It could have been no more than a quarter hour since Tyrion had found himself astride Viserion and yet whenever he chanced to look down, time seemed to slow. It will not last, he thought, trying to will himself to action. A small man from far off is easy to miss, and at night besides, but word will fill the pyramid and reach the Yunkish camp as well. Tyrion focused on the tangles of wood, stone and pitch that towered over the slavers' lines, visible even in the darkness given the clusters of torches around them. It seems the Wise Masters are of the mind the trebuchets should be crewed at all times. Either they underestimate the importance of what one is loosing at or they're fearful of sabotage. Tyrion had no way of knowing how well Mormont was getting on, where he might be in the Yunkish camp, or even if he had managed to get so far as to reach the queen's worthies. Fearing that the Tattered Prince or Plumm or both might be alerted to Mormont's presence was a worry only if one assumed the northman had made the slavers' lines, a further wrinkle. While Tyrion sat flipping coins in his mind, Viserion craned his neck to look back at the dwarf over an ivory shoulder. The dragon's golden gaze didn't impress an air of impatience to Tyrion, but rather something more like a child watching a cake being made. All the same, he felt it made something of a poor impression to seem overcautious or sheepish.
"Whatever it is that we're going to do won't be done atop this pyramid." Tyrion finally said, trying hard to keep several raw, conflicting and powerful emotions from shrinking his voice to a squeak or growing into a bellow. Viserion turned away, wings spreading. Tyrion's stomach knotted, prepared for the feeling of leaving the ground. I do hope that will fade in time, he thought as Viserion began to climb. I hope also that I'll live to know it might in the first place.
The dragon seemed to know that the Yunkish camp itself was not Tyrion's aim, exactly. Rather than rush in and spread golden fire like butter across a crust of bread at a feast, the dragon continued to ascend. We may be spotted by some truly eagle-eyed sentry, but there's little anyone can do with us at such a height. Tyrion reasoned further that it would not have been the first time one of the dragons had been spotted by the slavers. Too, that the Yunkishmen expect little more to come of such a sighting than a few tightened bowels, as usual.
"There will be six." Tyrion said, as much to himself as to Viserion. So far aloft it was not hard to spot the trebuchets' positions, a half-dozen badly-drawn circles of torches standing out in the darkness. Viserion warbled, which might have meant anything. Mormont will know the trebuchets will be the first things set ablaze should the queen return. He'll make it his business to stay wide as he can of all six. As for the sellswords, if Brown Ben Plumm and the Tattered Prince were as disenchanted with their Yunkish masters as Tyrion suspected, they'd not have been too keen to set up their tents amidst the slavers' shambles. Both to keep clear of the trebuchets themselves in case a dragon should suddenly set one alight…and to prevent the flux from bleeding into their companies as much as could be managed. "We cannot lose the element of surprise." Tyrion said. "I like it not, but Mormont and our hostages stand as good a chance as anyone of not being caught up in the fires once they start. If he's still alive, he's somewhere down there leading the rest away from the camp's heart right this moment." Viserion made a sound like a bellows puffing hard, the rings of torches that marked the trebuchets passing underneath him, one after another. He knows we are about the trebuchets in particular, he is not concerned with the sounds of unseen men and horses…if indeed dragons are as useless as men in the dark. Thinking back on the pit the dragons had been confined to, Tyrion wondered if Viserion in fact could see the breadth of the Yunkish lines clear as day. Suddenly he felt the dragon begin to dip, and for a moment it was not a few paltry slavers' toys beneath him but a monstrous castle. These slavers know no more than Black Harren, Tyrion thought grimly. All the trenches and fire ditches in the world aren't going to stop a dragon, any more than Harrenhal's height and size did.
It was impossible to say which trebuchet Viserion had chanced to descend upon. Not that it will much matter in a few minutes. Kindling is kindling no matter what men name it. Then the fire was lancing down, the trebuchet going up in a brilliant column of golden flame. The unseen camp below exploded like a heaved hornet's nest. Men were shouting and cursing, horses were screaming, yet by then Viserion had gone on to the next trebuchet. Another lance, another golden column, until six of them stood in the enemy's camp. Almost as soon as the last trebuchet had been set alight, Tyrion heard the first creak and groan. Wood and pitch and furs, he thought madly as the sorry tangle began to collapse. Far from managing to salvage their much-extolled trebuchets, the Yunkishmen seemed able only to run about, shrieking, as each of the structures buckled in turn.
"If we managed to not kill Mormont and the others just now, we've given them as good a distraction as they're like to get." Tyrion said. The noise below was abhorrent and Viserion's pace was no lazy glide, but Tyrion saw a golden eye flash his way. Well, that's the trebuchets spoken for, Tyrion thought. Viserion banked north, Tyrion's half-formed notions blowing out of his head in a panic. Does he mean to follow Drogon out onto the Dothraki Sea?! Another gout of flame set the empty hinterland below them to burning a hazy gold, all while Viserion continued north. Alarmed as he was baffled, Tyrion could only pray the dragon didn't buck him off before he got close enough to land to survive the fall. Then Viserion turned west, continuing in that vein for some time before banking about to go back east. Tyrion heard the waves of Slaver's Bay lapping beneath him and dared to think he understood. Some great mind you are, dwarf. There is more wrought of wood in Yunkai's marshaled power than a few paltry trebuchets. "Yes." Tyrion said, in what he prayed was passable Valyrian. Viserion rasped beneath him, building momentum.
The fleet that had sailed against Daenerys had been arrayed better than the army outside Meereen's walls, but Tyrion doubted they expected a surprise attack from the rear. Or from the air. Particularly with their eyes pointed in the wrong direction, following Viserion's flaming feint. His first instinct was to go after the sails on each ship, but slaves could row as easily as wind could blow and at any rate Tyrion could scarcely see his hand in front of his face. Yet, Viserion seems unbothered by the darkness.
"Hang it. The sails will be easier to alight passing over at speed and will stir up quite the chaos aboard the ships themselves. We don't need to sink the slavers so much as scatter them, and fire from the sky will do just that thing." He leaned forward and held his breath, which seemed to mean to Viserion his acceptance of the dragon's intent. Indeed, not so much as a full chamber pot rose to try to fend them off as they reached the fleet, golden flames sending sails and hulls both up as Viserion shot over them. "You needn't hit a man hard, you see." Tyrion said, sounding to his ears like nothing more than a maester with an opinion on something he knew aught of. "A lick, a tickle, and he will flee or he will fall." Viserion took to his prattling better than either of Lord Tywin's golden twins had ever done to lessons as children. He did not stop or even slow to ensure a ship was truly done for. "A dozen badly damaged ships mean more than one sunk one. Apply that rule across a greater proportion and see its validity grow in an equal proportion." He remembered learning shapes and lines and numbers on paper as a boy at the Rock, his faceless maester's demonstrations applying as much now in fire to wood as it had years earlier in ink to parchment. When the last of the ships below had thinned and the chaos on Meereen's docks sounded ahead of them, Viserion banked again, this time south. Another pass, Tyrion thought, as if he were riding a palfrey down a country road. Though I rather feel as if I'm the palfrey just now. They cut a second line of golden fire from south to north, a third from northeast to southwest, and a fourth from west to east, as they'd begun. When at least Viserion left off, the fleet had been split into three staggered circles of golden flame, cut horizontally by two more walls of the same. Today, dawn comes hours early, and from the wrong direction.
Viserion began to ascend as they neared the shore, Tyrion's best guess being to lose himself in the darkness above. The silence about him was made all the queerer by the utter anarchy roiling below as the golden flames tendrilled out from the trebuchets. While sails burned and hulls scorched in the bay, beneath them horse panicked, men screamed and swore and the tents of the Yunkishmen became more kindling for the blaze.
"Under control, if only somewhat." Tyrion said. "The bulk of the men down there will not die from our mischief alone, but their morale will be shattered, their chain of command snapped like a fraying ribbon and they'll have no chance to form up in anything resembling good order before our own are on them." He (somewhat awkwardly) patted Viserion on his right shoulder, prompting the dragon to bank right quite sharply. While Tyrion tried to will his bottom shut, he blathered on. "You needn't do it all. The queen has more than enough foot, more than more than enough horse. Unsullied spears, Dothraki arakhs…it's a prospect daunting enough to pale the face of any Westerosi lord. The sight of you and your brothers overhead will snuff any thought of defiance out like a storm dousing a window candle." Though defiance will not be the course most serve Daenerys, I think. The Lannisters were loathed the realm over save the westerlands and whatever had become of Stannis would be lucky to survive long enough to meet the returned queen in the field at all. Westeros has never lacked for lords, but a queen is something it could rather use, and badly. A good one, that is. Even as the flames deepened and widened below, Tyrion's mind meandered onto the topic of Daenerys herself. She will need help when we finally reach home. There is no pyramid she might perch upon to survey the breadth of her domain from. Tyrion knew well the Red Keep's throne room. The view is nothing to boast of. Viserion gave a chirrup suddenly, banking back toward the open sea, but without the slightest sign of wanting to give the burning, flailing fleet another pass.
Another flotilla? Viserion did not descend, however, nor did he slow. As they left the heat and noise behind the world below became as quiet as the one about him and Tyrion again had the strangest feeling bubble in his gut. A man oughtn't feel light as a feather and heavy as a barrel full of gravel at the same time. The sound of a second pair of wings flapping joined Viserion's own, Tyrion tensing as it grew nearer overhead. A rasp from above had Viserion warbling back animatedly. Rhaegal, Tyrion guessed. From what I've heard of Drogon, he is not the sort to solve a problem wits-first. Aside from the odd deluge of hot air, Rhaegal seemed to take little interest in his brother's acquisition, instead intent on trading notes of dragonsong with Viserion. Both dragons quieted when lights began to wink into view to the southwest (insofar as Tyrion could tell). A single ship, slow and unhurried, its crew likely a combination of drunk and asleep. Tyrion eased himself forward and Viserion began to descend, Rhaegal sounding offput by such circumspection.
"To look is not to see, Rhaegal." he said, the dragon snorting loudly at the sound of his name. A shriek rang out over the water and Tyrion tutted at the lost opportunity for surprise. Viserion was not so easily put off, nor was Rhaegal, and when Tyrion got close enough to smell the rankness of a full hold of living bodies, he found his own reticence fading. "Well, your mother breaks chains, I suppose I ought to get into the habit myself." Tyrion muttered as Viserion crashed onto the deck. There were perhaps a dozen men about them, more, but fully half seemed not to want to sail a foot in the company of a most irritable-sounding dragon. The sounds of splashing filled the air as slavers jumped from the sides of the galley, Tyrion dismounting with nary a hand raised against him. Though Viserion's neck craned over the railing for a look at the men overboard, Tyrion scoffed. "Not overtly courageous, these slavers. We've better trouble to stir up than chasing a few floundering fools." Viserion snorted in what might have been a shared sense of contempt, but Rhaegal slunk lithely over the railing after the slavers in the water, a green serpent crunching down on waterlogged insects at his leisure. Tyrion looked down, squinted in the darkness, and pulled a torch from the mast for a bit of light. The torch's light reflected in countless eyes in the galley's hold below, each gaze as guileless and terrified as the next. Oh, balls.
Tyrion muttered darkly to himself as he thumped down the narrow stair into the hold, the smell of countless people kept in close quarters powering through the bouquet of perfumes that hung in the air like sweet reek over a corpse-strewn field. Almost immediately he found himself treading on a foot, a high squeak of pain pulling him from his thoughts as he blurted an apology to the girl. Pillow slaves, Tyrion guessed, wondering at the number of them. At least fifty, sixty. Four of every five were girls, many of them gaping in unabashed horror at Tyrion.
"Common Tongue?" he asked, but they only drew away when he addressed them. A hundred bedslaves, and not one with a word of the Common Tongue of Westeros? Tyrion let it lie, however. I know a few words they'll doubtless understand anyhow. "I serve Daenerys Tar-" he did not even finish the queen's name before a great clangor rang out. Tyrion only nodded, took a length of chain in his hands and pantomimed pulling it until it snapped. The Breaker of Chains and all that. Regrettably there was nothing to be done for the chains that bound the lot of them, most like the slavers had had the keys on their persons when they abandoned ship. Now, how the balls am I supposed to get a hundred pillow slaves to safety in the middle of a battle? First light had begun to beam down from above, Viserion peering down past the wooden grating, burbling curiously. "Where's your brother?" Tyrion asked him, Viserion rasping as his head craned up. Rhaegal's cry sounded from high above, and not the sort he was wont to give merely to beat his chest. "Your pardon." Tyrion told the (former) bedslaves. He pointed up. "I've a dragon or two to nanny. Hold here, I'll see if there's aught to be done for those chains." As luck would have it, there was a mallet on deck and even a pair of iron chisels. Those will dig them out of the wood, if not the chains themselves. Tyrion slipped them through the grating before pulling himself upright. He found Viserion squinting west into the sunrise, golden eyes no more than slits. "Now what?" Tyrion asked, squinting himself. One ship he might have taken for a lucky break, but there were many and more of them. And no slavers' galleys, either. From their wide sails to their sleek, narrow hulls, Tyrion knew longships when he saw them, and the golden kraken embossed on more than one of the fleet's sails had him thinking a deal harder than he was prepared to that morning.
Well, time to see what all this horseshit is about. Tyrion turned, prepared to get moving, before he remembered it was no horse on the deck with him. He swallowed as Viserion looked at him, a low rumbling building in the dragon's throat.
"Your pardon." Tyrion said. It's not a fire I fear, nor one of falling. Who wants to look a thoughtless boor in front of a dragon? "This is a matter of import, even given the battle. I wasn't expecting a fleet of ironborn to turn up, is all." Were you expecting to ride a dragon, dwarf? Best start bloody expecting the unexpected. He eased himself up onto Viserion's back, his weary groan lost as they dived off the deck and golden wings beat their ascension. Rhaegal had circled higher above the slaver galley and moved to follow when Viserion made his way toward the fleet, though he kept his height. "We'll have little trouble spotting the flagship." Tyrion reasoned. "It will have the biggest, strongest, bullheaded brute at its bow." Helpfully, the ship at the fore of the fleet was rather a giveaway, from the golden kraken on its sail to the great ram at its bow, and all while the men aboard it bellowed calls of "Greyjoy!" and "Pyke!" "At least we won't be expected to make intelligent conversation. I'd sooner expect enlightenment from one of your sheep than from an ironman." Tyrion said. "Any problem they can't solve axe-first is one that can master them utterly." Viserion dipped as Tyrion leaned forward, starting at the sight of more than just a nest of reavers waiting to greet him. A great horn lay at the back of the longship, a coal-black boulder of a man with flames tattooed on his face reading from it in what sounded like Valyrian. Since when do fire worshippers bed down with followers of the Drowned God? Tyrion was too bewildered to feel uneasy, and even when one among the ironmen seized the chance to blow the horn, the reedy piping it produced had Tyrion bursting out in a guffaw. Only when the men about him muttered fearfully and cursed the thing for a hellhorn did he sense something amiss, as if some peril loomed before him that he alone could not see. The thought that a few brutes with barnacles for nipples knew something he did not rankled him something most awful and he waved an impatient arm in the horn's direction, the men about it scattering as Viserion's tail whapped it onto its side. "Who leads you?" he asked, a mite higher pitched than he'd have liked. I pray my being on dragonback counters it some.
Rhaegal's descent and Viserion poking at the fallen horn seemed preoccupation enough for the ironmen to attempt a gathering of themselves. One among them, clad in bloody plate of all things, lumbered forward with what Tyrion supposed the man took to be an imperious manner. I saw you fall on your arse, Captain, as did your crew. Notions of pride are aught to cling to, and that's without two dragons to keep happy.
"I am Victarion Greyjoy, Master of the Iron Victory and Lord Captain of the Iron Fleet." His voice, though deep, rattled like a penny rolling in a bucket from within his helm.
"So you are. You've wandered far from your islands, and in no small number."
"We did not wander." Tyrion could hear the word 'dwarf' on the man's tongue, but somehow it forgot to join its fellows out in the open air.
"Well then, what whim has House Greyjoy sending the greatest part of its strength halfway across the world?" Tyrion asked. By the way the ironmen were looking at Viserion, he had a funny feeling he well knew just what had drawn the reavers. That doesn't explain the horn, though, nor this well-cooked fellow who's no more ironman than I. When the captain served him only silence Viserion's head darted out, his rasp loud enough to loosen more than one bowel as Greyjoy was deposited firmly on his iron behind for the second time in half a minute. "I've a battle to return to and in short order, Lord Captain. I am most pressed for time." Rhaegal ringed still lower until he had a monkey somewhere in the rigging shrieking in dismay as the green dragon passed overhead.
"How does some lordling come to ride a dragon?" Greyjoy finally asked, once he'd gotten back onto his big bullock's feet.
"Arsed if I know. I'm not the sort to much care for asking, either." Tyrion replied evenly, Viserion's benign burbling matching his hurried but otherwise unconcerned manner.
"I was sent by my brother and my king, Euron Crow's Eye, King of the Iron Islands and the North."
"On a pleasure voyage clear across the world?" Greyjoy reached up to remove his helm and Tyrion was surprised by how little he saw of the lad he'd spotted at the feast welcoming King Robert to Winterfell a lifetime ago. Greyjoy's hair was long and grey had begun to worm into the black, and he had the face and air of an ox beginning its last traces, even though it didn't know it.
"On a voyage meant to see dragons return to Westeros. Euron aims to wed Daenerys Targaryen and seat himself upon the Iron Throne."
"A queer seat for a squid. Then again, the bloody thing's hardly the sort of chair any half-sane man aims to wed his buttocks to." A few chuckles on the deck provided a hopeful counterpoint to the smell of fouled trousers, Tyrion waving away the lark. "Suffice it to say Daenerys has no especial need of a Greyjoy marriage." Either this kraken is too proud to try hiding his intentions, or he's unable to conceal his thoughts, Tyrion mused as Greyjoy's frown deepened.
"However, that doesn't mean your axes aren't welcome…or that you don't stand to return home well enriched." Tyrion said. That meant gold to the ironmen around Greyjoy, and coupled with Tyrion's air of having found a golden dragon on a morning walk to the privy, seemed to be welcome news to their ears. Looking up again he saw Rhaegal had broken off to head back east, though he did not leave sight. "I daresay he saw you from on high days ago. Why he didn't engage you I can't say, but dragons are cannier creatures than more than a few men I've met." He tried to keep his eyes off Greyjoy while he spoke. Plate on the deck of a ship. Madness and stupidity. A good thing this one was born an ironman or he'd have been tilling fields and hauling stone until his back gave out. He cleared his throat and leaned forward, pleased to see the others aboard the longship leaning forward in turn. "If I may, the wealthiest of the slavers will be situated on the far bank. The big yellow tents, you'll know them at a glance. Do start with them, the least I can do is make your little voyage worth your while." He pretended to think. "Anything a man can carry, he can keep. The rest are the queen's own spoils. You'll have to chew through a few ranks of slave soldiers to get to the bulk of the nobles' tents, but when has that ever stopped an ironman? Leave the men under the broken-sword banners, as well as the ones flying ones of white-and-blue. They'll not trouble you, I think, as long as you don't trouble them." They'll be too busy turning on their Yunkish masters and racing to beat you to the booty, I don't doubt.
"A good bit of bloodletting, that's what's needed, Lord Captain." one of the ironmen near the captain muttered.
"And gold to be had besides, we've no need for hellhorns and black wizards." Some hellhorn.
"That reedy pipe?" Tyrion asked, pointing to it as Viserion yawned, men falling over themselves to back away from the sweltering air coming from his mouth. "I've heard babes give lustier calls." The man who'd blown it had not risen from his falling, Tyrion noticed, but he had more pressing matters to contend with than a single out-of-sorts reaver. "Well, if it discomfits you so, toss it overboard and get to Meereen all the quicker. I'm rather entangled in it all myself, and should be getting back." Before he could chew on tapping Viserion's side with a boot, the dragon's golden wings stretched upward.
"How did you bend the beast to your will?" Greyjoy finally forced out, as if to ask a question of a dwarf offended his base nature. Which I'm sure it jolly well does.
"Well, I didn't, for one."
"How did you make it onto his back?" Another man asked.
"By doing it." Tyrion replied.
"Why didn't he kill you?" still another called from the back.
"As before, arsed if I know. Or particularly care, at that. All I know is I wouldn't trade the day I've spent awing for all the bounty in the world. Lord Captain, if you could set a crew of your greybeards and wounded, those a bit leery of another battle, to minding Willing Maiden up ahead, I'm sure the queen could use a few more handmaidens and heralds besides. I'll tell her the news when I see her, she'll very much look forward to at least eighty more of one and twenty of the other." Viserion's wings came down and a row broke out on deck as men again quarreled to get clear. Above the fleet, Tyrion mused on this latest, most unexpected development. Well, this ought fix things our way, but speaking of battles yet fought and all that. He rubbed his eyes. Greyjoy looked like he couldn't have outwitted a pair of boots. His earlier meaning might have been lost on the bullock in plate, but not all his crew looked so dull. They will be counted upon arrival, and if so much as one is missing, the queen will know.
The flight back had Tyrion musing on whether he and Viserion needed to join the battle at all. It would make quite an impression on our new kraken friend if nothing else. I don't need ironborn bluster and to fear an axe in the back whenever I happen to be out of Viserion's immediate vicinity. To fly back to the pyramid might send a message of indolence, as well. It's not like anyone giving battle is expecting a ridden dragon.
"Perhaps we'll simply finish off the fleet, see if whoever Volantis has undoubtedly sent our way needs a greeting. That will keep the ironborn off the slavers' ships- we need their axes ashore, not amidships." Tyrion said, and all while Viserion, it seemed to him, listened intently as a child at a maester's knee. The fires burned as bright and gold as ever, though in the light of day they were just another color that was the madness unfurling before Tyrion. Viserion banked again, heading for a cluster of ships not yet harried by dragonflame. No doubt full of slave soldiers. The dragon did not forget how they'd done the trick before, content to cause as much chaos among as many ships as possible rather than simply pasting one with golden fire until it went down. That's Volantis' contribution spoken for, I'll wager. No doubt they'll be a bit out of sorts when they hear of today's bloodshed. Rhaegal did not shadow his brother, instead chasing down those ships nimble enough to evade the flames and steadily mounting number of burned hulks back west. Nor does he give them bronze flame. He knows what waits for the slavers just over the horizon. We did not attack the ironmen and so he didn't, meaning they must be allies of one sort or other. It was trickier on the shore, with men fighting in one great melee and killing and dying being done hand in hand. Viserion snorted. "Nothing less. An archer would be hard-pressed to feather the right behind in that. To think we'd do more good than harm is a drunkard's dream." Tyrion told him. To the southeast, the gates of Meereen buzzed with freedmen. Ants drowning an invader in bodies and never mind the butcher's bill. Behind them, the Unsullied. The slavers will be lucky to breach the city, let alone take it. The ironborn would be pouring ashore from the west before midday and with the Yunkish fleet trapped and burning, there was nowhere for the Yunkishmen to run but north into the hinterlands and beyond them, the Dothraki Sea. Where a dragon's fire would go over poorly, I do not doubt.
Instead of trying to bar the way north, Tyrion leaned to his right.
"A respite for you, and somewhere more comfortable than the deck of the Iron Victory, I daresay." he said, Viserion lazily sliding south, evidently with the Great Pyramid in mind. It pleased Tyrion mightily that the pool had not been despoiled in their brief absence, Viserion making for it like a thirsty man for a cup of Arbor red. Tyrion braced for the deluge, the dragon hitting the water a moment later and for a moment Tyrion was beneath the waters again before Viserion resurfaced, capering and making all manner of delighted-sounding noises. Tyrion slid from a pale shoulder, got soaked all over again, and waded to pool's edge with his hair in his eyes. Something poked him in the chest and he wrapped an arm around it instinctively, blubbering as he was pulled from the pool. A prod had him flipping onto his back, blinking one sun out of his eyes and one in. Even as Viserion frolicked in the pool not feet from him, Oberyn Nymeros Martell had eyes only for Tyrion. "Your pardon. There are only so many stairs a dwarf's legs can tackle before his calves start burning."
"Could stairs be any less a cause for burning calves than a dragon's back, I wonder?" He is not playing the untroubled ne'er-do-well today, nor the Prince of Dorne. Tyrion sat up, Oberyn neatly brushing the hair from his brow with the butt of a spear.
"How long did that take to master?" Tyrion asked.
"Longer than it did for you to work out how to ride a dragon." Tyrion started when the viper's words sunk in.
"Oh. Right. The dragon." Then he vomited noisily into his own lap. Oberyn was not dissuaded, was moved not an inch, staring Tyrion down as if he was like to spread wings and breathe fire himself. "Well, what's to be done for it, my prince? Have I erred in your estimation?"
"Perhaps in judgement…or not."
"Or not?" Tyrion was mystified, as of the was when the sphinx replaced the serpent.
"Another man might think you sought your own end, trying to mount a dragon."
"Another man might think the same of me trying to mount Arianne, but that I managed and rather well, if her reaction was anything genuine-" Tyrion japed, but Oberyn cut him off.
"You are too fond of yourself to seek your own end so glibly. When faced with what could very likely have been your end at your trial, you roared defiance in Lord Tywin's face and cursed the court for sycophants and flatterers until your face was purple." Tyrion shrugged.
"It was long past time someone hurled that particular chamber pot at the lot of them. As for Viserion, well, I've aught to say on that score. He either killed me or he didn't…and as it happened, he didn't."
"A matter you left not to chance, even with your cavalier demeanor. He was not going to kill you, was never going to kill you. More importantly, my lord, some part of you knew he was not going to kill you."
Whatever the Red Viper is dancing around is best saved when we haven't got a battle to win.
"Did Ser Jorah return with the queen's worthies?"
"He did. The Dothraki wanted nothing more than to join in the fighting-"
"-of course he did-"
"-but Ser Jorah managed to keep him on side. The admiral is neither a young man nor much of a fighter, and so for his sake they kept on until the lot of them reached safety."
"No doubt lingering just long enough to get ahorse and take the queen's horselords out to do their part."
"As happens, he's done nothing of the sort. Ser Barristan was sore wroth, but Ser Jorah would not budge on that point." Tyrion stared at him.
"So he's just sitting on his hairy northman's arse?"
"Not exactly. He's been talking to the horselords present…well, shouting at them, and they at him. Either they think killing one northman is going to bring them little prestige or they're truly reluctant to draw blades on him, you could hear the row from here."
"And let me guess, nobody understood a word?"
"Not to my knowledge. And were I one such, I'd not have been keen to make that much apparent to the rest of us. Dothraki aren't the approachable sort."
"Had they seen you dance with the Mountain, perhaps that much might be different."
"Alas, they didn't, and here we stand." The Mormont words. The gods point me in but one direction, they of famously vague aims. I'd do well to heed them. A thought occurred to Tyrion as they descended, following the sounds of raised voices. "I don't suppose I managed to keep myself from being spotted up there?"
"You may have. Unfortunately, when you addressed the Unsullied Ser Barristan was present, and being the true, upstanding knight he is-"
"Lovely. I'd have liked to broach the topic on mine own terms, but it seems that's been denied me." He found Mormont on the ground floor, the only man seated amidst a number of most incensed-looking Dothraki. "Oughtn't you be taking this lot out after the slavers?" Tyrion called over the noise, the nearest horselords whirling around and yipping like whipped curs. I'm sure no dwarf has hitherto provoked such a reaction in the Dothraki.
"Oughtn't you be buzzing about on high somewhere instead of stuck beneath this pyramid?" Mormont replied, casually running an oilcloth along the edge of his sword.
"You do recall we're amidst battle, Ser Jorah?" Tyrion asked, nerves fraying. Mormont looked around.
"There's no battle I see. As for the one outside, your torching the trebuchets threw the Yunkishmen for a loop and the sight of their fleet going up in smoke and golden flame behind them did not help their morale. The Second Sons and the Windblown turned, if what I heard escaping that madness was true. The Long Lances tried to protect one of the trebuchets from the Mother's Men, that didn't end well for them."
"It sounds as though we've left precious little for the ironmen to do once they bother to show up." Tyrion muttered.
"Ironborn?" Mormont asked, brow furrowing rather more than Tyrion thought to see.
"It seems word of dragons spread as far as the Iron Islands. One of the Greyjoy uncles thought to send his lackwit brother to try and fetch the queen and her children. I suppose the lunk thought wedding Daenerys in her own right fox-cunning." Mormont stood quickly, his placid air gone.
"Where are they landing? Which side of the Skahazadhan?"
"Calm yourself, ser, I hardly think they're going to go against dragons-"
"That's as much as you know, Imp. Where are they landing?" Tyrion frowned, lost.
"I pointed them toward the Wise Masters' tents, I suppose that puts them on the opposite bank of the river-" Mormont was off like a loosed quarrel, bellowing in Dothraki as loudly as he sounded capable. The men around him followed at once, faces going pale and mutterings breaking out among the horselords, leaving Tyrion and the viper alone. He turned to Oberyn, who only shook his head.
"Now look what you've done."
I have no chance of catching them on a dwarf's legs, nor of climbing the pyramid again in time to add my wrinkle to whatever's afoot. Instead, Tyrion ran out into the daylight and at once bellowed for Viserion, who, gods be thanked, shrieked from atop the pyramid, descending at once. There was no time to hide anything and anyway, the world at large would find out somehow. Tyrion vaulted onto the dragon's back, Viserion taking off at once, roaring irately. Preach, Tyrion thought. I've a long list of things on my mind right now, I've not got the time to humor the whims of a northman. He spotted Mormont on the shoreline, pointing and shouting and waving his arms most animatedly, an image which would have been riotously amusing in any other circumstance. What the fuck's all this about? Having most thoroughly seen to the last of the slavers' fleets, Rhaegal seemed just as mystified, circling above the docks as the ironmen poured off their longships, nine of every ten on the far bank. Mormont and the men around him seemed intent on calling them away from the slavers still within reach, pointing back to Meereen itself. Where there's nobody to fight and nothing to pillage, as he well knows. Tyrion was not so much a fool as to land anywhere he might catch a stray blade or arrow, but amidst the Dothraki around Ser Jorah he dared to think he might be harder to hit. When Viserion landed, Mormont hardly spared them a glance.
"Those fuckers are going to get it…" he hissed, red-faced and pale by turns, a combination that did not in the least suit his northern complexion. "Andal", my dwarf's arse.
"Get what?" Tyrion asked. He took in the faces of the Dothraki around him. Anxious, jittery…and more than a little hopeful, as if they'd just managed to find seats in a playhouse before the mummery started. Tyrion's head snapped north. "Oh, fuck me fucked."
"Fucked is right, and so are they if they don't leave off and get across the river!" Mormont cursed. We might have men aplenty willing to fight for the queen, but we still need ships to get us all to Westeros…and men who know a thing or two about doing such! Mormont got a few more minutes of useless shouting before another thought joined the first. A tug on Mormont's mail had the man looking down, Tyrion waiting with what he had to say next.
"These ironmen are a proud sort, and they only understand the tongue of steel. Words alone will not cow them, spoken from horse nor dragonback."
"Are you going to sail the ships west when comes the time, Imp?"
"No." Tyrion looked out across the water, where the ironmen had gone through the disintegrating lines of the slavers' "iron legions" without so much as slowing down. "I would have these ironborn see what they've come for, and who they will be following after today." And never mind lackwit fools who wear plate aboard a ship at sea.
More of the absurd high piping filled the air, Mormont cursing anew and the Dothraki about screaming murder at the sound.
"From one farce to anoth-" Tyrion turned just in time to see several of the ironmen around the great horn and the priest of R'hllor besides catch a tongue of bronze flame, the horn splintering and popping in moments. Part of Tyrion's gut wrenched, but another part could only scoff. The red priest ought have sensed Rhaegal's patience had worn thin, and was no more fond of their whistling than a dog might be. Besides, what can any man claim to know of fire that a dragon does not, and better besides?
"You were saying, dwarf?" Mormont intoned over his shoulder.
"The loss is precious little. I needed no horn, no more than Her Grace did. Its squeaking and piping was enough to earn Rhaegal's ire, a good thing it's gone."
"Squeaking? Dwarf, are you deaf? That horn-" Mormont's retort died in his throat. Distracted as Tyrion was, he at first thought it was merely a roll of thunder off the mountains to the north. Then he heard them. The Dothraki about broke out into a war cry of their own and close as they were it made hearing anything impossible…but only for a moment, until the far-off voices were not so far off, nor so paltry as the ones around Tyrion. And all this before they even break the horizon. Then they began to crest the ridge, pouring down from the hinterlands-and the endless grass beyond-in an unending rain of horseflesh and steel. The Yunkai'i are trapped, Tyrion realized. They are but a nail stuck fast in the wood, and can only wait for the hammer to descend. The ironmen began to flee into the river, but others who could not wet their boots amidst the rush to run would not miss what was to come. The flanks of the horde rode ahead, the center forming up to present a crescent-moon fork. Last came the black dragon over the heart of the horde, bellowing loud enough to make Tyrion wince clear across the river. Big, he noted, and he'll get bigger still. Nor did Tyrion miss the silver sliver on his back, more than one reaver pointing when he noticed it as well. How odd that I should witness the last gasp of Ghis of old, Tyrion thought. The last hour, the last minute, the last moment. True, there was New Ghis, but it had sent all it could afford to spare to augment Yunkai's force at Meereen. Too, rather handily, a fleet of pillage-hungry reavers had turned up. We might see about sending them on a brief errand, perhaps they'll come back with still more ships. Then the black dragon had pulled ahead of the horde at large, teeth parted, roar preceding a cascade of black flame that tore through the Yunkishmen easier than any axe. I do hope Brown Ben Plumm and the Tattered Prince kept clear of that shambles of a retreat. Seasoned commanders both might be, but ill luck undoes the best of us. The numberless horde crashed into them next, the last glimpses of yellow robes and armor lost in the avalanche of horses uncounted and uncountable.
Only when the Dothraki could reach the Skahazadhan with an arrow did their pace slow, wheeling in good order as they came on to disperse their momentum without collapsing into a pile at charge's end. Drogon roared above them, the whoops and cries of the Dothraki on both shores showing how much interest they had in the lives of the strangers off the longships. Viserion answered his brother with a roar of his own, Drogon's head turning aloft to spy him on the bank.
"He'll not land on this side of the river, my lord. Best get over there before he decides you're tarrying." Mormont said, a hand on his shoulder. For an absurd moment Tyrion was reminded most fiercely of Lord Commander Jeor.
"Aye." he finally found himself saying, clambering atop Viserion with hands and feet that felt like stone. Up he went, Drogon's roar muting into a warble when he spotted that his brother wasn't alone. This will take some explaining, I imagine. Rhaegal joined them, alone riderless of his brothers. Tyrion looked to the green scales that ran down his back. Who will sit there in the time to come, I wonder. He leaned forward and Viserion dipped down, the Dothraki below circling and wheeling wide to give the dragon room to land. While the others were still coming down, Tyrion dismounted, brushed himself off as much he could manage, and brushed a few tears out of his eyes for his trouble. Horselords were everywhere, though it wasn't their ungodly racket that had stunned the ironmen into silence. Drogon landed a moment later, his voice sounding as though it could drown out all the Dothraki in the world. The voices died, though the nervous whinnying of the horses nearby was not something reverence for Daenerys Targaryen could quiet.The queen slid off Drogon's shoulder, and Tyrion could see she was clad only in sunburns and what looked like the freshly taken pelt of a white lion. Her long hair had gone as well, surely lost to dragonfire in her trip onto the Dothraki Sea, but her face told him all he needed to know. Happier burned and blistered and bald besides than in all her Meereenese finery. She approached him, riders racing each other to dismount and walk beside her, around her, arakhs in every hand. Tyrion did not spare them a second thought, nor the steel they carried, going to a knee when she stood before him. "Your Grace, Meereen is relieved." he said. Tyrion needed no last look at the ironmen to know they were paying rapt attention, glimpsing the pair here and there through the wall of horses as the rest of the Dothraki ceased their wheeling about. Lord Captain, my nose. At day's end, these ironborn, like the Dothraki, follow only the strong.