"Gentlemen," Robert said as the last drinks were poured and the squires withdrew to the edges of the pavilion, "we find ourselves faced with a historic opportunity. It is not more than once in a lifetime that one's principal foe places himself within reach of your armies. And let none of us be mistaken; Viserys Targaryen is our principal foe. His stated goals encompass the deaths of most of the men in this pavilion, along with their wives and every member of their families, and the reduction to slavery of the people we have sworn sacred oaths to lead and protect. Let us, therefore, apply our energies not to forcing him to retreat, but to drawing him into a battle where we can destroy his army and kill him."

Matteo Contarenos, the Braavosi Viceroy of Pentos, nodded from where he sat at Robert's left hand. "I fully concur with this sentiment," he said firmly. "As does the Sealord and the Council of Thirty. A Volantis that accepts its traditional sphere of influence over the lower Rhoyne and restrains the adventuristic tendencies of the tiger party we can live with, especially if they make efforts towards the abolition of slavery. A Volantis that seeks to make itself the master of the whole continent west of the Great Grass Sea we cannot live with, especially with a man such as Viserys Targaryen at its head."

There was a wave of nodding heads and approving murmurs around the table; many of the men sitting there were old enemies of the slaver cities, albeit some of them were only recent allies. Mycan Banderis was one such, having argued in favor of abolition even before the Sunset Company had landed in Pentos but only in the last few years come out in armed opposition to slavery's continued existence. A fact reflected by the relatively low number of men under his command; Free Norvos mustered barely a thousand men, many of them refugees twice over having lost their second homes in Ghoyan Drohe. Only the fact that Robert and Contarenos had hopes for a relatively smooth takeover of Norvos if Banderis was kept on their side had led them to offer him a seat at the council table. Samwell Tarly was another newcomer to the Slave Wars, both in his own person and in who he represented; Stannis of Westeros had fought precisely one battle against the slaver cities, off Tyrosh, and then only under the terms of the Peace of Pentos, which had named him as guarantor and enforcer of its terms. Since then he had held himself aloof, preoccupied by putting down revolts and managing the fallout from the schisms of the Faith. Which was probably why Samwell was letting Ser Harry Flash do most of the talking for him; almost alone among Stannis' knights, Ser Harry had a famous name as a champion of abolition. Contarenos had already invited him to dinner, as a gesture of appreciation for the man who had saved Braavos from wildfire.

"Let us, then, hear the report of the situation as it presently stands," Robert said, gesturing to Eddard Stark at his right hand. "My Lord Stark, how are we situated?"

Eddard stood, folding his hands behind his back. "Our combined armies number approximately fifty thousand men," he began. "The larger part of that number, twenty thousand foot and ten thousand horse, are men of the Royal Army. The remainder is the Braavosi Army of Pentos, as reinforced by the militias of the countryside and King Stannis's Expedition." There were murmurs around the table; that was easily the largest army fielded in western Essos since the Century of Blood.

"The Grand Army of Volantis, judging by the reports of our scouts and the interrogation of prisoners, is at least our equal in numbers," Eddard went on. "Of those, the majority will be Volantene militia, Unsullied, and the Targaryen's own Exile Company. We are reliably informed, however, that the Tattered Prince has taken the field at the Targaryen's side, with eight thousand Norvoshi and his own two thousand Windblown. We can also expect the survivors of Khal Drogo's horde to rally to the Targaryen's banner in some numbers, although what those numbers are will necessarily be unclear until we can actually engage the Targaryen in battle. We have also received reports that the Targaryen brought some number of war elephants up the Rhoyne, but he was forced to send them back southwards due to the destruction of the supply warehouses at Ghoyan Drohe."

The murmurs were silenced. Every man at the table was old enough in war to know that when it came to a fight even odds were sucker's odds. As Ser Brynden Tully was fond of saying, "If you find yourself in a fair fight, you've done something wrong."

"Furthermore," Eddard added, "it appears that the Targaryen is marching down the dragonroad from Ghoyan Drohe as swiftly as he can. At last report he was eight day's march away, making reasonable progress for an army of such size. We can expect heavy contact between our outriders and his as opposed to mere skirmishing within the next three to four days, and if we remain astride the dragonroad we will find ourselves in a pitched battle within five to seven days. Sooner, if we advance to contact."

There was a moment's silence that was broken by Ser Harry Flash, the new commander of the Expedition. "Would it be advisable to draw the Targaryen onwards into a zone we have denuded of supplies?" he asked. "Fifty thousand men must eat veritable tons of food every day. If we fall back before him, carting away all the food and forage we can carry and burning or spoiling the rest, it would do much to sap the strength of his army before the day of battle."

Ser Brynden shook his head. "He can ferry supplies up the Rhoyne from Ny Sar to Ghoyan Drohe," he said, "and use the dragonroad to cart them up to his army. And if we employ such a strategy, then he may decide to fall back, make Ghoyan Drohe a fortress and a supply depot as great as he has made of Ny Sar, and attack us again a year or two from now, after using his cavalry and whatever Dothraki gather to his banner to weaken us by raids. We cannot keep an army as large as this in the field year after year; we must use it while we have it."

Eddard nodded. "And do so while we have the impetus of our recent victory over Khal Drogo," he added. "After consulting with the Viceroy's officers and the local experts," he nodded to Septon Deryk, who was sitting on the council by virtue of his leadership of the Old Faith, "we have a plan." A gesture brought Ser Gerold Dayne forward with a map of the local area which he unrolled over the table; servants stepped forward to weigh down the corners with spare cups. "The Targaryen must keep his army on the dragonroad," Eddard said. "It is the only way he can bring up the necessary weight of supplies from Ghoyan Drohe to keep his army in the field. That means that we know, more or less, where he is coming from and what route he will take to get to us. And the best battlefield along that route, Septon Deryk's men assure us, is here." He pointed to a spot on the map two thirds of the way down the dragonroad from Ghoyan Drohe to Haven. "At this place, the dragonroad crosses the Agneiat River; it's small, compared to the Rhoyne or even the Blackwater Rush, but still a river for all that. There is a community of the Old Faith there by the name of Sixstars, or there was before the Dothraki came through."

Septon Deryk nodded. "We have not heard from them since the war started," he said. "And when I ordered that all outlying settlements evacuate to Haven, none came from Sixstars. It is possible that they have simply been cut off from communication, but I fear the worst."

"Whether they yet live or not," Eddard went on, "the ground there is reportedly favorable for the kind of army we field. The inhabitants of Sixstars took over a plantation that was abandoned after we liberated Pentos in 'eighty-nine; at last report they were replanting the flax and cotton fields in wheat and rye and bringing the woodlots back in order. My advice, Your Grace, Your Excellency, is that we march to Sixstars at our best speed and offer Viserys battle along the banks of the Agneiat."

Robert and the Viceroy exchanged looks; the Viceroy's mouth twisted in an uncertain grimace. "I confess that I know little of battle compared to Your Grace," he said. "But it seems to me that such a battle as Lord Stark seems to envision would be a great gamble."

"A gamble of the sort that we have consistently won, since we came to this land," Robert replied, stroking his short beard. "Due in no small part to Lord Stark's prowess in leading men." He looked at Eddard and Ser Brynden. "My lords, are you certain that we can win such a battle?"

Ser Brynden nodded; Eddard bowed. "Your Grace," Eddard said, "if I do not take Viserys Targaryen's head in this battle, then I give him leave to send you mine."

"Perhaps, but I do not," Robert retorted, drawing a laugh from the captains. "But let it be so; we will offer battle on the banks of the Agneiat."

Eddard's face split in a carnivorous smile.

XXX

In Lys . . .

"They're gone?" Jaime asked, dumbfounded. "All of them?"

The borderer, one of Jon Rainwater's two surviving sons, nodded. "The ashes of their campfires were still warm, my lord, but they were gone," he said. "My father and the other borderers are following their tracks now, to find their rearguard."

Jaime nodded. "Very well then," he said. "Wait for a moment." As Rainwater's son, who had introduced himself as Matthos, bowed and withdrew a pace, Jaime turned to his captains. "By the gods, gentlemen, but we've broken them," he said, excitement creeping into his voice. "We must follow."

Ser Joren Potts, who despite the small size of his holdings was one of the more famous and hence more prominent lords in the Army of the South, frowned. "We've lost almost a fifth of our men, my lord," he pointed out. "And those that still live will need at least a day or two of rest before they're fit for battle again."

"Naharis' losses are as bad or worse," Jaime insisted. "They must be, after how hard we fought him those two days. And his army doesn't have a tenth the staying power ours does, because it's not one army; it's three or four armies, all with different goals. The Lyseni citizens want to hold us at bay and keep their slaves, the Volantenes want the Lyseni to bear the brunt of the war so their city doesn't have to, the sellswords want to spend their pay, and the Unsullied just want to follow orders. If we press on and hit them, now, we can break them apart."

"My lord," Lord Brendan Naysmith asked tentatively, "what exactly are our orders from King Robert? Do they encompass the outright conquest of Lys the way Lord Corbray said they did?"

Jaime shrugged. "I searched Lord Corbray's tent after we retook it, but I did not find his orders from King Robert," he admitted. "Naharis has them now, I assume, or one of his soldiers, if he needed something to wipe his ass with. In any case, my lords," he said over the snickers, "do any of us have any doubt as to our King's desires regarding the Lyseni? I myself heard him pledge to liberate Lys, in his wedding day speech. We here are in a position to fulfill that pledge for him, if we are bold enough to seize the opportunity."

The lords still looked dubious, but the Legion captains were catching Jaime's mood; many of them were nodding agreement. "And once we get into the Lyseni interior, many of our problems will resolve themselves," said Captain Hyrios March of the Dubris Regiment. "Even in peacetime we had a trickle of escapees from over the border, for all Devil Daario could do to curb them. Once we enter the districts where he wasn't able to all but abolish slavery, they will flood to us, when they see that we have come at last. They will not be trained soldiers, but they will learn, and willingly, to have the chance to avenge themselves on the masters."

"Consider also, gentlemen," interjected Balabos Rhosas, "how it will look to the Lyseni if we pursue them. Daario Naharis is their best captain, and he struck us with the hardest blow he could throw. If we show them that even such a blow, thrown by such a captain, could do no more than bloody our noses and make us angry . . ." He spread his hands. "That in itself will be a blow. I have fought across half the world for forty years, gentlemen, at every scale from armies of thousands to single ships, and I have seen time and again that men fight worse when their enemy appears invincible."

The lords exchanged glances, then nodded acquiescence. Jaime clapped his hands. "Excellent. Master Rainwater! My compliments to your father, and when he finds the Lyseni rearguard he is to press them as closely as he may. We are breaking camp now and will march to his support at our best speed." As Matthos Rainwater bowed and leapt back onto his horse, Jaime nodded to his captains. "Boots and saddles, gentlemen, and don't let the grass grow under you."

XXX

In King's Landing . . .

Brienne of Tarth could hear men speaking around her, but she cared nothing for what they said. Not when the evidence of her failure lay manifest before her.

When the riot had struck, she had acted as Ser Cortnay had trained her and Theon, putting herself between Princess Joanna and the danger and fighting like mad. She dimly remembered her sword breaking over a man's skull and having to rely only on her dagger and the plate armor that she had donned that morning on the force of habit and a hunch that there might be trouble in a city so recently torn by plague. But all her training, all her devotion, and all her fury had been unable to stop a cobblestone from sailing over her head and breaking the princess's skull. Now Princess Joanna lay sprawled inelegantly on the cobbled street, her laughing eyes staring lifelessly at a sky that suddenly seemed too bright and too cloudless.

It was not right, Brienne decided dully, that such an ill day should be so fair. But that was only the least thing that was wrong with this day. To begin with, her princess was dead, and she still lived.

"Squire Brienne," she heard someone say faintly. She ignored them. She had failed in her only task; she did not deserve the title of squire. She did not deserve to live, now, without seeking vengeance on whatever dog had killed the princess. But who was there to be avenged upon? One cobblestone, thrown in a riot amidst a storm of cobblestones, could not be traced to a single hand. And many of the rioters were dead already; she had seen the charge that the Order knights and mounted men of the City Watch had delivered.

"Squire Brienne!" The tone of command made her head jerk upwards; for a wild moment she thought King Stannis had risen from the tomb he had just this day been interred in. But it was only Lord Renly, who was looking at her with the blank expression of a man faced with a hard deed that must be done. "We must take the princess's body back to the Red Keep," he went on, his voice lighter than the King's, now that Brienne cared to listen to it. "Will you assist me in doing this?"

Brienne could only nod; when she tried to speak shame strangled her. As Lord Renly gestured for a cart to be brought forward, Brienne dully wiped some of the blood from her dagger, sheathed it, and then eased her arms under Joanna's shoulders and legs. Two knights in Lord Renly's colors moved to help her but stepped back at her wordless snarl. She had failed once already; she would not fail in this, the last duty that she could perform. Alone and unassisted she carried her princess's body to the cart and laid her on it, doing her best to arrange her body to give some semblance of dignity. Finally she stepped back and gave Lord Renly a wordless, miserable nod. Lord Renly stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Will you walk after her with me?" he said.

"I'm sorry!" Brienne burst out; she could no longer bear it. "I tried to protect her but I couldn't and now she's dead I'm so sorry my lord . . ."

Renly silenced her with a rough embrace. "There was nothing more you could have done," he said gruffly, grief coloring his own voice. "I saw how many men you slew to protect my niece; there are knights who have seen many battles that would not have done so well. You could no more have warded the stone that killed her than you could have warded a bolt of lightning."

Brienne shook her head dumbly against Renly's surcoat. "I could have done something," she said miserably, holding back tears by main will. "I could have seen it, reached for it . . ."

"Seen one flying cobblestone among dozens, through a visor, while fighting a mob," Renly replied. "Like enough, if you were the Warrior come to earth. Squire Brienne, what you did to protect my niece even the best of my knights would find difficult. Let the Queen say what she likes of this; I say that you did all you could, and no blame attaches to you for this. Now let us take her home, you and I."

Brienne nodded, feeling the tears come in spite of the fact that her jaw was clenched hard enough to make her teeth creak. As they began the long walk up to the Red Keep, the cart creaking and thumping along in front of them, there was only one thought in her head as the tears began to stream down her cheeks. I will make amends for this. Cost what it may, I will make amends for this.

XXX

Ser Bronn Smith watched the Master of Laws and the royal squire walk back to the Red Keep and shook his head. As if the day hadn't gone sideways far enough, without the most popular member of the royal family catching it.

And it had started so well, too, he reflected as he accepted a bottle from a harassed-looking corporal who almost addressed him as 'Sarge' before catching himself. The city had been hungry, in mourning, reeling from the plague, and looking for someone to blame for it all, but King Stannis's funeral procession had made it from the Red Keep to the Great Sept with all the ceremonial that the Iron Throne could muster on short notice. As long as he lived, Bronn knew, he would remember the Street of the Seven lined on either side with a solid wall of people in mourning colors, hats doffed as the carriage bearing Stannis's casket rumbled past them to the muttering of muffled drums. But once the service at the Great Sept was over and the royals had started to process back to the Red Keep, things had gone sideways, as if Stannis's burial had given people license to give voice to suspicions they would never have dared admit to while he still lived.

It had begun with someone throwing a lump of horse dung at Queen Cersei with a shout of "Kingslaying bitch!" The Queen had ordered that the man who insulted her be taken, the man-at-arms wearing her colors that had strode forward took a brickbat to the dome, and one of his friends had drawn his sword and started cutting.

What followed had been worse than anything Bronn had seen in all his years with the Order. He had seen skirmishes with bandits in the Kingswood, joined the Watch in manhunts through Flea Bottom, even served a term on the royal galleys in the Stepstones, but nothing had compared to thousands of people driven mad. Some had shouted for justice for the king's death, some had shouted death to Reformist heresy or Baelorite idolatry, and some had simply roared hatred of all and sundry. And Bronn, who had been knighted only the day before to replace Ser Gareth Price, who had died of the plague, had been in the thick of all of it with his squad, working minor miracles of discipline and prowess from second to second to hold the mob at bay while the royals retreated to the Red Keep. If Lord Renly and his knights hadn't been in full array and mounted on their warhorses, it would have been impossible; only their thundering charges had been able to drive the crowd back and give the Order infantry and the Watch space and time to fall back after the royals.

He knocked the top off the bottle, took a pull, and winced, both at the bitterness of the strong ale that was the Order's favored tipple and the bodies that still lay strewn across the street. The riots might have moved on for now, but only a fool would think they were done. He could hear distant shouting and see thin trails of smoke from down Flea Bottom way, and even if Flea Bottom wasn't the cesspool it was, this wasn't going to be a single outburst, not with the mood the city was in. And not just the city either; the Queen would still want blood for being called kingslayer and bitch before so many thousands, and the High Septon, until recently Most Devout Hugar, had already started calling for the city to be cleansed with fire and sword, or so Bronn had heard. As he might, given that he had come within an ace of being pulled down by the mob before two of Renly's knights had chopped him loose and herded him back into the Great Sept. The Baelorites would blame it on the Reformists, Bronn knew, and the Reformists would blame it on the Baelorites. And others would swear it was all the Lannister's fault for killing Good King Stannis and that Tywin the Terrible was on his way even now to sack the city a second time. Bronn glanced back up the street; the bitter jest was that he just might, and with good reason, once he learned about his granddaughter.

And he would learn, sure as death. Hadn't he heard that both the Queen and Lord Renly had sent for troops from outside the city to restore order? Word of why they were doing that would get out, and once it did . . . well, the news that had arrived this morning that the Point lords, of all fucking people, had laid siege to Whispering Tower on Crackclaw Point would be just the beginning, that was for fucking sure. The king's dead, Bronn thought sourly as he took another pull at the bottle. So all the little devils he tied in knots are coming out to play, and gods help the poor bastard who tries to stuff 'em back in the bottle.

The sight of a runner in an Order tabard, evidently searching for someone in charge of something, made him want to take the bottle and find a quiet corner somewhere, but he quashed the impulse and waved the lad over. A new knight he might be, but he knew what the Order expected of it's knights. "What's the trouble, lad?" he asked as the runner pounded to a halt, already bracing himself for the worst.

"Riot brewing at Little Qohor, ser," the runner gasped. "Some street preacher's whipping up a crowd by saying that the plague's the fault of slaver blood magic and the foreigners have to die beforethey get all of us. The Qohori and the other foreigners are putting up barricades, but . . ."

Bronn motioned for him to stop; he'd heard enough. "You can tell me the rest as we go. Sergeant Bones! Leave a squad here to help the Sisters and bring everyone else after me; I don't care if he's in the ground or not, King Stannis expects every man to do his duty." And we've got a whole bloody buggering shipload of duty to do, haven't we just?

XXX

"Gentlemen," Renly Baratheon began, forcing his voice to be steady despite the nerves, "before we begin, I must ask each of you; can any of you think of any way to avert the calamity that faces us other than this plan of ours?"

Every head present shook in denial; they had all had the same conversations over the past days, and come to the same conclusions. If they hadn't, they would not be here in this darkened room under Stormhaven Tower.

"Very well, then," Renly said. "Tomorrow, at noon, Ser Jacen Landser and I will take our lances and arrest the Queen and Lord Lannister. They will be confined to their quarters under guard until the King has returned and been crowned." Ser Jacen nodded agreement; as the senior surviving Stormguard, he had temporary command until Ser Cortnay could recover. His part in the arrest was to keep the Queen's squad of Stormguard from interfering, and swaying them to join the efforts that would follow.

"Simultaneously, Ser Jaymes Cafferen will secure the ravenry while Ser Davyd Swygert secures the semaphore. Meanwhile, Ser Dannel Tanner and Ser Balon Swann, with the assistance of Lord Qorgyle and Lord Redding, will arrest, disarm, and confine the Queen's Men." He turned sharp eyes on the four men. "I remind you, gentles, that our aim is to maintain the good government of the Realm, not to start a war. Take what measures you must, but spill as little blood as possible." Ser Dannel and Ser Balon nodded, as Renly had guessed they would; Ser Cortnay had trained the Stormguard to obey orders very well, and Renly had followed his example when forming his company. Square-shouldered Lucas Redding and hawk-faced Aron Qorgyle, on the other hand, simply inclined their heads, neither giving away a single hint of feeling. The sons of convicted and executed traitors, they had learned well that the best way to get ahead in Stannis' court was to keep your countenance and display absolute loyalty to the King. The reason they had not transferred that loyalty to Cersei was that Cersei had never bothered to hide her disdain for 'traitor-spawn'.

They also had the most to lose if the plan failed. If Cersei regained power, she would certainly declare what they planned to do to be treason. Renly might survive a little while, but Lucas, Aron, and the other hostages who had survived the plague would be lucky if they were simply taken to the training yard and beheaded. They would almost certainly, then, take every measure necessary to ensure the plan's success, even if that meant killing men who might have been spared with cooler judgment.

Renly dismissed the thought from his mind; he had to work with the tools he had. "Once the Red Keep is secure, Ser Ethyn Mooton and Ser Henry Ingulf will close the gates of the city to all traffic but incoming food convoys, and Ser Baelor will close the harbor. This will contain the spread of rumors until we can make our announcement, which will be made as soon as the Keep and the city are secure." Ser Henry nodded, while Ser Ethyn simply lifted his chin in acknowledgement, his drooping moustaches not hiding the set of his jaw. Renly felt a pang of regret; as the senior officer of the Order of the Crown in the city, Ser Ethyn's participation had been vital, and he hadn't hesitated to employ some rough leverage in securing it. Neither Master Bywater nor King Lyonel would be happy to learn that he had been taking bribes from a smuggler who moonlighted as an informant for one of Ser Henry's senior captains in the City Watch, after all.

Ser Baelor, on the other hand, simply nodded affirmation; he was in no more doubt than Renly was as to their likely fates if Cersei was allowed to dominate the Court. Ser Baelor had spent too long as the master of ships to hand the royal fleet over to some Lannister cousin with even less worth than chin. And he had shared Renly's suspicions about Stannis' death.

"That announcement," Renly went on, "will be that I have assumed the regency, and implore King Lyonel to return to King's Landing with all speed for his coronation. In order to ensure that he receives the message, every castle and royal post in the semaphore web will be instructed to send identical messages." Tywin Lannister was formidable, but he could not stop more than fifty separate messages from reaching the king, even in the Westerlands. "At the same time, Lord Tyrell will be invited to the city to help restore order, join the planning for the coronation, and lend his wisdom to the regency council until the king returns. When the king returns, I shall step down from the regency, transfer all power to him, and tell him our suspicions of the true circumstances of my brother's death." Renly drew himself up. "Remember, gentlemen; the password for this operation will be 'fealty', and the countersign 'justice'. Let these principles mark all our conduct in this matter, and, gods willing, we will be seen safely through." He caught each man's eyes in turn as he looked once more around the room, feeling the weight of destiny already bearing down on his shoulders as he did so. "Long live the King," he said finally, knowing that there was nothing else he could say.

"Long live the King," his co-conspirators said in a solemn echo.

XXX

On the waves . . .

All wise men respected the dangers of the sea, but only those who loved her truly appreciated her beauty. Any man could respect the sea's majesty, or fear it's sudden changes in temper, but only a sailor could truly love it. Salladhor Saan had been a sailor from his earliest boyhood, had walked decks in every kind of conditions the world-ocean could offer, and he knew as only such a man as he could know what unique comforts she could offer for any situation.

Comforts he was desperate for, because he couldn't help the sinking feeling in his guts as he watched his captains take their longboats back to their ships. The council had gone well, in that everyone had comprehended their part in the plan and no one had seen any obvious flaws. But he had not lived this long without learning how to read men past their face value. Too often the truth of men was hidden below the surface. And the truth was that his captains didn't think they could win the battle that was facing them.

The fleet he led was a grand thing, one any man would be proud to command. The cream of a Free City's regular navy, buttressed by faithful sellsails and prodigal pirates who had rallied to the motherland's banner in her hour of need, a respectable portion of the navy of the First Daughter, and sellsails and pirates of half a dozen nations drawn by the promise of loot and culled of cowards and blatant opportunists by the travails of the past years. And to top it off, Chang the Immortal, whose name was legendary wherever saltwater ran for canniness, desperate valor, and savagery. If any cowards still lurked in the ranks of his fleet, the fear of Chang's wrath would keep them in line.

And it wasn't as if they faced another Great Armament; the Braavosi, he had heard, could not afford to raise such a force again. Indeed, the Braavosi had been forced to reserve a portion of their strength, for which he had been told that he could thank the Ibbenese. So long as they maintained their rumblings in the Shivering Sea, the Sealord would have to keep a third of his fleet closer to home, lest they ravage Lorath. Or, more alarmingly, challenge Braavos's holdings on the dreary northern coasts of the continent.

But even with that happy coincidence, the Braavosi fleet in the southern Narrow Sea was still strong, and it's purple-sailed galleys had won new laurels to burnish their already formidable reputation. And while Andal fleets were hardly respected among the hard-bitten fighting sailors of the Free Cities, the Royal Navy of Myr was no rabble of nobles' retinues commanded by a man chosen for his lineage rather than his ability. No, the Royal Navy was made up of Ironborn, a true sea-people, backed up by freedmen of the same fanatical stripe that made the Iron Legion the most notorious army in the known world. A gambling man might call it a fair fight, but Saan could feel that, at some point, the hearts of his men had shifted from seeking victory to seeking mere survival, and the different portions of his fleet were reacting to that shift differently.

The Lyseni captains had seemed resigned under the bravado, as if they expected to do no better than to die bravely and sell their lives dearly. The Volantenes had been more reserved, both about the battle and what might come after it. As well they might; won or lost, this next battle would not determine the fate of Volantis as it would that of Lys. And more than a few of the Volantene captains seemed to have a chip on their shoulders about having been pushed out to the frontier to act as a bloody earnest of their government's commitment to fighting the abolitionists. Saan had heard from his informants among their crews that some of them had openly cursed the Triarchs for sending them so far from Home with no mission other than to die gloriously.

Saan clicked his tongue to himself; the Volantenes betrayed their own foolishness by such gestures, and not simply because they undermined the morale of their crews. If Baratheon was not stopped here, they would face him in their home waters within the next decade, or his son in the decade after that. At least the pirates and sellsails under his command recognized the desperation of the hour. They had made life difficult for the Braavosi in the years since the Rape of Tyrosh, even taking slaves from the ships carrying colonists to Martyros and the other Braavosi isles of the Stepstones to feed the starving markets of Slaver's Bay. But for all they could do, they were losing. Year by year the Braavosi were edging them out of the islands, smoking out their harbors and running down those who fled. Unless that tide was reversed, as could only be done by a victory, the days of the Brethren of the Coast were numbered.

In point of fact, the only person who had seemed perfectly sanguine about the coming battle was Chang the Immortal. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, but the Basilisk Emperor's cheerfulness about the impending struggle came with its own problems. No man would claim to fear battle where others could hear him, of course, but likewise no man could honestly claim to enjoy battle, either. Not unless they were an Andal fanatic or some other species of madman. Chang was no Andal, but Saan suspected that he had come unhinged at some point in his long and wild career, to claim that he looked forward to crossing blades with Victarion Greyjoy and appear to mean it. And Saan had caught the sidelong looks of the other captains around his table at that pronouncement; clearly, they had all been thinking, either Chang was a mighty liar or manifestly insane. Neither was a comforting thought.

Saan strode back to his cabin, accepting the glass of brandy that his valet had left on the table for him. At any rate, it was out of his hands. He had been dealt his hand, he simply had to play it as best he could. And if it turned out to be a losing hand . . . he sipped his brandy meditatively and glanced at his armor where it waited on its stand. He had read enough of the classics to know what was expected of a man who failed in the service of his city. Fortunately, suicide would prove unnecessary, when there would be so many Ironborn willing to oblige him.

And best if it was the Ironborn; he had heard some deeply unpleasant tales about what the Myrish freedmen did to the sailors of slaver powers that fell into their hands. And the Braavosi wouldn't just kill him. They would ship him to Braavos and put him in the dock of one of their courts, where some gods-cursed judge could drone self-righteously about his crimes and the condign punishment they merited. The Ironborn would settle for simply killing him, taking his head for a trophy, and making a song of his end. Unpleasant perhaps, but at least it would be quick, and comparatively respectable. He had quite a fine head, after all, if he said so himself. And with Fortune's help, he would make a bloody song for the skalds to sing before his end finally came.