who seemed to think it a failure of hospitality that their healers couldn't save him), leaving Jaime the senior officer of the embassy; Roryn Pyke might have the name, but he was a fisherman's bastard grandson who had become one of the gentry for service, not a lord or even a knight. And Princess Molanta, it had been explained, could not associate with someone as badly tapu as he was; she could not, one grizzled old chieftain had said, even look at him, lest the bad luck that had attached to him infect her, and through her all of Tall Trees Town.
Jaime took a pull at the bottle of arrack, his second of the day. At least the arrack didn't care what a mess he had made of his life. Couldn't be a lord, couldn't be an emissary . . . He was starting to wonder if he could still be a knight. The mere thought of it made him take a second pull too soon after the first, making him cough as the alcohol rasped at his throat.
The noise of the door opening drew his attention, and he turned his head to see Darabhar Xhan standing in the doorway to his chamber; the big Islander wore the same blankly neutral expression he had taken to wearing around Jaime recently, but there was something else under it. Jaime blinked through the muzziness inspired by the arrack. If he didn't know better, he would swear that Darabhar looked worried. "You have a visitor, Ser Jaime," he said in his deep, rumbling voice.
Jaime cocked an eyebrow. "That so?" he said in a tone that would have been sardonic had he not pronounced so as sho. "Who is he, that he doesn't care about tapu?"
"Jadhanal Rhoqu," Darabhar replied. "He is . . . tohunga."
Jaime blinked, then barked a laugh. "And what in the hellsh," he asked, "would I want with a mashter craftshman?"
Darabhar shook his head. "A tohunga is anyone who has mastered their skill, their path in life. Rhoqu is tohunga ahurewa; you would say . . . high priest."
Jaime smiled, suddenly past caring how such an expression might be taken. "Tell thish Rhoqu," he said, trying to enunciate and failing, "that I already have sheven gods to worship and I can't find the time to worship another one. He'sh about twenty-five, twenty-shix yearsh too late." He turned away from the door, ignoring Darabhar's sigh and the sound of the closing door, and was in the middle of taking another drink when the door slammed open.
The shock made Jaime start, spray a mouthful of arrack across the table in front of him, and spend at least half a minute coughing before he turned to the door, ready to rebuke whoever had intruded on his privacy, but the sight of the man standing in the doorway made him stop short. He wasn't particularly tall, perhaps a head shorter than Jaime, but the cloak of starkly-dyed black and white flax over his shoulders made him look almost as broad through the shoulders as he was tall, and he had an air that immediately reminded Jaime of his father in a bad mood. What truly caught Jaime's attention, however, was the man's face.
He had heard, and Darabhar had told him, that the Islanders practiced facial tattooing, but even after so much time in the Islands seeing a man's face almost covered by an intricate web of lines and whorls was a shock. It also, Jaime had found, could make even a mild frown imposing. The glower on this man's face could probably have split an oak plank at ten paces before he was tattooed.
It certainly made Jaime feel more sober than it had in two days.
"So," the man said in a gravelly voice that conveyed . . . not so much disdain as a complete lack of impressment at what he was seeing. "You're the tapu Pākehā." He narrowed his eyes, giving Jaime the impression that he was being minutely inspected and found wanting. "And no wonder, either. Ach, what a mess." He peered at Jaime a moment longer, then nodded and turned. "Come," he said over his shoulder. "We have a great deal to do, and not much time to do it in."
Jaime blinked, then drew himself up. "And why should I go with you?" he demanded.
The Islander stopped, turned on his heel, strode over to Jaime, and seized him by the ear with a grab-and-twist that made Jaime yelp in pained surprise as his head was dragged down to the level of the Islander's. "Because you have spent quite enough time feeling sorry for yourself," he snapped, "and not nearly enough time considering how to get yourself out of the mess you have gotten yourself into. Fortunately, helping people solve problems like the one you have is part of my skill. But this is not the place. Now come."
Jaime could not remember the last time he had been physically dragged someplace; he assumed it must have been in his childhood. Certainly no one had dared try it since he was old enough to wield a sword. But his sword was leaning against the wall of his chamber, along with his dagger and the Islander did not seem inclined to tarry as he hauled him down the stairs, through the hall of the building the embassy had been given for the duration of their stay, and out into the street. Once out of doors, the Islander continued up the street, still dragging Jaime by the ear. "Your friend, the wanderer, he told you about mana, yes?" he demanded.
Jaime struggled to concentrate against the pain in his ear and the side of his head and the difficulty of keeping his balance while half-bent and moving at a brisk march. "Power of some sort, isn't it?" he asked finally.
"Power, energy," the Islander, who he assumed was the tohunga Darabhar had been talking about, said impatiently. "Mana is in everything that lives, boy. Every man and woman, every creature in the sea, every bird in the air, every beast on the land, every tree and stone and blade of grass has mana. But it doesn't just stay in one place; under the right circumstances it can be, hmm, transferred? This language of yours is so imprecise about some things." He clicked his tongue impatiently. "Even inanimate things can gain mana, especially things that are used with great skill and great, hmm, intention. The instruments I use in my rituals, they have gained mana from me, as your sword likely has from you. People can gain mana also, and done properly, with the right, hmm, intention, it can strengthen the mana of the receiver. Like a stream flowing into a river. Do it improperly, however, and the receiver's mana becomes, hmmmm, muddied is the closest term in this language. Or disrupted." He tweaked Jaime's ear. "You, boy, have picked up a great deal of mana from somewhere and done so very improperly indeed. It must be sorted out if you are to be made noa again."
The idea of yet another person meddling in his life made Jaime's stomach rebel. "Get off!" he roared, reaching up to his ear to try and break the other man's hold. The Islander countered his grab, and a very confused minute later Jaime was flat on his belly, his face pressed into the packed earth of the road, with the Islander lying across his back with one of his arms twisted into a shoulder-lock.
"Are you done, boy?" the Islander demanded crossly. "Before you decide, know this; I, Jadhanal Rhoqu, was a champion wrestler long before I became a servant of the gods. Twice did I break a man's back in single combat with no weapon save what the gods gave me at birth. Why do you think I did not fear to take you, when you would not come?"
"Fuck. You." Jaime snarled, spitting dirt. "I've had one old bastard try to tell me how to live my life. I'll not let it happen again."
"So instead of heeding the wisdom of your elders, you blunder about like a drunken ape," Jadhanal said dryly. "How well has this gone for you, and for those around you? How well have you served your king, this Robert the Strong of whom I have heard so much, since you decided to heed no counsel but your own?"
Only a warning tightening of the hold on his arm kept Jaime from trying to writhe out from under the Islander and resume the attack. Instead he had to settle for a caw of bitter laughter. "How well do you think?" he asked, putting as much sarcasm as he could into that one sentence.
"Hmm," Jadhanal replied. "Do you wish this to be the end of your story, Jaime son of Tywin, son of Tytos? Would you have your whakapapa, your lineage, end with you so weak that an old man can wrestle you to the ground and keep you there, followed by you drinking yourself into an early grave? Or would you cast out whatever has brought you as low as this, and become again the man you were at Tyrosh and Novadomo? The man your king needs you to be, if he is to make use of you in his wars."
Jaime blinked. "How do you know what I was at Tyrosh and Novodomo?" he demanded.
"I did not turn my back on the world of men entirely when I went to serve the gods," Jadhanal answered. "I know that the way of things is being changed before our eyes, and that the time comes swiftly when we must decide if we will change with it. I also know that our people will take much convincing before they sail to war, and that Princess Molanta's word will weigh heavily on those scales. I also know that you are the only man who can convince the Princess that war is a risk worth taking; your friend, the Ironborn, he is wise in his way but we remember the raids his people have committed against us too well. And he does not believe in these wars the way you do. You have seen, have you not, how men are degraded when they are enslaved, and how they are restored when they are freed? You have seen, have you not, how those who enslaved them are rewarded for their cruelties, and how those who free them are given loyalty unto death? That is what you must tell the Princess, but you cannot do so with this, pollution, upon you. You must be made noa, commonplace, if you are to remind my people that there is a time for war and fury as well as peace and harmony."
Jaime could not help a shudder as something he had thought dead stirred in his chest. "How do you know all this?"
"It is part of my skill, and my gift, to see into the hearts of others," Jadhanal said. "Even more so to listen and to learn, the better to guide those the gods send to me for aid. But all the guidance I can offer is nothing unless the person is willing to be guided. Let me guide you, Jaime Lannister, and we will see what sort of man you become. At the very least," he added with a gentle edge in his voice, "it will be a better man than the one currently under my hold."
Jaime took a shuddering breath, then another, then tapped the dirt in submission. "Can't guide me anywhere if you keep my face in the dirt, can you?" he asked.
"Not very far, perhaps," Jadhanal replied as he let go of Jaime's arm and got to his feet. "But even the longest journeys begin with single steps. Now get up, boy, and follow. This will not be easy, and now we have even less time to do it in."
XXX
The wine was flowing freely in Dragon House, as the palace Viserys had been granted within the Black Walls had been swiftly dubbed, but very little of it was flowing down the throat of Donys Rahtheon. He liked wine, but not to excess; drunkenness reflected poorly on a man's lineage and upbringing. And while others celebrated the Company's victory, he was already thinking ahead to the next moves.
Now that Viserys was a Triarch, steps could be taken to consolidate Targaryen rule over Volantis that would have been too blatant while Viserys was merely an exiled sellsword on the city's payroll. Steps such as placing Company officers in command of the Militia, and making the last arrangements necessary to fold the Golden Company into the Company's ranks. Captain Toyne would become Proconsul of the Western Territories, Ser Edwyn Saffron would fill the last open spot in Viserys' Kingsguard, and the Golden Company's other officers and notables would receive a variety of lesser honors and rewards. That would give Viserys the force he needed to solidify his hold on the City, even if the other two Triarchs became desperate and unleashed the Unsullied, thinking to capitalize on the apparent misstep of moving the Company's claim to legitimate power within the Black Walls and into the heart of the remaining strength of the Old Blood. The confined terrain of a city might play to the strengths of the eunuch soldiers, but the confusion attendant on street fighting would not. And with memories of the Company's destruction of the slave revolt still fresh, the people would remember who had rescued them while their supposed leaders had cowered behind the Black Walls.
That being done, and the City's vassal towns falling into line on the heels of the metropole thanks to the reforms to internal trade that Donys planned to oversee, their likely allies would have to be consolidated. He was already in negotiations with the Lyseni, who were doing a poor job of masking their desperation for an alliance against the Kingdom of Myr. Their Captain, Daario Naharis, might be doing better against the Andals and their pet slaves than anyone else had done, but he still had yet to defeat the Iron Legion in a pitched battle. Until that occurred, he judged, the Lyseni would remain desperate for an ally that could match the Legion, and the Exile Company was quite possibly the only force on the continent that could do so, especially if it was augmented by Unsullied. Which reminded him; he needed to send an emissary to Astapor and see what the going rate was for Unsullied by the century. As a Triarch, Viserys might be legally entitled to command the Unsullied already in the City's employ, but it would be good to have Unsullied without such divided loyalties. The Andal scriptures enjoined men to remember that they could not serve two masters, and Donys was willing to admit that they had a point on that matter. Norvos also needed seeing to, once things settled down there enough for the reactionaries to prove themselves sufficiently valuable as allies. And perhaps even if they didn't; there was no land route towards the Myrish heartland that was logistically sustainable for an army of sufficient size, and the only way to circumvent that gap that didn't run the risk of either the Braavosi fleet or an ocean storm was to sail up the Rhoyne and follow its western branches into Pentoshi territory. It was always more economical to move goods, especially food, long distances by boat than by wagon. Past a certain point, your draft animals simply ate everything they hauled.
That would bring them into more direct conflict with the Braavosi, of course, but Donys was willing to take up that gauntlet. Robert the Bloody and his pillagers had only been able to sail to Essos by the generosity of the Braavosi, so what had followed therefrom could be laid at the Titan's door as surely as Robert's. And the Braavosi would need to be cut back down to size anyway, if they were to learn to keep to their lagoon and mind their own ledgers. A Braavos returned to its mercantile ventures was a Braavos that House Targaryen could live with. A Braavos that remained an active participant in Robert the Bloody's mad crusade was not. Fortunately, unless Donys was greatly mistaken, the Braavosi were not likely to have the stomach to shoulder the main burden of the wars themselves. Centuries of being confined to the relatively unproductive lands of the far northwest of Essos, dependent on the sea and foreign trade for their daily bread, had bred an instinctive caginess in the children of the Titan. It made them good merchants and dangerous enemies, but it also made them leery of military adventurism. It was an expensive hobby, after all, both in money and in lives, and for so much of its history Braavos had had little enough of either to spare. Especially once they had become used to the wealth that had been brought by their mastery of seaborne trade. Once the Kingdom of Myr was thrown down, the Braavosi would come to their senses.
And the Kingdom of Myr would be thrown down, if it was the last thing that he did in this life, Donys vowed, his fingers tightening on his glass. The fact that he had been forced to flee for his life a step ahead of an enraged mob was immaterial; Myr had been his home, the home of his family and friends and neighbors and associates. And Robert Baratheon had not simply destroyed it, but raised an abomination from its ashes. Bedslaves, porters, cooks, even sweepers were now persons of wealth and importance in the Kingdom of Myr. Some of them had even been named lords, if the reports that reached his ears were to be believed. Slaves, living in the manses of people they had not been worthy even to look at, claiming dignities and honors as far above them as gold was above manure. It was not to be borne. Especially since he, Donys Rahtheon, could be said to be at least partly responsible for their being able to do so. It had been his sheltering and championing of Rhaegar that had brought Robert the Bloody's wrath on Myr, with all that had followed in its wake.
Donys had not lived as long as he had by not correcting his mistakes. He would correct this one as well, by whatever means became necessary. He owed it to his good-nephew, who would never sit securely on his throne while a single child of House Baratheon lived, and his granddaughter, who would not live in safety until Robert the Bloody's line was expunged. That being so, he decided, he would do his utmost to see both of these things done. Personally, if he had to.
Especially since he no longer had only his good-nephew and granddaughter to think about, he reminded himself as he glanced at where Viserys was overseeing the festivities from the high table alongside his new wife. It would be some time before Viserys and Lessaena would be likely to produce a child, but it would happen sooner or later, if the gods willed it so. And if they did not . . . there was always Asha Greyjoy, sitting by Lessaena's right hand and looking like a proper young lady by some miracle. It wasn't unknown among the Old Blood for a childless couple to adopt a bastard the man had sired on whatever lover he might have taken, provided the mother was well-born enough. The Greyjoy's might be glorified pirates, but the same could be said for many Andal nobles, and a gentleman remembered to make allowances.
Malaquo Maegyr had been reluctant to grant Viserys the hand of his favorite granddaughter; the old man had known how seriously the Andals took a blood feud, and as for the First Men, like Robert's pet madman Stark . . . Donys had had to give his personal assurance that not a hair on Lessaena's head would come to harm from Viserys' enemies before Malaquo would give his consent to the union. At least the marriage had bound Malaquo to the Company's fortunes. He doted on Lessaena, who reportedly resembled his late wife more than any other of his grandchildren, and the idea that his great-grandson would one day be not only a Triarch of Volantis but King of Westeros had caught the old man's imagination. Even the Valyrians of old had only managed to rule one continent. The prospect of doing them one better . . . that was enough to excite any man of ambition, and Malaquo had always had a tiger's hunger.
A hunger shared by many of the other men attending this celebration, Donys reminded himself as he scanned the room. The Golden Company might be two or three or even four generations removed from Westeros at this point, but they still remembered what they had lost when their forebears had been driven into exile, and although they were the soberest revelers in the hall he expected them to be the fiercest fighters when the time finally came to conquer Westeros. The more recent exiles would likely give them some stiff competition on that score, though, given the recentness of their own exile. The Essosi of the Company would probably be the hardest to bring to the necessary pitch of enthusiasm, Donys reflected as he watched them knock back the wine at twice the rate of the Westerosi exiles and three times the rate of the Golden Company men, with a correspondingly greater degree of exuberance. As far as they were concerned, Viserys had just won the prize of prizes, the jewel in the crown of mortal ambition. To be a Triarch of Volantis was to be one of the most powerful men in Essos west of Qarth; what rational man would want to reach still higher? What, come to that, was there that was even higher than the Triarchy to reach for? There was a reason that Donys planned to advise Viserys to be sparing with the rewards where his Essosi-born followers were concerned. Men who were already lords on one continent were not likely to be tempted by the thought of gaining a lordship on another one.
XXX
The following is an excerpt from Iron Flash, the fifth instalment of the Flash Papers by George Dand
The first thing you have to understand about the Riverlands in the early nineties is that it was not a kingdom in the way the North or the Westerlands or the Reach was. In any of the other kingdoms if the lord paramount said "Jump," all the nobles would do was ask for direction, distance, and trajectory. In the Westerlands, they wouldn't even do that until they were already in the air. If the Tully's said "Jump," on the other hand, the first thing any of the river lords would ask was "Why?" The Tully's weren't royalty or the next thing to it from before the Conquest, like the other Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms, but simply the leaders of the rebellion against Harren Hoare that had attached itself to the Conqueror's coattails and been elevated for it, so they didn't have the same well of respect to draw on that the Stark's or the Lannister's or the Baratheon's did. And the rivermen have always been a fractious bunch; get five river lords in a room and ask them a question sometime. You won't just get five different answers, you'll get at least two feuds over the resulting arguments and you'd better have bouncers ready in order to prevent anyone from pulling a dagger. The only times the river lords ever united in my lifetime were for Robert's Rebellion and Balon's Rebellion; the first time because they were all at Riverrun and got swept up in the moment, and the latter because the one thing rivermen can agree on is that there's no death too bad for an Ironborn.
The second thing you have to understand is that the Riverlands in the early nineties was a kingdom in fear. There had just been a revolt of virulent heretics right next door, and while the Royal Army might have put them down and executed the ringleaders, it was known that some of their lieutenants had escaped the net. Reeves in the northern Reach had been catching Rymanist septons and begging brothers turned to preaching ever since Ryman himself got what was coming to him and so had their colleagues in the southern Riverlands, which had more in common with the northern Reach than the inhabitants of either would be willing to admit. By the time I was passing through on my way to the Islands, virtually every unfamiliar person passing through that region was being considered a heretic until proven otherwise. Even I got suspicious looks, and I was a belted knight traveling with my retinue (as small as it was) and wearing the king's livery badge as prominently as I could. Things came to a head at some village so small I forget the name, where what was probably the whole adult male population turned out with spear and bow and demanded my name, style, and business, after which they demanded I recite the credo. Of course I did so, there being no less than three war-bows within point-blank range of me, but after satisfying them that I was indeed a king's man and no heretic I demanded what they meant by it. What their headman told me afterward stuck with me through all that followed. "Which there's rumors as that Ser Wallford's been seen with heretics, ser," he said, leaning on his bill, "and as that he's turned heretic himself, or will soon. And what'll that mean for us?"
What indeed. See, a lord wasn't just a lord, in those days; he was also a major figure in the religious life of his bailiwick. Take me, for instance. I'm only conventionally pious, and that only in public, and I still read the scriptures and sit front and center at Divine Office, do my bit to help the septon with the parochial charities, and take a starring role in religious ceremonies that touch on my household. I was one of the groomsmen at my former squire's wedding, for instance, and godsfather to my father's steward's youngest son. If, for some unthinkable reason, I ever turned heretic, the pressure on the septon to do the same would be immense; his living was in my family's gift, after all, as is the case on almost every other lordship south of the Neck. Convert the lord and the septon, and you might as well convert the smallfolk while you're at it. People weren't nearly as mobile then as they've become since, and being given the choice between turning heretic themselves or being evicted would literally force them to choose between their faith and their livelihoods. And perhaps their lives as well; life on the road is hard even on the strongest, and when you don't know that your lord's neighbors haven't turned heretic themselves and won't give you the same choice if you try and flee to them . . . No wonder the people in that village were nervous.
Especially since there were new taxes being levied as well, the headman told me that evening over the pease pottage and weak ale that was the best food and drink my money could buy in that gods-forgotten place (the business over my credentials had taken enough time that I couldn't have gotten to Ser Wallford's castle before nightfall, and it seemed impolitic to feed the suspicions of the smallfolk even further). That much I knew already; I knew virtually nothing about the state of the Treasury and I knew that two wars in a year and a half had left it in desperate need of replenishment. What I hadn't considered was how the smallfolk would see it. Tax collection in those days wasn't a matter of royal officers fanning out across the countryside and making sure things are done by the numbers, the way it was in Myr. Instead, it was the lord's business to get whatever amount he owed out of his smallfolk and shipped off to King's Landing; how he did so was his problem. It's cheaper than maintaining an army of bureaucrats, but it also means that the smallfolk don't know their taxes are being assessed and delivered the way the king actually wants them. As my worthy headman put it, who was to know that Ser Wallford wasn't gouging them for more taxes than they owed and sending the excess to heretics? Or, for that matter, keeping it for himself against the day when he turned heretic himself and needed to buy sellswords for the rebellion that would follow?
Suffice to say, I left that nameless village with my retinue the next day with my head full of thoughts and my guts full of foreboding. One village might not mean much, especially when it doesn't have more than fifteen able-bodied men of military age, but if every village in the Riverlands was infected with the same fears, then we were riding through a wildfire keg with a slow fuse on it. I didn't know it then, of course, but Lord Tyrell had already told his castellans and reeves in the northern Reach to hold off on collecting the new taxes until the smallfolk had calmed down and sent reports to King's Landing warning of the discontent. Why Lord Tully didn't do the same, I still don't know, unless no one had told him what was brewing, which was possible. The river lords are an independently-minded bunch, all possessed of the notion that no one knows better than they do how to manage their own affairs. Which was true for the most part, but when it wasn't the results could be spectacular. As I found out for myself, the hard way.
We were spending a few days in Stony Sept, getting our horses re-shod and letting them gain some weight for the trip over the mountains into the Westerlands. I was in the main market with Baldwick, contemplating whether we should get a new pack-saddle, and then the next thing I know the market's being flooded with people in a state of panic. The only reason Baldwick and I weren't trampled is because the saddler's stall was at the edge of the market and Baldwick and I were quick-witted enough to flatten ourselves against the wall of the tavern the stall was placed alongside and inch our way into a nearby alley. Which gave us a perfect view of what happened next; the tail end of the crowd came stampeding into the market, followed by about a dozen knights on horseback and maybe threescore sergeants on foot, all in the livery of the landed knights and minor lords who lived around Stoney Sept. The market was small enough that the crowd filled it almost to bursting, but large enough that the knights and sergeants couldn't anchor their flanks on anything. Some of the braver souls in the crowd, realizing that their pursuers were now overextended and isolated, started to throw things; merchandise from the stalls and cobblestones, for the most part. Whoever was in charge of the knights was, evidently, as quick a thinker as I was; he knew that if he so much as wavered, the crowd would turn at bay and his men would be submerged. So when the knights spurred their horses into the crowd again, they used edge instead of flat and the screams went from burgeoning defiance to earnest terror. By the time the sergeants had formed a line the crowd was already wavering. When they went in with shields braced and spears at the charge, it broke like a vase struck by a hammer.
I was already thinking of Gulltown by then and the only reason I didn't get my retinue out of the town was because the gates had been closed and a curfew enacted by order of the Archsepton. The next day, a messenger in the Archsepton's livery came round the inn where I was staying and informed me that the Archsepton was levying all knights and men-at-arms in the town into his service to restore order; I was summoned by name, to serve as one of the Archsepton's captains in the hope that a name as famous as mine as a King's man and a defender of the Faith (ha!) would help to quell suspicions. Of course, I couldn't exactly refuse; if it got back to King's Landing that I had refused an Archsepton's order I would have been finished at Court. Cersei would have made sure of it. So I reported to the Sept with my retinue, only to find that all hell had broken loose overnight.
The smallfolk of the Riverlands, you see, aren't nearly as servile as their Reacher and Westerlander cousins are. The more or less constant state of minor war their lords lived in meant that the average Riverlander peasant had spent a respectable fraction of his life under arms at one point or another; a river lord's farmers are also his spearmen, and his shepherds and huntsmen are his archers. All of which is to say that when they were faced with the possibility of being forced to choose between their faith and their lives, and not knowing who to trust beyond a king who lived more than a hundred miles away and might side with the nobility even if they could appeal to him, the smallfolk of the Riverlands had the nerve and the ability to take matters into their own hands. In some places, I found out later, they were satisfied with making their lords prove that they hadn't turned heretic and didn't plan to, but those were the exception. Almost a fifth of the landed knights and minor lords of the southern Riverlands were killed or driven off their lands within the first sennight of the rising. Counting those who had been besieged in their own castles and tower houses, that proportion rose to almost half. By the time that Stoney Sept was sufficiently under control that the Archsepton could start dispatching patrols into the surrounding countryside, four days later, the rising had spread northward as far as Acorn Hall. I won't burden you with an accounting of what I saw on that first patrol from Stoney Sept to Hollow Hill, save to say that it was as bad as anything I saw anywhere else, and it was in the very heartland of the Seven Kingdoms. So yes, the reaction was bloody, especially against smallfolk taken in the act, but what else were we to do? The law had been set at defiance, the social order overturned and threatened with anarchy, and virtually no one was in the mood to listen to reason. In times like that, reason cedes precedence to naked force, at least until the other fellow stops fighting long enough to start listening to what you're trying to tell him.
Especially since it wasn't just the smallfolk that had flown to arms. Within the sennight there were lords in the field alongside their smallfolk, claiming to be defending the Faith and the Realm by purging them of suspected heretics. That these suspected heretics happened to be neighbors holding pieces of land that they wanted, they all later swore, was not a factor that entered their calculations. And if you believe that, then I'll tell you another one. All told, those first few sennights of leading my new company, twenty lances and half a hundred town militia, around the countryside were possibly the most exhausting sennights I've ever had. It was my first independent command, and that's always enough to keep you from getting a decent night's sleep. Add to which, as the forces of law and order, every man's mind and hand was against us until we forced them not to be. The smallfolk might be glad to see the Archsepton's banner, but they didn't like being told to stop this foolishness of rebellion and go back to their work; to their minds, they were fighting for their lives and their souls. The lords they had burned out or driven off might be glad to see us restore order, but they didn't like being told that they couldn't hang anyone who wasn't condemned by the Archsepton's court; they had just been the targets of a revolt that had threatened to kill them and their families, down to the children. The lords who had decided to take advantage of the chaos weren't glad to see us on any account; here they had thought to get one over on old enemies, make themselves rich, and receive the blessings of the Faith that were due its defenders all at the same time, and we were ruining the game. Fortunately, I was only dealing with the minor lords and the landed chivalry, and my little company was stronger than any two of them put together, especially after a sennight of marching through hostile country with danger behind every bush made us a company and not simply a gang of armed men.
Dealing with the more powerful lords, thank the gods, was work for people above my weight class. The Archsepton managed to keep the Piper's, the Wayn's, the Smallwood's, and the Ryger's away from each other's throats by threatening to excommunicate every one of them no matter who was at fault unless they stood down and joined him in restoring order, but virtually every other House in the Riverlands with a grudge (in other words, all of them) had apparently decided to make hay while the sun was shining. About the only House that didn't take the field was the Blackwood's, who limited themselves to patrolling their lands and telling everyone in earshot that they didn't care who worshipped what so long as they obeyed the law. Lord Tully, to give the old bastard his due, did his best to do what the Archsepton had done in the south, but he was already starting to fall sick then, and so he had to give command to his son Edmure. And while Edmure might have been a jovial and open-handed chap with his peers and those he considered his friends, he already hated Reformists like poison even then. With reason, I suppose, given what happened to his sister, but he still wasn't the person to send on a mission where dispassionate judgment would be more necessary than good leadership. Especially since he was a bit soft where the smallfolk were concerned. When he heard out the smallfolk of Sallydance and Lady of the Leaves and decided that their suspicions of Lord Lychester's heresy were in fact justified, he didn't just join them in the field against the Lychester's; he had Lychester himself arrested during a parley and sent him back to Riverrun in irons. Not, you may take as read, the sort of action to pour oil on troubled waters.
It was that, more than anything, I think, that truly set off the Trident Wars, which was probably one of the stranger wars I've ever fought in . . .