Interlude

Taggo Hess had sailed with the gilded fleet for half his life, and seen sights like few sailors could boast of, and near as few would believe.

Even he was struck dumb by the falling island.

It had been the young lad who spotted it first, but the cry had hardly gone up before others started to see what he was screeching about. The shadow it cast engulfed every ship in the so-called fleet in moments, then swept past them with the same speed.

That shadow pulled every pirate's eyes sunwards -east at this time of day- and then every man of them was shouting to match the boy.

Distance could be a deceptive thing on the seas, and size along with it, but years of reaving the Stepstones had taught Taggo to judge them better than most. If he still had his wits, then the dark mass tumbling towards the horizon had to be at least the size of Braavos. The results of something so large hitting the sea were obvious to anyone who had ever seen water, and Taggo had heard enough stories of immense waves on distant shores to know what was coming to the Narrow Sea.

Then it hit.

There were no thoughts after that. Only terror.

In the distance, water exploded, becoming a wall of fog that ended any hope of seeing their end coming. The sound hit a heartbeat after the impact and the roar was like all the dragons of his great-grandfather's stories had come back.

Clinging to the rail, Taggo hardly felt the first blow of the officer's club across his back.

The second knocked him out of his fear. The third finally brought him back enough to hear the orders his captain was roaring and Taggo scurried to his tasks before he could earn another strike.

They turned to face the oncoming wave, and braced for a rise and fall…but there was nothing.

The sea stayed flat and calm. Only the billowing fog bank told that they hadn't imagined everything.

"We should turn." Taggo muttered to whoever could hear him, "We should turn and make for the coast."

Discontented voices rose to match him, but the captain shouted over them before words could tip over into action.

"We hold the course! Else the wave will tumble us when it does come!"

Taggo had never heard of a delayed wave, but he'd also never heard of a falling island and he had no interest in an extra shift on the oars for disobeying orders. His years as a pirate had brought him no closer to an officer's right to debate the captain while underway, so he kept his head down as flags flashed messages between the ships and the captains agreed to hold the course.

Entering the fog almost shook his resolve, but after a few moments it lost its fear. Cold and wet and completely ordinary. It was hard to be afraid of fog once he was in it. Except for the usual fears of colliding with something, and it wasn't like there were icebergs in summer.

The rowers rowed, and they held the course as every man braced for the climb over a wave that never came.

Instead, between one breath and the next, the fog ended, and the gilded fleet nearly died with it.

A wall of ice loomed ahead of them. Great spikes of it jutted out of the ocean high enough to unman the Titan, sweeping off into the distance to either side.

Orders were bellowed again, and it was only the speed and experience of each crew that let the fleet sweep around to skirt the long wall of ice that rose and fell and flexed with the waves.

Discontent might have risen again, between the plainly unnatural ice and the lack of any wave to force them to hold their course, if the ice had not failed at that moment. The ocean's movements triumphed over the strange frozen spikes, and a fissure opened with a thunderous crack.

It closed near as quickly, but for those moments the pirates could see through to the ruin of the island itself, and the ivory structures that covered it. Strange and unknown and full of the promise of both. The thought sprouted in Taggo's head that this might be a blessing, and not the fell thing he had taken it for. An island of treasures dropped from the sky, and them the only men close enough to stake the first claim to it.

He knew he wasn't the only man thinking it. Not when the orders began to ring out for them to circle the ice and find a way through, nor when the other men set to the task as eagerly as he did.

He had been made for greater things than a life of drudgery, whether in the counting house or the merchant fleet, and the lust for them was rising in him as it always did before a raid. Dreams of winged women and endless treasure played behind his eyes as he worked, and his voice was one of the loudest when, some hours later, they finally found a gap that showed no danger of closing while they were halfway through.

They sailed through with the sounds of shifting and breaking ice all around them, and their eyes fixed on the treasures ahead.

For the black earth of the fallen land was clear to see, and though it had shattered on impact, the pieces had become a new cluster of islands in the narrow sea, and near every one of them was packed with buildings out of a fireside tale. Despite the shattered island, they hardly seemed to be damaged, and their design was as impossibly intricate as it was foreign to every shore Taggo had ever seen.

Here and there were different lands. Their stone and soil a more ordinary colour and the buildings upon them both far more damaged and far more familiar. No piece he saw was big enough to recognise properly, but Taggo saw bricks and hewn stone and pieces of roof tiles, alongside the remains of everything else a city might contain.

Everything but bodies.

Some men cried out to put ashore and start looting, but the captains had the right of it to Taggo's mind. Whatever treasures they might find would be richest at the centre, and it was unlikely they'd get two chances to plunder them. Not before every fleet -real ones, with more than four hulls between them- in the narrow sea got to them.

A strange call rang out as they rounded another island, this one of brown earth without more than a stray stone remaining of what had been there, then there was a thunder that wasn't quite that of hooves and a herd of giant birds came over the ridge and streamed down to the coastline. Bright yellow things the size of warhorses, with fierce beaks and curious ears that blinked at them as they sailed past.

Once the strangeness passed -and really they weren't the most bizarre creatures he had seen- Taggo noted the more important details.

Many of the creatures were injured, some grievously, and more than one was wearing horse tack. Or bird tack, he supposed.

Muttering rose again, and it was more than a little gleeful.

Saddles meant riders and injuries meant weakened riders. The gilded fleet would be sure to welcome them to the narrow sea, and all their treasures with them. Orders rang out to look out for a true settlement or some other sign of where the greatest treasures might be gathered.

For his own part, Taggo found his imagined winged women transformed from an idle thought to a real possibility. As did the price they might fetch in the slave markets of the Free Cities. Once the crew had had their fill, of course.

Then they rounded another island and saw the greatest wonder yet. Ships -for the shape of them was obvious to any sailor- of white stone and vast size, fallen and jutting out of the water in a stretch of otherwise empty water. The lagoon surrounded the largest ship of all, and even at the distance from the edge to that central point colour and movement could be seen.

They had found the treasure at the heart of this place, and Taggo ran for the Master-of-Arms as the armoury was opened and the fleet made ready for battle.

By the time he made it back to his post, the voices of all four crews were shouting and jeering at a much smaller vessel as it crossed the lagoon towards them.

Far from the ships whose ruin surrounded them, it was a mere wooden skiff that was sailing towards them. Taggo wondered if it might be another ship that had beaten them to the prize, or if the winged people were reduced to such things by their shattered island.

Then he saw the woman standing at the prow of the skiff and his thoughts of imaginary women shifted to the far more physical specimen in front of them.

She wore blue and white, fine clothes that only looked finer as she drew closer to them, but in a lopsided style he'd never seen the like of before. She had hair of silver, but a much darker shade than any of the blood of Old Valyria that he had known. She wore a sword at her side, and Taggo had seen enough hard women reaving the seas not to laugh at that before he'd seen her try to use it, but when they finally came close enough to make out her face he dismissed any idea that she might be a threat.

No warrior was as beautiful as that. Not for as many years of battle as the woman, who looked full grown and past, would have seen.

A noble lady then, with a fine sword to decorate her hip, and no idea what was coming to her.

He only hoped he'd get a turn before she was too broken in.

Seemingly oblivious to their weapons, the woman gestured to the cloaked figure who tended the skiff behind her, and raised a hand in greeting.

The captains of the gilded fleet were, in theory, equal, but Saav the Strongarm was the most equal of the four and he sailed at the head of their formation because of it. So it was his voice that called a cheerful greeting to the poor fool below.

She looked surprised for a moment, like she had expected something else, then she called back in an accent Taggo couldn't place. "Ahoy the ships. What is your business here?"

Laughter rose, and fell at a quelling gesture from Captain Saav. "Treasure." He called down to the noble lady.

She lifted her head, and her hand crept across her hip to touch the hilt of her sword, as if it would protect her from four ships of fighting men. Though there was no waver in her voice as she replied, "What do you have to trade?"

The laughter was darker this time, and Saav made a different gesture to end it. Two of his men tossed out grapples to catch the skiff and he called, "Swords!" to his crew as much as to the woman.

A ripple of weapons were lifted, though Taggo doubted most of them would get a chance to use them. A few men did come forward with bows in case the dumb bitch thought she could cut the grapples loose and try to sail away, but she just took ahold of her sword and watched as the ropes pulled her closer.

Then she turned to say something back to the cloaked sailor, and they dropped to huddle in the bilges of their skiff. Taggo turned to make a joke to the men around him, and caught the glitter of ice in the corner of his eye as everything went wrong.

When he looked back the woman was glowing icy blue, the air was crystallising around her, and her drawn sword was matched by a huge spike of ice that had obliterated the deck of the fleet's rightmost ship.

Then she leapt into the air, her skiff bobbing deeply as she soared high enough to clear the rail of the Strongarm's ship, what might have been a split cloak and might have been wings trailing behind her.

She hit the deck in a crouch, and the heads of Saav and every man around him hit a moment later.

Someone finally shouted an order and the decks of all three remaining ships exploded into violence. None more so than that in the middle, where a monster tore through the men like a winter storm.

Arrows flew, and the Scorpions at either end of all three ships were swivelled and fired. The monster picked up a man in one hand and swept half of the bolts out of the air with his body. The rest met a wall of ice in midair, or were struck from it by the sword that wove a steel net around her.

Without a bow, all Taggo could do was watch. Watch as the flood of men attacking her became a trickle, and the few that dared to face her found themselves slipping in blood that became muddy red ice beneath her step.

No projectile came close to her, but across the gap someone was rallying men towards the front of the far ship where they might aim at the cloaked sailor.

They weren't halfway to their goal before a fist clenched the air and a spindle of ice the size of a house formed. The woman idly swept her hand down, and the third ship became sinking men and splinters.

By then there was hardly a man left to face her, and the thought of another of those impossible leaps had Taggo dropping his blade and running for the captain. His last sight of the woman included a collection of much smaller spindles forming in the air around her, and distantly he guessed that it must have been those that punched through his own ship and its crew like they'd been struck by a siege engine.

It was a distant thought, because one of them took his leg off and he struck his head on the deck as he fell. His head rang too loud for any thought to come close to him. Though his body still knew to make for the captain, crawling on what limbs he had left.

He kept going as thoughts of the spiked wall of ice crept closer. Thoughts of the same spike coming at her command.

By the time he found the bottom half of the captain, he was barely even thinking of escape any more.

And when the crunch of footsteps on fresh ice started to come closer, he wasn't thinking of anything but the goddess that had descended to judge him and his for all they had done.

The second last thing that went through Taggo Hess' head was to imagine the rewards that might have come if the gilded fleet had offered trade instead of violence.

The last thing was the blade of her sword.