Sansa
She strode slowly on her bare feet through the field. She stepped carefully to avoid the arrows and blades that lay scattered on the muddy ground. The mud wasn't made by rain or flood water but with blood. The blood of the Westermen who lay dead in the thousands. Walking and flying among them were the scavengers ravens, crows, vultures, feral dogs, foxes, and Ironmen. They all parted before her. The Ironmen knew she was Euron's woman, so they dared not touch her. The Ironmen called her a witch, a skinchanger. They called her mad. Two out of three isn't bad, Sansa thought as she stepped over the corpse of a Crakehall knight. Two reavers looting the corpse of a Banefort knight averted their eyes as she walked past them.
Sansa shivered in anticipation as she stepped into a deep pool of blood, goosebumps spread up her legs as it seeped over her skin. She had drunk shade of the evening before she'd begun her walk and so her bones and blood began to sing. Though of late she sometimes found that she didn't need the strange wine to feel the power of blood or to see visions in her dreams. She'd seen many things in the blood dreams now, but first and foremost was always the storm. The great, dreadful, terrible storm she'd seen in her first dream. With her foot in the pool of blood, she was suddenly returned there. She could see the dead flowers being ripped asunder by the force of the storm, smell the rain, and hear the thunder. The wind was ripping the flesh from her body, then her bones were torn apart. Until all that was left was her soul and then Sansa was the storm. She stepped out of the pool of blood and the memory ended.
Sansa turned to look up at the hill where a wagon and a cage rested, Cersei Lannister was imprisoned within. Her path had taken her on a long loop around the battlefield from where the killing had begun at the base of the hill where corpses lay in heaps, and to the edge of the field where the Westermen had fled beyond sight.
"I want her blood," Sansa's had said a week past. "I want her dead."
"No," Euron had replied. "Her time is not yet come. To kill her now would be a mercy, let her suffer first. But I promise you can kill Joffrey when the time comes."
It has been Sansa's idea to take Cersei to the battlefield in a cage, to let her watch as her son's army, her hope of rescue was destroyed. The thought had warmed her sleep and her dreams of storms and death. Sansa smiled stepped around a wheezing man with an arrow in his gut.
"Please," he begged. "Mercy."
She ignored him, the man served House Lannister, he deserved no mercy. He was only one of the hundreds who littered the field, almost all of them Westermen. The battle should have been risky and hard fought on both sides. The Ironmen had slightly more men, but the Westermen had more knights. On the wide fields and rolling hills that separated Casterly Rock and Lannisport from the mountains, those knights should have proven key, should have dominated the battlefield. Sansa smiled, should have, she thought.
A day before the battle a hundred horses had been butchered and their blood set to boil in cauldrons. Euron had a vast stew of ash, wood, and wolf fur made and then mixed it with the horse blood. When the Ironmen arrived and took up their positions on a line of long low hills, some barely a dozen feet higher than the surrounding plain, the blood was taken from the cauldrons and spread in a wide arc a hundred paces away from the Ironmen host.
When Joffrey and his army arrived hours later they saw their enemy waiting exposed and unprotected. No trenches, no ditches, no rows of stakes, no earthen ramparts, nor even overturned wagons to defend against a great charge of the western knights. Even the Ironmen archers were exposed as they waited in the front lines of the Ironman army. Joffrey had readied his troops for barely twenty minutes before launching his attack. More than three thousand knights arrayed in a long line, a line that would crash into the Ironmen and send them flying. Their speed had risen the closer they grew. Sansa had felt the earth shake with their coming. Cersei had smiled and gloated from within her cage, sure in the glory of her son's victory. Some of the more craven Ironmen had started to run away from the fight already.
Then the knights met the line of blood and the charge ended. The horses, all of them, suddenly stopped. They screamed and reared in total panic, and they died as thousands of arrows fell on them. It was a slaughter, the horses refused to advance any farther, and with the press of the other riders behind them, they couldn't retreat either. Behind them, the mass of western foot had continued to advance but was now beginning to press against their own lords and knights. They couldn't advance and they couldn't retreat, they were trapped. It seemed like the arrows fell forever, and as the pride of Western chivalry was dying the Ironmen spread around their flanks and charged the leaderless and terrified western host and smashed them into the dirt. Many of the infantry had escaped, dropping their weapons and armour to let them flee more quickly, but hundreds were dead nonetheless, and near a thousand had been taken prisoner. Sansa had watched it all happen from the eyes of a hawk.
The victory, however, was secondary to what really mattered, Sansa quickened her pace as she approached. Most important of all Joffrey was in chains. Sansa quickened her step as she saw the bound king being dragged toward Euron. Five reavers had pulled Joffrey off his horse and took him prisoner. Behind them, another prisoner was being dragged a huge man with a white cloak. The Hound, she realised as the bound figure in white turned his head at her approach.
His good eye went wide. "Little bird," he gasped. His armour and cloak were stained with blood that ran from wounds high on his left side.
A reaver punched him in the face. "Quiet you."
Sansa stopped and looked to Euron unsure of what to do or to say.
Euron ignored her and squinted at Joffrey. "What's in his mouth?" He asked.
"My sock," a reaver answered. "The bugger wouldn't shut up about his kingly rights. How we had to treat him right. Hah!" The reaver kicked Joffrey in the ribs, sending the king to the ground. Joffrey moaned pathetically.
Euron chuckled and plucked the gag from Joffrey's mouth. "Care to comment on my hospitality Your Grace?" Joffrey said nothing, not even daring to raise his eyes. "Nothing? How disappointing. I so dearly wished to speak to a fellow king."
Joffrey sat up slowly and spoke sullenly. "You aren't a king."
"He speaks!"
"I am the one true king," Joffrey's voice grew louder with anger. "The Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and the Protector of the Realm!"
Euron waved a hand and the reaver kicked Joffrey again. "I have to say you're doing a very poor job of protecting your realm. Which kingdoms were you lord of again? The Reach? Hmm no, they hate you almost as much as they hate Stannis. Riverlands, Stormlands, the North, heh, all for Stannis more or less. Dorne is fighting for someone else entirely. The Vale can't seem to decide on anything. Then of course," Euron waved a hand around them, taking in the Ironmen and the battlefield. "The Iron Islands obviously don't care for you either, and the West is broken, Casterly Rock has fallen." He leaned into Joffrey's face. "What were you king of again?"
Joffrey fell back to his knees. "I am the rightful king," he mumbled pathetically.
Euron shook his head. "Foolish boy," he grabbed Joffrey's chin and smiled. "But blood is blood," Euron glanced at Sansa. "I know someone who would very much like to kill you," he forced Joffrey to look at Sansa, whose hand had fallen to her bronze, rune engraved dagger.
"Please," Joffrey begged. "Please don't."
Sansa lunged, cat quick, to drive her dagger into Joffrey. Euron's hand snapped out like a viper and took her wrist. The dagger trembled inches away from Joffrey's throat. Joffrey fell back with a strangled scream.
"Not yet," Euron said with a cruel smile.
Sandor Clegane gasped. "Little Bird-"
Euron backhanded him with the butt of his axe before the huge man could say any more. "Little bird," he spat on the Hound. "Are you a little bird," he asked Sansa. "A bird to be caged and imprisoned at will? A tiny thing?"
"No." Not anymore.
"Then prove it. Kill him. Kill this dog."
Sansa's hand tightened around her dagger. "He was kind to me."
"So was Myrielle," Euron whispered slyly.
"That was different. She was a Lannister."
Euron beat the Hound again with his axe. "And he's a Lannister dog. His kindness was only lies." Euron moved behind her and leaned over her shoulder. "It meant nothing."
"Little Bird," Sandor Clegane mumbled again through broken teeth.
"What are you?" Euron whispered into her ear. "A little bird or a storm?"
Sansa raised her dagger. "I'm not a bird," memories of dreams and vision rang through her body, following the path of her singing blood. Black clouds and swift wings. A severed head on the steps of a sept. "I'm a storm." Sansa drove the dagger into the Hound's neck. Joffrey moaned through his gag. Sansa pulled her bloody dagger from the Hound. "Him next," she smiled and raised her dagger to drive it into Joffrey.
"No, no, no," Euron said quietly as he seized her arm. "Not him, not yet, I need him. There's power in kingsblood."
Sansa struggled in vain against Euron's strength. "He killed my father! He ruined everything!" Joffrey trembled on the ground his wormy lips shivered in terror that Sansa could almost taste.
"His time will come, but not yet. Now's not the time. Take him to the camp," he ordered the Ironmen.
Sansa struggled. "No! No! You promised me-" Euron hit her. Sansa fell, stunned by the sudden violence. She felt blood trickle down her face, from where his rings had cut her scalp.
"Shut up," he stepped over her. Sansa shivered on the ground, not from cold but from anger. He promised. "Come," he said, like a master to a dog. "Come, we have work yet to do this day."
Sansa stood slowly and followed her master. They walked back to the camp, crossing the field of corpses and blood, and passing by the long low rampart of death that marked the edge of the sorcery Euron had made. Sansa, a long streak of drying blood on her face and shoulders, rode behind the king silently, for a time. "Why?" She asked at last through choked down her anger. "Why spare Joffrey?"
"There's power in kingsblood," Euron said again, his voice now light and calm. Just as quickly as his anger had risen, it was gone again. The Iron King was mercurial, cruel to happy to angry to cruel again in as many minutes. "He will die at the right time and not a second sooner," his voice as sharp and commanding as a whip.
"What's so special about kingsblood?"
"Everything."
"Then why didn't you just keep Tommen? He was crowned, he was King Robert's son."
"It takes more than a crown to make a king. More than a crowd of screaming drunks. To truly be a king is something else entirely. Tommen had a king's blood aye, but that isn't enough. I need a king, not a king's son. And Joffrey is a king, a poor king but a king nonetheless. A king in the eyes of gods and men."
Sansa said nothing as she followed.
Euron spoke on. "This is but the first battle, there are many more to come, more important battles."
Sansa hesitated a second. "Where will we go next."
Euron spared her a glance. "We already? How fast you learn, but so much more remains. Don't concern yourself with what things that are yet to come, just do as I say," Euron's pace quickened.
The Ironmen camp was a mile away from the site of the battle, close enough to gather their loot but far enough to be away from the stench of death and rot. Euron sent Sansa on to his tent while he entertained his followers, my foolish little people, as he called them. Sansa entered the tent and quickly kindled a fire in the brazier. She settled before it, sipping shade of the evening as she watched the flames dance.
Within the hour Euron returned, wine and ale on his breath, but walking steadily nonetheless. He settled down next to the brazier, laying back on a pile of furs. He rubbed his eye beneath the patch before speaking. "Dreams are where a man's heart is laid bare. His hopes, desires, fears, ambitions, and," Euron smiled. "Their nightmares. By entering the dream one can find those weaknesses and exploit them, or to use them to terrify." Sansa looked away from the flames, Euron's blue eye glittered with malice in the dark. He reached out and sprinkled some seeds into the brazier. "Their smoke will ease your path."
Sansa watched as the seeds began to tremble and pop, as they did the smoke grew thicker and sweeter. She leaned forward, breathed deeply, and waited, nothing happened. There was nothing, no tingling or singing in the blood. "Did it wor-" There was darkness and then Sansa slipped into the dream with Euron. There was darkness and then from that darkness came a hall of red stone, a hall within the Red Keep. In the hall was a man, a handsome man with long black hair, a lined tanned face, and long black hair. He was fighting in light armour and was armed with a long bladed spear, his foes were monstrous men with the forms of manticores, dogs, and lions. Sansa and Euron appeared like ghosts at the far end of the hall from the man, behind them was a stout wooden door being hammered against by a huge monster with three heads and a greatsword.
The man cut the smaller monsters apart, filleting them with contemptuous ease with his spear, and slicing open throats with quick thrusts and cuts. He screamed all the while and terrible scream of anguish and rage that could not have come from any human throat, not within a dream. "ELIAAAAA!" He screamed as he killed and killed and killed, but never came any closer to the door and the monster that was beating it down. Sansa frowned, something about the dream seemed, queer to her senses, almost rehearsed like some bit of court pageantry.
"He has the same dream almost every week," Euron said. "And has for years, but," he looked at the monster that had almost torn down the door now. Sansa could hear a woman screaming inside, children too. "He's never saved them," Euron chuckled. "Or even come close." Euron turned his head, like a bird looking at a particularly fine morsel. "Let's change things."
Suddenly the man was advancing against the horde of monsters. Where before the dead had always been replaced, now they were falling like wheat before a scythe. As he charged the three-headed monster smashed down the door and went to work inside, the screaming man followed, his spear drenched in blood. Without taking a step Sansa and Euron were inside the room. The man and the monster fought each other over the mangled corpse of a woman and two children, a young girl, and a baby. The monster swung, chopped, thrust, and cut with a huge sword while the man swirled and danced to avoid the deadly blade. All the while he attacked in return with his spear, thrusting at the face, armpits, elbows, or else trying to get behind and cut the monster at the knee. He was screaming and crying as he fought.
Euron cocked his head again and closed his eye for a moment. The monster's blade slowed and missed a parry, letting the man drive his spear into a gap in his foe's plate armour. The monster was slowed and suffered another wound shortly after, and another, and another. Euron focussed again, and with a final scream, the man drove his spear deep into the monster. The man gasped for breath and with a tear soaked gasp turned to the woman and began to cradle her corpse in his arms. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he said over and over.
Euron put a hand on Sansa's shoulder. "Change something," Euron he whispered in her ear. "Shape the dream, make this nightmare even worse. Make him feel your pain."
"How?"
"Just focus, feel the power in your veins and let it flow out into the dream, like slipping into an animals mind, but more subtle. Not command or control, but a suggestion. The subtle twist of a well placed dagger instead of a hammer blow."
Sansa closed her eyes and focused, she felt her blood sing and tried she to reach out. Nothing happened.
"Not enough," Euron took her head between his hands. "Focus!"
Sansa winced beneath the pressure, closed her eyes and tried again. This time she tried to follow the singing. She tried to hear the pattern, tried to find the source. A minute seemed to pass, an hour, a decade. The singing in her blood began to deepen, it became louder, like thunder. Sansa opened her eyes and reached out. She fell to her knees, the pressure mounting in her head, it felt like it was going to crack open like an egg. Distantly she could hear the words of the dead be whispered in her own mind before they were spoken aloud.
Across the room, the dead woman shifted, she looked up at the man cradling her corpse. "You failed us," she moaned.
"Uncle," the little girl cried. "Why didn't you save us?"
"You killed us," said the baby.
The man cried in shock and horror and fell back against the wall, tears on his cheeks.
"Murderer," the left head growled. "As guilty as us," the middle head accused in a proud tone. The last head growled like a hunting hound that had scented fresh blood. Then the woman and her children began to crawl toward the man, leaving trails of blood behind them, their eyes had all turned a cold clear blue.
The man's screams echoed in her flesh and Sansa clutched her head as the pain became overwhelming. But just as it seemed like her brain would erupt from her skull, Euron pulled her away. The screams grew distant and the world grew darker until there was nothing to see but blackness. The ground was hard as stone and Sansa groped blindly in the dark. Her fingers touched something soft and wet. She took it in her hands as Euron placed a hand on her head, petting her like he would a favoured dog, and brought her into the light.
"The age of man is ended." Euron smiled as the darkness shifted. Great winds rose from nothing, the hard ground shook, and the sky became crisscrossed with white bolts. "The time of nightmares has begun."
Thunder roared in the distance. Sansa looked down, in her hand was a strange flower, burnt black by lighting. The storm roared again.
Arianne
The Golden Company had travelled to the coast of the Disputed Lands. From a port nominally controlled by Tyrosh, they took ship with the waiting fleet. There were pirates by the score, old allies from the War of the Ninepenny Kings, and others bribed by the coffers of the Pentoshi merchant Illyrio Mopatis. Illyrio had also hired a merchant fleet, and Arianne's own father had sent a few Dornish ships to join the fleet as well. With them had come news and five hundred Dornish spears. A small host was gathering to guard the Prince's Pass, while Prince Oberyn and his daughters led a second larger host through the Boneway, and into the Stormlands.
From the Stepstones they made way to Weeping Town, where the corpse of the Young Dragon had once lingered for three days on its journey home from Dorne. Part of the fleet, commanded by Ser Marq Mandrake had travelled ahead to take the town and prepare it for King Aegon's arrival. Another detachment led by Torman Peake travelled to Estermont to secure the coast of the Stormlands. The rest of the fleet moved more slowly, shadowing the coast of the Stormlands as they travelled to Weeping Town. Now as the port came into sight they could see that the banners flapping from the town's stout wooden walls bore a red dragon on a black field.
"I should have been here," Aegon said, the blue dye had been washed out and locks of silver now flew in the breeze. "I should have lead the attack. I should have been the first to step foot in the Seven Kingdoms."
"You want to be the Conqueror come again?" Arianne asked, a hint of mockery in her voice. "You may have dragons," she spared a glance at one of the great bronze monster's that rested on pallets on the main deck and the queer foreigners that cared for them. "But these ones won't save you from knights or archers."
"It would have been kingly," he said. "My father never shirked from battle."
And look what happened to him, she wanted to say but held her tongue. Instead, she said. "It's not shirking to give the job to the best man."
Aegon said nothing at the large Stormlander town grew closer.
Ser Franklyn Flowers met them at the docks with a squad of pikemen and archers. "Your Grace," he said as Aegon stomped down the gangplank. "Princess," the bastard Reachman bowed his head as Arianne approached. "Weeping Town is yours Your Grace, the first of many to owe you fealty."
Aegon smiled and began to mingle with the men, putting aside his youthful bitterness to be a king. Farther down the docks the other ships were offloading their passengers. Black Balaq led a company of archers off the ships and made for the walls. Marq Mandrake shouted commands at knights and footmen alike from atop a stack of boxes. Laswell Peake was directing a pair of elephants off a huge cog, over a dozen more cogs just like it waited out at sea. In total, nearly fifty elephants accompanied the Golden Company. Other sergeants and captains were at work offloading thousands of men onto the docks.
Jon Connington approached them now with trimmed hair, splendid plate armour, and a surcoat with the dueling griffins of his house emblazoned. He looked like a true lord now instead of a ruffian sellsword. "Your Grace," he bowed his head. Harry Strickland followed not far behind him, his round face flushed with sweat.
Aegon smiled. "You're looking well," he said to Jon Connington.
"It's good to be in Westeros again. The closest I've been to home in… in too many years Your Grace."
"I'll see to it that your rightful home is restored to you." Aegon turned to the other captains. "Where now? Do we move to strike Mistwood?" Aegon asked the lords and captains. "Storm's End? King's Landing?"
"No," Harry Strickland said at once to the agreement of his commanders. "We will travel along the coast to the Red Mountains, where Prince Oberyn waits with ten thousand Dornishmen."
Jon Connington frowned but before he said anything else Aegon nodded. "I look forward to meeting my uncle."
They spent the night in Weeping Town's wooden keep, and the next morning they set forth to Golden Company set out for Stonehelm. They marched as the first rays of the rising sun brightened the green fields of Cape Wrath. They followed the main road, which ran inland toward the Rainwood before turning west to follow the edges of the forest. By midmorning, a light rain began to fall as they made their way north and west through a land of green fields and little villages. Further north, Arianne could see the fields gradually gave way to rolling hills and thick groves of the ancient forest.
The noonday sun them on the fringes of the rainwood, a wet green world where brooks and rivers ran through dark forests and the ground was made of mud and rotting leaves. Huge willows grew along the watercourses, larger than any that Arianne had ever seen, their great trunks as gnarled and twisted as an old man's face and festooned with beards of silvery moss. The trees pressed close, shutting out the sun. Hemlock and red cedars, white oaks, soldier pines that stood as tall and straight as towers, colossal sentinels, big-leaf maples, redwoods, wormtrees, even here and there a wild weirwood. Underneath their tangled branches ferns and flowers grew in profusion; sword ferns, lady ferns, bellflowers and piper's lace, evening stars and poison kisses, liverwort, lungwort, hornwort. Mushrooms sprouted down amongst the tree roots, and from their trunks as well, pale spotted hands that caught the rain. Other trees were furred with moss, green or grey or red-tailed, and once a vivid purple. Lichens covered every rock and stone. Toadstools festered besides rotting logs. The very air seemed green.
Arianne had once heard her father and Maester Caleotte arguing with a septon about why the north and south sides of the Sea of Dorne were so different. The septon thought it was because of Durran Godsgrief, the first Storm King, who had stolen the daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the wind and earned their eternal enmity. Prince Doran and the maester inclined more toward wind and water and spoke of how the big storms that formed down in the Summer Sea would pick up moisture moving north until they slammed into Cape Wrath. For some strange reason the storms never seemed to strike at Dorne, she recalled her father saying. "I know your reason," the septon had responded. "No Dornishman ever stole away the daughter of two gods."
The going was much slower here than it had been in Dorne. Instead of proper roads, they rode down crookback slashes that snaked this way and that, through clefts in huge moss-covered rocks and down deep ravines choked with blackberry brambles. Sometimes the track petered out entirely, sinking into bogs or vanishing amongst the ferns. Thus the march of the Golden Company was slow and tedious, wagons carrying supplies for man and animal alike became stuck constantly. Worst of all were the five wagons that carried the great bronze and iron dragons. Their immense weight drove the wheels down and dug huge troughs in the soft roads that quickly filled with water and turned the roads to mud. Men, oxen, horses, and even the elephants had to work together to pull the wagons free of the muck. In time, however, they returned to drier ground as the road moved south, away from the bogs, mud, and countless creeks.
The Golden Company camped an hour later amid the wide green fields of Cape Wrath. They fortified their camp with a ditch, earthen ramparts, and a low palisade. Inside, the horselines, animals pens, tents, and pavilions were set up in orderly rows with broad avenues between them. It was much like their camp in the Disputed Lands, though not as clean, or as lived in. Once they were settled in the rain began to fall again, a steady drizzle that blanketed everything in the soft cool mist of its raindrops. The trampled grass soon became waterlogged. In her soft Dornish shoes if felt like wading through the Water Gardens, except the Water Gardens had never been so cold. Arianne hurried inside her tent and tossed her soaked shoes into a corner. She quickly dried her cold feet with a blanket.
Nym and Obara may have reached Stonehelm by now, she mused, as she settled down crosslegged in the shelter of her tent. If not they ought to be there soon. Nymeria and Obara had accompanied their father and a thousand spears from Sunspear they would have travelled the length of Dorne, gathering men as they went and over the Red Mountains into the Marches of the Stormlands. Her father's ships had brought word that Prince Trystane was still safely back home at Sunspear, though they had said nothing of Princess Myrcella. Perhaps she was in Sunspear as well, or perhaps not. Myrcella was only a Princess by courtesy now with the fall of the Lannisters all but certain. Maybe she'd been sent elsewhere, sent somewhere so Trystane would forget her and he could be betrothed anew. That accounts for one brother, thought Arianne, but where is Quentyn? No word had come of him. Perhaps he was with Oberyn and the Sand Snakes, or in Sunspear. She hadn't seen Quentyn for weeks before she'd left Sunspear. At the time she'd been to busy preparing for her own voyage for it to concern her she'd thought perhaps Quentyn has returned to Yronwood. But perhaps her father had other plans in motion, plans she did not yet know. On that thought, Arianne retired for the night and fell asleep to the patter of raindrops.
Morning broke and the Golden Company decamped almost as quickly as they had set up the night before. The march west continued, more quickly now as the land grew higher and thus, despite the rain, drier as well. To the north, the Rainwood curved away and in the far west, the Red Mountains slowly came into view.
Arianne rode up beside the flank of one of the great grey beasts, the elephants that were the pride and joy of many in the Golden Company. Even more so than the great bronze dragons that the elephants pulled in wagons or the smaller hand-dragons that a few hundred men now carried. As she drew close her mare shied away from the huge animal and its unfamiliar smell.
"Princess," a thin Volantene with white-gold hair bowed his head as she approached. Her horse shied from the elephant again, and Arianne let her step away from the beast, the Volantene followed.
"I'm afraid you have the better of me ser," Arianne said once her mare had calmed herself.
"Horonno Qalgyr princess and I am no knight."
"Of course," Arianne rode quietly for a few seconds. "My uncle fought in Essos for a time, and he told me stories about elephants when I was young. How often have you fought beside them?"
"A few times," said Horonno, with a smile and a shrug.
"He said an elephant was worth fifty mounted knights. What do you think?"
"I'd say he'd be right if those mounted knights had fought elephants before if their horses were used to the size and the smell. If not," Horonno shrugged. "Then they'd be worth a hundred mounted knights."
"Do you play cyvasse?" asked Arianne. "My father has been teaching me. I am not very skilled, I must confess, but I do know that the dragon is stronger than the elephant."
"A very different kind of dragon then what the enemy has," Horonno said.
"And yet the Battle at Storm's End was said by many to be the Field of Fire come again."
Horonno shrugged. "I must confess I know little of what happened there. In the Disputed Lands, we heard tell of many tall tales and twisted fantasy. Some claimed Stannis had awakened dragons from stone and he was Azor Ahai come again." he chuckled. "Others, that he had bound an army of demons made from smoke and fire that laid waste to his enemies."
"In a sense the first is right I suppose," Arianne shrugged. "Metal comes from stone after all."
"But what really happened?" Horonno pressed.
Arianne wiped an errant raindrop off her nose. "What really happened is that Stannis and five thousand men destroyed a host of mounted knights four times their size. He had a dozen or so dragons, can your elephants match that?"
"I confess no they can't, but like Stannis' dragons, the elephants won't be fighting alone. The Golden Company will stand with them, the finest soldiers in the world," Horonno smiled. "And we have dragons of our own."
"Fewer dragons," Arianne said in turn. "And the men that carry them are less able than Stannis' men."
"But our pikemen, archers, swordsmen, and knights will be all the better."
"As you will, as free brothers go, your company stands well above the rest, I grant you. Yet the Golden Company has been defeated every time it crossed into Westeros. They lost when Bittersteel commanded them, they failed the Blackfyre Pretenders, and they faltered when Maelys the Monstrous led them."
Horonno frowned. "We are at least persistent, you must admit," he said sourly. "And some of those defeats were very close."
"And some were not, those who die in very close battle are no less dead than those who die in routs. Prince Doran, my father, is a wise man and fights only wars that he can win. If the tide of war turns against us, the Golden Company will no doubt flee back across the narrow sea, as it has done before. As Lord Connington himself did when Robert defeated him at the Battle of the Bells, Dorne has no such refuge."
"Then why are you here," he asked. "Why does Prince Oberyn lead a host over the Red Mountains?"
Arianne looked up at the Red Mountains that loomed ever closer. "Aegon is of my own blood. The son of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia of Dorne, my father's sister. Blood calls to blood."
The Volantene shook his head. "You Sunsetlanders are strange things. To fight and kill for blood and family. Such things don't happen in Essos."
"No, in Essos wars are fought only for avarice," Arianne tapped her heels and pushed her mare ahead to the front of the long column.
Finally, after four days of marching through the rain, the black and white stone towers of Stonehelm finally emerged from the grey mist. A host was already laying siege to the castle of House Swann. Above the army flew banners blazoned with scorpions, vultures, gates, flames, the suns and spears, the host of Dorne, led by the Red Viper himself. The sound of trumpets and drums rose from the Dornish host and soon a party of riders had left the camp to meet the Golden Company. Arianne and Tyene joined Aegon, Jon Connington, Harry Strickland, and the other captains and commanders of the Golden Company to meet them. Led by Prince Oberyn, the Dornish riders came to a halt ten paces away.
"Prince Oberyn," Aegon spurred his horse forward to meet Oberyn. "It is well to meet you at last."
The Red Viper pulled his black stallion up not far from the prince and took a long look at him before nodding. "Yes, you have Elia's look, around your chin and nose." He sounded mournful and very tired.
"Would that she was here," Aegon said with a hint of wistfulness.
"Papa," Tyene rode up past Aegon and embraced her father.
Oberyn kissed her on the forehead. "Glad to see you've joined us," her uncle shouted as he rode up to her.
Arianne smiled and rode up to meet him. Her smile froze when she drew closer and saw the large dark bags under his eyes. I've never seen him look so tired. "It's good to be here," she answered.
"Prince Oberyn," Jon Connington bulled his way forward. "It's been a long time."
"Can't you see I'm catching up with my niece Connington?" Prince Oberyn wheeled away. "Come, my lords, Your Grace night is falling and this rain is unbearable," he turned to lead them back to the camp.
"Are you alright," Arianne asked her uncle once they were in private.
"Hmm?" In the privacy of his pavilion, Oberyn seemed even more tired. Huge dark bags hung beneath his eyes and his armour seemed to weigh down on him like a mountain. "It's, uh, it's nothing, just… I'm just tired, a few bad dreams is all. A few nights in a soft bed will put me to rights. Once Stonehelm falls."
"How long will that take?"
Oberyn shrugged and sat down with a sigh. He seemed to melt against the low chair. "I've been here a week already. Lord Gulian Swann is a canny and cautious man, he's been taking in supplies since the war started and he's kept his almost all his men at home."
"Can we take the castle?" Arianne asked as she sat on a padded stool.
"By force? Yes, but it would be costly. Not something to do when Stannis has yet to be fought."
"Is he already marching?"
"I should think so, but we can't be sure yet," Oberyn shook his head. "Bah, enough of politics and war, that can wait. Tell me about your journey, has Essos changed much?" He reached into a bag and took out some wine.
"I doubt it," Arianne said with a smile that changed to a frown. "Where is my brother?"
Oberyn paused mid pour. "Ah, I imagine you aren't asking about Trystane."
Arianne said nothing and fixed her uncle with a look. "No."
Oberyn yawned and passed her a goblet of wine and sat. "You look like your mother when you do that."
Arianne raised an eyebrow. "I hardly remember her now, it's been too long."
"She brought my brother joy, for a time at least."
"And Quentyn?" Arianne pressed again.
Oberyn sighed. "My brother was never one to be a piece in another's game. Quentyn's gone east, to find a dragon of his own."
"Daenerys, the dragon queen." It would be like him, to have a plan for both Targaryens?
"Yes."
"King Quentyn, hmm," Arianne shook her head. "It sounds silly." Daenerys Targaryen was younger than Arianne by half a dozen years. What would a maid that age want with her dull bookish brother? Young girls dreamed of dashing knights with wicked smiles, not solemn boys who always did their duty. She will want Dorne though, if she hopes to sit the Iron Throne she must have Sunspear. If Quentyn is the price for that, then she will have to pay for it. "And if we both wed a dragon, if both Aegon and Daenerys refuse to step aside for the other, what then? Will Dorne tear itself apart in a second Dance or does my father have another plan?"
"I don't know, he doesn't share everything with me either," Oberyn yawned again. "If you'll please this campaign has been hard, and I'm not as young as I used to be. I must sleep."
"Of course, goodnight uncle," Arianne left her uncle and went to sleep in her own bed not long afterward. Arianne's dreams were worried full of storms and darkness, the stuff of nightmares.
Mathis
He jerked awake, his heart almost pounding through his chest, sweat drenched his body, and he was gasping for air. His leg was screaming in pain. He'd moved and thrashed too much in his sleep it seemed. With a gasp of pain, Mathis freed his leg from the blanket twisted around it. Sat up on his bed and held his head in his hands. Just a dream, just a nightmare, just like any you've had before. Battles always caused their fair share of nightmares afterward, though that was something no one wanted to speak of, it was unmanly. Nonetheless, they happened, nightmares filled with screams, the crash of steel, blood, death, and the dead. Mathis had had them for years, a few minutes to breath, maybe some wine, and he'd be fine, usually at least. Sometimes it was only his wife's touch that could calm him. Mathis' hand shook as he drank from the flagon of watered wine he kept at hand. But this dream had been different. Flashes returned to him as he drank.
It had started like a normal dream a normal battle nightmare. Mathis had been fighting his sword in hand. The crash of steel had been overwhelming. The dying and the dead had screamed in endless agony and fought to kill the living who had so tormented them. Two dead men grabbed Mathis, it was always the same two and pulled him to the ground. One was a brown-haired bandit with a dirty jerkin, the other a hedge knight with rusty chain mail, the first two men Mathis had killed. The hedge knight held Mathis down, and the bandit raised a rusty knife to drive through Mathis' visor. That was where the battle nightmare usually ended. But it this time it had only just begun.
The fighting changed, the dead men became more savage fighting with their hands and teeth, ripping apart the living with feral strength, their eyes shining with blue light. Then the lightning crashed and the thunder roared. The wind rose and flung the living and the dead alike as if they were a child's toys. The storm rose above everything, looming over the world and crackling with blue-white lightning. A figure flew in the storm, wrapped in wriggling things, armoured in shining darkness, and with wings formed from a hundred crows. Its eyes shined, one a brilliant blue, and the other an all consuming darkness. Behind the figure, the clouds a face formed glaring down upon the earth with unrestrained malice. Then the storm wall had crashed over him, and Mathis had woke.
"Just a nightmare," Mathis lied. He drank another mouthful of watered wine, wishing it was unwatered and began to dress for the day.
They'd left the Kingswood behind three days ago. Mathis' army moved quickly, taking the main roads as stealth was a luxury they could not afford. His outriders skirmished with the Stormlanders almost daily, but Stannis and Renly before him had taken all but the least of the Stormlands soldiery with them. All that remained were the ill trained, the young, and the old. The worst armed and the worst armoured, and less than one in fifty were mounted. Mathis' veteran men cut the Stormlander raiders apart whenever they met. Still, they took casualties and many of the injured, despite Mathis' best efforts, fell behind. They were left to the tender mercies of the Stormlanders. Varys rode next to Mathis at all time, he had half expected the eunuch to complain at the speed of their march. But if Varys the Spider was uncomfortable he gave no sign.
The days began to bleed together, and before long the host was passing not far the Crow's Nest of House Morrigen. They now passed through the lands between the less rugged northern branch of the Red Mountains in the west and the Rainwood in the east. Thereafter their journey became swifter and easier, House Morrigen had been one of Renly's earliest supporters, and they had stripped their lands almost bare to support the fallen stag's failed cause. The raids and skirmishes slowed to almost nothing, a much needed reprieve for the weary host.
A few days later and they entered the lands of House Swann, but instead of Stormlanders, they met Dornish outriders. After an unfortunately tense initial standoff, things were quickly put to rights and the fast moving Dornish horsemen guided Mathis' army to Stonehelm, where the main Dornish host and the Golden Company waited for them. As the Reachmen drew close riders raced to meet them. Dornish lords, for the most part, led by Princess Arianne, Prince Oberyn, his bastard Sand Snakes, and a surprise for both Mathis and Varys. Mathis barely held back a chortle when he saw Varys' eyes all but burst from his skull at the sight of Littlefinger. "Lord Petyr," Mathis said with a smile as Varys was still recovering his composure. "How nice to see you here. I trust you're doing well for yourself."
"Indeed my lord," the Valelord said with a shallow smile. "It's always a pleasure to serve the rightful king. I'm sure you can agree."
Littlefucker, Mathis thought sourly, the mockingbird's found another nest to sing from, but his attention was already turning to more important people. "Prince Oberyn, it's been a long time."
The Red Viper smiled. "Yes, the tournament at Highgarden I believe. Where Lord Willas was hurt. How is he doing by the way?"
Mathis shrugged. "I haven't seen Lord Willas in a long time, almost a whole years now."
"A pity," the Prince said, he turned to present a small young woman. "My niece, Princess Arianne."
"Lord Mathis," the Dornish Princess smiled sweetly.
"Princess," Mathis bowed in his saddle, forcing himself to ignore the shot of pain from his wounded leg. "I trust you had a pleasant journey."
Arianne laughed. "It's rained nearly every day since we landed at Weeping Town."
"The Rainwood is well named Princess." Mathis turned back to Prince Oberyn. "Have you taken Blackhaven?"
The Red Viper shook his head. "I left two thousand men under Lord Yronwood to lay siege and guard our rear."
A commotion caused the crowd of Dornishmen and Reachmen to part. Riding through the crowd was a young man with black steel armour, silver hair, and a circlet of gold on his head. He was flanked by two others, a greying man with a red beard and griffins on his surcoat rode to his right, and a portly balding man in plain armour and golden arm rings, on his the left. The young man spurred his horse ahead of the older men. "Lord Mathis! Be welcome to my army and my court!"
"Your Grace," Mathis bowed, the effort straining his leg again. "Lord Connington," Mathis turned to the third man. "And?"
"Ser Harry Strickland," the portly man said. "Captain-General of the Golden Company."
"And this," the King Aegon waved a hand at a knight in a white cloak. "Is Ser Rolly Duckfield, the first of my kingsguard."
"A pleasure," Mathis said courteously. A sellsword in a white cloak, still ten times better than what Robert packed his kingsguard with.
"Pleasant as all this is," an officer of the Golden Company with pox scars and a hole in his cheek leaned forward in his saddle. "Perhaps we should be talking about the siege instead of trading pleasantries?"
"Quite right," King Aegon said. "If you would my lords let us go to council." Aegon pulled his steed around and began the ride back to camp.
They retired to a large cloth-of-gold pavilion surrounded by gilded skulls mounted on poles. King Aegon took the chair at the head of the table and was flanked by Jon Connington and Harry Strickland. The divide in the camp was already present and was painfully obvious. On the king's left sat the officers of the Golden Company, a mismatched mix of cutthroats, foreigners, exiles, and the sons of exiles. On Aegon's right were the lords of the Seven Kingdoms, Jon Connington, Princess Arianne, her Dornish lords, Prince Oberyn who lazed in a chair beside his niece, and a hard looking woman Mathis supposed was one of the Sand Snakes. Mathis and some of his Reachmen, chiefly Ser Raymond Redding, Lord Torwood Middlebury, Lord Bart Risley, and Lord Ronald Uffering, now joined King Aegon's council as well. Though there was only room for Mathis and Ser Raymond to sit. The rest stood around with some of the Dornish lords and lesser officers of the Golden Company.
"My lords," King Aegon said. "Please let us welcome the arrival of Lord Mathis Rowan and his loyalists from the Reach." A polite round of applause rose from the assembled council. "I hope it is not presumptuous of me to ask if you would accept a place on my Small Council once the war is done?"
"Your Grace," Mathis rose and bowed. "Of course I accept such a great honour."
The King smiled broadly and glanced at Lord Jon before speaking further. "The honour is mine," he turned to the Spider, but a hand and a quiet word from Jon Connington stopped him from saying anything. Instead, the king turned to the rest of the council. "Now please my lords, knights, and commanders now that our host is gathered we must plan for the next steps in the restoration."
Harry Strickland spoke first. "So long as Stonehelm and Blackhaven stand our path of retreat into the Red Mountains is not secure."
"You already plan to retreat?" Jon Connington asked.
"I plan for the worst," Harry Strickland said mildly. "And hope for the best."
Another Golden Company man shrugged. "We'll have time to siege these castles will we not? Stannis is in King's Landing it would be most foolish for him to waste his effort to march for the sake of a pair of castles."
"Aye," a Summer Islander said. "Myr and Tyrosh wouldn't risk their armies for the sake of some forts or vassal cities, not if victory wasn't assured."
"That is Essos," Mathis said. "This is Westeros. Stannis will come at us with all haste and all the strength he has in King's Landing and that he can raise along the way. It might mean little for a Free City to lose some forts but the Stormlands and their lords are the heart of Stannis' power he can't allow us to run rampant over them."
"Lord Varys," Jon Connington turned his blue eyes to the Spider. "Do you agree?"
"Stannis," Varys said. "Is still troubled by rebels in the West, the Reach, the North, and the Iron Islands. Were it anyone else I should think that reports of pirates, Dornish raiders, and bandits would be dismissed as hearsay. A mere distraction, perhaps a ruse, or else not worth the time it would take to crush them. But this is Stannis Baratheon we speak of. It is not lightly I say this but of all the kings Stannis was the only one to truly worry Lord Tywin, and he was not a man to worry lightly."
"Had Lord Tywin worried a little more perhaps he would still be alive." Harry Strickland said as he leaned down to massage his foot. "Whatever happened there anyway? All we heard across the Narrow Sea were rumours that Mace Tyrell had gone mad with ambition."
Attention once more turned to Mathis. He shook his head. "I have no knowledge of what really happened that night. My wound and milk of the poppy ensured that I was deep asleep."
"It doesn't matter, what's done is done. Lord Petyr," Jon Connington spoke to the Valelord. "You claim to have friends in the Vale do you not? Can we expect much support from there?"
Littlefinger flicked at his little beard as he answered. "There is support, and then there is support. If you mean knights, bowmen, castles, and armoured hosts, then I fear you must look elsewhere. Lord Royce has too much influence and too much prestige to let my friends go to war for our king. But there are other ways to support the rightful king. I can say that aside from Royce and his closest allies no Valemen will march against us. "Further," he smiled. "Lord Varys is far from the only one with, hmm, little birds. Lord Royce brought more than a few of mine with him when he took up residence in Stannis' court."
Varys said nothing, though Mathis suspected the eunuch was all but ready to tear Littlefinger's head off. No lands, no knights, nothing but his spies and his words, and Littlefinger's beating him at both. Mathis felt little sympathy for the Spider. The rot in Aery's reign began with Varys. Better for everyone that he not have too much sway over King Aegon. "So what do your spies say?"
"Stannis is quickly preparing to march," he said. "He means to bring most of his host with him."
"How many is that?" Tristan Rivers asked
Petyr Baelish shrugged. "Greater than thirty thousand men to start with, and he'll gather more on the way, reinforcements from his garrisons in the Reach and what the Stormlords have left to spare."
"We'll likely be outnumbered then," Harry Strickland groused.
"Are the Golden Company not the finest soldiers in the world?" Jon Connington asked. "Surely Stannis doesn't frighten you."
The Captain-General spread his hands. "I only stated a fact."
Prince Oberyn leaned forward. "Not badly outnumbered, and the Red Mountains are good terrain to defend in. Thousands of years of war between Dorne, the Reach, and the Stormlands have proved that."
"The Stormlanders will know the mountains almost as well as my men do," Lord Ulrick Wyl said. "The mountains could prove more dangerous to us than to the Stormlanders."
Harry Stickland shrugged. "In any case, I don't think this siege should continue much longer. We should offer Lord Swann terms."
"Terms!" Jon Connington spat. "The siege has barely begun, and you want to offer terms."
"Please," King Aegon raised a hand. "Let Ser Harry explain himself."
"Thank you, Your Grace." Harry Strickland. "It's simple, the time spent laying siege to Stonehelm would be better spent securing our line of retreat through the Red Mountains, and into the Reach. If Stonehelm should happen not to fall, then we will be caught between Stannis and the walls."
"We have yet to even try an assault or use the dragons," Jon Connington protested.
Mathis perked up slightly. "Dragons? How many?"
Harry Strickland shared a look with his captains before answering. "Five dragons and three hundred hand-dragons."
"My father has sent a hundred Dornish dragonmen as well," Princess Arianne said quickly.
"We can fight Stannis at his own game now," Aegon said with a smile.
Not well enough I fear, Mathis thought, though he said nothing aloud.
"We have only so much powder and ammunition for the dragons," one of the Golden Company commanders, a Summer Islander said. "We should conserve it not waste it here."
Harry Strickland nodded. "We lose nothing by offering terms," the other Golden Company men and more than a few lords offered their agreement.
"Prince Oberyn, Princess Arianne," Jon Connington turned to the Dornish for support. "What say you?"
The Red Viper shrugged and said nothing, leaving his niece to speak for them. "I agree with Ser Harry, we lose nothing and have much to gain."
Mathis leaned forward. "If I may, Lord Guilian is a cautious man we can perhaps use that. A demonstration of the power the dragons possess may be sufficient to convince him to surrender. By now he'll have heard rumours at least of what feats the dragons have wrought."
"Tis a foolish thing," Lord Jon Connington argued. "We should make an example of him and his."
"And ensure no one would ever surrender again?" Harry Strickland asked. "Pah, if we can take the castle why bother shedding more blood?"
"Stannis will learn too much about the army," Jon Connington countered.
"Was every raven shot down?" Mathis asked. The following silence was answer enough for him. "Then Stannis most likely already knows much about the host."
"My lords," Princess Arianne said suddenly. "Before we go making an example of some poor rocks with the dragons. I have an idea."
Dornish ideas rarely end well, Mathis thought. At least I'm not on the receiving end.
The next day Mathis stalked behind the line of dragons set up to barrage the walls of Stonehelm. Nearly two dozen long black shafts rested on a platform built on the hard ground on a rise overlooking the River Slayne. A direct shot at the white and black walls of House Swann's citadel. A fearsome sight to be sure, though the effect was ruined when upon close inspection it was revealed that all but five of the dragons were simply logs that had been painted black. In the night, as the Golden Company and their foreign experts had set up their dragons, hundreds of other men worked for hours on the trees the Dornish had cut for firewood and siege materials.
"Trust the Dornish to think of bringing logs to a battle," Mathis muttered.
"If I didn't know better I'd think you sounded impressed," Prince Oberyn said from behind Mathis.
"It's equal parts impressed and scandalized actually. It's hardly chivalrous."
"Chivalry doesn't win battles."
"True," Mathis allowed. "But it certainly makes for a better song."
The Red Viper chuckled darkly as he stepped up beside Mathis. "I think more than a few songs will be made about this."
"Do you think it'll work?"
He yawned. "My niece is more like my brother than she'd care to admit," the Red Viper chuckled again. "Yes, it'll work."
Sure enough, a rider left Stonehelm within the hour to offer terms. Three hours of negotiations followed before they agreed to terms. Stonehelm was not to be looted, its people would not be harmed, and Lord Swann and his garrison would be allowed to retreat north. At Lord Jon's insistence, all the men who left Stonehelm were required to be blindfolded as they passed through the lines of the besieging host. In total, nearly half a thousand armed men left the castle. Led by their lord they journeyed north to where their king was no doubt waiting for them. The highest ranked lords and commanders were quickly allocated rooms and chambers inside the castle. As a great lord and a member of the Small Council Mathis was granted a large chamber high on the seaward side of the keep.
When evening fell Mathis settled down to sleep within his chamber. He sighed, grateful to have a proper bed for the first time in months. Mathis spent nearly half an hour watching the shadows spread across the Red Mountains and the Sea of Dorne as the sun fell to the west. He felt a pang in his heart, he missed the sunsets in Goldengrove, where the fields shone like gold in the evening light. With a heavy sigh, he limped to bed and shrugged on a sheet. He fell asleep hoping to dream of Goldengrove, of laughing children, and his smiling wife. Instead, there were only corpses, crows, and a terrible storm. The same nightmare came again, but different… now the thunder spoke a booming terrible sound that shook the earth. The Everstorm Comes.
Quentyn
He held onto the spar of broken wood with swollen and sunburned fingers. His back was raw from sun and salt, burning constantly as the waves Summer Sea swelled over his body. In a time like this, all that Quentyn could do was reflect on the path that had brought him here. It had started with a secret midnight conversation in Sunspear with his father.
"Whatever the truth of your cousin, my supposed nephew," Prince Doran had said. "Dorne must look for other options as well. Go to the east, to Slaver's Bay, and present yourself to Daenerys. Wed her if you can, but do all you can to bring her back to Westeros. The fate of Dorne is in your hands my son."
Quentyn had knelt beside his princely father's bed and had taken his hand with its joints swollen with gout. "I will not fail father. I swear it."
He and his companions Ser Cletus Yronwood, Ser Gerris Drinkwater, Ser Willam Wells, Ser Archibald Yronwood, and Maester Kedry had left Sunspear a bare half hour later, to taken ship for Volantis at Plankytown. Quentyn had known even then that his sister would be doing much the same as him in only a few weeks.
Their trip to Volantis was mostly calm, save for a brief squall that forced them off course for a part of the third day. Volantis was less peaceful, they were besieged in the room of a small inn by the endless barrage of mosquitoes, while they searched for a passage to the east. Finding a ship wasn't a problem, finding a ship willing to take passengers was. Most of the vessels were already packed with sellswords who'd been hired by the masters of Meereen and Yunkai. Men who would do their best to kill Daenerys before Quentyn could reach her. For a few days they tried to join one of the free companies, but then Ser Archibald Yronwood and Maester Kedry both came down with a fever. They grew so weak and sickly that they couldn't walk and could barely even move. So their voyage was delayed as Quentyn, Gerris, Cletus, and William spent their carefully hoarded coin on healers.
Despite the money they charged, the Volantene healers could do nothing for their sick friends. "It's a mosquito fever," the third healer had said. "It always seems to hurt you Andals the most," he shook his head. "Either he will live or he will die. There's nothing I can do for him." That healer had not charged them anything.
True to his word Ser Archibald had died in a sweaty deluded nightmare within the week and Maester Kedry died only a day later. Quentyn, Cletus, Gerris, and William had taken their bodies to a small sept near the harbour and buried him in the equally small graveyard. The septon, a half Ghiscari former slave with seven pointed stars tattooed on his cheeks, prayed in the Common Tongue with a strong Volantene accent over both of them. "Seven above take him, your servant, into your arms and with your holy light bless him and comfort him."
Quentyn and his companions paid their respects one by one, then returned to their room. "A toast," Cletus said. "To the Big Man."
"To the Big Man," they echoed.
"To Kedry," Quentyn said.
"To Kedry," the others repeated.
As one the four friends drank their sweet Volantene wine.
By that time, almost all the sellswords had already departed Volantis, and they had begun to despair of taking a ship to the east when the priest had arrived. He was a huge man with skin as black as pitch, a belly huge and hard like a boulder. His tangled white hair and beard looked like a lion's mane around his face, red-yellow tattoos of fire covered his cheeks and forehead. In his huge hand was an iron staff topped with a dragon's head that spat green sparks.
"Men of the Sunset Lands," the priest had said. "The Lord of Light has shown you to me in the flames. May I come in?"
We should have thrown him back onto the street. Quentyn coughed weakly, licking his lips in a vain hope for moisture. The priest had said he had foreseen that they would journey together and reach Slaver's Bay. He'd lied. Their voyage from Volantis has started smoothly enough, fair winds and calm seas had them moving south and then east as they skirted around the ruined lands of Valyria. The ship and her captain, both traders out of Braavos, had even proved to be excellent hosts, the cabins were clean, the food was decent, and there was even a singer. But three weeks out of Volantis a sudden and violent storm had risen from the Summer Sea. The great walls of wind, water, and thunder had rushed against them and sent the ship crashing into the deep. All the while as the storm whipped around them, the ship shuddered and shook the red priest had kept singing from his place on the bow.
He didn't know if his friends had died when the ship had gone down, he didn't know if any of the crew had survived, and he didn't know if the damnable red priest had survived. All Quentyn knew was that somewhere in that nightmare he'd taken hold of a spar of wood, and hadn't let go. When the storm passed, he was floating alone in the blue waters of the Summer Sea. That had been two days ago he couldn't last another.
He bobbed up and down with the gentle waves it was a beautiful day. A tall wave lifted him high above the rest of the water, and Quentyn opened his salt crusted eyes squinting against the sun, and its reflection off the shining blue sea. His heart skipped a beat, and a moan escaped his lips, a ship had crept over the horizon. They could be pirates, he thought, they could be slavers. For a second the thought crossed Quentyn's mind that he should stay silent and still, let the ship pass him by. But only death waited down that path. Quentyn groaned and shifted, he kicked his exhausted legs, trying to move closer to the ship. Gradually the ship grew closer. It seemed that the gods had chosen to send it in Quentyn's direction.
"Help," he cried weakly. "Help." he waved a sunburned arm and splashed the water. "Mother have mercy, " he prayed. "Please see me." The ship shifted slightly and began to sail toward him. It was close enough now that Quentyn could see the oars rise and fall. "Thank you," he said to the ship and to the Seven above.
The plain, salt stained grey sails hung limply in the humid air. Closer and closer it came. Five hundred yards, three hundred yards, one hundred yards. Fifty yards from Quentyn the oars were raised, and a man with a rope tied around his waist jumped into the sea and began swimming toward Quentyn. The ship slowly drifted onward.
The man wrapped strong arms around Quentyn, shifting their bodies so he would support Quentyn. The sailors on the ship began to pull the rope back. To Quentyn this all passed in a haze, he felt the water wash over him but wasn't truly aware of it. Quentyn was surprised when he was finally pulled from the sea and was laid down on the hot wood of the deck. A man put a skin into his mouth and lifted it letting Quentyn drink the fresh water. Quentyn coughed and sputtered at first, but quickly seized the waterskin with both hands and drank greedily.
"Easy," a gravelly voiced man said. "Too much and you'll spit it all back up."
Easy, the word seemed to echo in Quentyn's mind. The world began to turn dark around the edges. Quentyn looked up onto the faces of his rescuers. They were big men, most with large beards, many had axes or knives at their side, and most were shirtless in the hot sun. Only one man wore a coat with a House's badge, a black leviathan on a grey sea. House Volmark, Quentyn thought as unconsciousness consumed him, Ironmen.
He woke below decks swinging on a hammock. He tried to rise to his feet, but a powerful hand pushed him back down. "Stay still, your still lacking water. You'd just fall down and crack your skull." The man reached and grabbed something, then presented a cup. "Here, drink this." The man pressed the cup to Quentyn's lips and fresh warm water flow into Quentyn's mouth.
"Where am I?" Quentyn asked, cradling the cup of water in his hands like a holy talisman.
"On my ship, Swift Blow sailing the Summer Sea if'n you don't remember that."
"No… I… I do," Quentyn said, raising a weak arm to rub his forehead, and looked to see his saviour. The captain was seated on a simple stool was a short but powerful man, with a chest, arms, and belly like barrels. His head was shaved, and a huge brown beard covered his chest. He wore no armour only a tight cotton shirt that seemed too small for his own bulging body. Quentyn pulled himself slightly upright and bowed awkwardly in the hammock. "My lord," he said.
"I ain't no lord," the captain said. "Just a captain, Urri the Barrel, they call me." He arched an eyebrow. "What's your name?"
Quentyn shifted slightly. "Lewyn," he said. "My name's Lewyn Wyst." He took the name with a small house in service to House Dalt of Lemonwood.
Urri leaned forward. "And how'd you find yourself out here?"
Quentyn paused a second to think quickly, covering it by taking a drink from the cup. "I'm a steward in service to Ser Deziel Dalt. He fancies himself the next Sea Snake and sent me to make trade contacts in the east."
"Sea Snake?" Urri seemed confused. "You mean like Nagga?"
"Uh, no, no like Corlys Velaryon the old Lord of Driftmark during the Dance. He was a great trader and sailor he travelled all the way to Yi Ti."
Urri shook his head and spat on the bare planks of the deck. "If your Ser Dezial wanted to pay the gold price in Yi Ti he should have gone himself, instead of sending you. Ah but that isn't your fault, just doing your duty like we all must eh?"
"Yes," Quentyn said quietly. "Just doing my duty."
"Well," Urri stretched. "You know much about sailing?"
"Not much," Quentyn said quickly.
"Fighting?" Urri asked hopefully.
"I was trained by the master at arms of Lemonwood when I was young. Though I'm not the best with a blade."
Urri shrugged. "A blade in a hand is worth a hundred in the hold," he stood and grabbed Quentyn by the arm. "Come on. We'll get you one." With a single heave, the Ironman captain pulled Quentyn straight from his hammock. Using Urri as a crutch the two men made their way through the hold.
"I thought, maybe you'd make me a thrall," Quentyn said as he walked with the captain.
"I reckon it's a good omen from the Drowned God to rescue a man at sea. It'd be bad luck to make you a thrall and clean my boots. Nah, we'll give you a blade and have you learn the ropes, knots, and the ship to keep you busy. When the time comes, you'll earn your keep with blood and steel."
"When the times comes?"
"We're heading to fight lad. That's not exactly what the Lord Captain says but that's what I reckon."
"Where. Where are we heading?"
"Slaver's Bay."
Quentyn couldn't hold back a laugh. "Hah! That's, that's where I was going."
"Hah!" Urri laughed in turn and slapped Quentyn on the back. "You see, the Drowned God has a plan for us all. Here we are," Urri said as he pushed aside a thin sheet to reveal a small room crowded with spare weapons and armour. "Take your pick."
Many of the weapons showed signs of mild neglect, dull edges and the occasional spot of rust. In the end, Quentyn picked out a short spear and a short, broad bladed sword from amongst the various weapons that both seemed to be in good condition. He swayed slightly as he turned back to Urri. "What now?"
"Now I make a sailor out of you."
Quentyn worked long and hard for a dozen days and a dozen nights on the ship. Urri and his crew had been scouting ahead of the main fleet and were now meeting up with them in the Gulf of Grief, at the southern tip of the Isle of Cedars. Hauling ropes burned his muscles like they hadn't burned in years, he fell to sleep aching every night in a hold crowded with two dozen other men. The rest of the crew was standoffish to Quentyn, but not unfriendly, he was an outsider but not a wholly unwelcome one. The most indifferent seemed to regard him as nothing more than a good luck charm that could walk. However, Urri seemed to take great pleasure in taking Quentyn under his wing and, quite literally, teaching him the ropes.
Almost two weeks since his rescue the Swift Blow took land on the southernmost tip of the Isle of Cedars. They beached the ship in a sheltered cove, and the crew took to land. A trio of archers disappeared inland and returned an hour later with a pair of fat wild pigs that were cooked over a bonfire. Red juice flowed down his chin and into the scruffy beard he'd begun to grow, while dark ale and red wine flowed down his throat. The night deepened, and Quentyn joined the ironmen in dancing around the fire. They sang raucous songs that would've burned his ears had they not already been burning from drink. When morning broke the horizon was clear, and Quentyn's head was dizzy with a hangover. He was forced to recover quickly, as Quentyn and the crew worked to haul supplies, water, meat, and timber, onboard Swift Blow. For two days he hauled supplies and cut his hands stripping the beached hull of barnacles and other sea life that clung to the wooden frame. As noon passed on the third day, the first ships were spotted on the horizon. As the sun descended those ships grew in number, and slowly grew from distant dots into dozens upon dozens of warships, bearing krakens, scythes, leviathans, warhorns, and a dozen other crests upon their sails and flags. Six hours past noon the first ships began to make landfall, half a mile north of Swift Blow.
A few were trading vessels, cogs or small galleys, but most were lean and hard warships. Larger than a longboat, but smaller than a true war galley, they were fast and deadly like wolves or sharks. But the ship that dropped anchor offshore behind beside Swift Blow was a far different beast, a fearsome war galley far too large to pull ashore like Swift Blow. Instead, a ship was lowered from the side, and part of the crew travelled to shore.
The man at the prow of the boat was a large and powerful man, with a bull's broad chest and a hard flat stomach. His long black hair was flecked with grey and tied back with a leather cord. He was armoured in boiled black leather, heavy grey chain mail, and lobstered plate. His cloak was made of layers of cloth-of-gold cut into many strips that fell to his feet in their armoured boots. A longsword and a dirk were sheathed at his waist and in his right hand was a razor sharp axe. His helm lay in his left hand, for a moment Quentyn thought that the steel was formed into the shape of vines or snakes. But on closer look, it became clear that they twisting helm was made from the steel tentacles of a kraken. Behind him was the red priest, Moqorro, seemingly as healthy and hearty as ever, for all that he was dressed in red rags stained pink by seawater.
The big man waved an arm at the crew of Swift Blow. "Urri! What have you seen?"
"By the Drowned God m'lord empty seas and the King's bride wait for you."
The big man frowned as he made shore beside Swift Blow.
"Bride?" Quentyn asked quietly as the man approached.
"King Euron means to wed and bed Daenerys Targaryen. Lord Victarion," he pointed at the big man and smiled. "And we have been sent to fetch her."
Urri and Victarion embraced, the barrel shaped captain looked like a child compared to the massive bulk of Victarion Greyjoy. But Quentyn's focus was on the red, pink, and black shadow behind the pair. Moqorro's eyes were fixed on Quentyn, after a moment he tapped his staff on the ground, prompting a shower of green sparks, and leaned forward to whisper something in Victarion's ear. An almost irresistible feeling rose inside Quentyn, he looked up again to watch the red priest. You didn't lie priest you said we'd get to Slaver's Bay and we did. You just didn't include my friends when you said we. Quiet anger tightened around his heart.