A Feast for Dragons

ever been, with a bull’s broad chest
and a boy’s flat belly. The kinslayer is accursed in the eyes of gods and
men, Balon had reminded him on the day he sent the Crow’s Eye off to sea.
    “He is here,” Victarion told the Barber. “Drop sail. We
proceed on oars alone. Command Grief and Iron Vengeance to stand
between Silence and the sea. The rest of the fleet to seal the bay. None
is to leave save at my command, neither man nor crow.”
    The men upon the shore had spied their sails. Shouts echoed
across the bay as friends and kin called out greetings. But not from Silence .
On her decks a motley crew of mutes and mongrels spoke no word as the Iron
Victory drew nigh. Men black as tar stared out at him, and others squat and
hairy as the apes of Sothoros. Monsters, Victarion thought.
    They dropped anchor twenty yards from Silence. “Lower
a boat. I would go ashore.” He buckled on his swordbelt as the rowers took
their places; his longsword rested on one hip, a dirk upon the other. Nute the
Barber fastened the Lord Captain’s cloak about his shoulders. It was made of
nine layers of cloth-of-gold, sewn in the shape of the kraken of Greyjoy, arms
dangling to his boots. Beneath he wore heavy grey chainmail over boiled black
leather. In Moat Cailin he had taken to wearing mail day and night. Sore
shoulders and an aching back were easier to bear than bloody bowels. The
poisoned arrows of the bog devils need only scratch a man, and a few hours
later he would be squirting and screaming as his life ran down his legs in
gouts of red and brown. Whoever wins the Seastone Chair, I shall deal with
the bog devils.
    Victarion donned a tall black warhelm, wrought in the shape
of an iron kraken, its arms coiled down around his cheeks to meet beneath his
jaw. By then the boat was ready. “I put the chests into your charge,” he told
Nute as he climbed over the side. “See that they are strongly guarded.” Much
depended on the chests.
    “As you command, Your Grace.”
    Victarion returned a sour scowl. “I am no king as yet.” He
clambered down into the boat.
    Aeron Damphair was waiting for him in the surf with his
waterskin slung beneath one arm. The priest was gaunt and tall, though shorter
than Victarion. His nose rose like a shark’s fin from a bony face, and his eyes
were iron. His beard reached to his waist, and tangled ropes of hair slapped at
the back of his legs when the wind blew. “Brother,” he said as the waves broke
white and cold around their ankles, “what is dead can never die.”
    “But rises again, harder and stronger.” Victarion lifted off
his helm and knelt. The bay filled his boots and soaked his breeches as Aeron
poured a stream of salt water down upon his brow. And so they prayed.
    “Where is our brother Crow’s Eye?” the Lord Captain demanded
of Aeron Damphair when the prayers were done.
    “His is the great tent of cloth-of-gold, there where the din
is loudest. He surrounds himself with godless men and monsters, worse than
before. In him our father’s blood went bad.”
    “Our mother’s blood as well.” Victarion would not speak of
kinslaying, here in this godly place beneath the bones of Nagga and the Grey
King’s Hall, but many a night he dreamed of driving a mailed fist into Euron’s
smiling face, until the flesh split and his bad blood ran red and free. I
must not. I pledged my word to Balon. “All have come?” he asked his
priestly brother.
    “All who matter. The captains and the kings.” On the Iron
Islands they were one and the same, for every captain was a king on his own
deck, and every king must be a captain. “Do you mean to claim our father’s
crown?”
    Victarion imagined himself seated on the Seastone Chair. “If
the Drowned God wills it.”
    “The waves will speak,” said Aeron Damphair as he turned
away. “Listen to the waves, brother.”
    “Aye.” He wondered how his name would sound whispered by
waves and shouted by the captains and the kings. If the cup should pass to
me, I will not set it by.
    A crowd had gathered round to wish him well and seek his
favor. Victarion saw men from every isle: Blacktydes, Tawneys, Orkwoods,
Stonetrees, Wynches, and many more. The Goodbrothers of Old Wyk, the
Goodbrothers of Great Wyk, and the Goodbrothers of Orkmont all had come. The
Codds were there, though every decent man despised them. Humble Shepherds, Weavers,
and Netleys rubbed shoulders with men from Houses ancient and proud; even
humble Humbles, the blood of