Salladhor Saan had always prided himself on the fact that his courage ran cool rather than hot. For one thing, it was far more dignified for a man of his breeding to keep an even keel even in the face of great personal danger, rather than devolving into a ranting, raving beast as other men so often did when the battle-anger took them. For another, fighting at sea required not just valor, but intelligence, and especially for a captain who had to fight not just with his own person, but also with his ship and his crew. Some captains, like Bartoleo the Black and Nickolas Teach, might have the gift of combining fury with intelligence, but that had never been Salladhor's way. Not for him the roared curses of Teach or the sulfurous exhortations of Bartoleo, but the icy calm that let him calculate the effect of wind and wave and oar upon the course of the battle and allowed him to see not just the next blow, but the next four or five blows before they were even thrown.
Which was why the sight of the Myrish squadron shadowing his flotilla two miles off his windward beam produced no greater sign of disquiet than a slight pursing of his lips, for all that what he saw made him feel fear for the first time since he had fled Tyrosh. For one thing, none of the Myrish vessels were longships; all six of them were full-fledged galleys, and two of them were the new heavyweights that the Myrish had developed. One of them he recognized as the Tara, while the other one was either the Narrow Run or the Solva. Whichever it was, either of them was a match for anything in the Lyseni fleet, or in the Volantene squadrons that had joined them for that matter, and the middleweights that clustered around them were not to be despised either. And not just for the fact that the Myrish marines had developed a lurid reputation for such a recently formed corps, but for what truly set Salladhor's teeth on edge.
The Myrish were not just sailing in company, but doing so in formation, with the heavyweights abeam of each other in the center and the middleweights arranged in a semicircle before them. The seamanship necessary to keep such a formation was an order of magnitude greater than that required for regular sailing; such a feat was easily as difficult as marching in formation for soldiers on land, with the added difficulty that sudden and errant changes of wind and wave could throw the whole effort into chaos. He couldn't help a feeling of foreboding as he lowered his far-eye. If the Ironborn and the freedmen they had introduced to sea-fighting had learned so much from the Braavosi so quickly, then it boded ill for the future wars. Especially since the lack of longships indicated that either the Ironborn had finally overcome their attachment to their traditional raiding vessels in favor of more powerful warships, or that the freedmen they had trained were now so numerous that their preference for galleys had taken precedence. Oh, he had no doubt that his fleet was still the superior of the Myrish for seamanship and discipline, but that superiority appeared to be diminishing more and more every year. The Myrish fleet would almost certainly never equal even his fleet, much less the Volantene fleet, for size, especially since they had to compete for funds with the Royal Army and the fortifications erected by the Pioneers, but they were not small enough to be easily discounted either, even if the skill and ferocity of the Ironborn and their freedmen proteges in boarding actions were not so proverbial.
And the Myrish would not sail alone either. The Braavosi might never again launch a fleet to equal the Great Armament, but they were unlikely to need to. Why had they funneled so much money into King Robert's treasury, if not to allow the Kingdom of Myr to shoulder the brunt of the wars? And while the fury that had led to the Great Armament had been spent in the Rape of Tyrosh, the Braavosi were a patient people, famous for their persistence and their industry, and they were still bound by the treaty that had been made when King Robert had wed Serina Phassos. If, when, the wars came again, the Myrish fleet would be joined by the Braavosi squadrons based at Martyros and Brivas, and that combination would be strong enough to render a battle of force against force too uncertain to chance. Salladhor had not risen to the heights he now occupied by being unwilling to gamble, but he always weighted the dice as far in his favor as he could before throwing them; as his first captain had taught him, fair fights were for suckers. Accordingly, in the event of war breaking out again, his plan had been to whittle down the Myrish and Braavosi fleets by means of what one of the Volantene captains had sneered at as 'pirate warfare'; using raids to draw single squadrons into positions where they could be isolated and destroyed by overwhelming force, harrying the seaborne commerce of the enemy to force them to dispatch squadrons to convoy their merchant ships, and not seeking a decisive battle until it could be had under conditions of numerical and material superiority.
That plan, however, relied on the Myrish being too rash and undisciplined to avoid the traps he would lay for them and the Braavosi being too few or too lacking in influence for their greater experience to be heeded. If the state of that Myrish squadron was anything to go by, those conditions would be disappointingly rare. And while Victarion had yet to win a victory at sea to equal his feats on Tyrosh isle or at Novadomo, only a fool gambled on the foolishness or incapacity of his opponent. Salladhor turned away from the sight of that almost offensively professional squadron and gave orders for the flotilla to continue on its current course but keep the Myrish under observation in case they made any aggressive maneuvers, his mind already churning. He was going to need a new plan.
XXX
Viserys Targaryen retired to his cabin aboard the river galley Pureblood as he did every night, with Ser Arthur and Ser Barristan leading the way and his two pages at his heels. He had slaves, of course, but he did not trust them with his personal safety or his comfort. For one thing, his safety was the province of the Kingsguard. For another, trusting slaves more than his sworn bannermen would have been insulting to his bannermen, and the coalition that Uncle Donys and Ser Arthur had built was young enough that it needed all the help it could get to seal the cracks between its component parts. For yet another, he had no intention of repeating the foolishness of the Pentoshi, or the Old Myrish, or any other slaveholding class, by forgetting that he was at war with abolitionists. Even under normal circumstances, slavery was a weak reed; under the circumstances he found himself in, it could very easily become an active danger. Since he could not dispense with it, minimizing the danger it presented to him would have to suffice. Which was why his cooks, both of them slaves, always worked under armed supervision and tasted the food they made themselves before sending it to his table, among other precautions.
After he had gone through the nightly ritual of changing into his nightclothes, assisted by his pages, while Ser Arthur and Ser Barristan made sure his cabin remained secure, he dismissed both the two knights and the pages. The hour or two before he finally went to bed were the only time of day during this whole voyage up the Rhoyne that he had to himself, with no one intruding on his privacy with some request for something that he usually couldn't grant. That alone was enough to make his chest and shoulders feel lighter even than the removal of his brocaded and embroidered garments of state would account for, but there were other reasons he craved privacy, even if both his wife and his paramour had remained in Volantis.
Crossing to his desk, he opened a drawer and drew out two plain leatherbound volumes that stayed wherever he resided. The first and thinner volume, which he set aside, was a biography of his brother Rhaegar, but it was not the hagiography in all but name that was the official biography of Rhaegar the Exiled. No, this volume contained the whole tale of his brother's deeds, the craven and foolish as well as the valiant and wise. Viserys paused as he laid the volume on the desktop to run his fingers over the cover. When he had commissioned this version of his brother's history, he had given the scholars specific orders to include the full and unvarnished tale of Rhaegar's life, and placed everyone in his entourage who had known Rhaegar, even at most distant remove, under strict obedience to be wholly truthful in their answers to the inquiries of the scholars. Even so, he had eventually been required to question Ser Arthur and Ser Barristan himself, after the scholars had reported their evasions.
Having finally gotten the full truth from them, he could understand their unwillingness. Far from the spotless and romantic knight that he was portrayed as to the world, his brother had been revealed as a fool that quite possibly deserved at least some of the opprobrium that his enemies heaped upon him. The knowledge had been a relief in some ways, if only because it made his own flaws and mistakes seem all the more forgivable by comparison, but there were still days when Viserys was tempted to heap curses of his own on Rhaegar's name for his folly and its consequences.
But he would not read of his brother tonight; tonight was for the future, not the past. He opened the thicker volume at random and read. When Lord Baratheon was made aware of the usages that the Pentoshi made of their slaves, he read, his zeal to do his duty was replaced by a spirit of wrath. In this spirit, he gave orders to his men to redouble the strictness of the punishment they visited upon those who kept their slaves in a state of misery or suffering. The masters of pleasure schools and the houses they supplied especially felt his ire. On no less than four separate occasions Lord Baratheon visited death upon such men with his own hands, while others he threw to their own slaves to be murdered, claiming it justice for the injuries done to them.
Viserys nodded involuntarily. That squared with what he had learned of Robert Baratheon's habits before the Rebellion. A great and not especially choosy lover of women, but never one that could be accused of cruelty, unless it was cruelty by thoughtlessness.
This second volume was to Robert Baratheon what the first volume was to Rhaegar; a complete and unvarnished accounting of his life and deeds, both before and after his coronation in the ruins of Myr city. Ever since he had sailed from Dragonstone to join his brother in exile he had heard about Baratheon's faults; his choler, his crudity, his whoremongering, and his bloodthirstiness most of all, but also his unchivalrousness in swearing revenge on Rhaegar in defiance of the expressed wish of Lady Lyanna and his foolishness in casting aside the Iron Throne to pursue that unworthy feud. But by the time that he had been forced to flee Myr for Volantis he had known that that was not the whole story of Robert Baratheon. No man who was such an unmitigated collection of sins could have mustered an army to follow him across the seas, beaten Rhaegar in open battle, reduced one of the mightiest dynasties in the world to hunted exiles, or made himself the king of one of the most energetic and puissant states this side of Slaver's Bay. So Viserys had commissioned this volume, and kept it updated on a regular basis, in order to try and discern how it was that Baratheon had transformed himself from a footloose adventurer to a mighty sovereign in such a short span of years.
Slowly but surely, page by page, he had begun to grasp the man behind the legend, the man that Ser Arthur was content to label usurper and madman and leave at that. Robert Baratheon, he had found, was a great warrior, a fine general, a competent administrator, and a mediocre statesman in matters not pertaining to war, but even his faults mattered little, because the one virtue Baratheon had that cast even his greatest faults into shadow was his charisma, the power of spirit that had bound lord and knight and soldier and priest and merchant and farmer alike to him in loyalty. The victories that Baratheon had won had only enhanced that charisma, and the reputation he had already had when he left Westeros, until by now the man and the legend were one and the same. Ser Arthur and Uncle Donys might scoff, but Viserys knew he was right; who but a legend could cause even the wild Ironborn to swear fealty to him and fight by his side of their own will, as Victarion Greyjoy had done at Novadomo?
This, he was sure, was the greatest problem that would face him in the coming wars. His men were loyal, to be sure, but he had no great deeds to his name, certainly not to compare to the Fall of Myr and the Rape of Tyrosh. How could a man who was still not much more than a boy, as he knew himself to be, compare to a man who was a certified hero in the eyes of his followers, and whose captains were men of legend in their own rights? No, the name Viserys Targaryen would have to become a name to conjure with as well, if he was to ever hope to stand against Baratheon. Hence this voyage up the Rhoyne to parley with another legend.
Khal Drogo, he was sure, was a man who fully deserved his titles. But for all the savage splendor that attached to his name, he was still Dothraki, and so manageable. Uncle Donys had taught him what to do before he left Volantis, but he intended to use only a portion of that teaching, for he was certain that the old formulas by which the Free Cities had played off khal against khal would not work against a man who had set himself to the task of becoming khal of khals. No, a man like Drogo would not be swayed by attempts at bribery or appeals to his vanity any more than Robert Baratheon would be. So Viserys would offer more than mere strings of coins and bales of silks and petty flatteries. He had something of even greater value to offer.
His eyes flicked to the wall that separated his cabin from Visenya's. His niece's innocence and curiosity never failed to touch him. He could listen to her chatter for hours, on subjects ranging from the poetry of the Rhoynar to Lady Greyjoy's manners to the latest scandals among the Old Blood. By now she was as much a lady of the Old Blood as she was a Targaryen princess, and Viserys would have loved nothing more than to make her his wife in the ancient tradition. But he was already married, and even the blood of the dragon could not break the commandment to be faithful to one's spouse with impunity; Rhaegar had proved that, even if one was such a fool as to ignore the example of Maegor. And Robert Baratheon had discarded his paramour for a marriage of state, and prospered thereby. So Visenya would serve another purpose.
Ser Arthur would doubtless be wroth if he ever learned which of these two books he had taken inspiration from, and which warning. But Ser Arthur was a Kingsguard, not the King; a king had to take wisdom from wherever he found it, so long as it served his purpose. And besides, Viserys mused as he closed the book. Baratheon was blood of the dragon himself, diluted as that blood might be. These wars were, at their bottom, really nothing more than a family quarrel. Even if no one else seemed to see it that way.
He placed his books back in their drawer and closed it. There was a time and place for everything, as High Priest Benerro was fond of saying. The time for that parley was some way off yet, but the time for his meeting with the Stallion That Mounts the World was fast approaching. He would do well to sleep as he could beforehand. Tired kings made for even worse problems than tired soldiers, as Ser Arthur was fond of saying.
XXX
Captain Nakano Sanolis dismounted from his charger, smiling broadly as he handed the reins to his body slave. His company, five hundred light horse recruited from the wealthier burghers of the west bank of Volantis city and the plantations nearest the city, had made a brave sight as they paraded down the main street of Crotona, where they had been met by a throng of cheering citizens and a formal welcome by the town fathers. Combine the rapturous welcome with the clear brightness of the weather and it was a day worth remembering. The only dark spot, oddly enough, had been the Lyseni soldiery, and he hoped to clear that up directly.
It was in that spirit that he walked over to the small knot of Lyseni soldiers, evidently off-duty given the lack of armor but still evidently soldiers judging from the weapons that they wore so casually, that had watched his company debouch from the parade route with the noncommittal stare that had been the common reaction of virtually every Lyseni soldier to his company's appearance. Understandably so, in his opinion; Lys was not even half as powerful as Volantis, but it was still a proud city with its own traditions of glory. Being reduced to begging for aid from a foreign power would weigh on anyone's soul, regardless of any expressions of mutual goodwill. The effort had to be made though, and as the stronger party it fell to him to make the first move, in the interest of graciousness. As he approached, the Lyseni straightened up and lost their distinctly unimpressed expressions, assuming a military posture that Nakano had to admit was at least correct, if not exact. Their bearing aside, they seemed a near-perfect collection of desperadoes; each of them had the roughened face and skin of men who had lived outdoors in all weathers for some time, their eyes flickered about restlessly even as they stood at attention, and they wore an almost alarming array of weapons as casually as burghers might wear eating knives. "Can we help you, captain?" asked the man wearing a sergeant's badge.
"I have a question," Nakano said with a smile; it never hurt to assume a man was friendly until proven otherwise, as his father had taught him. "Why is it that your fellow citizens cheer us but you, whom we have come to save, hold yourselves so aloof?"
The sergeant tipped his head to one side briefly in a soldier's shrug. "Islanders, that lot, sir, or about half of them anyway," he said dismissively. "Not our fellows. Otherwise . . ." This time he did shrug. "Let me ask a question of my own, sir; has your company seen combat? In the River War, maybe?"
"We assisted the Dragon Company in putting down the slave revolt some years ago," Nakano replied. "And we have served on the border with Mantarys since then, as well as on patrols along the Rhoyne." And they had done a damned fine job of it, too, enough so that Triarch Viserys himself had written a letter thanking the company for its services. That letter now had a place of honor on the mantlepiece of the inn that was the company's muster hall.
The sergeant nodded. "You hear that, lads?" he asked his fellows. "Our allies sent us their slave-catchers." There was a wave of muted groans from the other Lyseni.
Nakano drew himself up, trying not to be too offended by these upjumped peasants. He had heard the rumors about the state of morale in the Lyseni armies, but this was a bit much. That said, a gentleman didn't allow himself to become flustered easily, and while he was hardly a nobleman his family were still high enough, and held enough Valyrian blood, that they could look the Old Blood in the face. "It is rebellious slaves you face here, is it not?" he asked stiffly. "So we 'slave-catchers' should be perfect for the job."
The sergeant shook his head. "I don't know what you've heard in Volantis, captain," he replied, "but the Iron Legion aren't just rebellious slaves. Some of 'em were already hard bastards when they marched with Robert the Bloody when he took Myr city, and they've gotten harder still since."
"As hard as they might be," Nakano interrupted smoothly, "my men are harder still. They are soldiers, not slaves with delusions of grandeur."
"Legion are soldiers too," one of the other Lyseni said darkly. "Even if they are slave bastards. Wait till you see one of their companies coming at you like a millstone, sir, stepping over their dead and just walking through anyone that gets in their way. As for their cavalry . . ." A few of the Lyseni made warding or propitiary gestures against evil, including one who snapped his fingers, rapped the guards of his sword and dagger three times each in rapid succession, and spat into the dust at his feet.
Nakano blinked. A good thing we arrived when we did, he thought to himself. "Well, I am sorry that the enemy have had such an effect on you," he said, trying to imitate his father's most genial manner as he did so. "But I can assure you that you will no longer have cause to worry about the Myrish cavalry at least. Not with my men watching your flanks."
"Make a habit of doing the impossible, do they, sir?" a scruffy-looking man with a crossbow slung over his shoulder drawled. "Those fucking knights of theirs don't stop unless you put a brick wall in their way, and even then I wouldn't put money on the wall. It ain't just the bastards themselves either; it's the way they come at you like a runaway wagon, knee to knee, like a fucking battering ram of men and horses and steel. Scares you shitless before the first lances hit, so it does, and then they do hit, and it's like the fist of a god hitting you, and then the bastards are all over your ass like you're hiding free wine in it, and then . . ." He shrugged, spitting aside as he did so. "What the knights don't do, the Legion does," he snarled. "Saw it happen at Solva and Iluro, before I came over and joined Lys; I could see that Tyrosh was fucked. Don't doubt that I'll see it happen again, and too close for comfort, too."
Nakano frowned. Really, this was enough and more than enough. "What is the name of your captain, soldier?" he demanded.
"Jaqys Irroyor," the sergeant said, shooting a significant glance at the scruffy crossbowman, who subsided with evident reluctance. "And meaning no disrespect, but he'll tell you the same things we've told you, sir. He'll just dress it up better, like."
"I will have words with him nonetheless, regarding the defeatism I have heard here today," Nakano snapped. "In the meantime, I will thank you to remain apart from my men. Whatever cowardice you may have been infected with, they are not afraid of a rabble of slaves and the barbarians who call themselves their masters."
The sergeant looked him in the eyes. "They will be, sir," he said flatly. "Take it as scripture. They will be."