BRINDLED MEN, SHADOWS and THIEVES

"I knew you wouldn't like it."

"Of course I don't like it," Jorah hissed, shifting his head a fraction to the left in time to avoid a sharp chink where bone hit stone. "Savages are throwing arrows at me. What's to like?"

Tyrion shrugged. He was short enough to earn protection from the ridge of stone running along the front of the Yeenish building. "Adventure. Danger. Intrigue," Tyrion listed off to irritate the bear. "Generally knights like these kinds of things."

"Knights of the realm enjoy drink, gold and whores," Jorah corrected, risking his neck to catch a quick look at their brazen attackers. "I'm not a knight any more." Great, thought Jorah, at least fifty of the things moved about on the edge of the city, throwing shit. Grey Worm whistled. Jorah nodded and gestured for the soldiers to edge forward. The Unsullied were excellent on the other end of a spear. They held their weapons at shoulder height, slinking through the city, near-invisible in the shadows. If the Brindled men were rats then the Unsullied were scorpions, tails raised.

"Disgraced knight but a knight you are," Tyrion continued, oblivious to their peril. "You are still a Mormont prince – king in the North with your father passed and the Starks scattered to the frozen winds. Indeed, should you wish you could rally an army and return home, reclaim Bear Island from that young niece of yours. Shame you lost your sword. Valyrian steel might come in handy."

"Listen, Lannister," Jorah shuffled on his knees, moving to a better hide. He pressed his back against the stinking stone. Not fifty – a hundred at least. Their attackers were darting all over the place, scaling the ruins like a nest of ruddy spiders and they were getting close. "I did not lose my sword, I returned it to my father for him to do with as he pleased. Now I'm Queensguard, as are you. Take hold of the queen's hand and do not let go of it. First chance you get, you run like fuck and get back to the beach or I'll make good on my promise to kill you before these buggers get a chance."

"The queen will not run without you."

Jorah turned on the dwarf and thrust the hilt of a dagger into his sweaty palm. "I'll be right behind you but if I find you on that ship without the queen, I'll send a piece of you to all the seven kingdoms and a few of the islands too. This hand," he squeezed Tyrion's hand hard enough to make the bones creak, "I'll keep for myself."

Tyrion swallowed hard. Nodded. Moved away to find the queen. He never thought he'd fear a man as he had his father but there was something in the bear's eyes. A deeper terror hid from the world. From what darkness it grew, he could not say, only that he never wished to be on the wrong side when Jorah Mormont held a sword.


"They are no men." Grey Worm heaved for breath, clutching his spear, fresh from a scrap.

Jorah half fell into a makeshift ditch beside Grey Worm then pulled the end of a spear out of his calf with a groan, tossing it aside. A sickening gush of blood ran from the hole. Jorah thought about doing something about it but there was a continuous assault of stone arrowheads against the wall. Each came with a decoration of feathers, many of which had broken free and spiralled in the air around them. It reminded Grey Worm of the cutting ceremonies, where the slavers released a thousand birds for good fortune to the sea. Their feathers floated onto shore for weeks. Feathers floated around them now, resting on the blackened city.

"They throw a spear as well as a savage," Jorah noted.

"No savage has five legs and one eye," Grey Worm replied, pointing to his forehead and tracing a single circle in its centre.

"One eye?" Jorah asked.

"One. Three men had stray creature cornered near statue," he pointed to a body crumpled nearby. Hairy best – breathing its last. A yellow orb was closing on the world.

"That's a nasty looking eye," Jorah agreed. "Wait on – the devil is that?" He protested, as Grey Worm took the edge of Jorah's blade and tainted the steel with poison.

"Tears of Lys, ser," he replied. "Only thing can stops them. There. You will see. Do not cut yourself, Bear Knight, or you be dead before you breathe again."

Jorah eyed his sword warily. He'd never been mad keen on poisons – they were the way of East. He was a Northerner through and through. They cut their enemies down; nice, clean and fucking final. "Can we take them with these numbers?"

"Scare them back into forest, maybe."

"Let's do that, then. Make a go at the ships."

Grey Worm whistled again, this time high pitched like a screaming gull. The Unsullied dropped back and vanished, moving through the city scaled one of its hideous sea-creature statues. They clung to the stone tentacles, leaning over a brindled man with spears ready to strike.

The brindled men had five equally long limbs used for running and fighting. Thick, matted hair covered their bodies except for leathery faces which were dominated by a single, yellow eye. Some had primitive beads plaited into their hair, others wore shells around their waists. All carried hollowed wooden tubes which fired black stone darts in a maddening swarm.

They were fast.

Toeless Rat, one of Grey Worm's commanders, took the first brave leap from the statue and landed on the creature's back, gripping at its hair. He drove his spear into the neck, twisting to tear away the muscle and disperse the poison. The brindled man arched sharply, tossing Toeless Rat aside. Immediately the creature moved to strike at the commander until another man threw a spear. It missed, bouncing over the stone street. Then another, catching the creature's arm. Nothing slowed it. The creature was determined to finish the commander. It reared up, three of its clawed hands ready to strike until the poison finally seized its heart and it fell dead.

The commander crawled over to the corpse, placed his foot on its side and pulled his spear free. He brandished it in victory, chanting to his men.

A stone dart erupted from his neck. It stuck half way with an explosion of blood, drowning the nearby statue which drank it in. Toeless Rat fell to his knees, the grin still upon his face when he died.

Jorah swung his sword, taking the arm clean off the creature who'd killed the commander. It wailed. Jorah struck again, another arm – then a head. The Dothraki joined him in a dance of curved knives. Their chaotic fighting had the brindled men confused. They scattered into the hills, bearing their teeth and beating stones against the trees until it sounded like thunder, rolling in from the North. With a shiver, Jorah realised that this was the sound they'd heard at dusk, mistaking it for a storm.

Tyrion had hold of the queen's hand as they waited in the safety of the throne room. Grey Worm appeared.

"We leave now," he said, guiding them through the streets.

The thunder quietened but all eyes watched the jungle above. They'd not gone far. Jorah joined the queen, a knife in one hand and his bloodied sword in the other. He stayed close by her. His eyes kept to the cliffs. They were still there, waiting. The men of Sothoryos.


YIN, YI TI

The pirates knelt on deck and whispered prayers to the Drowned God. Each captain threw salmon-coloured shells into the water which mixed with goat's blood and burned incense until a carpet of it sat low on the tide line in an unnatural mist.

Hundreds of abandoned ships floated in the harbour. They were in a state of disrepair – some half-sunk, others with torn sails or burned hulls and yet none of them showed signs of war. Rising in a crescent around the water was the sprawling capital, Yin and its famous Palace of Fallen Stars. The wharves were empty and the eternal flames that were meant to light each birth had been blown out by the wind.

It was completely empty. Three-hundred thousand people vanished.

A pirate approached Daario. Half her face was painted with the ceremonial goat's blood. It dripped down her cheek and onto her exposed chest. "These horse stories," she whispered, as the empty boats knocked together in the bay, lazily colliding with dull thuds as the waves nudged them free of rotton moorings. "We'll hear more of them."


Bravery. Irrational Greed. It could not be both. That was the thing about pirates – profit outweighed common sense. Most people who chose a life of crime over the safety of the realm had a short-sighted approach to their future. At least, that was the only rationale Daario could arrive at as several ships in the pirate fleet – including his, made ready to dock with Yin.

Surely it was a gift, they had reasoned. An empty city made for easy pickings... All their worries about infiltrating the royal court and locating the historic stone had blown away like the immortal flames and now the wealth of Yin lay at their feet, unguarded. The pirates were sending in several parties to scour the royal houses for gold and jewels while Daario led a search party into the Palace of Fallen Stars.

Still... As Daario looked up into the dark, empty windows of the palace with their pale, silk curtains blowing about, he couldn't shake the sickening feeling that the city wasn't entirely abandoned.


Daario's sense of dread intensified as his boots hit the wharf. The old wood creaked underfoot. Green waves lapped against the stone foundations. A piece of torn sail had caught in a lamp post. It flapped sharply in the wind, lashing at the iron pole. He ducked under it, leading the pirates up the tiled steps adorned with images of fallen stars crashing to earth.

Vistas of these stars dominated the walls of the palace. Each panel they passed on their way to the iron gates told the history of Yin. When Westeros had been a colony of mud-huts and dripping forests, Yin ruled the East. It was impossible that such a city could vanish from the map in a heart beat.

"Your people," the pirate whispered, falling in step with Daario, "people from the West, they took their hero from this place and named him a god. Look-" she pointed to one of the panels. It was filled by the image of a flaming sword, wielded by a man with a crown. In the next panel the sword was plunged into the chest of an ice creature with sapphire eyes and a body made of blue shells. "And there is your stone." It was shown in the hilt of the sword.

"Where do they keep the real one?" Daario asked.

"I have seen it once," the pirate replied. "Trade was conducted in the king's private office. He kept the jewel on a war table. Said it made him immortal. Maybe true. My father was a pirate also and he never saw a different king. Things are different in the East. Time runs more slowly."

"Mmm..." Daario agreed. The lies were thicker, he thought.


YEEN, SOTHORYOS

"What is it?"

"Let go of my hand!"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because I like it attached to my wrist, your grace. Ser Jorah was very specific about its fate should I let go."

The queen glanced over to the bear. He was using his sword to slice a path through an uncharted patch of jungle that lay between them and the safety of the beach. She watched him longer than was necessary, distracted by the twist of his back muscles as the blade came down again and again. "I bet he was." He had turned now, looking over his shoulder at her. Their eyes met and she turned back to the Lannister. "Do you think this trail leads to the beach?"

"If it doesn't we'll be mounted on spikes by nightfall," he replied. "Mormont is certain that the natives fear the sea and I tend to agree."

"Ser Jorah is right more than he is wrong."

"If you say so, my queen," Tyrion replied. "He has been in your service a long time, from what Varys says." And from how the queen looked to him. Tyrion had seen directly though Jorah the moment he met the sullen knight, mourning for the grace of his queen but Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, had taken longer to unravel. "They say -"

"I have no interest in what they say," she stopped him. "If you wish to retain your head, you'll be deaf to their whispers."

Fair enough. Between the bear and the dragon, Tyrion'd be lucky to have an ounce of flesh left.


"Are they following us?" Jorah asked Grey Worm, as the pair of them pulled a nest of heavy vines aside allowing the rest of the party to pass into the next clearing.

"Difficult to tell. I am not used to jungles. Are they always this quiet?"

"I have only frozen pines to compare," he admitted. "Those are always quiet. You can hear the ice crack against branches."

"I have never known snow. You are used to silence then?" It unnerved Grey Worm. He was a child of a raging city and preferred a night of screams to a whispering jungle. A forest creature fell onto his forearm. Grey Worm eyed it warily as it tapped over his golden skin with jointed limbs. Jorah calmly slid the flat edge of a machete between the bug and Grey Worm's skin, lifting it off.

"Not this kind of silence," Jorah replied, flicking the insect back into the forest. "It reminds me of -" he thought better of finishing. It reminded him of the frozen lands beyond the wall. Of the cliff where he'd found the broken bodies of Wildlings and seen dead men walk. "Grey Worm?"

"Yes, Jorah the Andal."

"Do you ever feel like the world is dying? The cities we've seen – the – things we've seen... There might be nothing left to fight for."

"I only wonder about moving this forest to get to the beach. Then I think about the ship crossing the water. That is the way of Unsullied. One foot then the other until the march is done."

"Quite right too," Jorah nodded. "And the queen?"

"Will sit on iron throne. Unsullied will live lives they choose. Do you hear that?"

Jorah nodded. "Thunder."

They worked faster. Everyone had heard the sound of the creatures approaching, picking their way through the dense jungle. As another tree fell, a break in the green appeared. Beyond it – black pebbles and a trim of blue. The beach.

"Quickly!" Jorah shouted at the group, waving the queen and Tyrion forward ahead of the others. "To the beach. Everyone onto the beach."

The party made it into the open as the first stone arrows fell, striking bark, leaves and exposed Unsullied flesh. Jorah stood at the edge of the jungle, ushering the men through. As the last passed he swung the machete fiercely, digging the blade half way through the stomach of a brindled man who'd lunged after them. The force of the creature sent Jorah crashing to the stones, clinging to the handle of the machete. It was stuck in its back so Jorah dug his heel into the thing's yellow eye, making it howl. Grey Worm joined in, stabbing his spear into its head until its dark blood ran over the rocks, black as the beach stone.

"Leave it! Leave it!" Grey Worm shouted, as Jorah went for the machete again. There wasn't time, the things were coming out of the jungle on all sides, dropping from the trees and crawling toward the fleeing party. "To your queen!"

Tyrion dragged the queen towards the water. The Unsullied stopped at the edge of the waves and turned to defend the queen from the creatures. Jorah and Grey Worm were only moments in front of the savages, barely staying upright as the pebbles rolled underfoot. Jorah gestured frantically at the water. "In, you fools! In!" but most Unsullied could not swim.

"Your ships, my queen," Tyrion pointed to the far end of the bay. "Can you swim?"

"Can you?"

"If required and I believe in this case, it would be required."

More and more of the creatures gave chase. It was a thousand times worse in the open with nowhere to hide from the assault of stone arrow heads. There were three in Jorah's back already. He could feel warm blood running down the back of his legs as he ran. "Command your men into the water!"

"They will drown," Grey Worm explained. "They've more chance fighting."

"Then they will die. You cannot die with them, Grey Worm. You hit that water and you swim. Bring help – you understand?"

Grey Worm nodded. He turned and hurled his spear straight into the closest pursuer, felling it. Then, he picked up speed and crashed directly into the waves, swimming into the water toward the queen's ships at pace to bring help.

When Jorah reached Daenerys he grabbed her by the arm and tried to pull her into the water too. She stopped him. "They're not afraid of the water," she whispered.

Jorah stopped and removed his sword, holding it to the sun. He stood it front of the queen and watched as the creatures hacked apart the Unsullied on the beach. They fought well and died well. "Daenerys..." he murmured, reaching his free hand down to take hers.

She took it, lacing her fingers with his. "I know..." she replied.


YIN, YI TI

The private throne room in the Palace of Fallen Stars was more lurid than the interior of a Baelish whore house. Huge red, stylised dragons were painted onto the walls. They arched and contorted, trapped by flames and pierced by a hundred swords. Some great battle, thought Daario – another blood bath that history had forgotten.

He circled the room once. It was small with silk covered archways leading off to a dozen different rooms. It was entirely indefensible, finished with a towering stone window open to the sea. They were at the tallest point in the city. Daario moved to the knee-high ledge where he sat and gazed at the water far below. The pirate fleet appeared tiny on the waves, moored between the bleached bones of the Yin fleet.

"There's no one here," one of the pirate scouts reported back. "Take your stone and head back to the ship. We're bringing another party ashore to search the city."

"Raid the city."

"As you like. Take your stone." The pirate replied. It was not an order but Daario knew better than to test it. Instead he grinned and flicked his matted locks of hair out of his face. It had grown long, these months abroad. A few more weeks and he'd be indistinguishable from the pirates.

It was not what he had expected. The legendary relic which the emperors of Yi Ti kept locked away amounted to a misshapen black pebble no larger than a quail egg. Compared to the jewels set into the walls, it was nothing and yet here it sat on a velvet cushion, alone in the room. Daario picked it up, holding the relic up to the light. It gave away nothing. All light that touched the surface of the stone was swallowed whole. It was black as the crows of the Night's Watch. Impenetrable.